George R.R. Martin and History
Every year, the arrival of a new season of HBO’s Game of Thrones is greeted by a predictable stream of click-bait articles by historians seeking to attach their bandwagons to the TV and publishing phenomena. The discussions tend to be superficial, bordering on the ridiculous: Is Game of Thrones based more on medieval or early modern history? Which historical example is the precedent for the Red Wedding? For those of us who have spent most of our adult lives waiting for George R.R. Martin to produce new volumes they are also intensely unsatisfactory.
These false similarities alert the reader to the distance between image and reality, a central theme in Martin’s work. We misread the historical examples the same way that Game of Thrones’ characters misread their contemporaries’ character as well as their own history: they have forgotten the purpose of the Wall, and the Night’s Watch. They repeat their words ‘the shield that guards the realms of men, the horn that wakes the sleepers’ but have forgotten that it does not refer to a war between wildlings and southerners, but between mankind and the icy death marching down from the north.
In the end Game of Thrones asks us whether we too have misidentified the real threats that confront us. The dangers of climate change have only grown more serious and apparent in the decades since Martin began writing. Winter, or should that be a no-less deadly Long Summer, is indeed coming. But like the decision makers in Westeros our attention is constantly drawn away from the real challenges by immediate political conflicts. We ask: who will sit the Iron Throne? Martin answers: will there be anyone left to do so when spring comes?