The Dragons in Fourth Wing: An Exploration of the Monster, the Animal, and the Anthropomorphized

Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing (2023) is a romantasy novel with a complex dragon society where dragons’ personalities, tempers and looks vary and affect each other. It is a new work of fiction, the first book in her still unfinished Empyrean series, and thus not many have had the chance to explore and discuss it in a formal capacity. The previous discussion is mainly made up of book reviews, and their focus is on the romance plot, human-dragon relations, and the book as a steppingstone to getting to a larger narrative. There is then a lack of focus on the developed dragons themselves and their society in the story, both as a collective and as individuals. By looking at dragons within the work, I explore them through multiple lenses and with the help of the three categories of monster, animal and anthropomorphized to map out their overlapping qualities. Throughout the text, both comparisons with similar characters and an exploration of the normative human-dragon dynamic will be discussed and used to separate the Fourth Wing dragons from traditional representations. This will hopefully provide one modern exploration of dragon characterization within a fantasy novel, to further expand upon what already exists.