A Game of Thrones (2003)

Written by George R.R Martin.

A latecomer to the party. I would consider myself one when it comes to the world of Westeros. I was introduced to Westeros through the famous series Game of Thrones that was aired in HBO from 2011 to 2019. I started watching when the Fifth Season of the series were just premiered—that was 2014.

I have always seen myself as someone who enjoyed Fantasy the most compared to other genres. I was obsessed with the concept of magic. I grew up watching and reading The Chronicles of Narnia and have always been obsessed with mythical creatures ever since. When I first started watching Game of Thrones, I was pretty obsessed with Lord of the Rings—2014 was about the same time when The Hobbit Trilogy came to an end. At this point I had indulged in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy extensively and was intrigued by the concept of High Fantasy. I am also a huge fan of Magic the Gathering and the game itself possessed an expansive world worthy of another article. Then there was also Blizzard Entertainment with World of Warcraft which contributed to a fair share to my obsession with Fantasy.

Fantasy-obsessed, I watched Game of Thrones for the magic and dragons. I wanted to see an epic story of kings fighting monsters and beings of mythic proportions. I wanted to see Elves, Dwarves, Centaurs and the many races ever recorded in the archives of Fantasy. My teenage hormones did not help with the excitement either after hearing that the show was meant for adults. Oh well… I could not have been more wrong.

There was none of that. There was no Arthurian conquest, no Instead I witnessed concepts that I had never really experienced before. I saw incest, political scheming, the cruelty and the different nature of people. I saw betrayal, death. But on top of that I also see what morality is like in real life. Grey. It consumed me like a venus fly trap. And I just could not stop watching.

Once you started on Game of Thrones, you just could not stop. And slowly the show transitioned. Into its High Fantasy nature. You began to see the dragons grew and became a force to be reckoned with. Magical weapons started to appear and Valyrian Steel became a thing of significance. Oh and there was Ice Zombies now, how cool is that?! It was around this time that I began to realise how huge Westeros really was. I began to question things like “So what happened to the Dragons? What’s up with the Targaryens? Why do they call themselves the Seven Kingdoms again?”

Initially I saw Westeros as a mere setting for the show. A playground for the politicians to scheme and play their “Game of Thrones” and if I would take it as what it was it makes sense. Because the show is called Game of Thrones. And what did not make sense was everything beyond Season 4 when the Fantasy aspect started to take over. When I finished the show, the first thing I told my self was “Wait… that’s it?”. I needed more of Westeros. I began to watched videos on Youtube talking about the history of the Targaryens—events like the Blackfyre Rebellion. The religions—The Seven, The Drowned God, The Lord of Light. I remembered the first video I watched was about Valyrian Steel by Alt Shift X. And I remembered asking “How the hell did they know all this?”

The next day I went to hit PURHASE on for an e-book copy for A Game of Thrones. It was not the first time that I have seen the name for the series of book George R.R Martin have been writing. A Song of Ice and Fire. “Holy shit” I thought. That was a really cool name. It sounded so… Fantasy.

It was a slow and grueling start. Reading a story that you have already witnessed before over again. It was slow on the first ten chapters and I was afraid that I would feel that way for the rest of the book (and my god it was 72 chapters long). But it did not. In the books I started to notice, things that I never really noticed before. I did not know that the Faceless Men was already mentioned quite early on (I must have missed it in the TV series). I learned the intricacies and beauty of the Dothraki culture. There was none of that in the TV Series, all we had gotten was a cut to Daenerys eating a stallion’s heart without much explanation (one that left me dumbfounded). The books spoke of Westeros’s past multiple of time and it gave ample time for the reader to know the history between Robert and the old dynasty. Names became much more pronounced. Areas like the Trident which could be easily glanced upon in the show. The more I read, the more intrigued I became.

That was when I realised that I had became obsessed with Westeros. I was obsessed with the plot of Game of Thrones when I watched the show, but I never really felt invested in the world GRRM had built. But as I turned the pages over and over again, I began to realise how detailed GRRM had built his world. And it was not just across space but also time. Westeros had a deep rooted history and it was constantly hinted in A Game of Thrones. The Houses were not just players trying to take over the Iron Throne but rather actual characters with different culture and motivation that had carried over from the past.

Magic was almost absent in the show, but A Game of Thrones did not shy away from it. The people spoke of miracles from the gods, and the GRRM even introduced the Seven pretty early and distinctly. A lot of the characters were an exaggerated version of the show. The Mountain Who Rides—Ser Gregor Clegane—for instance, was essentially a giant. He was a blob of muscle that made the character much more feared and became a looming threat. It added more attribute of epic in his character. And this applied to many more characters.

A Game of Thrones left me wanting more of Westeros, even more so than before. I became much more invested in the World that GRRM had built and it was a huge, mesmerising world. I can’t wait for GRRM to finish the epic that he had started. To fulfill the prophecy he had called A Song of Ice and Fire. And what had started for me as a political drama set in a medieval world + dragon. It had morphed into a true Fantasy Epic with an endearing plot involving a political drama.

As a world-builder, I respect GRRM with all my heart. The way he introduced Westeros through A Game of Thrones had became almost like a blueprint every time I decided to write a paragraph on Morbidia. A small hint of a bigger world. Having his audience peer through a keyhole to a magical world. A song that cajoled the listeners, leaving them wanting more.