Azdaema

I know this topic has been discussed a lot, but I haven't been able to find a real comparison of the various cases. So here's my shot at that: My list of dragon babies consists of 5: Maegor's three: Alys Harroway's stillborn son: "the boy a monster, with twisted limbs, a huge head, and no eyes." Jeyne Westerling's stillborn: "a legless and armless creature possessed of both male and female genitalia." Elinor Costayne's stillborn son: "a malformed and stillborn child, an eyeless boy born with rudimentary wings." Rhaenyra and Daemon's stillborn daughter Visenya II: "twisted and malformed, with a hole in her chest where her heart should have been and a stubby, scaled tail." Dany and Drogo's stillborn son Rhaego: "Monstrous. Twisted. [...] He was scaled like a lizard. Blind, with leather wings, like the wings of a bat." I'm not counting Daemon and Laena's stillborn ("the babe was twisted and malformed, and died within the hour") or Viserys and Rhaella's stillborns. It's certainly interesting that Laena's baby is described with the same very limited vocabulary as the dragon babies ("twisted" and "malformed") but I'm just not seeing any real evidence of anything dragon-y. A tally of the dragon-y traits: No eyes/blind: 3 Wings: 2 Scales: 2 Tail: 1 Hermaphroditism: 1 Lack of limbs: 1 Blindness and lack of limbs are not traits of dragons, but are traits of dragon ancestors firewyms. On the topic of firewyrm atavism, also consider Laena II's dragon egg, which hatched into "a monstrosity, a wingless wyrm, maggot-white and blind." I'm counting Jeyne's baby as having dragon-trait hermaphroditism because there is no human intersex condition that results in "both male and female genitalia." At most there is one set of indeterminate genitalia. Dual genitalia is not a thing in humans. (Or I guess sometimes it is, but that's a conjoined twin thing, not an intersex thing.) But there's a lot of misinformation about intersex conditions circulating, so GRRM may not know this (a la Sweets). Inbred/Outbred This intuitively seems like a inbred, recessive trait. The other forms I've seen discussing it often mention it as such. But that's not what the examples suggest. Visenya II is the only inbred one. The other 4 are all outbred, half-Targaryen babies. Stressful pregnancy All the examples have some sort of stress during pregnancy involved. Rhaenyra and Dany both had a crushing death in the family near the end of their pregnancies. Alys, Jeyne, and Elinor may or may not have been poisoned by Tyanna. At the very least, they were under a lot of stress at Maegor's court to produce an heir. Dany was influenced by sorcery at the end of her pregnancy. There's some possibility there was some magic fuckery going on at Maegor's court messing with Alys, Jeyne, and Elinor as well? Repeat offenders Clearly there was something up with Maegor, since he sired 3 dragon-y kids in a row. I also want to bring up Laena's last pregnancy again. I know I said I discount it, and I mostly do — but if that baby was dragon!malformed and not just normal!malformed, that would mean Daemon sired 2 dragon-y kids as well — plus as some normal ones. So I dunno, maybe there's something there.