Why Viserion Becoming an Ice Dragon Would Be Cool

I have wanted to write this post for some time but have waited. I don't want to stress myself out too much and pacing becomes everything to keep a blog like this running for years.

Anyways...part of the leaked plot of Game of Thrones Season 7 is that Viserion becomes an ice dragon and is ridden by the Night's King. Now the fact is that this could merely be rumors and this won't actually end up happening. So I wouldn't count this as a spoiler as it's in a state of being true and not being true.

In this post I'm not going to focus on how he becomes an ice dragon according to the leaks, but the implications of it happening. I find that to be the more interesting part.

History of Ice Dragons

Back before George R.R. Martin started writing Game of Thrones, first book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, he wrote a children's novel. I know, I know, it just sounds odd about him writing something for kids after all the stuff that goes on in Game of Thrones. It's hard to imagine someone who writes about incest, rape, torture, and a lot of other bad stuff doing something for kids. But it happened back in 1980.

That novel was The Ice Dragon and it's where a bunch of theories about ice dragons in Game of Thrones stems from. So to talk about the subject we first need to be familiar with the book. Well, for now, just know that it exists. If I ever get to reading it, I have so many things I need to read, I will delve more into it.

Another reason about not delving too much into it now is that more things than just the ice dragons connect it to the Game of Thrones universe. So I think it is better to leave a full discussion about it for another day.

Now those who already know about this book are probably yelling at me that this book isn't canon to Game of Thrones. G.R..R. Martin has stated that it's not canon but that doesn't mean we should rule the book out entirely either. Some ideas that he had in it may have influenced certain things in Game of Thrones. Things like ice dragons might not be exactly like they are in the book, but they may give hints on what is planned in the show.

We won't fully know until an ice dragon actually appears in the books and/or show.

Some of the rumors surrounding ice dragons is that one or more might actually be in the Wall. This structure, for those of you who forgot for some reason, protects Westeros from the threat of the White Walkers. It is also magical and extremely large.

Dragons tend to be pretty large creatures and the size of the Wall seems like it could fit at least one. Dragons, in the Game of Thrones universe, are connected to magic as their passing from the world has seemed to affect that ancient art.

So for both size and properties the Wall seems like a good place to have some ice dragons. Why they would be there in the first place isn't really clear.

Rumors also talk about ice dragons being much larger than their fire breathing counterparts. Of course to understand this size difference you first have to have some understanding of the size of fire breathing dragons.

First dragons never stop growing until they die. This means that a dragon that is five hundred years old is much larger than a dragon that is only fifteen years old. Drogon, Daenerys Targaryen's mount, will continue to grow. He's got to a good size now but he will become much bigger in the future. Second is that the largest dragon that is talked about is Balerion, also known as Balerion the Black Dread, who was the largest dragon since the fall of Valyria. He was so large that his shadow was said to swallow an entire town when he took flight.

So imagine something much larger than that. How much larger than that?

Well...from what I hear it seems like an ice dragon could easily dwarf a Balerion sized dragon.

Why Ice Dragons Would Be a Good Idea

The more dragons the better is the easiest reason why ice dragons would be cool. As someone obsessed with dragons, having more types on the show would be amazing even if those in charge of the budget might not agree. The lengths those in charge of the dragons go to are worth it as they seem real. As real as a mythical creature could be at least.

But another reason besides the awesome factor is that dragons are very useful weapons. The reason House Targaryen conquered Westeros was because no one else had dragons. The House was one of the smaller dragonlord families and it was because they were the only ones to survive the Doom of Valyria with dragons that they rose to such prominence.

Of course dragons didn't mean House Targaryen conquered all of Westeros without problems as there was the little matter of Dorne. Basically Dorne resisted House Targaryen successfully.

Currently Daenerys Targaryen, and the million other titles she gives herself, is the only one with dragons: Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal. They are all now at a size where they can do some really big damage if they want to. Drogon is the largest due to the fact that he was able to roam freely. Yes, if you keep a dragon cooped up in the Game of Thrones universe, it can't get as big.
So Daenerys has the creatures that help her House originally conquer Westeros. For something like retaking the Iron Throne it is fine that she is the only one with dragons as Cersei isn't the show's big threat. It's like if a red shirt got killed off easily. But with something like the White Walkers there's a bigger threat and having such powerful weapons in that fight isn't fair.

For seasons the threat of the White Walkers has been built up and to have Daenerys being the only one with dragons makes the fight seem a little more one sided. Yes, you can say that there is still danger but dragons breathe fire which sort of harms the White Walkers.

If an ice dragon or two is in the wall it could make a great scene. Not only will the Night's King, head of the White Walkers, be able to tear down the Wall which has stopped him from entering Westeros but will also be able to make quite a spectacle. People aren't yet really used to seeing dragons and having them appear as their safety goes away would be a big way to inspire fear.

Having them appear when the Wall breaks would let the Night's King let the humans know that he is a more powerful enemy than they imagined. One way to help win a fight is to make the opposing side think there is no way to win. Heck, with ice dragons appearing in that way some people might flock to the White Walker's side either because they see no hope or they want to be on the winning side.

The Pros of Viserion Becoming an Ice Dragon

In the Game of Thrones universe no one is safe and everyone can die. That gives viewers a lot of worry for safe seeming characters. When Ned died in Season 1 it was a huge shock as he was what could be called the main character. He was noble, wise, and selfless. He believed in honor like it was more important to him than life itself. In the majority of fantasy epics a man like Ned is destined to survive. But Game of Thrones is different and his head went rolling by the end of the first season

This makes the dragons an oddity in the show. Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion have never truly had their lives at risk. They were stolen in Season 2 but that is far from the same thing as what other characters have been put through. Even Tyrion Lannister, a fan favorite which would usually mean he would survive in other shows, nearly got killed by the stone men. What made this worse was the fact that the screen seemed to be black for a long time which would indicate that the episode would end on a cliffhanger. Luckily that didn't happen.

So why do Daenerys' dragons get special treatment? Will they really be the characters that never die? Should they be?

The direwolves, like the dragons, are the symbol of a House. While dragons are the symbol of House Targaryen, direwolves are the symbol of House Stark. Both creatures are known to be extremely intelligent and haven't been seen in Westeros for quite some time. While direwolves aren't extinct, people's reactions to their presence indicates that they are a rarity in Westeros.

I bring up these creatures to help compare their fates to those of the dragons.

Grey Wind, Lady, Summer, and Shaggydog have all met their ends. Only Ghost and Nymeria remain out of the original litter that was given to the Stark children. While the former remains with Jon Snow, the latter's location isn't currently known as of the end of Season 6.

The direwolves are cute and adorable, but that hasn't stopped them from dying. No one wants another direwolf to die and yet so many have which makes it hard to keep hoping. They are the symbol of House Stark and, therefore, have just as much symbolic importance as dragons to House Targaryen.

So why should it be certain that all the dragons will survive the end of the show?

Daenerys Targaryen thinks of her dragons both as her children and her greatest chance at winning the Iron Throne. In the first Season of Game of Thrones, the Mother of Dragons lost her son. In the show it hasn't been made clear of whether or not she can bear more children, which would put a big damper on any alliances formed through marriage, and so the dragons are the only way she will have any offpsring.

In the show she tells Ser Jorah Mormont:  They are my children. And they are the only children I will ever have...

So to say they are important to her is a huge understatement. If Daenerys lost one of them that would be a huge blow to her. She tends to think of some things as untouchable and has had to be reminded that some things just are no matter how we wish otherwise. With the death of Viserion, Drogon, or Rhaegal Daenerys would realize that her dragons aren't unstoppable. She'll start to realize that she could lose what she worked so hard to get.

Maybe this would start to make her go mad as she panics. Once she realizes she isn't invincible and some things will happen regardless of any kind of birthright. As I adore the thought of Daenerys Targaryen going to the dark side, I think of this point as a huge reason why one of her dragons should become an ice dragon.

Even though the Season 7 of Game of Thrones plot leaks say it is Viserion who becomes an ice dragon, we can't take that as fact. It could be that no ice dragons appear, a different dragon becomes an ice dragon, or the events surrounding the creation of the ice dragon are different. The leaked plot of the Ghostbusters remake was mostly right but there were some things that weren't there in the theatrical cut of the film. So could be the case with the Game of Thrones Season 7 leak.

With that said I'm going to go over why Viserion is the best pick for becoming an ice dragon.

Drogon is the mount of Daenerys and I don't think he should be lost. Well...not until the war with the White Walkers really gets going. A character such as he could die or be turned during the middle of an epic battle. For now I think she should keep her mount. While Drogon being chosen as the ice dragon would hit Daenerys hard, which I want, I think any loss of such scale needs to be built up. Slowly tear her apart in other words.

Rhaegal should be the mount of Jon Snow as he's named after Rhaegar Targaryen who is Jon's father. It would have a poetic ring to it. Maybe there could be speculation if Rhaegal is Rhaegar reborn so that he could still look after his son. His son that he believes to be the Prince Who is Promised.

This leaves Viserion as the one who could most easily go without ruining the plot. His transformation will still leave a big impact as it will be the first dragon death. Really epic way to go if you think about it. Plus he gets the fame of being the Night's King's mount.

Artwork by Me

How This Relates to my Own Fanfic

What's the point of doing anything if I can't shamelessly promote my other work?

The Rin Duology is my Game of Thrones/Resident Evil fanfic that can be found HERE. As the various plots in the series would be both too long and not important to this post to explain now, I will only be limiting my summary to relevant parts. If you have not read all of the current chapters of the fic, do so now as there will be some major spoilers.

So here we go:
Rin's parents were murdered before she was a year old. Instead of dying she was raised by a pack of direwolves and remained ignorant to the fact that she was human. After the death of her pack she started wandering in her anguish and eventually her travels brought her to Valyria where she became a stone man.

Franc Raqus, who studied cures for grey scale, saw something different in Rin and took her back to see if he could cure her. In what later turned out to be a blessing from her Kaari bloodline, Rin was able to be cured when a dragon hatched. Their minds connected and she raised the creature. Instead of staying at the estate, she wandered and managed to keep her dragon a secret under the guise of merely being a fanciful legend.

When the dragon eventually died, Rin absorbed her essence and had her DNA structure changed because of it. Upon meeting Viserion, one of Daenerys' dragons, she realized that her dragon had been his sibling. She then starts to refer to Viserion as her brother because of this, meaning he is the only blood relative she now has.

The following hasn't been revealed in my fic yet as there hasn't been a good place to it. When giving exposition you can't just dump without it being set up. In the next Game of Thrones chapter or two Rin will be able to contact Alexander (the ancestral sword of House Kaari) so I might be able to fit in this exposition there.

Anyways...House Kaari (an original dragonlord House I made up for my fic) found ice dragons and experimented on a few eggs to make a fire/ice hybrid. All but two of these experiments failed and you probably can guess which ones succeeded: Viserion and Rin's dragon.

So Viserion being the one chosen to be the Night's King's ice dragon mount does fit extremely well. He already has ice dragon blood and he would become a full ice dragon. I'm not sure if I'm going to do this in the fic or not, but that is one of the reasons I'm leaning on making this happen.

Another compelling reason for me to turn Viserion into an ice dragon for my fic is that he is the only blood relative that Rin has left. As she's the last of her House, one that has been struggling to keep alive ever since House Targaryen attempted to destroy every trace of it, she has no one else to call family.

As strange as it is, her sibling connection to Viserion is the only way she has a family member related by blood. Well...the only way she has a blood related sibling as she currently has one son alive in Westeros and is pregnant with another child in the Resident Evil universe.

So Viserion becoming the Night's King's mount would hit her harder than anything else. She's already been put through so much and to see her only brother as good as dead...yeah...not exactly happy times.

For the last few months I have been engrossed in the Rin Duology. I have stopped the majority of my other fanfics I've been doing. (the only exception are my Flight Rising fics) which I haven't done since a little before I started blogging. It is also now the longest fanfic I have written since before I started blogging with chapters being around 4,000 words each now.

So to say that I haven't been living and breathing my fic is a lie. I've become extremely invested in the story I have to tell no matter who is actually interested. I am and, for things like this, that's all that truly matters in the end. I'm glad if people join in on the fun but I know I can't please everyone.

I have become more interested in Viserion ever since deciding his relation to Rin. So when I read the leak that he becomes an ice dragon I was devastated. I had to reassure myself a few times that nothing is confirmed about it happening to him. So if he does become an ice dragon in Season 7...it will hit me very hard.

Please leave a comment about your thoughts about ice dragons appearing in Game of Thrones. Do you think the leaks about Viserion are true? Do you think it will be another dragon that gets turned? Do you think ice dragons won't appear at all? Also comment below to suggest future posts for this blog.
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