The Best Maps to Help You Navigate the Game of Thrones World While Reading/Watching

 

One of my greatest problems while reading the Songs of Fire and Ice Series (as a book reader I hate referring to it as "Game of Thrones"- unfortunately few people seem to know the true name of the series); is the fact that besides the countless characters making it almost impossible to know *exactly* what's going on (at least until your memory is jogged by the first few paragraphs of each chapter) I had no grasp of the world's geography. A condition made even worse by the fact that I'm reading the books on my kindle; meaning I don't have that useful map at the start of my books (nor the luxury to flip back and forth to it). 

In my deluded mind I had always assumed the layout of the world (which I can't seem to find a real name for) was similar to a map of North America, with Canada representing all that's north of the wall (is that racist?). 

Which is exactly why my mind was blown when I saw some maps of the kingdom, it turns out the "Seven Kingdoms/Westeros" are really a thin vertical strip of land, and not the wide sprawling from New-York to California mass that I had in mind. What troubled me most was trying to get a grasp of where * CAUTION! SPOILERS FOLLOW!*  Dany was conquering and freeing slaves in relation to the kingdoms. Specifically as to trying to predict exactly which part of the kingdom she would attack first once she crossed the Narrow Sea. ( I'm currently 80% into book 3/ "A Storm of Swords" so anything can happen... )

So enough of my blabbering, onto some of the greatest maps to help you understand your storyline better (hopefully you're reading the books, as they seem to be a million times more amazing than the show). Unfortunately the world doesn't have a full map that covers future cities and past (as the author can at any moment add another city to Dany's conquest perhaps) but here are some helpful visual aides:

Besides the one above via A Life in Equinox, which gives a decent representation of the 7 kingdoms, as well as the respective lord/king of each area, there is a full scale interactive map which also allows you to follow the conquests, campaigns and movements of each character from http://quartermaester.info/

Also available are the official maps of the story from Fantastic Maps which you can also purchase full size wall posters of at Amazon:

 

Also this unofficial map is quite useful, and possibly the most up to date of them all?

So that's pretty much it, hope you guy found it useful, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the story so far (regardless of whether you're reading the books or watching the show), and do share who you're favorite character is.

*Oh and if anyone here has read the books AND watched the show then let me know if you've noticed any major discrepancies in the story lines? So far my biggest issue (without watching the any of the show) is how Renly and Loras are so obviously gay in the TV show, while the book does nothing more than subtly hint at it (3 books in).

Cheers :)