Do you need to end a conflict quickly and incontrovertibly? Bring a dragon. They will do a quick job before any army or army that opposes you.

But they are also much more than that. Dragons are beautiful magical living creatures whose destiny is closely linked to the destiny of the world in which they live, and each of them has a character of its own.

In this article, we will classify some of the many dragons that George R.R. Martin has dreamed, and we are going to keep his multifaceted nature in mind. In “The World of Ice and Fire,” more firepower does not necessarily mean that one dragon is more powerful than another.

The criterion here is that the dragon has the greatest potential military impact. The ability of a dragon to roast a large number of enemy fighters is a factor, but so is its ability to fight other dragons.

We also have your history to consider. If a dragon does not live to reach its full potential, that’s bad luck, with no extra points for what could have been.

For this list, there is no legend dragon whose existence seems uncertain (maybe the series of prequels can give us details about some of them). We are not checking sea dragons, either.

We are beginning this with the number 10 so as not to bore you with a group of dead and stabbed offspring like unfortunate seal pups for an angry mob; only adult dragons here.

Terrax

The number 10 is a very, very dark creature. Everything we know about Terrax comes from a paragraph in “The world of ice and fire.” Terrax is the only dragon on this list that died before or during the Curse of Valyria.

Terrax was the dragon of Jaenara Belaerys, a member of a powerful Valyrian family. She flew her dragon over the mysterious southern continent of Sothoryos, going further than anyone had ever traveled before (and since then, as far as we know).

We give Terrax this place to honor that feat, as well as to provide evidence of my belief that Valyria’s pre-Curse dragons generally must have been superior to their post-curse relatives of Valyria, thanks to the superior knowledge of the Valyrians.

I have no reason to believe that Terrax was necessarily bigger or stronger than any of Daenerys’ children, but consider what he achieved with Jaenara, I do not think it would have taken place with the Targaryen dragons that arose hundreds of years later. Given how little we know, I might even be selling little Terrax here.

Meraxes

This dragon was mentioned in the series, although it is possible that some spectators are distracted by the nudity. It is in the scene where Viserys Targaryen, naked in a bathtub with Doreah, names several dragons, some of them from books, some invented at that time. The mention of the name “Meraxes” is somewhat compromised, but it is there.

Anyway, Meraxes, the dragon of Rhaenys Targaryen, is a formidable beast with scales of gold and silver. He is bigger than Vhagar, the dragon of Visenya, though not as big as Balerion, the dragon of Aegon I The Conqueror, the brother and husband of Rhaenys.

Meraxes participated in the Conquest of Westeros and played his part in the Field of Fire along with Balerion and Vhagar. During the Battle of the Last Storm, Meraxes unleashed his fire on Argilac the arrogant Durrandon, his vanguard and his personal guard. This helped the Targaryens secure a victory and paved the way for the establishment of the Baratheon House.

The real question here is if Meraxes should not have a higher rank. Meraxes is in ninth place because he died for something as mundane as a shot from a scorpion to the eye, during a failed attempt to conquer Dorne.

Sheepstealer

Sheepstealer is another dark creature. This dragon participated in a war, the Dance of Dragons, but is in this position for his cunning, not for his ability in battle.

Sheepstealer was a wild dragon domesticated by a commoner (possibly a targaryen bastard) called Nettles, one of only four “dragon seeds” to successfully join with a dragon.

Just as Nettles seems smarter than the other dragon seeds, Sheepstealer seems intelligent to me. By not being cheated or subdued – Sheepstealer killed more potential dragon seeds than Cannibal or Greyghost, two of the other unclaimed dragons.

One of the most interesting things about Sheepstealer is that he could still be alive. Nettles, knowing when to make an exit, decided to flee from public life after having been named a traitor by Rhaenyra Targaryen for sleeping with Daemon Targaryen, the uncle and husband of Rhaenyra. Sheepstealer and Nettles were last seen on the Bay of the Crabs, their fate is not clear.

Nobody has known about them since then. If Sheepstealer is still alive, it could be a complete game change. For all we know, he is now much bigger and stronger than Drogon.

Drogon

Speaking of Drogon, he is my number 7. What can we say about Drogon that you do not yet know, and why is it relatively low on this list?

As big as Drogon is, by the standards of the dragons of the Targaryen heyday, he is still small and small, even if he has grown an order of magnitude faster than other dragons in the series.

Also, we still have not seen how he behaves against another dragon. It is very likely that this will change in season 8, not to mention what might happen in the novels of the Song of Ice and Fire (we say it again: Sheepstealer?), But until then, it is difficult to know what Drogon I really can do.

Yes, he can burn the infantrymen until they are crispy and their scales protect him from the attack to some extent, but we can say that about all the dragons that made this list, and many that did not. Maybe Drogon is Balerion the Black Dread that is coming again, maybe it’s the Stallion That Mounts the World, maybe it’s even Lightbringer … but for now we can not put it higher in this ranking. But stay tuned.