Dragon in the context of Japanese dragon

A water deity is a deity in mythology associated with water or various bodies of water. Water deities are common in mythology and were usually more important among civilizations in which the sea or ocean, or a great river was more important. Another important focus of worship of water deities has been springs or holy wells.

As a form of animal worship, whales and snakes (hence dragons) have been regarded as godly deities throughout the world (as are other animals such as turtles, fish, crabs, and sharks). In Asian lore, whales and dragons sometimes have connections. Serpents are also common as a symbol or as serpentine deities, sharing many similarities with dragons.

As a literary genre, the chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the noble courts of high medieval and early modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a chivalric knight-errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest. It developed further from the epics as time went on; in particular, "the emphasis on love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the chanson de geste and other kinds of epic, in which masculine military heroism predominates."

Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic, satiric, or burlesque intent. Romances reworked legends, fairy tales, and history to suit the readers' and hearers' tastes, but by c. 1600 they were out of fashion, and Miguel de Cervantes famously burlesqued them in his novel Don Quixote. Still, the modern image of "medieval" is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word medieval evokes knights, damsels in distress, dragons, and other romantic tropes.

In Greek mythology, a drakaina (Ancient Greek: δράκαινα, Latinized dracaena) is a female serpent or dragon, sometimes with humanlike features.

In Greek mythology, Python (Greek: Πύθων; gen. Πύθωνος) was the serpent, sometimes represented as a medieval-style dragon, living at the center of the Earth, believed by the ancient Greeks to be at Delphi.

Sea monsters are beings from folklore believed to dwell in the sea and are often imagined to be of immense size. Marine monsters can take many forms, including sea dragons, sea serpents, or tentacled beasts. They can be slimy and scaly and are often pictured threatening ships or spouting jets of water. The definition of a "monster" is subjective; further, some sea monsters may have been based on scientifically accepted creatures, such as whales and types of giant and colossal squid.

The Woman of the Apocalypse (or the woman clothed with the sun, Greek: γυνὴ περιβεβλημένη τὸν ἥλιον; Latin: Mulier amicta sole) is a figure–often considered to be a reference to the Virgin Mary in Catholic theology–described in Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation (written c. AD 95).

The woman gives birth to a male child who is threatened by a dragon, identified as the Devil and Satan, who intends to devour the child as soon as he is born. When the child is taken to heaven, the woman flees on eagle’s wings into the wilderness at a "place prepared of God" for 1,260 days. This leads to a "War in Heaven" in which the angels cast out the dragon. The dragon attacks the woman, but the woman escapes on her wings for "a time, times and a time and a half". The dragon then attacks her again with a flood of water from his mouth, which is subsequently swallowed by earth. Frustrated, the dragon initiates war on "the remnant of her seed", identified as the righteous followers of Christ.The Woman of the Apocalypse is widely identified as the Virgin Mary. Some Catholic commentaries, such as Thomas Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary (1859), allow for the interpretation of the woman as either the Church or Mary. The commentary of the New American Bible states that "The woman adorned with the sun, the moon, and the stars (images taken from Genesis 37:9–10) symbolizes God’s people in the Old and the New Testament. The Israel of old gave birth to the Messiah (Rev 12:5) and then became the new Israel, the church, which suffers persecution by the dragon (Rev. 12:6, 13–17); cf. Is. 50:1; 66:7; Jer. 50:12."

Serpents (Hebrew: נָחָשׁ, romanized: nāḥāš) are referred to in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The symbol of a serpent or snake played important roles in the religious traditions and cultural life of ancient Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan. The serpent was a symbol of evil power and chaos from the underworld as well as a symbol of fertility, life, healing, and rebirth.

Nāḥāš (נחש‎), Hebrew for "snake", is also associated with divination, including the verb form meaning "to practice divination or fortune-telling". Nāḥāš occurs in the Torah to identify the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, it is also used in conjunction with seraph to describe vicious serpents in the wilderness]. The tannin, a dragon monster, also occurs throughout the Hebrew Bible. In the Book of Exodus, the staves of Moses and Aaron are turned into serpents, a nāḥāš for Moses, a tannin for Aaron. In the New Testament, the Book of Revelation makes use of ancient serpent and the Dragon several times to identify Satan or the Devil (Revelation 12:9; 20:2). The serpent is most often identified with the hubristic Satan, and sometimes with Lilith.

In heraldry, the term attitude describes the position in which a figure (animal or human) is emblazoned as a charge, a supporter, or as a crest. The attitude of a heraldic figure always precedes any reference to the tincture of the figure and its parts. Some attitudes apply only to predatory beasts, exemplified by the beast most usual to heraldry – the heraldic lion; other terms apply to docile animals, such as the doe, usually emblazoned as a "hind".

Other heraldic attitudes, such as volant (flying), describe the positions of birds, exemplified by the bird most usual to heraldry – the heraldic eagle; moreover, birds also are described by the positions of their wings. The term naiant (swimming) applies to fish, swans, ducks, and geese. The term segreant is applied to the griffin, as an approximation of rampant, and is applied to the dragon. Animal figures are positioned in profile, facing dexter (the viewer's left), and persons are shown affronté (facing the viewer), but the blazon might specify other attitudes.

Salm (Persian: سلم) or Sarm (Middle Persian) is a character in the Persian epic Shahnameh. He is the oldest son of legendary hero and king Fereydun. It is believed that his name was given to him by his father, after Salm chooses to seek safety and run instead of fighting the dragon that had attacked him and his brothers (the dragon was Fereydun himself who had disguised himself to test his sons).

When Fereydun decides to divide his kingdom among his sons, he gives Salm Anatolia and West. Salm and his brother Tur become jealous of their younger brother Iraj. They combine their forces against him and eventually murder the young prince. Years later Iraj’s grandson Manuchehr avenges his grandfather’s death by killing both Salm and Tur.

Saint George and the Dragon is a legend in which Saint George—a soldier venerated in Christianity—defeats a dragon. The story goes that the dragon originally extorted tribute from villagers. When they ran out of livestock and trinkets for the dragon, they started giving up a human tribute once a day. One day, the princess herself was chosen as the next offering. As she was walking toward the dragon's cave, St. George saw her and asked her why she was crying. The princess told the saint about the dragon's atrocities and asked him to flee immediately, in fear that he might be killed too. But the saint refused to flee, slew the dragon, and rescued the princess. The narrative was first set in Cappadocia in the earliest sources of the 11th and 12th centuries, but transferred to Libya in the 13th-century Golden Legend.

The narrative has pre-Christian origins (Jason and Medea, Perseus and Andromeda, Typhon, etc.), and is recorded in various saints' lives prior to its attribution to Saint George specifically. It was particularly attributed to Saint Theodore Tiro in the 9th and 10th centuries, and was first transferred to Saint George in the 11th century. The oldest known record of Saint George slaying a dragon is found in a Georgian text of the 11th century.

Worm, wurm or wyrm (Old English: wyrm; Old Norse: ormr; Old High German: wurm), meaning serpent, are archaic terms for dragons (Old English: draca; Old Norse: dreki/*draki; Old High German: trahho) in the wider Germanic mythology and folklore, in which they are often portrayed as large venomous snakes and hoarders of gold. Especially in later tales, however, they share many common features with other dragons in European mythology, such as having wings.

Prominent worms attested in medieval Germanic works include the dragon that killed Beowulf, the central dragon in the Völsung Cycle – Fáfnir, Nidhogg (Old Norse: Níðhǫggr), and the great world serpent, Jǫrmungandr, including subcategories such as lindworms and sea serpents.

A dragonslayer is a person or being that slays dragons. Dragonslayers and the creatures they hunt have been popular in traditional stories from around the world: they are a type of story classified as type 300 in the Aarne–Thompson classification system. They continue to be popular in modern books, films, video games and other forms of entertainment. Dragonslayer-themed stories are also sometimes seen as having a chaoskampf theme—in which a heroic figure struggles against a monster that epitomises chaos.

In mythology and fantasy, a fire-breathing monster is a monster with the ability to shoot fire from its mouth. The concept of a fire-breathing monster is shared by various mythological traditions throughout history, and is also a common element of monsters in the fantasy genre, especially dragons, which are almost always given the ability to shoot fire, or some other type of breath-based attack. The origins of this power may vary, from magic to a biological explanation similar to an organic flamethrower.

Princess and dragon is an archetypical premise common to many legends, fairy tales, and chivalric romances. Northrop Frye identified it as a central form of the quest romance.

The story involves an upper-class woman, generally a princess or similar high-ranking nobility, saved from a dragon, either a literal dragon or a similar danger, by the virtuous hero (see damsel in distress). She may be the first woman endangered by the peril, or may be the end of a long succession of women who were not of as high birth as she is, nor as fortunate. Normally the princess ends up married to the dragonslayer.