Fire & Blood Files: If You Dracarys, Do We Not Burn?

Warning: Spoilers for House of the Dragon season 2, episode 4 follow.

In “The Red Dragon and the Gold,” the fourth episode of House of the Dragon‘s second season, we see a proper dragon-on-dragon (on dragon) battle for the first time in Game of Thrones TV history. Yes, Vhagar chomped on Luke and Arrax in last season’s finale, but that wasn’t much of a battle. And while Dany (Emilia Clark) and Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) teamed up against the Night King and his zombie ice dragon in Game of Thrones‘ “The Long Night,” their battle took place at night, in a snowstorm, in the middle of an episode (in)famous for how difficult it is to see what the heck is going on in it.

The three way melee between Rhaenys (Eve Snow)/Meleys, Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney)/Sunfire, and Aemond (Ewan Mitchell)/Vhagar, on the other hand, takes place in broad daylight, with nothing obscuring the action. Which means the “oh shit” look on Aegon’s face is clear as day when his brother orders the massive Vhagar to fire on both Aegon and Rhaenys as he joins the battle. 

That look, in turn, begs the question: should Aegon even have been worried? Aren’t Targaryens immune to fire?

In short, no. They are quite flammable. Something George R. R. Martin himself has made clear repeatedly through the years in chats with fans and on his website. The persistent misconception lingers in part due to Daenerys Targaryen’s unique status, and a specific choice by the Game of Thrones TV creators. 

In the finale to the first season of Game of Thrones, Daenerys walks into her husband’s funeral pyre holding her three dragon eggs, only to emerge later from the ashes naked but otherwise unburnt, holding three baby dragons. This action earned her the sobriquet “the Unburnt,” but as Martin made clear all the way back in 1999: 

TARGARYENS ARE NOT IMMUNE TO FIRE! The birth of Dany’s dragons was unique, magical, wonderous, a miracle. She is called The Unburnt because she walked into the flames and lived. But her brother sure as hell wasn’t immune to that molten gold.

There are various places in Martin’s texts after that funerary event in which its made clear that Dany is not, nor considers herself to be, inflammable. However, the Game of Thrones TV show complicates the issue by repeatedly showing her to be immune to fire. Most notably, in season six when she burns down the Temple of the Dosh Kaleen with all the Khals (and herself) inside, only to once again emerge from the fire unharmed, in a scene clearly meant to evoke her season 1 climax. 

Nevertheless, whether you look at the book or the TV series, it is Daenerys, specifically, who is immune to fire, not all Targaryens. As Martin himself pointed out, her brother was still (horribly) burned by molten gold. Jon Snow — a secret Targaryen — burned his hand fighting a wight in season 1/the first book. Book lore includes Aerion Brightflame, a Targaryen who thought he was a dragon who drank wildfire to prove it (he burned to death from the inside out).

The Tragedy of Summerhall, another notable event in Targaryen history which occurs not long before the events which kick off Robert’s Rebellion, involves a massive fire that killed several Targaryens, including Egg of the “Dunc and Egg” stories. In the first season of House of the Dragon, Daemon’s first wife and Rhaenys’ daughter Laena died of immolation when she asked Vhagar (then her mount) to blast her with fire so she could die a dragonrider’s death. 

So when Aegon sees that fireball flying at him in “The Red Dragon and the Gold,” he certainly has every reason to be worried, and his condition by the end of the episode can be attributed to fire, as well as the fall. 

Incidentally, while their riders are (Daenerys aside) vulnerable to fire, most dragons are not. A full grown dragon’s scales effectively make them invulnerable to fire, including fire from other dragons, with the exception of their (scale-less) eyes. This is why, as seen in “The Red Dragon and the Gold,” dragon-on-dragon fighting tends to involve more clawing, biting, and tail-whipping than fire-breathing; those dracarys-ordered fire blasts are intended more for the riders than the dragons.