George R. R. Martin: The World of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones)

somebody started an argument online recently I got an email about it about you know it's uh if drogon could beat Smaug basically no drogon drogon is a very young dragon and still you know barely large enough to get Danny into the sky [Music] thank you lord [Applause] thank you all thank you for that kind introduction so let's start talking about this new book the world of Ice and Fire I've been telling people who asked me about it that it's sort of the silmarilian of your imaginary world and you wrote it with a couple of co-authors so I I'd love to hear you talk about whether it is The Silmarillion of the known world and and about what it was like to work with Elio and Linda well um this is book that really began with my readers and my fans of course in any epic fantasy the world is a character setting is is very important and that I think has certainly been true since they are Tolkien and Lord of the Rings of course fantasy goes back to ancient times the daily at the Odyssey The Ballad of Gilgamesh but Tolkien really invented modern epic fantasy it is current form and and one of the things he did that was extraordinary was create middle-earth in such detail if you look at some of the pre Tolkien fantasy it's it's written more in a story of fairy tales you know once upon a time there was a king and the king had a beautiful daughter and there was a evil Vizier and they may have names but you won't know like who was the king's father or who was his grandfather or how the dynasty came to power or how long it's ruled or what the neighboring countries are it's it's all told in this fairy tale thing Tolkien gave us all these histories all these appendices and genealogies and everything was was routed and it seemed as real as England or France or Germany when you when you read these things and since then that's become the style for epic fantasy isolate a fantasy readers now expect they expect a fully real secondary world as toki and called it and so certainly that's what I set out to creating in Westeros now some of this is a magician's trick it really wasn't with Tolkien you have to consider that Tolkien is was a very unusual writer I mean he was a linguist and a philosopher and uh he spoke Old Norse and Old English he was fascinated by myth you know he the story was almost secondary to Tolkien he spent years creating his Cimorelli on never published in his lifetime and the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit were like the stories set in the world he created but for him the world creation and the creation of languages was almost primary if you look at it like an iceberg he you know they say that three-quarters of iceberg is hidden below thoughts below the surface that was certainly true with Tolkien with a lot of the fantasies who have followed talk you know it's a magician's trick we have some ice on a raft and we we want you to think that there's this huge edifice underneath just like we're talking but there really isn't in some cases and that was probably true with me in the beginning I mean I begin with the story and the characters of the scene and everything grew from that but the world grew along with the story and i rapidly discover it as i got into the writing that the readers wanted to know more and more about this world and they would send me emails and letters saying is this dance with the dragons that you mentioned who can you tell me what about that it sounds fascinating Hagen's conquest how did they get on conquer the Seven Kingdoms when you know he only had a little army you mentioned that but I don't understand how it worked could you could you write me about that or could you write a book about that and you know as the years pass a lot of these letters came in and some of the earliest ones came in from Elio and Linda alia garcia jr. and Linda Ann Thompson Elio is as an American who lives in Sweden with his his Swedish girlfriend Linda and they were among the earliest fans to get in touch with me way back in the in the middle 90s and they wanted to run a game and they had a million questions and they displayed right away and almost obsessive knowledge of my world in fact I had to alter my world because of that obsessed with knowledge why not you know I in in one of the earliest appendices that I created was well who the kings who came before King Robert who was king we know that King Robert had usurped his throne from the Mad King but and before that there had been a gone the Conqueror and the Targaryen conquests who all the kings in between so I invented a bunch of kings names and dates and I put that in the back of the first edition of Game of Thrones and I had you know well this is the first son of the second son did you know this is the younger brother of and everything was fine there until I wrote the dunk and egg story the first dunk and egg story the hedge Knight which was set a hundred years before the mains ice entire story three short stories three novellas so far but there will be more yeah that and it set it set 90 years before the events of the Song of Ice and Fire and I have some Targaryen Zinn that and Leo and Linda looked at the date that that was set it and compared it to the date and they look at oh this guy you say the hedge Knight that this guy is like 35 years old but that you know if you compare it to the dates given in the in the chronology that you had in book 1 he can't possibly be older than because of how old would these people when I had the children all that and I went through all these dates and and damned if he wasn't right so I I hadn't changed the list of Targaryen Kings and someone who had previously been a son now became a younger brother so so all the days with all the dates would work but that impressed me right there to Delia and Linda really knew this stuff so fast forward as the years go by I got more and more requests for for something like this a concordance or World Book number of other fantasy authors had had done these you know this someone so companion or the concordance or whatever okay what we'll do one two and I'll I'll have Elio and Linda come in and they can do all the hard work because they keep track of stuff better than better than I am and we we signed the contract back in 2008 I think it was it was supposed to be delivered in you know a couple years we know how that works and like many of my projects it got not only to get become late but it got much bigger than Italy initially had begun and I wound up creating a lot more material you know the initial approach was in Lyon Linda we're gonna go through the whole book and they were going to all of the published books and even some of the unpublished manuscripts that point they were gonna organize all the historical references and you know kind of beat out a an outline in a rough draft which said they would then said to me and I would polish that and revise that and fill it out and I would fill in the gaps because inevitably there would be big gaps where I didn't say anything and we were gonna have a history and who's who and we started working on that Elio and Linda really started working on the who's who and who's who got so gigantically big with like thousands of characters that we should hmm we we have like half a million words of who's who so we took that out and we put that on the app so that's that's the world of Ice and Fire app and you can find all the all the who's who's here everybody who's ever walked on stage and said you know ouch I'm wounded what we mention there in the who's who but and then we concentrated on on this which is a book of history and legends and and I also wanted it to be beautiful I'd look at some of these other books that had been done and someone were pretty nice looking but others were not in fact it was I won't mention names but there's one prominent fantasy writer whose own fans call his concordance the the big book of bad art so I was determined that my book not be have bed art I wanted great art lots of art art on every page coffee table book heavily illustrated by some of the top fantasy illustrators in the world and and that's what we we set out to get and that's what we gotta people like the Magali Villeneuve and and Ted Naismith and Mark simonetti Michael Cole mark we used a lot of art from Fantasy Flight Games which has generated some wonderful art for the game of Thrones cut game and board game and it is always finding some great artists from around the world for us so you know all of that was was very exciting um as usual it grew bigger than anticipated our initial budget was that we were supposed to provide them with 50,000 words of text and the rest would all be art you know and it would be a nice book Elio and Linda by the time they finished their portion of the thing provided me with 70,000 words of text just working on the stuff in there and then I was supposed to add some sidebars filling in gaps and you know I did with things I knew about history that I already made up the stories and the characters and I knew kind of how they work but I hadn't found a place to put them in the novels and I'll put them in here as sidebars so I wrote like three hundred thousand words of size so at that point my editors had exploded yo-chan is somewhere in the audience you'll recognize her by her exploded head and it was pointed out that we couldn't actually publish this book you know we I wanted our and every page and we had bull the sort that we bought and paid for but if we put it in all these words than the art would be like picture every ten pages so we had to sort of get back to get at least closer to the original concept so we wound up actually abridging many of my sidebars and so what what what you're saying so Elia and Linda work on that and and work on that and we got basically the outline of the of the histories and stuff in there but not the fully detailed versions that I wrote so when you say is this your your simile on the answer is well kind of but no because I'm gonna take all those sidebars and you know write more side bars and somewhere down the line the full versions of all this stuff will be published and we've been calling that the grimmer really on that's mostly about the Targaryen Kings in the whole history of Westeros that's that's really the focus of that books will be focused on a tagged Aryans this book has a shorter version of that in but it also has the regional histories of all of the each of the regions of Westeros and the noble houses and it has a lot of material about the nine free cities and the civilizations of Essos and the summer islands and even some stuff about the basic islands and the further east and the furthest East and Mid cetera cetera so a lot of a lot of great stuff I hope I hope you guys enjoy it it was a lot of fun to write I'll tell you that much it's the kind of book where if you love books that have maps in them but you're obsessed with things that are on the edges of the maps that you'll get a lot of satisfaction from this but also in-depth history of some of the situation's that you know if you're if you've read the book and you're or and you're watching the show now wait where is the Arbor again you know those readers this is really great but you're sometimes like that I mean don't you sometimes use elio as as the is your kind of reference work for your own yes I do he really does have a frightening Lee exhaustive knowledge of of my world and my characters so you know when I when I write a new chapter it saves me time rather than going back and checking little details I just said that the Elio is a did I contradict anything I said in a previous book in this London here a yes you did this character you know you killed three books Oh Graham thanks for reminding me that I've read some interviews with you where someone asks you a question you go I don't remember where's a Leo and I okay so we have some of the images and let's see yeah okay I'm gonna ask you some questions related to the images this is Aegon the conquerer upon balerion the brought the black dread and the artist is Jordi Gonzalez Escamilla is that correct if you if I get the pronunciation wrong you're gonna have to correct me well I can't really read the signature but if you say so okay so but it's it's pretty cool that's one of my favorite piece in the book and it afters uh I think the size of of balerion pretty uh pretty accurately somebody started an argument online recently I got an email about it about you know if if drogon could beat Smaug and you know as competitors I am and and I would like my guys to win basically no drug on drogon is a very young dragon and still you know barely large enough to get Danny into the sky you know pretty formidable and small guys gigantic not the mention the fact that Smaug like talks and would probably have an intellectual advantage there but balerion could could give slab some trouble they're they're they're more equivalent in the in the size and ferocity Department on the other hand smoke would still have that talking thing going but I don't know how much a difference that takes makes a little bit about the two gariands they're not they're Burrell's newcomers to Westeros yes you know that Targaryen czar of valerian descent and the Freegal de Ville area was the you know the superpower of my my world for hundreds of years there were sorcerer Lords there who controlled certain dark magics blood magic and fire magic pyromancy and one of the things they had was dragons and there were great Dragon Lord families that bred and controlled dragons and flew them into battle and they they competed for primacy within structure not dissimilar to the Roman Republic where you know a certain number of great families controlled everything and most of the rest of the known world could not stand against the Valerians even when they had larger armies the valerian advantage of dragons was too great to overcome but four hundred years ago the doom came the doom malaria and the entire freehold of alaria was was wiped out overnight and the Dragonlords and hundreds of dragons with it the Targaryen had been one of the families one of the bloggers key but they had had a premonition that something I just had come in and they had resettled to the Dragonstone island off the coast of Westeros some time before the the doom came total area and their boy avoided that and it left them after a relatively short period with the only effective dragons and there in the world and Aegon and his sisters used three of those dragons to conquer the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros the doom of Valyria is not it's not really clear from the book exactly what causes it it sounds like it's a it's a bunch of volcanic explosions or something like that but but that's part of the sort of conceit of the book is that it's written by a westerosi scholar of some kind and he's right he's just he's working with these imperfect sources there they're actually we took a conceit that this book was written by a couple maesters from the citadel maester Yandell who was the creation of Elio and Linda and you know mr. Yan tells material is is drawn from preceding sources from primary sources that existed at the time court records and memoirs that people put down letters just as today's historians or historians of other ages worked from sources that came before them one of the sources that maester yendo works on is archmaester gil Dane who has a far more detailed history of Westeros track only fragments of which have survived the other portions have been lost and gilding is essentially my guy so you know they when they give a big chunk of gild a and stuff that's the that's the unabridged stuff that I wrote when it's Y and Ellis usually Elio and Linda cutting down on gilding material that I wrote so Gildan will get his day in the Sun when we published the Grima brilliant and and all of his notes will finally be uncovered and we also use other things I mean it was fun for us to to play with this whole idea of history and sources and historiography and so forth because the truth is like in real history sometimes there are different counts of what actually happened I always loved the line from the man who shot Liberty valance you know when when truth and legend disagree printe legend and I think that's true you know you you look at I I've often said in interviews that the red wedding my red wedding was based at least in part on the on the black dinner of Scotland the the black baron of Scotland is is was one of the inspirations for red wedding and it's a tremendously colorful event but if you read about it there's this great legend about how it happened and then there's some boring accounts by modern historians who say oh no it didn't really happen like that those are all later things that people made up to make it more dramatic and you know I hate those later I always want to rule room everybody's fun but I wanted to respect some of that in in this so even gilding who's not a primary source himself is constantly going back to the actual primary sources the court records kept by the maesters and and some observations of the septons of the time and in one case one that I had particularly fun with the D testimony of mushroom was the court fool during the dance with the Dragons and he was a he was a dwarf with a large overside head and everybody thought he was feeble-minded so you know they said also some things in front of him because he's just an idiot what the hell is he going to understand and of course he understood everything and he wrote it down and he done only that he his version is the absolutely most scurrilous version of it because he's always putting the worst possible motives on everybody and and adding a lot of sexual sin shenanigans and and so for that may or may not have happened he sort of the Swart onus of of westeros if those of you who know Roman history and know sciutto Gnaeus is working okay so here we have the Battle of the Trident its Robert Baratheon who is the king at the beginning of Game of Thrones and he's fighting Prince Rhaegar Targaryen who is Daenerys his brother and he's also the heir to the throne of the Mad King Aerys who was shortly after this killed by Jaime Lannister I got that right that's right this is one of the key the key scenes at a Song of Ice and Fire that occurs you know before the books open what it sets the stage and everything that they're fellows let's see this is just a sweet Brent depending yes yes Justin met incredible artists just as sweet he's done some magnificent work for us we've had um several great artists do the Battle of the Trident scene what I like about Justin's version particularly is that he actually included the horse horses because they the two of them did fight on horseback but most of the other artists who have illustrated the scene for one versus another have omitted the horses and have just shown two men on foot in that sense they're quite a lot like the TV show which omits the horses at many opportunities so with that the TV show is is short on horses but you know but we have horses here and that's that's good so that two of them were fighting in the middle up that's right and the Ford of the Trident and it was the whole turning point where the everything that occurs in the books was was set up by this fight between two men it's great to see them at this point looking you know in the prime of their lives and so heroic because by the time we jump into the narrative of of Game of Thrones Robert is kind of over the hill it makes him mean this makes you see why he was you know why people thought so highly of him to begin with yeah Robert was like me when I begin this my hair was dark I was skinnier was good I was I was different in 91 you know it's also your Rhaegar has kidnapped Roberts betrothed and and Ned's sister but it's really the culmination of a lot of forces I mean this is a big personal confrontation but it's also kind of a big you know kind of socio-political confrontation the the Targaryen King Aerys was crazy and they're they're sort of lines seemed to be kind of decaying well one of the one of the factors here is of course that 300 years ago in Aegon's conquest the Targaryen conquered the Seven Kingdoms with Dragons but then during the later civil war called that dance with the Dragons the majority of those dragons were killed and the few that survived that ward died a relatively short time later or else left the known lands of Westeros so by that point that Targaryen will firmly establishes the king and had you know the power of tradition and legitimacy behind them generations had come up of age with the idea of the Targaryen were the king and that the rules didn't apply to them I mean that was also part of it yeah Targaryen swear interlopers from another culture and they had some unique factors that didn't necessarily fit into the mainstream of the other Westerosi Lords such as their traditional incest you know which was part of keeping the bloodlines pure so that they could better control the Dragons brother marrying sister and and you know nephews and aunts and so forth and and all of that is detailed in the book all of the matches and and so forth but by the time this comes around the Targaryen have not had dragons for a long time and and I guess Robert and some of the other Lords are starting to say you know you know really have to be afraid of these guys anymore they can no longer you know just fly overhead and burn down our castles or entire cities and it's beginning to just just is beginning to dawn into it that maybe the Targaryen czar just people like other people and not an outside alien force with with strange scaly superpowers of course then Danny well you know so that's what the books are all about the the ability to tame or control the dragons to a certain extent is inherited it's a sort of a one of the more mysterious elements of the ongoing storyline well it's something that's not quite entirely understood and there is I think some interesting material in in the world of Ice and Fire and even more so in the in the later Grimm or early on that will elucidate various attempts to to tame dragons it's it's not a you know it's not a simple process it's a dangerous process you know it's like my friend Melinda Snodgrass who you met on one of your trips to New Mexico raises and breeds and trains horses Arabian horses and dressage horses warmbloods and and so forth and rides them in competition and when I was starting this long ago in the 90s I'd talk to her about some of the you know techniques for breaking a horse you know we all know the bronco buster kind of thing that we see in western movies but of course that's just for one particular kind of horse and when Melinda does with her Arabians and her dressage horse this is quite different but there is a process there a process of mastery and of course you also go stuff with the the dog whisperer and you know Jackson galaxy and his cat from hell there are ways to to try to make animals do what you want but it's not an exact science and and the thing about horses and and dogs and cats and trying to modify their behavior is that none of them can turn around and fry you to a crisp as an annoyed dragon can can do so it's a perilous process and I intended it to be so okay so now we are looking at daemon daemon Blackfyre daemon Blackfyre Blackfyre leading the charge at red grass field by jose daniel cabrera pena so this is a character from sort of deeper in the history of the two garyun dynasty and he is I think if I've got this right looking a thing he is Danny's great-great-great grandfather you see where he would know just like that I don't think so actually yeah because he's daemon Blackfyre right that's what you said David I tried to read grassfield the black forest were usurping line right they were they were the sons of I'm sorry he's not he's the he's a he's a bastard claimant to the throne yes of Danny's great-great-great great-grandfather sorry right Aegon King King Aegon the fourth also known as Aegon the unworthy had a lot of bastards he was a he was a horny guy and everywhere he went he he fathered children on serving wenches and tavern girls but also on the daughters and wives of noblemen and he only had one well he had he had had one son by his legitimate wife who was also his sister in the Targaryen thing and that was his legitimate heir but he didn't actually like that kid very much and he likes some of his bastards better and he was you know he was not a popular King Aegon the unworthy you could probably guess it from his name and he made a lot of trouble for Seven Kingdoms because on his deathbed he legitimized all of his bastards and then that created the question of okay now they're legitimate in our pastures where do they fall in the line of succession and the one of the oldest bastards who was a splendid you know look like a Targaryen great warrior charismatic handsome he gave black fire which is that ancestral sword of Aegon the conquerer and all the Targaryen Kings and he presented the sword to his son who was the warrior son they the the son who was the crown prince was not much of a warrior so and sometimes he was giving the sword to this on who was best fit to to use it but that created the issue well does the sword represent the kingdom was he saying this son should be my heir he was unclear on that point and when you're unclear on that point in the Middle Ages you not only got a war to clarify the issue and indeed that's what happened here a gun and his supporters rose up or Damon then his supporters rose up after after Aegon's death against his half-brother Darren and there was the first of the Blackfyre rebellion and it was followed by four more Blackfyre rebellion because daemon Blackfyre fathered children in Missoula and there was a whole nother line of pretenders the the Blackfyre pretenders that periodically would come invading Westeros and say no no it with illegitimate kings and they would try to overthrow that talk Aryans and this was all after the Dragons have died out so in the days when they were dragons the tag Aryans might have been able to deal with this a little more easily but without Dragons it's all a question of who can raise the biggest armies and who can win the support of the powerful Lords and the populace etc so they're just questions of succession have just well not completely continuous throughout the story but it comes up again and again it it's obviously very reminiscent of the real historical events that you've talked about being an inspiration the Wars of the Roses we're similar not so many bastards but but similar arguments about who is entitled to be the king yeah I mean that's you know a large part of ancient history of medieval history is is devoted to these succession crises you know the the nation that could actually manage to get us its laws and its succession in something approximating smoothness tended to flourish because they didn't have a war a regeneration when when a king succeeded his father but there were always issues that weren't really quite clear or where they thought well this person has a claim but this person also has a claim so which claim do you do you go with and you see that in English history to landscape this is it's the it's the wall and it very much reminds me of something that you've said many times which is that when you had been working in television before you started writing the books you were so frustrated by how you couldn't get sort of scale the grandeur and scale that you wanted and and you knew that in fiction you could just do whatever you want to make it as big as you want and and this is really big and really impressive can you talk a little bit about you know what what inspired this particular idea the idea of the wall well it was Hadrian's Wall actually in in in 1981 ten years before I even dreamed of writing his books I visited England for the first time and my friend Lisa trouble with whom I'd collaborated on when Haven was driving her me around England at Scotland and showing me the sights and we came to Hadrian's Wall or the bit that remains to it and it was around this time of year actually I was late October it was fall it was it was getting dark and cold and in England and Scotland and we arrived right near sunset as the last of the tour buses were leaving so we climbed up on the wall and and pretty much had it to ourselves which was really cool because we they have a lot of tourists around us and I stood up there and the wind was blowing and the Sun was going down and I looked off and and I tried to imagine what it was like to be a Roman Legionnaire a from Italy or North Africa or the Near East who'd been sent to this really cold place on the edge of the world and you know who knew what the hell was beyond there and you were like the last outpost of what they thought of as the civilized world and you know they had legends and and beliefs and they made very well but there were there were monsters or demons beyond there depending on where they came from and of course well we know that what was actually beyond there were were Scotsman and and picks there were picks back then but it was a profound feeling and and many years later when I came to write these books I it came back to me and I said I want to do that to it the whole idea of a wall defending civilization against unknown threats beyond and the people who have to stand on that wall and defend that wall stirs something profound in me that them and I wanted to I wanted to evoke that of course in fantasy fantasy you you take something real as your root but you make it bigger and more colorful so this is a lot bigger than Hadrian's Wall and it's made of ice which is kind of cool and you know actually needs some magic in it to keep it up and all that but it's it's an amazing thing and of course in the world of Westeros it's one of the one of the eighth wonders of the world or the seven wonders of the world of love as long now that actually that's the nine wonders made by man almost longest writer so and it would be if it existed in our world too in fact you know I was recently in Scotland for the Edinburgh Book Festival and they were having they were about to have their vote on independence whether they should secede from the United Kingdom or not and I suggested that if they did they should build a giant ice wall between Scotland and England and it would be would be an amazing tourist attraction and you know really help the the economy of both countries okay this is Winterfell this is but also by Ted Smith and this is where the story begins for you know for your readers but now you know at the point that we are in the story now it's been sort of destroyed and that is killed and there's something sort of really sad about looking at a picture of it now and maybe want to maybe wonder I know you're willing to tear down beautiful castles and killed popular characters if when you feel like you need to but do you ever end up missing them once they're gone yeah I do miss them sometimes here good villain it was hard to replace but as I said in the book all men must die I did there is something that appeals to me about rooms and I don't know beauty that's that has been destroyed or something like that I was reflecting I you know I don't know movie theatres in Santa Fe New Mexico where I live much smaller one than this theater and I walked in here said they're pretty cool theater too I like old theatres xxx movie palaces and so forth we had a we had a guy who New York photographer actually and they miss Matt Lambros and he has a website called after a final curtain he came to the Cocteau and did a slide show for us an art exhibition of his photographs he specializes in traveling around the country photographing defunct theatres some of them movie palaces and others vaudeville theaters and things like that that have been closed be it for five years or 50 years and they're still there they're there rotting they're decaying of some are far gone some of them are almost look like they were just closed yesterday but there's a strange beauty to all of those so there is something beautiful about ruins I mean when I when I tour you when I go to Europe you know we don't have any castles here in America but when I go to Europe I I like to visit castles but I I my preference is always the the room castles the way I can clamor over the rooms and try to imagine the way it was or at least the castles that were fortresses rather than the ones that may be called a castle but they're really like a palace from from Jacob be an aged and and they're full of antique furniture and now that they're there a four-star hotel you know those have their appeals but give me a good ruin any day and site of the infamous moon door many people nightmares I worked very closely with Ted on all of these these was the first art that was done for this book I wanted I wanted accurate versions of these castles we've had a number of different artists draw them on covers and you know on the fantasies like cards and games and some of them have been beautiful images but not necessarily accurate to what I described but I knew what Ted Naismith we were getting one of the great landscape painters of the of the world really and the guy does really great architectural work so he and I worked very closely on these and going back and forth on them until we got them pretty much as I see them in my in my mind sigh this one looks like the King Ludwig castle in Bavaria I definitely definitely inspired by that but would Vic didn't think of the sky cells which is that was that was my own perverse invention this looking at this made me want to ask you if there's one place in all of your books but you would like to live in which one would that be one place that I would like to live in a city or a castle Laura well I mean there are aspects about a number of them that attract me you know I do like cold weather so I actually probably would like Winterfell you know the cold winds never gets too hot there that's good I would like that Casterly Rock has the advantage of having a lots of gold so you could be very very rich living there there the IRA has magnificent views you know down in Dorne you you get great spicy food and great spicy women so that's good you know but ultimately I think I'd like to stay in Santa Fe New Mexico we have like modern medicine and and the NFL on Sunday Illinois after the after the way the Jets played to get me give that up very practical answer okay all right this is the red cape at King's Landing so you will already answered one of my questions which was you know how well these match your own vision of the place now you don't want to talk about the TV show too much but which of the locations to you feel the most true to what you imagined in the TV show well there are locations I mean we're shooting you know in Belfast we're shooting in we shot some in Scotland Belfast in Northern Ireland our main location was also shot in Iceland we're shooting in Spain right now we've done a lot in Croatia we've used Morocco and Malta in past years so there's many many different actual existing locations that that have been used over over the years none of them are exactly what I described in my book but they sure are gorgeous I mean and I think we've probably the best-looking show on television and some of the interior sets are pretty amazing too do you get frustrated when it's not quite what you imagined I would say I wouldn't say frustrating and sometimes it's it's better you know I think like they're their version of the hi whole of the errands with the moon door and the floor is probably better than my moon door which is just a door set in the wall because I didn't think of putting it in the floor that was pretty cool I like you know the the shows Iron Throne has become iconic it's now recognized around the world mmm it's it's numerous people have done parodies you know Mad Magazine has had a version made of toilet plungers and they've shown you know Sports Commissioners of Saturn ones made of baseball bats and they're their actual physical versions of throne is like six of them the United States and three or four Britain and Spain has one and you know these travel around for publicity so I recognise it's a it's a great looking throne and it's has become iconic but it's not really my Iron Throne in this book you'll see my yard we have one of the slides we have coming up not the next one but the one right after that so look at the next one which is of and stone this is yeah dragon stone has been a biggest is it's it's really a unique castle I mean it's a you know some of this is very easy for me as a as a writer to describe yeah but it's it's not necessarily easy for the artist to draw this was probably I think the most over-the-top illustration and left in the book but probably the most accurate to really what's actually described in the in the book and all the versions of Dragonstone I mean Dragonstone is is made by the Valerians who who had dragons and Dragon Fire and and magical means of making stone flow and twist and they could make it into any form that they wanted to and then it would harden in that form so they built these massive structures of not a bricks or stones mortared together but a solid stone shaped by intense fires and and and magic and in the case of Dragonstone like the towers look like great stone dragons and you know the entrances look like the heads of dragged and said you know i allude to this in the book but it's difficult for an orders to capture so a lot of the versions that we've had of Dragonstone over the years have been not not really great and this is one of the best here by philip strong by the way there's the Iron Throne the next one yes get back today is the correct version of the Iron Throne yeah I mean I state repeatedly in the book that the iron stone is you huge they did it towers over the room like a great beast and it's ugly it's asymmetric it it's it was put together by blacksmiths not by craftsmen and experts in furniture manufacturer and you have to walk up iron steps and when a king sits on it he's like 10 feet above everybody else in the hall so he's in this raised position looking down on him and the hall itself is is huge and it's made of the swords enemies the throne the throne is made of this all the swords you know when during Aegon's conquest when people surrendered to them they they set down their sword as a series of submission and of course when he won a battle by burning everybody there were all these burn melted swords lying around so he gathered all of them up and he gave them and said make a throne out of this and that's what they did and it's a it's a sign of dominance and conquest and when you stand before it you're supposed to remember that you know look on my works ye mighty and despair was a little bit of the of the psychology of that but nobody ever got it right I mean there were a comic book versions and there were versions in the card game and then and the board gamer they were versions on the cover and there were versions that were done for conventions you know the very first there was a wooden one that I sat on in 1996 at the at the ABA that looked like the emboss version on the first edition silver book but none of them were ever really right the closest one who ever came was was Marv simonetti two French artists and even his first one wasn't right but it says he was a closest I worked with him and then we got him for this book and he and I went back a half a dozen times to finally get something I could say yeah this is this is absolutely right now of course you can't do this in a TV show it's not something I criticize HBO for or something like that I mean the first have or enormous Li large and cumbersome to move and expensive to build to build this monstrosity would would blow the budget of an entire episode and it wouldn't fit in the set I mean our throne room our throne room is is in the paint hole and belt in Belfast in Northern Ireland now the paint hole is the largest some stage in Europe it was it originally part of the old Harland and Wolff shipyard where they built the Titanic and they painted the ships the holes of the ships in this wall which gives you an idea of the scale of it and we've divided it into a number of pods and our throne room is in one of them and it's a very large set but it's not large enough you would need Saint Paul's Cathedral if they would give us st. Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey to shoot in and a year to build a giant throne like that of that would dominate the entire thing and go half way to the ceiling then you could get the Iron Throne the way it's described in the books but this is the difference between books and television you know I can I can say well that the wall is 700 feet high but I don't actually have the build a 7-foot 150 wall or a giant throne made of made of nasty-looking swords here it's interesting there's actually a terrific speech that Littlefinger gives in in last season where he talks about the iron throne made from a thousand thrones of ngons enemies and then he said I counted them once and really there's only 137 and you know it's the one truth is truth and legend disagree print the legend and it's an interesting speech that's true in the show but it's not true in the books because it really are thousands of swords in the real Iron Throne the the gigantic Iron Throne it sits that sits in King's Landing in the books reminds me a little bit of tamerlane was supposedly made a huge pile of his defeated enemies skull some monument to his greatness and that's what this is always reminded me of it's great to see it that was a tradition among many conquerors the deep pyramid of skulls it's you know one of those things you can always go back to the old are good this is probably more structurally stable okay all right now this is a trial by combat if I am correct between sir Duncan the tall of the Kingsguard and Lord lyonel Baratheon and this is the the character in white sir Duncan is the dunk is the character is the dunk of Duncan again I haven't really told this story yet so so you know we'll get to it eventually in like the 7th or 8th Duncan egg story so he joins the Kingsguard newsflash well we kind of knew we kind of knew that that's reference in the books he's fighting lyonel Baratheon right that's the news flash right in his capacity as the leader of the Kingsguard I see well I'm not initially but eventually there's anything where you want to tell us about that no actually this was one of the hardest things about putting this book together what was the question of how much to tell and how much not to tell because the readers of course want to know everything and I knew some things and you know I'd shared some of them with my my editor and grow and someone with a Leo and Linda but they're things that I wanted to reveal in later books in later novels or like in the case of that in later Duncan egg stories so it was it was like you know I suggested at one point like when we were dealing with one of the big mysteries of the that people want to know a lot about was summer Hall and it's summer summer Hall was a Targaryen secondary castle that was in the sort of the border where the Stormlands and the reach and the Dornish fortress will come together and it was home castle to eggs father in the duncan egg stories and to some other Targaryen princes during a certain period of time but it was destroyed that at a certain point there been references to the book something happened at summerholt something something dark and traumatic and what exactly happened and the readers will want to notice and I know what happened but I don't want to tell the readers yet because I want to reveal that in a later Duncan egg story but how do we get around that because the maester is writing the history and this is a very important event so I suggested that since we're doing this as a mock fact simile that perhaps mr. Yandell could write a detailed account and then accidentally knock over his inkwell and it would be a big blotch on that page when you when you got to that book that was my answer here and actually talked me out of that because she felt that that if we did that a lot of customers would be returning to the book something I got a defective copy there's a big blotch here I'm taking three hundred and fourteen could you give me a copy that has that in you're not gonna actually find out much about summerhall in this book sorry did I tell you we didn't do it a blotch but we got around it another matter but that was unfortunately my reaction to a lot of this stuff at night whoa wait a minute I don't want to reveal that I'm gonna use that in a later Duncan no no you can't tell them that that's a good detail no nobly stood out from the earlier and Linden and ganged up like that you have to tell them some of these things so I did and actually they made up you know they're there there's amazing amount of new material in this book and stories that I made up just for the book and stories that I eventually was going to include the novel and they've still being the novels of the Duncan eight story but if you read this you already know somewhat of what has happened so there's there's lots of new stuff in here but it's those big feelings about telling things like that do what sir Barrett on and the laughing norm but I'll get to eventually we've got a couple of more images that I need to get to the question so let's just go through them quickly this is the the Ironborn long ship at sea by tomash do you know how my dad Drew said yes he's he's he's Eastern European incredible I had a lot of fun with the histories of the Ironborn they're a bunch of colorful bastards yeah they've got a very mysterious past that I found one of the more intriguing parts of this and then here's Aegon again that handsome devil and I think we'll go back to this is by Magana Villanueva and welcome back to the coloring get to some of these questions Magali is by the way doing the next year's Ison fired calendar so she's pretty amazing she's a French artist she does amazing portraits in particular we've been very proud of the the calendars that we've done we had a Michael hallmark Ted Naismith's John Picacho let me see Gary Johnny and assured Donato Giancola hold on the past calendars I love fantasy art I love illustrated books and a chance to do these calendars these are calendars is is you know one that I that I really appreciate that we're trying to make it a arrival to the long run in Tolkien calendar and get gets just some amazing best fantasy artists in the world to do it so my golly is the first woman to do it so we wanted to you know vary that a bit and have her bring a different perspective second French person but the first woman so she's going to do some spectacular work so take keep an eye out for that next next year but meanwhile the the 2015 calendar by Donato is is out and on sale and that one is amazingly gorgeous - okay well these these are some fantastic questions both from this crowd and from tumblr so I I'm gonna go for some of the more manageable manageable ones first from Jeff 2200 3 via tumblr who are your influences for stannis baratheon is he based on anyone from history literature politics to some extent he is inspired by Tiberius Caesar not necessarily did Tiberius Caesar from history but to a great extent by Tiberias Caesar as portrayed by God I'm blanking on the actor's name Baker I believe in I Claudius incredible British TV series I Claudius George Baker I believe it was yes played Tiberius in that and there are significant differences too but that series if you haven't seen I Claudius it's it's one of the great historical television series of all time incredible acting by Sean Philips as Libya and of course Derek Jacobi as Claudius himself and John Hurt is in it as Caligula Brian Blessed as Augustus all of them got an enormous amount of acclaim for their portrayals and deservedly show the writing was also amazing based on the the robert graves book but you know the scripting was was terrific George Baker though was a very important character in the first six or so episodes and he doesn't seem to get the acclaim of the other people got and I think he really should his Tiberius was was terrific so that was at least one inspiration but they're not at all the same character but they do share certain certain characteristics in terms of world building how do you separate culture and ethnicity from religion in your writing and how do you reconcile them that's a big one there's a couple of questions about the religion of Westeros in this stack so it may be that you'll you know that's the kind of abstract question I find it difficult to answer I mean I I don't know how other people write but I don't I don't ever sit down and saying mmm how am I going to separate ethnicity from religion here and this in this thing it's like I'm more okay we just went over a mountain range who lives here what should a religion be what what who can I steal from in history to model them on that I haven't already used you know and and that sort of things so it's it's a different process entirely but I do always try to consider the question of religion which i think is important because religion shapes societies and shapes cultures and shapes values it even in our modern world of course we see conflicts all around the world being driven by religious disputes even even now and of course through history God their religious disputes are legion and the millions of people who have died in the names of that are it's appalling to to think about I was raised Catholic but have long since stopped practicing I suppose I be considered a skeptic now and I just look at religions really are you really gonna kill all these people because a giant invisible guy in the sky told you to and and you're a giant invisible guy this guy is different but but you can't ignore religion in in fantasy I think because it's it's too important in history and the other thing that of course is is worth mentioning about religion is in fantasy is that in most fantasies you have working magic you have magic that demonstrably works which would affect the religious feelings of many people you know even when I was a Catholic and going to catechism and and I was being taught all these Catholic things you know I would sort of say sister uh what why is it did all this walking on water and raising the dead and stuff took place like 2,000 years ago because if it took place now I would be much more convinced if I could see it on television you know and and indeed if I would become the most religious guy in the world if we could actually see someone raising the dead or you know ascending to heaven or or you know doing any of these things we read about in the Bible and and other ancient religious texts and in fantasy that that does happen here where we are seeing in in the red God you know for example in my own books people say well why are the Brotherhood without banners abandoning their own religion that they were raised with the seven to follow Thoros of Myr and the red God well it's partly because they've seen him raised to dead not once but several times that's persuasive so they're thinking well maybe the sky has the right of it here because West dresses are based on a medieval European world it's actually kind of striking how one of the differences is that the medieval European world was so much more saturated with religion then then I think Westeros is whoa which is pretty pretty much there in Westeros it's you know I guess they don't exactly have a pope well but the the faith that of seven doesn't have a pope it's the High Septon but of course we're seeing in the course of the books what's what's happened when you know the high septons who were in when the story begins or the kind of corrupt high septons who like to sit around their palaces and eat chocolates and little little boys you know and what in the in the process of that they have been replaced by the character they call the high Sparrow who is a reforming zealot who has a very different and more fundamentalist attitude toward some of these beliefs and some people like Cersei or discovering you know to her dismay that he can't be treated the same way as the previous corrupt ones so so I'm certainly trying to deal with religion and there's also a lot of material in the world of Ice and Fire and will be even more in the room early on about what happened to the faith when the Targaryen took over and and the conflicts between them and the war between Aegon sons and the faith militant and all of that stuff which leads up to why why things are the way they are in the present day long but you wrote the foreword to maurice druon a cursed king series and cuz there's ourself a fan do you feel you drew any inspiration from Robert of Artois for the character of Gregor cloggin I'm sorry sorry the mountain that rides yeah no of course the king series was certainly an influence on Game of Thrones it's a it's a if you haven't read it it's a terrific series of historical novels written by a French writer named Maurice drawn and it's not fantasy it's strictly historical it relates the you know basically to fall of the Capetian dynasty and the beginnings of the Hundred Years War but it's got some stuff in as it's almost fantasy like you know that the curse of the Templars and the the downfall of Philip affair and all three of his sons and it's got poisonings and impersonations and battles and you know adulterous affairs and all kinds of great stuff all straight from history which is cool and part of one of the secondary subplots does revolve around this this fight between two Lords big cousins actually for this particular province and Robert ortt was one of them and he is a big blustering guy I wouldn't say he was an influence on the mountain that rides though aside from being big as I recall he's described was quite large but he's more like Robert Baratheon and in in some sense he's a big blustering kind of hard drinking hard living sort of man the mountain is a kind of quietly homicidal homicidal sociopath so they're very different okay when do you create the maps before during or after you write the story the the map creation is ongoing you know when I when I began back in 1991 I had probably written like 50 pages I said oh I better create a map so I know where I am maps are necessary to fantasy I think I know some critics occasionally have sort of made mock them up but if you're creating a secondary world really need them because you know when yeah if I'm writing straight historical fiction and my character and Ireland says I must go to France you don't need a map I know where Frances but in my world the third character from winter widow says I must go to dawn you don't know Dorn is the next village or you know or halfway around the world so you better have a map so these things that the characters are saying we make some sense so I created a map and it was you know basically pretty simple but as the story continued I started adding more and more more more places to it and it's ongoing and then of course a couple years ago we did the map book lands that Ice and Fire which involve considerably more map creation because they wanted maps of places you know like this they would like okay George we we want to do this map book here can we well just take the maps that are in the books and we'll blow up and they'll be beautiful poster size oh that that's great that won't take any work for me at all and then when you blow them up to poster size as though you get too cold hey yeah when we we take these maps from the front of the book and we blow them up to poster size it not a blank space can you kind of like invent some rivers and Hills and towns and stuff to put there so I want the detailing that and that was especially cute when you got over to Essos because like you know my map of the Dothraki I see when the time we did the map book it was there was a sheet of white paper and there was a dot in it why is da wreck and a little mountain drawing next to it other of mountains and then Dothraki I see written over a black page so I think I need to you know put a lot more in this one too so there's a lot of might make making there I would guess the answers to that are during and after that's right and more tomorrow I'm sure sort of metaphysical is there any connection between the Lord of Light and the White Walkers in terms of God and the devil no [Laughter] the birth of a dragon seems to be connected to fire and death does birthing a dragon require a human sacrifice interesting notion I mean there are clues and them in the books so you know I think I'm gonna dodge that one right now I the Lord of Light by the way Melisandre is religion there which was referenced in the previous thing again I don't try to do direct things from history but I'm certainly inspired by a lot of real history and the the the religion of Lord of Light is is based in part on on a couple of de duelist religions that actually existed in our world one of them the ZOA assert as or I can never say that so a stream yeah whatever that is yes and the other one the the Cathars were the Alba Jenson's who were destroyed they were Christian heresy that flourished in southern France and a crusade was launched against them and they were ultimately all wiped out in order sometimes called Europe's first genocide the famous famous statement killed them all God will God will sort them out actually dates back to the a virgin scene Crusade when they captured when the Crusaders the Christian Crusaders captain Alba Jensen in the city but only half of the people in it were Alba Jensen's the rest were good Catholics and that one of the people said well how do we they look just like us how do we know who to kill and the commander said and killed them all God will know his own and that's that's straight out of real history but the Cathars were a very strange Hurra see that make fascinating reading because they were they were true duelist I mean Christian has this concept of God and the devil but the devil is definitely you know second place he's not the equal to God he's he's a loser and God permits him to do a little things but in the end there's no doubt who's gonna who's going to come out the Abba Jenson's it was a real duelist system where they thought there's a dark God and there's a light god of light there's a God of good and God of evil and they're at perpetual war and there they are equal and we don't know who's gonna win but the interesting part of it you know they I mean they were a Christian heresy and their belief was that Jesus was actually the son of the the god of light and so thought for he didn't really have a real body that you know here here were they were kind of straying from Orthodox Catholic teaching because the body that we all lives in is a creation of the god of evil and indeed the world that we live in is a creation of the god of evil and it was a fairly persuasive argument especially in the early Middle Ages because they looked around and they said look at this world that you live in where people you know there's no justice there's no peace people come by and kill you and rape your women and burn your crops and the lords can cut off your head at any times and you're gonna get all these horrible diseases and you're gonna sicken and die and and gonna be you know in great pain and women bring forth children and paint what kind of good God would design this world obviously this world has been created by the evil God and the good God is is trying to get us out of it and that was you know the Catholics refuted this argument by killing them all [Laughter] so that makes fascinating reading but that's that's the seed from which the Melisandre is Lord of Light comes that and so or Astra which was similar but but I can't pronounce I will call what is your editing process do you always work with the same editor I know that you do it's an role right yeah and Grohl who I believe is here is has been my editor on this almost since the beginning she it was actually purchased by Bantam by another editor who and Anne was at a different house that tried to purchase it but lost but then the other editor left and came over to the house and wound up being my editor at the place and she's been with me since the beginning and then over in the UK I have Jane Johnson of HarperCollins has been my editor since the beginning and and they're both been great has been terrific to to work with them this person wants to know how much input does she have I don't know how do 17 percent I wait I send her stuff and you know she makes comments and she gives me notes and I revise some things and I don't revise some things and sometimes we have discussions or arguments about it and yeah that's and I get separate notes from Jane too from England so that they're the two editors who weigh in when I deliver a manuscript my and also Elio and Linda I usually send them a copy too but they catch different things but oh this guy's this guy's eyes were a different color or you have a horse here that's change sexes so that one got through I have a transect [Laughter] dear books have any references to the Grateful Dead you call your home Terrapin station and the song direwolf and Cassidy and Dark Star have names and references in the books well I'm certainly a fan of the Grateful Dead I've attended a Grateful Dead concerts and my wife Parris is perhaps even more of a fan of the Grateful Dead and there are a lot of Grateful Dead references in my my famous rock and roll novel the Armageddon rag in fact at one point we were hoping to make a movie of that and and film the the Connell concert scene as a Grateful Dead concerts but of course that came to nothing sad to say and I do have Grateful Dead lyrics always coming around and rattling around in my head ripple is one of my favorite songs of all time there is a road no simple highway but actually in this book I don't know it sounds like hey sir maybe I have to think about that not intentionally not that I can remember how did you decide on the name Hodor um that's not his real name this was just what they call him yeah it's really miss Walder if your name Walder you might want to be cool code or two I don't know you have to keep reading that question and soon this book this particular book reminds this question asker of some Illustrated Bibles I read as a kid were they an inspiration for the design of the world of Ice and Fire no I we had a Illustrated Bible as I recall so I've seen Illustrated Bibles but I actually grew up with illustrated books I love illustrated books I had you know as a kid I had Treasure Island and King Arthur and his knights you know with those amazing NC Wyeth illustrations which I fell in love with him and kids books you know some of the things I had always had some artwork in them too when of course I love comic books I think it's a shame that most contemporary books are not Illustrated that we've fallen out of that and you know since I've become popular enough to sort of get my druthers on some of these I've taken steps to have many of my books illustrated in limited editions a number of these books are have been done by subterranean press and beautifully illustrated editions with tons of black and white interiors and gorgeous covers and and so forth and we have the dunk and egg stories actually we did after this book my next book will be next spring and it'll be called the night of the seven kingdoms and it is a collection of the three published Duncan egg novellas the hedge Knight the sworn sword and a mystery Knight but illustrated by Gary Johnny and Gary did Ice and Fire calendar a couple years ago he's he's done Prince Valiant for years he did the wandering star for bran mac Morin and Solomon Kane gorgeous books if you don't have those and your buddy Howard fan some beautiful books I've ever seen and you know Johnny looks like NC Wyeth returned from the dead and some of his work is just amazing artists so we wanted him to illustrate the Dunkin egg collection and you know our thought was well do a couple color pieces and then like seven or eight interior illustrations that you can do and he read them and and fell in love with them and got back I said well I'll do it but I don't want to do that what I want to do is like a picture for every page and just have this thing absolutely loaded with gorgeous art and so that's what he's been working on for the last year and a half or so so when that comes out that's gonna be amazing illustrated book the night of the Seven Kingdoms be sure to get the hardcover that one it would be worth well worth it what would the sigil and words of house Martin be I don't know I once designed a shield for myself when I was in the early ages of work on this series what the hell did I put on it I think I put references to my some of my previous books on it what would the words be maybe deadlines what deadlines [Applause] [Laughter] is there anything you wrote in the earlier books that you feel back to into a narrative corner there certainly I mad that's overstating it I mean there are certainly mistakes in the earlier books that you know there's that transsexual horse I mentioned then there are some eyes to change color these are these are simple mistakes but they irritate me because I don't want to make any mistakes and also because there are in the books deliberate inconsistencies where I'm using the device of the unreliable narrator or using a point of view structure that they wear to people remember something that happened in very different ways and and may not be remembering it accurately and because the other each other mistakes some of my readers tend to assume that those things are also mistakes when they're not you know they're me being very clever so that's irritating there's there's the there are again it these are all relatively minor things I wouldn't say they backed me into a corner well the introduction of Tyrion where he does like a simple salt over offered door frame and and lands on his feet the first time I meet Jon Snow was probably something I could have left out I've kind of explained it later and done a pretty good job of it I think but it still might have been better just omitted also in that same that same chapter where they're having a feast at Winterfell and the Kings party is there and and all that is from Jon's viewpoint I believe is the viewpoint character in that scene and bran is not mentioned when everybody goes marching forth and so forth and numerous fans have written me letters about you know the deep meaning of why bran is omitted and it's just I sort of forgot about bran when I was writing that chapter I just stay was there I just happened it in John wasn't glancing in his direction and didn't mention him that thing so that's the kind of stuff that you know gets by you but I don't think it's backing you into the corner so yeah I made a little misstep there I stub my toe okay well we need to wind down a bit I just want to I have a question that I'm I was asked to ask you by a friend there's a rumor that when you met with David Benioff and Dan Weiss to talk who are the showrunners of the HPS show to talk about adapting the books there was one question that you asked them yes that's true that's that's not a rumor that's true I asked them an important question that I were to determine how carefully they had they had read the book and that question is who is Jon Snow's mother that was the question yes and I say no more about it okay but yeah you know we had a great meeting at the at the palm restaurant in Los Angeles we met for hours and discussed the books for hours and you know it was it was great but in Hollywood and it's the first time I had met either David and Dan I was I was you know when I the meeting was set up I looked him up in a course and I was already familiar with some of David's works not not quite so much with Dan but I knew their credits and it would certainly seem to be a great meeting but you know in Hollywood just a lot of artists out there so you know you have to you have to be careful so I wanted to you know they they said they read the books and they loved them and I thought I see how carefully they had read the books and they passed with flying colors it's great well thank you to George thank you all [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: 92NY Plus

Views: 2,488,941

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, George R. R. Martin (Author), Literature (Media Genre), The World of Ice and Fire, Laura Miller, Elio Garcia, Linda Antonsson, Game Of Thrones (Award-Winning Work), A Song Of Ice And Fire (Literary Series), Works Based On A Song Of Ice And Fire, Game of Thrones

Id: Vcy-EhkHXnE

Length: 91min 43sec (5503 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 27 2014