Quick sports break with SPOILERS BELOW!

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Ok anyway, if you’ve been watching House of the Dragon, you know that the theme over the past two episodes is getting bastards to ride dragons. Team black has a lot of dragons, but not a lot of people. Team green has a lot of people, but not a lot of dragons.

The way black has been going about rectifying this is trial and error, with the error being a fiery death. They’re trying to find people with high-born blood, and they put them in front of the dragons. If the dragon says no, it burns and/or eats the candidate. If it says yes, the candidate becomes a dragon rider. In Episode 6, “Sea Smoke” said ‘hell nah’ to this one guy, then flew off and found someone with the proper DNA. Similar thing in Episode 7, where “Vermithor” and “Silverwing” wound up in front of a couple of bastards from King’s Landing and the next thing you know, the latter was flying over the capital city after previously chilling in a cave.


So here’s the question –

If you’re one of these dragons, why would you want a rider anyway? From everything we’ve seen, it’s entirely the dragon’s call. My body, my choice. So if you’re just slumbering in a cavern or flying around on your own, setting your own schedule, eating goats, and doing fuck all, why would you want to connect with a rider? Now you’ve gotta take orders from someone. You have to breathe fire on command and go fight other dragons and avoid those big scorpion things that are launching crossbow bolts into the air.

Sometimes this lore is explained in the books, so I googled “Game of Thrones, if you’re a dragon, why do you need a rider?” and couldn’t find anything definitive. The closest match was this paragraph from “A Wiki of Ice and Fire” –

“A person may become a dragonrider at any age, much like horses and their riders; some when they are very young, some as teenagers, some not until adulthood. To ride a dragon, a person has to bond with the dragon. Once the dragon and the rider have bonded, that dragon will not allow anyone else to mount it alone while its rider lives, no matter how familiar said person might be to the dragon. For example, when Rhaenyra Targaryen’s son Joffrey Velaryon attempted to mount her dragon Syrax, Syrax shrugged him off mid-flight, causing him to fall to his death. However, dragons are willing to accept another person upon their backs as long their own rider has also mounted. Queen Visenya Targaryen gave a ride to young Lord Ronnel Arryn upon her dragon Vhagar. A century later, Vhagar allowed Alys Rivers to ride behind her current rider, Prince Aemond Targaryen.”

Helpful, but doesn’t answer the question of why a dragon would want someone riding it. Do they get bored? Are they lonely? Do the other dragons give you shit for not having a rider? Is it a status symbol? Feels like something is missing here, because capitulation seems unfitting for such magnificent beasts.

Anyway, something to chew on. Email me if I’m missing something here.

Now let’s get it back to the Eagles, but first, we’re spitting these bars with Drag-On: