They keep making a big deal about those dragons, but they are just animals, and in the coliseum execution scene one of them was almost killed by spears. Denaris is getting drunk with power now too as they all have.
shareYes. I agree. They are more like helicopters. She has three helicopters. One good rocket, or in this case crossbow, will take it out.
shareYeah, that's the comparison I made earlier, she's trying to conquer a continent with a land army and the equivalent of three military helicopters armed with flamethrowers. A very useful weapon, but not enough to win the war on their own. (Still, that's no excuse for keeping them hanging around Dragonstone doing nothing.)
Anyway, they'd be of extremely limited use in conquering the North in winter, BTW, which is why she's going to marry Jon. Not just because he's hot and broods so well and she can look him in the eye without getting a crick in the neck, but because she'd have such a hard time conquering the North with armies who've never seen snow or experienced cold.
No, but it's reasonable to assume they'd work very, very effective against a mass of shambling corpses which are known to be highly susceptible to fire.
The only question is what kind of anti-air defenses have the whitewalkers got?
Think that is the point of bigging up Euron's navy.
The Dragons are good in battle once you get them there but they can't hold territory if other resources aren't in place.
Cersai destroying Dany's fleet and allies and stranding the unsullied at casterly rock means Dany is basically in practical terms becoming a back seat player in the game once again.
Without ships to get her forces to where she wants them to go Cersai can pick off resistance in the 7 kingdoms while trying to starve Dany out. And Dany isn't going to get the money for ships from the Iron Bank and neither the Vale or the north really have the ships to help her.
Right now the only thing the dragons are good for is basically going to pick up groceries on westeros to feed Dany's army on that rock
Well they are good for scaring people who thought dragons were the size of cats before they went extinct.
I think we learn more about Dany's money situation in the coming episodes, and it turns out to be better than expected.
It would be interesting to see what Cersai really offers the bank. Even with the riches of the reach the Lannisters don't have the money to pay them back and fun another war.
The only thing I can think of is that Cersai is offering to start up a slave trade to make money for the bank that would make up for the loses that the bank suffered from Dany taking over slavers bay.
But right now what exactly has Dany got to offer the bank?
Dany doesn't need the bank (or at least she didn't before the start of season 7), but I give about a 0% chance Cersei pays them. So the bank will offer support to Dany as a consequence.
shareJamie just conquered Highgarden and Tyrells have a lot of gold. Lannisters can pay their debts with it. I think this might've been the main reason for attack on Highgarden in first place.
shareI think this is the right answer. The fact that Cersei promised the bank payment within 2 weeks meant she knew about the plan to capture Highgarden at that point. This also means that she probably knew about the forthcoming attack on Casterly Rock in advance; I'm doubting that Jaime figured it out and assume there is a mole (probably Varys).
I think you might be right about the mole. Their enemies know too much about their plans and movements of their army for it to be accidental. But if Varys is the obvious suspect, it will probably turn out to be someone else.
[spoiler]Some people suspect Missandei. They point out that when Davos asked her where she's from she didn't seem convincing and quickly changed the subject, like she has something to hide.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]The reason she reacts like that is because she was sold into slavery there, and to her it was not the beautiful land of palm trees and butterflies. But she was being tactful in not correcting him.[/spoiler]
shareTheory about [spoiler]Missandei being a traitor[/spoiler] seems far fetched to me as well.
shareThey actually are very much like aircraft carriers: Dragons are supremely effective against everything on the battlefield or ocean, except some very specialized counter-weapons, in this case ballista.
Their flames can burn/melt castles and navies with ease. They can eliminate unlimited numbers of troops, armor, cavalry, catapults, bridges, supply houses, grain fields, etc. If your enemy has them, your conventional forces have no chance.
Dany's dragon was hit with spears only because it needed to land in a stationary place and rescue her. That won't happen on the battlefield. Maybe they could sneak up on resting dragons with a few ballista wagons, but this seems unlikely. Especially since they prefer lofty aeries when they land.
While they are moving, they are nearly impossible to hit. In order to hit a flying dragon with a ballista you've got essentially two options:
1. Mount it on a 2-axis turret that can be rotated quickly enough to adjust for the dragon's jerky flying movements. Pretty unlikely, given the technology of the day.
2. Have enough ballistae firing so that the dragon cannot evade the fusillade.
Your crossbow shot then needs to hit a single point on the dragon, while not first getting hit by a big splash of dragon fire coming back at you. You've also got to do this while avoiding the two other dragons that are circling around behind and raining down fire on you.
"She has three full-grown dragons, Your Grace.
The same as Aegon when he conquered the Seven Kingdoms."
That’s what Lord Tarly said. Obviously, three dragons are more than »just animals«.
»and in the coliseum execution scene one of them was almost killed by spears.«
Well, hurt, not almost killed. He still was able to carry Dany to the Dothraki sea.
And by the way, I was quite pissed when I saw that scene. The way I remembered it from the books, the spears didn’t harm him at all. But maybe I remember it wrong, I really have to read the books again…
The dragon was a lot smaller then, and had much less armor.
And BTW just because Kyburn's spear-launcher can destroy a dragon skull, it doesn't mean that it can penetrate dragon armor. Who knows what dragon scales are made of, but there are a lot of things in this world that are tougher than bone.
Yeah I thought the scene with the huge crossbow and skull was laughable. Oh you mean a spear/bow can penetrate things at high speed? Woah, let's get on this technology!
Also, do people realize how easy non-guided ballistic missiles are to dodge when you are moving in air? Let alone by animals that spend all their time in the air.
To work, Kyburn's harpoon would not only have to hit a moving target, it'd have to hit right over a vital organ, with enough force to penetrate the dragon's scales AND at an angle that wouldn't cause it to bounce right off.
And of course, the harpoon launcher would be manned by men who have no practice hitting large flying targets and who are wetting their pants with terror, so what are the odds of a perfect strike? Not real great.
Come to think of it, the most vulnerable part of the dragon BY FAR is the Targaryan sitting on its back.
But she's got heavy-duty plot armor on. For now.
I agree, it seems quite unlikely that the weapon’ll actually help.
Unless, like it was suggested above, they’re having "enough ballistae firing so that the dragon cannot evade the fusillade", but that seems questionable again because Qyburn said that "the finest artillators and blacksmiths in King's Landing have been laboring day and night" – so how long would it take to build dozens of them?
Of course, if Dany still waits a few months before she attacks …
And I really would like to see that one of Cersei’s plans fails for a change.
But somehow, I’m quite certain the writers will find some way that at least one of the dragons will be killed by that weapon, or that they come up with hundreds of weapons of that kind, or that Euron realises that he can fart the dragons out of the sky or something…
If you shot a bunch of them at a dragon flying over your troops, wouldn't all the enormous iron arrows that missed rain down and crush people?
shareProbably.
But it didn’t matter to Ramsey Bolton as he rained down arrows at his own people during the Battle of Bastards.
Nor did it matter to Cersei that citizens in the streets of King’s Landing were killed when she blew up the sept.
That’s just collateral damage to them.
I think one or maybe 2 of her dragons will be killed in battle, this will be Demoralizing for her side and a huge boost for Cercei and her Allies.
shareShould we vote one of them off....or create a betting pool?
I think one will die, one will be wounded, and one will be fine.
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I think you are right. It would be too boring if the dragons were truly invincible and just burned everybody to ashes. There will be more drama if one is killed. I think only one will be killed, and Jon and Daenerys will fly the other two to defeat the White Walkers. Fire versus Ice.
shareI expect that at least one dragon will die, too.
But I’d prefer if he/they died fighting the White Walkers. It’s an army of thousands of wights, so that’s surely not a thing that even dragons can handle with ease. Moreover, the White Walkers thing has been build up since the first scene of the first episode of Season 1 – it’d be disappointing if they’d be finished too quickly/easily.
But we know that at least one dragon will be in King’s Landing (we saw that in one of Bran’s visions), and although I’d love to see Qyburn’s weapon fail miserably, I’m sure that won’t be the case.
Edit:
Of course, what we saw in Bran’s vision could have been some historic event, but I doubt that.