I have become addicted to the TV show Game of Thrones. I watched the premiere episode last spring and it didn’t quite grab me—but then someone told me that the source material (George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire) is actually based on the Wars of the Roses and I was All. Over. That!
So, some references are fairly obvious:
Stark = York, Lannister = Lancaster. Westeros is essentially all of Europe, although more England than anything. The Wall is Hadrian's Wall; the wildlings are probably the aboriginal Britons, the Celts who were driven out by the Roman troops. The southern kingdoms seem to be sort of Aquitaine-ish, with all the flowers and sultry living.
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| Physically Westeros looks more like Scotland than England. I wonder if that makes the Dothraki Irish! |
Part of the fun of watching something like this is figuring out who is based on whom—and then examining how Martin upends those prototypes, or combines them with others. King Robert is clearly intended to be your basic Edward IV-type:
- heavy-set*
- drinks a lot
- whores around
- strong warrior who led a rebellion and supplanted a Mad King.
[And let me say, I called Robert’s death a loooong time ago, I had a feeling something dreadfully William Rufus-ish would happen to him. Know your fairy tales and STAY OUT of the
However. Edward was a MUCH better king than Robert and his marriage to his eventual queen was certainly not the cold political alliance of Cersei and Robert. In fact Edward lost significant political support when he married Elizabeth Woodville [thoroughly pissing off his main backer, Warwick the Kingmaker, who ended up leading another rebellion AGAINST Edward and reinstating the previous King, Henry VI. The Wars of the Roses can be hellishly confusing—the timeline reads like a litany: …Henry VI, Edward IV, Henry VI, Edward IV…].
Poor Henry is the clearest parallel for Aerys the Mad King, but Henry’s insanity was pretty harmless stuff, mainly a lot of praying and swaying—he certainly wasn’t burning anyone alive! [Henry did have an unfortunate habit of wandering off during important battles though…after the 2nd Battle of St. Albans they found him sitting under a tree singing.]
So this seems to make Cersei the counterpart for Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s gorgeous, cold consort—but in her cool, straightforward bids for power, Cersei actually strikes me as more of a Margaret of Anjou, Henry’s Queen. Margaret, a fierce HBIC, led ARMIES, for God’s sake—there’s an hilariously disapproving account of her in Edward Hall’s Chronicles, courtesy of Richard Duke of York, frosty with frustrated battlefield chauvinism.
Margaret had just one child, one precious son, Edward of Lancaster, the Prince of Wales, of whose birthright she was extremely protective.
Like Cersei’s Joffrey [and Paul I, Catherine the Great’s only child who almost certainly was not fathered by her husband, the previous Tsar], Edward's paternity was questioned (delicately)—poor crazy, singing Henry didn’t really seem up to the task! Perhaps due to his somewhat unsettled childhood and his mother’s weird habit of consulting her son on how to execute prisoners, Edward was disturbingly precocious in his zest for York blood. One foreign observer said the boy
Edward would have been right at home in King's Landing!
But who is the Prince's analogue? In Game of Thrones, there are several candidates:
As for all the incest? I got nothing. The Lancasters and the Yorks didn't really keep it in the family a la the Ptolemys--the one possible exception is the rumor that Richard III was seeking to marry his niece Elizabeth of York after his first wife died. The English didn't really go for that sort of tackiness, though. The Habsburgs, however...**
*Henry VIII, Edward’s grandson, strongly resembled Edward, both physically and in personality. Both were stunning physical specimens in youth—tall, fair, athletic—with significant weight gain in later life; both were charming but absolutely draconian when they had to be.
**I have been meaning to do an entry on the most notorious member of that unbelievably inbred family, Carlos el Hechizado--the Bewitched. He was his own cousin MANY times over and the results weren't pretty.
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| Sorry blokes, d’you need me for something? Wot, I'm KING, how'd that happen? |
So this seems to make Cersei the counterpart for Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s gorgeous, cold consort—but in her cool, straightforward bids for power, Cersei actually strikes me as more of a Margaret of Anjou, Henry’s Queen. Margaret, a fierce HBIC, led ARMIES, for God’s sake—there’s an hilariously disapproving account of her in Edward Hall’s Chronicles, courtesy of Richard Duke of York, frosty with frustrated battlefield chauvinism.
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| Gah! How tackily unfeminine! |
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| The Duke of York barely lived to regret his sneering words as Margaret's army promptly handed his ass to him in the Battle of Wakefield the next day, wiping out the Yorkists. Ol' Richard's head ended up decorating a gate outside his eponymous city, adorned with a paper crown saying "Let York overlook the town of York. "Oooh, that is COLD, Margaret! |
Margaret had just one child, one precious son, Edward of Lancaster, the Prince of Wales, of whose birthright she was extremely protective.
 |
| Mummy, how come everyone says I look so much like |
Like Cersei’s Joffrey [and Paul I, Catherine the Great’s only child who almost certainly was not fathered by her husband, the previous Tsar], Edward's paternity was questioned (delicately)—poor crazy, singing Henry didn’t really seem up to the task! Perhaps due to his somewhat unsettled childhood and his mother’s weird habit of consulting her son on how to execute prisoners, Edward was disturbingly precocious in his zest for York blood. One foreign observer said the boy
already talks of nothing but cutting off heads or making war, as if he had everything in his hands or was the god of battle or the peaceful occupant of that throne.
Edward would have been right at home in King's Landing!
But who is the Prince's analogue? In Game of Thrones, there are several candidates:
- That psychopath Joffrey, obviously. Although Edward was never THAT sadistic; frankly Joffrey seems more like Caligula!
- Robin, the bloodthirsty heir of Eyrie, who likes to see prisoners “fly!”--out the window and down a 1000-foot drop. However as attached as Edward might have been to his formidable mother, he did NOT breastfeed to the age of 8. [My eyes!]
- Vicerys, the pretender to the Iron Throne, who like Edward maintained a court in exile after fleeing his homeland as a child.
As for all the incest? I got nothing. The Lancasters and the Yorks didn't really keep it in the family a la the Ptolemys--the one possible exception is the rumor that Richard III was seeking to marry his niece Elizabeth of York after his first wife died. The English didn't really go for that sort of tackiness, though. The Habsburgs, however...**
*Henry VIII, Edward’s grandson, strongly resembled Edward, both physically and in personality. Both were stunning physical specimens in youth—tall, fair, athletic—with significant weight gain in later life; both were charming but absolutely draconian when they had to be.
**I have been meaning to do an entry on the most notorious member of that unbelievably inbred family, Carlos el Hechizado--the Bewitched. He was his own cousin MANY times over and the results weren't pretty.
I don't have your knowledge of the actual history, so although I know GoT was inspired by the War of the Roses, I can't really comment on the parallels. However, I'll be very interested to hear your thoughts once you start reading the books. Needless to say, the story in the novels is much more in-depth and detailed than what they can portray on the show.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to the books, I've heard great things about them. Trying to stay unspoiled until then is difficult! I do love how strong--in different ways--his female characters are, although I have very mixed feelings about the constant female (and almost entirely so) nudity on the show.
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