George R.R. Martin is one of today’s most popular writers. His A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels, which includes the books Game of Thrones and Dance of Dragons, have sold millions of copies around the world.
As we already know, these stories are the basis of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, the successful series that HBO Max produced with Martin. The line of both productions follows the same path. In the latter, the most powerful dynasty of the Seven Kingdoms (the Targaryens) lives a civil war to determine whether Rhaenyra or Aegon II (both brothers) occupy the Iron Throne.
120 years later, Daenerys Targaryen, the only survivor of this dynasty that became extinct, returns and decides to claim her place as sole heir, which is occupied by the Baratheon family. This ends in a huge confrontation between the most powerful houses.
This fascinating story has given us a glimpse of the New Jersey-born author’s great imagination, but the most surprising thing is that he started thinking about it when he was a child.
Martin has been questioned on several occasions about his inspiration to create the Game of Thrones Universe, and in an interview with Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show, he revealed that it all started in his childhood.
“I love turtles, my writing career started with them. I lived in Bayou, New Jersey, in a federally protected house. We weren’t allowed to have dogs. We weren’t allowed to have cats. The only pets we were allowed to have were turtles, adorable little turtles. I had a play castle. I could put two turtles in a bowl inside the castle. But the problem with these pets is that they die very soon,” he revealed.
The writer continued telling his story and assured us that he was in charge of feeding the turtles he had as pets, but that at that time, because he was very small, he did not understand why they died and lived so little time. It was because of this series of losses that he began to imagine that each was fighting to be the queen turtle.
“They were fighting to be the queen turtle. That was my first fantasy: Turtle Castle. That preceded Game of Thrones many years before,” laughingly confessed the author, who left all the attendees entertained with the story of his childhood that preceded this universe, which is full of intrigue, jealousy, and betrayal.
Story originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva
