Abby: As I’ve said before: GoT/ASOIAF is dangerous because it might as well have been designed in a lab to cater to 21st century ideas about what the medieval past was “really like,” even though it is no less of a fantasy than Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.

As I’ve said before: GoT/ASOIAF is dangerous because it might as well have been designed in a lab to cater to 21st century ideas about what the medieval past was “really like,” even though it is no less of a fantasy than Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.

One of the worst things that Game of Thrones has enabled (involuntarily) in a particular kind of almost exclusively male nerd is a permission structure for going UMM WELL ACTUALLY at "unrealistic" depictions of medieval life (which aren't even unrealistic, you're just an undereducated twat)

I also disagree that this was involuntary—the idea that GoT/ASOIAF is more “historically accurate” than most fantasy has been key to the marketing of the books/show for years and has been encouraged by statements by both the author and showrunners.

Obligatory ACOUP plug:

New Acquisitions: How It Wasn’t: Game of Thrones and the Middle Ages, Part Iacoup.blog This series is now available in an audio format; the entire playlist can be listened to here. The following post is the first part of a three part series where we look at the question “how me…

Another ACOUP plug—this blog series is not about the issue of dirtbag medievalism per se but it makes a better case for why I think GRRM’s tendency to overstate the historical accuracy of his books is, in fact, dangerous.* *Note that I *do not* say “ASOIAF should be banned forever”

Collections: That Dothraki Horde, Part I: Barbarian Coutureacoup.blog This series is now available in audio format. You can find the playlist here. This is the first part of a three four part (I, II, III, IV) look at the Dothraki, the fictional horse-borne nomads of …

This was a really good read thank you for posting!

You’re welcome!

Incant remember the books that well but at least LotR actually features siege weapons. All you get in GoT are those ballistas which are exclusively used on dragons

The ASOIAF books refer to siege weapons to whatever credit they deserve. I couldn’t tell you if they were used accurately tho.

The thing that gives me the biggest headache about ASOIAF tho is how massive this supposedly medieval kingdom that’s supposedly dependent on personal relationships between the monarch and the aristocracy is.

Btw I explain what I mean here.

To elaborate on this, the main thing that gives me pause here is that Westeros is not centered on a large body of water or navigable rivers that could aid in communication, like the agrarian empires of antiquity, and also isn’t connected by a belt of steppe, like the Mongol Empire.

That's an amazing point

Yeah, he really did not think through the scale of anything. I recall reading that when he saw the Wall in the show he realised he'd made it far too big.

And Westeros doesn't know if it's a stand in for Europe or Great Britain so basing it's political make up on a portion of Great Britain is like you say, very frustrating. The Heptarchy didn't even encompass all of what we consider England today! It strains credulity

Is the Mongol empire a comparable scale for westeros?

yes, and these MASSIVE armies just teleport from one side of the continent to the other

I am now remembering to consider the awesome power of siege weapons - what if fantasy unleashed such a concept with magic

I think you're probably right on the TV series, but being fair to Martin, I think he's just instinctively a bit of an... well a bit of an edgelord, really.

I think he runs his mouth and doesn’t have the historical knowledge to back himself up.

this seems fair tbh

I like Martin as a writer, but Game of Thrones was never intended to be more than a fantasy take on Dorothy Dunnett. It becoming more is lightning striking. It’s emotionally resonant with a particularly nasty period of history on the British Isles and gets fuzzy anytime it expands beyond that.

Martin is a contemporary with writers like Harlan Ellison and Christopher Priest. He’s on the softer side of it, but being an edgelord was the height of rebellious sophistication in his formative years.

I feel somewhat uncomfortable calling the books actually _dangerous_, but also unlike the TV show Martin isn't allergic to admitting he likes fantasy! Hell he edits the insane superheros in alt history USA where Fidel Castro was a famous baseball player thing, which doesn't try for realism

Yes, I would call promoting misinformation about real historic periods under the cover of being a maligned truth-teller “dangerous.”

I mean, he's pretty clear that he's constructing a fictional world _based on_ certain narratives about historical periods, not actually teaching you a history lesson. Like there are problems there but it's not actually the authors fault if the audience misses that. But also thisnisnt worth a fight

The whole idea that he was doing something new with fantasy always drove me up the wall. People like David Gemmell had been around for ages and with the added advantage of knowing how to end a story.

Yeah ASOIAF/GoT was just the first fantasy story that many people were exposed to after watching the LotR movies when they were 8.

Guy Gavriel Kay was killing characters convention said you shouldn't *years* before GRRM got into the habit.

Amusingly, my brother watched the first episode of Game of Thrones under the impression that it was a historical fiction about medieval dynastic wars, not realizing until it was on the screen that it was fantasy.

I sometimes feel like Martin read le Guin's From Elfland to Poughkeepsie and decided to take it as a personal challenge.

The inaccurate parts I most liked were the vast and intricate food descriptions. If we’re going to have to pause while the author’s poorly-disguised fetish parades through, at least this one sounded delicious.

Ok this has been fun and frustrating by turns but I have to mute this thread in order to go do other things. Have fun yall.

I suspect Miles Cameron’s fantasy is a lot closer to what it was like (but then, he’s historical fiction writer Christian Cameron not-really-in-disguise). The centrality of belief and of oaths stand out.

Haven’t read his books but it’s refreshing to hear that they don’t treat oaths like pinky promises

Yes yes!!! Throwing tomatoes at GRRMs beard!!!

Absolutely!

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