【Rolls Royce Baby】

Before you read any further: SPOILER ALERT.

Seriously. I'm going to talk about George R.R. Martin's 1993 pitch for Game of Thrones,Rolls Royce Baby and the end of the story as it relates to a specific set of characters -- ones that we all know and mostly love -- is pretty well mapped out.

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First, a little history is in order: the three-page pitch letter surfaced in 2015 as a series of photos shared on a Twitter account belonging to British book retailer, Waterstones. The tweets were subsequently deleted, but not before Reddit user TheNextRobin grabbed the images and shared them.

The same day the photos appeared on Reddit, Varietywrote a story about it. This was on Feb. 4, 2015, just a few months before Season 5 kicked off. It was a much younger story then, with many more seemingly principal characters that went on to die during the season.

Now, as the penultimate Season 7 winds toward its conclusion and fans are starting to feel like they can envision an ending, the letter has once again resurfaced. And while much of what Martin had plotted out in 1993 has since changed in both the books and HBO's series, one item stands out: the characters he sees surviving until the end.

It's important to note a few things before we get into that. First, this chunk of text, from the letter's second paragraph:

As you know, I don't outline my novels. I find that if I know exactly where a book is going, I lose all interest in writing it. I do, however, have some strong notions as to the overall structure of the story I'm telling, and the eventual fate of many of the principle characters in the drama.

The text of the letter bears that statement out. Many of the plot points in the pitch letter have been changed or removed. Martin's original vision included an Arya/Jon Snow love story (I KNOW), a Joffrey/Sansa baby (ew), Robb Stark falling in battle (lol no), and Tyrion burning Winterfell to the ground (wut).

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It's important to keep in mind, however: all of the scenarios described in the preceding paragraph are plot points. It's common among writers for such ideas to shift as an original outline crashes against the actuality of the creative process.

Underlying themes and ideas, on the other hand, are less malleable. And that's where this other slice of text from the letter becomes vitally important:

The cast will not always remain the same. Old characters will die, and new ones will be introduced. Some of the fatalities will include sympathetic viewpoint characters. I want the reader to feel that no one is ever completely safe, not even the characters who seem to be the heroes. The suspense always ratchets up a notch when you know that any character can die at any time.

That unpredictability Martin references has been a constant throughout the series, in both the books and the HBO episodes. One of the reasons people love Game of Thronesso much is its willingness to delete beloved characters in the name of serving a larger story.

With all of that important context out of the way, we can turn and look at what may be the most telling section of Martin's pitch: his vision for who will survive this story. I'm going to say it again: SPOILER ALERT.

All five of these characters are still very much alive in the HBO series:

Five central characters will make it through all three volumes, however, growing from children to adults and changing the world and themselves in the process. In a sense, my trilogy is almost a generational saga, telling the life stories of these five characters, three men and two women. The five key players are Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and three of the children of Winterfell, Arya, Bran, and the bastard Jon Snow.

Don't read this and think "OMG SANSA IS DOOMED." Maybe that list has expanded to include a sixth, and it's her. Maybe, at some point, Martin swapped Arya or Bran or something out of that list and swapped in Sansa.

Hell, maybe they're allgoing to die horribly under the crush of undead White Walkers and the series will end on a most appropriate down note. There's no way of knowing.

But Game of Thronestheories are always fun to kick around and this letter effectively comes from the story's "ground zero." Martin's earliest ideas for what the series could be may well contain the most potent clues as to where it's headed.

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Topics Game Of Thrones HBO