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I said repeatedly the Iron Throne is huge. It towers over the room like a great beast. And it's ugly. It's asymmetric. It's put together by blacksmiths not by craftsmen and experts in furniture manufacturing. You have to walk the iron steps, and when a king sits on it he's like 10 feet above everybody else ... He's in this raised position looking down on everyone. [1]
The Iron Throne has been depicted in comic books, in games, and on book covers, but Martin has noted repeatedly that none of these representations coincided with what he imagined: [1] [2]
A dozen different artists have done versions of the Iron Throne over the years. Some have been very striking, some less so, but none of them have ever been quite RIGHT. Their versions never quite matched what I saw in my mind's eye. [2]
To Martin, the attempt closest to his vision was by French artist Marc Simonetti, for a Mexican edition of A Game of Thrones. [1] [2] [4] [6] [7] The author subsequently worked with Simonetti to get an image the author calls "absolutely right". [1] This depiction appears in Martin's 2014 companion book The World of Ice & Fire . [1] [2] [3] He noted, "From now on, THIS will be the reference I give to every other artist tackling a throne room scene." [2] [3] [8] Martin said of the image:
This Iron Throne is massive. Ugly. Asymmetric. It's a throne made by blacksmiths hammering together half-melted, broken, twisted swords, wrenched from the hands of dead men or yielded up by defeated foes ... a symbol of conquest ... it has the steps I describe, and the height. From on top, the king dominates the throne room. And there are thousands of swords in it, not just a few. This Iron Throne is scary. And not at all a comfortable seat, just as Aegon intended. [2] [4] [8]
The various depictions of the throne include:
The HBO television adaptation of the series, Game of Thrones , premiered in 2011. The design of the Iron Throne for the show was conceived by its production designer Gemma Jackson, and the prop maker Gavin Jones constructed the piece. [30] The show's popularity has made its version of the throne an icon of the entire media franchise. [1] [2] [3] [4] It has been parodied in magazines and used in merchandising. [1] [3] Several "promotional thrones" travel the world with show-sponsored exhibits and for fan events. [1] [2] [31] In June 2014, Queen Elizabeth II visited the Belfast set of Game of Thrones and was photographed examining the Iron Throne set piece from the series, though she declined to sit on it. [32] [33]
Though Martin had previously stated that the HBO version of the Iron Throne did not match his idea of how it should appear ideally, in 2013 he called its design "terrific" and claimed to own all of the merchandised replicas. [2] [8] He added:
I'm a realist about these things, and I know perfectly well that for millions of television viewers worldwide, the HBO Iron Throne is THE Iron Throne, and always will be. It turns up everywhere, on book covers, on magazines, in places that have no connection to the show. Say "GAME OF THRONES," and people think of the HBO Iron Throne. [2]
Of the feasibility of recreating the throne as depicted in The World of Ice & Fire, Martin said in October 2014:
Now, you can’t do this in the TV show. It’s not something I criticize HBO for. The thrones they have are enormously large and cumbersome to move and expensive to build. To build this monstrosity, would blow the budget of an entire episode, and it wouldn’t fit in the set. Our program is in the Paint Hall in Belfast in Northern Ireland. The Paint Hall is the largest sound stage in Europe. It [was] originally part of the old [Harland and] Wolff shipyard where they built the Titanic. We’ve divided it into a number of pods, and our throne room is in one of them. It’s a very large set, but it’s not large enough. [1]
The HBO television series House of the Dragon , an adaptation of Martin's novel Fire & Blood , includes a larger iteration of the Iron Throne which more closely resembles the Throne as Martin envisioned it.[ citation needed ]
The image of Sean Bean as Ned Stark sitting in the Iron Throne is featured on the covers of the 2011 Season 1 DVD and Blu-ray Disc sets, released in March 2012. [34] [35]
In June 2021, a statue of the Iron Throne was unveiled as part of the Scenes in the Square sculpture trail in Leicester Square, London, to mark 10 years since the release of the first episode. [36]
HBO has licensed the likeness of its Iron Throne for merchandising since the show's premiere, including T-shirts and small replicas of varying sizes. [1] [2] [3] In June 2012 the network began selling custom made, life size replicas of its Iron Throne for $30,000. [1] [3] [37] [38] [39] HBO even partnered with Brewery Ommegang to produce Iron Throne Blonde Ale, released in March 2013. [40]
The officially licensed merchandise includes:
A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of high fantasy novels by the American author George R. R. Martin. He began writing the first volume, A Game of Thrones, in 1991, and published it in 1996. Martin, who originally envisioned the series as a trilogy, has released five out of seven planned volumes. The fifth entry in the series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011. Martin continues to write the sixth novel, titled The Winds of Winter. A seventh novel, A Dream of Spring, is planned to follow.
The fictional world in which the A Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R. R. Martin take place is divided into several continents, known collectively as The Known World.
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A Game of Thrones is a strategy board game created by Christian T. Petersen and published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2003. The game is based on the A Song of Ice and Fire series of high fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin. It was followed in 2004 by the expansion A Clash of Kings, and in 2006 by the expansion A Storm of Swords.
Renly Baratheon is a fictional character in the A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin, and its television adaptation Game of Thrones.
Stannis Baratheon is a fictional character in the A Song of Ice and Fire series of epic fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin, and its television adaptation Game of Thrones. He is the second son of Steffon Baratheon and Cassana Estermont, as well as the brother of Robert – lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Renly – lord of Storm's End. He is the Lord of Dragonstone, and after his elder brother's death, becomes a claimant to the Iron Throne of Westeros and a key player in the subsequent civil war. Stannis's goals are frequently impeded by his lack of manpower and resources, owing to his unpopularity with other noble houses. He must therefore rely on the counsel of the foreign priestess Melisandre and his right-hand man, lowborn smuggler Davos Seaworth, who he later promotes to Hand of the King. Stannis often struggles to escape the shadow of his two more overtly charismatic brothers, particularly Robert.
A Dance with Dragons is the fifth novel of seven planned in the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by American author George R. R. Martin. In some areas, the paperback edition was published in two parts: Dreams and Dust and After the Feast. It was the only novel in the series to be published during the eight-season run of the HBO adaptation of the series, Game of Thrones. It is 1,056 pages long and has a word count of almost 415,000.
Lord Varys is a fictional character in the A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin, and its television adaptation Game of Thrones.
Melisandre of Asshai is a fictional character in the A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin and its television adaptation Game of Thrones. She is a priestess of the god R'hllor from the continent Essos and a close advisor to King Stannis Baratheon in his campaign to take the Iron Throne. She is often nicknamed the Red Woman, due to the color of her hair and clothes, and has mysterious powers over fire and shadow. She is a prominent example of Martin's use of magic within the story, and is the source of several important prophecies that guide the narrative.
Gendry is a fictional character in the A Song of Ice and Fire series of epic fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin, and its HBO television adaptation Game of Thrones, where the character is portrayed by English actor Joe Dempsie.
Game of Thrones is an American fantasy drama television series created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss for HBO. It is an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, the first of which is A Game of Thrones. The show premiered on HBO in the United States on April 17, 2011, and concluded on May 19, 2019, with 73 episodes broadcast over eight seasons.
Arianne Nymeros Martell is a fictional character in the A Song of Ice and Fire series of epic fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin. She is a member of House Martell and the heir to the desert kingdom of Dorne. Arianne is first mentioned in A Game of Thrones (1996) and first appears in A Feast for Crows (2005). The character also appears in A Dance with Dragons (2011) and will appear in the forthcoming volume The Winds of Winter.
"Winter Is Coming" is the series premiere of the HBO medieval fantasy television series Game of Thrones. The first episode of the first season, it was written by series creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, in an adaptation of the first chapters of George R. R. Martin's book A Game of Thrones. The episode was directed by Tim Van Patten, redoing the work done by director Tom McCarthy in an unaired pilot.
A Song of Ice and Fire, the series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, has formed the basis of several works in different media.
The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones is a companion book for George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series. Written by Martin, Elio M. García Jr. and Linda Antonsson, it was published by Bantam on October 28, 2014. The 326-page volume is a fully illustrated "history compendium" of Martin's fictional world, written from the perspective of an in-world "Maester" and featuring newly written material, family trees, and extensive maps and artwork.
The Princess and the Queen, or, the Blacks and the Greens is an epic fantasy novella by American novelist George R. R. Martin, published in the 2013 Tor Books anthology Dangerous Women. The novella is presented in the form of writings by the fictional historian Archmaester Gyldayn, who is also the "author" of Martin's 2014 novella The Rogue Prince, a direct prequel to The Princess and the Queen. The plot of both The Princess and the Queen and The Rogue Prince is later expanded further in the 2018 novel Fire & Blood, which also spawned a television series in 2022.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire media franchise:
Fire & Blood is a fantasy book by American writer George R. R. Martin and illustrated by Doug Wheatley. It tells the history of House Targaryen, the dynasty that ruled the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros in the backstory of his series A Song of Ice and Fire. Although originally planned for publication after the completion of the series, Martin revealed his intent to publish the history in two volumes as the material had grown too large. The first volume was released on November 20, 2018.
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