Is The New Game Of Thrones Play Canon? It’s Complicated
The Mad King is driving fans crazy.
In the world of on-demand entertainment, the latest trend has been the tie-in live theater show, an exclusive experience that fans have to travel to see. Stranger Things’ prequel show, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, turned out to be way more applicable to the greater story than we thought, and will close in early 2027 after 18 months on Broadway and three years in London. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has run on Broadway for over eight years. Paranormal Activity, the found-footage movie phenomenon, is moving to the stage with reportedly amazing special effects.
The latest addition to this list is Game of Thrones: The Mad King, the stage play set 10 years before the beginning of the HBO series. After multiple preview cancellations, the play finally premiered, but the exciting updates from the fans who attended are mired in a big question: is what’s shown on stage canon to the show or the books? The answer seems to be neither, actually.
The Mad King shows more of Rhaegar and Lyanna, a major catalyst for Robert’s Rebellion.
As soon as the curtain fell on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s first preview of The Mad King, rumors were swirling over what was shown. After all, this was our first depiction of King Aerys II, the titular Mad King who is referenced throughout Game of Thrones. Much of the action focuses on Ned and Lyanna Stark, her (apparently consensual) relationship with Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, and Ned’s decision to take their child home as his bastard.
As information started spreading, fans wondered how much they could take these reveals to heart. After all, Game of Thrones was in the title of the show, so it presumably was canon to the TV series at least, if not the books. To set the record straight, Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson, George R. R. Martin’s collaborators often referred to as “the historians of Westeros,” took to their fansite Westeros.org to set the record straight.
As the post explains, there are a lot of variables with this question. Unlike the series adaptations, a play is a living, breathing work of art, and no two performances are going to be alike. There’s also the fact that The Mad King was written solely by playwright Duncan MacMillan, and while he says he consulted with Martin on some matters, he used his artistic freedom to interpret the tourney at Harrenhal as a dramatic work.
“Game of Thrones: The Mad King is not canon as a whole, but some parts of it are, and some parts of it are not,” the statement says. “In fact, early reports cite a number of details which are very much expressly non-canonical, showing that the needs of the play and the story the creatives wanted to tell trumped attempting to stick to every piece of canon, old or new.”
Works of theater take some liberties, as Game of Thrones itself proved.
So while it’s interesting to break down all the prophecies and dreams and, apparently, extended sequences involving puppets, only the words in the books written by George R. R. Martin are officially canon. Parts of this play may be inspired by canon, or are interpretations of canon, but we shouldn’t take them as gospel.
Look at it this way: when we see theater in the world of Game of Thrones, whether that’s Tanselle’s puppet shows in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms or Lady Crane’s performance as Cersei in Season 6 of Game of Thrones, they’re not works of historical fact. When people in Shakespeare’s time went to see Richard III, it wasn’t a documentary event of what happened to that ruler, even if it got the core facts right.
They may be inspired by what actually happened, and the broad strokes may be accurate, but there’s some embellishment too. That may not be a satisfying answer to the fans looking to update those fan wiki articles, but it’s definitely a recipe for a great night at the theater.
