I'm having a difficult time understanding why mating is so complicated. Because if dragons don't reproduce, and all they do is live and die, it kind of makes their existence rather pointless. It makes the existence of male and female dragons pointless because they might as well all be hermaphrodites.<br/><br/>Why not keep it simple? Male and female dragons produce eggs. If the dragon gets old and dies or is slayed, they leave behind an egg of reincarnation. It almost makes them sound like pest control, but in the olden days they were a pest that needed tons of control thus the birth of heroes and legends. Or why not when a dragon dies, it dies like the circle of life. If they didn't reproduce, then they weren't the fittest.<br/><br/>Third idea, the dragons aren't just dragons but perhaps gods, meaning their existence represented some sort of earthly balance. That way, if a dragon god dies, it leaves behind an egg of reincarnation because it can't exactly afford to actually die because if it does die, then it brings disorder and chaos to the earth (a tip in balance). So, the ancients couldn't kill them because of those reasons and instead decided to imprison them. And perhaps the dark army supposedly has a weapon that can destroy the dragons permanently.