A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set roughly a hundred years before Game of Thrones, with the Targaryens still in power, but there’s a big change since we last saw them in House of the Dragon: there are no dragons.
The new Game of Thrones prequel is a lower-stakes, more personal story, following the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire, Prince Aegon Targaryen (Dunk and Egg for short).
While Thrones and HotD have dragons, zombies, and even a zombie dragon, you won’t find any of that in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – here’s why.
Why A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has no dragons or magic
To say it in the most spoiler-free way possible, the Dance of the Dragons (the war fought in House of the Dragon) decimated Westeros’ dragon population.
Only a few remained at the end of the war, and every new dragon born was stunted and sickly. The final dragon died in King’s Landing around 50 years before A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms takes place.
Ser Arlan of Pennytree, Dunk’s master, visited King’s Landing as a boy, where he saw the last dragon and her eggs, which he described as “hard as stone, but beautiful to look upon.”
The last dragon’s death seemed to mark the end of magic in Westeros (at least until Game of Thrones kicks off), with Arlan saying, “The summers have been shorter since the last dragon died, and the winters longer and crueler.”
If you want a more in-depth explanation of what happened, read on, but be warned, there are major spoilers for House of the Dragon below.
How did the last dragon die?
The last dragon died in the reign of King Aegon III, Rhaenyra’s first son with Daemon. He was given many nicknames, such as Aegon the Younger, the Unlucky, the Unhappy, and most famously, Aegon the Dragonbane.
It’s widely believed that watching Aegon II’s dragon, Sunfyre, eat Rhaenyra caused a lifelong fear and hatred of dragons. So, he poisoned the last dragon to end them forever.
However, when Samwell Tarly visits the Citadel in A Feast for Crows, Archmaester Marwyn all but confirms that the maesters were responsible for the dragons dying out.
“‘Who do you think killed all the dragons the last time around? Gallant dragonslayers armed with swords?’ [Marwyn] spat. ‘The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons.’”
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