Dragons in Middle-earth
[1][2] In the earliest drafts of "The Fall of Gondolin", the Lost Tale that is the basis for The Silmarillion, the Dark Lord Morgoth (here called Melkor) sends mechanical war-machines in the form of dragons against the city; some serve as transport for Orcs.
[T 5] In Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien mentions that Dáin I, King of the Dwarves, and his son Frór were killed by a "Cold-drake", prompting their people to leave the Grey Mountains.
[T 7] All Tolkien's dragons share a love of treasure (especially gold), subtle intelligence, immense cunning, great physical strength, and a hypnotic power called "dragon-spell".
He is a main antagonist in The Children of Húrin, in which he sets in motion events that bring about the protagonist Túrin Turambar's eventual suicide before being slain by him.
He arose like a storm from the pits of Angband beneath the Iron Mountains, as a last defence of the realm of Dor Daedeloth.
Eärendil in his airborne ship Vingilot, aided by Thorondor and his great Eagles, battled Ancalagon's dragons for an entire day.
The silver horn that Éowyn gave to Merry Brandybuck after the War of the Ring, crucial in The Scouring of the Shire, came from this hoard.
A deadly winged fire-breathing dragon, he was red-gold in colour and his underbelly was encrusted with many gemstones from the treasure-pile he commonly slept upon once he had taken control of Erebor (the Lonely Mountain).
[2] The folklorist Sandra Unerman writes that Smaug's ability to speak, the use of riddles, the element of betrayal, his enemy's communication via birds, and his weak spot could all have been inspired by the talking Germanic dragon Fafnir of the Völsunga saga.
[4] The scholar of Icelandic literature Ármann Jakobsson writes that with the encounter with Smaug, the story in The Hobbit becomes "more unexpected, entangled, ambiguous, and political".
He argues that Tolkien was effectively translating the subtext of his Old Norse sources, creating in his dragon a far more subtle, uncanny, and frightening monster than those in the earlier, more or less unconnected, travel narrative episodes.
"[7] Thus, Honegger concludes, Tolkien's "good dragons" admit their mythical ancestry but are at the same time recognisably modern characters.
[9] In the real-time strategy game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II, based on Peter Jackson's film trilogy, there is a dragon named Drogoth.
[11] Honegger writes that Tolkien's conception of dragons "as intelligent beings with a distinct personality" has been adopted by fantasy authors with a wide range of styles, including Barbara Hambly, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, Christopher Paolini, and Jane Yolen.
