Maester Steven, how influential is medieval artwork, when compared to historical texts, in your work as a historian? What are the lenses/filters you have to employ when looking at such art in order to find the truth behind any event being depicted in historical art?

Well, my professional work as a historian is on 20th century U.S public policy, so I don’t use it much. 

But when I do ASOIAF stuff, I try to keep it in mind, and remember back to my Art History classes as an undergrad, where they emphasized how the ideals and beliefs of a religion are written into its art – medieval art had figures of different size on the same plane not because they didn’t understand perspective at all but more because larger figures = closer to God – and architecture (how neo-Platonism got woven into the proportions of cathedrals, for ex.).