Might as well separate the shows, as The Long Night is greenlit and headed our way sometime after Game of Thrones ends. This is the “prequel” series, but that’s a bit misleading. The events will be set thousands of years before Game of Thrones.
So which one of those gets killed off before the end of the first season and which one gets killed off before the end of the first episode?
Thousands of years before? So why did this world get stuck in the pre-technology era?
Because of magic, duh. ;)
Just how fantasy is like usually. Middle Earth…D&D etc have worlds that spans thousands of years of history/civilization with them never moving tech beyond Middle Ages levels.
It’s one of the things I love about Prachett’s Discworld series, it’s a standard* fantasy world, replete with magic, that as it goes on basically becomes industrial revolution level.
The societal changes nd difficulties stemming from the introduction of technologies informs the best of the stories. Like, for example, their version of the semaphore lines, the clacks. It profoundly impacts the world in ways that get layered upon as the series continues.
*in the sense of it has many of the trappings of standard fantasy. Magic, dwarves, trolls, werewolves, etc. it definitely isn’t used like others though.
You’d be insane to think that GRRM hasn’t thought this through. He’s a huge student of history. But there’s no reason to spell it out; it’s not like Tyrion is sitting there thinking “Why haven’t we invented the steam engine?”
But here’s some of the theories from outsiders
I wouldn’t mind watching a series about cavemen/hunter-gatherers in ancient pre-Westeros. Certainly nothing similar has been attempted before.
Director and cast announced. The director is also handling the next Star Trek movie, but also did the BBC/Netflix series Collateral, which had Carrie Mulligan.
I know this thread only exists now because the series has been cancelled, but 6000 years ago in our own history (or 5000 years before our Medieval period) we had metallurgy, cities, agriculture, pottery, metal weapons and tools for harvesting, domestic beasts of burden, and sea and land trade over long distances.