History YMMV / TheWorldOfIceAndFire

** Oily Black Stone shows up everywhere, which has spawned an entire [[EpilepticTrees Epileptic Forest]].
* NamesTheSame:
** The Targaryens like to recycle or only slightly modify names, which can make reading the Targaryen chapters a little difficult. To make matters worse, only kings get numbers appended to their names, so, for example, you'd better pay attention to make sure you're thinking of the right Rhaenys. There's also the chapter chronicling the rivalry between brothers Dae''m''on and Dae''r''on.
** Happens rather often with the Starks, especially with the names Brandon, Rickard and Jon and is hardly exclusive to just those two families.
** This is of course an InvokedTrope, since real history is not only full of numbered kings named Richard, Henry, Louis, and Edward, but also princes and other royal relatives in the line of succession who never made it to the Throne. Many of them were even named specifically to memorialize someone who had previously held the name.

* CrazyAwesome: Some of the historical Starks, especially King Theon Stark and Lord Cregan Stark.

* HilariousInHindsight: This book introduced a Tully ancestor named Lord Grover Tully. Along with his grandson Elmo and great-grandson Kermit, he's an obvious ShoutOut to The Muppets. Later Sesame Street did a Series/GameOfThrones parody titled "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhWUFXvaZjo Game of Chairs]]" with Grover as the main character. [[spoiler: He ends up winning the Iron Throne]].

** Oily Black Stone shows up everywhere, which have spawned an entire [[EpilepticTrees Epileptic Forest]].

* DesignatedHero: House Blackwood. Where the main series criticized FeudingFamilies with good and bad elements on either side and where a memorable moment in ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'' has one of the Blackwoods accompanying Jaime as a hostage to the crown mention how Blackwood and Bracken have a long history castigating one or the other. The series lore is clearly favorable to the Blackwoods, since every named Blackwood mentioned in more than a few sentences and paragraphs is shown as an infallible, morally upright badass, while every Bracken is unpleasant, cowardly or traitorous, or some combination of the three. This extends to the Great Bastards. Bloodraven, the son of Melissa Blackwood, is fanatically loyal to the Targaryens, ushers in a time of peace in the Seven Kingdoms, and is [[TheAce good at everything he does, whether he is Master of Spies or Lord Commander of the Night's Watch]]. Bittersteel, the son of Barba Bracken, is a skilled knight, but a {{Jerkass}} who fails again and again and again, and dies in exile with nothing to leave behind except the Golden Company. Maester Yandel makes it ''really'' obvious which family is the more heroic one. One can argue that this is an invoked trope since as an in-universe academic record[[note]]obviously the House that eventually married into the royal family and stayed loyal to the Crown (and whose Great Bastard served the realm with great distinction will be portrayed far more favorably than the house that fell into disfavor with the Crown and whose Great Bastard helped to incite open rebellion[[/note]], except as per the MetaOrigin (written during the reign of Tommen Baratheon), [[spoiler:the Brackens bent the knee to the Lannister Regime, while House Blackwood was still resisting until late in ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'']].

* MagnificentBastard: Zhea, the first ''jhattar'' of the Jogos N’hai. She saved her people from extinction and crushed the armies of Yi Ti through sheer cunning and ruthlessness.

* CompleteMonster: [[ZeroPercentApprovalRating King Maegor I Targaryen]], the third King of Westeros, was better known as Maegor The Cruel. He [[TheUsurper usurped the throne]] from his nephew and promptly [[OffWithHisHead decapitated]] the one Archmaester who protested. As king, Maegor used brutal tactics to suppress the Faith of the Seven, even riding on his dragon Balerion to burn down a Sept with all worshipers inside, using archers to pick off stragglers. Maegor proceeded to commit massacre after massacre, even passing off the skulls of poor smallfolk in the wrong place at the wrong time as members of the Faith's warriors. Worse still was Maegor's [[EvilUncle attitudes towards family]]: Maegor killed his own nephew in combat, and then had his second nephew captured and tortured to death. When one of his wives gave birth to a "stillborn monstrosity," Maegor had her, everyone at the birth, and her entire family executed. When his favorite wife revealed she'd poisoned said wife from jealousy, causing the monstrosity, Maegor cut her heart out and fed it to his dogs. Obsessed with having an heir, Maegor forcibly married three women, including his own niece (Rumour had it that his inability to have living children was because his mother used black magic to conceive him). After having the Red Keep constructed, Maegor also had the builders massacred to keep its secrets to himself. Monstrous, brutal, violent and cruel, Maegor's excesses drove all Westeros to unite against him behind his only surviving nephew, Jaehaerys. Maegor is remembered to the present day as one of the greatest examples of an evil King.

* DesignatedHero: House Blackwood. Where the main series criticized FeudingFamilies with good and bad elements on either side and where a memorable moment in ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'' has one of the Blackwoods accompanying Jaime as a hostage to the crown mention how Blackwood and Bracken have a long history castigating one or the other. The series lore is clearly favorable to the Blackwoods, since every named Blackwood mentioned in more than a few sentences and paragraphs is shown as an infallible, morally upright badass, while every Bracken is unpleasant, cowardly or traitorous, or some combination of the three. This extends to the Great Bastards. Bloodraven, the son of Melissa Blackwood, is fanatically loyal to the Targaryens, ushers in a time of peace in the Seven Kingdoms, and is [[TheAce good at everything he does, whether he is Master of Spies or Lord Commander of the Night's Watch]]. Bittersteel, the son of Barba Bracken, is a skilled knight, but a {{Jerkass}} who fails again and again and again, and dies in exile with nothing to leave behind except the Golden Company. Maester Yandel makes it ''really'' obvious which family is the more heroic one. One can argue that this is an invoked trope since as an in-universe academic record[[note]]obviously the House that eventually married into the royal family and stayed loyal to the Crown (and whose Great Bastard served the realm with great distinction will be portrayed far more favorably than the house that fell into disfavor with the Crown and whose Great Bastard helped to incite open rebellion[[/note]], except as per the MetaOrigin (written during the reign of Tommen Baratheon), [[spoiler:the Blackwoods bent the knee to the Lannister Regime, while House Blackwood was still resisting until late in ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'']].

* DesignatedHero: House Blackwood. Where the main series criticized FeudingFamilies with good and bad elements on either side and where a memorable moment in ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'' has one of the Blackwoods accompanying Jaime as a hostage to the crown mention how Blackwood and Bracken have a long history castigating one or the other. The series lore is clearly favorable to the Blackwoods, since every named Blackwood mentioned in more than a few sentences and paragraphs is shown as an infallible, morally upright badass, while every Bracken is unpleasant, cowardly or traitorous, or some combination of the three. This extends to the Great Bastards. Bloodraven, the son of Melissa Blackwood, is fanatically loyal to the Targaryens, ushers in a time of peace in the Seven Kingdoms, and is [[TheAce good at everything he does, whether he is Master of Spies or Lord Commander of the Night's Watch]]. Bittersteel, the son of Barba Bracken, is a skilled knight, but a {{Jerkass}} who fails again and again and again, and dies in exile with nothing to leave behind except the Golden Company. Maester Yandel makes it ''really'' obvious which family is the more heroic one. One can argue that this is an invoked trope since as an in-universe academic record[[note]]obviously the House that eventually married into the royal family and stayed loyal to the Crown (and whose Great Bastard served the realm with great distinction will be portrayed far more favorably than the house that fell into disfavor with the Crown and whose Great Bastard helped to incite open rebellion[[/note]], except as per the MetaOrigin (written during the reign of Tommen Baratheon), [[spoiler:the Blackwoods bent the knee to the Lannister Regime, while House Blackwood was still resisting until late in ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'']].

* BrokenBase:: There are the those who are excited for some new information on the world and history of ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', and then there are those who wish Martin stopped wasting time he should be spending on ''The Winds of Winter''. Others appreciate the worldbuilding aspect but disparage the quality of writing, particularly as it's often painfully obvious which parts were written by his co-authors.

* BaseBreaker: There are the those who are excited for some new information on the world and history of ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', and then there are those who wish Martin stopped wasting time he should be spending on ''The Winds of Winter''. Others appreciate the worldbuilding aspect but disparage the quality of writing, particularly as it's often painfully obvious which parts were written by his co-authors.

* MemeticMutation: "And there are no children in Asshai."

* NamesTheSame: The Targaryens like to recycle or only slightly modify names, which can make reading the Targaryen chapters a little difficult. To make matters worse, only kings get numbers appended to their names, so, for example, you'd better pay attention to make sure you're thinking of the right Rhaenys. There's also the chapter chronicling the rivalry between brothers Dae''m''on and Dae''r''on.