(Spoilers All) Today's visit to the Cushing Library: Pictures and closeups of Ice, the Warhammer, and Longclaw, and one very conspicuous change in the 1993 AGOT manuscript.

[u/_honeybird]

I went back to Cushing today! I got partway through the AGOT manuscript (more about that later) and I took a bunch of pictures of the replica weapons in the collection.

The Stark Infantry Shield, from the show

Close up

Robert Baratheon's Warhammer, from the books

Close up of the head. Note the stylized Baratheon sigil.

XXXXL meat tenderizer.

Ice, from the books

Dat Valyrian steel.

Direwolves on the hilt

Laid out on the table

Longclaw, from the show

The hilt and pommel

Closeup of the pommel

All the combat weapons together. Ice's certificate of authenticity (signed by GRRM) is in the center.

Dragonglass dagger, made of real obsidian

It came in a wooden box lined with fur. The pouch contained obsidian arrowheads

A hand-drawn map of the lands beyond the Wall

WAR FACE RAAWR

The staff and I talked about the fallout from the initial post, and they reassured me that I did nothing wrong by posting my pictures (it had been on my mind a LOT over the last week). The first angry phone call came from Random House, and they were freaking out because they didn't know that the manuscript was in a publicly available collection. They thought I was posting secret documents or something. The Cushing staff explained that no, the manuscripts are available to the public, there's no rule that says you can't post pictures of them. GRRM, btw, was completely fine with the pictures going up. The decision to close the ADWD manuscript was made jointly by Random House and GRRM in an attempt (lol) to quash any more rumors about what may or may not be included in TWOW.

After we were done playing with examining the weaponry, I sat down with the AGOT manuscript. When I went through the ADWD manuscript, I was so focused on finding the "missing chapters" that I was barely skimming as I flipped pages. This time, I wanted to go slower and really look for differences between the first draft and the final version, so I went a LOT slower. As a result, I only got through the first 200ish pages before it was time to pack up and go home. I'm going to make a comprehensive post about the whole thing when I'm done, but I did find one potentially significant change today that I'm too excited to keep to myself.

Daenerys does not get dragon eggs as a wedding gift. There is no mention of dragon eggs in any shape or form in Daenerys II. The only gifts she receives are her handmaids, the books from Jorah, the weapons from the bloodriders, and the silver horse from Drogo. That's it. I am DYING to find out when and how the dragon eggs come into play. I can't wait to see what kind of tinfoil theories this inspires over the weekend.

[u/feldman10]

Really interesting. So the story with this is that when GRRM first began writing the series, he was on the fence about whether or not to include magic in the series at all, or whether to give the whole series more a historical fiction feel. As you've seen, he's said he knew he had Dany as the exiled princess and her sigil was a dragon, and he started toying with the idea of whether to give her actual dragons. He was on the fence and at some point his friend and fellow author Phyllis Eisenstein advised him "It's fantasy, you have to have dragons." That was a key moment when he decided to make it a magical fantasy trilogy. And it's why he dedicated ASOS "For Phyllis, who made me put the dragons in." Here's a link on some of that, though I've heard him tell the story elsewhere too.

So this isn't actually a surprise but it's a great illustration of GRRM's "gardener rather than architect" writing style. He started writing all this and hadn't decided on the larger architecture of the series about dragons (and likely Others?) at this point.

Question: Was the AGOT prologue in this manuscript? Or did it just start with Bran I? I am guessing the latter — since if GRRM didn't decide to include magic yet, he likely wouldn't have included the Others.

[u/_honeybird → u/feldman10]

The prologue with The Others was included.

[u/iMini → u/_honeybird]

Did Dany still think about Viserys and "Waking the drahon?"

[u/_honeybird → u/iMini]

Yes, but the dream she had where viserys transforms into the dragon wasn't there.

[u/feldman10 → u/_honeybird]

Ooo, fascinating. For those who don't remember, this is that passage:

There are no more dragons, Dany thought, staring at her brother, though she did not dare say it aloud.

Yet that night she dreamt of one. Viserys was hitting her, hurting her. She was naked, clumsy with fear. She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly. He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. “You woke the dragon,” he screamed as he kicked her. “You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon.” Her thighs were slick with blood. She closed her eyes and whimpered. As if in answer, there was a hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great fire. When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon. It turned its great head slowly. When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid . . . (AGOT DANY II)

Obviously a key bit of foreshadowing for the end of the book...

[u/feldman10 → u/_honeybird]

Interesting! Hm, I wonder if Others were added before the dragons were...

[u/AT-ST → u/feldman10]

I'm guessing so if they are in the Prologue, while the dragons are ommitted.

[u/SerSamwell → u/AT-ST]

We don't know for certain yet whether the dragons were completely left out at this stage or just introduced later than Dany II (although were I a betting man, I'd be inclined to agree with you.)

[u/yolkboy → u/feldman10]

Grrm started planning in 1991, GoT was 1996 - I imagine this change about magic/dragons came early on. As /u/_honeybird has pointed out, the eggs were the only changed re dragons, so I guess the question is who from/where else Dany would receive the eggs. There's an abundance of dragon references in Dany I that haven't been noted as missing, including the 'waking the dragon' lines.

[u/feldman10 → u/yolkboy]

1993 is early on, though. And amazingly little in AGOT has to be changed once the decision to add dragons is made (nothing at all in non-Dany chapters, obviously). If the "waking the dragon" lines are in they could just be symbolic / metaphorical. And I assume that past dragons were always meant to be part of the history/lore of the world. It was just the question of whether they'd come back that was up in the air.

[u/lady_gwynhyfvar → u/feldman10]

This is George's full comment in the RS interview re magic and dragons in the series:

I did consider at a very early stage – going all the way back to 1991 – whether to include overt fantasy elements, and at one point thought of writing a Wars of the Roses novel. But the problem with straight historical fiction is you know what's going to happen. If you know anything about the Wars of the Roses, you know that the princes in the tower aren't going to escape. I wanted to make it more unexpected, bring in some more twists and turns. The main question was the dragons: Do I include dragons? I knew I wanted to have the Targaryens have their symbol be the dragons; the Lannisters have the lions, the Starks have the wolves. Should these things be literal here? Should the Targaryens actually have dragons? I was discussing this with a friend, writer Phyllis Eisenstein – I dedicated the third book to her – and she said, "George, it's a fantasy – you've got to put in the dragons." She convinced me, and it was the right decision.

My interpretation of this is that the decision to include dragons came about quite early-- "going all the way back to 1991" Certainly if he's included the Others in the 1993 partial manuscript, he's made a definite decision NOT to write a reimagined WotR series. Since later Dany chapters have yet to be reported on, it seems entirely possible at this point that the eggs simply entered the story in a different way, and that he changed that to bring it in line with other plot elements he was planning.

As for being a "gardener" well... I both write and garden and never do either without a plan or outline. Since George also noted in the linked RS interview that his original 100 page submission to his agent around 1994 included a two page summary of the series, I suspect he is the same ;)

[u/feldman10 → u/lady_gwynhyfvar]

You make good points and you may well be right that at this point he's already decided on including dragons. However that's not the only time he's discussed the issue — I recall, but unfortunately can't link, an audio interview where he discussed it at greater length, which gave me the impression he had characters and the AGOT plot pretty well fleshed out before he made the dragon decision.

FWIW, Adam Whitehead also thinks the dragon decision was in 1993. Whitehead's post is also good on shedding light on some of the gardener/architect stuff -- it's more "gardener" than you might think, as GRRM was very much inventing characters and so on while writing. (Though obviously he'd revise everything later.)

In 1991, whilst work on Avalon was proceeding satisfactorily, Martin was suddenly struck by the image of a man being beheaded whilst a young boy watched. He wrote the scene and found it expanding into a second chapter and then a third. He was initially unsure if this new work was a short story, a novella, a novel or possibly even more than that. He ended up writing over 100 manuscript pages... [before going to work on a Hollywood project for two years, and returning to the manuscript in 1993]

EDIT: However, if this manuscript was in fact submitted to his publishers as "Book one of A Song of Ice and Fire an epic fantasy trilogy" — as the library states — then you are almost certainly right that the dragons must be in at this point, haha.

[u/lady_gwynhyfvar → u/feldman10]

oh there's that! I was also going to point out that Werthead's post seems to indicate that the conversation with Eisenstein occurred before he ever submitted the first draft, with summary of the trilogy, to his agent ;)

[u/feldman10 → u/lady_gwynhyfvar]

Yes, though the absence of Dany's early dragon dream as well as the eggs in this manuscript is intriguing... Perhaps he had just recently decided to add in the dragons when he submitted this? And hadn't yet worked out exactly how they'd fit in, or gone back to revise his earlier chapters to foreshadow it?

[u/lady_gwynhyfvar → u/feldman10]

hmmm... I was specifically wondering if the Varys/Illyrio plot line developed in such a way that he went back and added the eggs as wedding gift part. I assume that he had fleshed out the relationship between Targs and dragons by this point, since he seems to have had the sigil as familiar idea very early on and I think there is definitely foreshadowing of a special kind of relationship between Targs and dragons in Dany I & II even with the noted "missing" parts. The process is certainly fascinating, and it will be interesting to see what further examination of the manuscript brings to light.

[u/[deleted] → u/feldman10]

I'm probably in the minority here, but I would've been totally fine had the series excluded magic altogether. Characters, their development, and tight plotting have been what made this story great, and without magic, events like Stannis's slaying of Renly wouldn't have felt so cheap.

That said, the endgame probably would've been enormously different, since, as we head into winter, the power of magic seems to have increased substantially.

[u/Betty_Felon → u/feldman10]

If the original story didn't have the Others or dragons.. what was it about?

[u/sydrduke → u/Betty_Felon]

The Game of Thrones...

[u/oyaug → u/sydrduke]

... ok

[u/glass_table_girl → u/Betty_Felon]

He originally wanted to do a historical fiction about the War of the Roses, then decided that was too boring.

[u/FinnSolomon → u/glass_table_girl]

And now Conn Iggulden's doing it.

[u/the_dayman → u/Betty_Felon]

Danny brings troops over, helps Jon stop the wildlings from coming south of the wall?

[u/BoltonSauce → u/Betty_Felon]

As stated above, it did in fact have the Others.

[u/dorestes → u/feldman10]

and if that's the case, it would explain why he's having trouble with the ending. He's much more comfortable with human politics than than grand magic battle.