Temeraire

Temeraire is the black Chinese Celestial dragon at the heart of Naomi Novik's alternate-history series beginning with His Majesty's Dragon (2006), who serves in Britain's Aerial Corps during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Story

Novik's series imagines the Napoleonic Wars fought with an air force of dragons. In His Majesty's Dragon, a British naval captain, Will Laurence, captures a French ship and finds a dragon egg aboard, close to hatching. A hatchling bonds with the person who names and harnesses it, and this one chooses Laurence. Laurence names him Temeraire, after a famous warship, and has to give up his naval career to join the Aerial Corps, a rough, half-separate branch of the military.

Laurence and Temeraire train in Scotland and fight the French in the air, ending the first book in a battle against an attempted invasion of England. Along the way they learn that Temeraire is a Celestial, the rarest breed in China, reserved for the imperial family. The egg had been a gift from the Chinese emperor to Napoleon. Later books take the pair to China, Africa, Australia, South America, and Russia, and follow Temeraire's growing anger at how dragons are treated as property. The series ends with League of Dragons (2016).

Appearance and Powers

Temeraire is black, with lighter markings on his wings, and grows into a heavyweight dragon big enough to carry a large crew. He does not breathe fire. Instead he discovers the "divine wind," a roar powerful enough to shatter timber and kill, a power found only in Celestials. He is highly intelligent, speaks English, French, and Chinese, loves books and mathematics, and argues for the rights of dragons with stubborn conviction.

Origins and Sources

Novik combined two loves: the naval adventure novels of Patrick O'Brian, set in the same era, and dragon fantasy. The books are full of period detail, from ship tactics to formal speech, and treat dragons as both weapons and thinking persons. The Chinese setting of the second book, Throne of Jade, draws on the imperial dragon symbolism described on our Chinese dragons page.

Legacy

His Majesty's Dragon was a Hugo Award finalist, and Novik won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2007. Peter Jackson optioned the series for film, though no film was made. Temeraire is often named alongside Saphira and Pern's dragons as a model of the dragon as a full partner rather than a mount. See the best dragon books.

Related

• Saphira: Saphira is the sapphire-blue dragon of Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle, which begins with Eragon (2002); she hatches for the farm boy Eragon and becomes his telepathic partner as a Dragon Rider.
• Ramoth: Ramoth is the golden queen dragon of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, first appearing in "Weyr Search" (1967), who bonds with Lessa and becomes the senior queen of Benden Weyr.
• Lóng (Chinese dragon): The lóng is the Chinese dragon: a long, scaly, usually wingless creature with four clawed legs that rules rain, rivers, and seas and became the emblem of the emperor and of Chinese culture.
• Tairn: Tairn is the huge black dragon of Rebecca Yarros's Fourth Wing (2023), one of the most powerful dragons of Navarre, who unexpectedly chooses the fragile cadet Violet Sorrengail as his rider.
• Dragon Books
• Chinese Dragons

Sources and Further Reading

• Naomi Novik, His Majesty's Dragon (Del Rey, 2006)
• Naomi Novik, Throne of Jade (Del Rey, 2006)
• Naomi Novik, League of Dragons (Del Rey, 2016)

Cite this entry: “Temeraire,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/temeraire.