Rhaegal
Rhaegal is one of the three dragons born from the funeral pyre of Khal Drogo, the second to be named. Daenerys gave him the name of her eldest brother, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, the silver prince who died on the Trident. Where Viserion is pale cream and gold, Rhaegal's scales are the deep green of moss in a dark wood, his horns, spinal plates, and the membranes of his wings a burnished bronze. His eyes are molten bronze as well, glowing with their own heat. He is the middle child of the three, larger than Viserion but smaller than Drogon, and from the moment of his hatching he has been the most aggressive and intractable of the two chained dragons, quick to hiss, snap, and loose flame at any who approach.
Imprisonment and Deterioration
After the child Hazzea was killed by Drogon, Daenerys made the decision to chain her two remaining dragons in the dark pit beneath the Great Pyramid of Meereen. Rhaegal was the harder to capture. He fought so fiercely when they tried to net him on the queen's terrace that it took three days to carry him down the servants' steps, twisting and snapping, and six men were burned in the struggle. Once chained, he was confined to a pit large enough to hold five hundred men, bound by iron links as thick as a man's fist and an iron collar fastened to the wall. The air in the pit grew hot and sulfurous, thick with the stench of charred meat and smoke. Bones were scattered at his feet, cracked and scorched and splintered. Rhaegal's confinement warped him. He grew larger even as his prison shrank around him, and his rage festered. When Daenerys visited him, he roared and spat yellow flame that licked along the walls, and she felt the heat like the blast from an oven. The bricks of the pit began to blacken and crumble, and the iron chains showed signs of melting. The old knight Barristan Selmy warned the queen that chained dragons would grow wan and weak, their fires going out before the end, but Rhaegal's fire only burned hotter.
The Escape and the Burning of Meereen
When the Dornish prince Quentyn Martell attempted to steal Rhaegal and Viserion, he found the green dragon had already broken some of his chains. Rhaegal's iron collar remained, but three feet of broken chain dangled from it, and shattered links were strewn across the floor of the pit, partly melted. The prince tried to command Rhaegal by name, but the dragon was too wild to be mastered. When a crossbowman fired a quarrel that caromed off Viserion's neck, the dragons erupted. Rhaegal turned and unleashed his fire. Quentyn Martell was engulfed in flames and died three days later, his flesh sloughed away, his eyes pools of pus. After the escape, Rhaegal made his lair atop the great black pyramid of Yherizan, and the pyramid of Hazkar collapsed into a smoking ruin, many of that ancient line lying dead beneath its blackened stones. The green dragon flew free over Meereen, hunting, and proved himself more dangerous than the white Viserion. When the rain came, the dragons did not like it, but Rhaegal remained a threat, a monster that haunted the skies above the city.
Narrative Role and Thematic Significance
Rhaegal functions as a living symbol of the cost of Daenerys's attempt at peace. Chained to prevent further deaths, he becomes more savage, his imprisonment a direct consequence of the queen's decision to rule rather than conquer. His escape and the destruction he wreaks upon Meereen mirror the failure of Hizdahr zo Loraq's peace and the return of war. He is also a test of the Targaryen blood: Quentyn Martell, who claimed descent from the dragon, tried to master Rhaegal and was burned to death for his presumption. The green dragon does not recognize the blood of old Valyria in a stranger; he recognizes only the mother who hatched him. Rhaegal's continued presence over Meereen, untamed and unridden, represents the unresolved power that Daenerys left behind when she flew away on Drogon, a reminder that dragons cannot be caged and that fire and blood cannot be bargained away.
