Back in early 2015, when Sansa had yet to marry Ramsay, Cersei hadn’t taken her famous walk, we all still loved the idea of a Dornish plot, and Jon Snow hadn’t died (let alone returned from the dead) on HBO’s Game of Thrones, photographs of George R.R. Martin’s original proposal for his sprawling Song of Ice and Fire book series were tweeted—and then deleted—by British bookseller Waterstones. The three-page letter from Martin to his publisher was corroborated by HarperCollins before the tweet was taken down, so we know it’s legitimate. But at the time, this artifact from 1993 was more of an oddity, providing glimpses of a story that would never be rather than a major revelation of what would happen. But now, over two years and 14 episodes of television later, it turns out there are some intriguingly explosive possibilities lurking in the outline that are worth re-examining.

I’m confident in not calling the following spoilers. First of all, Martin himself had, at the time this proposal was uncovered, already deviated wildly from it. His original idea was to write a trilogy (which ballooned into, hopefully, a seven-volume epic), and early ideas like a stormy love triangle between Arya Stark, Jon Snow, and Tyrion Lannister seem absolutely laughable now. (Martin once had a planned time jump that would have made this less icky to contemplate.) There’s also the added fact that the HBO series has splintered off in directions Martin himself has said he never plans to go. But just in case this thought experiment alone is giving you hives, here’s a friendly spoiler warning to keep you safe. It’s more of a speculation warning, really.

As I said, this outline first came under the Game of Thrones fandom between Seasons 4 and 5. Back then, the notion that the second book in Martin’s original trilogy would have dealt with a Dothraki-backed Targaryen invasion of Westeros seemed revelatory. The HBO version of Daenerys had nothing whatsoever to do with the horse lords at the time, and the version of Daenerys in the actual book had only just encountered her second horde. But nearly 25 years ago, this was Martin’s plan: