Deleted Scene / Dragonheart

• After his father gets killed, Einon doesn't tell him to die while he gets his crown. After getting the crown, Einon gets knocked off Bowen's horse by Kara, and his right hand is wounded. Her bucket helmet comes off in the fall and reveals shoulder-length hair. Einon prepares to strike her with Bowen's sword but hesitates after turning towards her, so Kara grabs the sword from Einon and thrusts it into his chest. Catching up to the two kids, Bowen takes his sword from Kara, grabs her from behind by her hair, and prepares to strike but hesitates after realizing Kara is a girl, just as Einon did. Bowen flings her away, and she runs off, after which Bowen retrieves the wounded Einon.
• Draco has eyes with a nictitating membrane and shimmering iridescent scales that change color and enable him to blend into his surroundings. His right hand's middle talon is initially half-severed from a past encounter with Einon's father, King Freyne.
• After Bowen saves Kara's father, Riagon, from being blinded by Einon, Bowen gives Riagon a horse to escape. Kara runs to him from her hiding place, and Bowen and Einon recognize her. She and Riagon flee into the forest, after which Bowen confronts Einon in a sword fight, during which Bowen gets stabbed in the shoulder. After pinning Einon down, Bowen remembers the dragon's heart and rides off, and Einon orders his men to seize Bowen.
• After Bowen's departure, Einon, Brok, and several knights ride into the courtyard below Aislinn's chamber window at Freyne's wooden fortress. Despite having ordered Bowen to be caught, Einon says to Brok that Bowen can go since he has served his purpose. Einon sees Aislinn watching from her window when he feels pain in his right hand, though he writes it off as a cramp and looks at the scar Riagon the Red gave him. As he shakes the pain out of his hand, a tortured, trilling sound can be heard, with both Brok and Aislinn knowing it's coming from Draco.
• Draco repeatedly pounds his claw against a wall in his cave until his half-severed middle right talon breaks off. At that moment, Bowen returns after leaving Einon. He finds the broken claw and demands the camouflaged Draco to show himself, claiming that he betrayed his trust by bewitching Einon. Blending into the cave walls, Draco tells Bowen that someone else betrayed him and soars over Bowen, out of the cave and into the evening sky, with Bowen vowing to hunt him down.
• Bowen camps out by a lagoon three years later as the tenth dragon he's killed is cremated with a fire arrow, lumps of flesh falling into the pond. Bowen attaches its middle right talon to his shield.
• Bowen tries to find Draco by looking for a dragon with a scar on its chest and a broken middle right talon. Bowen looks for these signs on each dragon he kills before chopping off their middle claw.
• Six months later, the dragon Bowen encounters when he meets Gilbert is visible. It's described as a decrepit male dragon rather than a female and called "The Old One" instead of "The Scarred One." The fight between Bowen and The Old One is also visible, but Gilbert is involved in it as he has a few close brushes with death as the wheat field catches fire and the dragon nearly claws Gilbert. After the fight, peasants swarm the dragon carcass with knives and take it apart. Bowen fails to stop them until Lord Felton arrives with his three men and orders them to chase the peasants away and make them put out the fire. As Bowen walks to his horse, Felton calls out to him by name, not having forgotten about him, and says he will tell Einon, but by the time Felton later discloses his road tax idea to Einon, he has forgotten all about Bowen.
• Kara wears a cloak to hide her hair when visiting her father in the quarry, which comes off and reveals her hair when she runs to Riagon after Einon shoots him.
• Two days after Einon kills Riagon, Gilbert and Bowen discuss Avalon and their respective goals around a campfire at night. Gilbert reveals that he's on a pilgrimage to find Avalon and pray to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table buried there so that they may bring back the days of chivalry and the Old Code. Gilbert asks to join Bowen as their quest might be the same. However, Bowen says he is already on a quest to kill all dragons, one in particular.
• When Einon is in his room drinking some wine by the fireplace, thinking about Kara and Riagon, Einon thinks Kara's hair is familiar. Recalling the nerve and pride he saw in Kara's dark brown eyes when she faced him, he killed her father so he wouldn't succumb to them. Kara's flowing hair at the quarry invoked a memory in Einon that made him stop his horse and stare back at her before riding off "like a frightened child." Then he tosses the rest of his wine into the fire.
• As Bowen and Gilbert ride down a forest path the following day, they briefly discuss Einon. When Bowen suggests Einon was possibly bewitched, Gilbert says, "You cannot bewitch the devil." Gilbert falls into a hole that Bowen realizes is a giant dragon track, leading to the scene where they find Draco hiding at the waterfall.
• Behind the waterfall just before their fight, Draco shows Bowen his right hand; it's shown to have been reduced to "a maimed stump," with a thumb and fore talon, the small finger is entirely gone, and the middle one missing both its tip and claw.
• The fight between Bowen and Draco is slightly extended and modified, as is their dialogue. Bowen uses his shield in the battle and occasionally catches blows from Draco on it and gets lifted off the ground. While trapped in Draco's mouth, Bowen complies with Draco's request to get off his tongue and shifts so the dragon's tongue is free to move but gets slapped by it whenever Draco talks. Draco now has more dialogue while he has Bowen pinned down.
• Gilbert awakes to find Sir Eglamore's arm the following day and mistakes it for Bowen's. When he reappears with Merlin at the swamp village, Gilbert tells Bowen about burying the arm in the clearing beneath a cross with Bowen's name.
• When Draco attacks Lord Felton's property, more damage occurs as two of Draco's fireballs blow off the storehouse roof and blast a blizzard of flour into the air, covering everyone and everything. After Draco flies off a swaying grist wheel, it rolls downhill and crashes into the side of Felton's house. Bowen rides up the hill with a battle ax aloft, with Draco waiting for him on a millstone. As Bowen charges, Draco swoops in, scooping Bowen into his mouth with his legs sticking out, and grabs the horse. The shocked crowd watches Draco fly overhead and into the forest. Instead of a high cliff, the waterfall is where Draco and Bowen make their campsite because of the nearby villages. The waterfall is now where the scene in which Draco says he longs for death but fears it occurs. It is also where Bowen later gives Draco his new name.
• Draco and Bowen's next scam takes place in a village run by an overweight lord having a market day near a lake with a nearby sheep herd. Draco falls into the lake after Bowen "shoots" him down with a bow and arrow. He swims along the lake's bottom and soon finds a single sheep left behind by its herd.
• The novelization reveals that Draco uses the scams to test Bowen's morality and pick at his conscience as he sees the peasants suffer under Einon's rule until the time comes when Bowen can no longer justify conning the king's minions. It's a plot point that comes to a head when they and Kara arrive at the reeking swamp village where the people are not only starving, they're miserable and beyond poor, as they can only offer him cheap metal and kitchen utensils as payment.
• There are two moments at the waterfall where Bowen almost sees the scar on Draco's chest, causing Draco to hide it before Bowen can see it. The first is after scamming Felton as Draco cleans flour off of himself, and the second is after Bowen's fight with Einon when Bowen worries that Einon hurt Draco.
• When Kara tries to avenge her father, she gets close enough to Einon by pretending to be a serving girl. Einon is more physically aggressive towards Kara as he throws her to the ground after she fails to kill him, pulls her up by her father's headband around her neck, and slaps her after she spits in his face. Einon later remembers Kara as the one who stabbed him four years ago because she called him "Piglet," as her father used to during her failed assassination attempt.
• In the film, Draco's shoulder glows when Kara stabs Einon, which causes a continuity error as it never happens again. In the novel, parts of Draco's body or his entire body glow whenever Einon gets seriously wounded throughout the story. The connection is seen as Bowen wounds Einon during their final battle, especially when Einon falls into the cistern, and Draco's whole body glows red as he groans in agony.
• The film merely implies that Einon rapes Kara. In the novel, he does, and when he drunkenly attempts to seduce Kara, he places her bloody knife to her throat before wiping it along her cheek. He kisses her, and she bites his lip, so he yanks her back by her hair and roughly kisses her again before shoving her down on his bed. After promising to make Kara his queen, Einon leaves her knife in the bedpost instead of taking it with him. After this, the traumatized Kara contemplates suicide with the knife but throws it away.
• An extended conversation between Kara and Queen Aislinn occurs when the latter appears to help Kara escape the castle. Aislinn describes herself as nothing but a "creature of submission" to her late husband, who robbed her of her voice and the ability to show affection towards Einon. Learning of Kara's escape, Einon kills two guards in a rage and orders Brok to organize a search party, all while suspicious of Aislinn due to Kara using the secret passage.
• As Bowen approaches Kara's village, she's chased into his path by an angry mob throwing mud and rotten vegetables at her, with bits of vegetables getting stuck in her hair and the dirt on her. Then Hewe brushes past Bowen's horse and confronts Kara. Instead of a small watermelon, Hewe prepares to throw a gooey lump of cheese at Kara until Bowen takes it from him and takes a bite out of it. Kara gives Bowen an unsettling look of probing interest before saying, "Why waste good food on bad rhetoric?" and takes another bite of the cheese. Bowen refers to Kara's disheveled appearance as a vegetable patch instead of a mudpie, and she tries to reclaim her dignity by wiping her face.
• After Kara takes Bowen's hand and shoves the lump of cheese into his face, Draco comes and circles over the village before he swoops down, scatters the crowd, and instead of a faraway cliff, he perches on the bridge over the stream. Looking over Bowen's shoulder, Hewe says the dragon might go away itself, and Bowen replies that Draco might let everyone die of thirst before asking for the lord responsible for the village. After Bowen tells the villagers to take his offer or leave Draco, Kara pushes through the crowd, pointing at Bowen, and says, "Leave him!" as they don't need some blackmailing knight to get rid of a dragon. Bowen turns to a nearby plump man with three overweight daughters. After Bowen says dragons are partial to maiden sacrifices, Hewe smiles at him and asks why they must sacrifice a daughter. Bowen follows the gaze of Hewe's good eye as it falls on Kara. The villagers roll Kara tied to the cart down the path to the bridge's opposite end, bow to Draco, and retreat to the village. After sneaking across the stream, Bowen hides behind a group of bushes near the bridge. Then he and Draco whisper as they debate what to do with Kara. When Draco leans toward Kara and reaches out to her, she screams and faints. Draco pulls the stake from the cart and flies off with Kara, and then the crowd of villagers comes out of hiding and cheers.
• After Draco takes Kara as a maiden sacrifice, he helps her regain consciousness. Reaching the waterfall, he cuts her bonds and tells her she is free to go, but she's wary of his kindness and falls into the stream. Draco helps her out and compliments her beauty, earning her trust. After an hour of waiting for Draco to return to the village, Bowen leaves to look for him and finds hoofprints belonging to what he believes to be a hunting party. When he arrives at the waterfall, Kara jumps onto Bowen's horse and attacks him to protect Draco.
• When Einon shows up with his men, Kara tries to run, but two of Einon's men on horseback grab her. Bowen kills the men and saves her. After Einon refers to Bowen as "the king's old mentor," Kara recognizes Bowen as the knight who spared her life four years ago after she stabbed Einon and the one who saved her father.
• The day after Bowen and Einon's fight, Bowen, Draco, and Kara stop at the top of a hill and come across the swamp village. There's an extended dialogue between Kara and Bowen, including Draco. As Kara and Bowen talk, Draco is silent and staring at a tor in the mist beyond the village aside from trilling. His inner eyelids cover his eyes until he breaks his silence. After Bowen tells Kara that she reminds him of his former self but will learn as he did, Kara prepares to leave him, and Draco stops her with a question. When Bowen asks Draco if his longing for death finally outweighs his fear of it, Draco looks to Kara and says, "No...I can't help you. Man abandoned dragon wisdom long ago...Einon will not fall in my lifetime..." Then his filmy inner eyelids cover his eyes again, and Kara resumes walking downhill toward a grove of trees in the mist. Bowen asks Kara what she plans to do, so she responds, "Try to turn the wretched world the other way."
• The swamp village is described as a group of gray huts on the edge of a gray marsh covered in a gray mist with a rocky tor lurking above the haze. The village smells like rotting fish and is full of mosquitos, and the villagers are towering, unkempt giants with sunken cheeks and eyes filled with anguish. They are so poor that they can only pay Bowen with "crude cutlery, glass beads, a pewter ring, some actual coins—all of base metal and low worth."
• Amid Bowen and Draco's con in the swamp village, when Draco falls into the muck, Kara takes a knife from Gilbert, climbs onto Draco's belly as he feigns death, and begins jumping on him and tickling him with the blade to expose the con. In the film, a horde of pigs is in the swamp village, although the villagers are starving. The pigs are absent from the book. After the scam goes awry and Draco flies off, the film shows that the villagers turn cannibal when they go after Bowen, Kara, and Gilbert. In the novelization, the villagers turn on Kara after accusing her of being in on the scam despite her earlier warnings and then on Gilbert for supporting Bowen. They essentially turn against the three for cheating them out of a dragon that would have fed them, and when Draco returns, he picks up Bowen and Kara before going back for Gilbert and Merlin.
• Looking for answers after the waterfall fight, Einon returns to Draco's cave for the first time since that fateful night in four years. As he recalls how he cheated death with a lie, Einon sees that he, Bowen, Kara, and Draco are all connected. He finds Aislinn in the back of the cave and feels she's hiding something from him.
• Einon's lust for Kara is more broadly explored as he claims that Kara is similar to his mother as they share the beauty that only a king can have. He is distressed over his thoughts of Kara being with Bowen, talking about him, and plotting against him. Einon seeks to possess Kara by killing Bowen and proving he's stronger; in effect, he'd strip Kara of her power and purge his fear of her, just as Freyne did to Aislinn.
• Some minor and supporting characters that were nameless in the film are named in the book, such as Kara's father Riagon the Red, a young peasant tinker named Trev who becomes a 'disciple' of sorts to Gilbert. In the film, Felton's minx is credited merely as his minx. The novelization reveals that while Felton could never remember her name, he recalls her name beginning with 'Ro.' A few guesses are Rowena, Rosamund, and Ronalda. She later reappears as a member of Bowen's army and confronts Felton. The dragonslayers Aislinn summons are Cavan, Uhlric, Ivor, and brothers Tavin and Trahern. The dragonslayers play a more prominent role in the climax and get some development as they express disagreement with Einon's order to keep Draco alive. They even interact with Draco as he tries to goad them into killing him.
• In Avalon, Kara, Gilbert, and his mule Merlin take shelter from the rain under a rock overhang while Draco waits on top before he flies off toward the tor. The spirits of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table manifest and face Bowen; each knight recites lines from the Old Code, and they all close in on Bowen as he repeats after them. After King Arthur's spirit vanishes, Bowen sees a smiling Draco sitting atop Arthur's monolith. Bowen reaches out to him, and Draco embraces Bowen by wrapping his wings around him.
• In the film, the archery training moment with Gilbert and Hewe occurs in the village. In the novel, the archery scene occurs in a forest clearing, and Trev accompanies them. Gilbert has already tried several weapons, and archery is his last hope. At one point, Gilbert inadvertently shoots down Brok's falcon, and Brok arrives with his hunting party, including Felton. When Felton tries to see Hewe's sword, Hewe slices off Felton's hand. The ensuing chase leads to Brok's discovery of the rebel camp. When Brok tells Einon of his discovery, Aislinn goes to her chamber and writes four letters to the five dragonslayers she sends off by courier that night. Then, she kneels in her chapel and prays for forgiveness.
• In the morning, on the day before the battle against Einon, Bowen has a nightmare where he begs the dragons he killed for forgiveness, but they descend upon him, and he kills them again. Then, he finds himself fighting Einon. Bowen stabs him in the chest, and Einon turns into Draco. Draco falls off Bowen's sword, and Bowen gets sucked into a black void in Draco's wound, where he hears nothing but a sad dragon song as he calls for Draco. Then Bowen wakes from his nightmare at the sound of Kara's makeshift battle trumpet when she enters his tent. She attempts to shave his beard with a battle ax, but Bowen pulls away and says he taught her to cut throats, not shave them. Kara says that Bowen should look like a victorious general. He tells her that he isn't one yet and not to get overconfident. She replies, "You are my confidence. I've never been more sure of anything in my life."
• Then Gilbert and the rebels give Bowen a new suit of armor and shield they made, with the surcoat and shield adorned with the Old Code's symbol (a silver sword, hilt up, within a golden circle) combined with the Draco constellation. After Kara helps Bowen put on his new armor, he asks her for a "lady's favor" to wear or carry into battle, and she reveals her rape by Einon to him. Bowen promises to "wash away the stain of her soiled innocence" by killing Einon, then kisses her hand.
• The evening on the eve of battle, Bowen approaches Draco, standing watch on a cliff outside Kara's village, and offers him his trophy shield. Draco has Bowen climb onto his back, and as night falls, they fly over the rebel camp. Meanwhile, Queen Aislinn presents the dragonslayers to Einon in a partially built tower room. Draco's iridescent scales changing color to blend in with the night sky lets him and Bowen fly close to Einon's castle, and together, they destroy Bowen's talon shield. Einon sees the shield and mistakes it for a comet until Aislinn convinces him it's a sign from his father.
• As Einon orders a retreat, charges out of the forest, and up the hill toward the castle road, Kara throws an ax at him and misses. Just as Gilbert exits the forest, Einon goes up the road nearly parallel to him, and Gilbert takes his shot. Draco's chest glows red as he falls behind the walls of Einon's castle. After removing Gilbert's arrow from his chest, Einon charges at Bowen, but they're both stopped by Draco's wailing trill. The panicked Einon rides back toward the castle as Bowen yells at him to come back and fight. After halting the dragonslayers from killing Draco, Einon gently caresses Draco's neck, and Draco shivers at the king's touch. Later that night, trilling from the captive Draco can be heard at the rebel camp in the forest. Bowen worries that Einon is torturing Draco, but Kara says Einon won't harm Draco, repeating what Draco told her outside the swamp village. She says that Draco must die for Einon to die, but Bowen refuses to listen. He faces his men, leaps onto a stump, and asks who will accompany him to help save Draco, but no one volunteers. Trev and Hewe say the fight is over, and they can't beat someone invincible. Bowen says he expects them not to desert themselves, let alone a friend, and turns away in disgust to find Kara holding his sword, telling Bowen he's not going alone. Picking up his bow, Gilbert also volunteers.
• The film has Bowen wearing the headband that belonged to Riagon on his arm before the battle without explanation. In the novelization, Kara gives it to Bowen as her 'lady's favor' in Einon's castle's cistern, after which they passionately kiss.
• Gilbert has a slightly more significant role in the final battle within Einon's castle. During Einon and Bowen's fight, Gilbert gets wounded as he and Kara fend off guards in Einon's chamber before she leaves him to rest at his insistence. Then Gilbert returns to help the peasants open the gates. As Einon threatens to kill Kara in the courtyard, Gilbert, Hewe, and a group of peasants arrive. Draco maims his deformed hand to make Einon let go of the knife, which Einon thinks is his scar flaring up.
• After Bowen throws the ax away, Kara offers to kill Draco at his request, but Einon stops her.
• Draco dies after Einon in the film; Draco dies before him in the book, fulfilling his foreboding words about Einon not falling in his lifetime.
• After Draco's death, the rebels start cheering while Bowen and Kara mourn silently, and Gilbert recites a Latin prayer as they stand vigil.
• Draco's soul floats into the sky and behind distant mountains after dying. Celestial colors fill the sky; Draco's essence becomes a red comet that zooms into the sky; the stars dim, and his soul explodes into a star, becoming the Draco constellation's eye.