GAME OF THRONES author George R. R. Martin fact checks media outlets on the Game of Thrones’s prequel setting.
So rumor had it that the HBO Game of Thrones prequel, tentatively named The Long Night, was set to be around 10,000 years before the events of Game of Thrones. But now author George R.R. Martin has corrected the number to be more like 5,000 years before A Song of Ice and Fire, so only half the amount of years stated before.
Still, that’s pretty far back and long before King’s Landing or the Iron Throne. In the prequel, we’ll get to see the inkling of what is to become the beginning of the Targaryen legacy.
“it’s closer to 5,000 years … but you’re right. Westeros is a very different place. There’s no King’s Landing. There’s no Iron Throne. There are no Targaryens — Valyria has hardly begun to rise yet with its dragons and the great empire that it built. We’re dealing with a different and older world and hopefully that will be part of the fun of the series.”
Fun piece of trivia: Martin’s original idea for Game of Thrones was actually a fantasy world without any dragons.
Hard to believe now but Martin told EW in his recent interview that he “did consider in the very early stages not having the dragons in there” and instead simply wanted the Targaryen’s symbol to be the dragons.
I did play with the notion that maybe it was like a psionic power, that it was pyrokinesis — that they could conjure up flames with their minds. […] My friend and fellow fantasy writer Phyllis Eisenstein actually was the one who convinced me to put the dragons in.”
If The Long Night gets greenlit to series, it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with, since it does take place in an era where dragons had yet to exist… at least to the people of Valyria. But dragons are cool, and when people think of Game of Thrones, they think dragons. So, who knows, it’s possible somehow one might be snuck into the show.
The prequel pilot currently stars Naomi Watts and will follow the world’s descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour.
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