[1] Ironically enough, one of the players on the field for Kiel during their humiliating defeat was Alexander Graf von Perponcher-Sedlnitzky who would go on to become the stadium announcer for the Dresden Monarchs later on.

Promoted to the German Football League, the GFL, the club became an instant play-off contender, reaching the semifinals in 2004, where it lost to the Braunschweig Lions.

With only one win and eleven defeats in the regular season, the Monarchs had to enter the relegation round, but were able to overcome the Hamburg Eagles and thereby defended their place in the GFL.

The 2013 season became the club's best up to that point, finishing second in its division and reaching the German Bowl after play-off victories at home over the Munich Cowboys and Berlin Adler.

[4] In the GFL the club finished once more in second place in the North Division in 2014 and defeated the Marburg Mercenaries 42–22 at home in the quarter-finals of the play-offs but lost in the semi-finals on the road to the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns who would in turn lose the German Bowl to Braunschweig.

However, the team led by Quarterback Brandon Connette ultimately recovered and proved one of the most statistically efficient passing offenses in the league, losing only two games (on the road in Kiel and Braunschweig) and tying their home game against Braunschweig before defeating an overmatched Saarland Hurricanes squad in the quarterfinals before once more going on the road to the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns.

In the playoffs Dresden once more took care of business in their quarterfinals at home before being bested on the road by Schwäbisch Hall, again a repeat of the pattern of previous years.

The fact that Braunschweig also failed to advance to the final and Schwäbisch Hall won it all that year was only small consolation for the once again foiled championship dreams of the Dresden squad.

While the lingering effects of Covid-19 - several teams were unable to start full contact team training as early in the preseason as they would've liked - made for a few upsets, the founding of the European League of Football, which included many players who had played in the GFL as recently as 2019 threw the German Football landscape into disarray as both leagues competed for media and fan attention as well as sponsorship money and player talent.

The division lead was theoretically still up for grabs in the last home game of the regular season against the Potsdam Royals (who placed second) who could've equalized winning percentages at 8–2 and pulled ahead on the head-to-head tiebreaker if they'd won by more than 16 points, but Potsdam's decision makers apparently had no intention of even trying as they mostly let the backups play in a lopsided 63–7 road loss in Dresden to close out the regular season.

In the quarter-final, the Allgäu Comets were sent packing back to Bavaria with a score of 50–13 while the Saarland Hurricanes didn't even manage to get on the scoreboard in the 37–0 defeat they experienced in the last Monarchs game at Heinz Steyer Stadion prior to its renovation which is scheduled to take until 2023.

The Monarchs started out playing at Bärnsdorfer Straße, a former velodrome (the former cycling track is still visible but hasn't been used for that purpose in decades) in the Äußere Neustadt borough of Dresden.

The Monarchs have a strong fan base and usually place in the top three of attendance figures in the league together with the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns and the Braunschweig Lions.

However, fan violence is unheard of and even during heated matchups with fierce rivals that have playoff implications there are often joint tailgate parties organized by supporters of Dresden and their opponent.

Another rivalry began precisely in the promotion/relegation round of the 2002 season when the Kiel Baltic Hurricanes were sent down to the second tier by a combined score of 100–0 in the two game series.

Some Dresden supporters also take to mocking the Berlin mascot ("Adler" is the German word for "eagle") by displaying rubber chicken affixed to their outfits with a hangman's knot during games between the two teams.

However, road games are a different story and in the 2010s the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns proved to be the end of the line for Dresden's championship hopes five times.

Schwäbisch Hall won both games and Dresden only narrowly avoided relegation that year after placing last in the GFL North with a record of 1-11.