"Semi-canon sources"

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

It's probably too small a question to have its own topic so sorry about this, but the wiki often says, "According to semi-canon sources..." What are these sources?

[protar]

I always assumed they were things like interviews or tidbits on Martin's site. Things that he's confirmed but that aren't directly stated in the books. I'm not sure though so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong anyone.

[Scafloc]

A statement should be followed by a reference from where it was taken. Usually it is the books themselves (canon). Information from the heraldy page here is usually called semi canon because Ran and Linda have regular contact with Martin.

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

Ok. Thanks for the responses.

[Werthead]

Full-canon: the ASoIaF novels and the Dunk & Egg novellas.

Semi-canon: preview chapters from the next book, The World of Ice and Fire, The Lands of Ice and Fire, GRRM-originated info in the heraldry section of this website (plus interviews and reports from signings/readings) and in the Game of Thrones RPG from Guardians of Order (the pen-and-paper game from 2005, which GRRM provided some information for, some of which has been supersceded by full-canon information).

Non-canon: the TV show (the TV show and books are separate canons and continuities), the computer games, anything that does not come from GRRM.

'Semi-canon' means that it's canon but not finalised, and can be altered, adjusted or changed by GRRM in the final novels themselves. Lots of this stuff is unlikely to change (I doubt GRRM is going to sit down and redesign every single one of the 300+ heraldry sigils in the Citadel) but cannot be taken as 100% accurate until the series is finished. Most of the stuff in The World of Ice and Fire will likely be fully canon as well, but GRRM has already added the caveat that the info in the book is from the POV of the Maesters of the Citadel, and they might be wrong about certain likes (the Lands of Ice and Fire is from the same POV, so stuff particularly far away from Westeros is not entirely reliable).

[Scafloc]

Most of the stuff in The World of Ice and Fire will likely be fully canon as well, but GRRM has already added the caveat that the info in the book is from the POV of the Maesters of the Citadel, and they might be wrong about certain likes (the Lands of Ice and Fire is from the same POV, so stuff particularly far away from Westeros is not entirely reliable).

This is called an unreliable narrator. It is a style and has nothing to do with something being canon or not. As was already pointed out Edric Dayne says against Arya that Jon's mother is a Dayne servant called Wylla. While Edric's statement may turned out to be incorrect it is definately canon (that he said what he said). He just may be wrong.

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

Thanks Werthead.

[Ran]

I've revised Referencing and Canon when I realized that what we had was both incomplete and unnecessarily complicated.

Originally there were going to be three levels of canon: P-canon (primary), S-canon (Secondary), T-canon (I think that was either to cover the TV show canon or perhaps meant Tertiary canon). But we basically never used it, and the television show continuity is quite thoroughly ignored (as it should be) outside of TV-specific sub-sections. So I've simply given us two layers of canon: Canon (stuff published by George) and Semi-canon (stuff known to be from George but not set in stone due to being unpublished, or published in works that aren't his own)