PowerRankings

The second ladder16 dragons

Dragons,Weighed Without Their RidersThe Westeros Dragons ranking

A dragon is equipment. Say that out loud and half the arguments about this cast stop being arguments about the people in them: Aemond Targaryen on the ground is a one-eyed man with whatever Criston Cole taught him, and the same boy on Vhagar is the largest weapon in the world. Collapsing those into one number answers neither question. So the riders keep their places on the other page for what they can do with a blade in their hand — Daemon Targaryen is third over there on his swordsmanship and nothing else — and the beasts are argued here, out of what each one is filmed or recorded doing. Caraxes is high on this list for tearing out the throat of a dragon twice his size. His rider is high on that one for a leap between two of them. Two findings, reached separately, and the fact that they agree is worth more than one number pretending to cover both. Read the two columns side by side with some care. There are sixteen beasts named here and thirty names over there, twenty-five of them carrying a number at all, so the ladders are cut to different lengths and subtracting one placing from the other yields a figure with nothing underneath it. A gap between a dragon and the person riding it points somewhere; it does not measure. And most of these riders never appear on the other page, which is not an omission — a girl who tamed a wild dragon by leaving it a sheep every morning is not a swordsman, and was never going to be ranked as one.

BladeWielder
  1. 01—

    Balerionthe Black Dread

    Aegon I Targaryen — not ranked on the character ladder

    Did not burn Harrenhal so much as revise it. The towers of the largest castle ever raised in Westeros went up like candles and ran, and they are still standing in the shape that fire left them, which is a mark no other weapon on either page has managed to press into the map. He was black-fired and old enough to have seen Valyria before the Doom, his flame hot enough to turn sand to glass, and under his second rider he put a dragon and its prince into the mud beneath the Gods Eye. First here without an argument being necessary. Maegor coveted him and thought every other dragon beneath him; Aerea took him without leave and came back dying; Viserys got him at the very end, too heavy to rouse, and managed three circuits of King's Landing and no further.

    • statedThe World of Ice & Fire · The Reign of the Dragons: The Conquest

      At Harrenhal his fire burned so hot that the towers went up like candles and melted into the shapes they hold to this day, killing Harren Hoare and every remaining son.

    • statedFire & Blood · Reign of the Dragon — The Wars of King Aegon I

      In the fullness of his power his flames could fuse sand into glass.

    • statedThe World of Ice & Fire · The Targaryen Kings: Maegor I

      At the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye, Maegor used him to kill Prince Aegon and his dragon Quicksilver.

    All 4 citations
    • statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 8 (Daenerys I)

      Arstan Whitebeard tells Daenerys he was two hundred years old at his death, large enough to swallow an aurochs whole, and that a dragon never stops growing while it has food and freedom.

  2. 0214

    Vhagar

    Aemond Targaryen — 12 places lower as a person

    A hundred and eighty-one years old at her death and still the largest living dragon in the world, having outlasted Visenya, Baelon and Laena Velaryon before a ten-year-old took her off a Driftmark beach and used her harder than any of them. She took Arrax in a storm over Shipbreaker Bay — in the book by simply overcoming him, in the series by swallowing boy and dragon together. At Rook's Rest she dropped onto Meleys from above and was the only one of three dragons to get up from the crash unhurt, with a king crippled and a princess unrecognisable in the wreck. Second only because Balerion melted a castle and she never had to. What finally killed her was not another dragon's size.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Blacks and the Greens

      During the Dance she was the oldest and largest dragon alive, with Caraxes about half her size.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Red Dragon and the Gold

      At Rook's Rest she fell on Meleys from above; the three dragons struck the ground hard enough to shake stones from battlements half a league off, and she alone rose unharmed.

    • shownHouse of the Dragon · S01E10 “The Black Queen”

      Takes Arrax and Lucerys Velaryon in a single bite over Shipbreaker Bay, having stopped answering her rider first.

    All 4 citations
    • statedA Clash of Kings · ch. 12 (Daenerys I)

      Her breath was said to be hot enough to melt a knight's armour and cook the man inside it.

  3. 0303

    Caraxesthe Blood Wyrm

    Daemon Targaryen

    Half Vhagar's size and killed her anyway. Falling into the Gods Eye with his belly opened and one wing-arm torn off at the root, he shut his jaws on the bigger dragon's throat and pulled it out, and then dragged himself onto the shore with his entrails coming after him and died at the foot of Harrenhal. No other beast here beat something larger than itself, and the Dragonkeepers had him marked as the fiercest of the young dragons in the pit nearly sixty years before he proved it. Aemon Targaryen flew him first, against the Dornish fleet and over Tarth, and was killed by a crossbow bolt while Caraxes was eating goats.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — Rhaenyra Triumphant

      In the fall from the Battle Above the Gods Eye he tore out Vhagar's throat while she opened his belly and took off one of his wing-arms, then hauled himself ashore and died before the walls of Harrenhal.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Blacks and the Greens

      Red, huge and lean, formidable and experienced in battle, and by the end of his life an old and cunning dragon about half Vhagar's size.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — A Son for a Son

      Daemon takes Harrenhal by setting him down on top of Kingspyre Tower.

  4. 04—

    Drogon

    Daenerys Targaryen — not ranked on the character ladder

    The only one here whose whole career was filmed rather than compiled, and the record survives the change of evidence. He took a bolt from a weapon built to kill dragons, pulled out of the fall before he hit the ground, and came back and wrecked the machine. He put an army's worth of Lannister and Tarly men down in a single pass along the Roseroad, sank the fleet that had killed his brother, then flattened a city that had already rung its bells. In the books he is the one nobody can chain: three attempts, four men dead, and a spear in his back at Daznak's Pit that he answered by tearing off the arm that held it. The three above him each killed a dragon. He fought one and drove it off — dropping onto the undead Viserion over Winterfell, knocking the Night King out of the saddle and tearing into the thing's neck until it broke away — and never lost anything else, which is exactly the shape of a career that stops short of the top of a list.

    • shownGame of Thrones · S07E04 “The Spoils of War”

      Burns the length of the Lannister column on the Roseroad, takes a scorpion bolt from Bronn in the shoulder, recovers before hitting the ground and incinerates the scorpion.

    • shownGame of Thrones · S08E05 “The Bells”

      Destroys the Iron Fleet, breaks the scorpions on the walls, and burns King's Landing after its surrender.

    • shownGame of Thrones · S08E03 “The Long Night”

      Drops on the undead Viserion from above, rams him hard enough to throw the Night King off his back, and forces him to break off by tearing into his neck with his fangs.

    All 5 citations
    • shownA Dance with Dragons · ch. 11 (Daenerys II)

      Escapes three attempts to capture him, burning most of the men sent and killing four, and vanishes north into the Dothraki sea.

    • shownA Dance with Dragons · ch. 52 (Daenerys IX)

      Impaled at Daznak's Pit by Harghaz's spear, kills him by tearing his arm off, and carries Daenerys out of the pit as the first dragonrider in a century and a half.

  5. 05—

    Vermithorthe Bronze Fury

    Riderless at Tumbleton — not ranked on the character ladder

    Third in size behind only the two Conquest dragons, and the one that did its best work with nobody on its back. Hugh Hammer, the dragonseed who claimed him, was cut down by Jon Roxton before he could reach the saddle, and everything below happened with the straps empty. Woken half-asleep on the field at Tumbleton by two score knights who had come to finish him, he killed all of them, snatched up a knight who tried to flee before him on the ground, burned two lords with their squires and sworn shields, then took Seasmoke's head off his neck while Tessarion was also on him. He tried to fly away holding it and his wings would not carry the weight, so he came down and died. Almost a hundred years old, and the Old King had ridden him to claim a throne at fourteen.

    • statedThe World of Ice & Fire · The Targaryen Kings: Jaehaerys I

      Already large in 48 AC, with only Balerion and Vhagar larger.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — Rhaenyra Overthrown

      Hugh Hammer is cut down by Jon Roxton before he can mount; riderless, Vermithor kills the two score knights who attack him on the ground, snatches up a fleeing knight, then rips Seasmoke's head off and collapses dead when his tattered wings cannot lift him with the head still in his jaws.

    • shownHouse of the Dragon · S02E07 “The Red Sowing”

      Rhaenyra presents him as the largest dragon in the world after Vhagar and perhaps the fiercest; he then burns and eats most of the dragonseeds sent to him before bending his neck to Hugh.

  6. 06—

    Meraxes

    Queen Rhaenys Targaryen — not ranked on the character ladder

    Silver-scaled, golden-eyed, and the third of the three that took the continent. At the Last Storm the weather kept her on the ground and she burned Argilac Durrandon's vanguard and his personal guard from there; at the Field of Fire she was one of the three that killed four thousand men in an afternoon, the only battle of the Conquest in which all three were in the sky together. Then a scorpion bolt went through her eye above the Hellholt and she came down, taking the castle's highest tower and a length of curtain wall with her — the first proof anyone had that the things could be killed from the ground, which is the fact she is best remembered for and the least flattering one available. Tyrion Lannister has her larger than Vhagar; the maesters never say so, and she died a hundred and twenty years before Vhagar did, with far less time to grow, so the page keeps both readings and leans on the second.

    • statedThe World of Ice & Fire · The Reign of the Dragons: The Conquest

      Grounded by wind and rain at the Battle of the Last Storm, she still engulfed Argilac's vanguard and the knights of his personal guard.

    • statedThe World of Ice & Fire · Dorne: Dorne Against the Dragons

      An iron scorpion bolt through the eye at the Hellholt in 10 AC brought her and Rhaenys out of the sky, and her death throes destroyed the castle's highest tower and part of the curtain wall.

    • statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 13 (Tyrion II)

      Tyrion, looking at the skulls in the cellar, holds her to have been larger than Vhagar and smaller than Balerion.

  7. 07—

    Meleysthe Red Queen

    Princess Rhaenys Targaryen — not ranked on the character ladder

    One of the swiftest dragons in Westeros, able to leave both Caraxes and Vhagar behind when the three of them flew together as the Old King's children's mounts. Grown lazy across the fifty-four years between that judgement and the Dance, and still worth about eight hundred men in one visit to Rook's Rest, where the scorpion bolts that hit her annoyed her and did no harm. Then two dragons came out of the sun and she turned to meet them rather than run, which Gyldayn is careful to say she knew was hopeless — and she got her jaws round Sunfyre's neck and half tore a wing off him on the way down, crippling a king for a year. Alone against Vhagar the compiler thinks she had a chance.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Long Reign — Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Policy, Progeny, and Pain

      By 75 AC she was among the swiftest dragons in Westeros, easily besting Caraxes and Vhagar when Alyssa flew with her brothers.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Red Dragon and the Gold

      At Rook's Rest she was struck by scorpion bolts that angered her without harming her, and killed some eight hundred men; Gyldayn holds she might have stood a chance against Vhagar alone but not against Vhagar and Sunfyre together.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — Rhaenyra Overthrown

      She had half torn one of Sunfyre's wings from his body before she died.

  8. 08—

    Sunfyrethe Golden

    Aegon II Targaryen — not ranked on the character ladder

    Broken twice and never beaten. Gyldayn calls him the most beautiful dragon the world has seen, which is not the interesting thing about him: the interesting thing is that after Rook's Rest left one wing hanging off him he lay in a field eating the dead, healed crooked, killed the threescore men who came to finish him along with the lord who led them, and then flew. Crackclaw Point, then a hidden lair on the Dragonmont, with Grey Ghost torn apart and half eaten once he was back. Moondancer opened his side and blinded him in one eye and he killed her too. What he did last, grounded and rotting, was eat a queen in six bites. Nothing here has a worse medical record or a better win rate.

    • statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

      Gyldayn calls him the most beautiful dragon ever seen in the known world.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Red Dragon and the Gold

      Unable to fly after Rook's Rest, he killed threescore of the men Walys Mooton led against him, Walys among them, and had flown again within a fortnight.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — Rhaenyra Overthrown

      Blinded in the right eye and raked open by Moondancer, he killed her in the crash, and later devoured Rhaenyra Targaryen in six bites, leaving her left leg below the shin.

  9. 0901

    Viserion

    The Night King

    Ranked once, as one animal, because that is how the series treats him: the name never changes, the corpse is hauled out of the same lake it went into, and the thing that opens its eyes is the thing that closed them. What changed was the colour of the fire and who was holding the reins. Living, he did nothing on his own that the ledger can use — three dragons burning wights together is not an individual feat. Dead, he took a length of the Wall down at Eastwatch in a breath, brought a wall of Winterfell down on the people behind it, and fought Drogon and Rhaegal at the same time, coming off better than Rhaegal did. That ceiling has a switch under it, though, and it is not his: he was down in Winterfell's courtyard with Jon Snow pinned in the rubble when Arya Stark put a dagger into somebody else's chest, and he dropped dead where he stood.

    • shownGame of Thrones · S07E06 “Beyond the Wall”

      Speared through the neck by the Night King and dropped through the ice, then hauled out and raised with a hand laid on his snout.

    • shownGame of Thrones · S07E07 “The Dragon and the Wolf”

      Brings down the castle at Eastwatch and that stretch of the Wall with blue fire, opening the way south for the dead.

    • shownGame of Thrones · S08E03 “The Long Night”

      Fights Drogon and Rhaegal together over Winterfell, losing part of his lower jaw to Rhaegal and breaking off when Drogon tears into his neck, then dies grounded in the castle courtyard with Jon Snow pinned there, the instant Arya kills the Night King.

  10. 10—

    The Cannibal

    Never claimed by any rider — not ranked on the character ladder

    Black with green eyes, older and bigger than the other two wild things on the Dragonmont, and named for what he does to his own kind: dead dragons, hatchlings, eggs. A dozen would-be tamers went to him before the Dance and his lair is floored with what is left of them. When the Red Sowing came, not one dragonseed was fool enough to walk up that slope, and whoever did try it never came back to be counted. He drove Sheepstealer off a man he had already maimed and ate the man and his sons. Placed on a reputation nobody was willing to test and on the plain fact that he was one of four dragons still breathing when the war ended — thin evidence for a bout, decisive evidence about the animal.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Red Dragon and the Gold

      The largest and oldest of the three wild dragons of Dragonstone, so called because he feeds on dead dragons, newborn dragons and dragon eggs.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Red Dragon and the Gold

      Would-be dragontamers had tried him a dozen times and his lair was littered with their bones; no dragonseed of the Sowing was fool enough to disturb him.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Red Dragon and the Gold

      Descended on Silver Denys after Sheepstealer tore his arm off, drove Sheepstealer away and devoured Denys and his sons.

    All 4 citations
    • statedThe World of Ice & Fire · The Targaryen Kings: Aegon III

      One of the four dragons that came through the Dance of the Dragons alive.

  11. 11—

    Dreamfyre

    Riderless in the Dragonpit — not ranked on the character ladder

    Slender, pale blue, and ninety-eight years old by the time the mob came through the doors of the Dragonpit. Four dragons were chained in there. She was the only one that broke her chains, and Gyldayn's arithmetic is blunt about the rest: she killed more men than the other three put together. They shot her down out of her own circles, swarmed her every time she landed, and finally nicked an eye with a crossbow bolt, at which point she went up half-blind into the dome and cracked it, and half of it fell on her and on the men who had done it. Rhaena Targaryen had flown her for the best part of forty years, across every corner of the map, looking for a lost daughter. She had already snapped two chains on her own, the day Helaena went out of a window.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — Rhaenyra Overthrown

      Alone of the four chained dragons she broke free during the Storming of the Dragonpit, and Gyldayn records that she slew more men than Tyraxes, Shrykos and Morghul combined.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — Rhaenyra Overthrown

      Half-blinded by a crossbow bolt, she flew into the pit's great dome, which cracked and came down on her and on the dragonslayers below.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Sons of the Dragon

      Bonded with Rhaena Targaryen as a hatchling in 32 AC and was large enough to carry her three years later.

  12. 12—

    Seasmoke

    Addam Velaryon — not ranked on the character ladder

    Pale silver-grey, of fighting size but young, and quicker in the air than the older beasts around him. He killed a Queensguard knight during the Sowing before a fifteen-year-old out of a Hull shipyard walked up and got on. What earns the place is the last quarter-hour of his life: with Tumbleton burning and Vermithor loose and riderless below him, he threw himself down from above on a dragon far larger than himself and drove it shrieking into the mud. Gyldayn says Addam Velaryon must have known he could not win it. Seasmoke fought until the larger animal locked its teeth in his neck and pulled his head off, and the larger animal was dead within the minute from what the fight had cost.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Red Dragon and the Gold

      Killed Ser Steffon Darklyn of the Queensguard during the Red Sowing before accepting the fifteen-year-old Addam of Hull.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — Rhaenyra Overthrown

      At the Second Battle of Tumbleton he fell on the riderless Vermithor and drove him into the mud, and was killed when Vermithor ripped his head off.

    • shownHouse of the Dragon · S02E06 “Smallfolk”

      Burns Ser Steffon Darklyn in the caves beneath the Dragonmont, leaves the island, then runs Addam of Hull down on the beach and takes him as his rider.

    All 4 citations
    • shownHouse of the Dragon · S02E07 “The Red Sowing”

      Roars Rhaenyra to a halt on the beach when she approaches the already-mounted Addam on foot with Syrax behind her.

  13. 1313

    Rhaegal

    Jon Snow

    Green and bronze, and for most of his life the middle brother in a set of three, which is a hard position from which to accumulate a record of your own. He spent a long stretch chained in a pit under the Great Pyramid for something Drogon had done. The one hour that belongs to him is over Winterfell with Jon Snow on his back, where he tore part of the lower jaw off a dragon that had just brought down a wall — the first wound anybody put on the thing that night, and not the one that ended it. He came out of it with a bad wing and was shot out of the sky over Blackwater Bay a few days later by ship-mounted scorpions, without ever getting near them.

    • shownGame of Thrones · S08E03 “The Long Night”

      Carrying Jon Snow, he engages the undead Viserion and rips away part of his lower jaw and neck before retreating with an injured wing.

    • shownGame of Thrones · S08E04 “The Last of the Starks”

      Struck repeatedly by scorpion bolts from Euron Greyjoy's Iron Fleet and killed, falling into Blackwater Bay.

    • shownA Dance with Dragons · ch. 11 (Daenerys II)

      Chained in a makeshift pit beneath the Great Pyramid with Viserion after Drogon is blamed for the child Hazzea; six men are burned over the three days it takes to move him.

  14. 14—

    Sheepstealer

    Nettles — not ranked on the character ladder

    Mud brown, ugly, over fifty years wild, and the single most dangerous animal in the Red Sowing by a distance: he killed more of the people who came for him than Vermithor, Seasmoke and Silverwing managed between them, and tore Silver Denys's arm off. He would eat a shepherd's dog and never once touched a shepherd, which is the sort of detail this ladder cannot score and cannot ignore. A bastard girl got him by putting out a freshly killed sheep every morning until he stopped minding her — no bloodline, no dragonkeepers, just patience. Years after the war was over, a royal army found the pair of them in a cave in the Mountains of the Moon and left sixteen men behind in it.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Red Dragon and the Gold

      In the Sowing he killed more candidates than Vermithor, Seasmoke and Silverwing combined, and tore Silver Denys's arm off.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Red Dragon and the Gold

      Nettles tamed him by leaving him a freshly slaughtered sheep each morning until he suffered her to mount.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Lysene Spring and the End of Regency

      In 134 AC Ser Robert Rowan's men found him and Nettles in a cave in the Vale; sixteen were slain and threescore more wounded.

  15. 15—

    Syrax

    Rhaenyra Targaryen — not ranked on the character ladder

    Yellow, enormous, and soft. Gyldayn puts it as gently as a maester can — formidable, but neither as fearsome nor as experienced as Caraxes — and then supplies the reason without comment: she was kept chained in a stable in the outer ward, fed until she was fat, and had not hunted for years. A queen's mount rather than a war dragon. When the pit was stormed she flew to the noise, and the compiler notes she could have stayed high and made passes with her flames and instead put herself on the ground among them, killing dozens with tooth and claw before the rioters finished her. Nobody agrees on exactly how. Placed here on size that never learned what it was for.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Blacks and the Greens

      Huge and formidable, but not so fearsome or experienced in battle as Caraxes.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — Rhaenyra Triumphant

      Kept chained in an emptied stable in the Red Keep's outer ward, exceedingly well fed, and had not hunted for years.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — Rhaenyra Overthrown

      Threw Joffrey Velaryon from her back in mid-flight, came down among the mob at the Dragonpit rather than making passes from the air, killed dozens with tooth and claw and was killed there; Gyldayn declines to choose between the accounts of how.

  16. 16—

    Grey Ghost

    Never claimed by any rider — not ranked on the character ladder

    The colour of morning mist, and the only entry on either page ranked chiefly for avoiding everybody. He lived alone in a smoking vent on the east face of the Dragonmont, went years at a stretch without being seen by a human being, and fed by skimming fish out of the narrow sea. Dragonseeds who went looking for him during the Sowing could not find him, which is the closest thing to a contest he ever entered. What ended him was a crippled dragon with a badly set wing, which tore him apart above the mountain and ate some of him, and the castellan of Dragonstone then attributed the killing to the wrong animal entirely. Last, and nothing about that placing is contested.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — The Red Dragon and the Gold

      Pale grey-white and notably shy, avoiding men and their works for years at a time, feeding on fish taken low over the narrow sea, and never claimed or ridden by anyone.

    • statedFire & Blood · The Dying of the Dragons — Rhaenyra Triumphant

      The crew of the Nessaria saw him fighting a golden dragon above the Dragonmont; he was vanquished and partly devoured by Sunfyre, and Ser Robert Quince wrongly blamed the Cannibal.