Westeros

Over at Not a Blog, George R.R. Martin has continued his promised updates about his recent travels, this time discussing his visit to the HBO production of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (George notes it may still end up having The Hedge Knight as the title). This one’s quite special, because George features a number of candid, behind-the-scenes photos from his visits showing the Ashford meadow tourney grounds set, as well as actors in costume including the eponymous Ser Duncan the Tall (played by Peter Claffey) and the cousins Fossoway as well.

Another episode aired, and we’re rapidly approaching the end of the second season of House of the Dragon. As usual, Linda and I have posted a video recapping the episode and discussing its deviations from the source material in Fire and Blood, illuminating background that may not be obvious to viewers, and some dragon lore.

And, speaking of dragon lore, a lengthy post on dragons, their legs, and their habits from GRRM got a lot of attention almost two weeks ago. Given that some of what he talks about seems related to House of the Dragon, we’re going to add some of our own thoughts ... following the video, and the extras that HBO released around the episode.

Over at Not A Blog, George R.R. Martin provided an update on the casting of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which is currently in production in Northern Ireland. We’ve previously

shared the casting of the two leads, but GRRM reveals that a number of other key roles have been cast. . . but it looks like HBO isn’t quite ready to reveal who they are, so they will remain nameless:

As we don’t know who most of the roles are (except for Egg, played by young actor Dexter Sol Ansell, whose video of getting his head shaved is featured in George’s post) we’ll present a gallery below of art by Roman Papsuev (remembered by fans from the early days as Amok or Amoka), commissioned by the Dabel Brothers and based, I believe, on Mike S. Miller’s designs for The Hedge Knight comic book.

Egg, by Roman Papsuev

We’ve been in the midst of a vacation over here a Westeros, but George R.R. Martin has been keeping busy! A recent Not a Blog post goes into some length about the state of the highly-anticipated The Winds of Winter, a post which seems to have been prompted after a recent round of interviews (including this excellent interview by the team at Game of Owns). It’s the lengthiest update he’s given on the book in some years, and is well worth reading closely. And while he’s at it, George reveals how the story has been slowly moving further and further away from what he envisioned years earlier, even as late as when he met with the showrunners of Game of Thrones to discuss his plans.

Today marks the 73rd birthday of one George Raymond Richard Martin, known and beloved as George R. R. Martin, or GRRM for short. George has posted a brief remark on this happy occasion at “Not a Blog”, quoting from T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.