House of the Dragon: Season 3

The civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons is in full force, with Rhaenyra Targaryen and Aegon II Targaryen pitted against one another with their armies and dragons. Aegon II is reportedly dead, though his body has not been found, and his brother and heir Aemond has gone to ground with his dragon Vhagar, the sole survivor of the three dragons that conquered the Seven Kingdoms. But Rhaenyra faces new challenges as a massive naval battle erupts and a substantial Hightower army advances from the south-west. With more claimants to the throne waiting and new dragon riders emerging, the war is about to get a lot messier.

House of the Dragons, Game of Thrones's spin-off prequel about how the Targaryens lost their dragons, has been a bit of a mixed bag so far. The first season was excellent, with impressive fidelity to the source material and Paddy Considine's phenomenal performance as King Viserys Targaryen anchoring a well-considered project, possibly the finest season in the franchise since Game of Thrones's mid-point. The second season was, in sharp contrast, an odd, dispirited convulsion of television that didn't seem to know what it wanted to do or how to execute it. The phenomenal Battle of Rook's Rest aside, it was a bizarre slide into mediocrity.

Season 3 comfortably splits the difference. More dynamic character arcs and two massive battle sequences (one at sea) give the season more verve and pace than the second season. Season 3 is also enhanced by the presence of James Norton as Ormund Hightower, a deliciously scheming performance that adds a lot of character to a minor role from the books. Freddie Fox was already a bit of a breath of fresh air as Ser Gwayne Hightower in Season 2, but here he is presented as the only sane man in the room as he has to traipse around half the continent with Criston Cole (a satisfyingly, increasingly unhinged performance by Fabien Frankel) proving that some people just succeed in life by failing upwards. These two actors do a lot to keep the story afloat during its more questionable moments, helped by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth giving a game performance as the young but wise-beyond-his-years Daeron Targaryen. Phia Saban, who has always been great as Helaena Targaryen, is particularly outstanding, elevated from a few lines in the source material to the damaged heart and soul of the green faction.

Elsewhere the cast is replete with fine actors given iffy scripts or not much to do. Olivia Cooke and Emma D'Arcy remain superb actors but here the writers seem at pains not to have them actually hate one another, and instead constantly come up with ways of getting them to hang out. At least that makes more sense this year than the previous season's "let's sneak into the enemy stronghold" mechanic. Matt Smith is also excellent as the rogue prince Daemon, an at-heart honourable man desperately trying to be bad but not quite pulling it off. Early Season 3 has him not doing much but later on he is finally given quality scripts to cut loose with, and as usual nails it. Fortunately, he doesn't spend half the season in a bizarre horror side-story in Harrenhal.

Unfortunately, Ewan Mitchell's Aemond does spend half the season in a bizarre horror side-story in Harrenhal that will cause screams of frustration from viewers. Stop benching your best characters in Harrenhal doing nothing! It also massively detracts from Harrenhal's reputation as a bleak and foreboding place. By the end of Season 3 it feels about as scary as the Addams Family mansion. Deep untold horrors from the pit in the kitchen again? Must be Tuesday.

Other storylines are a mixed bag. The newly-promoted "dragonseeds" have a lot of good plot material, but Sonoya Mizuno's Mysaria has nothing to do except give bad advice but inexplicably still be trusted. Replacing Nettles from the books with Rhaena Targaryen is one of those ideas that isn't completely bad (at least in terms of keeping the cast manageable) but in execution is half-hearted, though it does at least remind us that dragons are very dangerous creatures that can't always be controlled. The northern greybeards led by Roderick Dustin (Tommy Flanagan) are entertaining and fortunately are not overused, but characters like Alysanne Blackwood (Annie Shapero) feel like they've had 80% of their scenes cut as the camera dwells on them and you're trying to remember what they've done that warrants the attention.

Still, at least this time around the season storylines build satisfyingly to their climax at the Battle of Tumbleton, rather than being cut short and left to flap in the wind by a last-minute episode count cut as with Season 2. The shorter, eight-episode count for Season 3 helps provide it focus and cuts short some storylines that I suspect would have been interminable at ten episodes (particularly anything to do with Harrenhal, or more Criston Cole stomping around the woods looking vaguely constipated).

Season 3 of House of the Dragon (***½) improves on the second but doesn't rise to the heights of the first. It is certainly an entertaining season of television with lots of vfx eye candy, great performances and several satisfying storylines, but the show seems to still be rolling around with its safety wheels on, not letting things cut loose with how vicious and vengeance-driven the story in the books could be, and tying itself into pretzel-like knots to explain why it's holding back. Hopefully the show can deliver a stronger run of episodes for its fourth and final run.

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GAME OF THRONES: WAR FOR WESTEROS gets a new trailer

Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, the latest attempt to bring George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire novels and their HBO TV adaptation Game of Thrones to the video game sphere, has received a new trailer.

War for Westeros is a real-time strategy game drawing heavy inspiration from the venerable Battle for Middle-earth series from the mid-2000s. You choose a faction - House Stark, Lannister or Targaryen, or the invading White Walkers - and guide them to victory over a series of battles. Your armies will include cavalry, infantry, archers, siege equipment and more exotic creatures such as giants, wights and, of course, dragons (well, three). The game features multiplayer and a single-player campaign mode, where you apparently choose which area to attack next.

The franchise has had a mixed history with official video game adaptations. Game of Thrones: Genesis was a poorly-received real-time strategy game that has been almost completely forgotten about. Game of Thrones: The Roleplaying Game was a surprisingly decent game (and easily has the best story set in Westeros not written or outlined by Martin himself) but had a horrendous opening couple of hours which put most players off. Game of Thrones: The Telltale Adventure Series was promising but the story devolved in a poor retelling of the main storyline with lower stakes and less-interesting houses.

The franchise has had much better success with fan-made games, such as Westeros: Total War, a mod for Medieval II: Total War, and the mods for Crusader Kings II and III, plus Mount & Blade.

War for Westeros is targeting an early 2027 release window on PC.

Game of Thrones: The Mad King

Winter has ended, and Lady Whent of Harrenhal has called a great tournament to celebrate. The great and the good from the Seven Kingdoms are attending, most notable amongst them Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, the entire Stark family bar their father, and Lord Robert Baratheon, lately come to his seat after the tragic death of his parents at sea. Robert is due to meet his betrothed, Lyanna Stark, the sister of his best friend Eddard, but her attention is divided between the unjust bullying received by her father's bannerman, the young Howland Reed, from some drunken squires, and strange dreams from her childhood that have been given increased vigour at Harrenhal. But plots and counter-plots swirl as the Mad King himself, Aerys II, puts in an unexpected appearance.

One of the more familiar plaudits offered to A Song of Ice and Fire over its three-decade history has been "Shakespearian." Like the Bard, George R.R. Martin drew on Roman and medieval history to inspire his work, and perhaps Richard III and Julius Caesar as well as the more obvious Hamlet and MacBeth were at least rattling around somewhere in Martin's head when sketching his story of warring knights and scheming politicians. It's therefore appropriate that the long-awaited first stage play based on his Westerosi mythos is being staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the Bard's own home town on Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Cynics may fear this is merely the latest in the lengthy franchising of the series whilst it remains incomplete, adding to the miniatures, wargames, cookbooks and mugs though, alas, Game of Thrones: The Flamethrower remains conspicuously absent. But whilst the author has battled the howling winter winds, he has grown adroit at finding collaborators and other ways of giving fans new information about the known world of Westeros and Essos. The World of Ice and Fire gave us much-requested information on the history of the world and its wide breadth, whilst Fire & Blood expanded mightily on the Targaryen reign, giving us striking vignettes and short narratives about the reign of the dragons. But nothing George or his collaborators have created previously are as iconic as this: the story of the great tourney at Harrenhal and the civil war it triggered, known (to the winners) as Robert's Rebellion.

This is the immediate inciting event of the history of A Song of Ice and Fire. It's arguably (and literally!) in the smouldering wreckage of this civil war that the story of Ned Stark, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen is born. Martin himself has been wary of portraying this story directly, feeling it takes away too much mystery from the series itself and also feeling that future revelations in the books would tell us all that we needed to know about these events. But script writer Duncan Macmillan disagreed, instead finding in these events a tragic-comic epic, worth retelling in its own right as well as the immediate prequel to the narrative of the books (and, of course, its TV adaptation, Game of Thrones).

The play is split into two distinct halves. The first is focused on the Great Tourney of Harrenhal in the Year of False Spring itself. Prince Rhaegar Targaryen has cunningly decided to use the tourney as cover to gauge the opinions of the great lords of Westeros on whether his father, the Mad King Aerys, should be removed from power. Unfortunately, most of the great lords have refused to come, instead sending their sons to try to win glory on the tourney field. Rhaegar's hopes are further dashed when the Mad King unexpectedly arrives to behold the tourney himself, his first time outside of the Red Keep, let alone King's Landing, for many a year. Rhaegar's political frustrations are undercut when he meets Lyanna Stark, daughter of Lord Rickard of Winterfell. Both have suffered strange visions and dreams since childhood, one of ice and one of fire. By combining the two, they realise they may hold the key to the future...if Rhaegar can convince himself his dreams are real and prophetic, not the prelude to the same madness that has consumed his father. Things are complicated by Lyanna's betrothal to Robert Baratheon, the only great lord who is present and whom Rhaegar seeks to make an ally, and the presence of Rhaegar's wife Elia Martell, who loves to dabble with politics.

The second, much more episodic, half is more familiar, telling of how the Mad King finally snaps the frail bonds of order in Westeros and triggers full-blown civil war, with half of the realm rising against him and too many of the other half decided to sit at home and see which way the wind blows.

As stage productions go, this can only be described as extremely impressive. The audience sits around a stage that cuts through the seating, meaning action can be happening in several places at the same time (though the audio cues and focus means you can't miss the main action). The stage has several immense props that form from underneath and overhead, such as a heart tree that assembles Volton-like whenever characters seek the wisdom of the old gods, whilst the Iron Throne elevates through the rear of the stage (vaguely like a launch sequence from Thunderbirds) whenever the action moves to the Red Keep. Horses are a mixture of human-powered puppets and props. The Mountain is only depicted by a massive suit of armour moved around by stagehands. During several key battles, literally larger-than-life armoured puppet versions of the characters do battle rather than the real actors. The musical accompaniment is excellent. This isn't a musical but there are several in-universe songs that are beautifully performed.

The acting is also almost uniformly excellent. Special props must go to Harmony Rose-Bremner whose Lyanna Stark carries much of the weight of the production (especially in the first half), whose performance is the right mix of funny, melancholic and romantic. Noah Ritter's Rhaegar is also excellent, but it's Callum Woodhouse as Robert Baratheon who maybe emerges as the most surprising performance, here playing Robert not as a fun-loving young buck but a man haunted by an unspeakable family tragedy who seeks oblivion from his feelings in drinking, and fixates on Lyanna as possibly his salvation from grief, going some way to explain his infatuation with her even decades later despite only a short acquaintance. Michael Shaeffer has the hardest task as the Mad King himself, imbuing Aerys with the charisma of the king he used to be but also the cruelty and dangerous whimsy of the tyrant he has become.

The performances and writing here also demonstrate interesting ideas, such as maybe Eddard Stark's (Michael Abubakar) regard for Robert being driven by his similarity to his brother Brandon (Luke Brady), explaining their closeness whilst also being very different. Elizabeth Ayodele is also intriguing as Elia Martell, here an active player in her husband's schemes but who also has a hard head for politics, whilst not perhaps being as skilled at the game as she thinks, especially when she matches wits against the redoubtable Varys (Hughie O'Donnell).

Sometimes the narrative creaks as the playwright struggles to keep all of Martin's numerous references to the tourney across five large novels and several supporting works straight (Tanisha Spring's fun Ashara Dayne being the object of veneration by half the male cast, it seems). The cast is enormous and couldn't get much bigger without becoming unwieldy, but fans may be surprised not to see Jon Connington, Hoster Tully or Jon Arryn at all, with characters like Catelyn, Tywin and Cersei reduced to not much more than cameos.

Fans may also wonder how canon all of this stuff is, and several clear breaks with the books and TV show may suggest that the answer is "eh, kind of." We know from the books that Daenerys and Jon Snow were born multiple months apart, which is not the case here, whilst the play keeps with the book timeline of having Jaehaerys II split the Unlikely King from the Mad King (the Unlikely goes resolutely unnamed here as well, possibly as a nod to spoilers for HBO watchers). Several scenes split by months or weeks in the text are also combined here for dramatic effect, and the timeline as a whole is left somewhat ambiguous, probably a good thing as there are multiple pregnancies to account for.

The play is almost four hours long, which is a formidable length, and it's impressive the cast and crew maintain their energy levels throughout the whole thing. But the splitting of the narrative in two, each with a different character focus, cleverly keeps up the pacing. There's also an air of slightly off-kilter surrealness to the proceedings, making it feel like we're watching a fever dream or maybe even an in-universe play based on garbled historical records many centuries in Westeros's future. If this is ever adapted for the screen, it feels like Denis Villeneuve and his slightly askew vibes would fit it well.

This is a hugely impressive production, engrossing and technically skilled but centered on the excellent performances playing haunted characters trying to do the right thing, but almost invariably making things worse.

Game of Thrones: The Mad King (**** for newcomers but ***** for hardened fans) is running at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon in the UK, until 5 September. There are apparently tentative plans for a West End run and possibly overseas, but no firm plans have yet been announced.

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A GAME OF THRONES at 30

In May 1996, eager fantasy fans in the UK hit their local bookstore to pick up the seventh and latest Wheel of Time novel in hardcover. Robert Jordan's giga-series ruled the roost in fantasy sales, only beaten in the UK by homegrown legend Terry Pratchett and his Discworld saga (which had two entries in 1996, Pratchett not being one to hang around). But fans picking up the brick-thick tome could also pick up something else: a preview booklet for a new novel arriving later that year. The preview booklet even had a Robert Jordan back cover quote: "A Game of Thrones grabs hold and won't let go!" proclaimed Jordan. "It's brilliant!" he added, possibly redundantly.

Arriving in the first week of August 1996 (release dates being a window rather than a specific date at that point, especially for the first book in a new series by an author who was not a household name), A Game of Thrones was George R.R. Martin's first solo novel for thirteen years. That novel, the supernatural rock and roll story The Armageddon Rag, had sold poorly and had dented Martin's publishing reputation to the point that he couldn't sell his his next planned books and instead took up a career in Hollywood, working on The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast. He did repair his reputation in publishing circles with his short story collection/fixup novel Tuf Voyaging (1986) and then as the editor-in-chief of the Wild Cards shared world anthology series, which started in 1987, but there was a perception that a promising genre novelist had been lost to the silver screen.

They may have been right, for a while, but Martin had grown frustrated with everything he wrote being "too long and too expensive" for the screen and started planning a return to fiction, where length and budget were not (or at least less) of a concern. With Beauty and the Beast finishing in 1990, Martin started work on Avalon, a new novel in the Thousand Worlds science fiction setting of his early work. By summer 1991, work on that novel was coming along well when he was almost forcibly struck by the vision of a young boy watching a man being beheaded in the snow. Martin didn't know what that meant, whether it was a short story or a novella or more, but started writing. More chapters came, and he left Avalon cooling off in a corner of his hard drive (where it presumably remains, the victim of maybe the biggest writing tangent in human history).

What the first chapter of A Game of Thrones looks like on George's WordStar 4.0 word processor. He's written the entire series like this. Writing white-on-black is something that would drive me crazy, making me want to murder every single character I was writing...wait a sec.

Martin's early career can be defined by promising series he started writing only to dry up after a promising first instalment, and he generally needed to get a story down whilst it was white-hot in his mind before it could cool off. As a result, A Song of Ice and Fire was almost strangled at birth when Hollywood called Martin up and offered him the thing he'd been dreaming about for ten years: his own TV show. Martin agreed with alacrity and began working on Doorways, a TV series about a character who can slip between parallel universes. Sets were built, casting was undertaken in Europe and a pilot episode filmed, featuring among its supporting players an unknown actress called Carrie-Ann Moss. By late 1992 or early 1993 ABC had passed on the project and Martin returned to working on what he was now calling A Game of Thrones. Rather than losing the thread of the novel whilst working on the TV pilot, Martin had used the time to solidify some of his ideas.

Martin had by now drawn a map of the vast continent called Westeros where the bulk of the action would take place. Additional action was happening to one character on an even bigger continent to the east, but Martin decided not to map or name that landmass to preserve a sense of mystery. He had also made a key decision on the tone of the story. His initial chapters had not featured any magic at all, and he had toyed with the idea of having no fantastical or supernatural elements of any kind, just a "fake history" in a different world. Martin's friend Phyllis Eisenstein, knowing of Martin's lifelong love of writers like Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock and Tolkien, thought this was limiting and suggested that he "put the dragons in." He took this advice to heart and, not one to do things by thirds, he put three dragons and a multitude of zombies and ice creatures in for good measure. A new prologue incorporating some of these elements followed.

Robert Jordan's copy of A Game of Thrones, signed by George R.R. Martin.

In October 1993, Martin sent the novel's opening thirteen chapters (totalling around 170 pages) out to publishers, alongside a rough outline of what he now considered to be a trilogy called A Song of Ice and Fire. Martin was not a fan of outlines, feeling they inhibited the improvisational urge that gave rise to the best fiction (in this he was similar to Robert Jordan, Terry Pratchett, Stephen King and J.R.R. Tolkien, so was in reasonable company), so cheerfully admitted that the outline would probably bear no resemblance to the actual series as it unfolded, as would very much prove to be the case.

The outline did its job, with publishers in both the USA and UK eager to snap up the series. Epic fantasy was huge business at the time but an epic fantasy from a credible, multi-award-winning genre figure was much rarer. More to the point, the editors who read the early chapters saw immense commercial potential mixed with excellent dialogue, potentially a critical and sales success. If anything, the UK was even more thrilled than the US publishing houses, with Legend Books and HarperCollins getting into a brutal bidding war that ended with Legend's John Jarrold admitting defeat to HarperCollins's Malcolm Edwards after the tactical deployment of a cheque for £450,000 (about £978,000 in today's money) in February 1994.

Martin discovered he may have bitten off more than he'd initially planned to chew (potentially not for the first time). His original estimate of three 700 manuscript page books started to look naive when he soared past 1,000 manuscript pages for the first book and kept going...and going. He took a hard look at the pages he had and chainsawed the book at a dramatically appropriate moment, calling this first coherent chunk A Game of Thrones and sending it off to his publishers, along with his apologetic note that A Song of Ice and Fire would now be four volumes in length.

Someone who was very happy was Robert Jordan, who sent George's editor a letter celebrating the fact that A Song of Ice and Fire would now take as long as it would take, across as many novels as it would take, rather than being artificially restricted to just three books. Jordan's unrepentant enjoyment of A Song of Ice and Fire may be explained by the fact that his original outline for The Wheel of Time was far more heavy metal, balls-out crazy than what the series ended up being, with half-demons invading our world through portals and the main character having sex with almost every female character of note in his quest to save the world, presumably by exercising his prostate. Jordan's editor (also his wife) and publisher asked him to tone it down a bit and write something with a bit wider of an age range, which ended up being commercially the better decision, but Jordan may have felt a little disappointed at not having unleashed his inner keg rager of a writer, whilst George had.

Finally complete (sort of), A Game of Thrones hit shelves in the first week of August 1996, preceded by the aforementioned sampler in May in the UK and, in the USA, by Blood of the Dragon, a novella consisting of all the Daenerys Targaryen chapters arranged into a single story. This novella was published in Asimov's, one of the leading SF magazines of the day, to try to tempt Martin's already-existing SF fanbase into trying his fantasy novel.

These intriguing tactics proved...not really successful. A Game of Thrones launched to a muted reception. Sales were okay, but not stunning. Reviews were decidedly all over the place. As well as Robert Jordan, authors Raymond E. Feist, Katherine Kerr and Anne McCaffrey gave the book glowing reviews and cover quotes, but critical reviews were somewhat less unanimous. SFX Magazine, Britain's biggest-selling SF magazine, was cool at best. The reaction was, after five years of build-up, underwhelming. However, Martin did get some consolation when Blood of the Dragon won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1997, the only literary Hugo the series has won to date (A Storm of Swords made a strong swing for the Best Novel prize in 2001, but was defeated by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire).

But, things slowly got better. The Wheel of Time fanbase, responding to Jordan's exultations about the novel and, with that series entering its longest hiatus (though, at two-and-a-half years until the next novel, perhaps not that bad in retrospect) many decided to check out A Game of Thrones. Arguably the earliest stirrings of the online Song of Ice and Fire discourse came about on Wheel of Time fansites. Some eager fans quickly created their own websites, with early discussion on the Dragonstone site before moving to Westeros.org.

A Game of Thrones came out in paperback and saw a jump in sales, with additional cover quotes joining the party. Thanks to the novel being split off from the larger manuscript, Martin already had a significant head start on the second book, which he now called A Clash of Kings. Martin's original plan had been to release a book a year in the series, but when he turned in A Clash of Kings in early 1998, he was deeply apologetic and some very early grumblings online can be discerned about the lateness of the book (proving that historical irony is definitely a thing). More traditionally, the same thing that had happened to Thrones had happened to this book. Once again, the book had gotten too big to be published in one volume and Martin's trusty literary chainsaw had been deployed, with a third volume called A Storm of Swords introduced to the mix.

At this point Martin decided to at least have a go at writing a new outline, one that has never been made public, and from this he deduced that the series would now consist of six books: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Dance with Dragons, The Winds of Winter and A Time for Wolves (a title he was never happy with, many years later replacing it with A Dream of Spring). He also mounted his first reconnaissance expedition into the lands of Westeros outside of the main series. His colleague Robert Silverberg had called to ask for a short story in the same world for an anthology he was editing called Legends. Martin eagerly agreed, and his story The Hedge Knight, about a young knight and his unusual squire adventuring in the Seven Kingdoms some ninety years before the events of A Game of Thrones, duly appeared in the book alongside new stories in their signature universes from the likes of Pratchett, King, Feist...and inevitably Robert Jordan. It was arguably Jordan's short story New Spring that drove sales of the anthology more than anything else, which led to people reading The Hedge Knight, which led to people buying A Game of Thrones and its newly-minted sequel.

A US first-edition hardcover of A Game of Thrones, retailing for £540 at the 2014 London WorldCon. I can only assume the value has gone up.

The rest is history, both past and present. The series did expand, though thankfully only from six to seven planned novels (touching wood). A tiny TV operation called HBO picked up the screen rights to the books and turned them into the biggest drama show of the entire decade in the 2010s, driving sales of the books to over 100 million (HarperCollins, you'll be happy or, more likely, totally indifferent to know, turned a profit on that advance). The novels would get turned into video games, board games, tabletop roleplaying games, action figures, miniatures, calendars and, most vitally cookery books. An entire ecosystem of websites and YouTube channels dissecting every scrap of the lore and background material would spring up. The TV show would spawn two spin-off shows, both successful, not to mention a stage play and even a book of witticisms (okay, maybe that one was pushing it a bit). The only thing missing is a Game of Thrones-branded flamethrower shaped like a dragon.

The books would get everything but, so far, an ending. Yes, and I know the novelty of this information this will shock readers to the very core of their being, A Song of Ice and Fire is, thirty years on from the release of A Game of Thrones (and fifteen from A Dance with Dragons), incomplete, with five of the planned seven books out and the sixth reportedly sitting on over 1,200 manuscript pages as of last reporting. We'll have to wait and see if the series will be finished. It will have etched its mark into the fabric of fantasy history even if it isn't, but everyone, and George R.R. Martin most of all, will be much happier if the words the series ends on are "THE END" and not "TO BE CONTINUED." 

But it's hard to overstate the positive impact that A Game of Thrones had on the history of fantasy fiction, an impact maybe exceeded only by The Lord of the Rings, Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories, the Harry Potter phenomenon, and Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax's invention of Dungeons & Dragons in the 1970s, and rivalled only by Terry Pratchett's series about a flat planet and Robert Jordan's series about a battle of the sexes played out as a magical metaphor. Authors like Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch and Mark Lawrence would gain traction from playing in a similar sandbox to Martin. Martin would champion younger authors like Daniel Abraham, who (as half of author-unit James S.A. Corey, alongside Martin's former assistant Ty Franck) would go on to write their own successful multi-volume series that would become a popular TV show (The Expanse, in that case). Fantasy would gain a more traction as a serious genre for adults after A Game of Thrones was published.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Royal Shakespeare Company confirms launch of GAME OF THRONES: THE MAD KING for Summer 2026

The Royal Shakespeare Company has confirmed it will debut its production Game of Thrones: The Mad King, based on George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire novels and HBO's Game of Thrones TV series, in June 2026. Tickets will go on sale on 14 April this year.

The Mad King is an immediate prequel to both the novels and TV show. Set fifteen years before the events of the books, the play is set during the great tourney at Harrenhal, where a young Robert Baratheon, his best friend Eddard Stark and Eddard's older brother Brandon and younger sister Lyanna rub shoulders with the likes of Jaime Lannister, Ser Arthur Dayne, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen...and King Aerys II Targaryen, the Mad King, whose increasingly erratic rule threatens the peace of the realm.

The full press release follows:

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) today announces the world premiere of Game of Thrones: The Mad King, a new play based on the novels by George R. R. Martin, adapted by Duncan Macmillan and directed by Dominic Cooke.

Game of Thrones: The Mad King will have its world premiere at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in Summer 2026. Priority booking will go on sale from 14 April 2026 with public booking to be announced in April 2026. For early access, visit rsc.org.uk/join to become an RSC member. More information will be announced later in the year. Full details of the upcoming RSC season will be announced on Thursday 26 February 2026.

Enter the world before.

A long winter thaws in Harrenhal, and spring is promised. At a lavish banquet on the eve of a jousting tournament, lovers meet and revellers speculate about who will contend. But in the shadows, amid growing unease at the blood-thirsty actions of the realm’s merciless Mad King, dissenters from his inner circle anxiously advance a treasonous plot. Far away, the drums of battle sound.

Family bonds, ancient prophecies, and the sacred line of succession will be tested in a dangerous campaign for power. Who will survive? Who will rise?

Wars aren’t won by those with most cause, but whose story’s best told.

Game of Thrones: The Mad King is a sweeping new stage epic from the world of George R. R. Martin, written by Duncan Macmillan and directed by Dominic Cooke. Spanning the final years before the events of the novels, this powerful drama reveals a legendary chapter of Westerosi history.

Come face to face with familiar characters from the houses Targaryen, Stark, Lannister, Baratheon and Martell and witness the events that set the stage for the world’s most critically acclaimed series.

Executive Producer and creator George R. R. Martin said: “When I first wrote Game of Thrones, I never imagined that it would be anything other than a book. It was a place for my imagination to exist without limits. To my great surprise, it was adapted for a series and viewers have been able to enter the world of my imagination through the medium of television. For my work to now be adapted for the stage is something I did not expect but welcome with great enthusiasm and excitement. Theatre offers something unique. A place for mine and the audience’s imagination to meet and hopefully create something magical.

“For me, the RSC was the obvious choice when thinking about putting a Game of Thrones story on the stage. Shakespeare is the greatest name in English literature, and his plays have been a constant source of inspiration to me and my writing. Not only that, he faced similar challenges in how to put a battle on stage, so we are in good company. It will be thrilling to watch the events of this new play unfold in a live environment. Duncan’s masterful script honours the world completely, and I am so excited for both fans of the series, and perhaps people who have never picked up one of my books, to experience this new story in a theatre.”

Adaptor Duncan Macmillan and director Dominic Cooke said: “The play is a prequel, taking place over a decade before the events of Game of Thrones. A long winter has started to thaw and, for the first time in years, all the great houses come together for a tournament - destined to be the greatest of the age. It feels like a new dawn, full of hope and opportunity. But tournaments always have a darker purpose.

“George’s storytelling is Shakespearean in its scale and its themes - dynastic struggle, ambition, rebellion, madness, prophecy, ill-fated love. From the beginning, Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies have been our primary reference for the ambition of this production, so the RSC feels like a natural home.

“It will be thrilling for us to share this new play with audiences, both those that know and love George’s books and HBO’s series, but also audiences who know nothing and want to come and experience something both beautifully intimate and truly epic.”

RSC Co-Artistic directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey said: “When we first read Duncan’s script, it was immediately apparent how this epic cycle of warring families sits in a continuum with Shakespeare’s history cycles. So it feels like an exciting and apposite marriage between the RSC and Game of Thrones universe.

“Stories of power, ambition and the complexities of succession are evergreen - and this adaptation explores the true nature of authority through the lens of young people grappling with inherited identities. The story will have all the epic qualities audiences would expect from Game of Thrones, but ultimately, it has a very human heart.”

Sales of A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE surpass 100 million

It's been a long time coming, but sales of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire sequence, perhaps better known by the name of its TV adaptation, HBO's Game of Thrones, have finally and officially passed the 100 million mark.

The Juniper Books rejacketing of the Song of Ice and Fire series.

The news was buried in The Hollywood Reporter's recent article on Martin, although the main focus was elsewhere (yes, The Winds of Winter still isn't out yet, and yes, the fall-out from Martin's public dissatisfaction with House of the Dragon continues to reverberate).

The series started off a little sluggishly, with A Game of Thrones only doing okay on its first publication in August 1996 (the series turns thirty this year) and it taking until the paperback was released before sales picked up, something Martin attributed to the cover quote from fellow fantasy author Robert Jordan, of Wheel of Time fame. Sales and critical acclaim grew with the release of A Clash of Kings in 1998 and A Storm of Swords in 2000. By the time of the release of A Feast for Crows in 2005, sales of the series had approached or exceeded five million. At least twelve million copies had been sold by the time A Dance with Dragons was published and the Game of Thrones TV series launched, both in 2011.

The immense success of Game of Thrones propelled sales of the novels to insane heights. The books reportedly sold a further nine million copies in the first year of the TV show alone (from 2011 to 2012). Sales hit 70 million in 2016 and are believed to have reached 90 million around the time of the pandemic, coinciding with the - contentious in some parts - conclusion of the TV series. With the franchise off the air and no new novel in the mainline series appearing, sales appear to have slowed, although spin-off books The World of Ice and Fire (2014), A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2015, collecting three earlier-published novellas) and Fire & Blood (2018) all sold extremely well.

Sales of the series appeared to uptick again after House of the Dragon launched to initial success in 2022, and no doubt there has been another sales boost from the successful launch of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms a few weeks ago.

Crossing the 100 million mark puts Martin in rarefied company. In the secondary world/epic fantasy field, he is just behind Sir Terry Pratchett and Robert Jordan, who have both also crossed the 100 million mark in the last few years, though of course J.R.R. Tolkien continues to rule the roost with at least 300 million sales of his various Middle-earth books (and this figure is highly conservative). Stephen King has over 400 million sales, but only around a tenth of those comes from his epic fantasy or at least epic fantasy-adjacent work, the Dark Tower series and Eyes of the Dragon, meaning that Martin may comfortably be the biggest-selling living epic fantasy author (unless you count Harry Potter as epic fantasy, which most don't seem to).

How long he holds onto that crown will be interesting to see. Brandon Sanderson recently passed 50 million books sold, but Sarah J. Maas recently hit 75 million copies sold and is selling books at a staggering rate.

It should also be noted that book sales are famously sluggish in their reporting, with the reporting sometimes trailing the real figures by many years. Martin's actual sales could be a fair bit higher than this number.

If the books continue to generate hit TV shows, we'll likely see a steady increase in sales. Obviously one thing would blast sales through the stratosphere again, but when those winds will blow remains to be seen.

House of the Dragon: Season 2

King Viserys Targaryen has died. He left instructions for his oldest child, Princess Rhaenyra, to inherit the Iron Throne. But Ser Criston Cole, the Kingmaker, has instead crowned his son as Aegon II. The realm is divided with almost half declaring for the Queen on Dragonstone and almost half for Aegon. Banners have been summoned and armies are forming. But this war will be bloody, for both sides are armed with dragons. Some are trying to halt the bloodshed with a negotiation, but others are seeking to profit from the chaos as much as possible. The Dance of the Dragons has begun.

Game of Thrones was the biggest TV show of the 2010s and also, easily, the biggest live-action fantasy television series of all time. The show stumbled hard at the end, though, and left behind a bitter taste for viewers. When HBO announced a prequel spin-off, they knew they would have to work hard to win back the fans disappointed by how Game of Thrones ended.

Against the odds, they succeeded. The first season of House of the Dragon was well-characterised with some great dialogue, brief but impressive action sequences, and some outstanding performances, particularly Paddy Considine's epic turn as King Viserys and Matt Smith as his brother, Prince Daeron, as well as Milly Alcock and Emma D'Arcy as Rhaenyra and Emily Carey and Olivia Cooke as her rival, Alicent. This was all great stuff, and established House of the Dragon as the clear fantasy successor to Game of Thrones, succeeding where Wheel of Time, Rings of Power and The Witcher had, to one extent or another, failed.

The reason for the success appears reasonable: whilst Game of Thrones struggled when it outpaced the books and did not have access to George R.R. Martin's source material any more, House of the Dragon had its entire storyline mapped out in Martin's 2018 tome Fire & Blood, with character motivations and arcs clearly established, and major action setpieces established. With a great cast, some strong writers who'd already established themselves in the first season, and some superb vfx designers (the dragons remain unmatched on the small screen), there was no reason to expect Season 2 to be anything other than a smash hit success.

Which is why it's a bit of a mystery why the second season is such a bizarre mess. Season 2 certainly has some great character moments to match anything in Season 1, some superb action scenes, some phenomenal vfx etc, but the pacing of the season has been hugely thrown off. Much of the season feels sluggish, with too many scenes of characters sitting around talking about the plot (again) rather than getting on with business. There's also a bizarre reluctance to embrace the fact that the war has started and cannot be stopped: Season 1 ended in such a way that should have left nobody in doubt that a full-scale conflict could not be avoided. Season 2, however, spends almost its entire length re-litigating about whether the war is inevitable and maybe there's a way to avoid it etc, which beggars all belief. The writers also seem to have realised that, following the book, they'd never have a scene with Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke verbally sparring ever again, so they introduce a surreal device where the two find ways to sneak into one another's strongholds for occasional hearts-to-hearts. It's genuinely bizarre and does not wreck a sense of disbelief as drive a four-ton truck right through the middle of it.

The writers also decided it was a great idea to have Matt Smith spend most of the season wandering around the "haunted" castle of Harrenhal having weird visions and strange exchanges with the locals. One episode of this might have been interesting, even fun, but when this extends into a third episode you might be wondering this was a good use of resources, such as one of your best and most expensive actors. There's also a bemusing obsession with trying to tie the events of House of the Dragon into those of Game of Thrones, through visions, dreams, prophecies, etc that just makes the show feel less confident in standing on its own two feet.

The season finally perks up with the fourth episode, where all hell breaks loose. The Battle of Rook's Rest is excellent, with a well-choreographed ground battle and a furious aerial engagement. Any fears that HBO's vfx department would not be able to deliver on the promise of dragon-on-dragon ultraviolence are laid to rest here. The battle and its plot ramifications are a major highlight of the season.

Any hope of the season turning the corner and becoming more compelling is quickly dispelled: Daemon continues to mess around at Harrenhal interminably, Rhaenyra and Alicent continue to come up with reasons not to, y'know, get on with the actual the war the story is about, and there's a whole lot of not very much going on . The season is not helped by the late HBO decision to reduce the episode count from ten to eight, with the writers' strike just starting. This meant that the production team couldn't do anything to compact the events into fewer episodes (usually ill-advised, but in this case it would have helped the season tremendously with pacing) and just had to cut off the final two scripts from the run and shunt them into Season 3 instead. This robs Season 2 of any kind of climax, it just stumbles to a halt.

There are other strengths to Season 2. Though he debuted at the end of Season 1 and showed some good promise, The Last Kingdom's Ewan Mitchell really nails the role of Prince Aemond and becomes a great addition to the show. Jefferson Hall's Tyland Lannister is also most entertaining and has more to do this season as a politician and diplomat. The acting throughout remains strong, even if the actors sometimes struggle to sell the more nonsensical plot twists.

Season 2 of House of the Dragon (***) is a deeply odd, dispirited convulsion of television. It retains many of the strengths of the first season, including great acting, vfx and casting, but the pacing and writing are all over the place. There's a lack of firm commitment to the fact this is a war, and despite the source material being complete and eminently filmable, there's a strange tendency to drift away from it at times in favour of contrived, less interesting "TV drama" moments. Game of Thrones and House are both at their very best when they resist being "ordinary TV" and it's odd this season makes such strides to try to become that. The battle sequence in the fourth episode is a huge highlight, though, and hopefully now all this additional scene-setting has been done, Season 3 can just cut loose with business and get the story going at last.

The season is available to watch on HBO and Max (and local equivalents) in much of the world, and Sky Atlantic and Now TV in the UK, alongside physical media releases. A third season of House of the Dragon is currently in production for release in late 2026.

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15 years ago (somehow) I visited Belfast whilst they were filming the GAME OF THRONES pilot

The Internet informs me that (mostly) celebrated medieval fantasy TV show Game of Thrones entered production just over fifteen years ago, despite it clearly actually being twelve minutes ago. Although I was unable to wrangle a set visit, I did get to meet many of the cast and crew at special events hosted by George R.R. Martin for fans in Belfast that week.

On 3 November 2009, he arranged a book signing in Easons Bookstore in Belfast, Northern Ireland, near the main set at the Paint Hall Studios (aka Titanic Studios). Ostensibly this was for his newly-released fantasy anthology Songs of the Dying Earth, a tribute collection to the classic fantasy author Jack Vance (fellow author Matt Hughes was on hand as well), although obviously most fans turned up with copies of the (then) four Song of Ice and Fire volumes in hand.

George R.R. Martin and Matt Hughes, authors in SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH.

Sophie Turner & Alfie Allen

Kit Harington

Ron Donachie & Richard Madden

Maisie Williams & Sophie Turner

Ron Donachie, Alfie Allen, Kit Harington, Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams, Richard Madden & George R.R. Martin

Multiple Game of Thrones actors stopped by and were happy (if slightly bemused) to sign books: Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark), Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), Richard Madden (Robb Stark), Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy), a very tired Kit Harington (Jon Snow) and Ron Donachie (Ser Roderik Cassel). Rory McCann (Sandor Clegane, the Hound) stopped by briefly as well, but alas too quickly for me to snap a picture.

That evening we repaired to McHughes, a bar in the city which had been booked out (for "G.F.F. Martin," apparently). We were joined by Esme Bianco ("Red-Headed Whore," soon to be renamed at George's insistence, "Ros") and several members of the crew, including extras, stunt coordinators and some of the vfx team. One fan even proposed to his girlfriend (she said yes) and George R.R. Martin was proud to announce that Richard Madden had been officially crowned "Best-Dressed Man in Scotland", in absentia because he was obviously filming in Winterfell.

Sophie Turner, Esme Bianco & Maisie Williams

Esme Bianco, Richard Madden & George R.R. Martin

Ron Donachie & George R.R. Martin

George was unusually forthcoming and let us in on some juicy plot info from the upcoming Dance with Dragons, but further revelations were curtailed when Ron Donachie joined us and immediately engaged George in discussion about American football. This was one of GRRM's blog posts come to life.

The main points of discussion were some nervousness, as the pilot was expensive and HBO had not done fantasy before. Everyone agreed the books were great and if they were adapted well, the show could find some success. But I think if you'd told anywhere there that it was going to become The Biggest Show on Television, arguably worldwide, for the next decade, and spawn multiple spin-off projects, I think you'd have been laughed out of the room.

But, of course, that's how it went down, and for the next few years fan gatherings would be held in Belfast to celebrate the show (initially ad hoc but then turning into the more formal TitanCon convention, which ran annually until 2019). The first spin-off show, House of the Dragon, moved production to the Warner Brothers studios at Leavesden, just outside London, but A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has returned to the original production base in Belfast to resume filming there.

It was a great night and a great set of memories to have.

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON and RINGS OF POWER both get second season trailers

HBO and Amazon have dropped the trailers for their forthcoming sophomore seasons of their big fantasy shows at the same time.

Amazon opened proceedings by deploying Hot Elf Sauron:

The first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power can be best-summed as "okay but disappointing." Lots of potential, but mostly unrealised in the final product with some very strange plotting undercutting a killer premise and an apparent lack of trust in Tolkien's original story and timeline that makes you wonder why they bothered in the first place. Still, this might be worth watching for the insane Clark Kentness of nobody recognising Sauron because he's wearing a nice wig.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 hits Amazon on 29 August.

Not to be outdone, HBO dropped the trailer for their second season of Targaryen Royal Rumble a few hours later:

HBO know what their audience likes here: dragons, armies marching, some nice scenery and even some Stark teasing. Nice.

House of the Dragon Season 2 rolls onto the battlefield on 16 June.

HBO eyeing a GAME OF THRONES movie and TV series about Aegon the Conqueror

HBO are reportedly, strongly considering greenlighting another Game of Thrones spin-off/prequel show. This time around they are looking at the possibility of combining a feature film with a TV show about Aegon the Conqueror, the first Targaryen king who united the Seven Kingdoms and forged the Iron Throne.

Aegon the Conqueror and his sister-wives Rhaenys and Visenya. Art by Roman "Amoka" Papsuev.

HBO's attitude to the Game of Thrones franchise has been a bit variable in recent years, with immense satisfaction of the massive commercial success of the final two seasons being undercut by a risible critical reception and heavy criticism of the series finale. The successful launch of the first successor show, House of the Dragon, last year seemed to restore some good cheer, but we then recently heard of the show's second season having its episode count slashed. Meanwhile, talk of further spin-off shows had become muted, amidst rumours that the ongoing complexities of the Warner Brothers/Discovery merger (which had resulted in companion streamer service HBO Max being gutted of almost all its drama material) had even spilled over to impact HBO's biggest success story.

This news seems to suggest that HBO is tilting back to reinforcing its investment in George R.R. Martin's vision. The story of the Conquest is more focused and concentrated than that of the Dance of Dragons, the civil war that unfolds during the events of House of the Dragon, and is more linear, with less preamble. It is a shorter linear story that might appeal to HBO, aware that some viewers had problems following the constantly-skipping timeline of the first season of that show. It could also be told faster, likely to be a relief to fans facing the dispiriting possibility that House of the Dragon might take eight years to produce just four seasons, three of them only consisting of eight episodes apiece.

The show would be based on the same book as House of the Dragon, 2018's Fire and Blood, although notably the Conquest gets far less coverage than the Dance of Dragons, so it would have to be expanded considerably to fuel a two-hour movie and several seasons of television.

Season 2 of House of the Dragon is now in production to air in 2024. HBO is pushing this new project into a fast turnaround but has not yet attached any writers or showrunners.

George R.R. Martin offers further update on THE WINDS OF WINTER, estimates the book is over 75% complete

George R.R. Martin has offered another update on his progress on The Winds of Winter, the sixth and penultimate volume in his A Song of Ice and Fire series (better known these days as "the Game of Thrones books,"), only four months after the last one.

Martin reiterates that the book is going to be significantly longer than the previous two longest novels in the series, A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons. In his previous update, he indicated the book will around 300 manuscript pages longer than either of those volumes, and maybe longer. He also reiterates that at such a size, it may be necessary for the novel to be split into two volumes. However, he wants to finish the book in full before it is split, so the two volumes can be released together or just a few months apart (unlike the split of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, which led to a six-year gap between the two volumes).

Martin also suggests that the book is 75% complete, immediately before saying his estimates are notoriously unreliable. So the book may be significantly more than three-quarters done, although hopefully not less. If we assume that tracks linearly, that means the book might still be two to three years away.