[Summary: sandrews asks if Duncan from the Hedge Knight fathered a family, is the family existant at the time of the books, why Aemon Targaryen did not appear in the story, and whether Dany has any kin in Lys because of Aerion Brightfire's exile.]
The answers to (i) and (ii) will have to wait until I write more stories of Dunk and Egg, or possibly until later volumes in A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE.
As to (iii), well, Aemon was at the Citadel in Oldtown, studying for his maester's chain. He had no part in the story I was telling in "The Hedge Knight," so I saw no reason to drag him on stage.
Lastly, (iv), well, Aerion Brightfire did not stay in Lys all his life, only a few years. He may have fathered a few bastards there, which would mean Dany has "relatives" of a sort in Lys... but they would be very distant relatives, from the wrong side of the blanket.
I'll probably tell some more stories about Dunk and Egg one of these days, but most likely not for a few years. I still have thousands of pages in my current series to write first.
I hate "What Has Gone Before" summaries. Instead, I tried to write the opening chapters of A CLASH OF KINGS in such a way as to jog the readers' memories of all that happened in A GAME OF THRONES. There's also the geneologies to help keep things straight.
In broad terms, the action in A GAME OF THRONES and its sequels is definitely informed by the War of the Roses, one of my favorite historical periods. It's not a one-to-one correspondence, however; I had considerable fun playing with expectations and mixing things up, and the characters grew more from my own head than from history.
Yes, the series was originally a trilogy, but it has grown... to four initially, but now I am inclined to think it will be longer than that. What can I say? It's a BIG story, and a cast of thousands.
[Note: The following chat is made available through the Internet Archive.]
http://web.archive.org/web/20061230131123/http://www.scifi.com/transcripts/nebula-97.3.html
[Note: The following chat transcript is made available through the Internet Archive. The precise date, beyond late 1996, is unknown.]
[Note: The following chat transcript is made available through the Internet Archive.]
http://web.archive.org/web/19970710231523/http://www.omnimag.com/archives/chats/ov112196.html
[Note: Sent in October of 1993, this letter to one of Martin's agents, Ralph Vicinanza, provides a glimpse of GRRM's original conception of the A Song of Ice and Fire series at the point where he had completed about a dozen chapters in A Game of Thrones. It is a very substantially different narrative than what eventually came to be published.]
[Note: The following interview is made available through the Internet Archive. The precise date, beyond April 1990, is unknown.]
http://web.archive.org/web/19990503011306/http://www.eidolon.net/old_site/issue_02/02_gmart.htm
