“Game of Thrones” creator George R R Martin has said this week he nearly left dragons out of the books and series.
He implied that “A Song of Ice and Fire” is similar to the Wars of the Roses during the Middle Ages.
Martin, however, was mulling taking the fantasy element out of the book.
“I did consider at a very early stage - going all the way back to 1991 - whether to include overt fantasy elements, and at one point thought of writing a Wars of the Roses novel. But the problem with straight historical fiction is you know what’s going to happen. If you know anything about the Wars of the Roses, you know that the princes in the tower aren’t going to escape. I wanted to make it more unexpected, bring in some more twists and turns,” Martin told Rolling Stone.
The Wars of the Roses lasted between 1455 and 1487 and were fought by the royal House of Plantagenet and the houses of Lancaster and York.
Martin said that Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons was a main focus.
“The main question was the dragons: Do I include dragons? I knew I wanted to have the Targaryens have their symbol be the dragons; the Lannisters have the lions, the Starks have the wolves. Should these things be literal here? Should the Targaryens actually have dragons? I was discussing this with a friend, writer Phyllis Eisenstein - I dedicated the third book to her - and she said, ‘George, it’s a fantasy - you’ve got to put in the dragons.” She convinced me, and it was the right decision. Now that I’m deep into it, I can’t imagine the book without the dragons.’”
And this week, the trailer for Game of Thrones Season 4: Episode 5 was released on YouTube.
