I'm trying to create a historical campaign setting, 13-14 century, and I got a flash of inspiration about dragons. To explain their rarity and behaviour, but still give PCs enough unique opponents to "grind" I though that one of the genders of dragons be very rare (relative to the already rare dragons). But I'm torn about which gender to be the single alpha.
A single female dragon could lay a clutch of eggs and give males a reason to travel. In human terms, female intelligence is higher (or at least, psychologically less brutish) and thus be able to talk and cast spells.
A single male dragon give female dragons a reason to roost for long periods of time and reinforces the patriarchy of the time.
So my question is this; is there any real world evidence for gender dominance in reptiles or dinosaurs or crocodiles? I can't find much info and hopefully this post will do more than just ask, but give other people a hook for their settings as well.
Use the lion pride or ape colony dynamics for patriarchy. Bees, elephants, and killer whales are matriarchy examples to draw inspiration from.
Basically, just pick an Approptiate template and roll with it. Adjusting to taste.
You could instead say that one if the genders is only "in season" once every 100 years or so.
One thing to keep in mind is that dragons are long lived and presumably take longer to mature -- basically the elf problem.
If you make females rare, then the lairs of female dragons are very special, as that is the only place where dragons can reproduce. Expect such lairs to be very well guarded, and make a female dragon's lair the ultimate encounter of the campaign. Killing that female dragon would basically clear the region of dragons in the long term unless there is another region with too many dragons waiting for the chance to move in. Until that encounter, the female dragon should not be encountered before then -- instead, she would send older and tougher male dragons to deal with adventurers who are taking out the younger and weaker males.
If you make males rare, then there is no such special place but there might be a wandering male "boss" in the region who goes from one female to another for population increase purposes. No lair is particularly important -- instead, it is the male dragon himself that matters. He will probably pay no attention to the party until they kill off several of the females. The death of a male dragon would be a campaign shaking event, as dragons from outside the region will see the resulting power vacuum as an opportunity to establish or expand their territories. Draconic genocide is far more difficult in this scenario since there is no single chokepoint where the entire population is vulnerable.