Hi there! This is George R. R. Martin,
coming to you from Santa Fe, New Mexico,
from Santa Fe's original art house,
the Jean Cocteau Cinema.
So we have some questions from fans.
The first one is...
And the answer is no. Absolutely not.
It's a different story set in the same world.
Set in the world of Westeros,
telling the story of the Targaryen dynasty at its height,
when they had a lot of dragons.
That's why we put "dragon" in the title.
Those are tricky questions because that's like asking,
"Well, which one of your children do you love the best?"
Daemon Targaryen, the Rogue Prince,
is one of my favorite Targaryens.
He's very charismatic, he's very changeable.
You never know what he's gonna do,
what side he's gonna come down on.
Is he gonna do something appalling?
Is he gonna do something heroic?
He does both in the course of this,
and I like that kind of complexity in my characters.
I like people who have a little humanity to them.
Because I think all of us have both good and evil in us.
King Viserys Targaryen the First,
as portrayed by Paddy Considine in the show,
is better than the way I wrote King Viserys in
He's stronger. He's still conflicted.
He's more of a tragic figure.
He has King Lear aspects to him, if I may dare that.
And that's made his portrayal really interesting to watch in the show.
And let it be known, anyone whose tongue dares
to question the birth of Princess Rhaenyra's sons
should have it removed.
No. No, it's just the color of the dragon's scales,
any more than the color of a human being's skin
doesn't say anything about the-- our character.
But if you look in nature,
which was my idea when describing these,
dragons are basically reptiles.
They're lizards.
If you go online and look at lizards and snakes,
they're incredibly brightly colored,
and some of them are striped.
Some of them really stand out.
I mean, a coral snake with its banding.
And especially in this show, because we have so many dragons,
that I wanted the audience,
as well as the characters in the show,
to be able to recognize which dragon it was
when it flies overhead.
And the color is one of the ways we do that.
(DRAGON TRILLS)
I don't know. I think Oldtown, way down south.
The oldest city in the realm.
That would be a pretty good place to live.
Oldtown and King's Landing are both very big cities,
but Oldtown is older and nicer.
It's a city with hundreds and thousands of years of history,
while King's Landing just kind of mushroomed from nothing.
So Oldtown has, you know, cobblestone streets
and nice restaurants and the river.
It's more southerly, so winters are not as harsh.
Balerion, the Black Dread,
is dead by the time
So he was Aegon the Conqueror's dragon.
He was the biggest of the Targaryen dragons that took over Westeros.
So with him gone, the largest and oldest remaining dragon is Vhagar.
Vhagar has been around for hundreds of years
and has fought many wars,
has reduced things to ash and flame and bone.
But Caraxes, who's also a very large dragon,
Prince Daemon's dragon,
but is younger and not as huge as Vhagar.
But he's younger and faster,
and he's also very battle-hardened,
very fierce,
doesn't take any crap from anybody.
So both of those dragons are really, really formidable.
What is my favorite scene?
Whoa. Actually, I haven't really seen it yet
because as I'm recording this tape,
I've only seen the rough cuts.
Some of the scenes, especially if they involve special effects,
I'm not going to see for a while yet 'cause,
especially the later episodes,
they're still working on the special effects.
But the biggest scene has to be the dragon battle in episode ten.
That's a huge moment in the books.
It's gonna be a huge moment to see.
It's a huge moment in the war.
It's really one of the big turning points of the war.
That's something I really want to see when it's completely finished.
I mean, it looks already pretty damn good in the rough cut,
but the rough cut is-- is rough.
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