The Rest Is History - 53. Game of Thrones

Episode Date: May 17, 2021

What, if anything, can we learn about medieval history from Game of Thrones? Or is George R R Martin’s hugely popular series of books, and the blockbuster TV series based on them, in danger of supplanting true history in the popular imagination? Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, both huge fans of the series, discuss books, films and history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. A wise man once said, a true history of the world is a history of great conversations in elegant rooms. Sounds like the rest is history. Those are the words of the dwarf from Game of Thrones, Tyrion Lannister, that great historian. And that's our subject this week, Game of Thrones.

Tom Holland, are you a fan of the Sex and Sandals and Swords hit? I am, and I'm proud to say that I was an early adopter because I read the early books before the TV show started. And I've got to say that it was one of the great reading experiences of my life. Wow, that's a good claim. Yeah, I got the first book, devoured it pretty much in a day, queued up early to get to the bookshop the next day to get the second one. I thought they were really great. And I thought they, I kind of quite enjoyed the TV series as well, but I thought that the book was brilliant.

So had you got all the way through before you started the TV series? Had you got to the, as far as you could get? Yeah, I got as far as I could. And the other link that I have with game of thrones is that um i once got sojourner mormont um lbw oh in glenn in glenn yeah i'm aware that for people who know nothing about cricket and haven't read game of thrones that will mean absolutely nothing of all our facts that, that's the most obscure. That's the best, isn't it? Which I guess kind of highlights the way in which this is an episode that we risk annoying two constituencies. And one of them, obviously,

is people who know everything about Game of Thrones. Because it's a while since I've watched it. I'm not absolutely on top of every last detail. But also, of course, there may be people listening who've never read the books, who've never seen the TV show, maybe wondering why on a history podcast we're talking about a work of fiction. And I think that the reason for doing it is focused by a question from David Haskier, who asks, how do you feel about the likely fact that the TV series has shaped popular perception about the medieval period more than popular historical TV or books. I mean, I'd go further and say that nothing in the 21st century has done more to shape the way that a broader range of people now think about the past than Game of Thrones. That's bigger more than Gladiator. I mean, Gladiator is huge. Much more, much more. Wow. Yeah.

Because it was such a phenomenon. And although it's fantasy, the whole thing about it is that it's rooted in kind of various historical episodes, various historical periods all mixed together. And I think it's hugely influential on how people see the past. It's in a continuum, though, isn't it, Tom? I mean, Lord of the Rings, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, sort of Victorian historical evocations of the Middle Ages. I mean, Game of Thrones, isn't it just the latest iteration of these ways that that we over the past centuries have have understood i think i guess particularly the medieval past but dominic for the benefit of those who have never read or seen game of thrones here's your start of a tale it's like kind of radio four panel show can you give the plot of game of thrones in what a minute two minutes well i did the french revolution in about 90 seconds so game of thrones is a bit more complex isn't it so for people so this is basically for people who haven't

haven't seen it already um because everybody else will be appalled by my gross oversimplifications as no doubt they always are um so basically game of thrones i think is two things one it's a story set in the sort of vaguely middle ages-ish time in this continent called Westeros, which is near the top of the continent. There's a huge wall, which is basically Hadrian's Wall. And on the other side, there's these snowy wastes. And there have always been stories and rumours about some terrible menace that's going to come

through the snowy wastes across the wall. And these are the White Walkers. These are kind of zombies. And the show starts with the realisation that basically the zombies are coming. And this is looming over the whole story. So that's one aspect of it. So you know there's this kind of apocalyptic confrontation coming.

But then most of the narrative is actually about the fight for supremacy in what are called the Seven Kingdoms. So there's the Iron Throne, which is the sort of, you know, the throne, obviously. And there is a series of kind of Wars of the Roses-style shenanigans and sort of soap opera machinations as these different families, who are clearly modelled on different families from medieval history, are fighting for control. And at the beginning, you're invited i mean the the

distinctive thing about game of thrones because some people will be thinking that doesn't sound very distinctive at all but the distinctive thing about it i suppose is that at the very beginning you're invited to empathize with one particular family from the north of the continent and it's very clear that they are going to be your sort of eyes into this world. And then the tables are turned by the end of the first book or the first series. And you realize that actually a lot of them are going to start getting killed off. And you start to realize that this whole enterprise has a sensibility that you don't expect, that nothing can be taken for granted, and the characters that you have invested in are going to be killed off really horribly. And then it's sort of, there's just twist part upon twist.

And yet all the time, you know, the zombies are coming, which gives it this sort of other dimension. And then, of course, there is one third dimension, which a lot of people loved, which is the fact that it has dragons. And dragons are these mythical creatures that are kind of the ultimate weapon that people don't believe exist anymore.

And they're going to come back and change the dynamic of the entire show. And that's basically Game of Thrones. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And to fix on the dragons, I've got a friend who refuses point blank to have any dealings with anything that has dragons. Wow. Just like the hobbits.

No, no. Faggner's Ring. Yeah, all of it. Hates it. Dragons for him for him are the absolute mark he's not going to touch it so you mentioned both zombies and dragons chinese new year neither yeah no but they're different aren't they i think he's talking about the medieval western okay zombies and dragons immediately mark it out as the kind of thing that that is not straight historical fiction yeah so perhaps we could i mean let's look at both of them so so there's a question from ghost of film past where did the idea of dragons originate from and one answer that is obviously it's very clear isn't it it's it's coming from medieval literature yeah

but more than that it's it's it's in a way it's an. But more than that, in a way, it's showing the Middle Ages in which dragons are real is kind of true to a certain way in which medieval people did understand the world because they did think that dragons kind of existed. So before the sack of Lindisfarne by the Vikings, fiery dragons are seen in the sky. Are they not comets and they're just not comets? Well, that's what we would say. But in the Chronicle, it says it, fiery dragons are seen in the sky. Are they not comets?

Are they just not comets? Well, that's what we would say. But in the Chronicle, it says it's fiery dragons. And you get reports from Armenia in the early 11th century of dragons sweeping down and vomiting fire. And you get this incredible report. I mean, one of my favorite passages in the whole of medieval literature, again, early 11th century of a monk from regensburg crossing the hungarian

plain and he's describing the details of his trip you know i saw this castle it's kind of interesting path oh and then a dragon shadowed me he had a huge head and he had scales like like metal plates and then he flew off where's this germany uh hungary hungary well who knew so so of course i mean we might say obviously he'd eaten something or drunk something or whatever. He had too much cheese. Yes, he had too much cheese. But in a way, one thing that is kind of, I think, great about Game of Thrones is that it does import the supernatural and the sensational in a way that is true to the way that medieval people perhaps did see the world. Well, I suppose if you're a Western medieval person, a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, a Komodo dragon, they're just as fantastic.

Yeah. I mean, why shouldn't a dragon fly? I mean, it's not, well, dinosaurs, birds. But there is another way in which obviously dragons, the role that they play in this series is incredibly modern because they are a kind of super weapon. They are the equivalent of, of, of a bomb,

a block, a fleet of bombers. Or the ring in the Lord of the Rings is a super weapon, isn't it? And that the prospect of using the ring hangs over the Lord of the Rings. I mean, this is slightly different, but isn't it the same thing that dragons,

there's a fear in the show and in the books that the possession of dragons will corrupt you. It's a symbol of ultimate power and the power of life and death over thousands, if not millions of people. Well, that's a tiny bit like Tolkien's ring, but it's also the way that, it's very modern because it's the way that we now think

of weapons of mass destruction. You know, the nuclear weapons in World War II, for example but also it's it's very true to a very you know the circumstances of the 90s and and early years of 21st century when highly powerful people did use aerial power to afflict devastation on enemy cities well i mean i have a whole ton of theories about game of thrones being written in the 1990s i mean to me maybe we well maybe we should get into this now before we get to the zombies um since we're talking about the 90s so george orr martin starts writing this these books in sort of the early to mid 1990s and i've always thought i haven't maybe nobody maybe people think this is mad because i haven't really seen anyone argue this but i always think he starts writing

these books at the point at which the Berlin Wall has come down, the Cold War is over, the end of history has been proclaimed, and then history kind of restarts. And you have these hideous civil wars in places like Yugoslavia or the genocide in Rwanda. And you have this sense played out in the headlines for day after day that sort of top people,

the elite, are taking decisions that have the most horrific consequences on the ground in ordinary people's villages, it's kind of neighbor turns on neighbor. And sort of, you know, the sort of the small folk, as I think George R.R. Martin calls them, they pay the price for the feuds of the great and the good. So Bosnia is an example of that.

And reading what happens in his story, and this is where it differs from Tolkien, the war starts, so the war for the Seven Kingdoms. And instead of you seeing it purely through the eyes of the nobles, you start to see the consequences for these people in these villages. And I thought at the time... And that's particularly true of the novels, isn't it? Much more than in the TV show.

Much more in the novels, exactly. The characters travel through these sort of burned out, shattered villages that feel like something from the Thirty Years' War and the Second World War. People have fled. They put their possessions on carts. There's a lot of rape. There's tons of sexual violence, which feels very 1990s, early 21st century. Something that people wouldn't have written about 50 years earlier and it's at precisely the point when people are writing about the red army's rapes when they invaded germany in 1945 or something so it feels very of the moment and i think that roots game of thrones very clearly in the sort of late 20th 30th it couldn't have been written at any previous point and i think that's that's true of all great recalibrations fictional recalibrations of history so it's true of tolkien that he's hugely lord of the rings is hugely informed by

the two world wars scott is hugely informed by the the climate in which he's writing and obviously game of thrones is as much about the 21st century as it is about whatever period it's set in and so um moving on to the zombies, the dead who lurk beyond the wall, we've got a question from, yes, Angus Colwell, who says, George R.R. Martin said, the White Walkers, who are the zombies, were a climate change analogy.

Yeah, the sense of doom. Well, so yeah, the recurring refrain is winter is coming. But in a sense, it's kind of, you know, heat is coming. Scorching summer is coming. Summer is coming doesn't quite have the same connotation. No, it doesn't. Here comes the sun. So in that sense, they're a very contemporary allegory.

But at the same time, the idea of the dead rising from their grave is something that did haunt certainly the early medieval imagination, the kind of Norse legends of the Drago who rise from the dead. I mean, in a sense, Beowulf is kind of the monster. So I think you can go back even further. Am I not right in saying that the epic of Gilgamesh, Ishtar, threatens to raise the dead

from their graves or some such? Yeah, yeah. And it's in the Odyssey as well. But I think this is specifically rooted in kind of Norse, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon traditions. Yeah. So I think that's what's interesting about Game of Thrones is that it uses authentic historical material and gives it a very contemporary spin.

And that's obviously why it's been as successful as it has, I think. Well, that's a huge element. And that's probably what a lot of fans will be expecting from our podcast actually that that i mean people have gone through the series kind of almost blow by blow um blow by blow i mean you can interpret that like this game of thrones um you go through game of thrones blow by blow and said okay this is he is edward I, he's Edward IV, this fellow is, you know, this Cersei Lannister is Margaret of Anjou, or, you know, you can do that, can't you? I mean, people have done it, or they've gone through all the places. So the geography is quite interesting, because the geography is clearly different. A lot of it is the British Isles, but set at different points

in history. Do you buy that? So it's sort of almost different time zones. Yeah, well, Dominic, on that point, there's a question from David Spracking. Game of Thrones follows familiar paths in representing the North as rough but honest, the South as sophisticated but decadent, East as barbaric and cruel, West as wild and strange. Are these associations with points of the compass

constants in British European history? I mean, yeah, there is a kind of continental framing of it, so that there are echoes of medieval Europe. But I do think that one of the things that's interesting is the way that British history is absolutely central in this. And the reason that I think that's interesting is that Martin said that his inspiration was a series of French novels set in the 13th, early 14th century, Les Rois Maudits. But when he comes to write this, he fixes on specifically British history. And I guess you could say actually English history, because as you say, the prime motor of the plot is clearly

based on the Wars of the Roses. Yeah. Well, Lancaster and York, Starks and Lannister, I mean, it's blatantly obvious, isn't it? The great dramatic cycle that tells the story of the Wars of the Roses is Shakespeare's history plays. And I don't think that there is any other kind of national tradition that has a great writer who has interpreted history in quite so profound and influential a way. So we've talked about Tolkien, we've talked about Scott, but I think ultimately the huge influence on this is Shakespeare. And the reason for that is that everyone who speaks English,

whether you're in America, Britain, wherever, that is the influence. So when you think of the Middle Ages, you think of Shakespeare. Yeah, I suppose that's true. I mean, well, I think Shakespeare is, I mean, Shakespeare is obviously enormously popular in America. And so English medieval history has arrived, is understood in America often through the lens of Shakespeare. I also think you can't get away from Tolkien.

I mean, Tolkien is the person who basically invents high fantasy, or at least popularizes it. And the idea that it has to be in the North, that there are always kind of Anglo-Saxon and Norse traditions at play, which is true with this, right? So in the North, in this story, the world of the Starks and Winterfell, it's very kind of Anglo-Saxon mead hall, isn't it? I mean, Ned Stark, who is the sort of family patriarch

that you're invited to invest in, in the first book at least, he's very much the sort of idealized Anglo-Saxon lord. Don't you think? He's sort of feasting his men. I do. And I think, again, that this is kind of what makes the world of Westeros hard to pin down. But also kind of very, very interesting question from Julian Lennox. What is the exact period of history depicted in Game of Thrones?

Well, it seems like an easy answer, but I think it's a bit tricky. In the Reach, they seem to be in the Renaissance, but maybe it's earlier than that. In the North, are they Norman Saxons? Can we say 1300 or 1000? So I think that the continent of Westeros, the centre of King's Landing is kind of... It's London? It's kind of London, Constantinople, whatever. Constantinople, yeah.

Yeah. So it's a mix of places. But the people who live there are basically late 15th century Tudor. Right. Yeah. Then you move northwards and you go through lands that seem to be basically 14th century. Yeah. They're kind of high medieval, aren't they? Hundred Years' War. Yeah. The plot lines coming from the Hundred Years' War. Then you go further north. So into Winterfell, the home of the Starks there you are in an anglo-saxon world and off the coast you have islands that are clearly viking so they're the ironborn who are seafarers yeah um clearly based on the vikings you go further north yet and you come to this

vast wall of ice that george rr martin has said was based on hadrian's wall so that's a roman construction and then you got really back in time because you're in Scotland. Well, you're in the Ice Age because you're in a land covered with ice. So yeah. Okay. I think that's kind of interesting. But also what's interesting to me, Tom,

is if you look east. So Martin does absolutely capture something that you get in Tolkien and something that actually you get in so much Western writing about the world, you know, orientalizing writing, which is that the West is kind of plain speaking and honest, and the East is sophisticated and corrupt and incredibly cruel, possibly inscrutable as well. So, you know, in the East, they have these great slaver cities, they're very rich, they're very sophisticated, but they're impossibly sadistic and exotic and all of that

sort of stuff. And in a way you know you know west so the way we think about westeros has yet to be decolonized because we see everything we know it's not we see everything through a very western lens i complete yes i completely agree and i think that that that that again is part of the appeal of it for lots of people is that you can't have the kind of um dramas that that or novels that you got in the early 20th century where you have white hunters or white heroes going to remote cities king solomon's mines or yeah tintin going to lost um mayan cities or whatever and invoking um you know the knowledge of eclipses or or whatever, to liberate slaves from their barbaric owners,

which in Game of Thrones you can, because the figure you mentioned, Daenerys Targaryen, who is the mother of dragons, who comes from a long line of kings and queens who are able to raise dragons, and that's the source of their power. And she is kind of basically sold into marital slavery to a barbarous leader of, of kind of Scythians stroke Hums quote stroke Mongols. And she becomes their queen and then uses this army and her dragons to, to, to liberate kingdoms of slaves yeah and we and we we were talking about the aztecs and the arrival of cortez yeah and the the way in which traditionally over the course of you know following the conquest right the way through

the 19th into the 20th century the way that the the conquest of the Aztec empire tended to be portrayed was as a liberation of people from barbarous rulers and priests and kings who were engaging in bloody sacrifice. And that is politically no longer permissible, but it is a very dramatic story. It's a very dramatic way of presenting it. Doesn't she crucify the slavers? She does, yes. And then she ends up incinerating the whole of west ross with her dragons so it's it is it's it's not a a kind of purely laudatory presentation of her but she is the very essence of a white savior i mean her her hair could not be more blonde she is she's she's somebody going on a comic relief trip to kilimanjaro, isn't she? Yes. With a dragon.

But it's gone horribly wrong. But she's an interesting character because she's a kind of, I mean, she's a pretender. Well, she's not, a pretender is probably not quite the right word because she does have a very good claim to the throne. But she's a kind of Jacobite figure, isn't she? Yeah, she's Bonnie Prince Charlie. Yeah, she's the queen over the water. And you're, what's so interesting now, I hope we're not going to ruin this for people. Well, we are going to ruin it.

But I mean, if you haven't seen the TV series by now,'re probably not going to and the books may turn out differently who knows because he obviously hasn't finished but you know there's this huge controversy because at the end of the books at the end of the series all these people who had invested in her were really disappointed because she turned evil and you know she captures the capital king's landing Landing, and she turns her dragons on the people and they incinerate everybody. And then the very final episode, she's this almost sort of totalitarian style ruler, the dragons behind her,

massed ranks of slave soldiers kind of doing homage to her in this sort of Nuremberg rally kind of scene. And everybody was very shocked, all the viewers who loved her and had named their children after her. Yes. Oh God, this just hasn't turned out as I expected. But I loved that.

I actually thought that was very good and very true to life because it was, I mean, maybe you would think that from, you know, you say, oh, this is the essence of sort of Burkeanism, that she's destroyed all these traditions. And she's a sort of Robespierre figure, nodding back to our French Revolution podcast. She's suffused with idealism, but it's turned her into this dreadful monster.

And I thought that was actually pretty true to the logic of her character and of the show. podcast she's suffused with idealism but it's turned her into this dreadful monster and i i thought that was actually pretty true to the logic of her character and of the show i think both of us are in a massive minority in the way that it ended i i yeah i i like the way that um line of duty ended as well oh that is madness um well dominic while we're on the subject of daenerys Targaryen, there's a question from Paul Duncan. Who from history is the best comparison to Daenerys Targaryen? Did any pretenders get as massively sidetracked as she does?

You've obviously got an answer because you wouldn't have asked it. No, no, we were talking about Daenerys Targaryen. I'm thinking on the hoop here. So she gets married off to a barbarian king. Yeah. Oh. And there was a Roman Empress. Well,

a daughter of, of, of an emperor. I know where you're going with this. Yeah. The, who, who,

the last Roman Emperor to rule both the East and Western halves of the Roman Empire. She was called Gallop Placidia. And she, basically got captured by the Visigoths after the sack of Rome in 410. And she ends up, marrying the Visigoth after the sack of Rome in 410. And she ends up marrying the Visigothic king. So I think that's a kind of interesting parallel, maybe kind of floating around. Yeah, I buy that. Judith Heron writes about her in her book, Ravenna, doesn't she? That's right. Yes. Because she then, rather like Daenerys does, she leaves her husband and

goes back to the Roman centers of power and becomes a kind of great matriarchal figure. But there is another figure. So we've talked about how dragons basically, you know, you, you can see that there are parallels there to Western air power. And Daenerys sees herself as rather anachronistically as a kind of great

liberal liberator. She's William Wilberforce. Bringing freedom to oppressed masses in far off lands. But wrecking terrible havoc and destruction by doing so. So I would say, as well as Galapagosidia, perhaps there's an element in Daenerys Targaryen of Tony Blair. Tony Blair. Oh my word.

I didn't see that coming. Emilia Clarke, I don't see her as a dead ringer for Tony Blair. I don't think she could carry that off. You honestly think Daenerys Targaryen is like Tony Blair? You saw Tony's long hair recently? Actually, that's true. He did have that. It's quite a Targaryen look to him.

Yeah, he did. I mean, a kind of slightly ravaged Targaryen. So how are you going to justify this? She's the third way. No, because Blair sent out lots of military missions around the world sierra leone to bosnia kosovo yeah kosovo you know helping out oppressed peoples everywhere yeah there's a statue of him isn't there in kosovo i think and then he tries to pull the same trick in iraq and it all gets horribly wrong and everything gets devastated so wow that's my case

that the whole story of Daenerys Targaryen is a parable about if you're if the history publishing doesn't work out I think you should write a parallel biography of Daenerys Targaryen and Tony Blair I think that's good um I'll tell you what I think is interesting about Game of Thrones though Tom I'm surprised you haven't brought this up I think it's the sort of the sensibility of it so the sensibility is so different from the Lord of the Rings. And I think that's the – I mean, that's basically what a lot of people have seen this as. It's not quite an anti-Tolkien, but it's kind of –

It is, though, isn't it? It was kind of overtly. I mean, didn't – Well, Philip Pullman is the anti-Tolkien, isn't he? I mean, he's the anti-Lewis. He's the anti-Narnia. Yes, he is. You're right.

I think Martin is the anti-Tolkien because he famously says, what was Aragorn's tax policy? And he asked difficult questions about what happened to the baby orcs. Yeah. Who cares about Aragorn's tax policy? Does anyone read the Lord of the Rings and really ask themselves about income tax in Gondor? Well, I mean, it does open an interesting point that perhaps

we should come to after a break. But one of the things that fans of Game of Thrones often say is that um it's much more accurate than yeah that say than the Lord of the Rings and it gives an accurate portrayal of what life was like particularly in the middle ages I could not disagree more I it is it is massively inaccurate as a portrayal of the Middle Ages. And I think that I've gone on record, I said I absolutely love it. I'm kind of completely hooked when I was reading the books. I think there's loads about it that does hold up fascinating mirrors to actual events.

But I think that if you have any interest in medieval history, It's a slight problem. The Game of Thrones now has this huge influence on how lots of people see and interpret the Middle Ages. Why? What's your biggest, what's your great, what's your big complaint? What's your biggest... Should we come to that after the break?

Oh, is it going to be the C word? Yeah, maybe. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, charge your glasses, those people who are playing the Tom Holland drinking game. I think he will be talking about Christianity after the break. I look forward to it. See you in a second. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The rest is history um tom holland is about to embark on a discussion

of the sensibility of game of thrones i think he will be talking about christianity you have been warned tom off you go you have two hours well i i'm sure christianity will will come up but i think that um talking more specifically about uh the idea that game of thrones in any way gives an accurate portrayal of of medieval life a more accurate portrayal say than than lord of the rings does this is based on the idea that uh medieval life was unspeakably brutal and that everyone just went around pillaging and raping all the time. So nasty, brutish and short. Hobbesian. No one would deny that it was a violent world,

but it was not remotely on the scale of violence, as Game of Thrones suggests. And I think that on all kinds of levels, Game of Thrones is essentially giving an 18th century an enlightenment idea of what the Middle Ages was about. Okay. age between a supposed civilized age you know classical antiquity when all was light and people just sat talking about philosophy and then 18th century when the philosophes arrive and again everything is returned to light and everything in between is is is brutish and and violent and aggressive ages and people just go around slaughtering each other non-stop and um it's it's all raped i this is not true. Medieval civilization.

I mean, in many ways, medieval. So just on the level of warfare, actually, medieval warfare was far more codified. There were far more inhibitions about violence. And there were far more controls on the ability of state actors to wage war than there were either in the classical period or in the early modern period. Because armies are smaller, right mean absolutely yeah yes yes so the scale of violence that you see in game of thrones that's the kind of so the storming of cities the the destruction of entire populations that's the kind of thing the romans went in for it's not what by and large people in the middle ages did and when you get um the notorious example is um 1099 when the first crusaders

seized jerusalem and the streets supposedly run in blood the reason that that's remembered and and is kind of preserved is that it was exceptional it was the exception that proved the rule that scale of violence did not happen and the the vast kind of teeming armies that you get with um increasingly over the course of the show again this is you know you need vast kind of teeming armies that you get with um increasingly over the course of the show again this is you know you need a kind of early modern state to provide that level of violence but isn't one of the things that people think is as modern isn't it so interesting that people equate being being accurate and being a sort of a properly modern portrait of the past with being very cynical very bleak and drenched in sex and violence so in other

words people say oh tolkien's terribly unrealistic because people are nice to each other and some people are virtuous and people applaud george rr martin's portrait of human nature which is unbelievably sort of downbeat everybody is really horrible yeah anyone who is virtuous ends up dying basically uh everybody stabs each other in the back and it's an interesting reflection on our Everybody is really horrible. Anyone who is virtuous ends up dying, basically. Everybody stabs each other in the back. And it's an interesting reflection on our loss of trust and authority and our disenchantment with politics that we think that is a all kinds of attempts to regulate the violence inherent within mailed men with horses who by their nature can dominate and brutalize. So again, the 11th century, the period that we talked about in the episode on 1066, the period that sees the emergence of castles, sees the emergence of knights. This is also the age that sees um what's called the truce of god

where churchmen bring out relics from churches and monasteries and succeed in compelling armed warriors to essentially kind of swear oaths that they will they will not brutalize those around them i mean of course these oaths were broken but it was assumed that that they would be obeyed and followed and there was you know i've just been reading over the lockdown i was reading chaucer and chaucer of course is always associated with with um bawdy and people having sex and people sticking ares out of windows and things like that. But on the,

on the nightly level that the, the, the tales that deal with the things that nights do, the whole point is, is that they're not going around raping. So in the night's tale, the whole thing is, is that,

that you have two, two brother nights who spend years both hankering after the same lady. They do not rush out and seize her. And even when you do get a rape, so in The Wife of Bath's Tale, that rape is punished. The whole dynamic of the plot revolves around his attempt to avoid being executed for committing rape. So essentially, what Game of Thrones does not get is the way in which

there are controlling ideologies, frameworks of morality, ethics that govern how warriors behave, certainly ethics that govern sexual behaviour, that are simply not reflected in the way that Game of Thrones shows it. Well, we've had tons of questions about this, actually, because people know your predilections. So Jim longhurst asked a question about who captured the human spirit best and you know is westeros sort of the the grimness without the buddhas christs and saints that made the real world livable carolina asked the question what did game of thrones misunderstand about christianity's impact on the medieval period so okay so some people say of Game of Thrones,

I mean, we're sort of creating straw men here, but I mean, they do exist. They say Game of Thrones is more realistic than Tolkien because it paints a medieval world in which there is a religion. There's seven gods, I think, the faith of the seven. And there's also this really interesting kind of reformation movement

or this sort of evangelical movement um by a guy who's called the high sparrow and who's played by jonathan price and he's very pious and austere and he's this sort of this sort of purging flame with his acolytes and they savonarola yes yes well we've got a question about that somebody said is he you know david morgan they look like savonarola and his army of boys and young men now do you so savonarola the um what's he florentine yes who the bonfire of vanities and he summons all the the florentines to to chuck their fripperies into a great bonfire he basically runs florence doesn't he seven in the same way that the high sparrow in the is clearly based on him runs king's landing for a time and becomes the great the great sort of power now the question, I suppose, Tom, is do you think this does elevate

Game of Thrones above its predecessors in making it more realistic? Well, again, I repeat, I think it's an 18th century view that religion exists solely as a kind of fraudulent trick played on people. Yes, because none of them actually, this is interesting, none of them in Game of Thrones, I think, really believe in their religion. So they talk about the Faith of the Seven and they pay lip service to it, but nobody ever has these sort of inner crises where they say, sugar, I really am going to go to hell.

This is what I actually genuinely, you know, nobody seems to believe it other than fanatics. And even the fanatics are, you know, the kind of implication is that it's all about power and control. I mean, it's a very it's a very modern perspective on it a very modern take on it and that is why i think tolkien is is truer to the middle ages because tolkien of course was a very great scholar of medieval literature and yeah he entirely understood that and he was also a catholic himself so it he he believed it and the

paradox is exactly as you fixed on that in lord of the rings there are no gods there are no priests there is no religion there are no temples no equivalent of churches um and yet it's saturated in a kind of theological understanding of the world that absolutely derives from um medieval literature um yeah the way that medieval people would have understood the world as being divided between good and evil um game of thrones isn't and so the the seeming realism i think is not realistic at all and particularly on the topic of sex um i mean the sex again a bit like the violence is more classical so the orgies people eating grapes yeah there's a real there's a real trend in um dramas about the classical world now to to show the kind of casual way in which you know in a

roman household um slaves for instance would have been treated um that that essentially their various orifices are the equivalent of urinal that they are they are there to be receptacles for the bodily fluids of the of the master and that is something that that you do you see it in in hbo series rome it's there in the new series that's out about um augustus's wife livia domina which is is good i recommend it um and it's absolutely in game of thrones as well but this is this is a kind of far more classical take um yeah we've got a question from um demetrius bogdansalis uh so hyped for the game of thrones episode hope it's not disappointing um i would like to hear your opinion on any roman inspiration that martin used in his work but the court is very roman isn't it

the king's landing politics yeah it is but i think um it's also deeply rooted in i claudius as so many of the kind of the great dramas of uh of 21st century american tv are it's hugely hugely influential and there are elements of the julia claudian court absolutely to the degree that um the guy who plays joffrey who who is essentially Jack Gleeson. For those who haven't seen it, he's the most terrifying ruler, perhaps, of the lot. Kind of young, murderous, sadistic teenager. Typical teenager. Channeling John Hurt in I, Claudius.

He's John Lennon. Go on. He's not John Lennon. He's John Hurt in I, Claudius. John Lennon gone it's not john lennon he's he's john hurt john lennon with the supreme power anyway he looks eerily like a portrait bust of caligula and i've always wondered whether that was deliberate but also that sort of idea of the of power corrupting you know of of supreme power being incarnated in one ruler and them using it for sexual excess for sadism that's very kind of sutonius isn't it rather than medieval again i think it's kind of there in enlightenment

pornography actually i you know it's the marquis de sade really yeah i think that game of thrones is clearly there's all the kind of medieval stuff. And we just discussed maybe Roman stuff as well. There's the modern stuff. And then there's this kind of controlling 18th century sensibility that is mediating both of them. Which sort of sees the medieval world as this sort of cesspit of violence. So it is a kind of pornographer's fantasy in that sense, do you think? Yeah, to a degree.

Because that's how pornographers in the 18th century certainly saw it. Yeah. Yeah. What about this? We've got a few questions about an event that people always mention, which I think a lot of people see as the sort of emblematic moment of the entire series, which is this event called the Red Wedding. Oh, my wife Sadie asked about that. Did she?

What was your opinion on that? What was the source for that so for those people those remaining listeners who are not game of thrones fans um the red wedding is this moment where this sort of heroic um young king is sort of henry v or something isn't he rob stark um who is the sort of king in the north he pitches up at this wedding and you've been invited to believe you've been led to believe that he's going to be one of the great victors of the whole series because he's such a heroic such a virtuous and noble sort of figure and basically the wedding all ends really horribly and the starks all massacred at the wedding and um it's shocking because it's a sort of breach of

the laws of hospitality and all that and there is a precedent so of course it's it's it's scottish hospitality isn't it tom the um the precedent is an event called the black dinner the black dinner i think it's from the early 15th century the earl of douglas pitches up at the king's court king james's court and he is served a black bull's head a severed black bull's head which is a kind kind of symbol, you're going to die. And then he and I think his son or something like that are taken out and horribly murdered, and it's kind of remembered as this. But I suppose the reason it's remembered is because it's so unusual, because this kind of carry-on doesn't, apart from the massacre of Glencoe,

so the Scots do have form, but this sort of thing doesn't happen very often. It doesn't, and also it's not a wedding. So a wedding in the Middle Ages is a sacrament and to desecrate a sacramental event like a wedding is incredibly serious. People did kill each other in church. I mean, Thomas Beckett died in a church, didn't he? He was butchered by his own altar.

But again, the exception that proves the rule, the king is whipped through the streets of canterbury thomas is enshrined as a saint it's remembered as the most shocking thing imaginable um again this kind of violence is it doesn't really happen that's that's the point of it but what i would but dominic what i would say also just on the on on why game of thrones is so addictive and why's such fun, is that I think it does give you everything that a great historical drama does. It gives you the sense of being in a past period governed by strange customs, governed by strange ways of doing things, family dynamics, all the kind of stuff that you get from a drama about the Wars of the Roses or the Julia Claudian Court. But because it's fantasy, you have no idea what's going to happen yes that's why this has the i mean i remember reading it and go being devastated and there's a famous footage

of people watching it on the on the tv adaptation and kind of gets pulling pillows over their heads and screaming who films themselves watching a tv program on the off charts that they're going to be go viral yeah but you'd never get that watching um you know shakespeare play about rich the third you know the princes in the tower are going to get it because that's yes happened yeah but doesn't actually doesn't the guy who perpetrates it doesn't he suffer a very shakespearean fate isn't he served his own children in a pie or something like that is it which is i remember yeah i think he is and that which is very shakespearean fate isn't he served his own children in a pie or something like that is it which is i remember yeah i think he is and that which is very shakespearean um let's do loads of questions because we should give the listeners the impression that we take them seriously and love them which we do we do but we should do it by answering their questions rather than ignoring

this colossal ream of paper that we've got in front of us so um we've got another question here from paul duncan go on He was really hogging the stage here. Well, he's going to be happy, even if no one else is. Is there any historical comparison to the doom of Valyria? So Valyria is this old ancient civilisation that has been destroyed and kind of swallowed up by the waters or something like that, or the flames or something like that. So it's clearly Atlantis, isn't it?

Or have you got some other um something else i suppose it's a you know civilizations do suffer apocalyptic fates we did the aztecs um just a couple of weeks ago didn't we chiotto acan so that's the city that predates the aztecs right that's the civilization that came before and they didn't know valeria is kind of rome right game of thrones it's kind of an ancient empire that was great and then has fallen and its ruins are because High Valyrian is a kind of Latin

that they speak isn't it a grand prestigious language or something like that and I think maybe there's an element also of the famous Anglo-Saxon poem

about looking at the ruins of Bath right imagining it as the work of giants and having no idea who could have built these astonishing structures Gibbon looking over the ruins of bath right imagining it as the work of giants and having no idea who could have built this these astonishing structures um so given looking over the ruins of rome yeah although he knew he wrote a book about it he knew better than anybody well maybe he didn't know and he had to

write the book and find out um uh okay william jensen he's written a question about toilets which i think will appeal to you um because you know a lot about people being killed on toilets he says is there something he's talking about people being killed on toilets. He says there's something... He's talking about the historical versus the mythical style. He says it's impossible to imagine Tolkien's characters, Saruman or Denethor, being killed on a toilet like Tywin Lannister. Martin is writing in a lower register,

which we take as being more realistic. Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it, about registers and... Because people were killed on toilets in the medieval medieval don't you have some good stories about that harold bluetooth who gave his name to the um the technology yeah yeah to bluetooth um he uh he was having a he was fighting his son spain forkbeard i think we've already mentioned this on the podcast haven't we yeah it was 1066 yeah he got off his ship um had a crap as he was having a crap blake shot him in the ass so actually martin is being true to

medieval form there but he's right though that it wouldn't happen in tolkien tolkien is right to you talking there are two registers aren't there there's the hobbits i mean i agree that they don't get shot in the arse but they kind of you know they have drink and yeah smoke pipes yeah um and that's um and then you have the high stuff, and that's going back to Shakespeare. So Henry IV, part one and two, you've got the high black verse of kings and nobles and so on, and then you've got all the prose of people in the taverns. Whereas Martin is writing almost entirely in one register,

I would say. He's writing prose right through. So there's no sense of the kind of grandeur. And there's no sense even that the characters really aspire to that, I don't think, by and large. Except for Daenerys Targaryen Blair. I love that comparison. That's the one thing I shall

take from this podcast, from this entire series actually. Saramandingo says, was there a historical Iron Bank? I like the Iron Bank. So that's this sort of Renaissance-type institution which exists in Essos essos i can't remember which city which is the eastern continent and they're bankrolling a lot of the war aren't they so they're basically italian banks aren't they they're a sort of italian bank yeah venetian or florentine or genoese um there isn't really though because isn't the thing about the iron bank that it um it kind of if you default on your debts they will come and

get you yes so they're a kind of mafia bank yes i suppose so i suppose medieval kings had you know they would default and then the banks would go bust yeah i suppose that's yes i suppose the florentines didn't have sufficient you know if you did borrow money they they probably couldn't do i don't know could they do much about it could they send mercenaries to go and get you or something i suppose you could sponsor a rival king couldn't you yeah well they probably would wouldn't they i mean sort of henry tudor yeah did that happen with henry the seventh i think it did well i mean so there was an element clearly must have been bankrolled i can't remember i think in wars of the roses there was kind of elements of

yeah financiers taking punts on rival kings we clearly need to know more about history before yeah before doing these podcasts uh what else um michael adam asked a question about the impact of game of thrones on jubrovnik that's something i know a lot about because i've been jubrovnik i've never been uh city walls are fantastic jubrovnik is a is a beautiful michael foot the former labor lead he's to go on holiday to jubrovnik is a beautiful... Michael Foote, the former Labour leader, used to go on holiday to Dubrovnik every year, which seems a bit repetitive to me. But it's a very nice city,

which has been utterly ruined by mass tourism. And actually, Game of Thrones has kind of destroyed the sort of... the life of the city because it's become this gigantic Game of Thrones theme park. And it does look... If you want to find a medieval... If you went to Dubrovnik out of season it is probably as good a glimpse of a kind of medieval walled city as you'll ever see

but not in summer when it's full of Game of Thrones fans posing for pictures on Iron Thrones um what about Hadrian's Wall Spike Searle asked a question about Hadrian's Wall didn't Martin get the point of Hadrian's Wall completely wrong it was never meant as an impenetrable barrier, perhaps a linear forward operating base and or a customs border. Tom, you must have very strong views about Hadrian's Wall.

We talked about that in our episode on walls. Yes. So we won't go into that. I mean, I think that the role that Hadrian's Wall plays in the imagination as a kind of outer limit

of civilization. That's the kick. And that is something that, you know, it's there in Kipling's poetry. Again, that is a perspective. That kind of,

yeah. Yeah. It's mediated. This is a conception that is mediated through earlier interpretations of history recreations of history literary reworkings of history um and i think that's you know that's that's the kind of that that adds resonance to the portrayal of history in game of thrones but also he has martin does this not quite nice thing where he has they they call the people beyond the wall the wildlings don't they and actually in it had the game of thrones been written 100 years earlier you would never see

the wildlings as people you would only ever see them as sort of frightening sort of figures but in game of thrones you they are humanized and you are one of the characters goes out north and sort of joins them and you you sort of end up they call themselves the free folk they're kind of almost like cossacks or something i'm not not sure about that because the parallel for Kipling and for imperial writers was with the Northwest Frontier. Yeah. So they would imagine Roman soldiers in Northern Britain as being analogous to British soldiers on the frontier of British India.

But of course they were, you know, they were fascinated by what lay beyond, by Afghanistan. Well, the man who would be king. Yeah yes which is actually a very um a very george rr martin yeah that's a great story that would be a brilliant podcast actually on kipling and all that sort of stuff anyway we're just talking about future podcasts instead of doing our own one uh fordek has a question which i like a lot game of thrones is usually compared with the wars of the roses but to me absolutely screams of the Wars of the Diadochi. Diadochi.

I don't know how to pronounce that, actually. I don't know its name. Diadochi. Diadochi. Now, that would make a series. I agree. So the Diadochi are Alexander's successors, the successors of Alexander the Great.

And I actually have a fantasy. I don't know. Four Deck must have a window into my mind. I have a secret fantasy that one day I'll be reincarnated as a showrunner for HBO. And this is the series I would make. Two series on Alexander the Great,

and then I'd go through his successors and end with Cleopatra. How many series would you have? 12, 10. But no dragons? No, but pyramids. You'd have a lot in Egypt. You'd have the Seleuc pyramids. You'd have a lot in Egypt. You'd have the Seleucid Empire.

You'd have the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. You'd have stuff going on in Thrace. You'd bring in the Romans. Come on, Tom. Would you like to be a consultant? Yeah. For the Roman episodes. Great.

You're in the money. Here's one from Chet Archbold. Friend of the day. It's not a podcast episode without's one from chet archbold a friend of the day it's it's not a it's not a podcast episode without a question from chet um game of thrones seems to me like the middle ages by ways of nietzsche were actual medieval nobles as brutal nihilistic and utterly fixated on power generally speaking as the fictional ones well this is me yeah this is me this is why chet is great yes chet i agree with you we've already done that one okay i think

what about warwick the kingmaker warwick the kingmaker was very brutal nihilistic fixated on he wasn't nihilistic well i mean he i suppose he wasn't nihilistic but he was fixated on power and brutal i mean he is a game of thrones character richard neville earl of warwick i used to love him when i was a child he was my favorite medieval character and of course richard richard iii as portrayed by by shakespeare's yes or um or laurence olivier yeah but the whole point is that that's an exaggeration isn't it yes i suppose so i suppose so what about um have we got time for one more you think well here's a good question to end on. Yeah. Johnny Wilson. I don't think that's the same as Jonathan Wilson,

our former guest. I don't see him as a man who's going to be sending in questions about Game of Thrones. Jonathan Wilson, very, very stark character. Well, he's very Northern. I think the North... Is Dan Jackson. I think...

We can divide our guests up into Starks and Lannisters. Who are Lannisters? I'm not getting into that um yeah paul lay uh who having on um later this week to talk about uh gromar he's a sort of he's a stark isn't he he's uh yeah i mean from the southern reaches of i listen dominic we're spiraling off here we are okay johnny wilson got any thrones? Do you have a favourite throne? You must have a favourite throne. The peacock throne. Iran, the Shah.

Yeah. Very good. Why? It's peacock. That's not a good reason in my view. It is. My favourite throne is the... Well, I've sat on the Iron Throne in Dubrovnik. So that's probably my...

So your favourite throne is a made-up throne? It was plastic, actually. And you're sneering at me for choosing an actual throne. Yeah. Well, at least I sat on my throne. With peacocks. I've chosen a Disney-type throne, which is, of course, what my listeners would expect

as a man of the people. I thought the Iron Throne was in Belfast. I think the truth is there were probably multiple Iron Thrones, and I may well have paid good money i may well have paid good money to a croatian um entrepreneur to sit on a fake iron throne which i think it's a nice epitaph for my entire life there was a photo of the queen looking at on the iron throne no looking at it all right i think it should be i can't believe she didn't sit in it i mean she's so she's done prince philip would have been straight on it um yeah prince harry well prince harry is a very

game of thrones character yeah isn't he i mean he i think he he definitely ends up dead in game of thrones doesn't he doesn't win does he yeah what about william i think william might survive i think william would come through yeah i don't know you die at the end of season two who would win oh princess beatrice or somebody prince edward prince edward's my favorite member of the royal family why do you know why? His acting or his theatrical career with Andrew Lloyd Webber? No, I went to a service to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Athelflad, Lady of the Mercians in Tamworth. That's exactly the kind of thing you would do. Yeah, it was great.

There was the local fyrd had arrived in chain mail. There was the Mercian regiment with the regimental sheep. Regimental sheep, wow. I think there were 12 bishops. It was a fantastic occasion. And after it, we went to the castle in Tamworth. Prince Edward was there. And he said he was a big fan of Rubicon.

Oh, my God. So up to that point, I'd had no time for the man. But now... That is galling well i hope he becomes king i happen to know prince andrew is a very big fan of my book state of emergency about the ted heath years you don't want prince andrew though do you so i've become i've become prince edward's banner man yeah wow and i am willing to do what it takes but you see you've given the game onto the iron throne him onto the Iron Throne. When the Super Bowl breaks out, I will know where you stand,

and I can use that against you. Well, you and Prince Andrew. That's anything to boast about. No, no, no, I might have to ditch him. Right, on that note, I think we should put the podcast to an end, because we've completely lost track of the questions, the subject, our audience, and, and yeah life itself so we will be back won't we with paul a talking about all of the cromwell the protectorate um british experiment with republicanism i think we'll keep that one more on track probably than

than we did and then in the future for people who like Game of Thrones, gods, all that sort of stuff, the World Cup of Ancient Gods is looming. That's massive, isn't it? We're going to be advertising that somewhere. It's bigger than the Euros. I think it's much bigger than the Euros. Well, it hasn't been postponed, unlike the Euros, so we can actually deliver it on time and on schedule.

And everybody can go. There's no restrictions on it. It'll be on Twitter. All are welcome. Please vote. If you have a favourite ancient god. Let's hope they've made it to the last 16. Huge excitement. There's a massive... I think we've had enough. It's the end

of Game of Thrones. ... ... ... ... ... ...... Goodbye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History.

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