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Where Have All the Dragons Gone? - Page 10

© Michael Martinez

Such a limitation makes the dragons incapable of taking over the world without a greater power behind them. And it also makes it possible for people to live relatively close to the dragons (as the Men of the Long Lake and the Elves of Northern Mirkwood did) without having to find cover every other day. The dragons, so long as they weren't disturbed, would sustain themselves on their golden hoards until moved to action for some reason. They may have had little in the way of a mating instinct, and perhaps there was a conflict between their need to reproduce and their need simply to exist. A dragon which brought forth children might weaken itself, perhaps even die, unless it had a very, very large hoard of gold. Smaug seems to have been the largest and most successful of the dragons of his generation. But if the hoards of Erebor and Dale were vaster than anything his kind had accumulated since the end of the First Age, he may have become sort of drunk with power, too besotted to go find a mate. A dependence upon gold and the strength to withstand all but the mightiest of wills would also explain why the Witch-king of Angmar was unable to control or breed dragons. He would simply have been too weak to accomplish the task. Sauron might have been able to exert his full will and gain control over the dragons. Gandalf certainly feared as much according to Tolkien, but Sauron appears to have nearly recovered all his strength by the end of the Third Age (minus the portion stored in the Ring). When Angmar arose around the year 1300 Sauron was still weak and hiding in Mirkwood. He may not have become capable of working with the dragons until much later. But the re-emergence of dragons in the north in the 26th century may be an indication that Sauron was doing something with them. He returned to Dol Guldur in 2460 "with increased strength", according to the Tale of Years in Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings. The dragons reappeared in the north around the year 2570. Coincidence? Sauron could certainly have arranged for the dragons to get a few shipments of gold. In fact, he could have begun working on a dragon breeding program soon after leaving Dol Guldur in 2063 in preparation for his eventual return. So it would seem that the story of Scatha was a bit of a fluke. The dragons would have been incapable of wreaking havoc among the northern peoples until the Dwarves started settling in the Grey Mountains in large numbers. Some Dwarf-colony may have awakened Scatha and he slew them, taking their hoard. A few survivors would have spread word that a dragon was living in the mountains. So what brought Fram into the picture? Would he really have set out to slay a dragon in the hope of getting treasure? That seems so unlike the heroic Rohirrim and their ancestors, the Eotheod who helped Gondor. Fram may have been a proud and arrogant man with little love for Dwarves, but I think it would be out of character for him to be greedy and pretentious enough to go dragon-hunting. Scatha must have seemed a real threat to the Eotheod.

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