Hi Steven, first of all, thank you very much for your continued work on ASOIAF. I consider you to be the very best writer about the series and look forward to your future work on the subject. I’m currently finishing HBO’s Rome and am very impressed by Octavian as a politician. My questions: (1) How do you rate Octavian’s performance in the earliest stages of his career, (2) how would he fare as king in Westeros if he, instead of Robert, had assumed the throne after the rebellion and 1/2

(3) who would be his closest similarity in the books? I personally consider him to be a Tyrionesque character with more regard for PR but am not sure if that comparison has any merit. Thanks in advance! 2/2

1. In his early career, Octavian was both daring and shrewd, choosing to go to Italy to stake his claim as Caesar’s heir rather than retreat to Macedonia, then getting his hands on Caesar’s war chest and using it to build himself a power base and an army, then playing Antony against Cicero to get the Senate on his side despite being just as illegal in his actions as Antony, then making peace with Antony to defeat the Optimates. He wasn’t necessarily the best general (although it’s more accurate to say that he wasn’t a particularly good admiral, he had a much better track record on land) but he had Agrippa to be his right hand.
2. That’s kind of impossible to answer, because Octavian’s political instincts were forged in the late Roman Republic, and he had no experience of feudal politics. An Octavian who grew up in Westeros is functionally an entirely different person.
3. I don’t know if there is a good parallel. I guess if you mixed Tyrion and Tywin?