Some people watch for the shocking plot-twists and the sexposition. but if you’re trying to follow the history of Westeros through Game Of Thrones and its now-numerous spin-offs – House Of The Dragon, A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms and more – you might struggle to map it all out.
Happily, author George R.R. Martin has a detailed timeline for his world, and we have gathered the screen story to date (don’t worry – no book spoilers here!) in one handy, digestible and not-even-poisoned parcel. Hey, after the Purple Wedding it’s best to make these things clear.
How we sorted the timeline order
Our Game Of Thrones timeline order is primarily based on the TV adaptations – which features some subtle but important changes from George R.R. Martin’s novels. The dates of when everything take place are defined by ‘BC’ and ‘AC’ – before and after Aegon’s Conquest, an important moment in Westeros lore (read on for more on that front).
Once upon a time…
Before we seriously get into it, here are a few important bits of early Westeros history.
The Before Times (12000 BC)
12,000-odd years ago, the First Men settled on the continent. It was not entirely empty before their arrival: there were giants, and crucially also the Children of the Forest, small nature-worshipping creatures with mysterious powers. Think Yoda, but antisocial; Tinkerbell, but bigger. The Children planted the weirwood trees that some Westerosi still consider sacred, and warred against (but eventually made peace with) the First Men.
The arrival of the White Walkers and Night King (6000-8000 BC)
Around the 6000 / 8000-years-ago mark there came the Long Night, where winter fell for a generation and the zombie-like Others, aka the White Walkers, came to Westeros. In Game Of Thrones, the White Walkers – and the Night King himself – were created by the Children Of The Forest, intended as a weapon against Man, who was ruining their whole Eden situation. Safe to say, their plan gets a bit out of hand. In Martin’s lore, it’s whispered in legend that an oathbreaking commander of the Night Watch took a “corpse queen” as his lover, and he became the Night King. Either way, the White Walkers necessitated the building of the Wall and the Night’s Watch to keep them at bay.
This is the era of Westerosi history that the cancelled Naomi Watts-starring pilot ‘Bloodmoon’ would have covered – but don’t hold your breath for that one, it sounds like it’s never going to be made after the first episode was scrapped.
The founding of Dorne (Date unknown)
Another series in development was set around this time: Ten Thousand Ships would cover the legendary Queen Nymeria’s foundation of Dorne, a thousand years before Thrones. Brian Helgeland was working on it before it was shelved in 2024, but later that year George R.R. Martin claimed that Pulitzer Prize-winner Eboni Booth was writing another draft, so it might still emerge. It apparently involves giant turtles as well as a boatload of boats, so sign us up.
Game Of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest (2BC to 1AC)
You know how it goes: a few thousand years pass, not one or two but Seven Kingdoms firm up around the great houses that have already established themselves, and over in Valyria, people use magic to tame dragons and create an empire. A few of those come to Westeros – including the Targaryen family, who build Dragonstone. A century or so later, a guy called Aegon Targaryen and his sisters (who were also his wives) decides that the rest of Westeros looks nice and they’ll take it, thanks. In two years Aegon, his missuses (sissuses?) and their massive dragons conquered and united six of the Seven Kingdoms (Dorne would follow by marriage 200 years later). Aegon’s Conquest is the date from which all others on Westeros are measured; it is their Battle of Yavin, in Star Wars terms. Aegon brought with him the tradition that the people in charge of everything would be super-duper blond and super-super-duper incestuous. It’s a choice!
According to the 2026 Warner Bros presentation at CinemaCon, Game Of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest – the first cinematic outing for the saga – will hit the big screen sometime after 2027, telling the story of this epic war. Expect dragonfire on the largest possible scale (no pun intended), with Andor’s Beau Willamon on writing duties.
House Of The Dragon: Season 1 (105AC – 129AC)
Season 1 of HBO’s Game Of Thrones prequel – set generally around 200 years before its parent show – covered a lot of time, often at a gallop. King Viserys (Paddy Considine) loses his wife/cousin in Episode 1, and appoints his teenage daughter Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock and later Emma D’Arcy) as his heir. Then he undermines her by marrying her BFF, Alicent (Emma Carey, later Olivia Cooke) and having three sons over the following years: there’s no tradition of Targaryens having ruling queens so this presents a challenge on who’ll rule next. Rhaenyra also has sons, marries her uncle Daemon (Matt Smith), and makes plans to claim her throne.
Alas, she is on Dragonstone when Viserys dies in 129AC, and soon discovers that her half-brother Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), son of Viserys and Alicent, has been crowned instead, at the behest of his mother, grandfather Lord Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), and a faction that become known as the “Greens” to Rhaenyra’s “Blacks”. A civil war looms. Though Rhaenyra initially hesitates to war with family, the tragic death of her son Lucerys at the hands – OK, dragon-teeth – of his cartoonishly villainous uncle Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) sets her on the warpath.
The series also adds an additional wrinkle to the whole quarrel that isn’t present in Martin’s books: Rhaenyra believes, via prophecy from her late father, that some kind of catastrophe (read: the Night King) is eventually coming to Westeros, perhaps imminently, and that it is her duty for her lineage to remain on the Iron Throne for the future apocalypse. This makes House Of The Dragon a more literal Game Of Thrones prequel series, and adds an extra dimension to her quest for power.
House Of The Dragon: Season 2 and 3 (AC 129 – AC130?)
After an opening season that spanned 24 years, Seasons 2 and (so far) 3 have taken place across a matter of months. The civil war known as the Dance of Dragons means that Season 2 boils down to “everyone manoeuvres for position and tries to line up allies for the fight.” Rhaenyra’s son Jaecerys (Harry Collett) flies oop North to talk to the Starks, while Aegon sends Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) over to Tyrosh to enlist the Triarchy fleet against Rhaenyra’s oldest ally, the impossibly cool Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), aka the Sea Snake (he may get his own prequel spin-off, if rumour is to be believed).
Season 3, however, has story coming out its… dragonmouth. Corlys’ fleet defeated the Tyroshi pirates in the Battle Of The Gullet, though at the cost of Jaecerys’ life and dragon, and Corlys’ life savings. Shortly after, Rhaenyra and Daemon take control of King’s Landing and start preparations for her coronation. Alas, the Greens emptied the Treasury and there are rumblings of discontent from the populace. Meanwhile a new and formidable Green military leader has arrived in Lord Ormund Hightower (James Norton), who’s a sneaky bastard with a fondness for the C-word. So far this season promises some devastating drama and more dragon action than the Reign Of Fire poster.
A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms: Season 1 (209AC)
It’s no spoiler for House Of The Dragon to say that a branch of the Targaryen family remains; they’re all Targaryens in that war. But 80 years on – and still around 100 years before Game Of Thrones – when the story of The Hedge Knight takes place, the dynasty is much reduced. Their dragons have died, leaving them without their nuclear trump card. Here, young Prince Aegon (Dexter Sol Ansell) is packed off to become a squire for his drunken older brother Daeron (Henry Ashton). Instead he takes up with the lowborn-but-likeable Dunk (Peter Claffey). Dunk ends up fighting for his life in a trial by combat against a more sadistic Prince Aerion Targaryen (Finn Bennett) as a result – also encountering the rambunctious Ser Lyonel Baratheon (Daniel Ings), and earning the respect of Prince Baelor Targaryen (Bertie Carvell) along the way. He and “Egg” develop one of the most heartwarming relationships in Westerosi history, which continues in…
A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms: Season 2 (211AC)
It’s official: Dunk and Egg will return. Shooting has wrapped on 2027’s Season 2, which we now know will cover The Sworn Sword book. That sees the pair swearing their service to Ser Eustace Osgrey (Peter Mullan), who unfortunately has potentially fatal beef with his neighbour, Lady Rohanne Webber (Lucy Boynton). Alien: Earth’s Babou Ceesay also has a role as Ser Bennis, another knight sworn to service who’s even less level-headed than Dunk, so there should be loads more medieval tomfoolery.
The Mad King (281AC – 283AC)
People have often called the plotting in Westeros “Shakespearean,” and the Royal Shakespeare Company clearly agrees. They’re staging a play of The Mad King, which chronicles the fall of Aerys II (Michael Shaeffer) into madness, the abduction of Lyanna Stark (Harmony Rose-Bremner) by Prince Rhaegar (Noah Ritter) and the rebellion led by Robert Baratheon (Callum Woodhouse) and Ned Stark (Michael Abubakar). It’s set 17 years before the main action of Thrones, though elements of this story were seen in flashback in that show’s later seasons.
Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark are BFFs as we head into Game Of Thrones (keep reading). And The Mad King acts as the missing link between A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms and Game Of Thrones: according to TV continuity (which skipped a generation mentioned in the books, for simplicity) “Egg” is this Aerys’s father. There were rumours of a Robert’s Rebellion TV show in 2021, but this may be as close as we get. The play will be onstage in Stratford-upon-Avon this summer, and promises major Thrones figures as we’ve never seen them before – plus puppets!
Game Of Thrones (298AC – 303AC, approx)
A word of caution: timelines for the Game Of Thrones TV show differ from the Song Of Ice And Fire books. The showrunners wanted slightly older Stark kids, both for production purposes (they can work longer hours) and storytelling reasons (sex and violence). Also as a matter of practicality, while the TV show keeps dates woolly, a rule of thumb is that one year passes per season, in line with the aging of the child actors – at least for the first four or five seasons. By the end, the seasons probably cover a shorter period, so everything becomes woollier still. Oh, and Daenerys’ dragons grow much faster than those in House Of The Dragon; maybe because of all those centuries their eggs spent fossilized? But here’s our best guess.
On TV, it’s been 17-odd years since Robert’s Rebellion (rather than the book’s 15), and Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) in Season 1 asks his auld mucker Ned Stark (Sean Bean) to become his Hand (aka right-hand man), which sets in motion a chain of treachery leading to the death of both men – largely through the machinations of Robert’s wife Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey). The War of the Five Kings erupts as a result, and Robb Stark (Richard Madden) tries to unite the North to avenge his father. Meanwhile in Essos, one of the surviving Targaryens, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke), is reluctantly married off to Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) of the Dothraki horse people. Over weeks or months they make the relationship work, only for him to be killed and her attempts to resurrect him with dark magic to fail disastrously, taking her unborn child with him. But hey! She hatches three dragon eggs in his funeral pyre, the first dragons born in centuries, so she has that going for her.
By Season 2, Robb takes Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) hostage and attempts to swap him for his sisters Sansa (Sophie Turner) and Arya (Maisie Williams). Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane), Robert’s older brother, unsuccessfully attacks King’s Landing, while Daenerys loses and regains her small dragons in the city of Qarth. Winterfell, the home of the Starks, is burned by the Boltons as war spreads across Westeros and even beyond the Wall in the North, where the Night King is stirring.
In Season 3, more armies are on the march. Robb dies suddenly at his Red Wedding, while Sansa is divorced from abusive King Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) and remarried to Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage). North of the Wall, Ned’s bastard son (or is he??) Jon Snow (Kit Harington) enlists the Wildling people against the Night King only to betray them; while in Essos, Daenerys and her lizardy brood hire the eunuch army of the Unsullied and start building an empire.
RIP Joffrey in Season 4, whose own nuptials are brought to an abrupt, choking end at the Purple Wedding – so at least enough time has passed to arrange a Royal Divorce and Royal Wedding. And then, of course, a Royal Funeral. Meanwhile, Jon fights Wildlings at the Wall; young Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) gets in touch with ancient, Children of the Wood-related powers by way of a Three-Eyed Raven, and Daenerys frees the slaves of a slaver’s city.
That’s all very well until the slavers regroup and strike back in Season 5, forcing Daenerys to flee on the back of her favourite dragon, Drogon – who is, pun intended, an absolute beast by this point, despite being a decade younger than little Tessarion in House Of The Dragon. ANYWAY. Tyrion, who was scapegoated for the Purple Wedding, joins forces with her, so she has one new buddy anyway. Jon tries to form an alliance between the Wildlings and Watch, only to be stabbed to (temporary) death for it, and Arya starts training with the Faceless Men in Braavos.
Some time passes, at least, for Arya to learn some skills before she heads back to Westeros in Season 6. Jon is resurrected by Stannis’ right-hand priestess, reunites with Sansa – who has been through it, marriage wise – and takes down the really very dastardly Boltons to reclaim Winterfell and be hailed King in the North. Meanwhile Daenerys gathers her allies and armies and sails to Westeros.
In Season 7, things start to move really fast, and the amount of time it takes to – for example – march from North to South gets extremely fuzzy. Daenerys arrives at Dragonstone and teams up with Jon Snow – and then really teams up with him, bow-chicka-wow-wow – to fight the Night King. Bran learns, in a vision, something that book readers guessed years before: Jon is the trueborn son of Rhaegar and Lyanna, who actually fancied each other; he is both Targaryen and Stark. And technically Daenerys’ nephew (gross). This all ties back in to Robert’s Rebellion and the Mad King.
In Season 8, Daenerys and the surviving Starks reunite at Winterfell and prepare for the attack of the Night King – who Arya dispatches with a surfeit of sneakiness (and a Valyrian steel dagger). That leaves Daenerys free to resume her campaign for the Iron Throne – and, as it turns out, to break bad, torching the city with her dragons in a fit of madness. Eventually, Jon has to kill her to save Westeros. Huh. Luckily for him, a bystanding Drogon doesn’t immediately barbecue him and just flies off instead – not before melting the Iron Throne itself into scrap metal.
Jon, Sansa, Tyrion and the rest of the survivors put Bran on the throne because “Bran The Broken” sounds cool where they come from. Tyrion will be Bran’s Hand and Sansa the Queen in the North. Arya sails off into the West, presumably looking for Gandalf, while Jon rejoins the Night Watch. The end – for now.
What’s next?
In the years since Thrones ended, various rumoured spin-offs have also included whispers of shows set after that big finale. But despite word of an Arya-focused spin-off following her sea voyage, or a Jon Snow spin-off, neither has so far seriously gone into development. But we’re sure Martin will continue the story into the future as well as the past. Any day now…
