Originally, the world of Dragon Age had very few dragons.
Game-wise, at least.
Origins had us fight one true high dragon in the entire game, a shapeshifter as a dragon, and the archdemon that looks like a high dragon but technically is an Old God.
DAII was worse in that regard, with only a single high dragon fight in the final chapter.
Inquisition gave us a veritable army of high dragons, roughly one per map, and added to the lore and questions surrounding them.
We’ve been drip-fed little pieces of interesting information about them outside of the games as well, but let’s start with the basics.
Dragons as Animals
Even in the latest Dragon Age media—Absolution on Netflix—reiterates through the character of Qwydion that dragons “aren’t monsters or gods, they’re just alive, like us.”
I don’t know how much I believe that, but they are definitely treated as marginally intelligent animals in the series.
Dragonlings are hatched from large clutches of eggs. They stay around or near their mother until they hit the next stage of their life cycle.
Males mature into drakes, flightless, four-limbed, medium-sized dragons. They leave the nest to find a female and live in her harem among a bunch of other drakes that defend and hunt for her.
At the same stage, females become dragons. They roam the countryside looking for suitable lairs.
High dragons are the final stage of female dragons after centuries of aging. They are massive and can be incredibly destructive, especially every hundred years when they scour the land looking for food to ready themselves for laying a clutch.
Inquisition introduced new breeds and breath weapons but also cut all stages except dragonlings and high dragons.
Beyond that, we know high dragons like hot springs, can hibernate for centuries at a time, and that they are intelligent enough to understand when a humanoid is more useful to them alive than as a meal.
Dragons and Magic
Dragon blood makes demon-slaying runes, which seems strange as there isn’t any connection between the two. That we know of.
Poisonous materials make dragon-slaying runes. It makes sense that they would need their own “slaying” rune since the corrupting one that is for regular humans/animals wouldn’t work on them. Poison is the next best thing.
I don’t remember anything in-game about dragon blood and blood magic, but Dawn of the Seeker used drake blood to enhance a specific mage’s inherent ability to control animals.
They might have used drake blood instead of human because the animals in question they were trying to influence were dragons. So, it may not be particularly potent for blood magic, just a matter of like calling to like.
If humanoids ingest dragon blood, they become Reavers. They take on the blood lust and strength of the creatures, and if they drink too much, they grow scales and become monstrous.
Iron Bull tells us about an urban legend among the Ben-Hassrath that the Tamasrans bred Qunari with dragon blood.
Though that might not be the exact reality (as it’s likely that the Qunari were created by someone/thing that was unhappy with the results), dragon blood might explain Qunari horns and “savagery.”
Dragons and the Blight
Dragons, or specifically high dragons, are resistant to the blight. They form fleshy nodules around infected tissue, kind of like how a clam makes a pearl around parasites.
This is why they need their own rune—they are highly resistant to the blight, unlike anything else that we know of.
Archdemons (and the Old Gods they once were) take the shape of dragons. Though we don’t know what the Old Gods looked like, as archdemons, they look like corrupted dragons.
There is speculation that they are just very powerful dragons, but this seems unlikely even in the in-game lore.
They are too intelligent, and the stories of them teaching Archons and magisters blood magic would indicate they are something far more than the true dragons we see in-game.
Corypheus’ dragon was, from what we can tell, a regular high dragon that he corrupted with red lyrium, not whatever an Old God/archdemon truly is.
Dragons and the Evanuris
A codex entry dating from the time of the ancient elves connects, if not dragons, then their form to the Evanuris.
One ancient codex in the Arbor Wilds is translated (with the help of the Well of Sorrows) as a “sinner” charged with the crime of “[daring] to fly in the shape of the divine” and that they “took wings.”
Dragons are likely the “divine form” the codex speaks of.
Further evidence includes Flemeth, aka, what’s left of the murdered elven goddess Mythal, taking the form of a high dragon multiple times throughout the series.
She also gives you help from the “Guardian of Mythal,” a high dragon, or teaches Morrigan how to transform into one.
Solas’ unfinished mural looks like a wolf over a dragon. The dragon might be the red lyrium one Corypheus uses, but it seems representative of something larger than a single entity.
It’s likely just the whole of Corypheus’ operation, but the inclusion of the wolf—Solas’ symbol, not the Inquisition’s—makes me think it represents something else.
Similarly, Solas’ demon in Tevinter Nights is half dragon, half wolf.
Outside of the Games
The main reason I feel like there is more to dragons than the games lead us to believe comes from a comic that I admittedly have not read.
In The Silent Grove, Yavana, a witch of the wilds and another daughter of Flemeth like Morrigan, guards two “great” dragons.
These two are supposedly “greater” than high dragons, one called the “queen” of dragons.
They were put into a hibernation to save them from extinction and can only be awakened by like blood, in this case, that of a descendant of Calenhad who drank great dragon blood.
She says she saved them because: “The blood of dragons is the blood of the world.”
To Alistair, she says: “Your heart beats with the old blood, as well. Where do you think it comes from? It sings of a time when dragons ruled the skies. A time before the Veil, before the mysteries were forgotten.”
That’s a lot to unpack given all we learned in Inquisition.
Connections
To start, given what Yavana said, and all we’ve learned from the latest game, I believe there is some connection between dragons and the world like titans are to the earth.
Both were hunted and put to sleep, ostensibly for the good of creation.
Though they both seem to be naturally occurring creatures, one has dominion or control over the earth, the other the sky.
If the dragons are some axis upon which the world hinges, that might be why dragon blood was used to make Qunari. It also explains the timing—dragons were thought extinct when the Qunari arrived, maybe they were made to avoid that extinction and whatever it may do to Thedas.
If the dragons are a representation of the world, where the spirits are the rulers of the Fade and the titans are the rulers of the earth, is that why dragons resist the blight (which is born from the earth) like their blood somehow slays demons?
As if the three (spirits/dragons/titans) are the axis of all of existence, a cosmic balance that must be kept or invite ruin to all life?
I don’t know what’s the dragons’ link to divinity, but I think they were to the elves like the titans were to the dwarves.
Gods, or god figures.
But then why are they little more than terrible animals in modern Thedas? Awe inspiring, yes, but hardly remarkable to a people that could produce magic the likes of which are unseen since the Veil came down.
And Yavana makes a pointed addition of saying they ruled before the Veil.
That comment was made before we knew the Veil was artificial at all.
It makes me think that maybe the Veil is doing something to the dragons. Like it’s keeping them animalistic somehow.
I also think there are some connections between Yavana’s great dragons and Solas and Mythal—hence having only two. They were the only two Evanuris to escape imprisonment via the Veil.
Is that what the archdemons are? Great dragons connected to the Evanuris, or their “sky” form?
There are a lot of theories that say the ancient elves, specifically Solas and the other Evanuris, were/are spirits, and there are a lot of connections to spirits and the “air.”
We are assuming the elven form (or human, in Mythal’s case) is the physical body they are inhabiting, but what if the dragons are their “divine” or worldly form?
Maybe the dragons are the inversion of spirits/demons, the physical to their magical?
Maybe that’s part of their power, not just the hearts of the “pillars of the earth” that became their orbs, but the “blood of the world” that bridges the gap between the “children of the air” (re: spirits)?
Would that make the archdemons the physical half of the Evanuris? Are their spirit bodies locked in the Fade and that’s why the archdemons are trying to break them out?
If those two great dragons are the physical components of Mythal and Solas’ bodies, that would also explain why Solas woke up when he did. He woke when his great dragon did.
This would also give Mythal another shot at coming back to life (again) if her dragon still sleeps. If it wakes, does a part of her as well?
I’m not sure how confident I feel about this theory, but it’s putting together pieces of the puzzle that have been floating around for years without a place to put them.
I don’t think I have it exactly, but I think I’m getting close.