George RR Martin on the Game of Thrones Prequels

there are some great scenes at ami Aegon's conquest at the beginning of this book as I would I be right in saying you know a sort of you know a version of the Norman conquest of England of 1066 but on dragon back with Dragon Age on the first arriving on balerion the dread I mean it is just amazing is this can I ask one one of the HBO shows and development can you tell us about any of those by the way Blood Moon is wrapped something hey I I can't go on it's probably an HBO agent in there in the auditorium even now I can say as I have said before we we started out with a number of different ideas all of them prequels one show which I've been calling the long night what HBO keeps saying it's not titled yet so the show that's not called the long night yet has just finished filming up in Belfast and is now and and other places not just Belfast Italy as well and Jane Goldman is the writer and the showrunner on that you you've probably been familiar with her work she was the scriptwriter on several of the x-men movies she did kick-ass and she did the the Kingsmen of Kingsman things she she scripted Neil Gaiman Stardust so she's very experienced screenwriter and she's done this story and it is set you know five thousand years in the past of Westeros so way way way before the events of Game of Thrones and that that's the one that is furthest along at the moment and it's in pre-production and right now it's just a pilot but it's got Naomi Watts in it starring it's got miranda Richardson a lot of other very exciting actors and will probably be finally added in the next couple months whether HBO was actually gonna order for the full series of that and meanwhile we have two other pilots that are also in active development at some stage and hopefully in the near future one or both of them will be a greenlit to shoot a pilot and we may get more than one Westeros show on air let's talk about the history of Westeros because this is your latest book it's and you know as I said at the beginning it's a masterpiece of popular history and you can tell how steeped you are in the form because of the the way you've constructed this book tell us why you chose to do this pulling together earlier writings I think on something quite substantial on the history of Westeros why put this together now well you know as I was writing the books I would I would have people think about or refer to things that happened in history occasionally from time to time and it's actually in the novels references to dead kings references to legendary Knights and so forth of the past at a certain point my publishers said we want to publish a concordance we want to publish a world book because you've got all this history in that and again I was to the middle reigning novels I said yeah well that's a great idea I'd love it to test I wanted heavily Illustrated I want lots of gorgeous fantasy on it and I'd love LLL astrayed books I always has since I was a kid reading you know Robin Hood and King Arthur books illustrated by people like Howard Pyle and and C Wyeth gorgeous gorgeous books I cut my teeth on those so I wanted my books done the same way so and I said and and you know I have I have little bits of history in my head that I haven't had an opportunity to put in the books yet it put in the novels yet but I'll include them too as sidebars so we hired Elio Garcia and Linden Thompson who are two of my Buber fans they run the Westeros website which is the oldest and the biggest of the websites devoted to Westeros stones book and they were supposed to organize all the historical references that were already in the novels assemble everything and you know write a rough account of it and then I would go in and I would polish that rough account and then I would put it in these side bars material that had never appeared so we were supposed to have 50,000 words of prose and then the rest would be art or on every page gorgeous art so by the time Elio and Linda had assembled everything we already had seventy thousand words of prose and then I wrote three hundred and fifty thousand words of sidebars my publicist said wait wait we can't we can't do this is this there won't be art at every page we've already spent the whole art budget there'll be art every 20 pages so we ripped out all my sidebars and you know we got the book together it was published a few years ago the world of Ice and Fire for a nice book beautiful but but then I had all these leftover sidebars that were kind of a history of various Targaryen Kings and I could have written more I was only like halfway through writing the sidebars when when I realized how long they were so at a certain point when we realized that Game of Thrones the TV show was winding down but there might be successful TV shows I said to my publishers well we want to we've always been talking about doing this history book which I was calling the Grimm are really on as a play on token should I finish wins first or should I because the groomer early on is almost complete at least up to Aegon the Regency of Aegon the third and it includes material in it that is going to be the basis of some of these successor shows so maybe we should get out first before the shows and they agreed so they said yeah that finish that one and and then go back to winds of winter so I sat down to finish that when I polished all of the material I'd written I expanded a few to sidebars but then I had to write you know that there was particularly King Joe Harris the first Joe Harris the conciliator I'd kind of skipped over him in the sidebars because he was the old king he reigned for 55 years and I just sort of written 55 years of peace and pus prosperity and that was the big hole in this book and I said well I can't just have two sentences on your hair as he ran for 55 years 55 years of peace and prosperity is pretty dull though there must have been something that happened during that and I started inventing all the things that happened during Joe Harris's rain all of his children were men who were trouble in many different ways and conspiracies and you know the roughness when he first took things and what I loved it and I finished all that and I finally got the whole book done - through the Regency of Aegon the third and I'm very pleased with it I it's it's different I know many of you are getting a copy here as while you were here it's it's not a conventional novel it is imaginary history written in the style I'd you've probably read my real influence on this was Thomas because stains for volume history the Plantagenet switch any of you have not read you know go out and find a copy in the used book store it's it's wonderfully written it's full of great great stories most of which academic historians have probably disproved by now but they're still terrific stories and and the Plantagenet for a family that was equally interesting as to the Targaryen they lacked only dragons otherwise otherwise they would be right up there so that was my influence and I tried to do that in this imaginary history book it's Costin is the second best book ever written about the Plantagenets actually one more question here submitted from an audience member aurelie percy i think is the name the second volume of fire and blood won't come out anytime soon so very pessimistic about your output maybe maybe with some justification but could you could you give us an idea of some elements that it will contain we go up to the reign of Aegon the unlucky here what at one of the highlights of the putative next volume of this well I mean that I act I this book on he goes up to the Regency of Aegon and ends when Aegon the third actually reaches mandarin takes control so i have his reign to cover which includes the death of the last dragons although Aegon the third is called the dragon bane there are still three or four dragons kicking around when he takes the crown and there were none by the time he's over so that one thing I was going to cover why and what happens there and some of the troubles and rebellions of his reign and then ultimately his children who are fairly interesting I mean he has ultimately five one of whom is there on the first a young dragon who conquers Dorne and he's a 14 year old Alexander the great kind of hero king figure but he dies young and then his his brother Bay Lord takes over and Baylor is very religious very he's a more of a st. Louis kind of figure little extreme and his religiosity and among other things he imprisons his three sisters in luxurious imprisonment and the red cape the maiden volt but he doesn't like them like walking around court because they tempt him with you know they have breasts and things underneath their clothes and he finds that very disturbing to contemplate so he hides them away so I'll tell their stories and I'll tell Baylor story and then after him well we get a brief a brief reign of Viserys the second and then the serious son Aegon the fourth Aegon the unworthy takes over and he's a very colorful figure himself I obviously drew on Henry the eighth for him you know Henry the Eighth had six wives Aegon the unworthy had nine mistresses and they're all existed my head I know who they all were and what happened to each of them and who was where their head chopped off and who you know had affairs and who did what so there's a lot of cool material that and then you get into the Blackfyre rebellion which were five I've referred to them frequently so I'll get all the details on the Blackfyre rebellion z' and ultimately we'll get up to the the Mad King and Robert's rebellion and that's where I'll draw to a close but what am I going to write it well I got to finish winds of winter first and then probably a Duncan egg and then yeah I don't know I don't know I need I need more hours in the day and I need to be 20 years younger and all of that but I'm tell you you could only write one word at a time so that's what I'm doing

Channel: Aegon Targaryen

Views: 173,058

Keywords: jrr tolkien, blood moon, the long night, fire and blood, stephen king, a dance with dragons, targaryen, pilot, cast, release date, trailer, series, teaser, reaction, season 8, finale, ending, books, winds of winter, the world of ice and fire, david and dan, hbo, empire of ash, aegons conquest

Id: FzHTbkPLWwU

Length: 11min 15sec (675 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2019