Westeros

A dragon egg on the verge of hatching accompanies the announcement from HBO that House of the Dragon will premiere on August 21st of this year. Along with the poster, HBO has also sent out eight new images featuring a variety of characters from the series, that you can see below.

With a ten episode run, that means it’ll end on October 23rd… just two days prior to the release of The Rise of the Dragon. Interesting timing, that… For more on this informational art book that very much ties in to the events covered by House of the Dragon, see here.

Yesterday, we said that we wanted to make sure we could get the name of all the contributing artists out there, and the team over at Ten Speed Press put that together quickly for us. In total, there are 38 artists who’ve contributed to The Rise of the Dragon, and below you’ll find the full list as well as links to their websites or online portfolios. We’re very proud to have worked closely with all the artists on this one, providing notes, references, etc., and they’ve delivered art that we think will please fans.

The Rise of the Dragon hits shelves in October 2022!

Balerion, the Black Dread, from the cover of The Rise of the Dragon. By Ertaç Altınöz, for Random House

Over at Not a Blog, George R.R. Martin has provided fans a lengthy update on The Winds of Winter, HBO’s successor shows, and more… and in the process lets the cat out of the bag regarding one project we here at Westeros.org have been working on for the last couple of years.

We’ll provide a quick summary below:

The Three Chroniclers, by Chase Stone.

Random House has revealed their publishing plans for the summer, and fans have noticed that July seems particularly stacked with House of the Dragon tie-ins using Fire and Blood as the focal material.

First, Random House revealed that on July 12th they will publish tie-in editions of Fire and Blood that will feature a cover using photography from House of the Dragon. Second, Random House announced that the 2023 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, to release on July 19, will be based entirely on Fire and Blood. And, in a departure from the previous calendars, this will feature an array of artists rather than just one. No word yet as to who has contributed.

Fans may notice these July dates, and speculation has run that the dating relates to the as-yet-unannounced premiere of House of the Dragon.

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A happy occasion for bibliophiles, as the latest entry in the Folio Society’s A Song of Ice and Fire illustrated editions has now been released: A Feast for Crows in a beautiful, slipcased two-volume edition with beautiful artwork by Jonathan Burton. Below, you’ll find the Folio Society’s video for the launch, as well as a few images they’ve sent to us share!

The 2022 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar [Affiliate link] is now available, as George R.R. Martin has noted on Twitter with a post featuring a fantastic preview of one of the pieces by Spanish artist Arantza Sestayo.

The image depicts the ravens being sent out from Dragonstone, with one of the best depictions we’ve seen of the citadel’s many terrifying gargolyes and the stone shaped by Valyrian magic.

The artists behind 2019’s very successful Unseen Westeros art exhibition—a collection of artworks from some 40 artists inspired by The World of Ice and Fire—have gathered together to launch a second exhibition of artwork, this time dubbed Unknown Worlds. Taking place at Frankenstein Castle overlooking the city of Darmstadt in Germany, the art exhibition will take place from July 15th through July 18th. Entry is entirely free.

Full details below!

For a long while now, we have occasionally shared tweets from the official Westeroscraft twitter account, sharing yet another screenshot of the work-in-progress Westeroscraft server.  There, Minecraft fans who love A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones are recreating Westeros block by block, and the results are truly impressive as the images and videos linked at their official wiki show. We can’t imagine how many hours of work have gone into it!

Below you’ll find a selection of recent tweets from Westeroscraft, providing some great images and explanations of what is being shown:

After a deal of footage has made its way to the internet from photographers with long lenses, HBO has now released to media images of some of the costumed lead performers from House of the Dragon. These feature Emma D’Arcy and Matt Smith as Rhaenyra Targaryen and Daemon Targaryen, Steve Touissant as Corlys Velaryon, and Olivia Cooke and Rhys Ifans as Alicent Hightower and her father Otto Hightower. See the images below, with some comments.

Emma D’Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen” and Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen. Typical Targaryen looks, as expected. Rhaenyra’s costuming fits the description of her preferred colors and textiles such as maroon and velvets. Her long braid is also drawn from Martin’s description.

The Locus Awards finalists have been announced, and down in the Illustrated and Art Book category there was a pleasant surprise in the form of George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords: The Illustrated Edition, with illustrations by the award-winning Gary Gianni. Gianni has previously provided art for one of the A Song of Ice and Fire calendars, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and Subterranean Press’s limited edition of Fire and Blood.

The winners will be announced on June 26th, during the virtual Locus Awards Weekend event.

Although we’re not generally planning to track details of filming of HBO’s House of the Dragon, a recent report from Cornwall Live caught our attention for a couple of reasons. One, we did not know that the famous Mont-Saint-Michel has a Cornish cousin in St. Michael’s Mount (apparently in close vicinity to Penzance harbor, of The Pirates of Penzance fame!) Secondly, and more to the point, one of the photos revealed what appears to be the show’s version of the heraldic arms of House Velaryon… and they don’t fit what George R. R. Martin confirmed to us over 20 years ago.

This mail, from our first year of correspondence with GRRM, refers to the fact that he had been visiting Westeros.org to look at the heraldry we had been producing from the books and then from his own notes. Though my original mail to him is lost, from context I think I must have remarked that we took a guess that he meant an actual seahorse and not the mythical or sea-horse (confusingly, both are also known as hippocampus).

We’ve reported previously on the news that theater producers and a live event production company are now working on bringing the tourney at Harrenhal, and the dramatic events that unfolded there, to Broadway and other theatrical venues. We noted at the time that Startling Inc.—Vince Gerardis’s company—had removed the reference to “A Song of Ice and Fire with The Works”, the thing that clued us into the fact that something like this was happening. A sharp-eyed fan and member of our forum, zionius, checked it today and noticed that the project has reappeared with a new name that we assume is a working title:

HARRENHAL, A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE STAGE PLAY

Well, more correctly, it sounds like something from A Song of Ice and Fire is coming to Broadway, as HBO is not formally involved in any way (but has the option to invest)...

You may remember this post from a month ago, where we stumbled across Vince Gerardis’s website for Startling Inc., which listed a project called “A Song of Ice and Fire with The Works” as being in development. Interestingly, we checked a couple of days ago, and that reference was gone. But the project was not, in fact, dead. It is, in fact, very much alive. Producers Simon Painter and Tim Lawson (of, ahem, The Works Entertainment; although, notably, The Works is not named in the piece, while Kilburn Live is… so perhaps this is a project they’re doing separately from their company?) are working from a story provided by George R.R. Martin to write a spectacular stage play—targetting, New York’s Broadway, London’s West End, and Australia—concerning the events at the Tourney at Harrenhal.

Dark Sword Miniatures, one of the longest-running license-holders for works related to A Song of Ice and Fire, has surprised us by revealing that legendary miniature sculptor Tom Meier has added to the George R.R. Martin Masterworks series by sculpting Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys.

Aegon Targaryen, the Conqueror, as sculpted by Tom Meier and painted by Anne Foerster.

Last night (for us here in Sweden, in any case), Deadline added to our knowledge of the projects HBO is actively considering as part of a greater Game of Thrones-universe of successor shows. This appears to bring the total of shows in development to five or six, from what we’ve been told, including work on The Tales of Dunk and Egg, an unspecified animated project, a possible Robert’s Rebellion show (which we still think may be the A Song of Ice and Fire project mentioned by Vince Gerardis’s Startling Inc. website) and the three that follow:

• 9 Voyages, or The Sea Snake, in development with Rome-creator Bruno Heller, which would presumably be predominantly an adventurous series focused on the young Corlys Velaryon’s famous sea voyages.
• 10,000 Ships, about the flight of the Rhoynar from Essos and their long journey under the leadership of Princess Nymeria. No writers currently attached.
• Flea Bottom, about the notorious district in King’s Landing. No writers currently attached.

A legendary ice dragon in the Shivering Sea. Corlys Velaryon is never claimed to have seen one on his own attempt to sail as far north as men can, but other sailors have.