[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] I was my great pleasure to introduce Doctor Theresa Speth from the University of Siegen. And over in Siegen there is a huge project called um transformations of the popular that's exploring what it means to be popular.
And Teresa and our colleague Hans are, uh, co-investigators on a module in the area within this project, which looks precisely at medieval fantasy or medieval fantasy as something which is popular and has become even more popular over the years. Uh, trazer and I are working together in a project called Prequels and Sequels, and we had a workshop on this subject earlier in the year, but I'm delighted to introduce her here and look forward to seeing how our project has been developing since April.
So. Thank you, Caroline. And, uh, thanks to all of you who made it to this last talk. Slowly, bit by bit, it's getting more and more complex and maybe even confusing for at least some of us. The three major franchises in which I'm interested in today's middle Earth, Westeros, and the Northern Kingdoms are growing. Nevertheless, the centrepieces or motherships can be named relatively easy for tall cannon Martin. The story works quite similar. There were novels then.
At some points they were adapted to visual media, films or TV series, retelling the events in this new medium. Peter Jackson's Lord of the rings as well as HBO Game of Thrones, became popular in the early 2020 tens. This success made lots of people buy, or at least reread the novels, which became then bestsellers themselves, sometimes even again. Looking at The Witcher franchise, things are already getting a bit more complicated.
Again, novellas and novels by Andrea Kosky laid the groundwork, but The Witcher became known to a broader audience through a series of video games, and especially the first part of it became a big success. The Witcher three Wild Hunt was bought 30 million times until the end of 2020. Only after that, the Netflix series came into existence and became again itself popular. Something has changed and is changing in the genre of epic fantasy since 2000.
We can see that there are differences in what part of a franchise becomes popular at first when it does that, and what happens after that. But based on the core texts and productions, all of the three franchises have experienced a considerable amount of expansion recently.
There have been a lot of new production like Lord of light, Rings of Power, Worf, Thor, Hiram, House of the Dragon, Blood Origin, or sirens of the deep with as you see, a lot more coming and announced or confirmed as different as all these free story worlds are, the series and films have one thing in common they all are prequels. What is told takes place before the plot of Lord of the rings, Games of Thrones and The Witcher saga.
Nevertheless, the prequels are connected to their originals actually in several ways. First, they are set in a pre-existing story world that is already very familiar to the recipients. At the same time, prequels expand these by providing them with new knowledge, events, and characters. Second, the events are somehow or very explicitly leading up to the plot that we already know from the original.
Third prequels include characters that either are familiar to us, for example, Elrond or Galadriel, or characters that can be closely connected to protagonists we know, for example, to Daenerys Targaryen. What we observe with the big epic fantasy franchises is what can be called transmedia storytelling. The stories, and here are called Henry Jenkins, unfold across multiple platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole.
To be honest, this is nothing that is really specific for the genre of epic fantasy. Transmedia storytelling is everywhere. Inspector Morse, sex and the city, X-Men, The Devil Wears Prada as well. Lewis, as we know May know is a spin off. Morse is a prequel to Inspector Morse based on novels, and Just Like That tells us what happened to the protagonists of sex and the city after the series has taken. So we have a sequel here with X-Men.
We have all of it. And even and to be honest, I somehow lost track of that as well. The Devil Wears Prada two makes it very clear that we're going to have a sequel there. So although this list is really weird, it gives us all the different formats of transmedia expansion prequels, sequels, and spinoffs. What is now striking about transmedia storytelling and epic fantasy to me is that it is nearly exclusively focussed on prequels.
Of course, productions like The Hatch Knight or The Nightmare of the Wolf, where the story of Carroll's mentor is told may be called spin offs, but I think they are more properly described as prequels as well, because they are also set into storyboards past, and their events are also leading up to what we know from Game of Thrones or The Witcher. So even though there have been multiple productions in the last few years, neither of them is interested in the future of the story worlds.
This might change in our future, but I suppose that epic fantasy will stick, at least for a while, with its focus on the story worlds past. So my talk today on critique is focussed on prequels as an effect of the genre's popularity. Thinking about transmedia storytelling, I want to talk about how prequels are embedded in an already existing story world,
and what challenges and affordances there are. Being a medievalist, my focus here lies on how epic fantasy uses medieval narrative structures, motifs, and inventories to link the prequel in a consistent and interesting way to its original. After some short theoretical remarks in this regard, I want to explore these logics of transmedia storytelling in the novels Fire and Blood and House of the Dragon both being both being prequels.
I will concentrate on two types of terror texts to analyse how the expanded story world and the entrance to it is framed. But let's first get back to popularity. I already talked a lot about the books, films and series being popular, and we heard a lot of that in the last two days. But what does that mean? What it doesn't mean is that something is liked or deemed especially worthy by experts. These would be qualitative categories.
In contrast, I would suggest that popularity can be defined as a quantitative category, and I quote a colleague from zig. And being popular means getting noticed by many. Tolkiens novels were followed by many. Game of Thrones was trained by many, and all these individual acts of noticing are counted. They get accumulated and get staged in rankings or charts, bestselling lists, Amazon rankings, or other forms of TV or film charts. Tell us what many other people read or watched.
This way, we know what is noticed by many, and this fact can change the attitude towards a book or film. We could also say, quote, when something is declared to be popular, it is irrevocably transformed and viewed differently. It makes a difference whether and how film, novel and so on appears in charts, rankings, tables and lists.
By staging popularity. In these ways, it is suggested that we should read or watch the things that many others did, thereby attracting even more attention and popularity to the things that are ranked. Now, before getting to prequels in particular, I want to give you a quick impression on how transformative popularity can be in the context of transmedia expansion. In Germany, the Lord of the rings appears in bestseller lists.
In the early 1980s, right after Rough Patches animated film was released a year a year before. Three years in a row. Tolkien Tolkiens novels are ranked as one of the top ten best sold books of the year. In 1980, even listed as number one. As you can see here, a very successful re-entry of the books into the two leading German bestseller lists took place in the early 2000. The novel stayed in 20, in the top 25 for several weeks in a row, climbing even to the top 5 in 2001.
What happened in December 2001, two and three Peter Jackson's movies reach German cinema. Each saw more than 10 million people. Part two and three even climbed to the top 100 of the year 2002 and 2003, where the Shelf Fellowship came in on second place in its release year. So the movies were not only a big economic success, making a profit of nearly $3 billion in box office up to March 2025. Moreover, they became very popular, as we saw looking at the bestseller list.
This popularity isn't restricted to cinema, thanks to new dimensions of cross-media marketing and novel status as long sellers. The popularity of the movies causes a renewed popularisation of Tolkiens novels. Movies and books attract attention to each other. An indication for this interdependency also are special editions of books that are being released right after new productions have reached the franchises.
Several special editions show how publishers react to the movies and accompany them and their success. Interesting in terms of transmedia storytelling is one of the latest additions, the one you see here on the right. The covers of the book originally have been character posters that Amazon used for the marketing of Rings of Power. They show the upper body or part of the upper body, and a special character item here, hinting us towards Galadriel, Elrond, and Sauron.
So even though the concrete source material of the prequel cannot be found in Lord of the rings, the covers well known from Amazon, are used to direct attention back to the books, hoping for more and renewed popularity popularity. So turns out to be a major influence in the evolution of transmedia franchises and their storytelling across different media.
I want you to argue that prequels are first and foremost an effect of popularity, and they speak to the significance of popularity in our contemporary popular culture. They come into existence because an original has been noticed by many. A prequel, then, is supposed to build up on this and become itself popular. House of the Dragon clearly kept that promise in comparison to Game of Thrones. The prequel could triple its viewers in the first season.
Even the number of viewers in the first episode exceeded those of the Game of Thrones seasons one. Such a number of viewers can only be reached when people already have been attracted to in season two and six, to a successful original and the story world. The popularity of House of the Dragon, of course, was staged in streaming charts, but the attention the prequel was getting was also emphasised by talking about big numbers.
Right from the start, HBO published statements on the show's performance, besides total numbers that drew comparisons to other shows and articulated superlatives wherever possible. These were then discussed in lots of articles in entertainment magazines, newspapers, in print and online that were also read, clicked, and bought by many.
We see here to quotes from variety referring to HBO statements announcing that the prequel quote drew the largest audience in the paid TV history in the pay TV channels history and had, quote again, the biggest series premiere ever.
Whether or not a prequel can live up to such a successful premiere depends on how well it is embedded into the story world of Westeros in this case, and whether it can contribute to the franchise and its story in the way that seems exciting and valuable to recipients. Keeping them streaming. That epic fantasy is popular changes the way it is perceived. It isn't nerdy any longer, but has become a legitimate part of popular culture.
Moreover, epic fantasy being noticed by so many people also transforms the genre and their story worlds. The fact that all three major franchises follow this prequel trend speaks to that. But the changes are not limited to the limited to the logics of production. They are also affecting the way prequels tell their stories and engage with their originals.
As a medievalist, in this part of my talk, I want to focus on the way motives, narrative structures, and inventories from medieval culture and literature are adapted to depict the historic past of the story world. Looking at House of the Dragon, I want to argue that by designing a historical past of Westeros, the prequel items intensifies the neo medieval character and aesthetics of the secondary world and its plot.
Moreover, neo medieval motives and narratives are used and provide important structures for the plot and the connection between prequel and original. The result is that House of the Dragon seems to be even more neo medieval than its original. Instead of giving you a long treatment or a long talk about major achievements in research, I want to focus on the term neo medieval.
In contrast to medieval, what makes epic fantasy special is the fact that it develops a secondary world that seems to be somewhat medieval, but has itself no claim to any historical or scientific accuracy. Even though Westeros to some extent resembles a medieval Great Britain and its and its historic conflicts. Game of Thrones doesn't revive the Middle Ages as an historic epoch.
It rather picks up bits and pieces from different cultures, from different medieval cultures that were present in different temporal and spatial contexts. We can think of the different forms of leadership that are displayed in Westeros and the Seven Kingdoms that we would find in very different times and places throughout the long epoch that we call the Middle Ages.
But because Westeros doesn't want to be historical, all these different concepts can be mended and patched up, like Umberto Eco set to create a story world in its own right. Moreover, the adaptation of medieval culture and literature is amalgamated with contemporary discourses. We heard also that we already heard a lot about them. We could name gender stereotypes, gender discourses, or maybe as well discourses about migration or ecological, um, ecological discourses that we have right now.
Richard AD sums this special way of working with a popular imagination of the middle age is very up, very clear. And he says, instead of instead, um, of creating traditional kinds of historical authenticity, it displays a similar trim of the medieval. Neither an original nor a copy of an original, including an adequate number of cultural references to make it belong to and to reinforce the brand. Medieval. So you see, he prefers the term medieval.
So in popular culture, the medieval or neo medieval becomes an imaginative field not bound to historical authenticity or scientific accuracy. The brand evokes specific expectations that can be recognised relatively easy. Interesting to me now is to have a closer look at transmedia expansion and the neo medieval character of House of the Dragon. How are motives, narrative structures and adapted to embed the prequel into the story world, and to give a link to previous elements in the franchise?
What is the new and valuable contribution the prequel has to offer? Is there maybe something like neo medieval logics of transmedia storytelling? Exploring House of the Dragon as a prequel? We need to first have a look at its source material. Martin's novel Fire and Blood was published in 2018 and is a prequel itself. The pair of text reveals that the book is framed as a chronicle, telling, quote, the history of the two Korean kings of Westeros.
In this sword stakes horse fiction, an arched knights of the citadel named gilding appears as awesome before the story even begins. Several pieces of information are given to reactivate what the what the recipients know about Westeros. Old town is known to be the scholarly capital of it. When Samwell Tarly turns to the Citadel, it resembles to some extent the Library of ancient Alexandria, collecting and storing all the knowledge and history of the world that the reader is about to learn.
Something about Westeros past also becomes clear by naming the Targaryen kings in Song of Ice and Fire. It is often referred to a long the past reign of two kings in Westeros ever since icons conquest, especially Aegon as the first king of this chronicle, gives us a hint that the decades around and right after the conquest are about to be told.
The fact that dragons have lived in Westeros throughout this given reign is self-evident and familiar to everyone who knows Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones. So from this first page of text, the novel gives away a lot of information that already helped to embed the upcoming plot into a known story world.
From the start, the book reveals itself as a prequel. It does that by using the source fiction that is new medieval chronicle chronicles retelling the history of the world or the reign of kings and emperors. A very common genre of medieval literature. The first word chronicle in German vernacular, was written in the mid of the 13th century by a man called Rudolf von EMS.
Beginning with the creation, the World Chronicle tells the story of Christian salvation and combines it with world history and a description of different parts of the world. Here we see manuscript around 1300, and we see an illumination showing the fight between David and Goliath. Besides that, there are chronicles that focus on the reign of kings, just like all my students.
Thus, one example, again from the midterm Middle Ages is the Emperor's Chronicle, written in Latin in the first half throat in the first half of the 12th century by one or more unknown clergymen. As the title suggests, this chronicle is focusing on kings, emperors and popes of the Roman Empire. It. Prologue. In the prologue it says, and this is my translation. A book has written to be interpreted. It tells us about the Roman Empire and is named Chronicle.
It reports for us on popes and kings, both good and bad, that lived before us and took care of the Roman Empire on to this day. This I will tell you to the best of my abilities. The speaker wants to provide a continuum that links past and present the readers, that this teaches the readers about their past, but it also provides coherence, as the events of the past are presented and interpreted in retrospect.
The history of kings and popes helps to understand the current situation of the Empire by providing a direct line of kingship. Present. Kings and emperors can be legitimised and they are provided with gravitas. The chronicle reassures the readers of the past and its significance. Fire and blood adepts. This genre of medieval literature to do a similar thing. Like the medieval recipients, Martin's readers know about the present.
The events A Song of Ice and Fire. The Chronicle creates a genuine part of the story world, and on the other hand, the events recounted explain how things developed and led up to the plot we already know. Like a medieval chronicle, the prequel creates a long continuum, providing coherence, linking past with present. It enriches the story world and gives background to things happening later in the world's history.
Adapting the narrative structure of medieval chronicles also influences the way the story is told. The author of the chronicle must rely on different sources. This is especially true for those times and events he couldn't witness himself. What can be told was handed down in written text and therefore is limited. In addition to that, the arch master can only utter speculations about characters feelings or hidden agendas.
Hence, insight to the characters minds that we know from Song of Ice and Fire are missing. The source fiction also implies that The cronies is talking about his own sources and their reliability. By doing this, the prequel gives insight into how knowledge is produced and passed on over generations. We learn, for example, that sources get corrupted during the replication process because their auditioned and imitations made the cut material.
Cultural and social circumstances of this literary production of the past of Westeros very much adapt the production and tradition of text that we know from the Middle Ages. The information do not only enrich the story world, but add an historic dimension to it. The author of the Targaryen chronicle so is dependent on divergent source material, and he reflects on that. And this also creates an uncertainty about what really happened.
This becomes especially important when the wearing of Westeros and his offsprings is told, as least two sources are mentioned, the texts of Septon Eustace and the Full Mushroom do not only recount events very different, but both authors seem to have own agendas and alliances that influence their retellings.
So what is told in Fire Blood about the tiger in dynasty seems to be open, at least to some extent, to question, because no one really can testify to what happened, what was done or thought behind closed doors. The. This gives the TV series House of the Dragon the opportunity to contribute to the story world in a way that can be seen as new and valuable. The series drops the new medieval chronicle structure.
Instead of telling the whole history off to Gary and King the prequel, it tracks those parts that are dealing with mistresses, reign, and what comes after that. Both things enable a storytelling that elaborates the plot in comparison to the novel. Not only can divergent agendas and secrets be told in another way, the series also suggests showing what really has happened. Independent of unreliable sources.
This way, the prequels select source material and can elaborate its storytelling by giving new information and insights. Even though the Chronicle style disappears, the storytelling remains very neo medieval. One example for that are the opening credits of season one. They provide ritualised entry to the story world, and Jonathan Break sums up the function of these texts as follows.
In preparing us for the text and offering us the first encounters with it, and through a pair of text hold considerable power to direct our initial interpretations, telling us what to expect and establishing genre, step, gender, style, attitude and characterisation. But as the opening credits in question belong to a prequel, they also have additional functions.
They must embed the prequel in the story world right from the beginning, so they provide links to other productions set in Westeros, draw on recipients knowledge, and reactivated at the same time, they have to give recipients an impression about the genuine contribution that is about to be made. House of Dragon does all that by using the motives, genealogy, and lineage from medieval literature and culture. Doing this, I want to argue the series are tense of intensifies.
Its new medieval appears and advertises it in its opening credits. And I may well skip these. Let's have a look. How many of you have watched House of the Dragon? Okay, that is a considerable amount. So I'll skip the the opening credits and you will see pictures and stills of it later on. So. Yes. To link the prequel to the original, some key parts of Game of Thrones credit of the Game of Thrones credits are adapted. You may be remember the iconic theme from Game of Thrones.
We also have a different camera settings, so we have the camera flying over in stone, an architecture built of stone, and we see different scenes out of that, and only in the long shot. In the final scene, we have an overview of the city. Like in Game of Thrones, the scenes are shown in the Empire that are shown in the opening credits vary from episode to episode, evolving with the narration of the series, but how do the opening credits work?
As you may remember, a red liquid flows for the city of Stone on its way. This liquid, quickly recognised as blood, flows through different kinds of apparatuses. These things somehow look and work like clock wheels and are decorated with different ornaments. The stream of blood flowing through the city symbolises the bloodline of House Targaryen. Each cogwheel symbolises one person that becomes part of the Targaryen lineage.
The blood runs through them once there are descendants and the lineage continues. The setting for all this is Old Valyria, also representing the ancient ancestry of the Turk Aryans. After flowing through the city all these blood streams and pouring into the citadel of the House of the Dragon, the opening credits give us a lineage of House of the Dragon, but the bloodline isn't limited to protagonists. Instead, it includes a long series of ancestors. This links the TV series To Fire and Blood.
People who read the novel can decipher who is represented by the co-creators that precede those of the protagonists, because they already know a lot about these characters. The interesting thing is that lineage is that the lineage shown adapts genealogical thinking that has its roots in medieval culture. In the European Middle Ages, once place in a genealogy provided identity and legitimacy.
Both things became especially important when heritage or high offices were concerned along an unbroken lineage of a family or office like kingship was seen as a sign of stability and gravitas. All this importance, and here it come to number one and meaning of lineage and genealogy, and the way it is represented are rooted in nature because they are based on reproduction.
But the contrary, the contrary is actually the case because genealogical thinking and all its construction principles are cultural. They are constructed in the special and specific cultural surrounding agreed on by society, on its meaning. But contingency and coincidence are very bad arguments. When heritage, the significance of a house or the legitimacy of a king are concerned. Therefore, genealogical thinking tries to implement continuity.
The status quo is explained by referring to the preceding. This explanation uses reproduction and birth, and therefore gives the impression that the lineage and genealogy are totally based on nature. One strategy to suppress this impression of being unproblematic and of being natural per se, is the symbolisation of blood. By using red colour to link the individuals in the family tree. The lineage presented in medieval manuscripts is closely connected to birth and reproduction process.
This mode of representation is crucial for the opening credits. Like medieval genealogies, this plot stream gives the impression that the order presented is a natural one, not a cultural one. In addition to that, the flow of blood for the stone walls stresses the continuity of the House Targaryen. Moreover, blood reference refers to multiple, often crucial scenes crew of birth scenes in this series. When Rhaenyra's mother tells her that the child beds are women's battlefields.
It becomes clear that birth and blood are also connected to questions of female agency and gender discourses. The bloodline in in the intro refers also to the purity of blood as well. The legitimacy attributed to view pure Valyrian blood is a big issue for Rhaenyra sons, as well as for the Dragon Seed and their ability to claim a dragon. One of the most important positions in a lineage is its starting point.
We know several stories in the medieval literature where protagonists link themselves and their families to famous ancestors like Niaz Shalmaneser or magazine O. Two quick, such famous forebears like these distinguished individuals and whole families. But they're also marked the ultimate beginning of the lineage, because there really is no need to search for older ancestors.
When you claim that shaman is the founder of your dynasty, as they mark the starting point of a family line, these forebears are found in the top position in medieval lineages. In his World Chronicle, name calling on universal for 12 of measure, spec included a lineage for the Carolinians. I just presented by these two figures, holding a parchment scroll from which the lineage unfolds with our noses as ancestor at the top in the Konica Sancta Pantaleon is on the left.
We see a genealogy of the Salesians and Ottomans, beginning with Louis Dolf again at the top of the line, while House of the Dragon goes without telling about Aegon's Conquest, Aegon's root icon remains present. As founder of the House Targaryen, he has the top position in the bloodline from his cogwheel decorated with his crown, the blood is released for the first time.
Egan not only marks the start of family's history, the clock will also show the escape of the dragons from old Illyria, thereby linking the Targaryen's family, thereby linking the Targaryens to ancient Valyria and therefore their mythical origin.
At the end, it is revealed that all these stones, walls, stone walls and streets we see are part of old Illyria, and we could recognise that when we are some point into the story, when we see this, there is this model of Old Valyria that he has in his chambers, so h dignity and the mythical origin of the bloodline are staged. We already saw that cockpits are decorated with special character items related to history or personality.
Those family members that sat on the Iron Throne are represented with their crown framing the cogwheel. The opening credits. So combine family history and genealogy of kings. This continuous line of kings again stresses the exclusiveness of the house. Such genealogies that show all the persons that held a specific office are common in the Middle Ages. Such forms of representation are even used for the papacy, a position that by definition cannot pass on through a vertical family history line.
I brought one example with me here, which shows the King of England, kings of England and Scotland, beginning with William the Conqueror, and all of the kings are shown. Very similar to House of the Dragon wearing the crowns. Genealogies always select that reveals the constructed character to be as convincing as possible. Lineages are focussed on vertical dimension. Often siblings and other women are excluded from the line to maintain a clear structure.
Looking at. Yeah, looking at to hair is an alisan. In this intro we see that siblings as well as women are included. Nevertheless, the opening credits select and exclude other persons and characters. Make of the cruel, for example, cannot be found in the lineage of. Why he would be a bad candidate for creating a convincing, convincing noble line is self-evident when we consider that cruel.
Often other characters who are represented in fire and blood are excluded as well, and this is probably done to reduce complexity and for aesthetic reasons, because otherwise the genealogy wouldn't be able to fit into the opening credits anymore. I'll skip the fusion of bloodlines. And if you want to ask, we could later. Um, I could later say something about that and we'd go straight to number six. Construction of one lineage. One important principle is still missing.
Families and individuals want to gain power and legitimacy. Only one person can become heir or king or emperor. Hence, medieval genealogies construct one direct line to be again as convincing as possible. The intro to the prequel transforms this strategy in several ways. We saw that women and siblings are part of the line, and instead of focusing on one plotline, the camera flight and the switch. This between the scenes show different parts of the lineage and the different lines of it.
Especially this last scene emphasises that there are more than one bloodline that pour into the ritual of the house of the Dragon. The genealogy doesn't serve to stage the house. It doesn't only serve to stage the house exclusiveness and dignity. It also shows how complex the genealogy of the House of the Dragon is, as the plot at the. As the plot evolves, more and more lines are added and become, and it becomes more and more complex.
This represents the difficulty to find one legitimate heir and to decide which claim to the throne is the strongest one. In staging the genealogy, the protector stages the central conflicts and is the shape of the plot, while contingency is ruled out by one direction. Your genealogical line. This multi linearity that we see here emphasises the fragility of the house of the Dragon and its power. The house isn't threatened from the outside, its problem is in the inside.
And maybe you remember the end of the prologue in the first episode where the voiceover says for he referring to Asia, Harris knew the cold truth. The only thing that could tear down the house of the dragon was itself. So I'll make a short conclusion when we remember the quote from Jonathan Cray about the functions of infrared para text, we see that the opening credits do way more than introducing genre and protagonists. They reactivate and intensify knowledge about the story world.
They embed the prequel into the world of Westeros and help to elaborate a historical past. Moreover, they represent the central conflicts and plots of the series. We can see that the opening credits tend to be narrative themselves, accompanying the actual storytelling of the prequel. All this is achieved by adapting and transforming geological and chronicle thinking we know from medieval literature and culture.
Constructing principles are adapted and get combined with discourses and tragedies targeted in the plot. The opening credits turn into a new medieval lineage that is an important link between the prequel, the novel, and the pre-existing story world, and makes an impressive first contact with it in comparison to Game of Thrones. The opening credits pick up central aesthetics, but intensify its new intensifies its new medieval character. Both prequels. Both prequels.
Adapt medieval genres, narrative structures, and events in a way that facilitates the story worlds expansion into historical past. Overall, neo medieval appearances and aesthetics are even enhanced in House of the Dragon. Westeros is getting more and more neo medieval as it pasts unfolds.
What we see here are neo medieval logics of transmedia storytelling, where epic fantasy is heading from here on, and how our popular imagination of the medieval is developing during this process will be an exciting thing to find out in the next couple of years.
There are lots and lots of prequels in production, whether they all are realised in the end, and whether the transmedia storytelling and expansion will continue remains to be seen, but it will definitely depends on depend on how popular current prequels are and for how long they are. Thank you very much. Thank you. Grateful. Strong timing game. That means that we have quite a bit of time for questions. Um, so I will invite the first question from the room.
As well. Yeah. Hey. Thank you for the talk. Um, I was wondering. I find it hard to think about genealogy in the world to talk about. Think about the incest that is going on. How does either. How's the dragon? Or if I am blood. Kind of. Not like in those that incest in its genealogy. And how does that compare to like real world medieval genealogies and what would have been like permissible in the real world?
Um, so one thing we see is that the bloodlines remain very complicated, even though you have incest, which is known to limited, uh, bloodlines in genealogy. So this is one thing. And of course, this is a kind of trick that is used to, at one point, make the Targaryens a special family. And it is often mentioned that this, this costume of incest remains from, um, Old Valyria, where this was no problem and cultural totally tolerated.
So this is some kind of, um, yeah, maybe making them even more special. But of course, something that is at least in when the European Middle Ages are concerned, something that we cannot really see as medieval because medieval in the Middle Ages, incest, of course, was a big problem and a cultural taboo. But of course, at the same time, at the same time, they're all stories that target incest.
And often there are two protagonists that meet each other, fall in love, have sex and then realise, oh my God, where mother and son, sister and brother and so on. And it becomes a real problem for them because they, they committed this really serious sin and there has to be some kind of plot turn to, um, make that good again. So this is something that is totally used, something new, which is brought in, but still kind of, um, kind of a topic in the Middle Ages.
So we have some people wondering, uh, a prequel. We already know the ending because we have the main story. Um, how does this affect the narrative format of the prequel? Uh, does it make it different from the main story in any way? Yeah, I think the interesting thing is that this we could again say that this is some kind of medieval way of storytelling, because you may be those of you who study literature.
Certain literary studies may have come across the name of Clements Lucas Key, who talks about, um, how, um, how is this no suspension bundle with tension? Tension? Yeah. How tension is created. And tension can be created in two ways. So we want suspense. Yeah. We want to know what happens or we want to know how things happened. And for example, in the song of the belongs that everyone dies. We know that right from the beginning. So the question is, how do we get there?
And this is the special kind of suspense that we have here. And that is and somehow also then related to, um, the middle medieval storytelling and of course, the fact that we know what happens in Game of Thrones gives a lot more room to explain how things evolved, what is what was crucial to that, what may be, um, was done to prevent special things that we know that happened. And so it's a I think it's a strategy to be more elaborate about all the things that happen in between.
Hi. Um, so I have noticed recently, um, that as new books are being released, there's a faster, uh, or higher demand for the sequels to be out, um, from the authors. And do you think that's connected to, um. Sort of the demand for media because we have more prequels. Uh, people like what was just mentioned online, like how people already know how the prequels and sort of.
So. Do you think that there's like, a reluctance to wait and to be in that second form of, uh, suspense now because most of the main media that we're consuming is prequels, and we know how that story ends. Um, I find it kind of hard to imagine what sequels to maybe, let's say, uh, Lord of the Rings or Westeros can be because we have these epic conflicts that are not to the full extent, but to some resolved at the end.
So I would think you would have were you would be in the trouble to create a whole new world order, even though Caroline set for, uh, Game of Thrones, it just some things are as they have been before, but you would have to think in a whole new, different way about what can happen from here on. And, um, so I think this is part of the answer. Why we are so matched by fantasy is so much focussed on prequels, at least when these big franchises are concerned.
And my personal guess is that this Fire of Blood novel is a very clever trick by Martin to create a new book in a shorter time period, and a book from which you can, from now on, extract every now and again different generations and evolve on that an elaborate their, um, story without him being picked every time. When is the new book about Aegon coming or something like that? So yeah, I think, uh, these are two things that, uh, that cause this prequel trend, at least at the moment.
But I will be happy to be proven wrong. So be very eager to see when we have sequels in these big franchises for the first time. Thank you. Um, thank you again for the fascinating talk. Um, God, I forgot my question. Sorry. You do want to go? Back?
Um. Oh, yes. Um, I listen also, um, a lot of the examples that we've looked at in this talk of, you know, like Westeros and, um, and Lord of the rings, etc. are a little bit more like, I guess, grown up, maybe fantasy, like a bit more kind of adult fantasy. And I wondered with, um, shows like, you know, Disney's Percy Jackson adaptation and stuff like, children's literature does seem to be kind of joining that slowly.
Do you think that we'll see some prequels of, like, the younger kind of kids fantasy literature? Because I haven't seen as much as that of that yet. To be honest, I don't know enough about children's literature and also this young adult trend at the moment, so I can not really say something more than a good guess, but this would be that. Yeah, maybe there will be more sequels, but I'm not very, very into that. So sorry. Thank you. I remember my question.
Um, with transmedia storytelling, we often see more than just one author or creator get involved. You've got different people who write the books, different people who work on the TV shows, different people who work on the games. Um, can you speak to that a little bit more on how that helps to expand? Um, a world or a universe sort of story? Um, yeah. Uh, so so you're right.
Of course it does end there. Um, there are certainly more influences and more thinking about what would be appropriate in times like this. How have reactions been? So why do we have we could think about why is there less male violence or less male warrior while violence in House of the Dragon? And instead we have these very, very cruel birth scenes, and we often see blood and, um, and violence related to women, but not in a sexual way other than in Game of Thrones.
So this seems to be something that comes in from different parts of the production process. But, um, you think you touched I think you touched a very interesting point, because I think what we could do as, um, as medieval scholars or literary scholars in general, is to think about more what to think more about what happens to the concept of the author when we have transmedia storytelling, because clearly we don't have the author and then some adaptation or something like that.
But we have a process and a combination that is very, very complicated, and we're thinking about it and exploring it more. What does it mean? How is the how do ideas of, um, of origin, of um, of property, how do they change in this transmedia process? So that's a very good question. Interesting one. Uh, thank you for your very interesting presentation.
Uh, my question is so for for different franchises, prequels, um, some prequels will be set sort of way, way before the original text, and then some will be set, you know, just a little bit before the text. Do you see any, um, significant differences between these two types of prequels? Um, I would say no. I think the only difference is where's the next prequel going to be, uh, squeezed in?
Is it before that? Because we have a direct line of prequel happening and then directly what's happening in the original? Um, but one difference might be the extent to which, in these cases, the story world appears to be somewhat medieval. So the more we go into the past, the more opportunities I think, are there to create a more pre-modern or a more ancient story world. And this may be a thing that differs when we have different constellations of prequels and originals, I think.
I think also you must get, uh, to jump in here. You must be more constrained if you have. I would just imagine if you had Robert's Rebellion as a new series, and we already know quite a lot about it, so we wouldn't be all that interested necessarily. We might quite like to see how it unfolds, but the storytelling would be really constrained by all of the information we have from Game of Thrones, right? When you go back much further, you have much more freedom, I think.
And maybe these single contributions aren't deemed to be very interesting or valuable. When you each time you say what happened before that and what happened before that, and now we see what happened before that, that maybe would lose, uh, would lose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that would lose the audience and wouldn't be very interesting at all. Right. Helen. Thanks. Um, what you were just saying about the prequels not wanting to be.
This is what happened in this is what happened for it is it is kind of segways into my question quite nicely, because I was thinking about the difference between sequels and series. Um, and I wanted to know what you thought about them in your examples, you're thinking about. Sorry, this isn't a comment. I promise. There's a question. The the examples you were talking about a transmedia franchises, um, where there's there's a big production and then there's another big production.
Um, but if you think about the fantasy literature, um, you know, the series is a classic. And then there's, you know, the all of the examples have gone out of my head, but then there's, there's the first trilogy and then there's the next trilogy, because the first one ended up so well, and then suddenly it's a 21 book series. Um, so I wondered if you. Oh, how much you. Thought, um, this is a product of transmedia. The prequel is a product of transmedia storytelling.
Aam and also how you're conceptualising the difference between a sequel and a series. Mhm. And is that one. Yeah I think that's that's the tricky thing. But from right from right from the gut I would say a series may have other significance structuring and plot organisation. So you would have more as you have cliff-hangers you have recaps or something like that, even though they're not a special pair of text.
But you to some extent have to remember people what happened in the last season or episodes or something like that. And I would say sequels, uh, or different sequels are in themselves to some extent closed, even though they have, um, they have links to what happened before or what can happen afterwards. So maybe this can be an answer to your question.
But the other thing is that it to some extent, we have this structure in literature as well, because we have the we have some kind of serialisation with the trilogies, and then we have these sequel prequel logic when we have, as you said, new trilogies or new tetralogy or whatever. And um, yeah. So, so this may not be something that is totally due to, um, transmedia or big budget productions, I think.
Right. Um, with that. So, um, I think having more questions online and everybody is going to sleep online and everybody here who's been so have shown so much fortitude over today is probably flagging as well. And just as well, because we have now come to the end of the workshop. And so I'm going to invite everybody to.