In a new blog post, Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin registers his disappointment with the House Targaryen emblem on House of the Dragon. Namely, that its three-headed dragon has four legs, instead of his preferred two-legged depiction.
In the post, Martin argues a dragon’s wings would have likely evolved from its forelegs, stating “four-legged dragons exist only in heraldry. No animal that has ever lived on Earth has six limbs. Birds have two legs and two wings, bats the same, ditto pteranodons and other flying dinosaurs, etc. ” He then presents the correct two-legged version of the emblem next to its incorrect four-legged version, adding, “why would any Westerosi ever put four legs on a dragon, when they could look at the real thing and could [see] their limbs?” The post concludes with the HBO-damning statement, “Fantasy needs to be grounded. It is not simply a license to do anything you like.”
Of course, the obvious counter-argument here is that no animal that ever lived on Earth has had three heads, either, but Martin catches himself, stating, “of course no dragon has three heads. That bit is purely symbolic, meant to reflect Aegon the Conqueror and his two sisters.”
Forgetting for a moment that a three-headed dragon likely would need the extra legs to support itself (or at least King Ghidorah’s dummy thicc thighs), Martin presents an interesting argument—though I’m not sure it’s necessarily the correct one. Must a dragon always be reptilian?
Many insects, of course, are six-legged animals with additional wings, which new research suggests may have evolved from gills. Notably, over 5,000 species of something called a “dragonfly” which also matches the physical description of its namesake. Hell, there’s even a “flying” lizard called a Draco with an extendable membrane that allows it to glide distances of over 200 feet at once. Martin is also adamant his dragons are “creatures of the sky” that must “breathe fire,” yet there’s vanishingly little oxygen the higher one goes. As larger animals need more of it for simple cellular respiration, it also strains credulity they’d live contemporaneously with humans. Hatzegopteryx, the largest known flying animal to have ever lived, did so at a time when there was 50% more oxygen than our current atmosphere. In this case, would it be so difficult to believe a dragon could be a “living fossil” descendent of an undiscovered six-limbed ancestor?
Maybe arguing about how many legs a three-headed dragon would possess is a conversation better left until after he finishes The Winds of Winter—and not a moment before.
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