Westeros

Although the show already landed the greenlight for a second season, some have been wondering how the ratings would go in the second week. James Hibberd at Entertainment Weekly provides the answer: steady. Despite it being an Easter Sunday, the show seems to have held onto the premiere viewership of 2.2 million people, and added an additional 723,000 viewers when it was repeated at 11PM.

Hibberd also notes that the first episode, including all repeats through the week, On Demand viewings, and other such outlets, has reached 6.8 million viewers so far.

It’s hard to gauge whether “holding steady” under the circumstances is a good, bad, or rather neutral sign. At a guess, the viewership across the whole of this week will be a more interesting indicator of what the show’s early impact will be, but even then it’ll be too early to tell if it’ll have legs and start growing an audience.

According to Valyrian Steel, the supply of the very limited “Damascus” steel version of Longclaw is running low, with only ten left in stock. For some, these are the only “real” examples of Longclaw, using pattern-welding (also known as “damascus”) to create the pattern, rather than paint as with the regular edition of the sword. This is the officially authorized version of the weapon, designed with George R.R. Martin’s direct guidance and approval; the HBO weapons were designed by the production company without GRRM’s direct input, and currently HBO does not have the rights to licensing out replicas of those.

If you’re interested in learning more or ordering, go here.

Thanks to our content partnership with MTV Geek, we’ve a new feature article to share for those interested in the series. Dr. Catherine Smith-Akel, a scholar of Medieval studies, approaches her first read of A Game of Thrones from a historical perspective, teasing out parallels between history (English history, primarily, in this first piece) and the story. It’s a good read if you’ve an interest in the historical antecedents to some of the characters and places.

Read Part I of Smith-Akel’s A Historical Dissection of A Game Of Thrones.

Besides our episode guide, with our commentary and recap, there were quite a few notable recaps, reviews, and reactions released immediately following the airing of “The Kingsroad”. Plus, HBO’s released a preview of the next episode. See below for some of the highlights!

Enjoyed that episode, didn’t you? With maybe a quibble or two?

See our detailed recap and analysis, our list of notable changes and added scenes, and a few sample images depicting scenes and moments from the episode! And after that, make sure to visit our forum to discuss it with fellow fans.

We’ve posted a new item in our Game of Thrones Features section, an interview with the weapon master for the production, Tommy Dunne. With over fifteen years of experience, he has worked on some very high-profile projects, both on Hollywood film projects and for HBO. Now leading the Armory department for Game of Thrones, Mr. Dunne fills us in on some of his background, some of the decisions made for the weapon and designs, and what’s become of King Robert’s warhammer.

Read the interview!

Due to some hard drive issues, the A Song of Ice and Fire forum was down for a bit. Our wonderful host has done some things to try and stabilize it to (hopefully) handle the post-Game of Thrones crush of traffic, but some time next week the system will have to go down to have the disk replaced and an image restored. We don’t have a day or date as of yet, but bear that in mind if it goes down at some point at next week. And bear in mind that if it goes down this weekend, it’s probably that disk acting up.

There’s been a bit more movement on the RPG and strategy game fronts, thanks to Focus Home Interactive and Cyanide Studio. First, we were remiss not to note that Game Banshee has an interview with one of the designers of the roleplaying game, which features a couple of new images, including a nicely moody bit of concept art which we really hope they translate into the game proper.

On top of that, Focus and Cyanide have released a few new screen shots of the game, along with a press release providing just a bit more information about the game’s concept:

A number of little things to post about, so here they go in easily digestible chunks. Make sure to watch the clips at the bottom, as they’re good fun.

• HBO has revealed that their subscriber streaming service HBO GO has some exclusive (and fascinating) content attached to each episode. This exclusive content includes detailed maps, pop-up “author commentaries” with remarks from GRRM, 360-degree looks at locations and even objects (some amazingly high-resolution-seeming shots of Robert’s crown, Ice, and Lyanna’s effigy), family trees, and more.
• For Swedes, it’s worth noting that Cinema magazine has a contest to secure tickets for the May 3rd screening of the first two episodes in a theater in Stockholm.
• Similarly, HBO has a sweepstakes you should really check out (U.S. residents only). A chance to win a clutch of dragon eggs? Awesome. It should be noted that Sky Atlantic has a similar contest (U.K./Ireland only).
• A couple of clips for this Sunday’s episode have been released, featuring Jon Snow and Jaime Lannister in an interesting (and non-book) scene, as well as a scene from the books featuring Daenerys and her handmaidens. You can find them below. Can you spot Mikken in the first one?

AOL TV in the UK has a few exclusive interviews with members of the cast of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which airs in the UK exclusively on Sky Atlantic. The cast members in the following videos include Sean Bean, Jason Momoa, Mark Addy, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau:

A report has just gone out revealing HBO’s category placements for Game of Thrones (as well as HBO’s other big show, Boardwalk Empire). The voting members have apparently received an “impressive screener package”, and HBO has noted the following category placements for the show:

TIME magazine has honored George R.R. Martin on it’s Top 100 most influential people list for this year, and with a write-up by none other than humorist (and fan!) John Hodgman. At the end, Hodgman writes:

Tyrion Lannister is the best character in fiction since Stringer Bell and that if you have not read these books, you should be ashamed of yourself.

A ringing endorsement, both from, Hodgman and TIME!

In the wake of the first episode, we have seen several people take issue with—on Twitter as well as on various forums—the show’s portrayal of certain issues relating to race and gender. There has also been some lively discussion on our own forum, such as here and here. Please note that both topics are ones that allow spoilers from the books to be posted.

A commentary of our own can be found in our newest article, a brief consideration of the criticism directed towards the show and the books on these matters.

All the great press around the show has started to overshadow some of the interviews, but we thought that these two interviews with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) were worth noting. First, this “tease” from TV.com which includes his musing question, “The one thing I don’t understand is that sex [in this show] has to be from behind. Why is that?” Don’t worry, Nikolaj, sometimes the ladies are on top!

And then we have Den of Geek with an excellent interview. Note, though, that at one point Coster-Waldau speculates about what his character might be up to in the fifth volume of the series. He is, I reiterate, speculating, and simply emphasizing something about the way GRRM writes his characters. It is not a spoiler!

James Hibberd on EW had a chat about the renewal with HBO executives Michael Lombardo and Richard Plepler, in which they discuss their happiness with the viewership. They note that its numbers are stronger than True Blood‘s were in its first season, and they predict it’s a “slow build” show that will win over more viewers as more episodes air and they decide that it’s worth watching even if they don’t consider themselves a fan of the genre.

On the other hand, they note that Benioff and Weiss are largely writing this on their own, without help of staff (except the odd free-lanced episode), and they think 10 episodes would be best to keep quality high. Which is, one supposes, an imminently reasonable reason to stick to 10 episodes. But the next season, if we are so lucky (*knock on wood*)? This may be why Benioff and Weiss have suggested that they wouldn’t mind splitting the third book into two seasons.