One of the most captivating elements of House of the Dragon is the way it treats dragons not as simple weapons or props, but as living, thinking creatures with personalities, temperaments, and relationships with their riders. The show goes deeper than Game of Thrones ever did in exploring the actual mechanics of how dragon bonding works, what makes a successful dragon rider, and why some people can claim dragons while others get roasted for even trying. If you’ve ever wondered why Lucerys can ride Arrax but couldn’t just hop on Vhagar, or why dragons have such fierce loyalty to their particular riders, this is the guide for you.
The Fundamental Rule: Dragons Choose Their Riders
This is perhaps the most important thing to understand about dragon bonding in House of the Dragon: dragons have agency. They’re not magical weapons that anyone can pick up and use. They’re intelligent creatures who form deep, almost spiritual bonds with their riders, and this bond is, fundamentally, the dragon’s choice. A person might try to claim a dragon, they might have the blood of Old Valyria running through their veins, they might be a Targaryen with centuries of dragon-riding history in their family, but if the dragon doesn’t want to bond with them, it’s not happening. The dragon might eat them instead, and that’s just how it goes.
This is why Aemond’s claiming of Vhagar is such a significant moment in the story. Vhagar is the largest living dragon in the world, an ancient beast who has known many riders throughout her long life. She’s not some young, wild dragon who might be desperate to bond with her first rider. She’s ancient, she’s experienced, and she’s seen riders come and go. The fact that she accepts Aemond is actually a mark of something special in him. It suggests that there’s something in Aemond’s nature—his determination, his desperation, his will—that resonates with Vhagar. The dragon sees something in the boy, and she chooses him.
Contrast this with other characters who attempt to claim dragons and fail. Throughout the show, we see several instances of would-be dragon riders approaching dragons they hope to bond with, and the dragons rejecting them. Sometimes this rejection is relatively gentle—the dragon simply ignores them. Other times it’s fatal. The point is always the same: the dragon decides, not the human. This creates a dynamic where dragon riders aren’t heroes who conquered beasts through strength or will; they’re partners in a relationship that the dragon had to agree to first.
The Hatching Bond: The Strongest Connection
The absolute strongest dragon bonds are the ones formed when a dragon hatches. When a young Targaryen, or a member of another dragonlord family, is present at the moment a dragon emerges from its egg, there’s a connection that forms that’s almost impossible to replicate. These dragons and their riders grow up together, they’re imprinted on each other, and their bond is often described as almost telepathic in its intimacy. This is why dragons who hatched with their riders are so extraordinarily protective of them and so devastating when something happens to them.
Think about characters like Daenerys and Drogon from Game of Thrones, or in House of the Dragon, the deep bonds between various young Targaryens and their dragons. These bonds formed at hatching are why some people in the world of Westeros have such casual, easy relationships with their dragons. They didn’t have to persuade the dragon to like them because the dragon has literally never known a world without them. The dragon doesn’t see its rider as a separate being who has to be convinced to cooperate; the rider is simply part of the dragon’s life, as essential as breathing.
This is also why some of the most tragic moments in House of the Dragon hit so hard. When a dragon and its rider have that kind of bond from hatching, an injury to one is felt like a physical wound by the other. The dragons grieve. They rage. They burn things in their sorrow. The vulnerability that comes with such a deep bond is part of what makes these creatures so powerful and so pitiable at the same time.
Claiming a Dragon: The Desperate Path to Bonding
Not everyone has the luxury of having a dragon hatch and imprint on them. Some dragonlord families had to deal with situations where they had more family members than dragons, or where political circumstances meant someone didn’t get the dragon that was “supposed” to be theirs. In those cases, claiming a dragon—approaching one directly and trying to form a bond with it after the fact—is an option, though it’s a risky one.
The process of claiming seems to involve a combination of elements: the potential rider has to have Targaryen blood or at least significant Valyrian heritage, they have to approach the dragon with the right mindset (there’s definitely a spiritual or magical component to this), and they have to be someone the dragon is willing to accept. Age plays a factor too—younger people seem to have more success with claiming wild or riderless dragons than older adults do, perhaps because young dragons respond to youth and potential, or because younger people are more flexible and less set in their ways.
When someone successfully claims a dragon after the fact, it’s typically a more transactional bond than a hatching bond, though it can still be quite strong. The dragon accepts the rider, and the rider accepts the dragon, but there’s less of that primal, intertwined connection that comes from growing up together. This might be why dragons with hatching bonds seem more fiercely protective and more willing to follow their riders into impossible situations. The dragon and rider with a hatching bond might literally die for each other. The dragon and rider with a claimed bond are partners, and partnerships, while strong, sometimes have limits.
The Bloodline Question: Why Targaryen Blood Matters
Throughout the lore and the show, there’s this persistent idea that you need Targaryen blood to ride a dragon. There are hints that the blood of Old Valyria confers some kind of advantage, some magical resonance that allows a person to communicate with or bond with dragons. But House of the Dragon complicates this by showing us that Targaryen blood alone isn’t sufficient. There are characters with Targaryen blood who are terrible with dragons, who get eaten when they try to claim them, who don’t have the temperament for bonding.
It seems that what you actually need is some combination of Valyrian blood and something else—determination, strength of will, perhaps a certain kind of magical affinity that you can’t quite define but you know it when you see it. Aemond has it. Daenerys has it. Even relatively minor Targaryen characters tend to have it if they’re going to be dragon riders. The blood of Valyria seems to be a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.
What makes this interesting from a storytelling perspective is that it allows House of the Dragon to tell stories where blood alone doesn’t determine destiny. A Targaryen can have all the right genes but still fail spectacularly if they don’t have the right temperament. A bastard with a drop of Targaryen blood might theoretically have a better shot than a trueborn child of House Targaryen, if they have the strength of will and the magical resonance that the dragons respond to. It’s a system that rewards individual excellence over pure bloodline, which makes the characters’ choices and actions meaningful in a way pure genetic inheritance wouldn’t.
The Emotional Connection: Understanding Your Dragon
One of the most striking things about how House of the Dragon portrays dragon riding is the emphasis on emotional understanding between rider and dragon. It’s not just about sitting on top of the creature and pulling on its reins. The rider has to understand their dragon, has to recognize the dragon’s moods and desires, has to be the kind of person who can interpret what the dragon wants and work with it rather than against it.
This is where we see some riders excel and others fail. Lucerys with Arrax has a gentle, understanding bond. They communicate, they cooperate, they move together as a unit. Aemond with Vhagar has a bond that’s more about strength of will and mutual respect—he commands Vhagar and she obeys, but there’s also something almost tenderly fierce about their relationship. Other riders might struggle because they don’t understand their dragon, because they try to force the dragon to do something against its nature, or because they’re afraid of the creature they’re riding.
The dragon’s personality is hugely important here. A dragon that’s naturally aggressive and bloodthirsty will be a very different mount than a dragon that’s more reserved and selective about when it engages. A dragon that’s old and experienced will have different needs and behaviors than a young, energetic one. The successful rider is the one who understands their particular dragon, who knows how to communicate with it, who can read its moods and work with them rather than fighting against them.
The Limits of Dragon Riding: What Dragons Won’t Do
Despite all the talk of magic and bonding and the supposedly unbreakable connection between a dragon and its rider, House of the Dragon makes clear that dragons still have limits. A dragon might refuse to go somewhere, might refuse to attack a particular target, might balk at something that feels wrong to it. Dragons have their own opinions, their own desires, their own sense of what’s acceptable and what isn’t.
This creates genuine tension in the show because dragon riders can’t just force their dragons to do whatever they want, no matter how much they command or how strong their bond is. Alicent and others seem to have this fantasy that they can simply order the dragons around like soldiers, that the bonding creates absolute obedience. But the dragons are more complicated than that. A dragon might love its rider and still refuse to commit an atrocity. Or it might commit an atrocity because it wants to, regardless of its rider’s wishes.
This unpredictability is part of what makes dragons such powerful and dangerous weapons. They’re not tools that can be fully controlled. They’re partners who have their own agency, their own limits, their own moral boundaries, even if those boundaries are sometimes crossed. A rider can influence their dragon, can suggest actions, can encourage certain behaviors, but ultimately, the dragon decides what it’s willing to do.
Training and Experience: The Years Between Bonding and Battle
One detail that House of the Dragon emphasizes more than Game of Thrones is the gap between bonding with a dragon and actually being ready to use it in combat. Young dragon riders spend years training, learning how to communicate with their dragons, learning how to fight from dragonback, learning how to understand the creature’s moods and movements. It’s not something you can pick up in a few months of casual practice.
This is why young riders can sometimes seem almost undefeatable—they’ve been training with their dragons since childhood, they’ve spent years practicing maneuvers, they know their dragons better than they know their own bodies. Someone who claims a dragon for the first time as an adult, no matter how Targaryen they are, is going to be at a disadvantage compared to someone who’s been flying their dragon since they were old enough to sit in a saddle.
The training and experience also create a kind of muscle memory, a deep understanding of how a particular dragon responds to certain commands or prompts. A rider with years of experience can do things that a novice rider couldn’t possibly accomplish, not because the experienced rider has some magical gift the novice lacks, but because they understand their dragon so deeply that their movements are almost automatic.
Conclusion: Dragons as Characters, Not Weapons
The genius of how House of the Dragon handles dragon riding is that it treats dragons as characters rather than as weapons or tools. Yes, they’re extraordinarily destructive creatures that can burn down castles and kill armies. But they’re also individuals with personalities, preferences, and the capacity for genuine relationship with their riders. They’re not just mindlessly following orders; they’re choosing to cooperate with someone they’ve bonded with.
This approach makes the dragons feel real in a way that purely mechanical creatures wouldn’t. It makes the bonds between riders and dragons matter emotionally, not just tactically. And it creates real stakes because you’re never quite sure what a dragon is going to do. Will it obey its rider? Will it rebel? Will it do something unexpected? The uncertainty is part of what makes these creatures so fascinating to watch. They’re never quite predictable, even to the people who love them and ride them every day.
Understanding these rules of dragon bonding and riding enhances your appreciation of House of the Dragon immensely. When you see Aemond claiming Vhagar, you understand that he’s achieved something extraordinary. When you see a young rider with their dragon, you understand the years of trust and training behind that partnership. And when you see a dragon do something unexpected, you understand that the dragon is making a choice, not just following programming. The dragons in House of the Dragon are characters, and that’s what makes them so compelling.
Discover more from Anglotees
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.