A World Where Dragons Are Almost Gone
The Dunk and Egg stories sit in an awkward, fascinating moment in Westerosi history. The dragons are not roaring symbols of conquest anymore. They are shadows of what once burned half the continent into submission. By the time Tales of Dunk and Egg unfolds, dragons still exist, but only just. They are small, sickly, riderless, and politically inconvenient.
This is part of the charm. Dunk wanders the realm chasing knighthood, Egg dreams of dragons returning, and House Targaryen quietly realises its greatest weapon is slipping away.
How Many Dragons Are Alive?
During the core Dunk and Egg era, roughly between 209 and 233 AC, there are only a handful of living dragons. None are battle ready. None are being ridden. All are kept on Dragonstone like embarrassing family heirlooms that no longer work.
Most sources point to four or five living dragons at most, depending on exactly which year you are standing in. The important thing is that they are all small and dwindling.
The Last Living Dragons
The Dragon of Aegon V’s Youth
This is the dragon Egg dreams about more than any other. It is never named on the page, which feels intentional. These dragons no longer earn legendary titles.
This dragon is small, weak, and never ridden. It represents hope rather than power. Egg wants to bring dragons back because he knows what they once meant, even if he has never seen one truly fly.
It likely dies before or around the tragedy at Summerhall, taking several royal ambitions with it.
The Dragon of Prince Aerion Targaryen
Aerion Brightflame’s dragon is alive during Dunk and Egg, which feels like a cruel joke by the gods. Aerion is unstable, violent, and deeply unfit to bond with a dragon, yet one exists in his lifetime.
Like the others, this dragon is small and unimpressive. Aerion never rides it. The idea that dragons refuse him feels appropriate, almost moral.
When Aerion drinks wildfire believing it will turn him into a dragon, it becomes painfully clear how far the reality has fallen from the Targaryen myth.
The Dragon of Maekar’s Reign
Under King Maekar I, dragons still technically exist, but they are politically useless. They are kept at Dragonstone, guarded more out of tradition than fear.
These dragons never leave the island. They never take riders. No lord trembles at their mention.
At this stage, dragons are symbols on banners rather than forces on battlefields.
The Last Hatchlings
The youngest dragons alive during the late Dunk and Egg period are barely larger than dogs. Some are said to be malformed, slow growing, or simply weak.
They cannot breathe meaningful fire. They cannot fly far. They cannot intimidate anyone who remembers Balerion or Vhagar.
They exist in a sad half life, living proof that something fundamental has broken in the Targaryen bloodline or the magic of the world itself.
Why Dragons Matter Even When They Are Weak
Dragons in the Dunk and Egg era are important precisely because they no longer work.
Their decline mirrors the weakening of royal authority. Without dragons, kings must negotiate, compromise, and occasionally get punched in tourneys by hedge knights with questionable armour.
Egg’s obsession with restoring dragons is not about spectacle. It is about justice, reform, and power without asking permission from lords who would rather keep things exactly as they are.
That desire leads directly to Summerhall, one of the great unanswered tragedies of A Song of Ice and Fire.
A Quiet Ending for a Loud Legacy
By the end of the Dunk and Egg era, dragons are functionally extinct. Their bones, eggs, and memories remain, but their role in the story has changed.
They are no longer weapons. They are warnings.
And somewhere on the road, Egg keeps dreaming of fire and wings, not realising that the age of dragons has already slipped behind him, quietly, without a final roar.
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