Perched imperiously atop a La-Z-Boy somewhere deep in his palatial Santa Fe home, George R. R. Martin has decreed that the depiction of the Iron Throne in Game Of Thrones, the HBO series based on his epic fantasy series A Song Of Ice And Fire, is some weak shit. As reported by io9, the literal seat of power in King’s Landing has been made far less monstrous and imposing for TV, and Martin has taken to the blogosphere to express his benevolently oligarchical displeasure at said affront. Says a recent Martin Livejournal post:
The HBO throne has become iconic. And well it might. It's a terrific design, and it has served the show very well. There are replicas and paperweights of it in three different sizes. Everyone knows it. I love it. I have all those replicas right here, sitting on my shelves.And yet, and yet… it's still not right. It's not the Iron Throne I see when I'm working on THE WINDS OF WINTER. It's not the Iron Throne I want my readers to see. The way the throne is described in the books… HUGE, hulking, black and twisted, with the steep iron stairs in front, the high seat from which the king looks DOWN on everyone in the court… my throne is a hunched beast looming over the throne room, ugly and assymetric… The HBO throne is none of those things. It's big, yes, but not nearly as big as the one described in the novels. And for good reason. We have a huge throne room set in Belfast, but not nearly huge enough to hold the Iron Throne as I painted it. For that we'd need something much bigger, more like the interior of St. Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, and no set has that much room. The Book Version of the Iron Throne would not even fit through the doors of the Paint Hall.
Instead, Martin says, the real Iron Throne looks a lot like this painting by “the amazing Marc Simonetti":
Maybe soon Martin will also issue a royal edict proclaiming that the cute little scar across the nose of Game Of Thrones character Tyrion Lannister is in no way as profound as the hideous facial disfigurement the character suffers in his books. Anything to keep his faculties occupied and spirits up as he delays finishing more of those books.