It’s a sad day for A Song of Ice and Fire fans, as one of the defining voices in the fandom has deleted their iconic blog, taking years of beloved theories and analysis with it. It’s a stark reminder (sorry) that things have grown pretty dire for fans of the series, with no end in sight for The Winds of Winter and George R.R. Martin recently admitting that he’s battled sadness and depression during an increasingly difficult year.

There was a time when the seemingly endless wait between books almost became part of the fun, fueling an incredible era of theory-crafting as fans dissected every chapter, prophecy, battle, and ambiguous line for clues about what might come next. More than 15 years after A Dance with Dragons, however, much of that energy has understandably faded, and some of the websites that once helped keep that excitement alive are beginning to disappear.

And today, it looks like the beloved Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire WordPress has officially been taken offline, marking the end of an era for A Song of Ice and Fire in a particularly painful update, especially for longtime readers who spent years following the work of Jeff Hartline, aka BryndenBFish on Reddit.

Wars And Politics Of Ice And Fire Has Officially Been Deleted

BryndenBFish was a pretty significant figure in the A Song of Ice and Fire fandom, arguably one of the writers who helped define the serious, long-form theory culture surrounding the books during the long wait for The Winds of Winter.

The username belonged to Jeff Hartline, often credited online as Jeff/JF Hart, a former U.S. Army infantryman who became active on r/asoiaf after finishing the novels. His military background heavily influenced his early work, and he had a signature style of writing that treated the wars in ASOIAF almost like real military campaigns. His first major project was a detailed analysis of Robb Stark as a military commander, followed by similar studies of Stannis, Jaime, Tywin, Daenerys, and various battles across the books.

That work eventually grew into the WordPress site Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire, which began primarily as BryndenBFish’s blog before expanding to include writers such as SomethingLikeaLawyer and others. By late 2013, Hart himself was already remarking that the site had become considerably more popular than he expected.

One of his most influential pieces was his multi-part analysis of the forthcoming Battle of Winterfell in The Winds of Winter, where he concluded that Stannis intended to confront the Freys around the crofter’s village, which became a foundation for dozens of later theories. Cantuse’s famous Night Lamp theory, now one of the best-known Winds of Winter theories in the fandom, explicitly credits BryndenBFish’s analysis as the groundwork from which it was developed.

The Wait For Winds Has Taken Its Toll

BryndenBFish was part of the mid-2010s theory-crafting ecosystem where r/asoiaf, Tumblr, WordPress blogs, podcasts, etc., all fed into one another in what now seems like a quaint period in ASOIF history. He later co-hosted NotACast with Emmett Booth/PoorQuentyn, doing extremely detailed chapter-by-chapter rereads, with episodes routinely stretching on for hours as the hosts dug into politics, characterization, foreshadowing, and competing theories.

This is why the removal of Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire is hitting longtime fans surprisingly hard, as it was not merely some random blog with the ramblings of an obsessed fan. For people who were heavily involved with ASOIAF between 2013 and 2020 or so, those essays were part of the experience of waiting for Winds and the basis for many spirited discussions from like-minded fans.

For many of us, reading a chapter and then reading BryndenBFish’s 5,000-word breakdown of it, arguing about it on Reddit, then watching another theorist build an entirely different theory was an integral part of the experience. While many of these write-ups will be archived somewhere online, the loss of Wars and Politics really does feel like the end of an era for many A Song of Ice and Fire fans.

Cast

Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage, Sophie Turner, Kit Harington, Lena Headey, Maisie Williams, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Iain Glen, John Bradley, Alfie Allen, Conleth Hill, Liam Cunningham, Gwendoline Christie, Aidan Gillen, Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Rory McCann, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jerome Flynn, Rhys Ifans, Matt Smith, Graham McTavish, Fabien Frankel, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Emma D’Arcy, Matthew Needham, Olivia Cooke, Milly Alcock, Emily Carey