The Best Part of Game of Thrones Wasn't Even George R.R. Martin's Idea

So it might be surprising to learn that early drafts of George Martin 's story did not involve any dragons at all.

Then again, back in early drafts of his fantasy saga plotlines and characters were drastically different (for example, Jaime Lannister had no character depth under his external image of a shameless villain) and the whole story was envisioned as short enough to actually be completed within Martin's lifetime.

Anyway, as George Martin said in a recent interview with Kevin Smith: "There was a very early stage of me writing Game of Thrones where I thought I would not have literal dragons."

As he explained, in the initial version Targaryens would still have a dragon as their house sigil and be associated with dragons, but not because they literally rode the things.

"Maybe the Targaryens had some kind of psionic power. They were like pyromancers and they could manifest blasts of flame mentally like in Firestarter or something like that, and that's why they were identified with dragons but there would be no literal dragons."

But eventually Martin discussed his idea with author Phyllis Eisenstein, who advised him to include actual dragons. "That was a good note," he said. We can only agree.

George Martin also talked about some of the criticisms he received from the fandom. Apparently, a vocal portion of fans has issue with the world of Westeros being too grounded and urges Martin to make his fantasy more fantastical.

Given that the fantastic elements of Martin's world, such as, you know, dragons, or shapeshifting assassins who appear to have 100% success rate, or causality reversals (better known as "prophecies") , or even multi-year seasons, already only work if you do not think too hard about them and logical, realistic implications of their existence…

Well, he should better stick with quasi-medieval intrigue as much as possible, and judging by his reaction to fan complaints of this sort, he understands that.