‘Game of Thrones’: This is the requirement George R.R. Martin imposed on its showrunners to make the series

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss walked through the big door into television history. Despite a controversial final season, Game of Thrones became a worldwide phenomenon. But getting the approval of George R.R. Martin, author of A Song Of Ice And Fire, was no easy task. The writers and showrunners met with the author with one idea in mind: get his green light to adapt the books into an HBO series. So how did they convince him? By answering one question, as published by Collider.

The meeting lasted five hours, time Martin invested in probing the extent of Benioff and Weiss’s knowledge of his work. He was even more specific, asking them a question that they both had to answer. If they got it right, Martin promised to greenlight the project. “Who is Jon Snow’s mother?” The screenwriters had already thought about this question and answered him with their theory. The writer simply smiled. Weiss assures that Martin was impressed by their obsession with the books, so all of this led to the final yes.

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Who are Jon Snow’s parents?

In both the novels and the series, it is established in the first season that Jon Snow is the bastard son of Ned Stark and a woman named Wylla, but this story is nothing more than a set-up to hide Jon’s true parentage. It is later discovered that his true ancestors are Lyanna Stark - Ned’s sister - and Rheagar Targaryen - son of the Mad King. Therefore, Jon is actually Daenerys Targaryen’s nephew, although they have a sentimental relationship, which was not uncommon among the Targaryens, who married between siblings.

After Game of Thrones, HBO released the first season of ‘House of the Dragon’, a spin-off whose second season is still in preparation, waiting for the end of the actors’ strike. All in all, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have left the platform and are not working on any more products set in the ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ universe.