Guild Wars 2

At the very end, the opening cutscene refers to Zhaitan as an " it ", thus not defining the dragon’s gender. Thus it would be possible for Zhaitan to have been female, opening new possiblities …

idk, just something I noticed.

Suggestions? https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Metal_Forest

But anyways, is there any information on how the elder dragons breed (and if they do at all)? Because it might be posible that they are powerfull enough that gender does not matter, just like in sylvari case.

I doubt Elder Dragons have genders, in as much as a virus or a whirlwind has gender.

I’ve always thought of them as being male though.

I think that additional question might be asked here: what are the origins of the elder dragons? And I’m asking it having in mind the case of Kormir - she became a goddess, but was born 'mortal' human. And since Elder Dragons are at least a bit like gods (if it come to power and fact that both can be killed) the follwing question will be: can you become an elder dragon? Because if ‘current’ elder dragons at one point of time rose to their present power from ‘lesser’ beings, they may had genders which mattered at past time, but not necessarily matter now.

On the other hand, looking back at previous example, Grenth is son of Dwayna and mortal, so it seems that Gods are still under the law of sexual reproduction (at least i assume that it went that way). But still the comparison between Gods and Elder dragons might be flawed and they can operate on completly different principles

I’d say Zaitan is male… You can’t have that many phalluses (or phalli?) attached to you and not be male. Tequatl on the other hand is definitely female. All the time I spent DPSing between her legs and not once have I noticed any evidence to the contrary.
;p

Although i loled at this, i recommend you look at, for example, alligator’s sexual organs: they are hidden inside cloaca, so are not visible from outside, unless errected. Therefore Tequatl still can be a male, you just haven’t aroused him enough :P

So, Loki is saying that One needs to try harder :P

It was said a long time ago that the Elder Dragons don’t have genders as Tyrians understand it. Whether this is a fancy way of saying “Tyrians don’t know if the Elder Dragons are male, female, or neither” or an indirect way of saying “they don’t have genders at all and any association is either ignorance or humanizing”.

The only Elder Dragon who’s genders is given by a reliable source is Glint calling Kralkatorrik a he. But this could easily just be a case of it being more common and natural to refer to any living being as either he or she instead of it (usually when calling a living being by pronoun without knowing gender the grammatically correct way is ‘they’).

Dragon Champions on the other hand would either be of the gender pre-corruption (no evidence to suggest corruption makes one transgender) or is genderless, as it is a construct (even if of flesh and bone). So unless Tequatl and the other risen dragons are made from full corpses of dragons (which we know exist in large numbers – see bone dragons in gw1), they’d be genderless.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The only Elder Dragon who’s genders is given by a reliable source is Glint calling Kralkatorrik a he. But this could easily just be a case of it being more common and natural to refer to any living being as either he or she instead of it (usually when calling a living being by pronoun without knowing gender the grammatically correct way is ‘they’).

The word “He” is technically gender neutral in some cases. So no, the word “they” would not be appropriate to refer to a single individual in this manner.

Zhaitan is (was) a compound dragon mix and matched with multiple parts such as tails. “It” seems appropriate because it could have parts from either gender.

As for Tequatl, I offer a third possible canon reason people fighting it don’t see gender indicia: it’s undead, and the parts have rotted off.

OriOri.8724:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The only Elder Dragon who’s genders is given by a reliable source is Glint calling Kralkatorrik a he. But this could easily just be a case of it being more common and natural to refer to any living being as either he or she instead of it (usually when calling a living being by pronoun without knowing gender the grammatically correct way is ‘they’).

The word “He” is technically gender neutral in some cases. So no, the word “they” would not be appropriate to refer to a single individual in this manner.

Technically all three – he, she, and they – are used for gender neutral cases. However, the “grammatically correct” way to refer to an individual with unknown gender and/or identity is “they” (because calling a person an “it” is considered rude).

That said, very few people actually go with the grammatically correct method – most just use male pronouns when the gender is unknown.

I don’t think dragons necessarily have genders.

As far as we know, Glint created eggs through sheer force of will. The fact that the rest of us call Glint ‘She’ is likely due to our own bias. We saw a vaguely reptilian being, and it made eggs, so we decided it was female.

In Reality, there is no evidence of dragons having any gender at all. They are more than likely asexual beings capable of procreation by just choosing to do so, assuming they have the required magic/energy/other inputs required to create the egg.

We only assume that a dragon egg is like a reptile egg, in that it is an unfertilized ovum that requires genetic material from the opposite sex. In truth, evidence suggests that dragon eggs are “created” rather than “laid” and that they are strictly creations from a single parent.

Further, the only dragon we know to have had eggs was Glint. We don’t even know if the other EDs have the capacity or need to lay eggs, or if they create their lieutenants through other means.

PopeUrban.2578:

As far as we know, Glint created eggs through sheer force of will. The fact that the rest of us call Glint ‘She’ is likely due to our own bias. We saw a vaguely reptilian being, and it made eggs, so we decided it was female.

And her voice was feminine by human measures. It wasn’t entirely an arbitrary call to make.

Ah, but Mister Stein, is that because the Elder Dragons don’t have genders or because Tyrians don’t know their gender?

Very important differentiation.

(Side note: I hope Jormag’s actually a she, because irony)

Konig, is the irony because Norn females don’t return from the North? Or because of the Sons of Svanir being misogynists?

The latter.

And it’s not that norn females don’t return from the north, but that the Sons of Svanir kill any females-turned-icebrood.

Male and female pairs using sexual reproduction is actually only one of many possibilities encountered in real life animals.

Others include:

• Animals changing sex at different points in their life cycle, or based on the colonies needs (e.g. if they’re all female some will become male, yes it was in Jurassic Park but it is also real – clown fish for example).
• Hermaphrodites which have both kinds of reproductive organs and can act as either male or female (or in some cases both at the same time) e.g. giant African land snails (and possibly other snails).
• Asexual reproduction – where one individual can reproduce without a partner. I think in animals this is usually a last-resort, but in plants it’s very common.

Add in the fact that dragons are fictional (and based on a wide variety of material), elder dragons are not even conventional dragons and you’ve got a whole range of new possibilities. They could create offspring in the same way they create minions. Or their minions could become offspring. (There was a theory way back that the sylvari were the Pale Tree’s seeds.)

Maybe once, long ago in Tyria’s history there were entire races of dragons, but they got so obsessed with fighting each other that they destroyed each other until there were only 6 left and they are incapable of breeding, so their gender is irrelevant and all they’ve been able to do for thousands of years is eat and sleep. Waking each time to find themselves forgotten and irrelevant by a world that has moved on without them.

Ok…that got dark fast. Point is we don’t know and unless someone can get close enough to study them and they happen to be breeding at the time we will likely never get to know.

I wouldn’t say only six left, given we see many dragons in Cantha.

And GW1 already indicated that there were multiple races of dragons.

• Bone Dragons (note: what we saw was only half their corpse – their hind legs and tail were torn off, according to lore)
• Saltspray Dragons
• Rock Dragons (turtle-like)
• Dragon Mosses/Dragonlilies (they were drake-like but covered in various plants)

Furthermore, we now have Wyverns in HoT (which are less-serpentine Saltspray Dragons in terms of body shape), which are said to be cousins of drakes (which in GW1 were much more draconic).

Zhaitan and Kralkatorrik has thus far been somewhat like the Bone Dragons/Glint in terms of general shape (Kralkatorrik moreso given the rotten appearance of Zhaitan); Mordremoth has had a similar appearance to the Mystic Dragon/Snow Flurry Dragon miniatures (and if the totems of Jormag are accurate, so does Jormag); and Primordus has kind of reminded me of wyverns in the shape of shoulders-neck-head.

But how many of those are actually the same species as the elder dragons? (Who may not even be the same species as each other.)

They’re all dragons in the sense that humans and other races call them dragons. But we call a lot of things fish too. That doesn’t mean a starfish is the same as a sunfish and can breed with them.

See my final paragraph there, Danikat.

Though we might also asume that the “Elder Dragons” are just the manifestation of the “Elder Dragon Energy”.

There are allready hints, that other beeings would be able to take the power, or able to use it to some capacity (CoE for Example).

While we have Glint and his child as a potential new ED and they are in fact dragons, we got the subconcious of Mordremoth, which looked more like a hulking bear with dragon parts. That could mean that Mordremoth could have been something else.

Just a theory, though.

On the other hand, we got several dragon and dragon like creatures in this world (though GW2 is rather stingy with them).

Mhm… maybe we could prevent EDs from reemerging by killing off all dragons in the world, if the ED energy is really just being used by dragonlike creatures.

Jaken.6801:

While we have Glint and his child as a potential new ED and they are in fact dragons, we got the subconcious of Mordremoth, which looked more like a hulking bear with dragon parts. That could mean that Mordremoth could have been something else.

I still think that’s just a manifestation Mordy crafted to fight us on our terms, rather than some true reflection of innermost being. Every other interaction we have with Mordremoth’s mind, from the intrusions sylvari characters experience to Trahearne’s final moments to even the background of the boss fight, presents said mind as a shadowy rendition of the Mouth of Mordremoth.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The latter.

And it’s not that norn females don’t return from the north, but that the Sons of Svanir kill any females-turned-icebrood.

Do we know this for sure? That females can be Icebrood but Sons of Svanir always kill them?

Yes, we got confirmation from devs. It was an overall disappointing answer given what folks were wondering and theorizing.

I mean, we knew from the get-go that Jormag corrupted women just as much as he corrupted men, but we didn’t know until some interview in 2013 iirc about what actually happened to them. The answer was simply “the Sons of Svanir hunt them down and kill them because they don’t believe they are worthy to receive Jormag’s ‘gifts’”