Westeros

Four and final teasers for the art we’ve commissioned to celebrate the tenth anniversary of The World of Ice and Fire. Starting tomorrow, one will be released each weekday, with a final two images on October 28th to close off the celebration. The artists—all professionals—who’ve worked with us have created some fantastic artwork which we thinks fans will enjoy seeing. We certainly have!

The third and final day of the Heritage Auctions Game of Thrones prop and costume auction drew to a close, and did so with a bang (we’ve recapped Day 1 and Day 2 in previous posts). Mid-way through the auction of the last ~300 items, an auctioneer announced that it had now become the 2nd highest grossing Entertainment prop and costume auction in history, and was now chasing the legendary Debbie Reynold’s auction of 2011. While it did not meet that number, it came close with a total of $22,115,719 in sales including the buyers’ premiums.

And a big chunk of the $8.5 million raised on that final day came in the form of the touring Iron Throne which went for a whopping $1.49 million dollars. An absolutely stunning sum, by any measure, especially when you consider that HBO made more than one replica throne for exhibitions and tours… and that for a brief time you could order your own replica through the HBO Store for a cool $30,000. I strongly suspect we’ll be seeing another Iron Throne put to auction in the future, given this result.

Could this throne, displayed at Stockholm’s Royal Armoury back in 2014, be the same that sold at auction? A close inspection comparing it to Heritage’s photos certainly show no obvious diferences, but as we said, there were multiple of these and they may well all have been pretty exact replicas!

Yesterday, we wrote a long post about the 10th anniversary since the publication of The World of Ice and Fire, and shared our first teases of twelve new pieces of fan art we commissioned by professional artists (most of whom are veterans of The Rise of the Dragon, or of the A Song of Ice and Fire calendars and official illustrated editions). This post will be shorter. Here’s four more mysterious glimpses at the art we’ll begin to release on a daily basis from the 14th through to the October 28th anniversary date!

Day two of the Heritage Auctions Game of Thrones auction started off with a bang when the first new entry into the six-figure sale list was Jon’s Snow’s season 6 Night’s Watch ensemble with an included “action” Longclaw. Realized price? $337,500, becoming the most expensive piece sold to date.

A few other notable pieces hit the six-figure mark throughout the day. Oberyn Martell’s trial by combat ensemble was next to break the mark, followed by what to me was probably the most surprising result among the big sellers: the Lannister “family litter” used in season 5. It’s beautifully crafted, but I had no idea it’d draw that much attention. After that, the last item we saw to reach $100,000 before we went to bed was the “Shame” bell, which I recall David Mandel of the The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of podcast expected to do well.

And that wasn’t even half way through the six-figure sellers. When we checked the final results, lets just say our eyes went wide.

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of The World of Ice and Fire. When it hit shelves in the US, UK, and elsewhere, it debuted on multiple bestseller lists. It had been 8 long years in the making—more, if you count when George first mentioned the possibility to me over dinner in 2004—and, on arrival, launched thousands of new conversations in the fandom, and has contributed to a dizzying amount of podcasts, vlogs, cosplay and other fan works.

It also, pretty directly, gave birth to Fire and Blood, as something like 80% of the material in that book was originally written by George for The World of Ice and Fire. And so there is a direct line, from George asking me if he thought Linda and I would like to help him on a world book, to House of the Dragon today. And, for that matter, to a number of the HBO projects that are or have been under development: the Ten Thousand ships, the Nine Voyages of Corlys Velaryon, an animated show about the Golden Empire of Yi Ti, Aegon’s Conquest, and who knows what else that hasn’t yet been revealed. Even a play, The Iron Throne (formerly known as Harrenhal), is likely to pull from the Year of the False Spring material George created for the book which gave fans never-before-revealed insights into how and why Lord Whent’s great tourney came to be. They all sprang from George’s pen for the book, and our role in many of these pieces was to help organize and excerpt and compress it down to fit within the bounds of a book that was originally contracted to be 50,000 words long (and ultimately weighed it at more than 180,000.)

Linda and I have been, and will always be, grateful for the opportunity to work with George in providing an expansion of the knowledge fans had about the world he’d created, and all the opportunities it’s given us. We’ve been invited to hold talks in more libraries across Sweden than we can count, have visited wonderful countries like Spain, Northern Ireland and Ireland, the Netherlands, and more to make appearances or sign books or take part in convention programming, attended an art exhibition in Berlin dedicated to works inspired by the book, we filmed numerous segments for Sky’s Thronecast in the UK, we’ve attended premieres, and much, much more. Along the way we’ve made many new acquaintances and friends, and that’s made this all the more gratifying to us.

It has been quite a ride, one we could never have imagined 25 years ago when we were just fans who wanted to run a little game based on these books we loved, and who started a small website to collect information about the books to share with fans the world over.

(This month also, not coincidentally, marks our 10th wedding anniversary—we decided it was an auspicious time to finally tie the knot, after spending 15 years together in Sweden.)

So, thankful to all the fans who have enjoyed the book, who have enjoyed all the art it contains and has inspired, Linda and I took it upon ourselves—entirely on our own initiative; this is not some secret marketing ploy or an attempt to hint at anything other than our love of George’s world and the fandom that shares that love!— to approach a number of professional artists to add just a few more illustrations for fans to enjoy. These works range from things that could well have been included in the original The World of Ice and Fire, or in The Rise of the Dragon, and are guided mostly by things we wanted to see done by these artists in particular.

Today, and over the weekend, we’re going to tease the twelve pieces of art we commissioned, posting them at about 7PM Swedish time each day… and over the following weekdays, leading up to the precise anniversary of October 28th, we’ll be releasing a new piece of art at 7PM our time as well. To get us started, you’ll see the first four teasers below. These teasers are randomly selected, and do not reflect the order we’ve planned for the final pieces.

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.

The first day of the three day Game of Thrones prop and costume auction run by Heritage Auctions started well, with nearly $5.36 million realized across the first 290-odd listings in the auction. We kept track of it as long as we could, and by the time we went to bed we’d noted that several items had cleared the $100,000 mark. Gregor Clegane’s tourney armor was the first to hit six figures and ended up just shy of $200,000, followed by a prototype dragon egg from the first season (a second egg just missed the mark).
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After that, Arya Stark’s season 2 “boy” ensemble with an included “action” version of Needle hit $150,000, which seemed like a very expected number. And then, fittingly, the first item to hit $200,000—just beating out the Mountain that Ride’s armor—was the Hound’s armor ensemble. After that point, we went to bed, but in the morning we found two more items made it to the prestigious six-figure club: a full Jaime Lannister Kinsguard ensemble. Because of the inclusion of both a prop hand and an “action” Oathkeeper, this one was an especially valuable listing, and the bidders recognized it as they drove it up to become the day’s top item with a final realized price of $212,500.

There are two distinct eras in the history of modern television: pre–Game of Thrones and post–Game of Thrones. Not only did Thrones reinvigorate fantasy as a mainstream television genre,
but the scope of its production resulted in an onscreen world that looked, sounded, and felt like a real place. Now, for the first time, the building blocks of that reality are available for public view and will shortly become
available for purchase by private collectors through Heritage Auctions’ HBO© Game of Thrones: The Auction.

At the September 16th press preview at Heritage Auctions’ New York location, Production coordinator Michelle Burns, Prop Master Chris Moore, and Wardrobe Mistress Donna Hughes were present to discuss their body of work before it’s scattered across private collections. All three were Thrones lifers, having been with the show from the unaired pilot to the series finale, a feat which fewer than 50 people can boast. Their work continued with the creation of the HBO Archive and the eventual curation of the auction collection.

“In 2018, HBO approached us to set up the HBO Archive and the first project was Game of Thrones,” said Moore. “We entered an 80,000 square foot warehouse with sealed crates floor to ceiling high, full of bodies, horses, carts, you name it. Armor. We’ve spent the past five years navigating our way through to the end, which you can see on the walls here.”

Those walls, festooned with house banners, shields, prop weapons, and more from all seasons of the show, set the visual history of Game of Thrones production on display in a way the public has never been able to access until now. In one section of hanging banners, Moore pointed out the difference between a House Lannister banner from Season 1, screen printed on a shiny red fabric with a thicker, plastic-looking fringe and a House Stark banner from Season 6, which had a thick tapestry texture, era-appropriate aging, and was visibly created with more authentic techniques.

Lannister and Stark banners from different seasons, created using different techniques.

As they have teased, fan site Winter is Coming had the opportunity to interview GRRM during the Glasgow Worldcon. Although discussion of HBO’s shows and The Winds of Winter were off the table, the latter got a passing reference initiated by George himself. More generally, however, the interview—conducted by Daniel Roman, and also including comments from Raya Golden, the artist behind the Hugo nominated The Meathouse Man and the Locus shortlisted Voyaging Part 1 is a fun and interesting discussion of George’s history in fandom, his friendship with the late Gardner Dozois, and more.

Touching on a subject very near and dear to our hearts, the House of the Dragon official podcast, hosted by Jason Concepcion and Greta Johnsen, has invited show runner Ryan Condal to answer a number of questions about adapting Fire and Blood to the screen. A lot of big topics are spoken of, including Nettles, Damon’s time in Harrenhal, Aegon’s prophetic dream, and more… and at the end, a discussion of George R.R. Martin’s role as an executive producer on the project which, I think, lays out a sense of how much role GRRM actually has at this stage in the production.

Interestingly, this is a surprise episode—two weeks ago, they announced that they’d have a final episode about now… but that one has been pushed into the future because, according to the hosts, they had so many fan questions sent to them after the finale about adaptation choices that they thought it was worth an added podcast. Things have been fairly quiet in the month since the show ended, though we suppose GRRM indicating issues with the season and making clear that he felt a lot has gone wrong on the show. NOTE: There are spoilers, not just for Fire and Blood, but GRRM reveals details about current plans for season 3.

But then, he has begun his promised post (archive link) about Blood and Cheese, and the butterfly effect it causes, and seems like he’ll go further in explaining his problems with the season.

ETA: An update, as HBO has issued a response via a spokesperson:

Via The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of podcast (hosted by House of the Dragon‘s Ryan Condal and Veep‘s Dave Mandel), huge news as it seems WBD has decided to let go of a great part of their Game of Thrones prop and costume holdings. This is very unexpected, to say the least. Here’s Mandel with a reveal video:

Full details can be found at Heritage Auctions. There will be preview dates both in London and in Los Angeles.

Adam Savage, famed special effects fabricator best known for co-hosting Mythbusters, has a great Youtube series called Tested that’s been a great success. So much so that he’s been invited behind the scenes of a number of productions and effects houses over time… and the latest such behind-the-scenes tour involves none other than House of the Dragon.

Promising to be the first of several videos from the production, the introductory episode features master armourer Tim Lewis as he shows Adam swords and other blades that the production has made… including a look at what I am quite certain was their hero Ice while still in the earliest stages of creation.

As always, the highlight for us was the detailed, close-up look at Peter Johnsson’s remarkable Blackfyre and Dark Sister. Some amazing details in those, but a great surprise was learning that Corlys Velaryon’s dagger includes a crude astrolabe in the pommel, suitable to his place as a famed navigator and sailor.

Via Variety, a press conference today with House of the Dragon ahow runner Ryan Condal provided the confirmation of what many suspected: the fourth season will also be the last for the show. This makes sense, given the pace. There are some other interesting remarks there, including Condal indicating he doesn’t yet know if the third season will be 8 or 10 episodes yet, and that he believes production will begin in early 2025:

House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal and his co-host, David Mandel (Seinfeld, Veep, White House Plumbers), have returned for the latest season of their terrific props podcast, The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of. Occasionally, Ryan brings on guests from the crew of his show, and this latest episode features season 2 costume designer Caroline McCall going over her work on the show.

Well worth a listen. For those who want to skip the opening section discussing props (like Ryan’s consideration of how to display his recently-purchased Deckard jacket from Bladerunner) and comic art, the conversation with McCall starts at the 13:45 mark:

Among topics covered are the work on Ser Simon Strong’s costuming, bespoke armor design and budgetary considerations, the importance of the breakdown department, the use of heraldry, and more.

The exciting penultimate episode, “The Red Sowing”, has caused quite the stir! 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.