Monday, June 10, 2019

A Game of Thrones Distance Calculator


The Game of Thrones Distance Calculator can tell you the distance between any two points in Westeros. This allows you to work out how far all the different characters in George R. R. Martin's classic epic have traveled throughout the various episodes and seasons.

The map was created by Mark Alicz based on clues gleamed from George R. R. Martin's novels. Jon Snow's closest friend, Samwell Tarly, tells us in 'A Storm of Swords' that the Wall is "a hundred leagues long." Martin himself tells us that 'a league is three miles'. Therefore the Wall is three hundred miles long. Mark Alicz can therefore use the length of the wall to calculate all the distances between different points on a map of Westeros.

If you click twice on the Game of Thrones Distance Calculator an information window will open revealing the distance between the two points. So, for example, the well trodden journey between Winterfell and King's Landing is 1645.29 miles as the dragon flies.

According to Google Maps this walking route from Paris to Moscow is 1,718 miles (so slightly longer than the journey between Winterfell and King's Landing). Google says this walk would take 563 hours. So if you walked 10 hours a day it would take you 56 days to complete the journey. When Robert Baratheon, the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, arrives in Winterfell his wife, Cerci, complains "We’ve been riding for months now, my love. Surely the dead can wait". Obviously the king traveled with a large, slow moving caravan and presumably spent many leisurely hours dining along the way. I can well believe it would take the king and his caravan a few months to travel 1,645 miles along the Kingsroad (BTW the journey on from Winterfell to Castle Black at the Wall is 2,199 miles long - so the Kingsroad itself is at least 3,800 miles long).

Of course the Game of Thrones Distance Calculator relies on the accuracy of the Westeros map. We have no way of knowing how accurate the map is. We might also do well to heed the words of George R. R. Martin when he said,

"I have deliberately tried to be vague about such things, so I don't have obsessive fans with rulers measuring distances on the map and telling me Ned couldn't get from X to Y in the time I say he did.
However, if you really must know, you can figure out the distances for yourself. The Wall is a hundred leagues long. A league is three miles. Go from there.
But if you turn up any mistakes in travel times by using that measure, let it be your secret".

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