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~ The geography and maps of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and other fantasy worlds

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Category Archives: game of thrones

A New Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones World Map

23 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by werthead in a song of ice and fire, game of thrones, geography, george r.r. martin, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

It’s been a long time coming, but I have completed my new complete map of the known world in A Song of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones).

ASoIaF Known World New Mountains

Please click or tap for a much, much bigger version.

My previous map was a sneak peak at Westeros, but since then I’ve redone the mountains to look at least a bit better and then completed work on Essos, Sothoryos and Ulthos. This new map is the most complete world map ever assembled for A Song of Ice and Fire, drawing not just on the world map in Lands of Ice and Fire but also the extended map in The World of Ice and Fire (which goes further north and south) and information that came to light only in Fire and Blood (can you spot the islands Elissa Farman discovered?).

This new map is huge at 10,000 pixels wide, so you may find it easier to download the image to peruse as your leisure.

My previous serious of historical and geographical maps should be updated in the future with information from this new, more colourful map, although it’s going to take some considerable time to update everything. As usual, thanks to everyone for their support.

ASoIaF Known World New Mountains

This is a .png version which may display better on some smartphones. Please tap for a larger version.

Thank you for reading The Atlas of Ice and Fire. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content before it goes live on my blogs.

Historical Map 3: The Age of Heroes & The Long Night

25 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by werthead in a song of ice and fire, game of thrones, history, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

The signing of the Pact began an age of kings, warriors and heroes in Westeros. Kingdoms were founded, splintered apart and reforged, dozens of them spanning the south and, increasingly, the north of the continent. The First Men abided by the Pact, sparing the weirwood and logging the trees but lightly where necessary. But as the centuries and then millennia passed the Children of the Forest were seen but rarely, and they raised no objection when many of the great forests were torn down altogether. Yet still the weirwoods were spared, and sometimes integrated into the design of the earliest holdfasts and ringforts that the First Men built. The respect the First Men held for the weirwoods as a symbol of the Pact saw them slowly take up the religion of the old gods of the forest, as many had already done even during the war, and after a few centuries this religion had become dominant amongst the culture of the First Men.

 

age-of-heroes

Westeros in the Age of Heroes. The great forests of the Dawn Age had been partially destroyed in the war against the Children of the Forest, but the land was still heavily wooded. The Arm of Dorne had been destroyed, becoming the Stepstones, and the Neck was flooded as a desolate swamp. At some point in the Age of Heroes, it is said that Oldtown was founded, Moat Cailin raised, Casterly Rock inhabited and Storm’s End built.

Legends speak of the Hundred Kingdoms, of a land divided into a patchwork quilt of ever-shifting petty-fiefdoms where every man who could raise a tower on a hill would call himself king. But in truth we do not know how many kingdoms rose and fell in the earliest days, only that many kings ruled where later only seven did, and then only one.

In all of Westeros in that time, only one city is known to have risen. The original name of the small town that took shape on the banks of the Honeywine is unknown, save that it was old when the Andals invaded. Hence, its name of Oldtown. We know that Battle Island, which stands in the harbour of Oldtown, was inhabited in even more ancient days, for mysterious fused blocks of black stone can be found there, which in later years became the foundations of the High Tower. But when exactly Oldtown was founded, we cannot say.

Reliable records of this time are scant, almost non-existent. The First Men did not use paper or write books. They chiselled runes into stone and occasionally tablets. Few of these records have survived, and their reliability and age are in question. Some of the maesters believe that this entire span of time, the Age of Heroes, is far more recent than tradition claims, and lasted a far shorter span of time. The truth, as always, remains unknown.

In the annals, the great heroes of this age included Lann the Clever, who tricked the Casterlys into abandoning Casterly Rock, the vast stone edifice on the west coast of Westeros, and took it as his own. There was also Garth Greenhand, a great warrior-king who united part of the Reach under his rule, established a great kingdom along the Mander and founded House Gardener. Durran Godsgrief took Elenei, daughter of the gods of the sea and the wind, to wife and was punished by having her and his family slain. In his rage he defied them to build what is Storm’s End. Great warriors such as Symeon Star-Eyes and Serwyn of the Mirror Shield are held to have fought great battles and done great deeds, from slaying dragons to rescuing princesses. But the truth of this, of all of this, is doubtful.

What is known is that the Age of Heroes climaxed in darkness, and cold, and death.

the-long-night

The known world during the Long Night. The great darkness and cold consumed all of Westeros and reached as far south and east as Asshai at its height.

The Long Night fell across the entire world, apparently with little warning. One year, winter came and did not leave. In some parts of the world the sun dipped below the horizon and did not return. This time lasted for more than a generation, where children were born and rose to adulthood never knowing anything other than cold, privation and darkness.

Out of that darkness rode the Others. Pale beings of ice and cold, wielding weapons which shattered bronze of contact, the Others rode dead horses and giant ice-spiders, commanding the bodies of those they had slain to rise again and fight alongside them. They came from the uttermost north, out of the Lands of Always Winter beyond the northern-most valleys and peaks of the Frostfang mountains, spreading south through the Haunted Forest and into the lands that are now called the North. Every king of men who stood against them fell, his forces slaughtered and the bodies raised again to serve their new masters.

This darkness fell across Essos as well. The mighty River Rhoyne froze over. In the lands of the Great Empire of the Dawn, which is now Yi Ti, it is recorded that the sun hid its face from the earth for a lifetime. In Asshai it is said that a great hero, Azor Ahai, slew his beloved to forge the greatest sword in the history of creation, Lightbringer, and used this blade to drive the darkness from the earth and the Others from civilised lands. The religion of R’hllor, the Lord of Light, claims that he will return at the end of days to drive back the darkness a second time.

That Azor Ahai is of Essos is interesting, for the legends of the Others, whom some call the white walkers, claim that their stroke fell on Westeros alone. The rest of the world felt the darkness they had unleashed (or which had summoned them; the cause and effect remains a mystery) but their direct fury fell first on Westeros. Essos is separated from the northern polar icecap by the Shivering Sea, suggesting that the Others had no way of crossing unfrozen water, limiting their initial invasion to the western continent. Whether this means that Azor Ahai came to Westeros to fight the Others, or fought a separate enemy in Essos, is also a mystery.

The legends and annals of Westeros record that the continent was shrouded in darkness and ice. The kingdoms of the First Men fell before them and hope dwindled until a great warrior, the Last Hero (who may or may not be the same as Azor Ahai), rode forth to seek the aid of the Children of the Forest. In the forests of the far north he found them at last, and with their aid he was able to restore light to the world. He founded an army known as the Night’s Watch and took the fight to the enemy. The Others were defeated, driven back in a renewed conflict known as the War for the Dawn. The Children equipped the armies of men with swords and daggers of obsidian – dragonglass, or frozen fire – which shattered the Others on contact. The Others were unable to stand before this threat, and the fire the First Men unleashed on the battlefield, and fled. And as they fled the Long Night lifted, and so the world was saved.

But the Others were defeated, not destroyed. They fled north beyond the Frostfangs, into lands so cold that men could not follow and survive. It was held that they would return, so a great barrier was erected to stand against them. Brandon Stark, a great mason of the northern kingdoms, was called upon to design a defence. He proposed a wall, a single great fortification stretching almost from coast to coast, spanning the narrowest part of Westeros north of the Neck. This required a construction project spanning three hundred miles, the largest in history. But he did not labour alone. Men came in their tens of thousands, and maybe hundreds of thousands, from across Westeros to lend their aid. Giants, who had suffered the depredations of the Others as well, descended from their mountain homes to lend their aid, cutting vast blocks of stone and ice. And the Children of the Forest lent their aid as well, imbuing the blocks and foundation stones with magical properties. How tall Brandon planned to build his wall is unknown, except that it was far lower than what we see today. Some hold that originally the Wall was only dozens of feet tall, rather than hundreds, but as time passed snow and rain fell on the Wall and turned to ice, and that ice then never melted, but grew and became compacted and the Wall grew taller, and taller. By every law of nature and science, the Wall should have toppled and fell, its colossal weight growing far beyond the ability of any foundation stone to support it, but the sorcery of the Children held true, and the Wall grew straight and tall. Thousands of years later, the Wall now tops seven hundred feet, making it the largest and most awe-inspiring sight in all the known world.

building-of-the-wall

The Wall under construction, with men, Children of the Forest and giants allying together. Art by Chase Stone for The World of Ice and Fire.

According to myth, Brandon the Builder was acclaimed as a great warrior and administrator as well as a mason and architect, and after building the Wall he laid the foundation stones of Winterfell and ruled as the First King in the North, the founder of House Stark.

Of course, in these more enlightened days, no true maester believes a word of it.

Or, to be more precise, that some great climactic catastrophe took place several thousand years in the past is certainly likely, especially as cultures otherwise remote and disconnected from one another all record a similar age of ice falling on them within roughly the same period of time, and it later lifting. The Others also existing is possible, but it is more likely that they were a tribe of First Men who dwelt the lands of the furthest north. They were displaced south by the Long Night and mounted a migratory invasion to save themselves, but were defeated and thrown back. Their descendants, lacking their numbers and vigour, scattered into the feuding tribes known today as the Free Folk, or wildlings.

This scepticism is checked by the Wall. It still stands in the North of Westeros, spanning the continent for a hundred leagues from the Gorge to the Shivering Sea, topped out at over seven hundred feet, defying reason and logic. It is too regular to be a natural phenomenon, too large to conceivably be the work of man. The Wall is an anomaly that some of the maesters of the Citadel have been trying to explain through science for thousands of years, and others have simply ignored as an inconvenient reminder that they do not know everything.

The Age of Heroes is said by some to have ended in the Long Night and the War for the Dawn. Others believe it only properly concluded when the Andals invaded Westeros millennia later, ushering in an age of iron and conquest.

White Walkers.png

In Game of Thrones, it is said that the Children of the Forest created the original White Walkers using weapons of obsidian, blood magic and mystical runestones. However, this may be a different origin to what George R.R. Martin will reveal in A Song of Ice and Fire.

A Note on the Seasons & Revelations from Game of Thrones

It is entirely possible that the Long Night is what threw the seasons out of balance and before this event they were normal in duration. This is hinted at in both The World of Ice and Fire and in the original cover blurb for A Game of Thrones. Since the Long Night it may be that the seasons instead reflect the power and supremacy of the Great Other, with the weather growing colder as his power waxes and warmer as it wanes. If the Others are defeated forver, it may be that normal seasons will be restored to the world.

The sixth season of Game of Thrones featues a sequence in which we see the Children of the Forest created the White Walkers/Others from captured men. That the Children created the Others is a long-standing fan theory. It is possible that they did so to create the ultimate weapon against the First Men, but then the Pact was forged and there was no need to unleash this magic. Four thousand years later, the Others were released by accident, or by Children who foresaw their extinction and were driven to desperation.

It is possible that this is an invention of the TV series alone and the true origin of the Others is yet to be revealed.

Dany’s Invasion of Westeros (TV Edition)

03 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by werthead in game of thrones, military, tv map

≈ 4 Comments

Since the opening chapters of A Game of Thrones, readers have anticipated one event in A Song of Ice and Fire more than almost any other: the return of Daenerys Targaryen to Westeros and her claiming the Iron Throne with the appropriate amounts of fire and blood. Despite its unimpeachable excellence, A Storm of Swords disappointed a lot of readers when it ended with Daenerys choosing to stay and rule the city of Meereen in Slaver’s Bay rather than pressing on for home. Dany’s departure for Westeros in the books is now not anticipated until The Winds of Winter, at least, and it will be a murky, conflicted invasion involving not just Daenerys and her forces but various factions working at cross-purposes. Prominent amongst these complications is her alleged nephew, Aegon VI Targaryen, and his mercenary army, the Golden Company. Aegon and the Golden Company are already in-theatre and may be able to claim the Iron Throne whilst she is still MIA in the Dothraki Sea.

Targaryen Fleet

The Targaryen fleet heading for Westeros.

HBO, however, have accelerated this particular storyline. The sixth season of Game of Thrones ended with Daenerys setting out with a “coalition of the willing” to finally invade the Seven Kingdoms and claim the Iron Throne. So, how might this be achieved?

For starters, we might look at the forces involved:

House Targaryen

  • Three dragons.
  • Dothraki bloodriders (100,000+ men).
  • House Tyrell (several dozen ships, 100,000+ men).
  • House Martell (several dozen ships, 30,000+ men).
  • Rebel Greyjoy forces (100 ships, several thousand troops).
  • The Unsullied (8,000 elite troops, minus a few dozen killed by the Harpy).
  • Captured ships from Volantis, Astapor and Yunkai (hundreds).
  • Support from forces loyal to R’hllor, Lord of Light.
  • Superior numbers.
  • Air superiority.
  • Naval superiority.
  • Dwarf superiority.
  • Eunuch superiority.

House Lannister

  • House Lannister (60,000 men minus several tens of thousands of casualties from the War of the Five Kings).
  • House Frey (unreliable, 4,000+ men)
  • Various houses in the Crownlands, Riverlands and Stormlands, maybe totalling 40-50,000 men but of highly uncertain loyalty.
  • One raging psychopathic undead giant zombie thing.

House Stark

  • Forces directly loyal to House Stark (probably over 10,000 men, maybe more).
  • House Arryn (40,000+ men)
  • Wildlings (2,000+ men)

Uncommitted

  • The Brotherhood Without Banners (several hundred forces)
  • House Greyjoy (1,000 ships and probably 10,000+ men)
  • The Night’s Watch (less than 1,000 men, but unable to leave the Wall)
  • Mercenary forces of Essos (tens of thousands of men)
  • The Iron Bank of Braavos (previously allied to Stannis but current deposition unknown)
  • The hill tribes of the Vale of Arryn (several thousand men, previously allied to Tyrion Lannister)
Dany's Invasion

Dany’s forces in the battle for the Iron Throne will include the armies of House Martell and Tyrell, a large part of the strength of House Greyjoy, tens (and maybe hundreds) of thousands of Dothraki bloodriders, elite Unsullied forces and three dragons. The Lannisters have only their own forces and the redoubtable House Frey to oppose them, and will be severely outnumbered, outmatched and outflanked.

That’s…not great for the forces of House Lannister. In fact, they are so seriously outmatched and outnumbered that I’m not even sure it’s worth them turning up to fight. For there to be any tension in the conflict I suspect the producers of the show will have to field some curveballs.

First up, I think there will be an alliance between Euron’s ironborn and Cersei. Given the lengthy lead-time required to build more ships and then sail to Slaver’s Bay, Euron probably realises that Yara and Theon reached Daenerys months ahead of him and have already secured an alliance. If he wants to rule the Seven Kingdoms, allying with the person who’s already in charge – Cersei – would make a certain amount of sense. Although this would make a naval assault more problematic for Dany’s forces, the certain advantages they have – like three airborne boat-burning dragons – would still ensure victory in Blackwater Bay. The forces the Lannisters and Greyjoys would have available to defend King’s Landing would be quite strong, potentially a quarter of Daenerys’s forces but with the defensive multiplier gained from holding the walls that could be enough to hold them off. However, again, Dany’s dragons would eliminate that advantage and Varys is well aware of the tunnels under the city, such as the one Arya stumbled across in Season 1, that would allow strike forces to slip inside and attack the Red Keep whilst the bulk of the defenders are on the walls.

Drogon

Daenerys’s dragons confer an immense tactical advantage that Cersei would not seem able to match.

One potential force-equaliser would be if Euron has, as in the books, a Valyrian horn of dragon control. If he does, this could upset things at a delicate moment in the attack. Seizing control of all of the dragons and turning them against Dany’s army and fleet could be disastrous, or getting the dragons to fight and kill one another, or even just distracting them to prevent their use in the battle.

Another possibility is the use of additional stocks of wildfire. Having blown up part of Stannis’s fleet on the Blackwater and then destroyed the Great Sept of Baelor with it, it might be a little too much to rely on it to turn the tide in a third major engagement, but at least this time the attackers should be forewarned by Tyrion and Varys. There’s always been a strong theory that Cersei would rather burn King’s Landing to the ground then surrender and it might be that she would rather die and try to take as many of her enemies with her as possible than give up meekly. This would track with Daenerys’s TV vision from the House of the Undying where the Red Keep is in ruins and snow is falling on the Iron Throne.

Another complicating factor is the position of House Stark. At the end of Season 6 the Starks have a problem. They know about the threat of the White Walkers but they also need to neutralise Cersei and prevent any further threat from the south, as well as attempting to secure more support in the struggle to come. They may decide to march once they learn of Cersei’s difficulties, especially with House Frey in chaos from Lord Walder’s assassination. However, it may be that Daenerys and Jon Snow’s forces come into opposition with one another, potentially over competing claims to the Iron Throne. This would also maximise the level of chaos at a time when Littlefinger is trying to manoeuvre himself into a position where he can take the throne himself (the Knights of the Vale may tip the balance in any struggle, as they did in the battle for Winterfell). And of course this level of chaos would benefit the White Walkers, since they could potentially strike at the Wall at any time.

We know from George R.R. Martin’s original outline that A Song of Ice and Fire, when originally mooted as a trilogy, was meant to conclude with an epic battle between the living and the undead, possibly in the North and maybe at Winterfell. The TV producers are not bound to that, of course, and Martin may have changed his mind since then. But with less than 15 episodes of the TV series left and apparently only seven episodes in Season 7, it looks like we are moving decisively towards the end of the TV version of the story and that would indicate that Daenerys’s invasion of Westeros will need to be wrapped up by the end of the next season. It’s going to be a short, sharp and brutal campaign, whoever ends up winning.

Teleportation in Game of Thrones

02 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by werthead in game of thrones, tv map

≈ 5 Comments

The latest season of Game of Thrones has played a little fast and loose with the realism of medieval travel times, chronology and geography, it is fair to say. The TV series has always done this, of course, but in Season 6 there were moments when it felt a little bit over-the-top, especially Littlefinger flashing back and forth between Winterfell, Moat Cailin (700 miles to the south) and the Vale of Arryn, 500-ish miles further away. The most jolting moment came in the series finale when Varys apparently travelled from Meereen to Sunspear in Dorne and back to Meereen again in what felt like a very short span of time.

Voyager of the Eunuch - GoT 610

The Voyage of Varys in Season 6 of Game of Thrones. A round-trip journey of 5,130 miles could be accomplished in around ten weeks, assuming he stays in Dorne for a fortnight and there are favourable winds.

The simple answer is that a lot more time elapsed than it first appeared. This has been the case in the show all along which has eaten up much time than the novels. More than a month elapses in the very first episode of the series, Winter is Coming, by itself. By the end of Season 5 Myrcella Baratheon says that she had spent “years” living in Dorne, where she was sent towards the end of Season 2. Very clearly, Arya, Sansa and Bran have all grown considerably and even Jon and Daenerys are notably older than when the story began. Estimates vary but it appears that at least three and maybe closer to five years have elapsed in the show to date, compared to two to just under two-and-a-half years in the novels (which begin in 298 AC and conclude, so far, in the middle or latter half of 300 AC). There are some problems with this, most notably that Gilly’s baby (born just a few episodes after Myrcella’s departure for Dorne) only appears to be a year or so old when he should really be over two and maybe closer to three, but it’s a necessity of the production schedule of the TV show and the inconvenient insistence of the actors on aging a year between each season.

For the purposes of cartography, working out how much time elapsed on Varys’s journey is interesting. Meereen and Sunspear are 2,565 miles apart in a straight line. However, the shattered volcanic peninsula of Valyria lies inconveniently in the way. In the books, sailing around Valyria is described as a “fearsome” journey which the faint-hearted do not attempt. Sailors believe that to sail within sight of the cursed Valyrian coastline is to risk death, but ships are not designed to sign for vast periods of time far away from the sight of land. Storms are common on the Summer Sea, particularly if the surviving Fourteen Flames of Valyria are active, and losses at sea are common.

In the TV show, the same dangers are not in place. In fact, in Season 5 Jorah Mormont and Tyrion Lannister cut across the neck of the Valyrian Peninsula via the Smoking Sea and it’s even said that the route is reasonably safe – plummeting Stone Men aside – as the dangers are greatly exaggerated to dissuade treasure-hunters and pirates. Assuming that Varys travelled with a bold captain in a swift vessel, how fast could the journey be?

Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World (Lopez/Raymond) features a surviving chartering contract for a ship sailing from Genoa, Italy to Acre, Israel in 1250 AD. This is a distance of just under 2,079 miles (1,807 nautical miles). The crew anticipated spending a minimum of 22 days at sea on the voyage out and 25 back, although of course this could be dramatically extended by unfavourable weather, becalmings, storms etc or dramatically shortened by favourable winds on the right quarter. That’s an average of 94.5 miles per day under ideal circumstances.

Travelling in the Mediterranean may be analogous to crossing Slaver’s Bay (now aka the Bay of Dragons) and maybe even the Smoking Sea, but braving the open ocean of the Summer Sea is a different matter, even if Varys’s ship is cleaving to the shore (as all medieval ships generally did; ships capable of sailing out of the sight of land with a reasonable expectation of survival did not really emerge until the 15th Century). Still, let us assume winds were favourable in both directions. Assuming the 94.5 mpd average holds true, it would take 27 days to sail from Meereen to Sunspear. Let’s call it an even month. Let’s assume that Varys spent a fortnight in Sunspear. Logically it should be more if he showed up and only after making his offer of an alliance with the Sand Snakes did they send for Olenna Tyrell, but maybe he organised something by messenger whilst en route and they set it up so Olenna was already on her way or something. Anyway, that gives us a time elapsed from the start of episode 608 (when Varys departs Meereen) to the end of episode 610 (when he joins Daenerys’s fleet) to something like two-and-a-half months, with a time-jump within the episode itself as about a month to six weeks. Not quite as outrageous as first appears. In addition, although viewers have been assuming that Daenerys’s fleet was just departing Meereen there is no on-screen evidence of that. Dany’s fleet could in fact be in the Summer Sea already and Varys and the Tyrell and Martell ships he brought with him could have joined them en route.

So, no teleportation required, although the writers could have maybe done a little more to flag the fact that much longer stretches of time had passed than maybe it first appeared.

It’s smaller on TV: distances on Game of Thrones

15 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by werthead in a song of ice and fire, atlas of ice and fire, game of thrones

≈ 1 Comment

After five seasons something rather peculiar has become apparent on HBO’s Game of Thrones. For unknown reasons, the continent of Westeros appears to be significantly smaller in the TV show than in the books.

The North map

A map of the North, the largest but also most sparsely-populated of the Seven Kingdoms.

This may not be immediately apparent, but three separate data points now confirm it. These are as follows:

It takes one month to get from King’s Landing to Winterfell.

In the first episode of the TV show Cersei says that it has taken one month to travel from King’s Landing to Winterfell. Although the royal party is mounted, the party has travelled using carriages which will slow them down. The ridiculously massive land-cruiser wagon from the novels is fortunately not present, but it’d still be slower going with carriages. The novels suggest that actually several months may have passed on the road. Using the book maps, the distance from King’s Landing to Winterfell by road can be calculated at approximately 1,500 miles. Even making 30 miles a day on good roads (as we can assume the Kingsroad is), it’d take 50 days (more than one-and-a-half months) for the party to travel from King’s Landing to Winterfell.

The distance from Torrhen’s Square to Winterfell.

In the Season 2 episode The Ghost of Harrenhal, it is stated that the castle of Torrhen’s Square is 40 leagues (120 miles) from Winterfell. However, the maps make it 76-80 leagues (230-240 miles). This distance is notable because it is quite specific, suggesting that the TV version of Westeros may only be half the size of the book version!

The size of the North.

In the Season 4 episode The Mountain and the Viper Roose Bolton legitimises his bastard son Ramsay just outside the recently-surrendered castle of Moat Cailin. They then discuss the size of the North. Roose states that the North measures, from Moat Cailin, more than 700 miles by 400 miles by 300 miles. This is at odds with the book maps, which suggest the territory is much larger. From Moat Cailin to the Wall, for example, is approximately 970 miles. Given that Roose is trying to impress Ramsay, this is indicative that the TV version of the North is again smaller than the book version. The other measurements are somewhat nonsensical: given Moat Cailin’s location it’s actually quite close to the sea in either direction (220 miles to the west, 140 miles to the east) and it’s unclear where Roose is pointing when he gives these directions.

The correct size of the North from the books is approximately 1,175 miles from north to south and over 1,400 miles from the western-most tip of Cape Kraken to the eastern-most island off Skagos (the actual widest point on the mainland is still about 1,190 miles). According to the calculations by Elio of Westeros.org, the North measures about one million square miles, or one-third the total size of the Seven Kingdoms (and about one-sixth the total size of the Westeros continent, including the lands beyond the Wall and offshore islands). The TV version of the North simply seems to fall short of that size.

I’d normally be inclined to dismiss such things as the TV writers not paying attention to details, but the very specific sizes given for the distance from Winterfell to Torrhen’s Square and for the size of the North suggest that a calculated decision has been made to make Westeros and Essos smaller on TV than in the books. This does also help explain Littlefinger’s ability to move extremely rapidly around the continent and the relative quickness of Tyrion and Varys’s journey from Pentos to Volantis to Valyria to Meereen, compared to the epic, lengthy grind in the books. It also appears that there has been no set scale for the size different: clearly the entire continent isn’t half the size as this wouldn’t make sense for the climate and would also make the journey from King’s Landing to Winterfell too long rather than too short.

Of course, just to make things awkward it has also been mentioned on TV (in the final episode of Season 3) that the Wall is still 300 miles long, just as in the books. Actually at one point it was said to be 500 miles long, although this appears to have been a script error.

It’ll be interesting to see if Season 6 gives us more clues as to what the TV producers have in mind for their version of Westeros and Essos.

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