The Decree to Guard Dragons at All Times

The Decree to Guard Dragons at All Times was a royal order by Jaehaerys Targaryen requiring constant guards for every dragon, wherever it was kept. Issued after Aerea Targaryen escaped on Balerion, it turned a frightening breach of royal control into a kingdom-wide security rule and created the Dragonkeepers to enforce it.

Background: Aerea’s Escape

Aerea was still short of her thirteenth nameday when she fled Dragonstone on Balerion, a dragon she had never ridden before. The account suggests that she may have intended to go to King’s Landing, Oldtown, or seek out Elissa Farman, but emphasizes that the journey was not simply a matter of choosing a destination: Aerea could mount Balerion, but could not control him. The question of where she meant to go therefore became less important than the danger of a rider being carried away by a dragon she could not command.

The decree addressed the risk exposed by that escape. Its stated purpose was to ensure there would be no repetition of Aerea’s flight on Balerion. Rather than limiting precautions to that dragon or to one place of keeping, Jaehaerys ordered that all dragons be guarded night and day, regardless of where they laired.

The Order and Its Reach

The order accompanied a change in where some of the royal dragons were housed. Balerion became the first Targaryen dragon kept in the Dragonpit on Rhaenys’s Hill. Its brick-lined tunnels were sunk deep into the hillside and fashioned to resemble caves; they were five times as large as the lairs on Dragonstone. Three younger dragons soon joined Balerion there.

The arrangement was not uniform for every dragon. Vermithor and Silverwing remained at the Red Keep, close to their riders. The decree nevertheless applied to them as well: the location of a dragon’s lair did not exempt it from continuous guard. This made the rule broader than a measure for securing the new Dragonpit; it applied across the dragons’ separate places of residence.

The Dragonkeepers

To carry out the decree, the king established a new order of guards, the Dragonkeepers, seventy-seven in number. They wore gleaming black armor and helmets crested with a row of dragon scales that continued, diminishing, down their backs. Their creation gave the decree a dedicated body charged with watching the dragons, rather than leaving the work to occasional or unspecified sentries.

The measure joined royal command to an organized, visible presence around the dragons. Its immediate rationale was specific—preventing another escape like Aerea’s—but its scope encompassed every dragon and every lair. The account records the order and the institution created to serve it, without claiming that the decree could make dragons themselves controllable.