Westeros

Mark the date: July 22, 2025 will see the release of the latest calendar based on the works of George R.R. Martin. This time, award-winning artist Tom Kidd will be providing 12 paintings (plus a 13th, bonus fold-out poster) inspired by the adventures of Dunk and Egg. This is not Kidd’s first foray into George’s work, having provided art for the illustrated limited edition of the novel Dying of the Light.

But speaking of those adventures, there’s one rather interesting detail. From the official blurb:

This would be the first we’ve ever heard of the fact that Ser Duncan the Tall would find himself in Essos in the course of his life. Quite interesting!

Max has put out a new video about upcoming Max and HBO programing, starting with the much-anticipated Dune: Prophecy, and moving on to programming for 2025 such as The Gilded Age, White Lotus, The Last of Us... and of course we get some glimpses of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms:

Comparing it to the previous teaser, all the footage seems to be exactly the same as what we’ve seen before, which is disappointing. But it’s nice to see it featured prominently among some other very anticipated shows.

(Also, speaking of HBO and Max, if you have not gotten around to watching The Penguin, the finale just aired and really capped the limited series off. Tremendous performances from Colin Farrell and Cristin Miloti, in particular.)

James Hibberd (with contributions from Kim Masters) has the scoop, sharing that multiple sources have told him that:

Hibberd’s article places this in context of recent history at HBO, including the facts that Benioff & Weiss had briefly considered a trilogy of films to wrap up the TV show, George R.R. Martin was interested in seeing his universe on the big screen, and the sense that the idea that a property could be only on TV or only in cinemas is increasingly considered outdated in this new era dominated by streaming.

And now the celebration of the 10th anniversary of The World of Ice and Fire comes to its conclusion, with a piece of art that is very different from everything that’s come before it.

I’ve seen confusion about the “canon” nature of the artwork, despite out initial post indicating that this is a wholly unofficial series of commissions, for a wholly unofficial anniversary celebration. That said, of course, we direct the artists to the books, and in the cases of dragons we felt free to give them the colors that George had indicated to us for The Rise of the Dragon, which we couldn’t find a way to share in all cases.

But this piece of art, by the terrific Fran Vegas, is different. The location is one that has been referenced, and glimpsed once in official art (in The World of Ice and Fire in fact): Summerhall. But the scene… well, we admit, that is what some fans call “headcanon”. We just love the idea of the image, and feeling free to see it rendered by a capable of artist, we asked for it.

And that concludes the anniversary, as far as Westeros.org is concerned. Linda and I? We’ll be at dinner right about now, because not only is this the 10th year to the day of the publication of The World of Ice and Fire, it’s also our 10th wedding anniversary.

We thank you all for the well-wishes, and all the support we’ve had over all the years.

Ten years ago today, The World of Ice and Fire was published, introducing fans and readers to a huge bevy of new information regarding the history and the world behind George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. We’ve been celebrating that event over these past two weeks.

It was a long journey to get it made, working with George R.R. Martin, our editor Anne Groell, the team at Ten Speed Press who helped put it together, and a score or artists. The book hit the New York Times bestseller list on release, and has sold perennially ever since as new readers come along who fall in love with the world GRRM has created.

As promised, on this particularly auspicious day, we are sharing not one but two pieces of original art, by artists Linda and I commissioned to give back something to our fellow fans. You’ve had dragons aplenty, and the great tourney at Harrenhal. For this piece, however, we went to the novels, specifically to A Clash of Kings, and to a moment that… well, yes, Game of Thrones didn’t give readers this moment. So we thought we could rectify that, a little.

To help us, we turned to Arantza Sestayo, the Spanish artist behind the 2022 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, and who also contributed art to the illustrated A Game of Thrones. We owe particular thanks to our friend, Javi Marcos of Los Siete Reinos, who made the introduction that made this possible.

This is the penultimate day of our celebration of the 10th anniversary of The World of Ice and Fire, and as we said yesterday, we wanted to bring the last pieces of art to where it all started: A Song of Ice and Fire.

So here’s another image, a scene we’ve never seen directly—it’s only been referenced in the novels—brought to life by Ice and Fire veteran René Aigner, who took what we asked for and pushed it up to another level of poignancy.

Eddard Stark delivers Dawn to Ashara Dayne

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!

For this 8th art reveal in celebration of the 10th anniversary of The World of Ice and Fire, we turn once again—and for a last time—to Rudolf Hima. His Grey Ghost and Tyraxes were great additions to the canon of A Song of Ice and Fire dragon art, but we wanted something a bit more narratively-driven for his final contribution. And yes, it relates to House of the Dragon, and maybe to things we’re not likely to see there that were described in The World of Ice and Fire and Fire and Blood.

I hesitate to name it above the fold, for those who do not want spoilers… but after the image we’ll discuss it some!

The dragons return for one more round, during this tenth anniversary celebration for The World of Ice and Fire.

Dragons have always been such a key part of A Song of Ice and Fire, from the time Daenerys Targaryen’s three “children” were born through to the present. The World of Ice and Fire introduced fans to nearly all the dragons of the Dance (with the exception of Syrax, who was given a passing mention), and in the course of that book and The Rise of the Dragon we gave fans a look at a number of them, and more. But one that we never managed to show in its full glory, with its rider on its back, is Dreamfyre. We thought we’d take the opportunity of Ertaç Altınöz‘s involvement in this celebration by asking him to give him just that.

So here is Dreamfyre, with Helaena Targaryen riding her in the skies.

We’re back! The tenth anniversary celebration for The World of Ice and Fire continues. You’ve seen dragons aplenty now—and not the last, too—but another theme Linda and I settled on when we contacted artists may start to become clearer when we reveal this new piece. This one, we’re happy to say, was created for us by the very talented Spanish artist Joshua Cairós, who we we had the pleasure of working with on The Rise of the Dragon.

Our first concept for him was, I admit, overly ambitious—maybe we’ll revisit it some day; perhaps the 20th anniversary? But as we talked about alternatives, another idea presented itself: a depiction of the Knight of the Laughing Tree in armor.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s image reveal, the celebration of the 10th anniversary since the publication of The World of Ice and Fire continues, and Rudolf Hima did a fantastic job giving fans—and us—another dragon. This time, it’s the young dragon Tyraxes, the dragon of Joffrey Velaryon, who on House of the Dragon is much younger and much smaller at this point in time than he is in the books.

The Dragonpit is, once more, the scene of this image. We think Rudolf did a fantastic job of capturing the magical hue of the dragon’s fire, a feature that George has described but which the TV shows have not made use of so far.

The dragons are back, and so is Ertaç Altınöz, as we continue commemorating the 10th anniversary celebration since the The World of Ice and Fire. Before, he gave us Sunfyre, the golden dragon in his splendor. And now? Morning, the dragon of Rhaena Targaryen ... at least in Fire and Blood, because House of the Dragon seems to have removed the dragon from the show, alas.

And not Morning as fans have tended to see it, a young creature riding on her shoulder, but the dragon now large and strong and able to carry Rhaena on long journeys. When we wondered at a setting, we thought that it’d be appropriate to contrast the dragon—one of the very last living dragons—with the ruins of the Dragonpit, and Ertaç kindly obliged.

Continuing the 10th anniversary celebration for The World of Ice and Fire, a change of pace. The first two days featured dragons—Sunfyre by Ertaç Altınöz and Grey Ghost by Rudolf Hima—but today we start another theme. We’ve heard and seen much of Harrenhal in the books, and even in House of the Dragon.  There’s been lots of art, too, featuring Harren’s huge, cursed castle… but most of it is of its imposing bulk, or of that fateful moment when Rhaegar Targaryen presented the crown of the queen of love and beauty to Lyanna Stark.

But to our recollection, no one has tried to show the great, grand tourney in all of its sprawling splendor before. That’s what we asked René Aigner—a veteran of The World of Ice and Fire, The Rise of the Dragon, and the 2023 World of Fire and Blood Calendar—to do, and we think he did a superlative job.

The 10th anniversary celebration for The World of Ice and Fire continues, with a companion of sorts to our previous image, as we look at another dragon from the Dance. This one seems to have disappeared entirely from House of the Dragon, though it was obliquely referenced in the first season, but we always had a bit of fondness for it. Here is the wild dragon known as the Grey Ghost, a shy creature that kept away from men, and preferred fish to anything else, beautifully rendered by artist Rudolf Hima:

To kick off our celebration of the 10th anniversary of The World of Ice and Fire, we commissioned Ertaç Altınöz to depict Sunfyre, the golden dragon of Aegon II—featured, all too briefly, in House of the Dragon. Ertaç gave us this beautiful image, of the great dragon spreading its wings as it suns itself.