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In George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, readers do not get an all-knowing account of every event. Each chapter is filtered through a character’s perspective, and memories or competing accounts can differ. Martin has described unreliable memory as a deliberate technique—but he also acknowledges genuine continuity mistakes, so a contradiction is not automatically a clue.
Are the characters in Game of Thrones unreliable narrators?
Yes, sometimes—especially when memory is involved. Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2014, Martin said: “I do use the device of an unreliable narrator, particularly when dealing with memory. I present these scenes sometimes from multiple different viewpoints and the versions don’t quite jibe and then you have to figure out what really happened.”
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That is an authorial method, not a rule that every inconsistency in the novels is intentional. Martin has also said real mistakes can be confused with deliberate unreliability and acknowledged that some errors are genuine. A conflicting detail may therefore reflect a character’s limited perspective, a purposeful ambiguity, or a continuity mistake; the discrepancy alone cannot tell you which.
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How does memory affect the story?
The novels’ viewpoint structure puts readers close to one character at a time. Martin described viewpoint characters as the audience’s “eyes and ears” in a chapter: events are filtered through what that character perceives and understands, rather than presented through an all-knowing narrator.
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That filter matters when a character recalls an earlier event. A memory may be incomplete, shaped by emotion or later understanding, or simply different from another person’s account. None of those possibilities, by itself, proves that the character is lying. Partial perspective is not the same as deliberate falsehood.
How to compare conflicting accounts
- Start with access. Establish what each character actually saw, heard, or experienced, and what they could not know directly.
- Notice emphasis and emotion. Ask what each person focuses on, leaves out, misunderstands, or may have reason to stress.
- Cross-check the text. Look for another viewpoint, a later event, or an independent passage that supports or challenges the recollection.
- Separate evidence from inference. State what the books establish plainly, what a comparison suggests, and what remains uncertain.
Martin’s comments support this way of reading in general; they do not settle the meaning of every disputed memory or fan theory. Specific interpretations need to be checked against the novels themselves.
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Why do different characters remember events differently?
Two accounts can diverge because the characters had different access to an event, interpreted it differently, or remember it through different emotional stakes. Martin has said he sometimes presents scenes through multiple viewpoints whose versions “don’t quite jibe,” leaving readers to work out what happened.
When accounts conflict, compare their details rather than treating one as automatically authoritative. Note what each account claims, whether the character witnessed it firsthand, and whether other passages corroborate it. If the text does not resolve the disagreement, it is more accurate to call the matter unresolved than to promote a preferred interpretation to fact.
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How the books and HBO series differ
A novel chapter can place readers inside a viewpoint character’s thoughts; a filmed scene presents what viewers see and hear from outside. That difference can change how intention or recollection is understood. Martin’s public comments about the framing of the Jaime and Cersei scene are relevant to adaptation and interpretation, but they are not evidence about memory specifically.
The books and HBO’s Game of Thrones should therefore be treated as distinct versions, not collapsed into one account with a single authority. A scene’s presentation in the series does not, by itself, establish what a character remembers or thinks in the novels.
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Further reading on memory in the series
For a scholarly overview, Bloomsbury Academic published Memory and Medievalism in George RR Martin and Game of Thrones: The Keeper of All Our Memories, edited by Carolyne Larrington and Anna Czarnowus, on 11 August 2022. The collection examines connections between history and fantasy in A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones; its contents include a section titled “Memory.” It is a useful route into broader scholarship, not evidence for a specific character’s disputed recollection unless the relevant chapter is consulted directly.
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