Item from Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams
The throne of the High King — made from the bones of the dragon Shurakai, a seat of power built on a lie and a dead monster, and the symbol of everything mortal Osten Ard believes about itself.
The Dragonbone Chair is built from a fraud. Prester John claimed he killed the dragon Shurakai, but he actually found it already dead beneath the Hayholt — slain two hundred years earlier by King Eahlstan Fiskerne, who died from the dragon's caustic blood in the process. John found both locked in their final poses with the sword Minneyar protruding from the dragon's breast, took the sword, and took the credit. The chair is therefore a perfect metaphor for mortal kingship in Osten Ard: impressive, powerful, built on foundations that don't bear close examination. Every king who sits on it inherits the lie along with the authority. The dragon's bones are real. The kill is not. The power the chair represents works anyway, because power doesn't care about truth — it cares about belief.
A skeletal throne constructed from the massive bones of the red dragon Shurakai — teeth as long as a man's hand, ribs curving overhead like a cage, the whole structure bleached white and polished smooth by centuries of use. It dominates the Hayholt's main hall with the unsettling authority of something that was alive and terrifying and is now furniture.
Also known as: The Dragonbone Chair, The Dragon Throne