Westeros

We’ve worked overtime on this one, and are pleased to note that we have our review and detailed recap available at the episode guide for “The Mountain and the Viper”. Usually we have the book-to-screen up at the same time as well, but trying to squeeze out the recap (it’s a long one) took too much time; we’ll tackle that tomorrow, for those eagerly awaiting it.

We hope to record our video discussion tomorrow, but in the interim,  we welcome viewers to drop by the A Song of Ice and Fire forum and its Game of Thrones discussion pages. A great deal of discussion going on in the community, with a lot of useful insights!

One of the actors who has been most elusive among the regular cast has been Aidan Gillen. We’ve hoped to interview him for a number of years, but could never make it work… until, that is, earlier this year when I traveled to London to take part in a round of interviews with Gillen, as well as a number of actors.

I recall back when the show was announced that all sorts of names flew about for various roles, but Gillen’s name was easily the most common fan suggestion for Petyr Baelish. Those suggestions were largely based on his role as Carcetti in HBO’s groundbreaking The Wire, I suspect, but I admit at the time I hadn’t gotten past the show’s first season so didn’t know him from there. But we here at Westeros.org also latched onto the name when it was suggested, because of his charming, fearless, devilish performance as Stuart Russel T. Davies’s Queer as Folk.

With many notable roles under his belt, in film, television, and theater, the Dublin-born actor proves a very knowledgeable, extremely thoughtful interview subject. He takes his time with all his responses, thinking them through. And, as you’ll see, he’s more familiar than most of the actors with the source material….

Interview

Without being too spoilery, what sort of character does Littlefinger takes this season?

How much do you know about what lies ahead for your character? You’ve read the books, I know, but do you know what lies beyond that?

(For the rest of the interview, head over to the Features page!)

One of the things that has most often been asked of Linda and I since we started posting videos discussing the A Song of Ice and Fire series, as well as HBO’s Game of Thrones, concerns the many, many books on the bookshelves behind us. In an answer to address the questions—and perhaps help people find some good, summer reading, we’ve put together a video that tries to cover a number of the books and authors that we read. Below the video, you’ll find a list of the authors and the specific works we mention, for those who just want to see what we’ve placed there:

Spanish fans, are you sitting down? Because according to James Hibberd at EW, the production is looking to film in Spain for season 5. While Hibberd’s coy about just what new region might be depicted there, the image heading the article might be taken as a hint… although as we’ve seen from the past production, it’s entirely possible that filming in Spain might be used to supplement footage shot elsewhere (just as the dragon scene in “The Laws of Gods and Men” was filmed in Iceland, as Byran Cogman revealed in our interview, despite all other Slaver’s Bay exteriors having been shot in Croatia).

Spain has a very long history as a popular filming location for its beautiful, semi-arid regions and the Moorish influence on its architecture. Andalusia—the name of the region deriving from the Arabic name, Al-Andalus—served as one of the primary filming locations for David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, as well as a significant part of Sergio Leone’s westerns with Clint Eastwood, such as A Fist Full of Dollars and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and also Anthony Mann’s El Cid. Suffice it to say, it will provide a lot of possibilities for Dorne, a region Martin has explicitly connected with Moorish Spain.

Our episode guide for “Mockingbird” is now updated with the first of our content: the book-to-scene breakdown and our review analyzing various scenes, as well as a number of HBO’s post-episode videos (including an interesting one from GRRM discussing Littlefinger’s feelings towards Sansa). Besides that, HBO has placed the trailer for episode 8 on-line, which we’ve placed over in the episode guide for “The Mountain and the Viper”. Remember, that episode won’t be airing until two weeks from now, as the show takes a break for Memorial Day (replacing it in its time slot is the HBO original movie, The Normal Heart, starring Mark Ruffalo and Julia Roberts; heard some good things about this harrowing look at the early days of the AIDS crisis in New York City, so it’s worth checking out).

We hope to get our detailed recap of the episode posted tomorrow evening, but for those who want to discuss the episode, rate it, and more, the A Song of Ice and Fire forum is full of like-minded individuals, so give it a try!

With Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Bryan Cogman’s been the member of the Game of Thrones production we’ve had most opportunities to interview, and as always it’s been a pleasure as we range around various behind-the-scenes aspects of the production, as well as some in-depth discussion of Bryan’s work as a writer for this season in regards to “Oathkeeper” and “The Laws of Gods and Men”>.  See below for the full interview, as we discuss filming in Iceland, the growth of the scale of the production since the early days, who Bryan’s idol is, and more!

Interview

All right, welcome back to what’s turning into an annual chat, Bryan. I think Nikolaj’s the only person we’ve interviewed as often at this point.

Hah. As I recall, this season included your first trip to Iceland for filming—usually none of your material was shot there, is that right?

Iceland really looks stunning. This time around the shooting was in the summer. Lots of sunlight, relatively warm weather?

(Click here for the rest of the interview in our Features section!)

As promised, Linda and I are very pleased to present a second excerpt from The World of Ice and Fire  (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), following George’s excerpt from last month. Our own excerpt features the beginning of “The Ten Thousand Ships”, the section devoted to the events leading to the arrival of the Rhoynar in Westeros, beginning with the relationship—and eventual conflict—between the people of the Rhoyne and the Valyrians. Those of you who’ve looked at the other available glimpses of the book know, the book’s richly illustrated with beautiful artwork from many artists. Below, you’ll find one of those pieces of art, a depiction of Princess Nymeria by artist J.K. Drummond.

And as an added bonus, at the end of the extract is a video Linda and I recoreded from our Youtube channel, discussing the origins of the book, the writing process, and going over some of its content. Enjoy!

The Ten Thousand Ships

The last of the great migrations into Westeros happened long after the coming of the First Men and the Andals. For once the Ghiscari wars had ended, the dragonlords of Valyria turned their gaze toward the west, where the growth of Valyrian power brought the Freehold and its colonies into conflict with the peoples of the Rhoyne.

The mightiest river in the world, the Rhoyne’s many tributaries stretched across much of western Essos. Along their banks had arisen a civilization and culture as storied and ancient as the Old Empire of Ghis. The Rhoynar had grown rich off the bounty of their river; Mother Rhoyne, they named her.

No, not our excerpt—that’s for Wednesday—but instead you can see some of the updated sample pages that the publishing site Above the Tree Line now features for The World of Ice and Fire (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK).

The updated page reveals more of the beautiful art… and reveals the table of contents for the first time. While it doesn’t reveal the full break down of pages devoted to each section, it should give a real sense of the sort of information that will be contained herein. Lots of stuff about far eastern lands, a great deal about the Targaryens, substantial information on the various regions of the Seven Kingdoms before the Conquest, and so on. It’s been a great pleasure and privilege for Linda and I to have been a part in it, and we hope everyone will enjoy it when it hits shelves in October!

Our analysis and book-to-screen breakdown for “The Laws of Gods and Men” are now live at the episode guide.  As with last week’s episode, this week’s recap will have to wait—hopefully we’ll have it up tomorrow, or Tuesday at the latest.

Besides our material, HBO has released three post-episode videos which are linked in the Extras section of the guide.

GRRM has just shared the cover of the forthcoming The World of Ice and Fire  (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK). We’re very excited to share it here as well, co-written with Linda and myself.

As he notes, the text was originally contracted for 50,000 words…. but suffice it to say, it’s much, much longer than that (especially if one includes the text of the World of Ice and Fire app (Buy: iOs, Android) which was originally intended for the book. The book itself is now at the 330-odd page mark, and is chock-full of some truly gorgeous art, more of it being added as we speak. Lots of new information, about the ancient history of the world, about the various regions, about the Targaryens and the Lannisters, and even about the strange, far-off places of Essos, from the Free Cities to Asshai and the Summer Isles.

The process of settling on the exact cover design certainly took awhile, especially when you’ve seen some of the early mock-ups. The three-headed Targaryen dragon really fits, although as you might guess from the above, this isn’t a work exclusively focused on the Targaryens (though it has a great deal to say about them!)

And with that said, stay tuned next week, as we’ll have an exclusive excerpt from the world book to share concerning another group of people who arrived in Westeros, and weren’t necessarily welcome to begin with…

The episode’s done, and our episode guide for “First of His Name” has gone live with our initial analysis of the episode, as well as our book-to-screen breakdown and a number of HBO’s post-episode videos. Our own video—as well as our exhaustive recap—will have to wait until tomorrow this time around, as neither of us can stay up much longer out here!

But to tide you over, there’s always the forum, and HBO has also released the preview to the next episode, which you can find at the guide for “The Laws of Gods and Men”.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to interview a number of actors in London. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has been our most frequently interviewed actor, I believe—he’s always been quite game to talk to us!—but they’ve always been just with him. This time around, Gwendoline Christie joined him, and I finally got to see at first hand what the show is like as the two actors spark off one another, sending zingers one another’s way with much laughter. And sometimes the zingers aren’t just directed at one another, as you’ll see below ...

Interview

Nikolaj, since we spoke last year we’ve seen that your character has become more human and likable. Do you feel that progression continues this season?

Read the rest of the interview at the Feature page!

More than a week has passed since “Breaker of Chains” aired to some controversy, all thanks to the sept scene between siblings Cersei and Jaime, a dark moment between them made grotesque by the presence of their dead son’s body in the scene. Outrage was exceptional on many sides as a general opinion formed that what was depicted was a rape scene with Jaime forcing his sister. Matters were thrown into some confusion by certain remarks from director Alex Graves and actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, compounded by a very brief remark from executive producer David Benioff in the Inside the Episode featurette which were construed by some as being contradictory.

This week, however, a pair of new interviews with the actors involved in the scene sheds some further light on what they had intended to achieve. Speaking with Sweden’s Expressen newspaper, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau expanded (Google Translate version) on his earlier remarks, speaking forthrightly but with a clear acknowledgment that what viewers took from it was in many cases different from what he, Lena Headey, the director, and the executive producers had intended. Two brief excerpts:

Last night’s episode, “Oathkeeper”, now takes its place as the highest-rated episode of the series to date, with a tremendous 6.9 rating according to HBO, as reported by EW’s James Hibberd. The premiere and the third episode each tied for the previous highest mark, of 6.6 million viewers, so that’s approximately a 5% increase. Hibberd also adds that across three viewings, the episode reached the 8.4 million mark viewing it on the day.

Our episode guide for “Oathkeeper” has been partially completed now, thanks to a mad scrabble of post-episode work. The most time-consuming part, the full recap, shall take awhile longer. HBO has also kindly released a number of post-episode videos, which you can find in our Extras section, while our own video discussion will be up some time tomorrow. It looks like there’ll be a lot to discuss.

HBO has also released the trailer for episode five, which you can find at our “First of His Name” guide.