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When is 'The World Of Ice and Fire' coming out?


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There's some legendary material in the current draft, but we'll see how it goes.

I don't expect any population statistics whatsoever.

We have all the heraldry GRRM's published pretty much on our website, as we're the ones who first published them. ;) He gave us his notes at the time. Need to catch up through ADwD with some new ones. That said, while a few heraldic arms shall be making appearances, it won't be anything like exhaustive. OTOH, we'll learn more about several of the families that held Harrenhal.

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There's some legendary material in the current draft, but we'll see how it goes.

I don't expect any population statistics whatsoever.

We have all the heraldry GRRM's published pretty much on our website, as we're the ones who first published them. ;) He gave us his notes at the time. Need to catch up through ADwD with some new ones. That said, while a few heraldic arms shall be making appearances, it won't be anything like exhaustive. OTOH, we'll learn more about several of the families that held Harrenhal.

I hope you mean all the major heraldic arms shall appear, not only those of the wardens or great lords. I'm talking about their direct vassals and bannermen, like Bracken, Karstark, Lorch, Caron etc. Also, I hope it presents the arms of important extinct houses, like Darklyn, Qoherys, Whent etc.

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  • 2 weeks later...

A question for Ran:

Will we learn more about the customs and forms of government of Essos´ countries? like, which of them endorse slavery, which practise polygamy, their naming customs (bastard names, legitimation of bastards...etc.), which of them are monarchies and which of them have an hereditary nobility...etc.

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I hope this is an appropriate question for this thread as I've seen talk of artwork....

I've always been curious to see an artistic depiction of exactly how GRRM views dragons. I know his descriptions, but visually what do they look (at least Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion, or Balerion, Vhagar, and Meraxes) like in his mind? Is there anything like this out there, or will anything like this be in this book?

(I think this picture of Drogon (ADWD spoiler) from the wiki is stunning. That is a fearsome beast and almost exactly how I picture them)

Really looking forward to this regardless. I already have pre-ordered "The Lands of Ice and Fire" on Barnes and Noble.

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On his website Martin commented that the book will contain a lot more info on things like Aegon the Unworthy's paramours, the Dance of the Dragons, Aegon's wars with the Faith etc.

Now, this filled me with a bit of disappointment, to be honest.

Speaking for myself - and also from the impression I get on the forum - most people are far more intrigued by ancient history, like more detail on the Seven Kingdoms before Aegon's conquest, and even before the Andal invasions, the historical timeline and even the Age of Heroes.

We really have an overload of Targaryen info already, and they only occuppy a very tiny portion of Westeros's overall history.

I hope we get a lot more than just physical descriptions of Shiera Seastar, her love affair with Bloodraven, Maegor's disputes with the Church etc.

Give us info on the ancient Kings of Winter instead, the Rape of Sisterton, the establishment of the Wolf's Den at White Harbor, a chronicle of some of the major wars in pre-Targaryen Westeros,

That one page in Dance where the jailor gave Davos a history of the Wolf's Den was more priceless in terms of piecing together the last 4000 years of the North's history than any number of descriptions of Shiera Seastar, beautiful as she no doubt was.

A thousand year War between the North and the Vale? Sends shivers down my spine. Brandon Ice Eyes, King Jon Stark etc.

That's the kind of stuff that would be of incredible interest in this history book. Pretty please.

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Given the questions I get through our site and Youtube channel, the general readership wants lots and lots of information about the Targaryens more than it does about ancient history. I'm very fond of the ancient history -- have a section of the Citadel devoted just to it -- but for various reasons GRRM doesn't want to get too deep into it.

That said, there'll be some new bits and bobs about the pre-Targaryen history as well, I think.

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Given the questions I get through our site and Youtube channel, the general readership wants lots and lots of information about the Targaryens more than it does about ancient history. I'm very fond of the ancient history -- have a section of the Citadel devoted just to it -- but for various reasons GRRM doesn't want to get too deep into it.

That said, there'll be some new bits and bobs about the pre-Targaryen history as well, I think.

So we're not going to get a confirmation of whether Maester Aethelmure's True History - which puts the Andal arrival at 4000 years ago is actually true instead of the Revised history that puts the Andal arrival at 2000 years ago versus the Appendix history, which puts their arrival at 6000 years ago?

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Nope. The text is to some degree being presented as being in the setting -- the work of maesters -- so differences of opinion expressed in the novels will be expressed in the book as well.

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Nope. The text is to some degree being presented as being in the setting -- the work of maesters -- so differences of opinion expressed in the novels will be expressed in the book as well.

Are comparative army sizes addressed? I assume that one of the links in a Maester's chain represents military studies, which is crucial knowledge for an advisor to a Westerosi lord. It is also said that Stannis knows the strength of every House in the Seven Kingdoms.

So surely if this knowledge exists "in universe" then it can be presented as some Maester's dissertation on the Military Strength of the Greater and Lesser Houses of the Seven Kingdoms.

E.G. House Florent can raise 2000 men

House Umber 1500

And so on.

This is very consistent with knowledge that will be available to scholars at the Citadel, and to military strategists like Stannis and Randyl Tarly in Westeros, and hence would be perfectly fitting to this reference book. And very valuable to readers as well.

Jon Snow even reminisces that he studied military tomes under Maester Luwin as part of his education at Winterfell. This knowledge MUST be available to the Citadel. Jon Snow's knowledge is clearly well developed in this area, as he was immediately able to give Stannis an estimate of how many armed men the Mountain Clans had left in Dance. This knowledge obviously extends to alll Houses in Westeros, for the truly educated miltary minds of the Seven Kingdoms.

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Nope. The text is to some degree being presented as being in the setting -- the work of maesters -- so differences of opinion expressed in the novels will be expressed in the book as well.

So,this is «cheating» GRRM talked about? Many sources,and some of them in contradiction?

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Mrm, don't understand the reference.... but maybe? Certainly, there shall be some varying opinions by both the maesters and the various sources they may reference.

No plans for a lot of military detail, troop figures and such

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No plans for a lot of military detail, troop figures and such

OK. Pity.

Anyway, still looking forward to the book a lot.

I have a question about your reference to the Heraldry above.

Following your post, I visited the Citadel site and studied the houses listed under each region. Obviously what I immediately did was go and compare the number of Houses per region. And I ended up with something like this:

The Reach - 70 Houses

The Westerlands - 46 Houses

The North - 42 Houses

The Riverlands - 42 Houses

The Stormlands - 35 Houses

The Vale - 31 Houses

The Iron Isles - 30 Houses

Dorne - 19 Houses

So my obvious conclusion was that the number of Houses are roughly correlated to the army size and population of each region. If for argument's sake you assigned an average of 1000 men per House, the number of Houses would correlate to the number of thousands of troops that each region can raise. The numbers seeem to be pretty reasonable.

In the comparison above the Reach has about twice as many as the Stormlands and the Vale, while the North and Riverlands are equal and just behind the Westerlands. Dorne is at the bottom, as would be expected.

My question is, though. Is this a complete list of Houses? Because in the Song of Ice and Fire Wiki there are about 10 additional Northern Houses listed which you don't have on your list, such as House Branch and Bole and other lesser houses sworn to the Glovers, and about 5 Houses sworn to House Reed.

If this full list of 52 is included, then the North is in second place, after the Reach, and just ahead of the Westerlands.

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Not at all complete, nor is it necessarily indicative of anything in particular like noble family density or what have you. GRRM creates as he needs or feels like, and given that so much of the story is in the North, not a surprise that there are so many houses there.

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Not at all complete, nor is it necessarily indicative of anything in particular like noble family density or what have you. GRRM creates as he needs or feels like, and given that so much of the story is in the North, not a surprise that there are so many houses there.

Yes, that makes sense. Because in the example I gave, the Wiki shows about 5 or 6 lesser Houses from the Wolfswood area sworn to House Glover - which is just a Masterly House - yet it only has about 1 lesser House sworn to House Manderly which is the most powerful House in the North and who rule a vast and very populous area. Similarly, no lesser Houses sworn to House Bolton or Umber or Karstark are shown.

The only logical conclusion therefore, is that there must be a hundred or more additional northern houses that are yet to be named, and who probably will never be named in full.

Manderly tells us in Dance that he has a dozen lordly Houses sworn to him. That excludes the 100 landed knights, which I'm not sure whether they get a house as well. I assume they do, as the Vale lists a number of knightly houses. Meaning that Manderly alone has about 112 houses sworn to him.

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Mrm, don't understand the reference.... but maybe? Certainly, there shall be some varying opinions by both the maesters and the various sources they may reference.

Not a blog,in comments,a user asked how is it that we have all history/legend book when 2 books are to be published,and GRRM answered «We'll cheat» :)

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