I’ve really been enjoying your series on Tower of the Hand about the Blackfyre Rebellions. Do you have any plans to do similar series about, say, the Dance of the Dragons or Robert;s Rebellion?

I find the Dance of the Dragons kind of uninteresting for the most part – compared to the War of Five Kings, the Blackfyre Rebellions, or Robert’s Rebellion, it’s not as well plotted. 

The Greens especially act like jobbers – they don’t really win unless there’s treachery involved (Tumbleton) or a deus ex machina (Honeywine), or if they take hideous losses and make it Pyrrhic (Rook’s Rest, Gullet), and they take some huge losses which make major figures seem a bit pathetic (Aemond and the loss of King’s Landing, Criston Cole and the Butcher’s Ball, the Lannisters and the Fishfeed, Daeron and Second Tumbleton, Borros Baratheon and the Battle of the Kingsroad), etc. 

Whereas the Blacks seem to always inflict crushing, devastating defeats without suffering them in return. The Battle of the Kingsroad is a good example: the Baratheons are completely fresh, the Riverlanders have been fighting the whole time, taking casualties along the way, and somehow 40,000 Stormlanders get stomped by 4,000 Riverlanders. 

And Robert’s Rebellion seems pretty well studied.