As it turns out, Game of Thrones fans were almost spared the tragedy of Viserion’s death…sort of. That’s one of the many tidbits that comes out in a new interview A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin gave with Russian media outlet Meduza.

So how were we almost spared Viserion’s death? Because originally, Martin wasn’t even sure if his story would have dragons in it.

I did consider in the very early stages not having the dragons in there. I wanted the Targaryen’s symbol to be the dragons, but I did play with the notion that maybe it was like a psionic power, that it was pyrokinesis — that they could conjure up flames with their minds. I went back and forth. My friend and fellow fantasy writer Phyllis Eisenstein actually was the one who convinced me to put the dragons in, and I dedicated the third book to her. And I think it was the right call.

Whoa. That would have been a major departure from the made-up reality we know and love. Can you imagine Daenerys running around controlling fire with her mind?

He may not have included fire psychics, but there is plenty of magic in his novels. Martin thinks that’s a necessity in fantasy stories:

Fantasy needs magic in it, but I try to control the magic very strictly. You can have too much magic in fantasy very easily, and then it overwhelms everything and you lose all sense of realism. And I try to keep the magic magical — something mysterious and dark and dangerous, and something never completely understood. I don’t want to go down the route of having magic schools and classes where, if you say these six words, something will reliably happen. Magic doesn’t work that way. Magic is playing with forces you don’t completely understand. And perhaps with beings or deities you don’t completely understand. It should have a sense of peril about it.

Meduza: “So no Hogwarts?” Martin: “No.” And then he laughs.

Talking further about fantasy fiction, Martin thinks it’s becoming more widely accepted. “[T]he walls are beginning to crumble, but not completely, not yet,” he said. His own work certainly has some role in that, as does Game of Thrones, the HBO adaptation that Martin deems to be “partly” his. He clarified, however, that showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss can do whatever they like with it.

They are independent. They can do whatever they want. I don’t have any power… any contractual right to [stop them]. I consult with them. I talk to them on a regular basis. Of course, years ago, we had a series of very long meetings, where I told them some of the big twists and turns and huge events that were coming in the last few books. So they’ve been touching [on] some of these, and doing some of the reveals, but they have also been departing in various ways.

Martin noted that there are a number of characters who “are quite important in the books and missing totally in the show.” #LSH4LIFE

Martin praised the work of Beinoff and Weiss — and of the cast and crew as a whole — saying they are doing a “phenomenal job.” He also commented on there being less explicit sex and violence on the show as it’s gone on. “I don’t disagree with it,” he said. “The show is the show. David and Dan are doing it, and they have to make choices with parameters that I don’t have to deal with. Questions about what audiences will accept and not accept, questions about running time, questions about what they can actually do.”

So Game of Thrones is only “partly” Martin’s. One of those parts is the characters he created. When it comes to that, Martin likes to keep them grey.

I think the battle between good and evil is fought all over the world, every day, in the individual human heart, as we all struggle with the choices that define us and define our lives. And we have to choose what we are going to do, and sometimes the choice is not easy; it’s not this absolute juxtaposition of the good guys and the bad guys. And I wanted to get to that with my characters, and show some of the difficulties that they face.

For example, Martin thinks of Jon Snow and Theon Greyjoy as two sides of the same coin:

In some senses, Theon is struggling all the way through to be a hero. They both come out of the same situation: they’re both raised in Winterfell by Eddard Stark, but they’re not part of the real, core family. Theon is a ward, and Jon Snow is a bastard son. So they’re both a little outside, but Jon handles this successfully, and Theon fails to handle this. He is poisoned by his own envy and his sense of not belonging.

Macall B. Polay – HBO

When asked which character most resembles him, Martin said that “Theon [Greyjoy] is the one I’d fear becoming.” Otherwise, his answers aren’t surprising. “The character I’m probably most like in real life is Samwell Tarly,” he said. “Good old Sam. And the character I’d want to be? Well who wouldn’t want to be Jon Snow — the brooding, Byronic, romantic hero whom all the girls love.”

Tyrion, however, is the easiest character for the author to write, even though he apparently takes weeks to come up with the halfman’s legendary witicisms. “I have to rewrite them four times, before I get the line just right.” However long it takes.

Finally, while Martin didn’t say much about The Winds of Winter, his elusive next novel, he did address the long-running idea that every time someone asks when it’s going to come out, he kills a Stark. “If that were true, there’d be no Starks left, because I get this question constantly,” he said. “But we still have a healthy number of Starks running around.”

Some other highlights from the interview:

On his work being an allegory for modern events, “If there are any politics being reflected in my books, it’s the politics of the Hundred Years’ War, and the Crusades, and the Wars of the Roses — not anything that’s happened in 2017.”

On the level of sex and violence in his novels, “The books are my absolute vision of the story, and I present what I want to, including the sexuality and violence. This is essentially a war story, as are many fantasies, including Tolkien. The War of the Ring! And if you’re doing a war story, I think you have to be honest about the nature of war, and war is certainly a powerful theme that goes all the way back through the history of literature.”

On how to write a point-of-view character: “To make a viewpoint character come alive, you do have to use parts of yourself — even if the character is very different from you. Obviously, I’ve never been an exiled princess, I’ve never been a dwarf, and I’ve never been an eight-year-old girl. But I think, with the common traits that apply to all humanity, we have far more in common than what sets us apart.”

For more, head to Meduza.

A release date for The Winds of Winter has not yet been set, but in the meantime, Martin is working to varying degrees on HBO’s Game of Thrones spinoff projects.

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