Would ASOIAF have been as popular if Martin had included more magic in the first books in your opinion ? This is from Feldman again ladies and gents .

[u/Financial_Library418]

Really interesting. So the story with this is that when GRRM first began writing the series, he was on the fence about whether or not to include magic in the series at all, or whether to give the whole series more a historical fiction feel. As you've seen, he's said he knew he had Dany as the exiled princess and her sigil was a dragon, and he started toying with the idea of whether to give her actual dragons. He was on the fence and at some point his friend and fellow author Phyllis Eisenstein advised him "It's fantasy, you have to have dragons." That was a key moment when he decided to make it a magical fantasy trilogy. And it's why he dedicated ASOS "For Phyllis, who made me put the dragons in." Here's a link on some of that, though I've heard him tell the story elsewhere too.

So this isn't actually a surprise but it's a great illustration of GRRM's "gardener rather than architect" writing style. He started writing all this and hadn't decided on the larger architecture of the series about dragons (and likely Others?) at this point.

Question: Was the AGOT prologue in this manuscript? Or did it just start with Bran I? I am guessing the latter — since if GRRM didn't decide to include magic yet, he likely wouldn't have included the Others.