Jump to content

FIRE AND BLOOD EXCERPT


Moondancer

Recommended Posts

18 hours 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.

What?!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wait, I’ve got an idea:

given that the “current” version of the world book was edited to flatter the Lannisters....

....say that Gyldayn was such a staunch defender of the truth, with outspoken writings criticizing Tywin for the sack of King’s Landing, that the instant he heard the Lannisters propped up Joffrey on the throne, he FAKED HIS OWN DEATH, as it were.

well, living so isolated in his cell in the citadel, a cloistered academic, he was easy to miss - so all of his fellow Maester who respected him so much just spread the false story that he died long ago.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If Gyldayn is to be able to write the second part of Fire and Blood, including the whole reign of Aerys II, then he should be alive at least at the time of the Rebellion.

It won't be possible for him to be the Grand Maester, since Pycelle held this position from Aegon V to Tommen. Perhaps he could be the Targaryen maester at Dragonstone and fled to exile with Viserys and Dany, writing his book in his last days at Braavos?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Well, after I post that, here's George's last promo video  where he says Gyldayn's work are "crumbling manuscripts".

I'm currently helping move out a retiring professor, she's one of the more prolific researchers on the EU - and also happens to be a packrat so she has plenty of "crumbling manuscripts."  They're only about 40 years old.  Just saying.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, DMC said:

I'm currently helping move out a retiring professor, she's one of the more prolific researchers on the EU - and also happens to be a packrat so she has plenty of "crumbling manuscripts."  They're only about 40 years old.  Just saying.

True, although I'd note is that  Gyldayn seemes to live after Aerys, so his writing on that stuff at least can't be that old... and parchment is a lot more age-resistant than most modern paper, and even late medieval paper was complained about because it lasted "only" two hundred years as opposed to vellum being able to go a 1,000 years. Obviously, maybe George is thinking it was written on some sort of bad paper... guess that could explain it.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Ran said:

True, although I'd note is that  Gyldayn seemes to live after Aerys, so his writing on that stuff at least can't be that old... and parchment is a lot more age-resistant than most modern paper, and even late medieval paper was complained about because it lasted "only" two hundred years as opposed to vellum being able to go a 1,000 years. Obviously, maybe George is thinking it was written on some sort of bad paper... guess that could explain it.

Didn't you try to settle this thing during the editing process? A short preface to FaB by George himself (or Yandel or Gyldayn or whoever else) could have settled this issue. I think pretty much everyone expected there to be something like that to play into the fictional history angle of the book.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As I said earlier, we thought we had settled it, and then George threw out this crumbling parchment thing which confuses me.

Eh, probably just his way of trying to say it was obscure and not accessible, rather than literally so old as to be crumbling. But I guess I'll have to check again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, but did nobody actually try to introduce an explanation into FaB proper. I mean, it is good that you guys correct TWoIaF, but that doesn't mean anybody who has the book is buying a new copy for that, or that people who have FaB care to also buy TWoIaF.

This whole fictional history context thing should have been mentioned in some foreword thing. George even has an epilogue in AKotSK where he says something about the series and its future, etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/27/2018 at 6:49 PM, King Aegon I Targaryen said:

I don't know how much we can trust the information provided by this Archmaester, but I'm already loving this Alaric Stark.  xD

Ditto. You've got to love that ole grumpy man. Made me laugh so much.:D

I'm tempted to buy the book just to read about him. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Adaneth said:

Ditto. You've got to love that ole grumpy man. Made me laugh so much.:D

I'm tempted to buy the book just to read about him. 

Then go along. There is more about him in there. But it is not just him, Cregan Stark is cool, too. There is even a looong, tantalizing, Mushroom-based romance dialogue in there, one of the longest conversations 'recorded' in the book.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Lord Varys said:

Then go along. There is more about him in there. But it is not just him, Cregan Stark is cool, too. There is even a looong, tantalizing, Mushroom-based romance dialogue in there, one of the longest conversations 'recorded' in the book.

You're a temptation, Lord Varys. ;)

I normally do not like to read other "side" materials before the "main story". But I'm seriously thinking to break that rule with this one. The informations you gave seems good enough for me. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, Adaneth said:

You're a temptation, Lord Varys. ;)

I normally do not like to read other "side" materials before the "main story". But I'm seriously thinking to break that rule with this one. The informations you gave seems good enough for me. 

Oh, don't you have read all the books yet? It doesn't matter, though, since that all take place before the main series. There are no spoilers. And it gives you a pretty good - or perhaps even better - feeling of the world as such as if you read only the novels.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, don't you have read all the books yet? It doesn't matter, though, since that all take place before the main series. There are no spoilers. And it gives you a pretty good - or perhaps even better - feeling of the world as such as if you read only the novels.

Oh yes, I've read all 5 books. I meant the whole series, when it is finished and published. lol

It's like when you read about an event, a story, and then you go on to expand. That's how I like to read these books. But yeah, if this isn't connected much with ASOIAF, I might give it a try.

The illustrations seems good as well, and I do love art work. Strangely enough, I read a review on Amazon, and it seems that the italian version doesn't have them. Ugh!:huh:

I buy them in english anyway, but I thought that was weird. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Ran said:

As I said earlier, we thought we had settled it, and then George threw out this crumbling parchment thing which confuses me.

Eh, probably just his way of trying to say it was obscure and not accessible, rather than literally so old as to be crumbling. But I guess I'll have to check again.

Maybe he was referring to the primary sources Gyldayn was working from?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...