Game of Thrones A-Z (9 page)

He also had problems with another of Tully’s children – drunkenly bedding Catelyn’s sister and impregnating her.

However, Hoster Tully demanded that Lysa drink moon tea to abort the child because Littlefinger’s family has such a lowly status.

He was banished from the Riverrun family, but Lysa continues a relationship with him, and, when she marries Lord Jon Arryn, the Hand to King Robert, she manages to ensure Littlefinger a customs job at the port city Gulltown. Having impressed many people with his considerable finance skills, he is named Master of Coin in King’s Landing, and he buys many brothels in the area.

SPOILER:
It was discovered that Littlefinger manipulated Lysa to poison her husband after he found out that he was set to tell the King that his children weren’t his and that, in fact, his wife’s brother had fathered them. Lysa was led to believe her husband was sending her young son away to be fostered, and so she murdered him. She was further manipulated by Littlefinger, who convinced her to write a letter to her sister claiming that the Lannisters were involved in Jon’s death. It’s this letter that sends Ned Stark to King’s Landing, and sparks a chain of events at the beginning of the series leading to the death of King Robert and the war that engulfs the Seven Kingdoms. He is also the one that leads Ned Stark to his death, after betraying him following King Robert’s death. Littlefinger thwarts a plot to whisk Sansa Stark away from King’s Landing by informing Tywin of the plan. The elder Lannister then weds her to Tyrion to keep her there.

Because of his newfound status as a High Lord due to his work during the beginning of Joffrey’s reign, Littlefinger is assigned to woo and marry Lysa Tully in an attempt to win over the neutral Vale of Arryn. Given his romantic dalliances with Lysa in the past, Littlefinger sees it as an easy task. However, he stays close to King’s Landing, having plotted the death of Joffrey. Sansa is taken to him following the King’s death from a poison called The Strangler, and informs him that she is free from the Lannisters. He dyes her hair and she takes on a new identity – that of his bastard daughter Alayne Stone. Littlefinger ends up marrying Lysa, but she grows jealous of his affection towards Sansa/Alayne and tries to kill her. However, Littlefinger stops Lysa, and after an argument he tells her he has only loved one woman, her sister Catelyn. He then shoves her out of the Moon Door and pins the blame on Marillion the singer.

He reveals to Sansa that the Seven Kingdoms is coming to ruin faster than he could have thought thanks to Cersei’s doomed leadership at King’s Landing.

In 2009, Aidan Gillen was told by a journalist that he appeared in two of the most iconic shows ever made –
Queer as Folk
 and 
The Wire
. ‘Well, I did go out of my way to find those sorts of parts and those sorts of series,’ he said.

‘And for me that is still a mandate.’

And he added a third to his CV, after it was announced in 2010 that he was cast as Lord Petyr Baelish, or Littlefinger.

His name had been mentioned several times to play the slippery character and the casting news was met with joy by fans of the books.

Gillen noted, ‘I did audition for it, as I do for probably about 50 per cent or maybe less of the things I end up doing. I’m not very good at auditions, but, if there’s something I really want like 
Game of Thrones
, that I may not necessarily be top of the list for, I’ll do what I can to convince them to cast me. I wasn’t really aware of the fan favourite thing, although someone did point it out to me after I’d been cast. So if that had any influence, and I know producers now actually, particularly on a project like that, do listen to the fans, thanks for that.’

Gillen first came to attention with his breakthrough role as the charismatic Stuart in the UK version of 
Queer as
 
Folk
, before starring in HBO’s 
The Wire
 as plucky political schemer Mayor Carcetti.

‘It seems to me that most characters, in anything, are flawed in some way, just like most people,’ he said. ‘You look for the good in the flawed people and vice versa, and then try and make them appealing in some way. It’s always more interesting to take on someone that’s going to have hidden sides or a fatal flaw, because there’s going to be more to play with – more conflict, internally or in and around them – but it’s probably the thing of finding the positive in there. ‘I like the wide scope of the show, that there are so many strands in play – I like that it’s tough, sad and funny. And that it’s all rooted in real human experience with something like magic now starting to filter in. It’s been earned and so can be believed.’

Speaking before the start of series two, he revealed, ‘I’m actually trying to get out of playing villains now – maybe signing up for six seasons as Littlefinger goes against that, but I don’t see him as a villain, more a brilliant strategist and survivor in a cut-throat world. There’s some strong new characters, Robert’s brother, Stannis, being a very obvious one to note. We see Littlefinger branch out and go on some travels, too, and it’s nice to get out of the house. I have some dealings with Tyrion – he’s really dominating the scene in King’s Landing now. There’s always a lot going on and there’s no rush to pair everyone up with everyone.

Having worked on 
The Wire
, I know the merits of playing the long game. It’s more interesting, not patronising.’

Costume designer Michele Clapton said about his costume, ‘It’s also interesting to look at Littlefinger’s journey; he started off very much as a courtier, he was always very organised with his little chain and his notebook, and then suddenly he actually stopped wearing the mantle. He had just little glimpses of turquoise beneath his costume and the slit was cut slightly higher. Slowly you realise he ran brothels. His costumes, just slowly, became a little richer.’

LOCATIONS

Rugged lands and squalid harbours in an ancient medieval world; sunnier, majestic climates and a freezing landscape masquerading as the country Beyond the Wall were just some of the locations needed to bring Martin’s written world to life. Weiss and Benioff faced a puzzling task in how to pull this off.

There were two options. They could film it in a studio with set backdrops masquerading as different lands, which would be a cheaper alternative but would look exactly that – cheap. The world that Martin created was lavished with so much detail it needed to feel real, which meant they had to go for option two – the filming would need to be done in several locations around the world, posing a headache for HBO as they attempted to keep control of a production that would be split around the globe.

In 2009, it was confirmed that the series would be shot in Northern Ireland, with the area’s First Minister Peter Robinson, announcing, ‘This is the first time that a TV production of such vast size and scale has been filmed in Northern Ireland. The announcement comes following the visit by the Deputy First Minister and I to Los Angeles in March. It will be a welcome boost to the production sector, helping develop the industry here and bringing employment and investment to Northern Ireland. HBO is a recognised worldwide brand, with their programmes broadcast in over 150 countries. Securing this project over a number of competitors is a major coup for Northern Ireland. HBO has an enviable reputation for offering very high-quality, original programming, receiving critical acclaim for its productions, including 
Sex and the City
, 
Six Feet Under
,
Band of Brothers
 and, of course, 
The Sopranos
.’

The main filming for seasons one and two took place at the Paint Hall Studios in Belfast. They also exploited the rugged scenery of Ireland to double for the many scenes in the North and other locations around Westeros.

‘We’ve been able to find an incredible variety of locations,’ Frank Doelger, one of the executive producers of the series, told UTV. ‘The weather is definitely a challenge, but I have to let you know that we’ve been rained out in Malta, we’ve been rained out in Croatia, we’ve been snowed out in Iceland. So all the other areas that we’ve gone to have been challenging as well.’

Sandy Brae, in the Mourne Mountains, stood in for Vaes Dothrak, a city where the Dothraki enter. County Down’s Castle Ward was used for the courtyard scenes of Ned Stark’s ancestral home, and is the location for the first meeting we see between King Robert and Ned and his family. Saintfield Estates also doubles up as Winterfell’s godswood. Tollymore Forest was used extensively in the first part of the pilot, with the dead children, and when Ned finds the direwolves. Cairncastle in County Antrim is where Ned beheads the deserter. In season two, they needed to find a location for the Iron Islands – home to the seafaring Greyjoys – and they chose Lordsport Harbour.

The show’s location manager, Robert Boake, said, ‘Because our story reached out toward seagoing adventures and featured the Iron Islands and Pyke, [we] needed something brand new and spectacular.’

Malta’s Mdina doubled up for the King’s Landing – the capital city of the Seven Kingdoms. The huge medieval city stands impressive on a hill but is an inland city, which is not how it is described in the books, and they were limited to interior shots such as side streets.

Fort Manoel nearby doubled up as the Great Sept of Baelor. Island of Gozo’s The Azure Window was used for Daenerys Targaryen’s wedding to Khal Drogo.

Shooting in Malta lasted six weeks, but was marred because of an environmental fiasco when construction sand was thrown over the rocks at Gozo’s Dwejra – with the local production company fined €86,500 and ordered to pay the cost of cleaning up the mess.

King’s Landing and the Red Keep moved to Croatia in season two to capitalise on, according to Weiss, a ‘full-on, immaculately preserved medieval walled city that actually looks uncannily like King’s Landing’.

‘That was in and of itself such an amazing find,’ Weiss stated, with Benioff adding, ‘King’s Landing might be the single most important location in the entire show, and it has to look right.’

The Island of Lokrum just off the coast of Dubrovnik doubled for the City of Qarth, with a set built at the Dubac quarry for the gates of the city that Daenerys visits in season two.

Filming in Croatia began in September 2011, and the Maltese officials understandably sought answers for the production team’s decision to move. HBO moved fast to explain the switch had nothing to do with the Dwejra sand saga, saying, ‘We are shooting different scenes for the second series and Croatia was able to offer us the look we needed for those additional locations.’

The Malta Film Commission said, ‘We were pursuing that line of thought and trying to contact the production to find out why it did not return to Malta. Once a production chooses Malta, 50 per cent of the job is done but the other half is proving it was the right choice. No repeat business does not necessarily translate into a bad experience but we would still have questioned why the production did not come back.’

With season two showing more of the dangers that lie Beyond the Wall, they chose Iceland to replicate the savage land that is the home of the wildings and White Walkers – with the Svinafellsjokull calving glacier in Skaftafell bearing the brunt of filming, followed by shooting near Smyrlabjorg and Vik on Hofdabrekkuheidi.

Line producer Chris Newman said, ‘In season one, we had places we could snow up with artificial snow, but north of the Wall in season two when Jon Snow goes to the Frostfangs demanded a bigger landscape.’

‘We always knew we wanted something shatteringly beautiful and barren and brutal for this part of Jon’s journey, because he’s in the true North now,’ added Benioff. ‘It’s all real. It’s all in camera. We’re not doing anything in postproduction to add mountains or snow or anything.’

Kit Harington said about filming in Iceland, a place he visited when he was younger, ‘I swore I’d go back. It’s one of those places that I went to as a teenager and all I really wanted to do was chase skirt, but it shocked us how beautiful it was. We spent the whole time gawking at the landscapes.

‘It’s like landing on the moon. It’s like landing on an alien landscape. There’s no trees; it’s very barren. That’s the first thing you reckon with – it feels very moon-like. It’s strange. It’s a country of extremes. It’s got these huge glaciers sticking out of very flat lands. It’s stunning to behold, definitely.’

There was a setback to filming in Croatia in series three, with concern over securing the funds from the Croatian that would enable HBO to film there. However, everything fell into place, and filming in Croatia went ahead.

M

MAD KING

While the latter parts of his reign would see him dubbed the Mad King, or Aerys the Mad, he was known as Aerys II Targaryen – the 17th and final member of the Targaryen dynasty to sit upon the Iron Throne.

His initial reign saw great promise, making sweeping changes to the court at King’s Landing. He felt it had been filled with stuffy old men, and needed more youth and vigour – and appointed the young ruthless Lord Tywin Lannister as the King’s Hand.

It was a peaceful reign for 12 years, but things began to sour after the King heard rumours that Tywin had boasted that he was really the King. Aerys began to distance himself from his Hand, solving more problems by himself, and he even rejects a Tywin’s proposal that his daughter Cersei should marry Aerys’ son, Rhaegar.

Aerys was abducted and held prisoner for several months by a rebellious lord, and after his release he was never the same again – and his paranoia and insanity began to grow. After the abduction, he distrusted Tywin, Rhaegar and his wife, and appointed Lord Varys as Master of Whispers after hearing about his talents. He also developed a huge obsession with the incredibly flammable substance wildfire, stocking huge amounts and eventually burying them beneath the city with the plan to destroy King’s Landing if his reign was to come to an end.

Aerys was becoming a harsh and cruel King, dishing out vindictive punishments, including burning Ned Stark’s dad alive, and concocting a device that saw Ned’s brother Brandon be strangled the more he struggled and tried to free his father.