The Fire Is Mine

A sideblog for all things Daenerys of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Realm, Lady Regnant of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons. I still stan her and would follow her to the ends of the Earth if she asked me to. Dracarys!

[helaenarts]

"We follow the comet," Dany told her khalasar. Once it was said, no word was raised against it. They had been Drogo's people, but they were hers now. The Unburnt, they called her, and Mother of Dragons. Her word was their law.

A Clash of Kings - Daenerys I

[beetlebaes]

baldnerys!!

[stormborns]

GAME OF THRONES 5.05, Kill the Boy

[huntedmaiden]

— i’ve grown used to him.

[awildwickedslip]

thinking about dragon sex for fic reasons. so the world of ice & fire has this to say:

“As Archmaester Gyldayn notes in his fragmentary history, there is no record that Vermax ever laid so much as a single egg, suggesting the dragon was male. The belief that dragons could change sex at need is erroneous, according to Maester Anson’s Truth, rooted in a misunderstanding of the esoteric metaphor that Barth preferred when discussing the higher mysteries.”

that belief of barth’s gets airtime in the main series in a feast for crows in the context of how human constructs of gender can lead to grievous error and misreadings of the world’s wonders:

“It was a prince that was promised, not a princess. Rhaegar, I thought … the smoke was from the fire that devoured Summerhall on the day of his birth, the salt from the tears shed for those who died. He shared my belief when he was young, but later he became persuaded that it was his own son who fulfilled the prophecy, for a comet had been seen above King’s Landing on the night Aegon was conceived, and Rhaegar was certain the bleeding star had to be a comet. What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise! The error crept in from the translation. Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame. The language misled us all for a thousand years. Daenerys is the one, born amidst salt and smoke. The dragons prove it.” Just talking of her seemed to make him stronger. “I must go to her. I must. Would that I was even ten years younger.”

this is all preliminary to what i’m thinking about how the various writers of fire & blood DO sex the dragons according to human constructions - even though i think martin is getting at this being incorrect. specifically, what are the constitutions of the various targaryen rider-dragon dyads? breaking it down:

balerion/aegon i (m/m)

rhaenys/meraxes (f/f)

visenya/vhagar (f/f)

aenys i/quicksilver (m/f)

maegor/balerion (m/m)

aegon the uncrowned/quicksilver (m/f)

rhaena the black bride/dreamfyre (f/f)

alysanne/silverwing (f/f)

jaehaerys i/vermithor (m/m)

aerea/balerion (f/m)

aemon/caraxes (m/m)

baelon/vhagar (m/f)

alyssa/meleys (f/f)

viserys i/balerion (m/m)

daemon/caraxes (m/m)

rhaenys/meleys (f/f)

rhaenyra/syrax (f/f)

laenor/seasmoke (m/m)

laena/vhagar (f/f)

aegon ii/sunfyre (m/m)

helaena/dreamfyre (f/f)

aemond/vhagar (f/f)

daeron/tessarion (m/m)

jace/arrax (m/m)

luke/vermax (m/m)

joffrey/tyraxes (m/m)

aegon iii/stormcloud (m/m)

baela/moondancer (f/f)

rhaena/morning (f/f)

jaehaerys/shrykos (m/f)

jaehaera/morghul (f/m)

nettles/sheepstealer (f/m)

ulf/silverwing (m/f)

hugh/vermithor (m/m)

addam/seasmoke (m/m)

my point is if the sex of dragons is possibly not firmly fixed, but human writers (and i believe all men) fix it anyway - although their only metric is “if the dragon lays eggs then the dragon is female” which is of course as is usual in this area lacking in real scientific rigor - those designations could say interesting things. some notes:

the first opposite sex pairing is aenys and the female dragon quicksilver. interesting as aenys’ historical reputation is a weakling less masculine than his father or brother whose indecision as a ruler helps plunge the realm into civil war:

“The boy was diligent, his instructors agreed, and did not want for courage, but he lacked his sire’s size and strength, and was never more than adequate as a fighter, even when the king pressed Blackfyre into his hands, as he did from time to time. Aenys would not disgrace himself in battle, his tutors told one another, but no songs would ever be sung about his prowess.

Such gifts as this prince possessed lay elsewhere. Aenys was a fine singer himself, as it happened, with a strong sweet voice. He was courteous and charming, clever without being bookish. He made friends easily, and young girls seemed to dote on him, be they highborn or low.”

and

“The king was easily influenced, swaying this way and that like a reed into the wind, like as not to heed whichever councillor last had his ear.”

other opposite sex pairings are vhagar and her male riders. this is also interesting - vhagar is a female dragon because her first rider is visenya, but visenya is possessed of a degree of gender ambiguity herself: she is a warrior, she has a harsh and unyielding character, she is as comfortable in chainmail as silk, and she wields real political authority. her reputation is bloody and ambivalent, constituting usurpation and treachery and rumors of the dark arts, but so awesome that the inheritable things associated with her - from her dragon to her sword (named “dark sister”) - have a talismanic power that increases the reputation of the male descendants proud to wield them.

the next example of balerion and aerea, again, fascinating. balerion’s fearsome reputation is such that a little girl like aerea riding him is viewed as impossible; as this quote suggests, it almost has to believed that she did not truly master him as is considered normal for dragon and rider in other cases:

“The princess might well have intended to fly to King’s Landing, just as her mother suspected. It might have been her thought to seek out her twin sister in Oldtown, or to go seeking after Lady Elissa Farman, who had once promised to take her adventuring. “Whatever her plans, they did not matter. It is one thing to leap upon a dragon and quite another to bend him to your will, particularly a beast as old and fierce as the Black Dread. From the very start we have asked, Where did Aerea take Balerion? We should have been asking, Where did Balerion take Aerea?”

intriguing that jaehaerys and jaehaera, girl and boy twins, each have a dragon of the opposite sex. calls to mind jaime and cersei and the theme of an opposite sex twin being an externalized male/female self. also both shrykos and morghul die as tiny baby dragons before they are even large enough to ride, and it seems like maybe before they could have reached dragon sexual maturity, raising other questions about how this sexing process works.

the other pairings are the dragonseeds - non-aristocratic bastards allowed to claim dragons in a usurpation of the natural order of things, and in ulf’s case, claiming a dragon first ridden by someone else (and thus with a fixed identification, according to people other than our guy barth). the only other female rider-male dragon is nettles/sheepstealer. from the quote about aerea above, it’s easy to imagine a woman riding a male dragon as activating some gender anxiety for westerosi observers, and nettles’ “taming” of sheepstealer is a radically new model of dragon-human relation based in slowly gaining the dragon’s trust.

the logic of even “if the dragon lays eggs then the dragon is female” receives added epistemological strain when you consider that in the show when daemon gathers eggs from the dragomont in 1.08, he says they’re syrax’s…but how does he know that? he didn’t see it! he dug them out of some mysterious disgusting dragon egg sac goo! are these egg layings witnessed? presumably sometimes, but this is a suggestive chime of doubt.

daenerys’ dragons are all identified as male and given the names of her deceased male relatives (#boymom), but are also tiny baby dragons who have not been able to lay eggs if they can, although perhaps daenerys might hope they will because there is only one of her to be able to bring dragons back to life via blood magic ritual. but they are apparently to be considered male until proven otherwise, and of course the patriarchal logic influencing that seems obvious.

[huntedmaiden]

— what we’ve created.

[noveaucolors]

“if I look back, I am lost,”

Daenerys, my tragic and flawed beloved.

I’ve been re-reading the ASOIAF series this past year and it really grinds my gears that Dany was stripped of all the magical, symbolic, and mysterious elements of her story

[huntedmaiden]

DAENERYS TARGARYEN + RHAENYRA TARGARYEN

[huntedmaiden]

— DAENERYS TARGARYEN + JOAN OF ARC

[beetlebaes]

bald middle schoolers 💔💔💔

[helaenarts]

Dany and her Silver

[manymanymirrors]

“once on a voyage to braavos, as she'd watched the crew wrestle down a great green sail in a rising gale, she had even thought how fine it would be to be a sailor.”

commission for @/redoorlemontree on twitter

[martellspear]

He [Robert Baratheon] sent me poisoned wine, yet I live and he's gone. "What was the manner of his death?" — Daenerys; ACOK

I just realized this lovely parallel (?) between what Robert tried to do to Dany and how he died. Divine justice imo

[girlsfordalecooper]

“You were made to be kissed, often and well” is such an amazingly romantic line but unfortunately it is said to a 15 year old after a middle aged man kissed her non-consensually.

[marsinthespace]

book!snowstorm✦ | navigation ⋆

"Sometimes Dany would close her eyes and dream of him, but it was never Jorah Mormont she dreamed of. Her lover was always younger and more comely, though his face remained a shifting shadow."

[soncee]

Dany's handmaidsssss. Had a lot of fun designing these. I promise i will try to be more active

[most-screwed-by-writers-tourney]

Character Most Screwed by the Writers, Final Round.

Korekiyo Shinguji, Danganronpa v3

Daenerys, Game of Thrones

Voting ended onMar 16, 2025

Korekiyo: backstory involves him getting groomed- and thats never acknowledged. Gets treated as a "sister guy" (he has romantic feelings for his groomer). Is "half possessed" by his sister which comes across as an alter and it's very very bad. Also all his memories are fake and the writers in story and in real life did not need to include the incestous grooming

Daenerys: was a very feminist and progressive character until they decided to make her the main villain suddenly and kill her off in two episodes.