ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Did you know, my dear readers, that I am an unabashed Game of Thrones enthusiast? I have not (yet) learned High Valerian,  and I haven’t actually read the books though I’ve collected them all from OpShops, but from the time we watched the first HBO episode out of simple curiosity, we were hooked.  And so when I stumbled on Oxford University’s TORCH Book at Lunchtime featuring a presentation of ‘All Men Must Die’ by Professor Carolyne Larrington, I reserved its predecessor Winter is Coming at the library.   And discovered at Goodreads that Jennifer at Tasmanian Bibliophile at Large had read it already, seven years ago when it was first released.

Winter is Coming (2016) interrogates GoT Books 1-5 and Seasons 1-5, so All Men Must Die: Power and Passion in Game of Thrones (2021) is its sequel, but unlike Winter is Coming which has a lot of love at Goodreads, All Men Must Die seems to have disappointed the diehard fans.

Whatever about that, I found it fascinating to read in Winter is Coming about the ways in which the series draws on history, mythology and medieval literature tropes.  The book is segmented into an Introduction and five chapters which explore the Known World and its power bases in the North, the West and the East. But despite their differences, these power bases have much in common, much of which is derived from the medieval world.

The cultures of the Known World, mostly but not exclusively framed by the norms of Westeros, share a good number of deep-seated cultural beliefs: about rank and gender, about honour and face, hospitality, justice, weapons and the habits of dragons. (p.9)

(Which are, as we see in the end, amoral weapons of mass destruction wielded in the pursuit of power.)

BEWARE: SPOILERS

A Minstrel Sings of Famous Things by JR Skelton 1910 (Wikipedia)

Outsiders of low status play crucial roles in the GoT narrative.  This is a world where Rank, Birth and Honour determine life chances from the outset, and everyone — even Shagga (the low-status leader of the Stone Crows)  announces his lineage at the moment of introduction. In the old English epic poem, Beowulf the narrator makes repeated references to Beowulf’s father Ecgtheow, which evokes memories of his deeds and makes his son acceptable to the King of the Danes.  So it is in GoT.

Bloodline is everything for the members of the Great Houses, and their relative standing is determined by the length of their history. p.15)

Yet Lord Varys rises from a childhood as a castrated beggar to the Small Council, despite having no land, no House, and only an honorific title.  Lord Baelish is a newbie.  He only inherited his land and title recently and he’s a social inferior with the derisive nickname ‘Littlefinger’ but he rises to be Master of Coin.  Bronn is only a sellsword (a mercenary) but his friendship with Tyrion Lannister is for sale at a critical moment, enabling him to rise without any lineage.  And then there’s Jon Snow…

(And that’s because Jon Snow has Honour despite his dubious lineage!)

Membership of a lineage endows nobles with what is perhaps the most important constituent of individual characters: their sense of personal honour.  Honour — particularly for a man — revolves around keeping his word, not allowing others to insult him and remembering the history of his House.  If he is a bastard, he begins at a disadvantage; if he has no surname, for example, his chances of acquiring honour are very limited indeed.  Theon is excluded from some of the responsibilities which go with membership of House Stark, by reason of his ambiguous status — one that’s revealed only gradually in the early episodes of Season One.  His position as a hostage compromises his sense of honour, particularly in the face of his father’s unyielding view of what constitutes Greyjoy honour, with terrible political and personal consequences. (p.19)

When it comes to ambiguous status… Joffrey and Tommen’s reign isn’t questionable because of incest but because of their father’s lineage.  They are not of Baratheon blood and blood is everything. (Which is why even as late as the 20th century Lady Di had to submit to a virginity test. I could not believe at the time that she was prepared not only to go along with it, but for it to be made public.)

What’s different to tales of the medieval period is that there’s no religious underpinning to GoT.  There are the Old Gods and the New, but they don’t seem to disapprove of things one way or another, and when Jon Snow betrays his oath to the Old Gods, it’s his friends in the Night Watch who bring him to his senses, not any fear of divine retribution.  Ethics in GoT, says Larrington, are mutable and situational.

But honour defines the individual and it can be lost, won, sacrificed or leeched away.  The Red Wedding damages the Bolton reputation forever, because it betrayed the rules of hospitality which is, as Larrington writes in the section subtitled ‘Guest-Right’ a central obligation of human interaction. Larrington writes that it’s hard to think of real-life or even fictional parallels to the horror of the Red Wedding but gives as examples of breaching the rules of hospitality Chaucer’s ‘Man of Law’s Tale’ and the infamous Glencoe Massacre of 1692. There was also a Black Dinner of 1440.

(Horror at weddings occurs in real life in the present day, as you will soon see if you Google ‘terrorist attacks at weddings’).  There have been terrorist attacks at weddings in Yemen, Turkey, Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, from original MS, artist unknown (Wikipedia)

Medieval romance explores the complicated matter of hospitality in one of my favourite tales,  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Guests are vulnerable, but when they arrive under your roof

they can bring unknown complications, pre-existing enmities from which a good host will have to defend them, or as in the visit of Robert and his in-laws to Winterfell — the hosts may discover things about their guests that must not be known to others.

Other examples of the rules of hospitality being breached include the theft of the dragons in Qarth, and Catelyn is all the more outraged when she wrongly believes that Tyrion was responsible for sending an assassin to kill Bran because he had entered her home as a guest.  (To say nothing of Jaime and Cersei’s breach of the rules of hospitality when they try to silence Bran forever!)

In the section subtitled ‘Justice and Vengeance’, Larrington reminds us that

Law codes tend to be among the earliest texts created when a society gains the technology of writing.  Even before literacy arrived in pre-Christian Iceland, laws were codified, and a third of them were recited by the Lawspeaker every year at the Assembly (the Althing) so that they might be remembered, discussed and, if need be, modified. (p.39)

In GoT, the king, or his Hand, hears cases and received deputations from aggrieved subjects.  In Season One, we see Bran learning these ropes in his parents’ absence under the patient guidance of the Maester Luwin. But as we see in the case of Tyrion’s trial, justice is very easily denied, and trial by combat (a genuine medieval custom) depends entirely on relative strength and strategy, and in Tyrion’s case in his ability to buy a stand-in.

The obvious flaws in the procedure meant that the practice fell out of favour, in England in the fifteenth century and in France in the mid-fourteenth century.  (p.40)

(But duels based on a code of honour persisted. Pushkin famously died in a duel in 1837.)

Vengeance, says, Larrington, shapes the arc of the entire story: the vengeance taken by Robert Baratheon for the abduction of Lyanna Stark by Rhaegar Targaryen.  

The call for vengeance when a family member is killed is endemic in honour societies like Westeros, a culture which remembers through stories passed down through generations. (p.42)

In modern societies calls for vengeance are moderated by the sense that vengeance perpetuates more violence, but in the world of GoT honour requires that revenge be sought for such losses, the more so when the original victims were killed in some dishonourable way.  The Martells pursue vengeance, and so does Arya with her list of people she plans to kill.  (Because she was a child, I did not take her seriously until she plunged Needle into a man who was mocking her dead brother’s body with the head of his direwolf, Grey Wind. It’s a shocking scene, and not because he wasn’t on her list.)

The section subtitled ‘War and Weapons’ explains a man’s relationship to his weapon.  The Dothraki wield arakhs with their lethal curved blades but what they value most as weapons of war are their horses.  On the other hand, the highly valued swords forged from Valyrian steel are reminiscent, says Larrington, of the old swords brought over from the continent to Anglo-Saxon England.

It took time for the smiths, transplanted into a new landscape, to discover supplies of iron ore and to locate the charcoal needed to raise the forge temperature high enough to make strong, flexible steel, neither too brittle nor too pliant.  Old English poetry often mentions the serpentine design in the best-quality swords; this was produced by pattern-welding, twisting and fusing individual rods of steel together, forging and reforging them for suppleness and strength, exactly the technique which perished with the smith of Valyria.

In Beowulf, the swords which are particularly valued are the old ones; they carry with them the mana, the aura of those who have been killed by them in past battles; they are redolent of victories won. When an enemy is defeated, the victor takes his sword and makes his defeat part of the weapon’s history. (p.47)

Beowulf uses the borrowed sword Hrunting but it fails because only Grendel’s mother’s own ancestral sword can pierce her hide.

And all this is just the beginning, from the Introduction and the first chapter. I found it fascinating to learn about the historical and mythological resonances of Game of Thrones and am tempted to chase up Larrington’s sequel as well.   (And to watch the entire series again in the interim. We have them all on DVD.)

About the author

Carolyne Larrington has the sort of academic career that looks enticing indeed.  She’s a prolific author, producing both academic texts and books for the general reader.  On her website, she says:

My research interests lie in medieval English literature, along with Old Norse literature, and general European medieval texts and cultural history.

I work particularly on Old Norse mythology, Arthurian literature and emotion in the medieval period. Increasingly I have been working on medievalism topics – the study of the medieval in the modern period. This has resulted in two books on ‘Game of Thrones’, and a book on folklore and place in the British Isles.

I am currently writing on Old Norse myth and its reception in the modern world, and am also working with Stuart Lee to develop the activities of the Oxford Fantasy Cluster in public outreach.

Professor Larrington thinks that GoT will be Tolkienian in its influence, long term.

Author: Carolyne Larrington
Title: Winter is Coming, the Medieval World of Game of Thrones
Publisher: I. B. Taurus, 2016
Cover design not credited
ISBN: 9781784532567, pbk.,252 pages including Notes, Suggestions for Further Reading, and an Index
Source: Bayside Library

Image credits:

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, from original MS, artist unknown: By Unknown author – http://gawain.ucalgary.ca, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=621711
• A Minstrel Sings of Famous Things by JR Skelton 1910, By Joseph Ratcliffe Skelton – https://www.lookandlearn.com/blog/10143/joseph-ratcliffe-skelton-artist/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97283200