Free Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, From A Game of Thrones to A Dance with Drago by Unknown Page A

venture into the past. They also continued working on prequels after Silverberg was out of the picture, suggesting sincere interest in the task. Indeed, the enigmatic first part of the dedication to Legends II —“For George R.R. Martin who baited the trap”—suggests that he in some fashion inspired Silverberg to edit the second anthology, perhaps to provide a venue for another Dunk and Egg story. It is also true that fantasy writers necessarily spend a great deal of time developing the prehistory of their imagined settings, and some aspect of the chore might naturally inspire a story idea deemed worth pursuing—in Martin’s case, the early life of one king, Aegon V, in his Targaryen dynasty. Finally, dedicated fans often crave more information about their favorite fantasy worlds, so writers may respond by publishing prequels as a way to satisfy readers’ curiosity about an imagined realm’s background and history.
    All of these factors might have been involved in the creation of the Dunk and Egg stories, but Martin’s prequels may also demonstrate that there is something about the nature of high fantasy itself that inspires authors to keep returning to their epics’ pasts instead of advancing into their futures: the main story begins to feel confining, and its past offers the possibility of freedom. Ironically, however, these prequels also suggest that such authorial efforts to temporarily escape from their own epics may ultimately prove futile.
    To understand what might lead fantasy authors to write prequels, one can begin by noting that fantasy epics are usually driven by a strong sense of destiny: as a practical matter, the creators of imaginary worlds, more so than other writers, must engage in extensive planning before they begin writing, so the events they describe may project an aura of predetermination; and perhaps as a reflection of this, their characters often feel impelled to do certain things because of prophecies or prophetic signs. In the first chapter of A Game of Thrones , for example, Lord Eddard Stark agrees to spare a litter of direwolf pups when his bastard son, Jon Snow, points out that they correspond in their number and genders to his own children: “Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord.” In this way, Martin immediately establishes that in his world, as in other fantasy worlds, people regard predictions and omens as important matters; further, as the epic unfolds, we learn that certain members of the Targaryen family tend to have prophetic dreams. More broadly, as in other fantasies, the major characters in the series are compelled to maintain certain loyalties, or take certain actions, solely because of the families that they were born into, or else face accusations of treason or betrayal, as various families compete for power in Westeros and beyond.
    If characters feel bound to move in particular directions due to portents or family history, they may regret the loss of personal freedom but can also relish the positive outcomes that may be foretold, or that may emerge from their family connections. Yet in a still broader sense, A Song of Ice and Fire, like many fantasy series, may seem haunted by a general prediction of eventual doom. This is an argument put forth most elaborately in Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), an oft-cited literary study that, in the words of the online Canadian Encyclopedia, “has had a powerful international influence on modern critical theory.”
    In its most influential section, covering his “Theory of Myths,” Frye envisions all literature as falling within what he describes as four “mythoi or generic plots,” corresponding to the four seasons. In this scheme, as shown in the diagram, comedy is the mythos of spring, which moves linearly from the dark world of experience to the bright world of innocence; romance (including fantasy) is the mythos of summer, which moves cyclically within the world of innocence;