• Series The mental health problems of Kit Harington as a result of Game of Thrones

  • Series Nearly Gone: Game of Thrones' Sadist Joffrey Baratheon's Allergy to Fame

The intrigues and power struggles between the Lannisters and the Starks have kept millions of people glued to the screen for almost a decade thanks to the prodigious imagination of

George RR Martin (73), the creator of

Game of Thrones

(

GoT

).

A television hit of such magnitude that it has led HBO to premiere on August 21

La Casa del Dragón

, also based on the work of this author.

Martin's ability to create gripping stories of intrigue is indisputable.

However, no less intriguing is his own biography:

from poverty to amassing a fortune of more than 125 million dollars

.

The Childhood of George RR Martin could very well be written by David Simon and be a foretaste of the second season of

The Wire

.

It took place between social housing, shipyards, unemployment and poverty in Bayonne

, a port city located on the outskirts of the Big Apple (but in the state of Jersey) which is separated from the luxury of New York by a 500-meter bridge.

"I saw the lights from my window and it seemed like Shangri-La [a utopia]."

"

We had no money. My father was unemployed for a long time before he became a longshoreman

and we didn't have a car. He lived on 1st Street and the school was on 5th. That was my world. The books and comics I read allowed me to expand my horizon," said the author in a conversation with Stephen King.

At that time, Martin was a skinny kid with an Elvis toupee and a perky face who knew how to make virtue of his financial need.

"I've always been a writer. I

used to sell handwritten stories to my peers for a penny

, though I soon raised the price to five, the price of a chocolate bar. However,

my professional career as a children's writer ended abruptly when one of the children, who He was my client, he started having nightmares

and his mother came to talk to my mother and it was over," she recalls.

"It was my way of responding to my desire for adventure."

A wish that was fulfilled when he moved to Northwestern University to

study journalism in full swing was Woodstock

.

There he became a long-haired young man, steeped himself in the hippie spirit, developed his goofy humor, published his first novel—

The Hero

, with a post-apocalyptic setting—and

graduated

summa cum laude

.

Then Uncle Sam called him up in the middle

of the Vietnam War and George became a conscientious objector

.

A vital decision that would mark the universe of JdT when it came to describing the harshness, death and misfortune caused by war.

The author disguised during the recording of a Game of Thrones pilot.GRRM

After finishing university, he discovered

the two loves of his life

in a few months: Gale Bunwick and Parris McBride.

She met Gale in 1974 at a comic book fair.

In 1975, engaged but not married, George met his current wife at another literary convention.

We were partying in the women's sauna. She came in, one thing led to another, and we started playing piggyback fights in the pool

,” he recalls.

However, he had a feeling that Parris was attracted to her friend Joe of hers.

"Luckily Joe was married, so

he sold her to me for two goats and a pregnant fish

. Despite my purchase, a few months after I met Parris, I went ahead and married Gale, oops," he mocks.

During this time,

he became a university professor and a screenwriter in Hollywood

, where he worked on Beyond Reality.

There he ended up rebounding after the publishing failure of his

1983 novel

From Him The Armageddon Rag .

However, his first marriage did not last as long.

The marriage was affected by work stress and in 1979 they divorced.

"

Our wedding song was

A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

by Simon and Garfunkel. Maybe it was a clue."

George RR Martin and his wife Parris McBride during their wedding.GRRM

Two years after the breakup, in 1981, he got back in touch with Parris.

"She

was working as a waitress in a lesbian-feminist restaurant

," she recalls.

The author invited her for a visit and they would never be separated again.

Both share ideology, love for fantasy and science fiction, for costumes, hats and cats.

However,

they would not marry until 2011

, in a medieval ceremony to which the couple and guests

attended in disguise and in which they posed with axes

.

In addition, Parris also witnessed the birth of George RR Martin as a successful author when

he published the first installment of the

Game of Thrones series

in 1996 .

A volume for which the publisher had planned the sale of only 5,000 copies.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

  • Hollywood

  • Game of Thrones