George R.R. Martin has been mostly impressed with Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, recently praising the franchises most devastating dragon battle yet, and the development of several characters that he had perhaps not fleshed out as much in the novel, Fire and Blood. However, that doesn’t mean that the author hasn’t got his little bugbears about the HBO adaptation, and one of those is a “sloppy” mistake in a very prominent part of the Targaryen sigil.
No animal that has ever lived on Earth has six limbs. For what it’s worth, the show got it half right. Someone got sloppy, I guess. Or someone opened a book on heraldry, and read just enough of it to muck it all up. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
While it may be a little thing in the grand scheme of the series, Martin went into great detail in his recent blog post about the differences between what the Targaryen sigil should look like, and what the series’ design team came up with. The main difference between the two is a matter of legs; dragon and wyvern legs to be exact. Martin explained at length:
“Much of the confusion about the proper number of legs on a dragon has its roots in medieval heraldry. In the beginning both versions could be seen on shields and banners, but over the centuries, as heraldry became more standardized, the heralds took to calling the four-legged beasties dragons and their two-legged kin wyverns. No one had ever seen a dragon or a wyvern, of course; neither creature actually existed save in legend, so there was a certain arbitrary quality to this distinction… and medieval heralds were not exactly renowned for their grasp of zoology, even for real world animals. Just take a look at what they thought a seahorse looked like.”
George R.R. Martin Explains The Differences Between Dragons and Wyverns
Although it may seem like this could well allow some creative license for House of the Dragon, Martin makes a further point about the world of Westeros that makes a big difference to the allowances that can be given to the anatomy of its scaly beasts. He added:
“Dragons DO exist in the world of Westeros, however (wyverns too, down in Sothoryos), so my own heralds did not have that excuse. Ergo, in my books, the Targaryen sigil has two legs, as it should. Why would any Westerosi ever put four legs on a dragon, when they could look at the real thing and count their limbs? My wyverns have two legs as well; they differ from the dragons of my world chiefly in size, coloration, and the inability to breath fire. (It should be stressed that while the Targaryen sigil has the proper number of legs (two), it is not exactly anatomically correct. The wings are way too small compared to the body, and of course no dragon has three heads. That bit is purely symbolic, meant to reflect Aegon the Conqueror and his two sisters).”
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As blood, bones, and burials await, it wouldn’t hurt to get a greater understanding of these harbingers of war and their backstories.
For most fans, an extra couple of legs of a sigil does not tarnish what has been a stunning return to form from the Game of Thrones franchise, following the disappointment of how the original series ended. While, over five years on, fans of Martin’s novels are still waiting to see how his version of that story ends, House of the Dragon has restored a love of the world of Westeros once more, which bodes well for the other spin-off shows that are on the horizon such as The Hedge Knight.