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This page is about the giant stable. For the short, see: The Dragonpit

"I imagine it was a sad joke at the end. An entire arena for a few sickly creatures smaller than dogs. But in the beginning, when it was home to Balerion the Dread, it must have been the most dangerous place in the world."
Tyrion Lannister[src]

The Dragonpit[1][a] is a huge structure in King's Landing that House Targaryen once used as a giant stable for their dragons. It was built following Maegor Targaryen's destruction of the Sept of Remembrance. It was later destroyed and never rebuilt.

History[]

Background[]

The top of Rhaenys's Hill was once home to the Sept of Remembrance. It was destroyed by Maegor the Cruel in the Faith Militant uprising and then replaced with the Dragonpit.

House of the Dragon: Season 1[]

Rhaenyra Targaryen lands her dragon Syrax at the entrance of the Dragonpit. Three Dragonkeepers bring the dragon inside while Rhaenyra departs for the Red Keep. Days later, Daemon Targaryen flies out of the Dragonpit on the back of his dragon Caraxes, taking his paramour Mysaria with him.[2]

Fourteen years later, the children of Rhaenyra and the children of Alicent Hightower use the Dragonpit to train and strengthen their bonds with their respective dragons under the supervision of the Dragonkeepers.[3]

In 132 AC,[b] the coronation of Aegon II Targaryen is held at the Dragonpit before it is interrupted by the escape of Meleys and Rhaenys Targaryen.[4]

Game of Thrones: Season 7[]

When Arya Stark encounters a group of Lannister soldiers in the Riverlands, Geoff notes his disappointment in King's Landing after seeing the Dragonpit is now a "damned ruin."[5]

The summit between the major monarchs of Westeros is held at the Dragonpit.[6]

Game of Thrones: Season 8[]

The Great Council of 305 AC is held at the Dragonpit. There it is decided that future Great Councils will also be held at the Dragonpit.[7]

In the books[]

In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the Dragonpit is a huge, cavernous building that sits atop the Hill of Rhaenys in King's Landing. It is located on the opposite side of the city from Visenya's Hill, atop which stands the Great Sept of Baelor. Flea Bottom is located on the south side of the hill (at the bottom), and the Street of Silk (the red light district where Chataya's brothel is located) is on the northern side.

During the early years of the city, a great Sept was built on Rhaenys's Hill known as the Sept of Remembrance which used to be the main Sept in King's Landing. During the Faith Militant uprising, about forty years after the Targaryen Conquest, Maegor the Cruel mounted on Balerion the Black Dread incinerated the Great Sept with dragonflame. Afterwards, Maegor decreed that a large domed structure would be built on the hill as a "stable for dragons". Maegor had just finished construction on the Red Keep, after which he had all of the builders killed to preserve the secrets of the hidden passages within it. Understandably, few stonemasons and laborers volunteered to build the Dragonpit: instead, prisoners from the city's dungeons were press-ganged into construction labor. They were supervised by architects from Myr and Volantis.

The Dragonpit was incomplete when Maegor died under mysterious circumstances but its construction was taken up by his successor. During King Jaehaerys I's minority, the rule of the realm was managed by his mother, Queen Regent Alyssa Velaryon, and her second husband Rogar Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End and Hand of the King. Completing work on the Dragonpit was one of Lord Baratheon's ambitions before he handed the rule of the Seven Kingdoms over to Jaehaerys. However, Maegor's wars had emptied the Crown's treasury and construction on the Dragonpit ground to a halt due to a lack of coin. When Jaehaerys took the realm into his own hands upon his majority, one of his first priorities was restoring the Iron Throne's finances, a task he accomplished thanks to his efficient Master of Coin, the Pentoshi Rego Draz. Draz's taxes on the luxury items desired by the lords and merchants of Westeros and his ability to gain favorable loans from the Iron Bank of Braavos and its rivals in other Free Cities allowed Jaehaerys to continue work on the Dragonpit, a construction that would eventually be completed and celebrated with the first great tourney of the King's reign since the marriage of his mother to Lord Rogar Baratheon. After the Dragonpit's completion, Balerion became the first dragon to be housed in the new edifice, soon joined by other dragons such as the King's Vermithor and Good Queen Alysanne's Silverwing. To protect the dragons from thieves looking for dragon eggs, would-be dragon slayers, or overeager young Targaryen princes and princesses, King Jaehaerys ordered the creation of a new order of guards to protect the Dragonpit: the Dragonkeepers, seventy-seven guards charged with protecting both the dragons of the pit and the yards of Dragonstone.

Despite its simplistic name - "dragon pit" - it was actually a gigantic colosseum-like mega-structure. Thirty knights could ride abreast into its entrance. Forty large undervaults were carved deep under the hill, intended for one dragon to nest in each, though there were never that many Targaryen dragons at once. There were only 20 during the Dance, and many fewer during Maegor's time. Apparently, he had the foresight to anticipate the number of dragons to grow in the future. Inside of the dome, the walls were lined with stone benches which could comfortably seat 80,000 people so it was used for public spectacles such as the funeral ceremony for King Jaehaerys I Targaryen. When living dragons still nested beneath the dome, light would shine through the windows at night. Subsequent generations of dragons grew smaller. Some said it was because they were contained in the Dragonpit, though others scoff that by the same logic men who live in small houses should grow smaller. Many dragons continued to nest in the sides of the Dragonmont volcano on Dragonstone island. Dragons could be stabled in the Dragonpit, but nests for their eggs needed the heat of the volcano.

During the Great Spring Sickness so many people died so quickly that there was no time to bury the bodies. Instead they were piled up in the Dragonpit and when the corpses were 10 feet deep, the Hand of the King, Lord Brynden Rivers, ordered the pyromancers to incinerate them. The fires burned night and day, the dark green glow of wildfire visible through the windows at night through all of King's Landing.

By the time the War of the Five Kings breaks out, the Dragonpit is still an abandoned ruin, though it is now frequented by whores (apparently spillover from the nearby Street of Silk - the cheaper kind of street-walker whores who can't get work in a dedicated brothel building). In the second novel, one of these whores and her patron fall through the floor and stumble onto one of the hidden wildfire stashes that the Mad King had hidden throughout the city during Robert's Rebellion - part of the Wildfire plot to have the pyromancers destroy the entire city rather than let it fall to the rebels. This recovered stockpile enabled Tyrion to use it against Stannis's fleet at the Battle of the Blackwater since the pyromancers could never have made the massive quantities of wildfire needed on such short notice. The TV show omitted this extra detail and just said that the alchemists worked day and night to produce that much wildfire.

Gallery[]

References[]

Notes[]

  1. High Valyrian: Zaldrījudiri
  2. "The Green Council" picks up only hours after the events of "The Lord of the Tides," which takes place in 132 AC.

External links[]


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