Does George R.R. Martin consider Jon and Daenerys the “main characters” of the story?
By Corey Smith
The Game of Thrones season 7 home boxset has an extensive list of audio commentaries, and fans who listen will inevitably stumble across interesting nuggets of information from the cast and crew. For example, in the commentary for “Beyond the Wall,” director Alan Taylor reminisced about a conversation he had with A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin during production on season 1, for which Taylor directed both Ned’s execution in “Baelor” and the birth of Daenerys’ dragons in “Fire and Blood.” Back then, Martin was more heavily involved in the production, and visited during filming. Taylor got an interesting impression from Martin regarding the “main characters” of the story.
"At that point there was [a] tremendous sea of characters and competing storylines and possibilities for the future. After talking to him I got the impression, I sort of realized that Dany and Jon were for the long haul, were sort of the long story. Cause back then, y’know, Robb was still around, and seemed like he might become king, and it wasn’t clear who was gonna rise and who was gonna fall. But in George R.R.’s mind, it was always these two."
This echoes Taylor’s previous previous comments on the subject, and is in line with the amount of screen time Jon and Dany have gotten, although Tyrion still comes in second behind Jon where that’s concerned.
What, if anything, this means for other important characters like Sansa, Arya, Bran, Theon, Jaime and Cersei remains to be seen, although it can’t be good for their life expectancy. But on the other hand, now that we’re near the end, anyone can die at any moment, even the “main characters,” so the playing field may be more level than we think. Looks like we’ll have to wait until 2019 to find out.
Next: Game of Thrones is getting a line of postage stamps from the Royal Mail
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