HBO is currently mounting a Game of Thrones spinoff called House of the Dragon, about a Targaryen civil war that tore Westeros apart around 200 years before the events of the original show. Things look to be going well, even if we don’t have a release date yet. (Hint hint, HBO.)
But before House of the Dragon, HBO was working on a wholly different Game of Thrones prequel series codenamed Blood Moon, which they since cancelled. This show would have been set thousands of years before Game of Thrones, and explored the first time the White Walkers invaded Westeros. We’re talking really early in the timeline here; the Casterlys are still in Casterly Rock and Westeros is divided up into tons of petty kingdoms.
The Starks are still around though; in fact, a lot of the Northern houses were already in existence back then, when the First Men were still the dominant strain of human being on the continent.
The White Table is a Northern version of the Painted Table on Dragonstone
And that’s where Elio M. García Jr. and Linda Antonsson came in. This pair not only runs the Song of Ice and Fire fansite Westeros.org, but they’ve also collaborated with George R.R. Martin himself on projects like The World of Ice and Fire. Few fans know the mythology better than them, so it was no surprise that Blood Moon showrunner Jane Goldman asked them to consult on the series.
Per Los Siete Reinos, this came out in an interview Elio and Linda did with the YouTuber Maglor. In fact, they even revealed something about the cancelled show: it was going to feature a version of the Painted Table from Dragonstone, the one Stannis and later Daenerys used to plot their takeovers of Westeros. The difference is that this table would have just featured the Northern houses of the day. It would have been called the White Table, and been made of weirwood.
Elio and Linda advised Goldman about which Houses were where, the borders of each kingdom (remember, this is long before the North was united under the Starks), their rulers and their heraldry. Back then, the Manderlys weren’t in the North yet, but the Blackwoods were. In could have been very interesting, not to mention visually striking.
HBO actually shot a pilot for Blood Moon before cancelling it, so who knows, maybe one day they’ll release it on home video on something. Until then, we can look forward to House of the Dragon sometime this year.
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