‘House of the Dragon’ Is Actually About Vhagar

She’s big! Scaly! And GREEN! She looks like the kind of monster that appears in a T-Rex’s nightmares. She’s the single most powerful being in House of the Dragon. She’s Vhagar, she’s actually the star of the show.

Vhagar: A Star Is Born

Like many of the best and brightest stars, Vhagar came from humble beginnings: a dragon egg. Hatched around 50 years before Aegon’s Conquest during the Century of Blood. That means that she is REALLY old. Not counting weirwood trees and maybe the White Walkers, Vhagar just may be the oldest living organism in the Known World.

She was claimed by Visenya Targaryen, one of two sister-wives to Aegon the Conqueror himself. After Visenya’s death, Vhagar refused all other riders (yes girl, known your worth) until finally allowing herself to be claimed in 73 AC by Baelon the Brave, King Jaehaerys I’s third son and heir. After Baelon’s death, she was then claimed by Laena Velaryon in 120 AC. After Laena died by suicide-by-dragon, Prince Aemond was able to claim the beast immediately after her former rider’s funeral. At this point in the series, Vhagar is almost two centuries old.

Vhagar: A Study in Starpower

Vhagar is a hardened veteran of countless battles, and was an integral part of the Targaryen war effort to conquer, unite, and later rule the Seven Kingdoms. Without Vhagar and dragons like her, there would be no Targaryen rule. After all, the Targaryens are said to be anointed for rule by the gods themselves. Vhagar takes her name from an ancient god of the Valyrian freehold. Besides the Lord of Light bringing people back from the dead every once in a while, Vhagar is essentially a god on the planet. A creature of nigh infinite power, when compared to the might of men.

Just how powerful is Vhagar? To understand that, first ya gotta understand how BIG she is. This dragon was confirmed to be 90 meters long with a wingspan of 150 meters, over the length of a football field. And the scariest part? Vhagar was actually said to be the smallest of the three original Targaryen dragons; Balerion and Meraxes were even bigger.

According to Westerosi maesters, dragons are theorized to grow the same way that crocodiles do. They just don’t stop. They get bigger and bigger and bigger until they die. Like crocodiles, it’s possible that dragons have an extremely slow metabolism despite their massive sizes. There is NO WAY that Westeros has enough sheep and cattle to feed Vhagar if she was a ravenously hungry beast. With a fast metabolism, a creature of her size would have to eat constantly, and would starve to death after devouring all of the animals in the ecosystem. A slow metabolism is likely the evolutionary advantage that allowed dragons to become apex predators among apex predators. Second to humans, they are the most dangerous beings on the planet.

So why is Vhagar really the star of the show?

Vhagar is a symbol of nigh divine power. A war weapon that is so potently capable of destruction that her mere existence is a threat to humanity. Sounds like something we have in our world too, doesn’t it? es, House of the Dragon is essentially a show about nuclear warfare, and the eventual failure of nuclear deterrence when cold logic gives way to vengeful emotion.

The second season begins with Rhaenyra’s war council hawkishly encouraging scorched earth warfare tactics and the deployment of dragons. Rhaenyra is not so sure. Like the launching of a nuclear arsenal, Rhaenyra knows that once dragons are unleashed there ain’t no going back. She tells her advisors that this war will be one with armies, and not dragons. The human cost of a dragon in battle is too great. Rhaenyra fears that The Realm will not survive.

Meanwhile, in King’s Landing, Aemond and Criston Cole discuss the nature of dragon warfare as well. Cole gives us a stunning revelation: that Aemond and his mount Vhagar are the single most powerful force in all of Westeros. It’s true. If regular dragons are nuclear weapons, Vhagar is a hydrogen bomb. Not a single dragon on either side of the war can match the awesome destructive power of the dragon of The Conquest. While Rhaenyra and her council are hesitant to harness that sort of destructive power, Aegon II and his cadre of supporters are chomping at the bit. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with dragon fire.

To draw a cinematic parallel, Vhagar is Godzilla—another gargantuan reptile creature used to represent nuclear war incarnate. Like Godzilla, Vhagar is a terrifying force of nature that is capable of wiping humanity off the map entirely. Unlike Godzilla, Vhagar can be controlled… to an extent. We see that even the iron-willed, totally deranged Prince Aemond himself is not able to keep Vhagar completely in check. She devoured the dragon Arrax and Lucerys Velaryon over the Stormlands not because they were a threat, but because they annoyed her.

Throughout Vhagar’s entire life, she has been used as nothing more than a weapon of war. By the beginning of House of the Dragon, she has already been responsible for the death of thousands. Combat is all she knows. Like a nuclear weapon, Vhagar doesn’t care what she destroys. She burned her old rider Laena to death without even batting a scaly eye, and even more disturbingly, she just recently killed her old rider’s MOTHER as well during the Battle of Rook’s Rest. Vhagar’s draconic callousness might simply be a part of her species right? I used to believe that, but after the soulful look that Meleys gave Rhaenys just before Vhagar ended her life, now I’m not so sure.

It’s possible that Vhagar is simply getting old. That her advanced age is causing her mind to go, making her cantankerous and vengeful. But maybe not, maybe she’s always been this way. Like The Bomb itself, she was made only to bring death, and bringing death is all that she knows how to do. In House of The Dragon, Vhagar is “The Dragon” in question. She is Fire and she is Blood.