Our Dragons Are Different/Literature: Difference between revisions

* No actual dragons have yet appeared in [[Robert Jordan]]'s ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' -- "the Dragon (Reborn)" is a title used by [[The Chosen One]]s. However, a dragon appears on his primary banner, and the name must have come from ''somewhere''. (At one point Rand's previous incarnation/the insane voice in his head snarls that his enemies will learn what it means to "rouse the Dragon", which of course is an old proverb almost everywhere.) Given the cyclical nature of his world, the whole concept of "dragons" might even be a [[Stable Time Loop]] situation in which mythological dragons derive from the Dragon's behavior and his banner.

** There are also the raken and to'raken. Native to the continent of Seanchan, raken and to'raken are flying lizards. Raken are ridden by one or two people, generally of small stature, while to'raken are large enough to carry at least half a dozen people and probably more. However, there are no signs of intelligence greater than a horse or any kind of breath weapon. To the main characters the raken and to'raken are generally very bizarre, alien monsters, so we never get details on appearance and they are never associated with [[The Chosen One|The Dragon]].

** There's also another {{spoiler|very antagonistic}} dragon who has a half ''[[Fantasy Kitchen Sink|kitsune]]'' daughter {{spoiler|who becomes Tannim's SO}}.

* Another [[Mercedes Lackey]] example is the [[Dragon Jousters]] quartet, which is set in something like [[Ancient Egypt]]. These dragons come in two Western-style types. One is the crocodilian "swamp dragon" which likes water, the other is the more brightly colored, larger "desert dragon". They're established to be as smart as a bright dog (and able to [[Evil-Detecting Dog|sense evil]]), can't breathe fire, and they imprint. Dragons taken from the wild as fledglings are forcibly trained to accept riders who treat them like flying chariots and have to be drugged; dragons raised from the egg are tame and fussed over by the ones who raise them. Riders mostly use them for patrols in which they make the enemy cautious and "joust" against enemy riders, knocking them out of the saddle to fall to their deaths. It's a major plot point that tame dragons can be trained to catch a falling man, and that another use is to pick out a human, snatch him up into the sky, and drop him.