Story before game of thrones

This is a story of duplicity and treachery, nobility and honor, conquest and triumph. In the Game of Thrones, you either win or you die. In the mythical continent of Westeros, nine families of higher nobility Targaryen, Lannisters, Starks, Tyrell, Martell, Greyjoys, Baratheons and Boltons scramble bitterly to gain power over the seven kingdoms and the Iron throne. As Westeros becomes rife with political unrests, conflicts, treachery, murder and debauchery, an ancient enemy Army of the dead awakens and strike the sense of doom to the living folks of Westeros.

Nine noble families fight for control of the mythical land of Westeros. Political and sexual intrigue is pervasive. Secretly warned that the previous Hand was assassinated, Eddard accepts in order of business to investigate further. Meanwhile, Queen Cersei Lannister's family may be hatching a plot to take power. Across the sea, the last members of the previous and deposed ruling family, the Targaryens, are also scheming to regain the throne.

The friction between the houses Stark, Lannister, Baratheon, and Targaryen and with the remaining great houses Greyjoy, Tully, Arryn, Tyrell, and Martell leads to full-scale war. All while an ancient evil awakens in the farthest north. Amidst the war and political confusion, a neglected military order of misfits, the Night's Watch, is all that stands between the realms of men and icy horrors beyond.

Sign In. Jon Snow is elected the new Lord Commander of the Night's Watch , and cements his position by personally executing Janos Slynt for treason. The White Walkers slaughter thousands of wildlings in the Massacre at Hardhome , and the Night King revives them as wights in their army of the undead.

An insurgency grips Meereen of former slave-masters calling themselves the Sons of the Harpy , who refuse to accept Daenerys's rule. Stannis Baratheon marches south from the Wall to fight the Boltons, leading to the Battle of Winterfell. Jon Snow is stabbed and left for dead in the Mutiny at Castle Black.

Jon Snow is miraculously resurrected by the red priestess Melisandre at the behest of Ser Davos Seaworth. Ramsay Bolton murders his father , Roose Bolton, seizing power in the North. The sept of Baelor is destroyed with wildfire , killing most of the Sparrows and the Tyrells. The Targaryen fleet sails to Westeros at last , having defeated the slave masters, conquering the Dothraki, and forming an alliance with the Reach, the Iron Islands, and Dorne.

After Ramsay is killed, Jon Snow is declared the King in the North by the lords of the North and the Vale, the latter of which helped defeat the Bolton army and return Stark rule to the North. Arya Stark, on her quest for vengeance, oversees the extinguishing of the male line of House Frey in retaliation for the Red Wedding before returning to Winterfell. Jon and Daenerys first meet at Dragonstone, with Melisandre crediting herself as bringing ice and fire together to Varys.

Euron Greyjoy destroys a large portion of the Targaryen fleet and captures his niece Yara, solidifying his alliance with Cersei Lannister. Her Unsullied trapped at Casterly Rock and Highgarden sacked with the Tyrells dead , Daenerys Targaryen leads the Dothraki atop Drogon against the combined Lannister and Tarly army and destroys their loot train at the Battle of the Goldroad. Jon Snow embarks on a Wight Hunt with his allies to capture a wight as proof for the rest of Westeros. They are rescued by Daenerys, but the Night King kills Viserion and raises it as an ice dragon.

The Parley in King's Landing is held at the Dragonpit, where the captured wight is presented and Westeros agrees to come together for the Great War , setting aside their enmities and differences.

After learning that Cersei and Euron plan to betray their promise to help fight the undead, Jaime abandons his sister and rides north as snow falls on King's Landing. With his crimes against the realm and its noble families uncovered, Petyr Baelish is executed by the combined efforts of Sansa, Arya, and Bran Stark. Theon Greyjoy, forgiven by Jon Snow and overpowering Harrag , wins over Yara's remaining followers and persuades them to join him in his mission to rescue his sister from his uncle Euron.

This concerns Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys's Hand. The Wall is breached where Eastwatch stands after attacks made by the Night King, nullifying its magic and allowing for the crossing of the White Walkers and wights into the North. The date given on Jorah's letter of pardon from Season 1 is " AL", the same as in the books - which has been taken as establishing that both the TV series and first novel begin in the year AC, though time moves more slowly in the TV series.

The timeline of the TV series broadly follows the timeline of the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, with several minor differences. Several younger characters - most notably Jon Snow, all of the Stark children and Daenerys Targaryen - are two to three years older than their book equivalents, which has required the date of Robert's Rebellion to be pushed back from fifteen to seventeen years before the events of the series begin.

Other characters are even older Robert Baratheon is ten years older than his book counterpart, Eddard Stark is likely similarly about ten years older or younger Ser Vardis Egen is decades younger than in the book, while Theon is two years younger , though for the most part this has no bearing on the timeline.

Though this takes place in Season 4, the letter was written and sent in Season 1, and it specifies the year as after Aegon's Landing, the same year as in the beginning of the book series. Several characters in Season 1 mention that Robert's Rebellion ended 17 years ago, which would put the year it ended as roughly - 17 AC.

The prop for the book The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms explicitly states that Robert Baratheon was crowned king in year after Aegon's Landing, cementing that the end of the rebellion was in that year.

That is actually 18 years before could be taken as a contradiction, but there are examples when the 17 year date is contradicted within the show itself as well, In Season 1 Episode 2 " The Kingsroad " , Catelyn says that Eddard Stark rode off with Robert Baratheon "17 years ago", but Eddard rode off with Robert at the beginning of the rebellion, which is said in the same episode to have lasted about a year, which would suggest it ended in AC.

One, albeit unlikely, explanation to account for the discrepancy between "17 years" and " after Aegon's Landing" is that 17 years could be referring to the actual end of the rebellion, the Assault on Dragonstone , which is specified to have taken place about a year after the Sack of King's Landing after which Robert was crowned.

More plausible explanations could be that Season 1 takes place early in AC not likely since Season 1 covers several months - there is significant travelling and Daenerys carries a child almost to term or that Robert became king very late in AC and the date of the anniversary simply did not pass yet in Season 1.

Regardless, Game of Thrones Wiki follows the assumption that the current year is AC and that Robert became king in AC, as those are the only concrete dates directly given by official prop TV continuity material, anything else being fan-made calculations. The major datable event from King Robert's reign in the TV continuity is that the Greyjoy Rebellion is, as in the book series, consistently stated to have occurred 9 years before the beginning of the story - it is mentioned several times in Season 1 that there hasn't been a "proper fight" in nine years.

In the books, the Greyjoy Rebellion also occurred 9 years before the story begins - to necessitate just how long Theon was functionally raised in the Stark household as Ned's ward. In the book continuity, with a year gap since Robert's Rebellion, the Greyjoy Rebellion occurred 6 years after Robert was crowned. In the TV series, based on the repeated comments regarding "9 years", the Greyjoy Rebellion took place in - 9 AC, the same year as it did in the books, but Robert becoming king in AC means that it took place longer into his reign than in the books, 9 years into his reign rather than 6.

Beyond the props in Season 1, there is no concrete confirmation of the years events in the rest of the series take place. No later piece of dialogue or prop explicitly gives the current year. Game of Thrones Wiki follows the assumption that one season corresponds roughly to one year. Evidence for this, and evidence for the contrary, is presented below. It is possible to reconcile much of the discrepancies noted above if it assumed that Season 2 and 3 take place in the same year, and that Season 7 and 8 take place in the same year.

With this timeline, the timeline of Cersei's pregnancy makes more sense, and much of the other evidence holds up as well. Sansa being 14 in Season 3 and 13 in Season 1 works out, as does Cersei being queen for "19 years" in Season 4, and Varys working to assassinate Daenerys for "20 years". It also works with the various comments about events having been "years" ago, Joffrey's wars had lasted for two years in Season 4, when Barristan commented on them lasting for "years" two is plural , Stannis having trusted in Melisandre for years would also equal two years rather than three, still plausible.

This would also go to explaining how Daenerys can claim she "did not have dragons a year ago" in Season 3 when they were born in Season 1 , and Cersei not having seen Myrcella for about a year in Season 4 when they last saw each other in Season 2. Talisa's statement in Season 3 that indicates that the War of the Five Kings had lasted for about 2 years could be reconciled by imagining it starting early in AC and her making the statement late in AC i.

The major problem with this version of the timeline is Arya Stark's age. Though Arya's age is never expicitly given within the series itself, HBO officially confirmed her to be 18 years old in Season 8. If Season 8 takes place in AC, five years after Season 1, this would make Arya 13 years old in Season 1, the same age as her older sister Sansa Stark.

Though the actress of Arya, Maisie Williams, was 13 when they filmed Season 1, Arya and Sansa cannot be the same age in-universe, and have to be separated by at least one year. Their ages relative to each other are never confirmed in the TV series. In the book series, Arya is three years younger than Sansa, but Sophie Turner Sansa's actress is just a year older than Maisie Williams. Given that they have to be at least a year apart, the timeline would have to look like one of the models below:.

In Season 1 Episode 9 " Baelor " , when Maester Aemon recounts his lineage to Jon Snow, he states that Aegon V Aemon's brother was the father and direct predecessor of Aerys II, meaning that Jaehaerys II was cut from the Targaryen lineage in the TV series continuity, a deliberate change presumably done to make Aemon's explanation of his genealogy to Jon Snow more concise and less convoluted. Though it skips an entire generation or merges it into the next, depending on the characters involved in the Targaryen family tree, the timeline implications of skipping Jaehaerys II are not as large as they would be if another king had been skipped as he only ruled for three years in the book series.

At the time of the novels, Westeros has been using a calendar system based on the year of Aegon's Landing, which occurred three centuries before. As explained above, calling it "Aegon's Landing" AL is somewhat anachronistic given that the "landing" happened at the beginning of the conquest but the calendar system only begins two years later, at the end of the conquest - more recent in-universe historical texts have been shifting to the alternate name "After Conquest" AC.

The difference is purely one of nomenclature: "the year AL" and "the year AC" are exactly the same. The known world that Westeros and Essos are set in has variable seasons that can last for years, sometimes a decade each though such long seasons only come once every century or two.

On the average, it seems that one season can last for about two to three years or so the full four season cycle therefore taking about a decade. There are hints that the seasons may not always have been this way: characters still define "a year" as a twelve month period, not a full cycle of summer to winter.

Months are the same as in real-life, roughly a thirty day period. The term "moon-turn" is commonly used for "month". When the in-universe history text from the novellas about the Dance of the Dragons give specific dates, they are usually just in the format "on the fifth day of the third moon of the year AL" etc. While they seem to just refer to each month by number, keep in mind that this is essentially what the real-life Gregorian calendar does, inherited from the Romans, and their names often just stem from Latin numbers: "Sept-ember" is the seventh month, "Oct-ober" is the eighth month, etc.

Westeros also doesn't use an "o'clock" system of measuring hours in a day they also don't have mechanical clocks. Not every culture throughout real life history has measured the first hour of a given day starting at midnight the exact opposite of noon ; some start at sunrise, others at sunset. It isn't clear at what hour one day officially becomes the next in Westeros though given that they are an agrarian society, they probably measure by each sunrise.

Each "day" apparently consists of a 24 hour period - simply so that Martin would not confuse readers when he referred to a certain amount of hours in the narrative. People in Westeros apparently just apply colloquial names to each hour of the day, i.

A few other hour names have been mentioned in passing:. The events in the book series are faster paced than in Game of Thrones. Rome was unflinching in its portrayal of sex, violence, and sexual violence, and people loved it for that.

Some hated it for the same reason, but none who had seen it remained indifferent for very long. By the time it arrived on British screens, the show was already notorious for its stark imagery and often casual brutality.

Sound familiar? Both tell grand stories of violent political turmoil through the intimate lens of personal experiences. Every frame of Rome is drenched in intrigue, which occasionally erupts onto the screen through acts of bloody backstabbing or equally explicit sex scenes.

Much as in Game of Thrones , being the most influential or powerful character is no guarantee of surviving until the next episode, let alone the next season. In fact, power and misery seem to be inextricably bonded in both shows. Indira Varma, the actress that once portrayed the wife of Lucius Vorenus, turned into the paramour of the vengeful Prince Martell in last season's Thrones. More importantly, Rome showed HBO was capable of wrangling huge casts and weaving together sprawling and complex storylines to create one compelling whole.