George RR Martin: 'Gandalf felt like a cheat - coming back from the dead should change characters'
George RR Martin, whose A Song of Ice and Fire series was the inspiration for HBO’s Game of Thrones, has offered insight into the fate of characters who come back from the dead in his books – and has spoken about how he felt “cheated” by the seemingly easy return of wizard Gandalf in JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy.
“It’s always bothered me that Gandalf comes back from the dead,” the author told Time Magazine.
“The Red Wedding for me in Lord of the Rings is the mines of Moria, and when Gandalf falls — it’s a devastating moment! I didn’t see it coming at 13 years old, it just totally took me by surprise. Gandalf can’t die!”
Martin added: “And then in the next book, he shows up again, and it was six months between the American publications of those books, which seemed like a million years to me. So all that time I thought Gandalf was dead, and now he’s back and now he’s Gandalf the White. And, ehh, he’s more or less the same as always, except he’s more powerful. It always felt a little bit like a cheat to me. And as I got older and considered it more, it also seemed to me that death doesn’t make you more powerful.”
He then explained how, when he brings characters back, he tries to show that they have been changed by the experience in some way or another: “If someone comes back from being dead, especially if they suffer a violent, traumatic death, they’re not going to come back as nice as ever.”
Consequently murdered Catelyn Stark, in Martin's books, returns as the vengeful, zombie-like Lady Stoneheart, a storyline omitted from the HBO series.
And when asked about Jon Snow, who was restored to life in season six of Game of Thrones (a point not yet reached in the author’s book series), the author spoke revealingly about Beric Dondarrion, who has been brought back from the dead multiple times by the Red Priest Thoros of Myr and is played on the show by Richard Dormer.
“Poor BericDondarrion, who was set up as the foreshadowing of [Jon’s storyline], every time he’s a little less Beric,” Martin said. “His memories are fading, he’s got all these scars, he’s becoming more and more physically hideous, because he’s not a living human being anymore. His heart isn’t beating, his blood isn’t flowing in his veins, he’s a wight, but a wight animated by fire instead of by ice, now we’re getting back to the whole fire and ice thing.”
Fans of the show, consequently, might want to be on the look out for further signs that Kit Harington’s Snow has been irrevocably changed by his death and resurrection.
Martin’s explanation also acts as a reminder that, in the fantasy world of Game of Thrones, there are no easy routes to immortality.
In season two of the TV show, for example, Arya Stark asks Dondarrion if it would be possible to resurrect a man with no head (thinking of her murdered father Eddard Stark).
Dondarrion, however, tells her that he would not wish such a fate upon Eddard.
Season seven of Game of Thrones begins (in the UK) on July 17.
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