FIRE AND BLOOD EXCERPT

[Ran]

The completion date is not an error, but simply a detail that was added to the TWoIaF version at George's direction (it's merely confirming a piece of information from Catelyn in ASoIaF). I think I've noted previously that George basically started with his original drafts of all the Targaryen material, as those were in his Wordstar format, but this does mean that some of the edits and corrections made had to be painstakingly made all over again... and in  you may find a couple of things like this where a detail that George added in the worldbook actually slipped through being re-added for whatever reason.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, The Grey Wolf said:

What do the lineages discuss?

Would interest me as well. For the German edition we just have an expanded version (queens and mothers of the kings) of the Targaryen lineage as given in the appendix of AGoT. 

[Euron III Greyjoy]

Just got my copy a day early, going to start reading it soon. 

[Alyssa of House Arryn]

18 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Would interest me as well. For the German edition we just have an expanded version (queens and mothers of the kings) of the Targaryen lineage as given in the appendix of AGoT. 

Are birth dates mentioned?

[Lord Varys]

8 minutes ago, Alyssa of House Arryn said:

Are birth dates mentioned?

Only reigns and birth order. For the German edition, that is. King X is the such and such born son of King/Prince Y and Queen/Princess/Lady Z.

[SFDanny]

2 hours ago, The Grey Wolf said:

What do the lineages discuss?

 

27 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Would interest me as well. For the German edition we just have an expanded version (queens and mothers of the kings) of the Targaryen lineage as given in the appendix of AGoT. 

First two pages are much the same format as the Targaryen Succession in A Game of Thrones. Last two pages are the Targaryen "family tree" much like the layout of the Stark and Lannister lineage in TWoI&F.

No real discussion by the maesters.

[The Grey Wolf]

1 minute ago, SFDanny said:

First two pages are much the same format as the Targaryen Succession in A Game of Thrones. Last two pages are the Targaryen "family tree" much like the layout of the Stark and Lannister lineage in TWoI&F.

No real discussion by the maesters.

Thanks for the info. Is the family tree the same one we saw in the video?

[Bael's Bastard]

A  few questions:

1. Is this work supposed to be entirely in the hand of Gyldayn, without even the slightest edit or compilation by someone such as Yandel?

2. Is there any indication of how long Gyldayn lived after Summerhall? I know that this volume is only up through the regency of Aegon III, and I seem to recall that Fire and Blood as a whole was supposed to be from Aegon I through Aegon V, but is there any indication of Gyldayn having knowledge of/living into the reigns of Jaehaerys II or Aerys II?

[Lord Varys]

9 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

A  few questions:

1. Is this work supposed to be entirely in the hand of Gyldayn, without even the slightest edit or compilation by someone such as Yandel?

Considering that there is no preface or foreword or any such thing the work is entirely Gyldayn. We don't get an in-universe history of the book and the manuscript.

Quote

2. Is there any indication of how long Gyldayn lived after Summerhall? I know that this volume is only up through the regency of Aegon III, and I seem to recall that Fire and Blood as a whole was supposed to be from Aegon I through Aegon V, but is there any indication of Gyldayn having knowledge of/living into the reigns of Jaehaerys II or Aerys II?

We don't learn anything about Gyldayn's life and history in the book, either. If decisions have been made in the in-universe character of Gyldayn then Ran may know something about that.

However, it is quite clear that Gyldayn knows things about the total number of the Targaryen kings as well as Robert's Rebellion specifically.

So chances are that FaB II or III (depending whether there is another split or not) is going to include the reigns of both Jaehaerys II and Aerys II.

I'd imagine a new edition of TWoIaF is no longer going to claim that Gyldayn died shortly after Summerhall. He is more likely to be one of the guys who saw it happen but never talked about it afterwards.

If I had to guess I assume he lived into the first few years of Robert's reign and died as the archmaester of history.

Back at Summerhall he may have been a mere maester, serving Aegon V or whatever royal prince held the castle when it was destroyed (possibly Duncan).

By the way: Got my ebook copy now, too.

[SFDanny]

19 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf said:

Thanks for the info. Is the family tree the same one we saw in the video?

I haven't had time to go over it to compare with what was released in the video, but on the surface it looks the same. Same typeface and format iirc.

[SFDanny]

14 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

A  few questions:

1. Is this work supposed to be entirely in the hand of Gyldayn, without even the slightest edit or compilation by someone such as Yandel?

2. Is there any indication of how long Gyldayn lived after Summerhall? I know that this volume is only up through the regency of Aegon III, and I seem to recall that Fire and Blood as a whole was supposed to be from Aegon I through Aegon V, but is there any indication of Gyldayn having knowledge of/living into the reigns of Jaehaerys II or Aerys II?

1. This looks to be simply Gyldan's work, but of course he quotes other histories and tells you what he thinks of the scholarship and reliability of those other historians.

2. Not that I've seen yet.

[Bael's Bastard]

@Lord Varys and @SFDanny

I don't mean explicit biographical information about Gyldayn's own life, but any statements or comments that betray awareness or knowledge of anything post-Summerhall.

[Lord Varys]

18 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

@Lord Varys and @SFDanny

I don't mean explicit biographical information about Gyldayn's own life, but any statements or comments that betray awareness or knowledge of anything post-Summerhall.

Here is the quote that gives it away:

Quote

Sixteen Targaryens followed Aegon the Dragon to the Iron Throne, before the dynasty was at last toppled in Robert’s Rebellion.

That's from the end of the chapter on Aegon's governance, where Aegon is compared to the other Targaryen kings insofar as his accomplishments are concerned, and Gyldayn concludes that Aegon only 'belongs near the top of that list', indicating that Jaehaerys I was the greatest king in his opinion (and perhaps even some others like Daeron II).

The only king who is mentioned out of order in the book is actually Aegon IV. The Unworthy himself is cited in an obscure footnote on his opinion on how to properly seduce someone...

[Ran]

I have mentioned before one substantial change to TWoIaF due to the book, and since Bael is asking and people have started legally getting a hold of the book, I'll go ahead and say it here: Gyldayn did _not_ die at Summerhall and in fact lived into Robert's reign.

So, to explain this, we need to go back to 2006 when we first planning the book. One issue George had was that he didn't want to reveal too much about events important to ASoIaF's plot, aka the precise events of Robert's Rebellion and a few other things. Our solution, which he liked, was that the book would be written in the voice of a maester with all the imperfect information and knowledge of a maester. We provided reasons for why he might scant aspects of the past history, and why he might be politically motivated to elide details of the rebellion.

We then figured at that point that the bulk of writing would be from us, and George would contribute notes to help flesh out details. But then, since it turns out that he had fewer notes on hand than was expected, that he'd write sidebars. These sidebars would be from some other maester(s). As we all know, the sidebars grew enormously, with Gyldayn being the guy responsible for the Targaryen material.

In fact, there was a brief moment when George contemplated just pulling all the Targaryen material from the world book, when the book became so very long. However, we all agreed after considering it that a book presenting an overview of the history of Westeros can't very well have _nothing_ about the Targaryens. So we sorted it out by proposing that we take Gyldayn as one of Yandel's sources, thereby compressing details, and in the process of doing so we worked out the idea that Gyldayn must not be around, and since we long had George's desire to have the Summerhall information be obscured, it fit naturally to come up with the idea that Gyldayn had been writing up to that point and died very shortly after. The stuff after the Summerhall material would then be Yandel continuing on from other sources.

However, come F&B, George looks at it all, and decides that he wants to keep Gyldayn's voice through the whole project (today's interview with EW explains why: just way easier for him to write in "one voice"). Fair enough! But that means Gyldayn can't have been an archmaester hanging out at Summerhall, so we've had to retcon this.

At some point, a future edition of TWoIaF will be published with a few edits to change up things to fit this. It's not an enormous change for most people, I suppose, since Gyldayn and Yandel as characters are simply not germane to ASoIaF. But it is a change. One that opens up an interesting possibility or two for the future, but we'll have to wait and see about those.

[Bael's Bastard]

4 minutes ago, Ran said:

I have mentioned before one substantial change to TWoIaF due to the book, and since Bael is asking and people have started legally getting a hold of the book, I'll go ahead and say it here: Gyldayn did _not_ die at Summerhall and in fact lived into Robert's reign.

So, to explain this, we need to go back to 2006 when we first planning the book. One issue George had was that he didn't want to reveal too much about events important to ASoIaF's plot, aka the precise events of Robert's Rebellion and a few other things. Our solution, which he liked, was that the book would be written in the voice of a maester with all the imperfect information and knowledge of a maester. We provided reasons for why he might scant aspects of the past history, and why he might be politically motivated to elide details of the rebellion.

We then figured at that point that the bulk of writing would be from us, and George would contribute notes to help flesh out details. But then, since it turns out that he had fewer notes on hand than was expected, that he'd write sidebars. These sidebars would be from some other maester(s). As we all know, the sidebars grew enormously, with Gyldayn being the guy responsible for the Targaryen material.

In fact, there was a brief moment when George contemplated just pulling all the Targaryen material from the world book, when the book became so very long. However, we all agreed after considering it that a book presenting an overview of the history of Westeros can't very well have _nothing_ about the Targaryens. So we sorted it out by proposing that we take Gyldayn as one of Yandel's sources, thereby compressing details, and in the process of doing so we worked out the idea that Gyldayn must not be around, and since we long had George's desire to have the Summerhall information be obscured, it fit naturally to come up with the idea that Gyldayn had been writing up to that point and died very shortly after. The stuff after the Summerhall material would then be Yandel continuing on from other sources.

However, come F&B, George looks at it all, and decides that he wants to keep Gyldayn's voice through the whole project (today's interview with EW explains why: just way easier for him to write in "one voice"). Fair enough! But that means Gyldayn can't have been an archmaester hanging out at Summerhall, so we've had to retcon this.

At some point, a future edition of TWoIaF will be published with a few edits to change up things to fit this. It's not an enormous change for most people, I suppose, since Gyldayn and Yandel as characters are simply not germane to ASoIaF. But it is a change. One that opens up an interesting possibility or two for the future, but we'll have to wait and see about those.

@Ran

Thank you for this explanation. That's very helpful in trying to understand what we are getting with Fire and Blood. With the implication that Gyldayn died shortly after Summerhall, I'd wondered if we were either going to get a Targaryen historyentirely by Gyldayn but short of a couple kings, or a complete Targaryen history mostly by Gyldayn but completed by Yandel. I think it could have worked either way, but I think this is probably for the best. No matter how we look at it, we were always dealing with Fire and Blood having been "lost," whether for forty years, or for ten or fifteen. And the statement that those who survived Summerhall would not speak of it can just as easily be applied to Gyldayn as anyone, so I don't think it creates a difficulty that he lived into Robert's reign.

[Lord Varys]

47 minutes ago, Ran said:

However, come F&B, George looks at it all, and decides that he wants to keep Gyldayn's voice through the whole project (today's interview with EW explains why: just way easier for him to write in "one voice"). Fair enough! But that means Gyldayn can't have been an archmaester hanging out at Summerhall, so we've had to retcon this.

No idea with what retcon you came up with, but as I said earlier a Maester Gyldayn could have served at and survived Summerhall like Aerys and Rhaella and Jaehaerys II did. That is an interesting tidbit that could be saved. He would have just become an archmaester later and lived to write or complete his monumental history on the Targaryens after Aerys II's death. There is not necessarily a reason for him to talk about Summerhall, if it was too painful for him (or whatever other reason influenced him there).

To keep the tantalizing sidebar from Gyldayn about Summerhall in TWoIaF (which I think you should try to do) one could go with a very shaky hand (the man writing about things which greatly trouble him to this day) as well as tears and wet fingers blurring the ink.

One could even go by the idea Gyldayn followed George's example with the Red Wedding when he wrote ASoS - Gyldayn could have written his account of Summerhall last, and if he finished the book only shortly before his death it would also make sense for him to not be able to deliver those last lines in his best handwriting.

But the man could also get a completely different biography, of course. Although I'd prefer as mild a change as possible.

27 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

No matter how we look at it, we were always dealing with Fire and Blood having been "lost," whether for forty years, or for ten or fifteen. And the statement that those who survived Summerhall would not speak of it can just as easily be applied to Gyldayn as anyone, so I don't think it creates a difficulty that he lived into Robert's reign.

I don't think Gyldayn's 'Fire and Blood' has to be lost in-world - it can be lost, and I think there is no need to drop the 'lost history' background from TWoIaF - since Summerhall is not necessarily as much a mystery to the people in-universe than it is to us. And we'll only get more on Summerhall in a Dunk & Egg story, in some references in future novels of the main series, or in another volume of FaB.

In-universe many a character and historian may know essentially everything about Summerhall without ever mentioning or thinking about it. After all, even Alester Florent seemed to know pretty much about it - and we have no indication at this point that he was there or particularly close to anyone being there.

[DMC]

So Amazon tells me my copy should arrive today at 11:00 AM EST, or in a little over 3 hours.  Really pumped!  But, I have a stupid meeting scheduled at the same time.  AND THEN, my brother wants to go see the new Fantastic Beasts movie today.  Which means I'll have to wait, like, six more hours to start reading it.  These crimes against humanity...

[Corvinus85]

I've pre-ordered from my local bookstore, and will pick it up later. That short Jaeherys & Alysanne excerpt on GRRM's not a blog got me really excited, so looking forward to this.

[The Grey Wolf]

My copy should arrive sometime today. Can't wait.

[kissdbyfire]

Bloody iTunes finally had the audiobook available. Ready to go listen.