Why Game of Thrones is essential watching for historians like me
Historian Dan Jones explains why he finds HBO’S all-conquering series such a particular joy to watch
Avery long time ago, at some vague and distant point in the middle ages, in a land that looked a lot like Britain, there was a war in which kings and magicians watched fire-breathing dragons do battle. The struggle was both physical and cosmic. As the dragons “panted fire” and drove one another backwards and forth, their lives were on the line. So too were the lives of the people who dwelt in the kingdom, whose futures were hitched to the outcome of the contest.
The stakes were apocalyptically high. The outcome of the battle of the dragons would mean that “mountains and valleys shall be levelled, and the streams … shall run with blood … the cult of religion shall be destroyed completely … seven who hold the sceptre shall perish … the bellies of mothers shall be cut open and babies born prematurely. Men will suffer most grievously, in order that those born in the country may regain power.”
Thousands would die. The iniquitous would triumph. The only consolation would be that “human beings will fornicate unceasingly”.
This exciting, lurid, sexy and ultraviolet story, which will sound uncannily familiar to anyone awaiting the final season of HBO’S blockbusting historical-fantasy series Game of Thrones, was actually composed nearly 900 years ago.
It is an episode describing the prophecies of Merlin, written up in a book called the History of the Kings of Britain, completed in the year 1136AD by a puckish genius and churchman called Geoffrey of Monmouth. Like
Game of Thrones, which is based increasingly loosely on the unfinished A Song of Ice and Fire novel-cycle by the American writer George RR Martin – Geoffrey’s work fused expansive historical knowledge with epic storytelling and an eye for the gothic and grotesque.
Also like Game of Thrones, it was a runaway hit, particularly with the chattering classes of its day, who swooned to its tantalising vision of a world in which magic, myth and big historical themes swirled irresistibly together. Nine centuries separate our world today from that of our 12thcentury forefathers. But when it comes to entertainment, there’s nothing new under the sun.
When the first season of Game of Thrones launched in 2011, I watched it with some scepticism, and mainly at my wife’s behest. Never much of a fan of the fantasy genre (and having then never read any of Martin’s books) I felt instinctively queasy at the idea of a show that seemed to be little more than a thinly masked retelling of the 15th-century wars of the roses. I have spent many years studying and writing about British medieval history, and I figured that this new drama was almost certain to be either totally stupid or very annoying, or both.
I was dead wrong. True, Game of Thrones did indeed at least begin as a riff on the 15th century – as indicated, with a very firm wink, by the family names of Stark and Lannister, which echo the houses of York and Lancaster who contested the wars of the roses. But it very quickly became plain that this was not a wars of the roses tribute act. Rather, it is a layered, deeply considered, unsentimental, shocking and often extremely funny take on human conflict throughout the ages, bursting with references both obvious and opaque to different historical eras, yet far enough removed from all of them to be freed from the tedious cries of “inaccuracy”, which bedevil almost every other piece of historical drama that ever makes it to the screen.
Rather than being yoked to any one specific period – although the implication of most of the available technology is that the world of Westeros, in which the show is set, is in a very broad sense medieval – Game of Thrones in fact claims licence to rampage around human history, looting material wherever it lies, from ancient Egypt to the Napoleonic Wars. As Martin himself once said about his approach to his novels: “I’m interested in all of history. It’s all endlessly fascinating. I take it, I file off the serial numbers, then I turn it up to 11.” That sensibility has likewise been embedded in the TV show’s production team, led by David Benioff and DB Weiss.
The most famous historical parallels in Game of Thrones (other than the likeness to 15th-century England) can often be found in the most notorious and spectacular episodes. The bloodbath known as “The Red Wedding”, which killed off several of the show’s best-loved characters at a stroke during season three, was partly inspired by the real-life “Black Dinner” of 1440, when Scotland’s Earl Douglas and his younger brother were murdered during a banquet at Edinburgh Castle, and partly by the Glencoe Massacre of 1692.
The battle on the frozen lake that took up most of the penultimate episode of season seven, pitching humans and dragons against an army of the undead and White Walkers, led by the Night King, seemed to take its cues from a real-life clash from the crusading era known as the Battle on the Ice, which took place on Lake Peipus, between Estonia and Russia in 1242. That battle, which was fought between the medieval crusading order known as the Teutonic Knights and Orthodox
Russian troops under Prince Alexander Nevsky, was popularised in the early days of cinema by Sergei Eisenstein. By rebooting it with armies of zombies, skeletons and Cgi-generated dragons, Game of Thrones has given it a twisted new life for 21stcentury
It is a layered, considered, unsentimental, shocking and often extremely funny take on human conflict
audiences. And then there are the broader historical similarities in Game of Thrones – which are no less fun to explore.
Does Daenerys Targaryen draw more on Joan of Arc, Cleopatra or Catherine the Great? Are the amoral financiers of the Iron Bank of Braavos supposed to resemble the Medici family – or should we see a dash of the house of Jakob Fugger there? Are the fanatically religious members of the Faith Militant hellish counterparts to the Dominicans and Franciscans who led the medieval Inquisition or do they more closely resemble modern-day religious police such as the Mutaween in Saudi Arabia? The answer, usually, is: yes to all of the above.
It would be possible to write a whole academic thesis on Game of Thrones’ adaptation and repackaging of historical characters and material – and indeed, several universities, including Harvard, have offered undergraduate courses on exactly that subject in recent years. Martin last year emphasised the deep love he had for the historical narrative form by writing an entire “fake history” of the Targaryen family (“Fire and Blood”), which will likely provide material for the several Game of Thrones spin-off shows that are at various stages of development for the screen.
But perhaps the real joy of watching Game of Thrones for the historian is that it is never a straightforward (and therefore fallible) recreation of any one period or event. Rather, it is a mash-up – a proof-strength cocktail – in which historical influences are thrown in a blender, laced with fantasy, vivid characterisation and gratuitous nudity and violence and let loose on the world.
The end product, shot on a budget that in latter series has run to more than $10million per episode, is the most popular high-end television series in the world for a reason. It is smart, salacious and supremely well constructed. It is the defining show of the early 21st century. Yet it is also a timeless piece of storytelling, squarely in the mould of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s prophecy-laden pseudohistory of Britain, which was wowing audiences nine centuries ago with tales of heroes and villains real and imagined, dragons and derring-do.
The last season of Game of Thrones begins on Monday. How we will miss it when it is over.
Dan Jones’s books about the middle ages include The Plantagenets, The Hollow Crown and The Templars.