The Dance of Dragons—First look at awesome animated featurette from the Season 5 Blu-ray set

Apologies for using the word “awesome” right in the headline, but this is pretty awesome. HBO has included a great many interesting special features in its Game of Thrones home video boxsets, but a planned featurette for the Season 5 set sounds like it might best them all. According to IGN, the Season 5 Blu-ray set will include a 20-minute feature about the Dance of the Dragons, the Targaryen war of succession that tore Westeros apart years before the events of the show proper. (You may remember Shireen reading about it right before she was burned to death in “The Dance of Dragons,” the season’s ninth episode.)

The Dance of the Dragons is a fascinating era of Westerosi history. Without getting into the many, many details, it involved a protracted civil war between half-siblings Aegon II Targaryen and Rhaenyra Targaryen over their father’s throne.* Once you get into the story, it becomes clear that the Dance could form the basis for a series of its own, but thus far George R.R. Martin has only written one story set during this time: the novella The Princess and the Queen, although he also penned a prequel called The Rogue Prince.

Anyway, IGN debuted an excerpt from the featurette. In this clip, Pedro Pascal (Oberyn Martell) tells the tale of the battle between Aemond and Deamon Targaryen, who fought on their dragons above the Gods Eye, near Harrenhal.

I’m not say that 20 minutes of this is worth the price of admission if you weren’t planning to buy the Season 5 boxset otherwise, but then again, I’m not NOT saying that.

Pascal isn’t the only person who will provide narration. Kerry Ingram (Shireen Baratheon), Harry Lloyd (Viserys Targaryen), Mark Addy (Robert Baratheon), Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark), and Jack Gleeson (Joffrey Baratheon) will also lend their voices. The special was written by Game of Thrones scribe Dave Hill, who described how the project came about in a statement.

"When HBO and [producer] Adam Vadnais broached the idea of adapting The Dance of Dragons for the Blu-ray special features, I was thrilled. I loved the story as George had written it and felt honored to help bring an animated version to the fans. Every year I try to keep the scripts worthy of the incredible work that I know to expect from Adam and his team. This year, more so than ever, they’ve set the bar astronomically high with the Dance of Dragons featurette. Winter will eventually come, but not the day that Adam and his team fail to amaze me."

The Game of Thrones Season 5 Blu-ray set will be released on March 15, 2016.

*Keeping in mind George R.R. Martin’s penchant for basing events in his Song of Ice and Fire universe off real-world history, the Dance of the Dragons seems loosely inspired by The Anarchy, a civil war in which the Empress Matilda fought her cousin Stephen of Blois for control of the English throne. That’s just my guess, though.