Is the Iron Throne in the show faithful to the books?

Question

Inspired by "Is Needle’s portrayal in Game of Thrones faithful to the books?" and more recently "Are the swords shown in Game of Thrones faithful to those in A Song of Ice and Fire?" comes the question:

Is the Iron Throne as depicted in Game of Thrones faithful to George R. R. Martin's vision of it for A Song of Ice and Fire?

score 99 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 16 '20 at 09:31

No

George R. R. Martin has written on his Not A Blog about this subject where he states that though the Iron Throne is iconic and he does like the way it is shown in the show it's not what he had in mind. However, he does state that there are good reasons why the show couldn't use the version he had in mind.

And yet, and yet... it's still not right. It's not the Iron Throne I see when I'm working on THE WINDS OF WINTER. It's not the Iron Throne I want my readers to see. The way the throne is described in the books... HUGE, hulking, black and twisted, with the steep iron stairs in front, the high seat from which the king looks DOWN on everyone in the court... my throne is a hunched beast looming over the throne room, ugly and assymetric...

The HBO throne is none of those things. It's big, yes, but not nearly as big as the one described in the novels. And for good reason. We have a huge throne room set in Belfast, but not nearly huge enough to hold the Iron Throne as I painted it. For that we'd need something much bigger, more like the interior of St. Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, and no set has that much room. The Book Version of the Iron Throne would not even fit through the doors of the Paint Hall.

^{Not A Blog, The Real Iron Throne}

He also goes on to talk about what his version should look like, but still the version he includes, as a picture from the calendar, isn't exactly how he wants it to be it does come close.

That's the Iron Throne as painted by the amazing Marc Simonetti (and if you haven't gotten his 2013 Ice & Fire calendar, better hurry, the year's half over) for the upcoming concordance, THE WORLD OF ICE & FIRE. It's a rough, not a final version, so what you see in the book will be more polished. But Marc has come closer here to capturing the Iron Throne as I picture it than any other artist to tackle it. From now on, THIS will be the reference I give to every other artist tackling a throne room scene. This Iron Throne is massive. Ugly. Assymetric. It's a throne made by blacksmiths hammering together half-melted, broken, twisted swords, wrenched from the hands of dead men or yielded up by defeated foes... a symbol of conquest... it has the steps I describe, and the height. From on top, the king dominates the throne room. And there are thousands of swords in it, not just a few.

This Iron Throne is scary. And not at all a comfortable seat, just as Aegon intended.

Look on his works, ye mighty, and despair.

^{Not A Blog, The Real Iron Throne}

Just compare the two versions side by side (books left, show right):

Martin has since said the same thing in a panel interview but offers slightly more insight into how tall it is supposed to be.

I said repeatedly the Iron Throne is huge. It towers over the room like a great beast. And it's ugly. It's asymmetric. It's put together by blacksmiths not by craftsmen and experts in furniture manufacturing. You have to walk the iron steps, and when a king sits on it he's like 10 feet above everybody else ... He's in this raised position looking down on everyone.

^{George R.R. Martin: No One Ever Gets The Most Iconic Part Of 'Game Of Thrones' Right}

The A Song of Ice and Fire 2016 calendar also features George's version of the Iron Throne with Tommen stood in front of it.

There are also other depictions in Fire & Blood with the below being one of them.

Eddard's description in the books also doesn't fit the show as the amount of blades doesn't match nor does it's dangerousness.

Ned could feel cold steel against his fingers as he leaned forward. Between each finger was a blade, the points of twisted swords fanning out like talons from arms of the throne. Even after three centuries, some were still sharp enough to cut. The Iron Throne was full of traps for the unwary. The songs said it had taken a thousand blades to make it, heated white-hot in the furnace breath of Balerion the Black Dread. The hammering had taken fifty-nine days. The end of it was this hunched black beast made of razor edges and barbs and ribbons of sharp metal; a chair that could kill a man, and had, if the stories could be believed.

^{A Game of Thrones, Eddard XI}

Later on Eddard notes about the steps down from the seat atop the Iron Throne.

Alyn and Porther climbed the steep iron steps to help him back down. As they made their descent, he could feel Loras Tyrell's sullen stare, but the boy had stalked away before Ned reached the floor of the throne room.

^{A Game of Thrones, Eddard XI}

Note that the steps in the books are also taller than the whole chair in the show, implied from this quote.

Lord Tywin rose to his feet. "We continue," he said in a clear strong voice that silenced the murmurs. "Those who wish to ask pardon for their treasons may do so. We will have no more follies." He moved to the Iron Throne and there seated himself on a step, a mere three feet off the floor.

^{A Clash of Kings, Sansa VIII}

The height of the Iron Throne is again implied in the following quotes and a higher throne means more swords gone into it.

Her prince—no, her king now!—took the steps of the Iron Throne two at a time, while his mother was seated with the council.

^{A Game of Thrones, Sansa V}

"You let my father die," Joffrey said accusingly from atop the Iron Throne. "You're too old to protect anybody."

^{A Game of Thrones, Sansa V}

The height of the Iron Throne gave Joffrey a better vantage point than anyone else in the hall. He was the first to see her. "Come forward, my lady," he called out, smiling.

^{A Game of Thrones, Sansa V}

From Tyrion's perspective it is especially high, making him cramp as he climbs it.

The Iron Throne of Aegon the Conqueror was a tangle of nasty barbs and jagged metal teeth waiting for any fool who tried to sit too comfortably, and the steps made his stunted legs cramp as he climbed up to it, all too aware of what an absurd spectacle he must be. Yet there was one thing to be said for it. It was high.

^{A Clash of Kings, Tyrion VI}

The show even makes at least 2 jokes about the Iron Throne being different. The first is mentioned by Skooba below and is in Season 3 in an exchange between Littlefinger and Varys.

Varys: 1000 blades taken from the hands of Aegon's fallen enemies, forged in the fiery breath of Balerion the Dread.

Littlefinger: There aren't There aren't even 200. I've counted.

Varys: Ha, I'm sure you have. Ugly old thing. Yet it has a certain appeal. The Lysa Arryn of chairs. Shame you had to settle for your second choice.

_{Game of Thrones, Season 3 Episode 6, "the Climb"}

The second is in the final episode of the series when Dany is talking to Jon in the now mostly destroyed Red Keep.

Daenerys: When I was a girl, my brother told me it was made with 1000 swords from Aegon's fallen enemies. What do 1000 swords look like in the mind of a little girl who can't count to 20? I imagined a mountain of swords too high to climb. So many fallen enemies, you could only see the soles of Aegon's feet.

_{Game of Thrones, Season 8 Episode 6, "The Iron Throne"}

Just to be clear: "The songs said it had taken a thousand blades to make it" Just from that quote alone, the throne probably didn't weigh more than a ton or two, which in iron and steel means... they would maybe fill a regular bathtub. A thousand of something lumped together is often not as many as people imagine. — Arthur, Dec 08 '17 at 08:23
To match his vision, George should have written "over 9,000" swords. — Cœur, Dec 08 '17 at 09:09
@Arthur Although you're probably correct iron and steel as swords fill more volume than when melted (how they join together, irregular shaping etc). Also songs are never 100% accurate and this is medieval fantasy people are never good at counting. — TheLethalCarrot, Dec 08 '17 at 09:18
@PatrickTrentin GRRM believes in the unreliable narrator and remember that all chapters are POV based. Also note that he's stated numerous times he doesn't like people judging distances or time to carefully and finding inconsistencies. The songs might say their were 1000 swords but there could have easily have been 10000. — TheLethalCarrot, Dec 08 '17 at 09:24
@PatrickTrentin Well the closest would be Ice in Planetos but I don't think exactly 1000 of them would be close enough. — TheLethalCarrot, Dec 08 '17 at 09:47
@PatrickTrentin Ice is a two-handed sword, AFAIK one of the largest swords in history, although I doubt 1000 of them would make a chair that big. However they were not melted to the core and reshaped, they were simply fixed together and the inside could be mostly hollow, it is possible that 1000 swords were able to make that big of a chair. I guess the only way to test it is to get 1000 of these bad boys and see how big of a chair you can build. — Edlothiad, Dec 08 '17 at 10:18
If you had 1000 of these, you'd build a much bigger chair. (@Arthur) — Edlothiad, Dec 08 '17 at 10:23
@Edlothiad True. But I doubt you would find a thousand of them lying around a battlefield where mostly regular humans fought. — Arthur, Dec 08 '17 at 10:24
@Arthur are you going to define the rules of the strength the Man (not necessarily humans) had in a fantasy world? — Edlothiad, Dec 08 '17 at 10:25
@Edlothiad I have only seen the show and not read the books, but it seems to me like they mostly have regular sized swords there. Also, you have material strength to consider. A big enough sword would break from just swinging, much less fighting and parrying. I'm no expert, though, so I don't know where that limit is. — Arthur, Dec 08 '17 at 10:30
@Arthur They do but remember this is medieval fantasy. Numbers won't be accurate. There could be 1 million swords in that chair or ten the stories would probably average out to a thousand in the end anyway. — TheLethalCarrot, Dec 08 '17 at 10:32
@Arthur all I'm saying is you're attempting to apply real world rules to a work of Fantasy, where the rules are really up to the writer, if 1000 swords made that chair, then 1000 swords made that chair and they made it work somehow. It often amuses, and surprises, me that people will accept Ice Dragons blowing blue fire, and ghost babies capable of murder being born out of a magician, but once something comes up which should be taken in the same fantastical light can be taken in real world terms (by the average person), it gets criticised. — Edlothiad, Dec 08 '17 at 10:32
@Edlothiad How else am I going to apply all the unnecessary knowledge that I've acquired about how our world works if not to apply it to hypothetical scenarios in mythical worlds? — Arthur, Dec 08 '17 at 12:55
@Arthur I'd love to help you there, but trust me, it's much more difficult to apply all the unnecessary knowledge that I've acquired about hypothetical mythical worlds to our world and how it works... — Edlothiad, Dec 08 '17 at 13:18
@Edlothiad I think it's perfectly fair to distinguish between unrealistic elements that have an in-universe explanation and unrealistic elements without. You can suspend disbelief when there's a flying castle if the lore clearly establishes that magic is a thing. But if a mundane character chops a rock in half with a mundane sword in that same setting with no further explanation, suspension of disbelief is broken (instead one assumes the author simply didn't think things through enough).
IMO, in a good fantasy setting, inexplicable things happen, but it's all internally consistent. — KoenP, Dec 08 '17 at 19:28

Skooba · Answer 2 · 2024-03-22T12:52:49.587

No.

There is even a joke made by Littlefinger where he counts the swords and says there aren't even two hundred swords when according to the book there are over a thousand.

Varys: A thousand blades. Taken from the hands of Aegon's fallen enemies. Forged in the fire of Balerion the Dread.

Littlefinger: There aren't a thousand blades. There aren't even two hundred. I've counted.

Varys has the gist of how it is supposed to look...

The Iron Throne was full of traps for the unwary. The songs said it had taken a thousand blades to make it, heated white-hot in the furnace breath of Balerion the Black Dread. The hammering had taken fifty-nine days. The end of it was this hunched black beast made of razor edges and barbs and ribbons of sharp metal; a chair that could kill a man, and had, if the stories could be believed.

_{A Game of Thrones - Eddard XI}

I like the show's implication that the book's description is what people think the Iron Throne looks like if they've never seen it in person. — recognizer, Dec 24 '17 at 16:53
Dany also comments about the size of the Iron Throne in the final episode of the entire series. I've added it to my answer but it would make a good addition to this one. — TheLethalCarrot, Jun 04 '19 at 09:27

Is the Iron Throne in the show faithful to the books?

2 Answers2

No

No.