Fire and blood Volume...3???

[Ser Uncle P]

Just finished re- reading FAB volume 1. I'm wondering how will Martin properly cram the events from Aegon III's maturity to the Mad King in just one more volume? 

The extinction of the dragons, wars of Daeron I, religious mania of Baelor, the role of Viserys in providing stability, and the attempts to hatch the eggs could easily take up half a book, if Gyldayn expounds on them.  

The marriage of Dorne into the realm, folly of Aegon IV and the Blackfyres vs Bloodraven is worth several chapters. 

Martin surprised most of us by focusing on the post Dance regency, so don't be surprised if he expands on something previously obscure like the mechanical  dragons of Aegon IV or the ordeal of Baelor's sister wives. 

 

Mark my words, it'll need a third or fourth volume...

[Lord Varys]

I say FaB II should cover Aegon III to the Great Spring Sickness, allowing him to write and publish that one before he finished all the Dunk & Egg stories. Else, we would get a lot of information that would be considered spoilers for them in the second volume.

Definitely agree that the Conquest of Dorne, Baelor's reign, the Unworthy, and the Blackfyre Rebellion warrant a very detailed coverage.

But Aegon III's reign, too. George created a lot of interesting and memorable characters in the Dance and the Regency material, and we sure all want to know what Oakenfist and Baela, Rhaena (and eventually Garmund) - these are essentially secondary main characters now -, their children and grandchildren, Cregan and Aly, Rickon and the girls, the Tully brothers, Bloody Ben, Unwin Peake, Alys Rivers and her son, etc. do in the years to come.

It wouldn't do to just summarize all that in a couple of dozen pages and that race through the later reigns.

And by the way - I'd also like to read a FaB IV written a century or so after the conclusion of ASoIaF to learn about the future lives of the characters who survive the series, especially the children.

How Sansa, Arya, Jon, Bran, Dany, Rickon, etc. act in middle or old age - if they grow to old age - would be very interesting. In a sense, it is pretty unpleasant to leave any of them before they grew to the age of fifteen or twenty.

[Ser Uncle P]

34 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

 

And by the way - I'd also like to read a FaB IV written a century or so after the conclusion of ASoIaF to learn about the future lives of the characters who survive the series, especially the children.

How Sansa, Arya, Jon, Bran, Dany, Rickon, etc. act in middle or old age - if they grow to old age - would be very interesting. In a sense, it is pretty unpleasant to leave any of them before they grew to the age of fifteen or twenty.

As long as Martin doesn't use FAB narrations in place of finishing actual ASOIAF Novels...;)

Would be funny if he used a FAB volume focusing on GOT era, mentioning the major divergences in the show as rumours springing from a deviant, Mushroom style shit stirrer!!

 

 

[Euron III Greyjoy]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

And by the way - I'd also like to read a FaB IV written a century or so after the conclusion of ASoIaF to learn about the future lives of the characters who survive the series, especially the children.

How Sansa, Arya, Jon, Bran, Dany, Rickon, etc. act in middle or old age - if they grow to old age - would be very interesting. In a sense, it is pretty unpleasant to leave any of them before they grew to the age of fifteen or twenty.

That would actually be very interesting to read. Presuming it follows the same format as the other history books, we'd have someone giving their biased opinions on matters, and unlike the other history books, we'd know how true or false the statements where. It would also just be interesting to read about everyone's opinions on characters such as Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Sansa Stark, Tyrion Lannister, etc. 

[Seaserpent]

I hope Martin will be 123 years old, if he has to publish this all. But i agree that FaB2 can not cover all the reigns. Is het maybe possible he uses dunc and egg novels for the period after FaB2 and picks the FaB up after Aegon5 reign, or something like that?

[Ser Uncle P]

1 hour ago, Seaserpent said:

I hope Martin will be 123 years old, if he has to publish this all. But i agree that FaB2 can not cover all the reigns. Is het maybe possible he uses dunc and egg novels for the period after FaB2 and picks the FaB up after Aegon5 reign, or something like that?

He'd have to finish Dunk & Egg first though, which is another monkey on Martin's back...:(

[Seaserpent]

17 hours ago, Ser Uncle P said:

He'd have to finish Dunk & Egg first though, which is another monkey on Martin's back...:(

yes so i would be happy if we get a FaB2 till Aerys I!

[Bael's Bastard]

The same way he crammed a little less than the first half of Targaryen history into the first volume. He might decide to split it into two more volumes, but he already showed he can spend hundreds of pages writing about just a handful of years, and spend less than hundreds of pages writing about decades and decades. A majority of the first volume is spend on eleven years of Aenys and Maegor, two years of Rhaenyra and Aegon II, and five or six years of Aegon III's regency, less than twenty years total out of 137-138 years.

[The Grey Wolf]

Not to mention how most of the Jaehaerys I material focuses on just the first ten years of his reign and the first four out of his seven chapters on just the first two.

[The Grey Wolf]

That being said, such imbalance is one of F & B's many issues.

[Lord Varys]

One can, perhaps, forgive George for writing FaB I the way he did because he never actually planned to write a detailed history of the Targaryen kings when the writing process started (although it is pretty clear a lot of stuff in there should have been reworked to a larger degree than it was).

But if he were to follow the same approach in the continuation of the book that book would just suck from a conceptual angle. Going back to, say, to the amount of detail we see in TSotD or HotD after Regency material - and in material that involves the gang from the Regency material - just doesn't make any sense. It would be shitty storytelling, just as it is, quite frankly, pretty shitty to go from the amount of detail we still get in 'The Long Reign' to the amount of detail in HotD.

At times things feel as if they were written by different people and were part of a different book. Not to mention the minor things were stuff doesn't fit very well, e.g. the actual Viserra story vs. the Manderly version from DotD, or the ban to go to Valyria after the Aerea incident vs. the claim that Daemon and Laena visited Valyria while they were in Essos with their dragons.

[The Grey Wolf]

Not to mention the number of child-brides, overuse of death by childbirth, Gyldayn's obsession with (teenage) women's sexual lives to the detriment of the rest of their character, the relentless misogyny (unchallenged by the text), the silencing/sidelining of women's voices (e.g. Alyssa Velaryon, the only two books written by women featured are all about sex), the lack of female relationships that aren't sexual or centered around rivalry over a man for the most part, and the problematic depiction of the Dornish as well as the Essosi. 

[VVSINGOFTHECROSS]

23 hours ago, The Grey Wolf said:

Not to mention the number of child-brides, overuse of death by childbirth, Gyldayn's obsession with (teenage) women's sexual lives to the detriment of the rest of their character, the relentless misogyny (unchallenged by the text), the silencing/sidelining of women's voices (e.g. Alyssa Velaryon, the only two books written by women featured are all about sex), the lack of female relationships that aren't sexual or centered around rivalry over a man for the most part, and the problematic depiction of the Dornish as well as the Essosi. 

 

Problematic depiction of the Dornish and Essosi? Don't see how the depiction is anything but accurate to the biases in world. 

 

Silencing and sidelining of women's voices is to be expected, given the in universe misogyny.

[Daemon of the Blacks]

On a convention Martin said the second book will go all the way through Robert's rebellion so we should probably take his word on it 

[Lord Varys]

He also said ASoIaF would be a trilogy.

There would be no fault whatsoever in allowing those historical texts to grow in the telling. They won't entangle him, not even if he decided to depict all the six voyages of Alyn Velaryon in great detail.

It is all dead history. And we know the ending already already.

[The Grey Wolf]

2 hours ago, VVSINGOFTHECROSS said:

Problematic depiction of the Dornish and Essosi? Don't see how the depiction is anything but accurate to the biases in world. 

Silencing and sidelining of women's voices is to be expected, given the in universe misogyny.

I don't mind Gyldayn being biased or misogynistic. What bothers me is the lack of pushback by the text unlike in ASOIAF. In fact, the way GRRM has written F & B makes it misogynistic even if Gyldayn were a radical ahead of his time. Case in point, the lack of female authors who don't write about sex when in the RL Middle Ages there were women writers on a variety of subjects. Honestly, at this point I'm half-expecting most Targaryen wives and princesses to either die giving birth or just plain disappear from the text a la Jocelyn Baratheon, which sucks. I had such high hopes for F & B but now that I've read it...

[VVSINGOFTHECROSS]

7 hours ago, The Grey Wolf said:

I don't mind Gyldayn being biased or misogynistic. What bothers me is the lack of pushback by the text unlike in ASOIAF. In fact, the way GRRM has written F & B makes it misogynistic even if Gyldayn were a radical ahead of his time. Case in point, the lack of female authors who don't write about sex when in the RL Middle Ages there were women writers on a variety of subjects. Honestly, at this point I'm half-expecting most Targaryen wives and princesses to either die giving birth or just plain disappear from the text a la Jocelyn Baratheon, which sucks. I had such high hopes for F & B but now that I've read it...

Martin's not very good at that sort of detail. I think we can all agree on that,

[Ser Uncle P]

14 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

 

It is all dead history. And we know the ending already already.

That's true @Lord Varys but we don't know a lot of the details in between.  

 

E.g. in FAB volume 1 Aereas' trip to Valyria, Silverwing refusing to fly north of the wall, how Aegon III overthrew the regents, details like these could easily entangle Martin, if he keeps adding them.