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Game of Thrones’ Finale Admitted What Iron Throne Is Supposed To Look Like
The series finale of Game of Thrones was titled "The Iron Throne", and fittingly enough the episode touched on how the royal seat is supposed to look based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books. Across all 8 seasons of Game of Thrones, the Iron Throne was a prime motivator for a wide variety of characters. With Robert, Joffrey, Tommen, and Cersei all ruling from it across the show's run, it was where much of the power resided in Westeros.
Made-up of swords from the enemies of Aegon the Conqueror, which he had melted down by his dragon, Balerion the Dread, and turned into a throne as he was proclaimed the rightful and true King of Andals and the First Men, the Iron Throne is far from a conventional seat of power. It's supposed to be imposing and terribly uncomfortable, which itself works as a commentary on what it's really like to rule in Westeros. However, while Game of Thrones' version of the Iron Throne became a core part of the show's iconography, it is supposed to look rather different.
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels that Game of Thrones is based upon, the Iron Throne is a far greater monstrosity, and a real sight to behold. It's a towering chair that allows the sitting King or Queen to literally rule over his subjects from up high in the Red Keep's Great Hall. The Iron Throne is supposed to be around 40 feet high in total, with its seat around 20 feet in the air, sitting inside the cavernous throne room. There are steep steps leading up to it, and Martin himself described it as "massive", "ugly", and "hulking, black and twisted" on his Not A Blog site. The blades are still sharp, and stick out at different angles, making it not only incredibly uncomfortable but also dangerous (Maegor I was killed by being impaled by one of its swords). Of course, the practicalities of production meant that the Iron Throne on Game of Thrones, while still impressive, was more just like a regularly-sized throne made out of swords, rather than the gargantuan creation of Martin's mind, but the series finale did at least reference it.
When Daenerys, having conquered the Seven Kingdoms at last, stands before the Iron Throne in what's left of the Red Keep, she says to Jon Snow: "When I was a girl, my brother told me it was made with a thousand swords from Aegon’s fallen enemies. What do a thousand swords look like in the mind of a little girl who can’t count to twenty? I imagined a mountain of swords too high to climb. So many fallen enemies you could only see the soles of Aegon’s feet. But many years later, I saw it. The real thing... It all looked exactly like this." Daenerys clearly felt somewhat disappointed by the version of the Iron Throne she did get to see, but her imagination as described in the Game of Thrones finale does align with A Song of Ice and Fire. In the books, the Iron Throne is quite literally made from a thousand swords of those Aegon defeated on his path to becoming King.
In the show, the number of swords itself is acknowledged in Game of Thrones season 3, episode 6, "The Climb". Here, after Varys mentions the Iron Throne being made from the thousand swords of Aegon's defeated enemies, Littlefinger responds: "There aren't even two hundred. I've counted." Whether being serious or not, it's quite clear from looking at the show's version of the Iron Throne that it isn't made of 1000 swords. As Martin noted, it would've been impossible to bring that vision to life, with the version of the Iron Throne in the books being too big to fit inside Game of Thrones' sets, and that's before even getting into the difficulties of making such a thing. Game of Thrones did a great job, but it doesn't match the awe- and terror-inspiring creation of Martin's books.
