Age of Heroes: What stories should HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel tell?

3. Garth Greenhand and his offspring

What it is: Garth Greenhand, Garth the Green or Garth Greenhair was either the First King and High King of all of the First Men or just a leader of the First Men to whom history granted a lot of fancy titles. According to some stories, he even reached Westeros before the First Men. Depending on who you ask, he was a mortal man, a god demanding blood sacrifices, and a lot of things in between. He is supposed to have brought agriculture to Westeros and to have made the land bloom. Several of his children are known as the founders of prominent noble houses both extinct and extant, including House Gardener, House Oakheart, House Redwyne and House Hightower. Some even say his blood runs in the veins of the Starks of Winterfell.

Why it could be awesome: The life of Garth Greenhand, whatever his title, would be material enough for a show the length of Game of Thrones. There are a lot of named characters to work with who have at least some distant relation to people we’ve already met, which would make it easier to get invested. This could be a veritable family saga, an origin story for many of the Houses we know today, and some we don’t.

Why it could be terrible: Do we want all those open questions to be settled once and for all? Part of the appeal of these legends is that we get different accounts of what happened, and in contrast to the events from more recent history, we are probably not meant to be able to deduce the whole truth of it.

How likely we are to get it: 50% (if we don’t get a lot of this, there’s a good chance we won’t get any)