George R.R. Martin: Daenerys Targaryen could benefit from reading Fire & Blood

A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin’s volume of Targaryen history, Fire & Blood, is out today, and Esquire got its hands on a video of the writer discussing how Daenerys Targaryen could have benefited from reading the history of her family, especially when it comes to raising her three dragons:

"The thing about Daenerys, of course, is she lives in a time when the dragons have been gone for hundreds of years. No one has seen living dragons since the events chronicled in Fire & Blood. So, this is a book that Daenerys might benefit from reading, but she has no access to Archmaester Gyldayn’s crumbling manuscripts. So, she’s operating on her own there, and maybe if she understood a few things more about dragons, her own history in Essos would have gone a little differently. But we shall see, fans will have to make up their own mind about that"

So if we infer things wildly, Martin is saying that if Daenerys had access to Gyldayn’s manuscripts, she wouldn’t have chained Rhaegal and Viserion in the pyramid in Meereen, they would have grown as large as Drogon, and the slavers wouldn’t have dared revolt against her. Or maybe that’s just me making up my own mind about how useful this books is. Also: c’mon, Viserys, would it have killed you to tell your sister more dragonlore before you got yourself killed?

Fire and Blood, which Martin has gone out of his way to emphasize is not a traditional novel like A Dance with Dragons or The Winds of Winter, covers about 150 years of Westerosi history, from Aegon’s Conquest of the continent through the bloody Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of Dragons. There are several excerpts available to read online, or you can head out to your local bookstore and pick up a copy today!

To stay up to date on everything Game of Thrones, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Watch Game of Thrones for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels