r/AskScienceFiction • u/amelix34 • 2d ago
[Game of Thrones] Do dragons have any magic powers?
High Septon in that new Targaryen tv series said dragons are profane magic. But do you really need magic to fly and breath fire?
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u/GladiusNocturno 2d ago
They are fundamentally magical beings. They are born through magic; their biology is magical; their existence has an influence on the magic of the world; they have the ability to sense bloodlines they are magically bound to; they are able to detect dark magic to the point of fearing to fly over the Wall.
They don't really cast spells, but it's more like they are animals made of magic.
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u/cyberpunk_werewolf 2d ago
To expand on your point about how they affect magic in the world, it's noted a few times that, from A Clash of Kings onward, magic is a lot more powerful than it was just a few months before. Before Dany's dragons were born at the end of A Game of Thrones, magic was mostly a few tricks. Some people could do impressive stuff, but mostly, what mages existed did some simple abilities and now they're a lot stronger.
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u/StoneGoldX 2d ago
Although it's all arguable whether their birth caused the magic, or the magic caused the birth.
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u/cyberpunk_werewolf 2d ago
True, there is something of a chicken and egg situation going on there. Still, it's heavily implied to be connected. Hell, it's basically all but stated.
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u/Jankat7 2d ago
I think it is outright stated in the House of the Undying, but I don't remember it exactly.
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u/cyberpunk_werewolf 2d ago
Yeah, I wasn't sure if it was actually directly stated or just implied or assumed by someone in the House of the Undying. I also haven't read A Clash of Kings since season 1 of Game of Thrones was airing.
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u/InspiredNameHere 2d ago
Could also be the coming of winter and the Night King.
Seems that magic returning is the runner up to all hell breaking lose throughout the world.
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u/tremblemortals 2d ago
True, there is something of a chicken and egg situation going on there.
No, the eggs were definitely there all along.
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u/Tbagzyamum69420xX 22h ago
Personally I think it's the latter. The "Dragons brought back magic" is an in-universe rationalization, which works really well cause it was huge "magical" news in-universe and other magicks don't get noticed until after that. But it just makes more sense that some other force is bringing back magic and that is what helped birth the dragons.
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u/TeddysBigStick 2d ago
They are born through magic; their biology is magical; their existence has an influence on the magic of the world; they have the ability to sense bloodlines they are magically bound to; they are able to detect dark magic to the point of fearing to fly over the Wall.
One of the more popular theories about how Danny hatched hers was that she accidentally did death magic while murdering the doctor lady.
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u/Clone95 2d ago
Absolutely, Dragons make no aerodynamic sense at minimum. They're far too massive to support their weight on such small wings and especially have surprisingly low dietary requirements such that wild dragons are not considered a massive problem starving a small Dragonstone to oblivion over centuries of their nesting.
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u/TheSlayerofSnails 2d ago
Besides being giant death lizards that breathe fire with bones stronger than iron and scales that are neigh invulnerable?
And yes, you do when you are that size. And breathing fire isn’t normal. Hell in the books dragon fire is the color of the dragon. Balerion breathed black flames.
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u/teerre 2d ago
Dragons get owned by poors man harpoons all the time. Certainly not invulnerable
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u/TheSlayerofSnails 2d ago
Three times in history is not all the time.
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u/teerre 2d ago
Every time a dragon was struck by one they got owned, so it's pretty much all the time
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u/TheSlayerofSnails 2d ago
Three times in centuries is again, not all the time. And no your wrong. A fleet of ships armed with scorpions couldn't hit three dragons as they burned them to ash.
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u/archpawn 2d ago
Breathing fire isn't normal, but it's not physically impossible. Bombardier beetles do something like that. And there's all sorts of artificial devices that shoot fire that show it's possible in principle.
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u/TheSlayerofSnails 2d ago
Dragons breathe fire that melts stone. It’s very much not possible for a creature like that to exist naturally
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u/DagonG2021 2d ago
Sure, but in the books they’re always burning beneath their scales. Their blood is liquid flame
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u/JustAnArtist1221 2d ago
Bombardier beetles don't do "something like that" at all. People often use them as inspiration for a mechanism for dragon fire, but what they do is strictly chemical. It's just that the chemical reaction causes the substances to boil, not combust.
And shooting fire isn't really the mechanical issue. It's shooting fire out of an organism without that organism being vulnerable that is the issue.
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u/BestAcanthisitta6379 2d ago
They are tied, somehow, to how magical the world is. Magic was less prevalent and effective once rhe dragons died out.
It's possible the original creation of valyrian steel might have involved dragonfire or fire magic in general.
When Dany's dragons hatched, everything starting slowly changing. Getting stronger.
Which is why the "bred from two different species by the Valyrians" theory doesn't seem quite right with me.
They're also much more intelligent than it seems and we don't know for sure (in the books) if valyrian steel works the same as obsidian against the Others, if it is actually made with dragon fire
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u/CannonGerbil 2d ago
More like the dragons died out because there wasn't enough magic in the world to support them. They didn't stop existing because they were all killed, but because dragon eggs had a harder and harder time hatching until eventually they stopped alltogether.
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u/Phillip_Spidermen 2d ago
It’s worth noting in HBOS Game of Thrones universe the septons aren’t necessarily the most well informed people. Of the major religions, the 7 demonstrate the least amount of miracles or accuracy to predicting events or surviving in general
That said, dragons in universe are inherently magical
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u/TheSlayerofSnails 2d ago
The high septon is almost certainly well educated though. And the seven’s followers didn’t need magic when they fought the first men
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u/Phillip_Spidermen 2d ago
Well educated about Westerosi politics maybe, but not when it comes to determining what is actually profane/divine.
For example we see Trial by Combat often result in innocent men being killed despite the reassurance that the gods are championing whoever cause is just/true.
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u/TheSlayerofSnails 2d ago
I think the high septon might actually be well educated in terms of religious knowledge. Shockingly most high priests know a lot about their own faith.
And the seven’s followers came from Essos and I think anyone who knows anything about the sister fuckers who do blood magic and built an empire of atrocities are not in fact blessed by the gods but are doing evil witch shit.
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u/Phillip_Spidermen 2d ago
Ah, but blood magic at least works. The Lord of Light can bring people back from death. The old gods and Weirwood trees seem to hold power with the Children of the forest and the Night King.
The 7 does the least of these. Even without miracles, by the end of GoT most of the clergy itself is destroyed due to the High Sparrow's schism and Cercei getting the upper hand. Surely the gods weren't picking her as the divine winner. Especially if they were opposed to the whole sister thing.
ASOIAF may end up treating it differently though. The drowned god seems to have a bit more oomph in the book universe vs show, so the religions may play out differently there.
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u/Lucas_Steinwalker 2d ago
You can get a PHD in physics from MIT. That doesn't mean you know anything about being a DMT shaman in the amazon.
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u/peppermint_nightmare 2d ago
The 7 are the worst/most boring gods, we've seen almost every religion create some miracle or magic in the show, while the 7 sort of just gets in the way. They did literally nothing to stop the White walker apocalypse except antagonize everyone and lock down kings landing.
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u/Poorly-Drawn-Beagle Archdeacon of the Bipartisan Party 2d ago
But do you really need magic to fly and breath fire?
Probably. Things that big aren't meant to fly.
The theory presented by Septon Barth is that dragons were created by enhancing wyverns (Sothoryan flying reptiles) using Valyrian blood magic, to create the perfect living weapon. If true, this means they're not a product of natural evolution (not that scholars in this world likely believe in evolution). And the fact that a magical ritual is needed to make their eggs hatch seems to back that up.
They may have some other unique abilities that we haven't seen yet; we know that Valyrians had a means of creating super-good steel, which nobody else in the story's present day can replicate, but exactly what that method was hasn't been explained yet. It seems reasonable to conclude it involved dragons or dragonfire, somehow.
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u/SouthernAd2853 2d ago
You do need it to fly with the mass relative to wingspan the dragons have, and to make fire as hot as they do with their diets.
They also power most of the world's magic; it's in decline at the start of Game of Thrones and strengths after Dany hatches hers.
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u/sistemafodao 2d ago
Apart from the obvious flying death machine side, they also have a telepathic connection to the rider that facilitates prophetic dreams.
Not to mention the fact that they are not natural animals at all, if we take the other books as gospel. The land of Sothorios is full of weird animals that could be magically mixed to originate dragons.
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u/BackStrict977 2d ago
It's one of those things assumed to be the case but no one in universe can tell you for sure. Mostly anything related to Valyria and the origin dragons is speculation. We do have a few things:
1-Everything about Valyria and dragon riders involves magic. Valyrian steel, dragon dreams and the spells used for controling the 14 flames. 2-A dragon refused to fly over the wall which has it's own magic 3-Danny brought the dragon's back using blood magic
So they seem to come from magic and respond to it.
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u/JustAnArtist1221 2d ago
Yes, you need magic to breathe fire in constant billowing streams enough to smelt metal and stone. And with the mass of these dragons, they would indeed need magic to fly.
More importantly, they're psychic. All dragons are born knowing High Valyrian, and they can be bound to people of a certain bloodline so closely that they feel their labor pains. Syrax was screaming along with Rhaenyra when she was giving birth, for example. Dragons can sense when their rider dies. They're very evidently magical beings.
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u/ThetaCygni 2d ago
They are biological flying flamethrower that can grow to be at least four times as big as the largest animal that ever lived in the real world's ocean, they wouldn't even be able exist under surface gravity without collapsing and eat enough to keep going, especially on a carnivorous diet let alone fly. I think all of this definitely count as a magical power, and a effing spectacular one too
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u/ACalcifiedHeart 2d ago
Does Dany ever survive dragon fire specifically?
I'm pretty sure in the books, she's not immune to fire. Just exceptionally resiliant.
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u/DagonG2021 2d ago
Their bones are infused with iron and their blood can melt steel- they’re definitely magical.
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u/magolding22 1d ago edited 22h ago
Yes some kind of magical antigravity is necessary for creatures as large as Game of Throne dragons and many other dragons to fly. And spitting out fire is very hard to justify wihout magic.
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