Spoilers for Game of Thrones below.
Which one of Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons was killed by Euron Greyjoy in Sunday night’s Game of Thrones episode? It was an awful shock to see one of her two remaining “children†spill buckets of blood before crashing into the water below — whether or not it made a lick of sense that she somehow didn’t spot the Greyjoy fleet before Euron fired those giant arrows — but if you aren’t sure which dragon died in “The Last of the Starks,â€Â you’re not alone. It’s a little tricky to tell the difference between Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion, so let’s spell it out.
In George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the dragons are described as much more distinctive than they appear in the show. Drogon’s scales and teeth are black, and he has red eyes. Rhaegal’s body is made up of green and bronze tones, with black teeth and claws. Viserion is mostly a cream color, although Daenerys refers to him as her “white dragon,†and his eyes and horns are gold.
We can knock out one of the dragons right off the bat: Euron definitely didn’t kill Viserion, since he’s … well, he’s already long gone because the Night King turned him into a zombie dragon last season. (Or wight dragon. Zombdragon? There’s really no terminology for this.) It isn’t Drogon either: He’s always ridden by Daenerys, and so he’s the one that narrowly dodges the fleet’s barrage of gigantic arrows in “The Last of the Starks.†That means the unlucky dragon was poor Rhaegal. At least he and Jon Snow got to take a few joyrides together, right?