George R. R. Martin is the most in-demand author in the world right now. His popularity exploded after HBO adapted his A Song of Ice and Fire novel series for Game of Thrones, with a prequel show House of The Dragon currently making headlines. The Martinverse is a huge imaginary ecosystem and the prequel series is just a part of it, but exploring even that portion completely needs time and a couple more seasons.
Originally, Martin had plans to include a bit more of the story from Fire & Blood. In a recent interview at Random House Events, Martin told David Anthony Durham, “I don’t know if I should reveal this, maybe I should wait for a Blu-ray or something after the show. But that was not handed down by some muse from ancient Greece. Myself and the other writers had a lot of spirited discussions where to begin.”
“One of the writers wanted to begin it later, essentially with Aemma dying. So skip the Great Council, skip the tournament, a scream sounds out, Aemma is dead. That’s where we begin. So that was one possibility. Another of the writers wanted to begin even later than that, with Viserys dying. So you open, act I, scene I, Viserys [dying souds] and what happens then. There you have to present all that material in flashbacks or dialogue, that becomes challenging too.”
“And the other possibility that we discussed which is actually my favorite possibility but nobody liked it except me. I would have begun it much earlier. I would have begun it like 40 years earlier with an episode I would have called ‘The Heir and Spare’. In which Jaehaerys’ two sons Aemon and Baelon are alive and we see the friendship but also a bit of rivalry. You could have presented all of that stuff but then you would have had 40 more years and you would have even more time jumps and you’d have even more recastings.”
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