Westeros

Fire and Blood is now out in the wild! Fans at our forum are already wading into it.

Two days ago, George R.R. Martin and John Hodgman appeared on stage to talk about the book and other matters (such as The Winds of Winter), and Random House has now posted the video:

Also timed with the launch of the book, a last promotional video from George discusses how useful Fire and Blood could be for Daenerys, but alas, she has no access to it. The video was posted exclusively at Esquire.

Linda and I are planning at least a couple of videos about the book, and we’re even considering doing a livestream to interact with viewers directly, answering questions or discussing ideas they may have. Keep an eye on the site as well as Twitter and Facebook for news on that!

A trio of new Fire and Blood excerpts have been released since our last post, as well as a new #TargaryenThursday video from George R.R. Martin, one that bears commenting on.

The first of the new excerpts actually comes from the Russian publisher, published on the website of the Russian edition of the magazine Maxim, and of course is all in Russian. But Google Translate can help make it understandable, even if there are some quirks. One thing I will note is that it’s clear that the translator had to work off an earlier draft of that particular material, as there’s at least one detail that was changed by the final version of the book.

The second excerpt comes from Entertainment Weekly, and covers material already published for the most part in “The Princess and the Queen” and The World of Ice and Fire, but contains some new details that had been edited out.

And finally, the Times of London has another excerpt, although it is behind a paywall. The text makes it sound like it, too, will largely contain material already previously seen, but again some new details may slip out.

Below, you’ll find George’s Targaryen Thursday video, and our comment on it:

While George and other members of the Wild Cards Consortium have been hinting that big things are afoot with the Wild Cards universe, including in GRRM’s recent “Not a Blog” covering a wide range of matter including a status update on The Winds of Winter (yep, still working on it!), they have been quite cagey about the specific details.

But now The Hollywood Reporter and Variety have revealed a substantial amount of information, namely that streaming giant Hulu and Universal Cable Productions are on the verge of a deal to bring not one, but two, Wild Cards series to the streamer. When the deal is struck, Andrew Miller—tapped to be the showrunner—will lead the opening of a writers’ room for the projects to develop the ideas further and produce scripts. x

So far as we know, this is the closest that Wild Cards has come to seeing production, although it’s not entirely there yet. However, the THR article frame this as being part of Hulu’s play for a franchise, because franchise television is becoming an increasingly major aspect of the broadcast and streaming portfolio (as Game of Thrones fans know very well; the other obvious example is The Walking Dead on AMC, which has revealed plans for more spin-offs, including feature-budgetted films). Wild Cards presents a unique opportunity as one of the most developed superhero universes outside of the major comic publishers, with stories spanning from 1946 on to the present to draw from.

For my part, I hope one of those series would closely track to Wild Cards, the original novel that started it all. It rapidly covers the period from the release of the alien virus in 1946 to the early 80’s, which the books that follow use as their starting point. Seeing the stories of Dr. Tachyon, Golden Boy, Croyd Crenson, and more would work very well as a way to quickly build the reality that a series set more in the present day might exist within.

The Hollywood Reporter has released an exclusive excerpt from the forthcoming Fire and Blood. This excerpt is from a piece originally written for The World of Ice and Fire, providing some details regarding Aegon I’s reign after the Conquest, including the development of King’s Landing as the royal capital and the founding of the Kingsguard.

The book will be released on November 20th. If you missed it, we have an exclusive interview, as well as exclusive art, from Doug Wheatley who provides the book’s interior illustrations.

HBO has posted two videos, with the hashtag #ForTheThrone, to promote the 8th season. In the process, they confirm expectations that the final season will premiere in April, 2019.

The first is more of a direct tease, a montage of key moments from across the seasons:

The second, with a “spoilers ahead” warning, is actually from “A Golden Crown”, the 6th episode of the first season:

More videos have been published since at the official Game of Thrones Youtube channel. There’s more to the announcement from HBO, incuding special events in New York and Los Angeles, special emojis, and more. See the press release below:

On this #TargaryenThursday, we’re publishing an exclusive interview with Doug Wheatley, the artist whose work is featured throughout the forthcoming Fire and Blood. A veteran artist long associated with Star Wars comics, Wheatley has a wide portfolio, including having provided illustrations for our own The World of Ice & Fire (a fact we reference in our first remark).

There’s a number of images illustrating the piece, including an exclusive revealing the hapless Aenys I! Here’s the interview:

HBO and Danielle Nicole have partnered to create a line of Game of Thrones handbags and accessories. This 18-piece collection will feature backpacks, pouches, wristlets, and more featuring the devices and colors of the Lannisters, Starks, and Targaryens. Launching November 8, 2018, the collection was also inspired by the costumes featured on the show, as well as the dragons and direwolves regularly seen in the series.

Each piece is made with non - leather materials and will be available starting November 8th at Boxlunch.com and on December 8th at Danielle-nicole.com. Prices of the collection range from $18 to $88.

The full chapter list Fire & Blood (on shelves from November 20th)  has been posted at GRRM’s official Facebook page for the forthcoming. The book, the first of two planned volumes covering the history of the Targaryen dynasty from its beginning to its end, is over 709 pages long.

Some of the material herein was originally written for The World of Ice and Fire, but most of it has only ever been seen in abridged form, sometimes very heavily abridged as with the material concerning the regency of Aegon III (we had to cut it down to about two thousand words). The exceptions are the history of Aegon’s conquest, which we published in full in TWoIaF, and the “Sons of the Dragon” which was published in full… but which George has since (slightly) expanded. And then there’s the new material, namely almost the entirety of the material concerning King Jaehaerys I and his sister/wife Good Queen Alysanne. We’ve seen it, and there’s a lot of meaty new details about their reign, their children… and, perhaps, a few things that might be of interest to those more concerned with their more recent descendants.

We were in the midst of writing up our post about yesterday’s big casting news that the splendid Naomi Watts had been cast for the pilot of the Game of Thrones successor/prequel, tenatively titled The Long Night, when news broke of a second lead actor being announced: Josh Whitehouse, a British actor that fans of Poldark (as we are) will recognize as the romantic, tragic Hugh Armitage.

There’s no information to speak of of Whitehouse’s role in the series, but the EW piece by James Hibberd did share this about Watts’ character:

“Socialite” has raised eyebrows among fans, as the sort of society that has a “fashionable” or “high” society doesn’t seem like it would fit a Bronze Age-like era as described in the novels. Some interesting thoughts have been put forward, such as her character actually being from Essos and one of the more advanced civilizations that existed there while Westeros was near to barbaric. For my part, I’m guessing that the term is being used very loosely to indicate a character who has made many alliances through personal connections, a “peace-weaver” if you will, after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxon conception of noblewomen binding feuding tribes together through marriage and through their conduct as hostesses and advisors. But we’ll have to wait and see.

Responding to the news, George R.R. Martin weighed in with the expectation that there’d be more announcements soon (as there has been) and the fact that “a couple” of the pitched projects are still being developed, one or more of which may relate to Fire and Blood and its history of the Targaryens from Aegon I to the regency of Aegon III. The word “couple” might well suggest that of the four or five pitches made to HBO, a couple have now fallen by the wayside. Whether this includes Bryan Cogman’s pitch, which we know involved GRRM closely, we do not know but his recently announced overall deal with Amazon does suggest it.

A fan on our forum has turned up a great find: Random House has quietly revealed that next year’s 2020 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar will be illustrated by the legendary John Howe.

From the Random House listing, which reveals that this edition of the calendar is themed:

Howe, most famous for his outstanding art set in Tolkien’s Middle-earth and his contribution to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, is no stranger to Westeros: he illustrated Meisha Merlin’s limited edition of A Clash of Kings, a few samples of which fans can find on his website.

The calendar will be on sale on July 16, 2019.

The Unseen Westeros art project is still raising funds, and with the help of the organizers we’ve gotten the opportunity to look at the art they’ve collected from the forty talented, professional artists (many who have worked on Game of Thrones!) for their planned art exhibition in Berlin. In the video below, we selected five of the many locales the artists have depicted to give some information and share our thoughts.

If you click through to Youtube, you’ll see timestamps to each of the particular places we talk about, but they are a Rhoynish town, Lorath, the Rhoynish festival city of Chroyane (before its ruin), the Summer Isles, and the mysterious Stygai within the Vale of Shadows. Let us know what you think in the comments, and remember to check out the Kickstarter!

Back in August, we shared the news that HBO had teamed up with Nerial to bring its popular mobile game series, Reigns, to the world of Game of Thrones. Today is the launch date for the game, which is available at the iTunes App Store, Google Play Store, and on Steam.

We’ve had the opportunity to play it in beta, and were very impressed by the way it boiled down elements of the series and its characters to its deceptively-simple gameplay. At heart, it’s a strategy game where the player takes on the role of a monarch from the world of Game of Thrones as they’re faced by choices which become increasingly perilous because the player has to strike a balance between the four pillars of their reign—military power, the Faith, the people, and money—so as to avoid a messy and premature end to their reign. And while this is going on, “winter is coming” in the form of the white walkers and their wights.

There’s a fun metatextual narrative, and some interesting quirks to the gameplay. I’ll say we’ve completed the game, but there are character cards and achievements we haven’t yet come across so even when you’re “done” there’ll likely be some things left to explore.

But enough of that. We’ll be live streaming some initial gameplay, and taking questions on the game, the books, the novellas, the TV series, and more for anyone who wants to drop by!

We knew something was up awhile back when a fact-checker for the New York Times contacted us with some questions for an article that was in the works by Charles Yu. That piece has now been published, a lengthy profile and interview with George R.R. Martin about his work with a special focus on A Song of Ice and Fire and the world Martin has built in the process of writing the novels. Westeros gets mentioned, as does the Wiki of Ice and Fire and the Brotherhood without Banners fan group, which is terrific.

As a companion to the piece, the NY Times also published a Q&A with GRRM with questions from fans. Some questions are silly, but some interesting ones as well, including one on dieties and the conflict with the Others that led George to immediately pass on answering before the question was even out.

The Unseen Westeros project is still fundraising, and the organizers have done something quite cool: they’ve teamed up with Adobe (the world’s leading maker of graphics software, particularly Photoshop) to provide a number of “making of” videos showing timelapses of several pieces being created from start to finish.

As an added feature,, there’s a pretty cool set of tutorial videos by Philipp Scherer using his depiction of Norvos toward the bottom of Adobe’s feature. Well-worth checking out if you’ve any interest in digital art!

If you like what you see, considering supporing the Kickstarter to help make the exhibition a reality!

Took awhile for us to get this edited together, but we have our promised 2nd video covering the rest of our trip to Northern Ireland, with a focus on the 2nd annual Winterfell Festival atCastle Ward. Our first post, and video, can be found here.

Once again, our many thanks to the National Trust, Castle Ward, Giant Tours Ireland, Winterfell Tours, and The Cuan.

We’ve one more video from our trip left to share, about 15 more minutes of a second talk with Ian McElhinney. The first talk we edited (and the only complete one) is already online.