One interesting thought on this:
Fairy tale dragons? Theyāre like Smaug. Theyāre arrogant, talkative, they hoard treasure, they eat virgins. Theyāre amoral rather than evil, but they are intelligent monsters.
The dragon in Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, the one indirectly responsible for Eustaceās draconic curse is along the same lines.
At that time that is what a dragon was. There was a general consensus in western literature that dragons were, well, that.
In Medieval stories, dragons are to be killed by brave men. Gawain fightsĀ āwyrmsā - a kind of wingless dragon. St. George slays a dragon. So does Beowulf. So does King Arthur. To be a worthwhile myth hero you have, at some point, to slay a dragon.
Early modern and nineteenth century dragons - we see one counter example - Faustus chariot is drawn by dragons inĀ āDoctor Faustus.ā The first really solidĀ āfriendly dragonā story is The Reluctant Dragon, which became a 1941 Disney film. That is the first story I can findĀ about a dragon that befriends a human - but itās friendship, notĀ āhuman masters dragon.ā
The second friendly dragon is E. NesbitāsĀ āThe Last of the Dragonsā who decides heād rather hang out with the princess than fight the prince (the first example of subversion of the dragons eat maidens trope that I can find).
But theyāre the minority.
In the 1930s, when Lewis and Tolkien were writing, dragons were the bad guys. The rare exceptions were dragons deciding not to act like dragons.
That something probably started with a 1948 childrenās book calledĀ āMy Fatherās Dragon - about a kid who runs away to Wild Island and rescues a baby dragon. Heard of it? If youāve studied kid lit, sure, it won a ton of awards. Otherwiseā¦nope, and certainly in Dawn Treader, written in 1950, dragons were still bad.
In the 1960s we start to see a couple moreĀ āgoodā dragons. But itās almost always the same thing. Dragons are bad, except thisĀ one. This is a special dragon.
Then in 1967 John Campbell ran a story in Analog named Weyr Search. Heard of that one? Yup.
It was part of a novel called Dragonsflight, written by Grand Master Anne McCaffrey.
And she completely changed what dragons were.
Anneās dragons were gentle, genetically engineered protectors who bonded to a human rider at birth and wereĀ āmasteredā by that rider - the dragons offered instinct, but the reason came from the humans.
Anne McCaffrey was one of the first female authors to write science fiction by women about women - and while she had a number of flaws and was honestly a better worldbuilder than writer she inspired a lot of people.
And changed our view of dragons as a fantasy trope.
Since then most fantasy writers that include dragons have them as friendly and willing to be ridden by humans. Even theĀ āgoodā dragons in the DragonLance novels.
In other words: In the space between Tolkein and Martin, whoās first short story collection was published in 1976, almost a decade after Weyr Search Anne McCaffrey turned dragons on their head.
Daenerysā dragons owe more in their lineage to Ramoth than they do to Grendel, the dragon slain by Beowulf.
(In other words, literary evolution is fascinating).