Westeros

With this final flurry of art celebrating the 10th anniversary of The World of Ice and Fire, we wanted to bring the material back to A Song of Ice and Fire. René Aigner set the scene with his rendition of the “greatest tourney of them all” at Harrenhal in the year of the false spring, and Joshua Cairós gave us a vignette in the form of the Knight of the Laughing Tree. To cap off this particular theme, we wanted something that captured the excitement of the joust.

GRRM has said “a lot happened at Harrenhal”, a fact hinted in the books, and in the pages of The World of Ice and Fire and its account of the origins of Lord Whent’s great tourney. We’ve heard bits and pieces, and among them we’ve heard the results of some of the jousts… but as far as I know, no artist has really depicted the competitors actually competing. We thought we’d rectify that, and we asked comic creator, artist, and novelist Mark Smylie—whose Artesia comics, and the incredible epic fantasy world therein (which have given birth to an RPG, a second RPG in development, and not one but two novels with at least one more planned), are a favorite of ours—to do just that in one of the more detailed, character-packed pieces of art we’ve asked for. The scene?

We think not only have we never seen any jousts from Harrenhal depicted, but we also think Brandon Stark in the lists has never been shown, either. That has now been rectified!

Oh, and there’s a lot more characters than the jousters, you’ll notice In fact, there are more than a dozen—substantially more—characters who are noted as having been at Harrenhal, either directly named or alluded to. How many can you find and name?

Tomorrow, the last image before the weekend is another thing we’ve never seen depicted before. And on Monday, a double-header as we close out the celebration!