Board Thread:TV Show Discussion/@comment-8331-20170908192738/@comment-5014364-20170915001054

Well, speak of the devil, we got the first announcement today:

New Blu-ray set comes out December 12th.

And they're doing things a little differently this year - given that they've already covered so much backstory from other stuff.

They're going to have a long animated video on the Targaryen Conquest, called "Conquest & Rebellion: An Animated History of the Seven Kingdoms".

As suggested earlier in this thread, it's basically the Targaryen Conquest getting the long-form treatment that the Dance of the Dragons did back in the Season 5 set (I was surprised we didn't get one for Season 6).

Odds are that both the Dance and Conquest long-videos are attempts to seed the general audience of TV-viewers for future prequel TV series -- which is fine, I'm not criticizing that, this is what I would have done :)

Narrators:
 * Viserys III Targaryen
 * Euron Greyjoy
 * Jaime Lannister
 * Littlefinger & Varys
 * Sansa Stark

Description is: "Focusing on Aegon Targaryen's attempts to conquer the Seven Kingdoms"

I checked the Blu-ray features website, and the whole thing is 42 minutes long - compared to 22 minutes for the Dance video.

Now the "Rebellion" of the title confuses me....for such a long video, would it cover both the Conquest era and the Faith Militant uprising era? (Sons of the Dragon)

No...it seems not. More likely is that it will go to the death of Aegon I, and the "Rebellion" part covers the First Dornish War, I would guess.

IGN has a preview - it's actually cut up into internal chapters (each would be a normal "Histories & Lore" sized video - i.e. "Chapter 1" is on the Doom of Valyria, and Aenar Targaryen fleeing and settling Dragonstone, ending with a flashforward to Aegon I looking over the map of Westeros (whole thing is 4 and a half minutes).

However, while Season 5 had a 20 minute Dance of the Dragons video in addition to one full hour of Histories & Lore videos, this probably isn't the case for Season 7.

Instead, we're only getting SEVEN pure "Histories & Lore" videos in this set - my guess is that they're normal-length, making up the difference of ~18 minutes or so combined with the 42 minutes from the Targaryen Conquest video, to get to a full hour like most prior seasons. Fair enough.

As for the seven other videos, we don't know what all of them are yet, but they include:


 * The Dragonpit
 * Highgarden
 * Prophecies of the Known World
 * The Rains of Castamere
 * 3 others (I really really think one of them is Naath)

This list strongly aligns with what we all hoped for/guessed.

Like I said, I really hoped that the Samwell/Gilly stuff plus Melisandre/Daenerys scenes and all the stuff about the Prince That Was Promised merited a video explaining that, and we'll get it.

--also....I seriously think Dave Hill reads our wiki when he writes these. Little turns of phrase I've used that I recognize. Or maybe it's mirrors reflecting mirrors - we write stuff into the wiki based on the books, he's working independently, they end up similar. I don't know (the Braavos video in particular...). But that's what I hoped would happen - what crazy idiot wouldn't double-check by googling proper names? And we're the first thing that comes up. That, or the book Wiki of Ice and Fire on Westeros.org. My point is I've noticed him, in this case, using "The Known World" in all capitals...when that's just an informal name the wiki crowd cobbled together on AWOIAF. I mean, it's as good a name as any.

I'm surprised we're not getting a Dragonstone video, however...we ALREADY had one from Stannis, other than the Rhaenyra bits it would be a retread (and they're not necessary) and really....the Conquest videos basically ARE the "Dragonstone" video, explaining how the Targaryens settled it and Aegon I lived there. So overlap, fine.

"Rains of Castamere" sounds like it's going to be the history of the Reyne Rebellion....yes we've gotten this in short form before, but now I mean a longer dramatization of the much longer excerpt for the World book that Martin posted on his website; the "War of the Wombs" with Ellyn Reyne and all that, much more specific details about the back and forth of it. Which involves Casterly Rock, so functionally it IS the "Casterly Rock" video.

Surprising we're not getting another Citadel video - or are we? - though they've covered those before.

Eastwatch....when you think about it, can't really sustain a full video on its own. It would be mentioned in something else if at all.

....so, what do you guys suspect the final 3 will be?

My guesses:


 * Naath (and the rest of the Summer Sea?)
 * Sansa gives another video on Northern Allegiances, talking about the rise and fall of the Greystarks - paralleling how they were wiped out, and she wants to wipe out the Karstarks this season as punishment.
 * Possibly something on the Citadel? (more specific than before)
 * Something on the [[Golden Company}]?
 * House Mormont of Bear Island