Dragonkeepers

The Dragonkeepers are the guard order established to protect the dragons of House Targaryen wherever they were housed. Created after Princess Aerea escaped on Balerion, they stood between the royal dragons and those who might approach them without permission. Their history runs from the crown’s attempt to make dragon-keeping a permanent, organized duty to the order’s destruction during the attack on the Dragonpit, when its small force could not hold back a vast mob.

Foundation and Duties

Not long after Balerion became the first Targaryen dragon housed in the Dragonpit on Rhaenys’s Hill, Jaehaerys decreed that all dragons should be guarded night and day, wherever they laired. The order was a direct response to Aerea’s escape on Balerion: the king sought to prevent a repeat by ensuring that no royal dragon was left unwatched. The decree applied beyond the new dragon house. Balerion and three younger dragons were kept beneath the hill, while Vermithor and Silverwing remained at the Red Keep near their riders; the king’s rule covered both locations.

The Dragonkeepers numbered seventy-seven. Their distinctive uniform was gleaming black armor, with helmets crested by a row of dragon scales that continued, diminishing in size, down their backs. The sources establish their central task as guarding the dragons, rather than describing a wider chain of command or a complete range of duties. Still, their presence around the Dragonpit extended into the practical business of access: they knew the dragons housed there, and their intervention could determine whether a person reached one at all.

Encounters with the Dragons

The order’s knowledge of the dragons mattered when royal children sought mounts. When Princess Alyssa wanted to claim Balerion, the Dragonkeepers dissuaded her, explaining that the old dragon was slow and urging her to choose a swifter mount instead. She ultimately rode Meleys, a dragon who had never before been ridden. The account presents the keepers as able to guide, and at times restrain, a would-be rider’s choice, though it does not describe a formal process for granting permission.

Their role also appears in less successful attempts to approach dragons. After Princess Saera disobeyed orders and fled to the Dragonpit, the Dragonkeepers found her there and returned her to the Red Keep. Years later, Prince Aemond tried to reach Vhagar in secret while his parents slept. He went to the outer yard where Vhagar and the other dragons were fed and stabled, hoping to mount her without their knowledge. The account emphasizes his daring and the dragon’s response, not a confrontation with the Dragonkeepers; it therefore shows the risks of access without establishing that the order was present or responsible for the prince’s attempt.

The keepers also served as a link between the royal family and the dragons they guarded. During Princess Daenerys’s fatal illness, Jaehaerys, desperate to save his daughter, ordered ravens sent to Dragonstone for a hatchling to be brought to the Red Keep. Daenerys died before it could help her, and the king flew to Dragonstone to tell the keepers that the hatchling was no longer needed. The episode shows the order receiving and acting on a royal command concerning a dragon, even as the intended purpose of that request became tragically moot.

The Dragonpit and the Order’s Limits

The Dragonpit offered the dragons a purpose-built home. Its long, brick-lined tunnels had been sunk deep into the hillside and fashioned to resemble caves; they were five times as large as the lairs on Dragonstone. The keepers guarded dragons housed within this structure, but its scale and strength did not make their task easy. When the Shepherd’s followers rose against the dragons, fewer than fifty Dragonkeepers were on watch that night, despite the order’s total strength of seventy-seven.

The attackers reached the hill in overwhelming numbers. Gold cloaks sent out from the Dragon Gate could not cut through the crowd and turned back, while a messenger sent to the Old Gate failed to arrive. The Dragonpit had its own contingent of guards, but the attackers found ways inside through lesser entrances, breaking through doors and climbing through windows rather than forcing the great main gates. The Dragonkeepers fought, but their numbers could not match the mob; they were overwhelmed and killed. With the attack already underway, the four dragons inside were awake and enraged, and the keepers could not prevent the assault from becoming a catastrophe for both defenders and attackers.

Institutional Significance

The Dragonkeepers embodied an attempt to make the Targaryens’ most dangerous source of power subject to routine protection. Jaehaerys’s decree applied wherever dragons lived, and the order’s recognizable black armor made that responsibility visible. Its members could advise a princess against claiming an unsuitable mount, respond to a royal command for a hatchling, and intercept a princess who had reached the Dragonpit against her family’s wishes.

Yet the order’s history also marks the limits of guarding dragons by human force. The Dragonkeepers were created after one dragon carried Aerea away, but their presence could not eliminate the danger of unauthorized access or contain a mass uprising. At the Dragonpit, a force of fewer than fifty on watch faced attackers whose numbers grew as they approached. Their defeat ended the keepers’ immediate defense of the dragons there and exposed how vulnerable the royal collection could be when the crown’s authority in the city failed.