Photo: Mashable
I’m upset.
HBO’s The Long Night—the prequel to Game of Thrones—was originally going to take place 10,000 years before the events of the hit series.
But now, George R.R. Martin confirmed that the series will actually take place 5,000 years before the events in Game of Thrones. And unfortunately, that’s still long enough to predate the city of Valyria—the place that gave rise to House Targaryen.
“… it’s closer to 5,000 years,” Martin said. “But you’re right. Westeros is a very different place. There’s no King’s Landing. There’s no Iron Throne. There are no Targaryens—Valyria has hardly begun to rise yet with its dragons and the great empire that it built. We’re dealing with a different and older world and hopefully that will be part of the fun of the series.” Martin is an executive producer and co-creator on the new drama.
While the news is disappointing for some, it certainly doesn’t mean there will never be a dragon in the prequel. In a show like Game of Thrones, anything can happen.
Martin’s original vision for the GoT series was a fantasy world without any dragons whatsoever. “I did consider in the very early stages not having the dragons in there,” Martin has previously said. “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.”
With Naomi Watts set to star, the upcoming prequel pilot “chronicles the world’s descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour. And only one thing is for sure: From the horrifying secrets of Westeros’ history to the true origin of the white walkers, the mysteries of the East, to the Starks of legend… it’s not the story we think we know.”
