This Alternate History series sets out to answer a vital question that has intrigued historians for millennia: What would the Napoleonic Wars have been like if the countries involved fought them with dragons? The series centers on William Laurence, a Navy captain who takes possession of a French ship transporting a valuable dragon egg home. Unfortunately for Laurence, the egg is very close to hatching when he takes it on board, and an "unharnessed" dragon who doesn't choose a captain within a day of hatching becomes feral and thus useless for anything but breeding stock. He ends up harnessing the baby dragon and naming him Temeraire, after a famous French ship captured by the British; the books center on the pair's adventures together.