"Only 500 pages to go" for Winds of Winter

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

8 minutes ago, Mithras said:

That 1993 outline included the first 13 chapters that were almost identical to the published version.

I don't think they were identical, because by Eddard II, which is the twelfth chapter of AGoT if you don't count the prologue, Arya has already departed for King's Landing with the royal party, whereas in the 1993 outline she was supposed to go north of the Wall with Catelyn. GRRM said that he submitted 13 chapters along with that outline.

[BlackLightning]

On 1/11/2023 at 9:32 AM, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

I'd think Cersei's got to have something to offer Euron and I'm  not really sure what that would be if she isn't back at the rock and in control of her House -assuming that she's been split from Tommen or Tommen is no longer a part of the equation in KL. I'm not one to dispute Lord Varys lightly though, I'm sure he's thought about that too.

I agree.

I don't think Cersei and Euron will meet and coordinate their alliance until after she gets back to the Rock and starts raising another army.

By that point, Tommen at the very least will be dead.

[Mithras]

11 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I don't think they were identical, because by Eddard II, which is the twelfth chapter of AGoT if you don't count the prologue, Arya has already departed for King's Landing with the royal party, whereas in the 1993 outline she was supposed to go north of the Wall with Catelyn. GRRM said that he submitted 13 chapters along with that outline.

Arya would return to Winterfell after Ned's death and from there they would go north of the Wall with her mother after losing Winterfell.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

9 hours ago, Mithras said:

Arya would return to Winterfell after Ned's death and from there they would go north of the Wall with her mother after losing Winterfell.

Right, I somehow forgot about that. But still, I was talking about the fact that Cersei was not mentioned it the outline itself.

[sifth]

4 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Right, I somehow forgot about that. But still, I was talking about the fact that Cersei was not mentioned it the outline itself.

Sansa was suppose to be evil in that outline as well. She was suppose to betray the Starks and help the Lannisters destroy her family.

[Luca]

19 hours ago, sifth said:

Sansa was suppose to be evil in that outline as well. She was suppose to betray the Starks and help the Lannisters destroy her family.

She did that when she told Cersei about Ned planing to cancel her betrothal to Joffrey

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

On 1/16/2023 at 8:07 PM, Werthead said:

In fact, we know that George revised the 1993 outline around 1998 or 1999, and I wonder if he solidified a lot of these other ideas in that (never-seen) second document. A lot of vague earlier ideas seemed to come into sharp focus after that point (the Blackfyre Rebellion, Bloodraven, Connington etc).

That second outline sounds really interesting, it's a shame that we don't have much to go on.

[sifth]

55 minutes ago, Luca said:

She did that when she told Cersei about Ned planing to cancel her betrothal to Joffrey

Yea, in the actual book it was a mistake, because she was in love. In the original draft, Sansa was suppose to be a full on villain.

[Rubicante]

On 1/19/2023 at 10:22 AM, sifth said:

Yea, in the actual book it was a mistake, because she was in love. In the original draft, Sansa was suppose to be a full on villain.

Sansa is a full on villain.  Consider the following things she did

1. She agreed to marry Ramsay Bolton

2. She intentionally withheld the Vale army from helping Jon Snow in the Battle of Bastards, and then allowed them to join at the last second so she could take full credit for the victory.

3. She didn’t stop Ramsay from taking 20 good men and simultaneously lighting various points of Stannis’ camp on fire, destroying all of their siege machinery without being seen, while somehow getting through the worst winter storm the North has ever seen, while Stannis on the other hand was stuck.  She should have suggested to Ramsay that he take 20 okay men, that way ensuring they are caught by Stannis.

4. She couldn’t stand Bran being King of Westeros, so she greedily declared herself Queen of the North, even though everyone in the North despises her.

Oh wait, that is the fan fiction seasons 5-8 of the GoT tv show.  If there is one thing good thing to come from probably never getting Winds of Winter, it’s that I can deny everything happening in Season 5 and on will never happen in the book.

 

Edited January 21 by Rubicante

[Jekse]

10 hours ago, Rubicante said:

2. She intentionally withheld the Vale army from helping Jon Snow in the Battle of Bastards, and then allowed them to join at the last second so she could take full credit for the victory.

Don't forget that this move killed Rickon, the then rightful king in the north. 

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

On 1/19/2023 at 6:22 PM, sifth said:

Yea, in the actual book it was a mistake, because she was in love. In the original draft, Sansa was suppose to be a full on villain.

The original outline says that she would “bitterly rue” the fact that she chose Joffrey over the Starks, so I think she would have the same arc she had in AGoT/ACoK/ASoS, only stretched out over a longer period of time.

[BlackLightning]

On 1/15/2023 at 5:22 PM, butterweedstrover said:

I think post ASOS is late in the game. There is no evidence Martin had even thought up either of these characters before then which makes there introduction seem less like a vital aspect to the overall story and more like appendages to reorient the narrative. 

Or maybe he just wrote in a bunch of new characters because he was tired of the old ones. Either way I don't see YG being an important part of Dany's journey. 

I'm not calling you a liar, but this entire post is patently dishonest.

Arianne Martell and Euron Greyjoy were mentioned as early as A Game of Thrones and name-dropped on several different occasions in A Clash of Kings. Euron's cameos and mentions in A Clash of Kings (i.e. "What happened to Uncle Euron?"/"We don't speak of it.") are clear foreshadowing that the character will pop up in a big way. Euron is the subject of more than one prophecy in A Storm of Swords and he actually indirectly contributes to the downfall of Robb Stark in the same novel.

Arianne Martell was name-dropped repeatedly in A Storm of Swords; in her case, these were minor name-drops but it's not like she came out of nowhere.

How is YG not an important part of Dany's journey when, at first, he tried to marry her and now he is setting himself up as her rival? Between A Clash of Kings and A Dance with Dragons, he is the subject of at least three different prophecies all pertaining to Dany. Moreover, Arya overhears Varys and Illyrio making plans in regard to one Targaryen or another (either Viserys or YG or both in a way) in A Game of Thrones. The fact that it is revealed to be YG later on in the story is not an example of a last-minute creation; what is an example of is that of a mystery revealed.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

11 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Arianne Martell and Euron Greyjoy were mentioned as early as A Game of Thrones and name-dropped on several different occasions in A Clash of Kings.

Arianne, Quentyn, Trystane, and Areo Hotah were all mentioned in the appendix of the first edition of AGoT.

Edited January 23 by Takiedevushkikakzvezdy

[BlackLightning]

On 1/17/2023 at 1:12 PM, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I don't think they were identical, because by Eddard II, which is the twelfth chapter of AGoT if you don't count the prologue, Arya has already departed for King's Landing with the royal party, whereas in the 1993 outline she was supposed to go north of the Wall with Catelyn. GRRM said that he submitted 13 chapters along with that outline.

Not necessarily.

You probably are right to say that as the likelihood that Arya never left Winterfell with her father, sister and the royal party is high. She always felt like a tag-a-long anyways.

...or you could be wrong in that Arya left with her father and the royal party only to escape the city and successfully make it back to Winterfell (thanks to Yoren)

It might have well been the case for Arya to make it back to Riverrun after Catelyn returned from Storm's End (if Catelyn ever left Riverrun at all) and then the two of them made it to Winterfell either just after it had been sacked, right before it had been sacked* or before it had been taken to begin with

 

Oh, and in the original outline, Winterfell wasn't to have been burned by Theon; it was burned by Tyrion.

On 1/18/2023 at 2:37 PM, sifth said:

Sansa was suppose to be evil in that outline as well. She was suppose to betray the Starks and help the Lannisters destroy her family.

She was

But I assume that she probably would have been the only survivors of Jaime's genocidal coup because she has nothing to do with the Baratheon-Lannister line of succession.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

6 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

You probably are right to say that as the likelihood that Arya never left Winterfell with her father, sister and the royal party is high. She always felt like a tag-a-long anyways.

No, I was actually wrong on that one. The original outline says: "Ned will be accused of treason, but before he is taken he will help his wife and his daughter Arya escape back to Winterfell". So Arya was always going to follow Ned to KL. 

But there are other things that give me pause. For example, Jon was supposed to succeed Benjen as Lord Commander in the outline, but when Benjen was visiting Winterfell in Jon I, he didn't seem to be the Lord Commander at that point.

Either way, knowing GRRM, he probably made minor changes all the way throughout.

[butterweedstrover]

4 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

I'm not calling you a liar, but this entire post is patently dishonest.

Arianne Martell and Euron Greyjoy were mentioned as early as A Game of Thrones and name-dropped on several different occasions in A Clash of Kings. Euron's cameos and mentions in A Clash of Kings (i.e. "What happened to Uncle Euron?"/"We don't speak of it.") are clear foreshadowing that the character will pop up in a big way. Euron is the subject of more than one prophecy in A Storm of Swords and he actually indirectly contributes to the downfall of Robb Stark in the same novel.

Arianne Martell was name-dropped repeatedly in A Storm of Swords; in her case, these were minor name-drops but it's not like she came out of nowhere.

How is YG not an important part of Dany's journey when, at first, he tried to marry her and now he is setting himself up as her rival? Between A Clash of Kings and A Dance with Dragons, he is the subject of at least three different prophecies all pertaining to Dany. Moreover, Arya overhears Varys and Illyrio making plans in regard to one Targaryen or another (either Viserys or YG or both in a way) in A Game of Thrones. The fact that it is revealed to be YG later on in the story is not an example of a last-minute creation; what is an example of is that of a mystery revealed.

I was talking about YG and Jon Connington. 
 

If they weren’t part of the story before, Dany’s endpoint was planned out without them. 
 

Side note: GRRM adds a lot of nobodies to his glossary that he can later take from and turn into a fully fleshed out character.

[sifth]

4 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

No, I was actually wrong on that one. The original outline says: "Ned will be accused of treason, but before he is taken he will help his wife and his daughter Arya escape back to Winterfell". So Arya was always going to follow Ned to KL. 

But there are other things that give me pause. For example, Jon was supposed to succeed Benjen as Lord Commander in the outline, but when Benjen was visiting Winterfell in Jon I, he didn't seem to be the Lord Commander at that point.

Either way, knowing GRRM, he probably made minor changes all the way throughout.

That got changed in the editing, I imagine. For example Lord Commander Mormont, is mentioned in the prologue, by Will or one of the other two rangers.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

On 1/16/2023 at 8:07 PM, Werthead said:

My understanding is that George met with D&D to jointly work with them on an outline for the rest of GoT, based on D&D's requirements versus what George had planned in the rest of the books.

But GRRM said in 2019 that the show's ending wouldn't be much different from the books ending. This was right before the premiere of Season 8, so I assume he had already seen the episodes by then.

Plus, he has talked about knowing the fates of the main characters for decades. For all of his gardening, this seems to the one thing he has never budged on. And given that we know that he talked with D&D about those endings, I don't expect big differences between books and show.

Edited January 24 by Takiedevushkikakzvezdy

[Werthead]

46 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

But GRRM said in 2019 that the show's ending wouldn't be much different from the books ending. This was right before the premiere of Season 8, so I assume he had already seen the episodes by then.

Plus, he has talked about knowing the fates of the main characters for decades. For all of his gardening, this seems to the one thing he has never budged on. And given that we know that he talked with D&D about those endings, I don't expect big differences between books and show.

George also said he didn't read the scripts for the later seasons and may not have been shown all the episodes, so he didn't really know.

There's also a very wide field that's being discussed here. George could have been speaking in the most general of general terms ("in both the books and TV show, the Others are defeated, Daenerys does reach the Iron Throne and Cersei dies"). He's already noted that it certainly wasn't the same down to every dot and comma, and he doesn't even know how relatively major TV characters (like Bronn) will end up in the books so D&D just made all of his story up.

Edited January 24 by Werthead

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

22 hours ago, Werthead said:

There's also a very wide field that's being discussed here. George could have been speaking in the most general of general terms ("in both the books and TV show, the Others are defeated, Daenerys does reach the Iron Throne and Cersei dies"). He's already noted that it certainly wasn't the same down to every dot and comma, and he doesn't even know how relatively major TV characters (like Bronn) will end up in the books so D&D just made all of his story up.

I was thinking more about the fact that:

Spoiler

The ending that each of the Starks got in the show matches with the name of their direwolf, so it all definitely must have come from GRRM.