An actor has been chosen to take on the role of Mace Tyrell, father to Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer) and the Knight of Flowers, Ser Loras Tyrell (Finn Jones), and son to the Queen of Thorns, Olenna Tyrell (Diana Rigg), in season four of HBO’s Game of Thrones.

George R.R. Martin, the author of the books the show is based on, announced on his blog recently that Roger Ashton-Griffiths has been cast as Mace.

There are two age-old proverbs in Westeros: “If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention” and of course the more well-known, “If you think fans would let a Comic-Con go by without an appearance from Game of Thrones, then Hodor hodor hodor hodor.” One of the highlights of 2013’s San Diego Comic-Con is, no doubt, currently HBO’s most popular show Game of Thrones, which had a panel today in Hall H.

The panelists this year included executive producers/writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin, and cast John Bradley (Samwell Tarly), Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark), Kit Harington (Jon Snow), Rose Leslie (Ygritte), and Richard Madden as Robb Stark. The panel was moderated by public radio host Elvis Mitchell.

The panel began with a somewhat comical “In Memoriam” reel dedicated to all the characters that have died on the show, set to the tune of Boys II Men’s “It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday.”

I love the Iron Throne that was built for HBO’s Game of Thrones, the TV adaptation of author George R.R. Martin‘s “A Song of Ice and Fire” books. It’s big (around eight feet tall) and intimidating and scary and awesome. But it’s not the Iron Throne that Martin visualizes in his head when writing about it, and that means it’ll never be the right Iron Throne.

Martin understands this, obviously, as things can’t always be exactly how they’re described in a book when you’re working under a strict budget. But with the Throne, many artists have tried to recreate what Martin has in his head—a massive thing, made of thousands of melted swords—and no one had come anywhere close…not until now, that is.

Artist Marc Simonetti does cover art and concept art, and it was his version of the Iron Throne that Martin discovered to be closer than any other. You can see what it looks like below, and why it would have been awful hard to create it for the HBO show.

Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert! Read no further if you watch the HBO series Game of Thrones but have not yet read the books. One of the greatest chapters from George R.R. Martin’s A Storm Of Swords has been rendered into sequential art, but the scene probably won’t be seen on the television series until Season 4. I will not be held responsible if you fail to heed my warning!

There, with that out of the way, let me say this A Storm of Swords fan art, by comic artist Jeff McComsey, is amazingly well done. Detailing the duel between Oberyn Martell, Prince of Dorne, called the Red Viper, and Gregor Clegane, nicknamed the Mountain because of his gargantuan size….it appears to be a very uneven fight from the start. I won’t get into too many details but the point is that Prince Oberyn volunteered to fight this massive warrior for personal reasons. Though both of these men are champions for another, they enter the battlefield with the express intention of killing their opponent in this trial by arms.

Author George R.R. Martin visited Conan last night to discuss the hit HBO show based on his books, Game of Thrones. While there, Conan O’Brien showed Martin a popular video going around that shows fans watching the shocking latest episode of the show, “The Rains of Castamere,” and their reactions to the madness that went down.

Considering it was Martin’s brain that the events of this episode were born in, everyone’s been wondering his thoughts on what happened. Click on over to the other side now to see Martin watching people react to the episode, but be warned, there may be spoilers.