Vhagar

The second of the Conqueror's three, and in her old age the largest living dragon in the world.

The beast itself

Vhagar aged the way a mountain ages. In the Conquest she was a fast, hard, mid-sized war beast; a century and a half later her hide had gone the colour of old bronze under older leather, seamed with scars that had healed into ridges, and she had to shoulder her way into the air like a ship leaving a slipway. Her flame ran gold-white and hot enough to slump armour into the shape of the man inside it. She did not roar so much as tear the air: a sound that arrived as a physical pressure, that set horses down on their haunches half a league off and had been known to crack slate.

Her temper was the frightening part. Old dragons are not quick to anger, and Vhagar could be flown past, shouted at and even struck without much reaction ÔÇö she had the deep, dull patience of something with nothing left to prove. But she was slow to start and slower to stop, and once she had decided on a thing there was no calling her off it, not by rein, not by voice, not by the rider she was carrying. Men who kept her in the last years said she seemed to be listening to something other than the person on her neck.

Her first rider: Visenya Targaryen

Visenya was the elder sister, the swordswoman, the one who did the parts of the Conquest that are not sung about, and Vhagar suited her exactly. The two of them took the Vale without a battle: Visenya set her dragon down in the courtyard of the Eyrie itself, in a castle everyone agreed could not be stormed, and made the point by arriving. At the Field of Fire she flew the left of the three and burned her way across the Reach beside Aegon and Rhaenys.

Where Balerion was an argument and Meraxes a spectacle, Vhagar under Visenya was a tool used precisely. Contemporaries described the pairing as cold. Visenya rode her in mail, made no display of her, and put her where she was needed. It was said in the Vale afterwards that the dragon had been the more courteous of the two.

Her second rider: Baelon Targaryen

After Visenya, Vhagar spent a long stretch of years with nobody on her back, which is how she got her growth. Prince Baelon, second son of the Old King and the best-liked man of his generation, claimed her in that peaceful century and rode her for much of it. It was an unglamorous partnership by the standards of this list ÔÇö no conquests, no burnings, mostly progresses and tourneys and the occasional show of force in the Stepstones ÔÇö but it kept the largest beast in the realm exercised, handled, and used to a rider's weight. She was already too big for the Dragonpit's smaller stalls by the end of it.

Her third rider: Laena Velaryon

Laena Velaryon claimed her as a girl of about twelve, and that fact alone made her name in Westeros: nobody had gone up to Vhagar in decades, and a child who did it and lived was worth more talk than most tourneys. Laena flew her for years, in Pentos and Volantis and the Free Cities as much as at home, and there is a strong case that she was the most natural flier of her whole generation.

Those who saw them together said Laena rode high and loose and let the dragon choose the line, which was not how the dragonkeepers taught it and worked better than the way they did. She is the only one of Vhagar's riders about whom nobody, in any account, records an argument with the beast.

Her last rider: Aemond Targaryen

Vhagar had been unclaimed for barely a season when a one-eyed boy of ten crept down to Driftmark's shore in the dark, alone, and climbed onto the largest living creature in the world. It was the single bravest thing anyone in that family did in the whole Dance, and everybody involved understood immediately that it was also the worst. Aemond had lost an eye to his cousins and gained, in exchange, a weapon none of them could match.

The pairing was a bad one in the way that matters: the dragon was enormous and unhurried and the rider was young, aggrieved and quick. Together they burned a long stripe through the Riverlands, put whole villages to the torch for the crime of belonging to a lord who had chosen the other side, and made Aemond the most feared man in the realm before he was twenty. Watching from the ground, the smallfolk did not distinguish between beast and boy. They spoke of them as one animal with two tempers.

What became of it ÔÇö if an ending is written, it is here. Spoilers.

Vhagar died over the Gods Eye in 130 AC, locked together in the air with Daemon Targaryen's Caraxes. Both dragons and both riders went into the lake. She was one hundred and eighty-one years old, and with her died the last living link to Aegon's Conquest.

Laena Velaryon never rode her again after a childbed that went wrong at Driftmark; she asked to be carried out to her dragon at the end, and the accounts differ, gently, about whether she reached her.