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Vhagar or Meraxes


Inc4

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In 'The Princess and The Queen' and in 'The World of Ice and Fire', it was very clear that Vhagar, at the time of her death as almost as big as Balerion. And since Meraxes dies very early, it is obvious that Meraxes was smaller than Vhagar.

Yet, in Tyrion II chapter in aGoT, when Tyrion thinks about the time he saw the dragon bones in the dungens of King's Landing, he remembers that Meraxes was bigger than Vhagar.

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 Balerion, Meraxes, Vhaghar. Tyrion had stood between their gaping jaws, wordless and awed. You could have ridden a horse down Vhaghar’s gullet, although you would not have ridden it out again. Meraxes was even bigger. And the greatest of them, Balerion, the Black Dread, could have swallowed an aurochs whole, or even one of the hairy mammoths said to roam the cold wastes beyond the Port of Ibben.

Continuity error?

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Possibly, or Meraxes could have been an older dragon who had already outlived a rider (or two, or more), when matched with Rhaenys, and Visenya could have had Vhagar as a hatchling. 

Dany's dragons hatched at the same time, yet Drogon outgrew his siblings even before their imprisonment. 

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46 minutes ago, Eden-Mackenzie said:

Possibly, or Meraxes could have been an older dragon who had already outlived a rider (or two, or more), when matched with Rhaenys, and Visenya could have had Vhagar as a hatchling. 

Dany's dragons hatched at the same time, yet Drogon outgrew his siblings even before their imprisonment. 

But 'The Princess and The Queen' was written by a Maester long after Vhagar had died. Since he mentions that Vhagar was almost as big as Balerion simply means that Meraxes should have been smaller. 

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4 hours ago, Inc4 said:

In 'The Princess and The Queen' and in 'The World of Ice and Fire', it was very clear that Vhagar, at the time of her death as almost as big as Balerion. And since Meraxes dies very early, it is obvious that Meraxes was smaller than Vhagar.

Yet, in Tyrion II chapter in aGoT, when Tyrion thinks about the time he saw the dragon bones in the dungens of King's Landing, he remembers that Meraxes was bigger than Vhagar.

Continuity error?

My recollection is that Vhagar was actually described at the time of its death in 130AC, as being almost as big as Balerion had been at the time of the Conquest. Meaning not as big as the Balerion Tyrion sees in King's Landing, which was a Balerion about 100 years older than he had been during the Conquest.

That should address the discrepancy.

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20 hours ago, Inc4 said:

But 'The Princess and The Queen' was written by a Maester long after Vhagar had died. Since he mentions that Vhagar was almost as big as Balerion simply means that Meraxes should have been smaller. 

It actually does not mean that at all - think of it like an elementary school word problem: Aegon and his sisters had three dragons. Balerion is the largest known dragon. Vhagar was almost as large as Balerion. Meraxes was larger than Vhagar. Rank the dragons from smallest to largest. 

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Tyrion was calculating based on the size of their jaws (did the bones have labels on them?); the maester compared the approximate volume of two dragons (that he might not seen himself). So there are a few explanations for the discrepancy before we count this as author's error

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We don't have a reason to assume that older dragons (and Vhagar definitely was older than Meraxes when she died, even if Meraxes hatched immediately after Aenar arrived on Dragonstone) are necessarily bigger than younger dragons.

It seems as if dragons grow all their life but how quickly they grow might depend on a number of other factors - the quality of food, for instance, or genetic predisposition. Then there is this talk that being trapped inside might hamper a dragon's growth. Both Balerion and especially Vhagar would have spend at least some time in the Dragonpit after Maegor had finished it (Vhagar was definitely housed there while he was ridden by Aemond, but she would might have had a freer life while she was ridden by Laena on Driftmark). While Balerion was ridden by Prince Viserys there is a reasonably good chance that he was housed in the Dragonpit, too, considering that his father was not yet Prince of Dragonstone for most of that time.

Anyway, Meraxes never spend a day in the Dragonpit and she was apparently also ridden very often by Rhaenys (and possibly by previous riders, too). Who knows? Perhaps she lived a happy life full of fun and adventures and thus grew much more quickly than the other dragons?

You have to keep in mind that Rhaenyra's dragons on Dragonstone don't seem to have grown all that quickly despite the fact that they seem to have been kept mostly out in the open. Vermax, Arrax, and Tyraxes seem scarcely bigger than Dany's dragons are right now (I think all of them are somewhat bigger than Drogon is in ADwD because they all can carry Rhaenyra's strong lads who seem to resemble grown-up men much more than adolescent youths, and Drogon had trouble to take wing with slender Dany on his back) yet it is quite clear that those dragons are at least a couple of years old. They might even be as old as a decade considering how young the Targaryen children usually are when their dragon eggs hatch or they receive living hatchlings.

Syrax was claimed by Rhaenyra in 104 AC, and she was a young dragon at that time, making it quite likely she hatched from a dragon egg given to Rhaenyra. That could suggests she was about thirty years old when she died (Rhaenyra was 33). Sunfyre would be about as old Aegon II, making him about twenty years upon his death.

Yet if we assumed every dragon grows as quickly as Dany's dragons are growing right now both the dragons of Rhaenyra's sons as well as Sunfyre and Syrax should have reached the size of Vermithor or even Vhagar by the time of their deaths. But this is clearly not the case.

Thus we should be very cautious when equating size and age of a dragon. A dragon can be pretty old without being particularly huge and can possibly also grow to monstrous sizes just in a couple of years.

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On 8/27/2016 at 5:39 AM, Eden-Mackenzie said:

It actually does not mean that at all - think of it like an elementary school word problem: Aegon and his sisters had three dragons. Balerion is the largest known dragon. Vhagar was almost as large as Balerion. Meraxes was larger than Vhagar. Rank the dragons from smallest to largest. 

It makes sense when all three are described. But in the context, Vhagar was compared to Balerion and Meraxes wasn't mentioned. If Meraxes was indeed bigger than Vhagar, then the comparison with Meraxes rather than Balerion makes more sense.

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3 hours ago, Inc4 said:

It makes sense when all three are described. But in the context, Vhagar was compared to Balerion and Meraxes wasn't mentioned. If Meraxes was indeed bigger than Vhagar, then the comparison with Meraxes rather than Balerion makes more sense.

Full grown, the order of size was Balerion, then Meraxes, then Vhagar. That was at the time of their respective deaths.

However, Balerion at the time of the Conquest was 100 years younger than at the time of his death, and hence he was much smaller at that time than the skull that Tyrion saw in the Red Keep. Vhagar, 130 years later, was almost as large as Balerion had been during the Conquest. But obviously still significantly smaller than Balerion was at his death, based on Tyrion's description of the skulls.

Meraxes in turn, in 10AC when it died, was still bigger than Vhagar became in 130AC. It had to be smaller than Balerion at the time of the Conquest, but had about 10 years after that point to grow larger than that. So Meraxes might well have been larger at its death than Balerion had been during the Conquest.

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On August 30, 2016 at 5:48 AM, Inc4 said:

It makes sense when all three are described. But in the context, Vhagar was compared to Balerion and Meraxes wasn't mentioned. If Meraxes was indeed bigger than Vhagar, then the comparison with Meraxes rather than Balerion makes more sense.

Except everyone knows Balerion. Balerion the Black Dread, the largest dragon known to man, ridden by Aegon the Conqueror. Meraxes, Vhagar, Rhaenys, and Visenya all get relegated to a lesser status. Yes, their names are known, but they are just as likely as to be referred to as "Aegon and his sisters" as they are to be called by name. Vhagar, by surviving into the Dance, would be more well-known than Meraxes as time went on, but neither could top Balerion. 

 

Even though I think there is nothing to this potential inconsistency, I have given some thought to it being an actual thing. If it is a real inconsistency, it would have to be either accidental (Renly's eyes, Jeyne's hips) or deliberate (Sansa and the un-kiss), and if it is going to mean anything, it would have to be deliberate. The only possible reason I can think of for a deliberate inconsistency would be to show Tyrion is not as knowledgable as he seems. So perhaps time and the remaining books will tell. 

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I thought at the time of the conquest Balerion was the biggest, followed by Meraxes, followed by Vhagar. But obviously Vhagar was bigger than Meraxes by the time she died at the Dance of the Dragons as Meraxes hadn't been growing for 130 years? I think when it is said Meraxes was bigger still it refers to at the time of the Conquest. 

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