It also follows the show, just change Chapters to Episodes:
As a viewer of the show but not a reader of the books, a couple of things don’t make sense to me. (Potential spoilers up to the end of S6, in case it needs saying).
- the Iron Islands being west of Westeros. How do Theon, Yara and their entire fleet sail to meet the Dragon Queen? I thought west of Westeros was supposed to be entirely outside the known world, so they can’t circumnavigate to the west. And the writing and editing make it seem as if the journey is short; at best it’s a long way around the west and south of the world.
- Qarth, Mereen, etc. being so far east. Not only has the Iron Islanders’ fleet sailed there in record time (presumably by skirting around Westeros to the south), but now the fleet is leaving from there to cross the Narrow Sea. But first, a very long journey along the southern shore of the continent.
In my mind’s eye, the Iron Islands are in the Narrow Sea, around the same latitude or slight south of Winterfell, while the liberated slave cities are in the western part of Essos, on or near the Narrow Sea. But maybe I’m missing something? I know the show’s credits probably have answers for some of these issues but I’m not going to go check now.
These points are some of what annoyed me about the last episode of S6. They messed with time a lot in that episode (does Varys have a teleporter or something?!) But the Iron Islands are canonically to the west of Westeros - e.g. Seagard was built to protect the shore from Iron Islanders.
Looking at the map again I see that Yara is indeed assumed to have sailed from the Iron Islands, all the way down and across the west and south coasts of Westeros, across the Narrow Sea, and then along the majority of the south coast of Essos to reach Dany. And this journey happened in what, two episodes?
I think I will just have to tell myself this is a very small world, with the entire “continent” of Westeros being about the size of the British Isles.
I read all of this: https://medium.com/migration-issues/westeros-is-poorly-designed-3b01cf5cdcaf#.pu4hqpyey and I still have no idea about the size or population of Westeros. Basically, don’t worry about it. Assume GRRM is an unreliable narrator
Varys teleported so blatantly I’m guessing the writers meant it to convey “the timeline’s all over the place for dramatic and logistical reasons, don’t be, like, so chronologic and literal, man”.
As for size, I always figured Westeros was sort of UK-sized as well as sort of UK-shaped. But some random person in the internet came to a different conclusion.
Hey, it’s on the internet so it must be right.
And what’s with the boring-ass “the Orient is exotic, north is cold viking-scot-icelandic types, south is friggin’ Spain” clichés? Isn’t this world supposed to subvert the generic tropes? You’ve already got the impossible seasons, there’s a fine chance missed to also be the first fantasy setting I’ve ever seen where expectations aren’t the usual northern-hemisphere-normative.
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