Hail to the Queen

The gold is by far the largest and rarest of Pern's dragons. She is always female. Unlike the tiny (by comparison) greens, golds cannot chew firestone and breathe flame, which allows them to be fertile and lay eggs. Since greens do chew firestone, this leaves golds with the role of sole breeding female for the entire species. Golds are exceedingly rare. Even though only golds clutch, there will be, at best, only a single egg containing a golden female in any given clutch of dragon eggs. And most clutches don't have a gold egg at all. This is one reason that golds are highly prized, instead of being relegated to low-ranking stay-at-home 'breeding females'. Another reason is their sheer size and power. Not only do they simply out-mass any other color by a significant degree, including the bronze males who mate with them, but they have the greatest physical strength and stamina, pound for pound. And they DO rise to Thread with the other colors, to boot - their riders simply carry flame or acid-throwing devices to tackle the Thread, instead of having the dragon breathe fire. In short, the golds rule their Weyrs, masters of everything from domestic issues to foreign policy to planning for battle. And even when flying against Thread, although the bronzes are the battlefield commanders, the golds are still present, flying low to keep an eye on how the whole Weyr is flying. Moreover, the gold is the only dragon capable of FORCING another dragon to obey her word. The bronzes issue commands and expect to be obeyed, yet if a queen does so, the ordered dragon is literally incapable of resisting the will of the gold, due to a gold's telepathic skill and power. This is why these huge, regal dragons are known as QUEENS. Well-known queens include Ramoth of Lessa, who was the largest queen ever to live and who went back in time four hundred years (and returned to her own time to tell the story!), Orlith, dragon of the storied Moreta, and Holth, the old queen who bore Moreta on her doomed yet valiant Ride as Orlith brooded what would turn out to be her final clutch of eggs.

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