Dragonpit Storming and Destruction

The Storming of the Dragonpit was a popular assault on the royal dragons during Queen Rhaenyra’s rule of King’s Landing. The Shepherd’s followers advanced on the Dragonpit after calling for the dragons’ destruction; they overwhelmed its guards and killed all four dragons housed there. The event turned a threatened attack on royal power into a catastrophe for the dragons themselves, while leaving Syrax alive and free beyond the walls.

The uprising reaches the hill

The attack followed the Shepherd’s call to destroy the dragons. A cry to kill them spread through the crowd, which moved through the streets and alleys toward the Dragonpit. Some withdrew, but others joined, and by the time the mass reached the hill its numbers had doubled. From the roof of Maegor’s Holdfast, Mushroom watched the torch-bearing crowd advance with Queen Rhaenyra, her sons, and members of her court.

Rhaenyra ordered riders to the Old Gate and the Dragon Gate. They were to disperse the attackers, seize the Shepherd, and defend the royal dragons. The city was in turmoil, however, and she could not be sure that her messengers had reached their destinations. The remaining Gold Cloaks were too few to turn the crowd back. When Prince Joffrey asked to ride out with the knights, Rhaenyra refused: she judged that the castle itself might be attacked if the mob took the hill, and kept the available defenders near the Red Keep.

The defenses fail

Gold Cloaks from the Dragon Gate came out to defend the hill but could not force a path through the crowd and returned to their barracks. The messenger sent to the Old Gate did not arrive. Inside the Dragonpit, the Dragonkeepers were also outnumbered: the order numbered seventy-seven, but fewer than fifty were on watch that night. They fought, but could not hold the building against attackers entering through its many lesser doors and windows. The great main gates, sheathed in bronze and iron, remained too strong for the mob to break through; the assault instead exploited the Dragonpit’s other entrances. The Dragonkeepers were overwhelmed and killed.

The noise of the attack roused the dragons before the crowd reached them. Four dragons were housed within the pit, and the building’s confined interior left them unable to escape by flight. Accounts disagree over the number of people who died beneath the dome: estimates range from two hundred to two thousand. They do agree that many more survived with burns. The dragons killed many attackers, but their confinement and the crowd’s numbers turned the encounter into a sustained assault rather than a battle in which the dragons could take to the open sky.

The dragons are killed

Shrykos was said to have been killed by a woodsman called Hobb the Hewer, who climbed onto the dragon’s neck and struck seven times with his axe. Septon Eustace’s account gives each blow a religious association, ending with the seventh, linked to the Stranger; the narrative qualifies this version as dependent on Eustace’s reliability. Morghul, according to the chronicles, was killed by the Burning Knight, who attacked with a spear despite the dragon’s fire.

Tyraxes retreated into its lair, where its chains became tangled and restricted its movement. The Shepherd directed his followers to enter through the lair’s second entrance, which opened onto the hillside. Several people later claimed to have dealt the dragon its mortal blow, so the account leaves the precise slayer uncertain. The attackers also cut pieces from Tyraxes’s wings and made them into cloaks, a final indignity after its death.

Dreamfyre, the last of the four, resisted longer. Legend held that she had already broken two chains at Queen Helaena’s death; during the attack, she broke the remaining bonds and fought within the cavernous pit. She took wing inside the building and attacked the people below, but could not escape through its barred bronze gates. Arrows and crossbow bolts struck her, and one bolt wounded an eye. Unable to flee, Dreamfyre made a final attempt to break through the dome. The weakened structure gave way beneath her impact, and a large section collapsed, killing the dragon and attackers beneath the falling stone.

Aftermath and significance

With Dreamfyre’s death, all four dragons kept in the Dragonpit were dead. The accounts emphasize the enormous cost of the assault, while differing over the exact number killed; the scale of the casualties does not change its outcome. The Dragonkeepers had failed to protect the royal dragons, and the building intended to contain them became the setting of their destruction.

The fall of the Dragonpit did not end the danger to the queen. The Shepherd was still alive, and Rhaenyra’s dragon, Syrax, remained free. As the burned and bloodied survivors emerged from the ruins, Syrax descended on them. From the roof of Maegor’s Holdfast, Rhaenyra watched with her remaining son, Aegon the Younger, held close. Her companions fled or went to pray, but she stayed until Syrax fell. The storming therefore marked both the destruction of the pit’s captive dragons and the precarious survival of the queen’s last dragon; it did not itself bring the uprising to a close.