"There is love and betrayal, greed and murder." "It's set in this interesting world of contrasting ideology, of what's right and wrong." "It has a great philosophy about it." ""Game of Thrones" is about power struggles in a fantasy kingdom, called Westeros." "And it's a power struggle for the Iron Throne, which is the seat of power in this kingdom." "There's a war coming, Ned." "I don't know when, I don't know who would be fighting, but it's coming." "At the core of it there's a conflict for power between two great houses initially." "House Stark and House Lannister." "The other major houses are all contenders as well." "It's a suitably complicated political situation." "The old truth "the power corrupts", I think it's very valid and it shows in this series." "You see characters come into power and how they change." "In a way it's about how people forget to see the bigger picture, this common threat, that everybody kind of ignores, because they're too busy pursuing their own interests." "And meanwhile, outside the Seven Kingdoms, two great threats arising." "One across the sea, in the exile Targaryen siblings, and another far to the north, beyond the Wall, which is the boundary of the Seven Kingdoms, in lands of perpetual ice and cold, where supernatural threat is stirring." "It's very different from anything that's been done." "I can't think of another fantasy which is as dark as this one is, which is as gritty and as real." "Every single character is incredibly complex." "You think you know them." "You think you got them pegged as what they seemingly are but they really aren't." "Is there someone in your service whom you trust completely?" "Yes." "The wiser answer was "no", my lord." "It's not a good guys/bad guys story." "It's a story where everybody is pursuing their own interests and everybody's following their own code and it's about those interests and those ethics coming into conflict with each other." "And it provides a much richer story than the guys in white beating the guys in black." "Lord Baelish, perhaps I was wrong to distrust you." "Distrusting me was the wisest thing you've done since you climbed off your horse." "It's quite big sprawling epic story and... and fascinating characters, different characters, very rich, so tasty characters you don't know who they are or how they fit in." "Surely we are here, my lord." " There is no telling who has eyes as well." " Let them look." "So I find it very dense and multilayered." "That's what I find intriguing, fascinating in this thing." "Ned Stark is the center of the series." "It's very realistic, quite pragmatic character." "This is fine work." "It's not for sale." " His lordship wants the helmet." " I made it for me." "Forgive him, my Lord." "There's nothing to forgive." "He's principled, he has values, and above all he's very loyal, you know and... that's something that he demonstrates on many occasions." "You help me win the Iron Throne, then help me keep the thing." "We were meant to rule together." "Ned is the Lord of Winterfell." "And he is married to Catelyn Tully." "Together they have a number of children." "17 years ago you rode off with Robert Baratheon, you came back a year later with another woman's son." "Jon Snow is of an age with Robb, the eldest son, and they're closest brothers." "I would say Jon Snow is a young hero in a lot of ways." "Well, lord Snow, it appears you're the least useless person here." "Personally I think there's a hell of a lot of inner turmoil fighting between his ambition to be someone and to make a mark on things." "I'm ready." "You're not going." "You're no ranger, Jon." "Here a man gets what he earns." "When you earn it." "His ambition can and does make him do quite extreme things." "The Lannisters are the Queen's family." "Robert Baratheon, the King, wed the daughter of another great house, Cersei Lannister." "She is the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms." "She's quite tricky." "Layered." "And power-mad." "She's smart and political and has a hard time trusting anyone." "You're just a soldier, aren't you?" "You take your orders and you carry on." "I was also trained to kill my enemies, your grace." "As was I." "There is a definitive sense with Cersei that if it will further her game of power" "She'll get rid of anybody." "It doesn't really matter." "Jaime, her twin brother is one of the members of the King's Guard." "It would be good to have you on the field." "Ambition has become a bit stale." "I don't fight in tournaments." "I just wanna fight a man for real." "I don't want him to know what I can do." "He is a soldier and he doesn't care about the politics." "He knows the game and doesn't want to be directly involved." "Cersei and Jaime also have another brother, Tyrion Lannister." "Tyrion Lannister, because of his size, has had a very complicated upbringing in relation to his father and his sister." "He is very well-read, he has zero powers with physical defenses." "So he has to defend himself with his wit and charm." "Why do you read so much?" "Look at me and tell me what you see." "Is this a trick?" "What you see is a dwarf." "My brother has a sword and I have my mind." "And a mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." "There's a set of characters that you also encounter who are crossed narrow sea and are in an entirely different conflict." "May I present my honored guests?" "Viserys of House Targaryen, the rightful king of the Andals and his sister Daenerys of House Targaryen." "He's the man on a mission." "He's fairly obsessive about one thing, which is regaining his crown." "When they write the history of my reign, sweet sister, they will say it began today." "He's very bitter, and resentful to people who took it from him." "And he carries a huge burden." "His sister is a Daenerys Targaryen." "Also known as Daenerys Stormborn." "Tell them to stop." "You want the entire horde to stop?" "For how long?" "Until I command them otherwise." "She gives them such a journey." "She gets put up with a lot of obstacles coming her way and every time she overcomes them, she succeeds and she kind of gets stronger and stronger." "She goes on." "She's an incredibly... incredibly wicked person." "There are plots within plots and wheels within wheels and many people competing for one seat." "Going into this story it's been very important to us that things never look fake." "For us it's about creating a world and making it an authentic and believable world, but it's not our world." "We were lucky enough to have the help of a tremendously gifted art department." "I'm responsible for the look of the show." "From the colors of the floor to the sky." "What now what we see is going to be the whole look of it from there downwards so we have a complete look to the series." "You have to create a world from scratch that feels like you're in a different time and place so it's creating different environments that work that feel real but don't feel like contemporary or known periods, that's the main thing." "The biggest challenges have been I guess the scale of the event." "We've created very high standards for ourselves." "There are a lot of bits and a lot of stuff to pull together." "Jenna Jackson really range far and wide to find the artistic resources and the stylistic resources, to give us a world we haven't seen before." "There's an arctic wasteland, which is very far north and you go all the way to a more desert wilderness and everything in between." "Our brief was to try to combine interesting visual elements from a lot of different societies and periods." "So we spend a lot of time researching... medieval Europe, we looked at oriental influences, we looked at Asian influences, we looked at subcontinent, we looked at African influences." "We tried to find references from a lot of different civilizations and different times and combine them." "You try to create a world that's based in real physics, even if it's fantasy." "There has to be a reality to it." "To go forward we look just like a set so always try to think..." "How would these people live?" "What would the need?" "Why would they put things... where they do?" "How would it be?" "I think the approach we want to take is that yes, it is fantasy but it's very grounded in reality and I think we want to make it as real as possible." "And that's the same approach we are taking with everything and I think as the series goes on, you'll see the great..." "Differences between the four worlds what the series inhabit." "It's very important to have a complete different look, and light be different and the topography." "We've been given the luxury of being able to span various countries." "So we've scouted probably, I don't know, 14 different countries when we were trying to decide where to shoot and why ultimately we decided to shoot northern Ireland." "We drive 25 minutes and you're at some beautiful forest somewhere." "And you drive 45 minutes and you're at this great old castle." "It's a huge scale shooting simultaneously in two different countries." "Malta and Ireland." "It`s a challenge, but it's great fun." "We love it." "One of fun things about this show that we get to make it up." "We're not cueing to any particular historical period absolutely." "This a fantasy series and it gives us a lot of freedom and that's part of the fun of it." "Fantasy is always bigger." "I mean, fantasy is larger and more colorful and more exciting than history." "So you take your inspiration from something in history you make it much bigger and perhaps more dramatic." "It's just the best story, it's fascinating and there are so many twists and turns and when you think you have it figured it completely it changes its mind." "You follow it and get excited by it." "This real emotion and this... real relationships that you can understand and relate." "It's just brilliant." "It's a wonderful story." "It's an interesting combination of a very real world with an overlay of fantasy." "It's a pretty intriguing combination, and I think it's something that you see nowhere else on television currently." "I don't think anybody will do it quite the way HBO does." "What do you know about fear?" "Fear is for the winter." "when the snows fall a hundred feet deep." "Fear is for the long night, when the white walkers rove through the woods." "When the sun hides for years." "And children are born and live and die all in darkness." "That is the time for fear, my lord."