HBO has wasted no time in getting started on the production of the first of what is sure to be a number of Game of Thrones spinoffs, and now series creator George R.R. Martin is getting the hype train rolling by revealing some major new details about the upcoming prequel.
We already knew a few details about the series, like the fact that it takes place 5,000 years before Game of Thrones, will not feature dragons, and will probably be called The Long Night, but now Martin is giving us even more information. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the author revealed that the series takes place in a Westeros that consists of roughly 100 separate kingdoms rather than the usual seven. “We talk about the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros; there were Seven Kingdoms at the time of Aegon’s Conquest,” Martin said. “But if you go back further then there are nine kingdoms, and 12 kingdoms, and eventually you get back to where there are a hundred kingdoms — petty kingdoms — and that’s the era we’re talking about here.”
Martin also revealed that, while there won’t be any familiar faces, there will be at least one familiar family: the Starks, since they are the direct descendants of the first human settlers of the continent known as the First Men. “The Starks will definitely be there,” Martin said. “Obviously the White Walkers are here — or as they’re called in my books, The Others — and that will be an aspect of it. There are things like dire wolves and mammoths.” Martin also stated that the Lannisters don’t exist yet on the show, and their ancestral home — Casterly Rock — is still ruled over by the Casterlys, a family that was long extinct by the time of Game of Thrones.
So to sum up, dragons, Targaryens, and Lannisters are out but Starks, dire wolves, and White Walkers are in. Call us crazy, but something tells us this is going to be one chilly series. Good thing they’re filming in Northern Ireland.
Images courtesy of HBO, GIPHY
