Dragon “families”

I generally divide the families by physiology (which coincides pretty much with release date): dragons with scaled horns, versus dragons with metal horns. The “original” family of 5 Western dragons I remember seeing in catalogs in the 1990s was just the Mother, Hatchling, Male, Emperor, and Young. They all have pretty similarly intricate, lizard-like scale patterning and sculpted/non-metal horns, so I tend to consider them one “species” of Western dragon, while the metal-horned ones with their larger, more fish-like scales are a different species. 🙂 Spectrals, with their unique eyes, I consider a separate and third species.

Ultimately, though, it’s up to you! I decided early on that I wanted to get every Western dragon in White as part of my collecting goals (minus a couple sculpts that I don’t care for, or just can’t afford like the Secret Keeper), so I could see my favorite color on the widest variety of dragons. Later on, I added a “conga line” of my favorite sculpt, the Lap, to provide the reverse: a wide variety of colors on a single dragon. It’s the closest I can come to having everything! 🙂

You’re welcome. I hope you can figure out a satisfactory system for your collecting, and share photos on the Forum!

Some of them are definitely created with families in mind, and named accordingly: the “Male, Mother, Young, & Hatchling” dragons, the “Male, Mother, & Baby” Kirins (with standing baby created later), the “Male, Mother, & Baby” Pegasus, the “Male, Mother, Colt, & Baby” Unicorns, etc. are all pretty clearly intended to be a familial grouping. (Though I always wondered why so many are Male+Mother instead of Father+Mother or Female+Male.)

Others are left much more to imagination: what’s the relationship between the Sitting and Rising Spectrals? They could be anything – siblings, mates, enemies, you pick. 🙂 And what relationships connect an Emperor, a Warrior, a Lap, and a Secret Keeper? No idea! Some of them don’t even seem to be in scale with each other (the Hatching Kinglet is *enormous* compared to the Hatching Dragon! It’s hard to imagine they’re supposed to belong to a single family), so you might decide to omit them from your grouping, or to display them in a separate space so the difference is less obvious.

Hmm, I wouldn’t include the fledge with the original male-mother-young-v1 hatchling family. He’s a bit out of scale to them, and a bit morphologically different. I would keep the originals as one family. The fledge could perhaps go with the V2 hatchling and lap? It’s still a bit large there, but they look similar. The old warrior is intended to pair with the lap I believe. The hatching royalty could only go with the secret keeper, and even there they’re too huge. And since females are often bigger than males in herps and birds, the emp can be the s.k.’s mate. The spectrals are definitely a different type, in my imagination the other westerns are diurnal while the spectrals are nocturnal. The bantam looks typewise like the spectrals to me, but of course there aren’t any with the spectral eyes.

I don’t know Ms Melody’s intentions if any creating them.

Years ago I started keeping the fledgling with my lap and scratching dragon because they looked nice together (two peacocks and a ruby) and somehow as time went by I started thinking of them as teenage siblings babysitting their kid brother/sister. lol

The Lap and Fledgling definitely have a similar look! Leetle pinched-in snoots. 🙂

I have a couple OWs on my Lap shelves, but they look a little out of scale together to me. The OW’s head is so much larger, and differently proportioned, that he makes the Lap look weirdly tiny-headed by comparison, sine their bodies are not all that different in height.

I love the Scratcher and Lap together, though. They could be twins! Or siblings just a year or two apart. <3

I believe the fledgling is of the emperor line.Ms.Melody mentioned that awhile back. Same as the royals,I think.Lap,scratchers,cousins,?🙂