Welcome
Welcome to the Jade Compendium, our blog on the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin. These theories, character studies, and predictions have been discussed and written during the long wait between A Dance with Dragons and The Winds of Winter; an era we are still in...
It's been more than a decade since we began reading the series, and obviously in this time we have read not only the main series but all of the lore books, histories, and short stories. It will probably come as no surprise that here be SPOILERS. We regularly quote from all of Martin's ASOIAF works and we will try to tag all relevant books (it's probably safest to assume that the main 5 books are spoiled in most posts). Additionally, we have read many other novels and short stories by George RR Martin, and we will always mention non-ASOIAF spoilers, marked with this red line, at the top of posts that incorporate information and plot-points from his other works.
We believe that this series is George RR Martin's magnum opus and that he is treating it as such, carefully building a world that sings the songs of heroes throughout its history. Our writing and theory-crafting does rely on the idea that George knows what he is doing, and symbolism is not just a thing your English teacher invented to torment you. This blog won't be for everyone, and even if you aren't 100% on board with what we are writing (we aren't always ourselves), we hope it will give you something to think about as you wait patiently for Winds (or reread the series 18 times and descend into madness). Please see this page for more information about how we craft our theories.
Where to start
At the moment we only have a few theories, including A Theory for Fools, which is a long, scattered post that links Rhaegar's rubies, the Quiet Isle, the Hero's Call North, Bael the Bard, Mance Rayder, Jon's 'father', and the Winterfell crypts. This is the original version posted almost 4 years ago, since we haven't had a chance to organize and add our additional notes and observations gathered since we first posted it. Check out the post index for some shorter writing, if you aren't ready to jump into 10K+ word ramblings.Latest
What's new from our very normal and well-functioning brains?
Apologies for the long hiatus. Please accept our offering of a sprinkling of admin and a new post on Jon Snow and Daenerys Targeryen, hopefully live by next weekend.
While writing the above post we simultaneously worked on a 'concepts' post (basically the most important ideas introduced in the first 5 POVs of AGOT, which we think can be useful in thinking about the direction of the series and what sorts of things are possible in Westeros), our Master Baby List (um... working title...), and this strange little post about Rhaella's children who survived into adulthood. We hope that the Concepts as well as the Jon and Dany post will be ready soon.