That is, unlike other natural, supernatural, and fantastical creatures in the fantasy universe, they tend to stand alone. They are not necessarily villainous, even when destructive. They are too cool for that. They may be good. They may be bad. Whatever they are, they are above it all.
Books containing dragons, consequently, also seem to occupy a category of their own. They tend more towards "meta" than just about any other group of fantasy books.
Tanith Lee's The Dragon Hoard
The Dragon Hoard is a very funny book about a wry, level-headed prince, Prince Jasleth, who has no choice but to set out to find a treasure. He joins up with a group of princes headed on an adventure, namely to retrieve a hoard guarded by a dragon. The adventure is headed by Prince Fearless, whose father is utterly indifferent to the quest and considers it mostly a waste of time.
Jasleth ends up doing much of the heavy lifting on the quest--in a wry, level-headed, occasionally exasperated way--yet he remains good friends with his companions. In the end, the hoard is obtained without anyone conquering the dragon, who went off to see the dentist about its "nine hundred and fifty-four teeth."
In Dealing with Dragons, Princess Cimorene escapes her tedious life at court and goes to work for the King of the Dragons (who is female). She wants the job and gets extremely irritated with princes who show up to rescue her. "Go away!"
In Wrede's universe, having a princess is considered something of a cache for a dragon but also something of a bother. Few of them are as helpful as Cimorene and many of them run away before being rescued since they get tired of the life.
In any case, the dragons are mostly occupied with their internal affairs and don't care much one way or the other. Having a princess is like having a BMW: a nice perk but not entirely necessary.
Trouble with Dragons is one of those books I tracked down when I got older, I love it so much.
The dragons in Selfridge's book are unapologetically destructive, though they go after princesses and princes (people in shiny outfits) more than ordinary folk. But they are like tsunamis and volcanoes, a force unto themselves.
The true villain is the Prime Minister. Since dragons in his kingdom lay brilliant sapphire eggs after eating a princess--and the sapphire eggs make gorgeous and expensive sapphire goblets--and the prime minister is making a bundle off the goblet factory--he encourages the prince/king to keep sending princesses out to be slaughtered. And it's very sad but eh, what can one do?!
Until a clever, resourceful, and wise princess, Celia, comes along to change things.
In the end, the dragons retreat to the stars. They aren't punished--but they do need to stop burning stuff down and eating up farmers' herds of cows. So they become legends.
This meta-aspect of dragons is part of their charm. They exist inside and outside any story at the same time. See Eugene Woodbury's Serpent of Time, which presents a "dragon" that quite literally operates outside the chronological timeline.
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