Winning the Game of Thrones: The Host of Characters and their Agendas (12 page)

     
Catelyn thinks, “For good or ill, her son had thrown the dice” when they cross the bridge at the Twins and commit to war. This echoes Caesar’s famous “The die is cast” when he crossed the Rubicon and began his own civil war.

Medieval Europe

Martin comments:

In 1981, on my first trip outside the United States, I visited England to see my old friend and writer Lisa Tuttle. I spent a month there and we went through the country visiting the most important sites. And when we were to Scotland we visited Hadrian’s Wall. I remember it was the end of the day, near sunset. The tour buses were leaving and we had the wall nearly for ourselves. It was fall and the wind was blowing. When we arrive on the top, I tried to imagine how would be the life of a roman legionary of the first or second century after Christ. That wall was the edge of the known world, and it was protecting the cities from the enemies behind the wall. I experienced a lot of feelings there, looking to the North, and I just used it when I started to write Game of Thrones. However, fantasy needs an active imagination. I couldn’t just describe Hadrian’s Wall. It is pretty amazing but it’s about ten feet tall and it’s made of stone and mud. Fantasy requires more magnificent structures so I exaggerated the attributes of Hadrian’s Wall.
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Hadrian’s Wall inspired the Wall protecting the North from the “wildlings” or Scots. But many other correspondences appear as well. The “First Men,” like the Celts, lived in harmony with nature and worshipped the trees and the Old Gods. The Saxons, after conquering the Celts, created their own “Seven Kingdoms”: Kent, Sussex, Essex, Wessex, Mercia, Northumberland, and East Anglia. They echo the Andals of Westeros – the Saxons even originate from the same Germanic area as the Angles and Vandals. In this scenario, the most recent invaders are the Targaryens or Normans, the successful conquerors of the continent. Martin notes that Aegon the Conqueror derives from William the Conqueror, the Norman leader who made himself king of England.
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The land is England, warm in the south and icy in the North. Ancient ruins dot the landscape, reminding readers of ancient battles: Nightfort, Oldstones, and Summerhall carry the weight of history in a way not seen in America. Martin comments:

The medieval setting has been the traditional background for epic fantasy, even before Tolkien, and there are good reasons for that tradition. The sword has a romance to it that pistols and cannon lack, a powerful symbolic value that touches us on some primal level. Also, the contrasts so apparent in the Middle Ages are very striking – the ideal of chivalry existed cheek by jowl with the awful brutality of war, great castles loomed over miserable hovels, serfs and princes rode the same roads, and the colorful pageantry of tournaments rose out of a brown and grey world of dung, dirt, and plague. The dramatic possibilities are so rich. Besides, I like the heraldry.
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Queen Isabelle of France and Cersei

Queen Isabelle of France, wife of Edward II king of England, was surprisingly aggressive for her era – she most likely had her husband murdered (much as Circe does) and campaigned to become regent for her young son, her lover ever at her side. On one occasion, she visited her birth family and, struck by the behavior of her two brothers’ wives, accused both of committing adultery with various knights at the court. (The accusation may have been genuine, or she may have been attempting to move her young son ahead in the succession by eliminating rivals.) In 1314, Margerite de Bourgogne, wife of the future King Louis X of France, and her cousin, Blanche de Bourgogne, were put on trial.

The two knights were sentenced to be horribly killed, while the women had their heads shaved, and were displayed to the crowd and humiliated in the streets, and then were locked in the dungeons. After seven years of religious wrangling, Blanche de Bourgogne had her marriage annulled and was sent to a convent. Marguerite de Bourgogne died in prison, though there were rumors she was secretly strangled to facilitate the king’s new marriage. Meanwhile, Queen Isabelle lost much popular support for starting the
Tour de Nesle
affair as the accusation and trial were named (
Tour de Nesle
was an old guard tower where the couples allegedly met). Readers of the fourth and fifth book may notice parallels.

Catherine de Medici and Cersei

Catherine de Medici, queen consort of King Henry II of France from 1547 until 1559, also has interesting ties to Cersei. At the age of fourteen, she wed, though the king excluded Catherine from participating in state affairs in favor of his celebrated mistress, Diane de Poitiers. When he died, Catherine found herself playing politics on behalf of her fifteen-year-old son, King Francois II, and then became regent for her ten-year-old son after the first’s death. Upon
his
early death, she counseled her third son at statecraft as well.

Civil war was common at the time, and Catherine acted ruthlessly to keep her family on the throne at all costs. In particular, she and the uncles of Francois’s wife, Mary Queen of Scots, battled heavily for power, much as Cersei does with the Tyrells. She made broad concessions to the Huguenots, religious rebels of the time. However, she didn’t bother to learn the complexities of their position, and later found herself taking an angry hardline policy against them. Her attitude led to her being blamed for her sons’ viciousness against them. However, her acts did indeed keep her three sons on the throne. She played the political game badly at times, but all she did was for her three children.

Like Cersei, her life was driven by prophecy – the famed Nostradamus told Catherine her husband would be killed in a joust, and her three sons would each take the throne after the death of the previous. As a child, Cersei received a prophecy from a Maegi called Maggy the Frog, much of which has already come true:

Cersei: “When will I wed the prince?”

Maggy: “Never. You will wed the king.”

Young Cersei asks about Prince Rhaegar; she in fact weds King Robert instead.

Cersei: “I will be queen, though?”

Maggy: “Aye. Queen you shall be... until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear.”

This younger queen might be Sansa, Margaery, or Daenerys. Cersei exhibits paranoia and extreme jealousy toward Margaery in particular, though she’s a disturbing mix of cruel and warm toward Sansa, her protégé.

Cersei: “Will the king and I have children?”

Maggy: “Oh, aye. Six-and-ten for him, and three for you….Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds. And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.” (IV:540-541)

This suggests all three children will be crowned, and also predecease Cersei. If Joffrey, then Tommen, then Myrcella die, all three will be crowned in the current order of Westeros succession, though Myrcella will need a consort. In Dorne, Myrcella would inherit before Tommen. This may be significant, as Myrcella has been sent there and can be used for a puppet queen in a civil war.

The word
valonqar
 means “younger brother.” Though Cersei hates Tyrion, she gradually neglects, ignores, and dismisses Jaime as a matter of course. It would be fitting if he turns on her and they leave the world at the same time: “We will die together as we were born together,” as Jaime thinks (III:418).

Other Historic Parallels

     
Two famous hunchbacks, Pepin, son of Charlemagne, and Richard III (according to Shakespeare at least), were both condemned by history and their families for plotting to take the throne and betray their more beloved siblings. Tyrion echoes them in many ways.

     
A particular treacherous massacre in the third book echoes the famous “Black Dinner” in Scotland, as Martin has confirmed. Soldiers staying at Glencoe massacred those who welcomed them as guests. The English king in the south arranged much of this and sent pardons to the wrongdoers, who were actually loyal to him. The idea of hospitality ran so deep at the time that this crime was considered unspeakably treacherous.

     
William the Conqueror’s funeral was disrupted by the horrible smell of the corpse…a particular book three funeral is equally nasty for the same reason.

     
Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne, reunited the Franks and halted the moors from entering his territory from Spain in the Battle of Tours of 732. Martin’s Martells rule Dorne, a region based on southern Spain with much of its culture.