Look, every Song of Ice and Fire fan wants George R.R. Martin to complete The Winds of Winter, and he promises that he’s on it. But part of the reason why it’s taken so long for him to finish that book — 11 years and counting now — is that he has a bit of an…active imagination.
For instance, in 2014, a book came out called The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones. It was pitched as an illustrated encyclopedia about Westeros that would include a lot of art and few sidebars about Westerosi history written by Martin. Well, those sidebars turned into voluminous details on the lords, ladies and conflicts of Westeros past.
And he actually held back. We get that information from a 2014 interview between Martin and his editor, Anne Groell. Javi Marcos, proprietor of the Song of Ice and Fire fansite Los Siete Reinos, just uploaded it, and there’s some interesting stuff in there.
George R.R. Martin contemplated writing another book that isn’t The Winds of Winter
One of the stories in The World of Ice and Fire concerns Ellyn Reyne, who was so determined to be the Lady of Casterly Rock that she fomented a rebellion against the Lannisters when her chances started to fade. That rebellion was put down by a young Tywin Lannister, who squashed it so brutally the singers still sing of it to this day. I think we all know the song:
Martin was outlining this story for The World of Ice and Fire and became so intrigued that he considered fleshing it out even further. “What am I doing? Why am I putting this in this history book? This could be my next three novels. I could write a trilogy about this. I could write a standalone novel,” he said.
"‘If only I had more time, I could write a whole novel out of this. Oh, I could write a story out of this incident.’ There’s stuff there that could easily be expanded and dramatized and made into stories, but the stories are still there in outline and you know who the main players are, and that’s fine."
Martin’s “full, unabridged sidebars” ended up getting published in another book, Fire & Blood. And that’s the book that HBO is using as the basis for its upcoming Game of Thrones prequel show House of the Dragon. When the “outline” is this detailed, it might as well be a novel.
House of the Dragon premieres on HBO on August 21. As for The Winds of Winter, we have no idea. “My tales just seem to grow very much longer in the telling,” Martin quips in the video. Ah, but how big do they grow?
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