'House of the Dragon': Co-Author Facing Serious Backlash for Racism After Casting of Black Actors

By Michael Hein

[Updated on Aug. 28 with comments from Linda Antonsson.] As House of the Dragon has brought A Song of Ice and Fire back into the public consciousness, it has also fired up a controversy that seems to have been bubbling for many years. Most Game of Thrones fans know of George R.R. Martin, but many are just being introduced to Linda Antonsson and Elio M. García Jr., who co-authored his companion book The World of Ice and Fire. Now, fans are asking Antonsson to answer for years of racist and combative posts on social media.

Antonsson and García created the first widely popular A Song of Ice and Fire fan forum in the late 1990s, Westeros.org. Over the years, that website expanded and the couple came into contact with Martin, even reportedly helping him to catalog bits of information in his own writing. When Martin's publisher proposed an encyclopedia-style companion book to his series, he approached Antonsson and García for help, which is how they ended up as co-authors on 2014's The World of Ice and Fire. Thanks to that as well as their work on the forums, the couple looms large in the fandom today.

That made it all the more sad for fans when they saw that Antonsson was railing against the casting of Black actors in House of the Dragon on social media. Antonsson has used her position as co-author to assert that the characters played by Black actors in the new series were canonically white in the books – a dubious claim at best, as many of her critics have pointed out by scouring the source material. She has said that this "change" keeps her from enjoying the book because she believes it puts "diversity" ahead of "story" — though the depiction of House Velaryon in the show has been faithful to the book in other respects so far.

[Antonsson contacted PopCulture.com by email to bring to our attention this Entertainment Weekly interview where House of the Dragon showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik described the casting of Black actors as a change from the books. It's also true that in A Feast for Crows members of House Velaryon were described with pale skin.]

This drew some heated responses from fans, and naturally led to angry exchanges on social media. Along the way, some users recalled times when Antonsson was combative on the forums, on Tumblr or on other social media sites. Before long, they were compiling lists of examples. In several of them, Antonsson used loaded terms like "feminazi," "social justice warrior" and "woke," effectively politicizing her own arguments about race in A Song of Ice and Fire.

[Antonsson argues that these quotes and screenshots were taken out of context, and that these insults were made during "flame wars" which featured "vitriol on both sides."]

Non-white fans remarked on how Antonsson's comments made them feel unwelcome or even unsafe in communal fandom spaces – both in person or online. Some shared similar experiences they have had as fantasy readers over the years, and suggested that things like this keep non-white people from engaging in fantasy fandom in general. Many later reported that they had been blocked by Antonsson.

Antonsson herself seems to have written these skirmishes off as hyperbolic and unimportant. However, a growing number of fans are trying to catch the attention of Martin and his publishers, hoping to shine a light on Antonsson's rhetoric. Some have even vowed to boycott the new book The Rise of the Dragon because it has Antonsson listed as a co-author once again.

At the time of this writing, Martin has not commented on the controversy surrounding Antonsson. House of the Dragon airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max. Martin's books are available now in print, digital and audiobook formats.

Antonsson provided the following statement via email to PopCulture.com exclusively on Sunday, Aug. 28: "When it comes to A Song of Ice and Fire, I have a long history of pointing out and noting my irritation with all kinds of changes to the book canon, from the appearance of the Targaryen sigil (the dragon should have two legs) to the race of the Velaryons. The latter gets me called a racist by strangers even though I am motivated by the same feeling as with the sigil: I dislike unnecessary changes that go against the text of the work. Yes, some of my statements are very vitriolic, but the context is that they were my responses to rudeness and abuse against myself which I returned in kind."

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