Game of Thrones A-Z (6 page)

But, until the success of 
Game of Thrones
 and 
The Lord of
 
the Rings
, fantasy was something in the shadows. As Jackson said himself during a commentary of the film, he doesn’t like magic. Instead, characters take precedence.

Author Martin agreed, saying, ‘If you look at 
The Lord of
 
the Rings
, although Middle Earth is suffused with a great feel of magic, there is very little onstage. Gandalf doesn’t shoot lightning bolts from his fingers. If it’s on every page, then magic loses its magic.’

Another huge fantasy influence was 
The Wheel of Time
 –an epic book series that gave the fantasy literary genre a bolt of energy. It was planned to be only six novels but, as Martin knows only so well, it had to be extended. There will be 14 books in the series, excluding companion and prequel novels. Robert Jordan, real name Jim Rigney, began writing the first instalment in 1984, and it was published six years later.

The reason fans are so obsessed with Martin’s mortality is that Jordan died in 2007 as he was working on the final book. Luckily, he had planned in advance for such a morbid scenario, and had provided extensive notes for another author to finish his work. To read more about fans’ obsession with Martin’s mortality, read the section ‘ 
A Song
 
of Ice and Fire
’.

Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson was assigned the task, and the final book would eventually be made into a trilogy. Selling nearly 50 million copies worldwide, the mammoth book series focuses on the Dark One, the embodiment of pure evil, as he escapes from his prison.

One man learns that he is the Messiah, and must do everything he can, no matter the price, to destroy the Dark One.

Robert Jordan was someone that Martin not only admired but also counted as a friend, saying, ‘He gave me a blurb when my series was starting out, an endorsement for the cover that got me a lot of readers. And his own work really made my series possible. Jordan essentially broke the trilogy template that Tolkien helped set up. He showed us how to do a book that’s bigger than a trilogy. I don’t think my series would’ve been possible without 
The Wheel of
 
Time
being as successful as it was. I’ve always wanted to sprawl, and Jordan, to a great extent, made that possible with his series.’

When Jordan died, Martin wrote the following words on his blog:

The world of high fantasy is poorer today. James Rigney, better known to fantasy readers as Robert Jordan, has passed away. Although he had been fighting amyloidosis for several years, the news of his death still came as a shock to many, including me. He was so optimistic and determined that you had to think that if anyone could beat the disease, it would be him. Jim was a good and gracious man, a pleasure to share a platform or a pint with, and his contributions to modern fantasy were many. His huge, ambitious 
Wheel of Time
 series helped to redefine the genre, and opened many doors for the writers who followed.

He was also unfailingly generous towards other fantasists, always ready to offer them support and encouragement. My own 
Ice & Fire
series might never have found its audience without the cover quote that Jim was so kind as to provide, back when 
A Game of
 
Thrones
 was first published. I will always be grateful to him for that.

G

GARY LIGHTBODY

Gary Lightbody is the lead singer of the British alternative rock band Snow Patrol and is a huge fan of the series. So the singer was delighted when he filmed a small cameo for season three.

Dressed in medieval gear, he took to the band’s Facebook page to share a photo of himself on set. He wrote, ‘So I did my scene this morning for 
Game of Thrones
. I looked like this. Can’t say much, just it’s no pivotal role. Fun!’

The Irish singer regularly hangs out with some of the cast when they film in Belfast and even has Twitter conversations with fans of the show. Gary has been a member of Snow Patrol since 1994, and they have had two massive hit songs: ‘Run’, which was covered by Leona Lewis, whose version reached number one in the UK charts, and ‘Chasing Cars’.

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN

Ironically, George Raymond Richard Martin turned to writing fantasy epics because his imagination was hampered by TV. The television veteran grew frustrated by the constraints, complaining, ‘My scripts were always too long, they were always too expensive. I was always having to cut them. There were too many characters, too many matte paintings. We can’t have all these matte paintings; we can’t have this giant battle scene that you’ve written because we can only afford 12 extras.

‘So when I went back to books, I said, “I don’t care about any of that any more. I’m going to write a story that’s going to be as gigantic a story as I want. I’m going to have hundreds of characters, gigantic battles, magnificent castles and vistas; all the things I couldn’t do in television, I’m going to do in these books, and I hope people like it.” So now here we are doing it for television. But fortunately it’s David and Dan [Benioff and Weiss] who have to figure out all the problems, not me.’

Martin was born in New Jersey on 20 September 1948 in a federal housing project near to the Bayonne docks.

It was clear from a young age that he possessed a wild imagination, selling monster stories to neighbourhood children to earn pennies. After some of his pet turtles died, he penned a tale of a mythical kingdom, where his turtles killed each other to rise to power.

I had a world that was five blocks long,’ he told 
Rolling
 
Stone
 magazine. ‘My house was on First Street and my school was on Fifth Street. But my imagination wanted a world that was much bigger than that. So I would read about distant planets and ancient Rome and Shanghai and Gotham City.’

He devoured superhero comics, particularly the Silver Age Marvel ones, which are credited with adding a sense of realism and a more human perspective than the invulnerable and slightly dull ones that preceded them. The avid collector has a huge comic-book collection, including the first issues of 
Spider-Man
 and 
Fantastic Four
.

After obtaining conscientious objector status to avoid the Vietnam War, he studied journalism, while also continuing to write – eventually carving out a successful career. He was nominated for two prestigious Hugo Awards, although he did not go on to win them. In 1976, he helped organise the first annual Hugo Losers Party.

The surprise failure of 1983’s 
The Armageddon Rag
‘essentially destroyed my career as a novelist at the time’, Martin admitted. ‘Growing up poor as I did, a kid from the projects of Bayonne, New Jersey, I’m always conscious of the way money can go away. Back when I sold 
The Armageddon Rag
, it took me about a year to write and I got $100,000 for it. And when that happened, I said to myself, “I now make $100,000 a year.” And that was a huge mistake. I bought a house and a new car, and then the book failed to sell at all. We had to get a second mortgage, and I thought, “How am I going to make my payments?”’

He turned to TV, which saw him hired to revive 
The
 
Twilight Zone
 and for a new working of classic story 
Beauty
 
and the Beast
, which starred 
Terminator
 actress Linda Hamilton. In 1987, his novella 
Nightflyers
 was adapted into a feature film with the same name.

Talking about his time in Hollywood to the 
Chicago
 
Tribune
, he said, ‘There were things about it I loved, and there were things about it I hated. But what was very good about those five years was that I was part of a writing staff, the writing and producing staff on shows that were actually on the air. I would write a script and we would rewrite it and sometimes there would be fights with the network or the studio or the censors. But in the end, the fight would be resolved and then the show would go before the camera and then a couple of weeks later it would be on the air and millions of people would see it.’

However, it was when he started developing his own series that he began to grow frustrated by the process, adding, ‘And that was the process that I sort of got used to.

But the second five years that I was out there, I had reached the point where I was doing pilots. I was doing feature films. I was doing development. I had an overall deal at Columbia, and you know they call it development hell for a reason. I found myself writing scripts and sometimes working on something for a year or maybe two years and pouring my heart and soul into it, creating good things and then, “No, we’re not going to do that one. No, the other network is doing something similar. Oh, we have another show we like better.” So you’re paid a great deal of money, but four guys in the room are the only people who ever saw it.

‘I decided I just couldn’t do that anymore. It was just too psychologically frustrating. It certainly drove me crazy. And probably the most frustrating was the pilot that got the closest to being done.’

He went on to explain, ‘I did a show called 
Doorways
 that was the only one of my pilots that was actually filmed, and everybody loved it. It was for ABC, and it was going to go on the air; they ordered six backup scripts, which was a huge order for backup scripts then. Then there were personnel changes and some executives left and other executives were promoted, and suddenly we weren’t on the air. And suddenly I was back to square one. And I did a few more pilots and all that, but the failure of 
Doorways
 to get on the air kind of took the heart out of me.’

Martin then explained how this disappointment turned him back to writing books, saying, ‘Books had always been my first love anyway. So at that point I started writing what would eventually be 
A Game of Thrones
.’

GREYJOY REBELLION

Nine years before the beginning of events in 
Game of
 
Thrones
, and six years after the victory of Robert’s Rebellion, a rising led by Balon Greyjoy attempted to break away from the Seven Kingdoms for independence for the Iron Islands.

Greyjoy was unsure about King Robert; he believed he lacked support, and prepared himself for war against the Iron Throne – starting with a surprise attack at Lannisport, burning the Lannister fleet at anchor, and embarking on several smaller raids around the surrounding coastlines.

The counter-attack by Robert was swift and strong.

Supervised by his brother Stannis, his army and resources outnumbered Greyjoy’s – and they significantly hindered the rebellion – destroying the Iron Fleet near Fair Isle.

Robert and Lord Eddard Stark were reunited in battle at Pyke, the main battle of the Greyjoy rebellion. Jorah Mormont was also there that day, and was rewarded with a knighthood for his bravery. Jaime Lannister was there, too, and the battle also featured the iconic image of Thoros of Myr leading the attack with a sword covered in wildfire.

The battle was fierce and long, with the castle eventually being taken by the King and Balon Greyjoy eventually forced to swear loyalty to the Iron Throne. His only surviving son, Theon, was taken into the care of Ned Stark to ensure a rebellion didn’t happen again.

Theon Greyjoy – played by Alfie Allen – is a complicated character. Despite being raised with honour and kindness by Ned, he is still in effect a hostage, and is torn between his new family and the old one that left him behind.

Allen said about the character to 
GQ
 magazine, ‘I don’t think people are going to like him as much as other characters in the show. But that doesn’t matter because as long as you feel sympathy for him, and why he does all these horrible things, then I feel like I’ve achieved what I set out to do. ‘I always set out to do that, really, to make people feel sorry for him and understand why he did what he does.’

He went on to explain the differences between the character in the book and the TV series: ‘In the book it starts out and it seems like he’s almost set out to betray Robb from the start, which doesn’t paint him in a nice light. In the series, we approached it differently, showing all the decisions that lead him down that way and that they’re due to the humiliation and rejection he receives from his family. He’s absolutely desperate for the approval of his father. And I think once he realises that that’s a lost cause, he tries to prove it to himself that he can hold Winterfell, can hold that power and authority, but what he’s really doing is ruling through fear. It’s not the first time that someone’s gone about it that way before. It’s a strong character trait of his that, to be respected, he has to disrespect other people.’ He added, ‘He has love, he has it in his heart, but that means he wants to be loved and he’s never really gotten it.

Ned Stark’s probably put his arm around his shoulder at some point, but he’s never really taught him the right and wrong way of life, and apart from Ned he never really had a role model. That’s where the conflict comes in his mind; this mental torture happens because no one is telling him right from wrong. He’s crying out for someone to tell him what to do, and he never really gets it and that’s why he makes so many brash decisions. If you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big one – you know what I mean?’

H

HAND OF THE KING

By the end of season one, we see two Hands of the King take up the position separately, and both are dead before the final season. It may be a prestigious position, one where you are the chief adviser to the King of the realm, but it is also one that carries the threat of danger.

The official duties are drafting laws and commanding the King’s armies but also maintaining the day-to-day work of the kingdom. But, in reality, it’s about playing games, massaging egos and undertaking constant damage control with the Small Council. As such, the rewards are small but the punishments severe. No wonder one of the sayings that describes the position is: ‘The King eats, and the Hand takes the shit.’

When Robert Baratheon is King, he had two Hands, but obviously not at the same time – Jon Arryn and Lord Eddard Stark.