‘Real Game of Thrones’ Story Is Told In This Interactive 15th Century Scroll

Ancient Origins

The Game of Thrones continues to attract an audience and many people interested in it also have a passion for history and the true stories that inspired the series. Now you can gain some new insight into the who’s who of the Wars of the Roses and their legendary ancestors by exploring a digital version of English royal family genealogy as depicted on the Canterbury Roll.

 The Canterbury Roll provides a handwritten 15th-century story of the beginnings of England. It starts with suggesting English royals have descended from the biblical Noah, to the legendary Brutus of Troy, and then it traces their heritage until King Edward IV. As you can see by examining the digital edition of the Canterbury Roll, fiction has mixed with history in this document.

A section of the Canterbury Roll, a medieval scroll depicting the genealogy of the English royal family. (The University of Canterbury)

Live Science reports that the online version of the medieval scroll has been made available thanks to the work of a team of researchers and students at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. They joined up with some experts from the United Kingdom to translate and interpret the scroll. The scholars from the UK are especially interested in exploring how the document was altered during the Wars of the Roses, when the document changed hands between the warring houses and one house may have altered the story of the other.

Chris Jones, a medieval historian and a researcher on the project from the University of Canterbury, discussed the importance of the Canterbury Roll in a statement:

"It's visually striking. The Wars of the Roses are what 'Games of Thrones' is based on, and this is the Wars of the Roses laid out across a 5-meter [16 feet], visually spectacular document. It is not the only manuscript roll from this period to exist in the world, but, uniquely, it features contributions from both [of] the key players in the Wars of the Roses — it was originally drawn up by the Lancastrian side in the conflict but it fell into Yorkist hands, and they rewrote part of it."

As Thomas de Fauconbergh beseiges London (setting fire), he is attacked by Edward IV and his troops. (Public Domain)

As Bryan Hill explained in an Ancient Origins article discussing the Wars of the Roses and the Game of Thrones:

“The two houses in conflict with one another in the Wars of the Roses were the House of York and the House of Lancaster. In Game of Thrones, the House of Lancaster is thought to be the Lannisters while the House of York, the Starks. The war between the Starks and the Lannisters is similar to the Wars of the Roses between the English houses of Lancaster and York that took place between 1455 and 1487. Like the Starks, the Yorks were northerners, while the Lancasters, like the Lannisters, were from the south. Not only do the Lancasters and Lannisters share almost the same name, they also share an almost identical symbol: a Lion(s) on a red background. The name of the wars comes from the symbols associated with the two families; the white rose belonging to the Yorks and the red rose to the Lancasters.”

Wars of the Roses – key players in the Houses of Lancaster and York. (AGZYM)

The digital version of the Canterbury Roll is still a work in progress, but it already provides an interactive depiction of the scroll. Viewers have the option to click, zoom, and read passages on the scroll in English and Latin, as well as explore notes and expert interpretations of the document. It is expected that the full 5-meter document, along with its translations, will be available online by the end of 2018.

 Top Image: Detail of ‘Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens’ (c.1908) by Henry Arthur Payne. (Public Domain) Insert: Detail of part of the Canterbury Roll, a medieval scroll detailing the genealogy of the two houses in the Wars of the Roses. (The University of Canterbury)

 By Alicia McDermott

Parallel Worlds – Events in Game of Thrones Based on Real Historical Events

Ancient Origins

The television series, Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin’s book series A Song of Ice and Fire, has been praised for its gritty realism and epic storyline. G.R.R. Martin has been referred to as the “American Tolkien.” Game of Thrones, however, was not made up from scratch and some events do have parallels in real world history, which makes sense, being that the author of the original books wanted it to be realistic and explore themes pertinent to the real world including politics, gender, religion, and identity. Most of the real world historical events and personalities which served or may have served as inspiration for events and characters in Game of Thrones and the book series A Song of Ice and Fire are events that took place during the Middle Ages, though a few of them took place in classical antiquity.

Game of Thrones Draws from The War of the Roses
For example, the entire Game of Thrones storyline itself is partly inspired by a real-world conflict, the War of the Roses (1455-1487). In the show, Game of Thrones, two rival houses compete for control of the Iron Throne. The two houses are the northern House of Stark known for being poor but, relatively, virtuous and the southern House of Lannister which is extremely rich and very devious.

 In the same way, the War of the Roses was a conflict between two branches of the royal house of England, the Plantagenets. The two rival branches were the northern House of York and the southern House of Lancaster. The Yorkists and Lancastrians had reputations parallel to the Starks and the Lannisters respectively.

War of the Roses - the Houses of Lancaster and York ( AGZYM)

One of the causes of the War of the Roses was when King Henry VI who was forced out in favor of Edward IV because King Henry VI was considered unfit to rule because of mental health issues. This is similar to how the War of the Usurper started with the overthrow of the insane, tyrannical King Aerys II Targaryen by Robert Baratheon.

 The Game of Thrones Weapon of Mass Destruction Existed in Greece
Another example, on a smaller scale, would be the naval Battle of Blackwater. In the battle, Tyrian Lannister orders the use of magical fire called “wildfire” to destroy the enemy fleet commanded by Stannis Baratheon. The magical green fire appears to light water on fire and destroys many of the enemy ships. This is very similar to the real world second Arab Siege of Constantinople (717-718 AD) where the Byzantine secret weapon, Greek fire, was used by the Byzantines against the Arab fleet.

A Byzantine ship uses Greek fire against a ship of the rebel, Thomas the Slav, 821. 12th century illustration from the Madrid Skylitzes (Public Domain)

Greek fire was of unknown composition, but it was probably some sort of chemical that was flammable and lighter than water. Thus, a layer of the substance floating over a body of water could be lit on fire, giving the appearance that the water itself was burning, similar to the way that gasoline can be ignited while in water since it is lighter than the water and thus does not mix. The main difference between Greek fire and “wildfire” of course is that the former was (probably) made through science whereas the latter was made through magic.

Game of Thrones Assassinations
One particularly dramatic assassination scene in the Game of Thrones is when King Joffrey I Baratheon keels over and dies during his wedding after drinking wine that was poisoned. Although there were many kings and nobles who were poisoned in history, a particularly close parallel would be the Medieval prince Eustace of Boulogne who is said to have died mysteriously in a feast in 1153. He was apparently considered to be an evil man who caused a lot of suffering for many people. It is thus not unbelievable that he was poisoned just like Joffrey.

Another underhand murder plot unfolds at the ‘Red Wedding’ where Rob Stark, several of his family members, and many of his soldiers are slaughtered at a wedding feast by disgruntled allies of the House of Lannister. What may be either reassuring or disturbing depending on how you look at it is that the Red Wedding may have been inspired by real events.

The Black Dinner (Den of Geek)

One such event, called the Black Dinner, is where the king of Scotland invited a sworn enemy, the Earl of Douglas, to a feast. He promised that the Earl would not be harmed. Part way through the feast, however, the Earl was served a black boar’s head, an omen of death. Shortly afterwards, the unfortunate least favorite of the king was hauled to courtyard and put to death. In another account, known as the Glencoe Massacre, a clan called Campbell invited its rival clan, MacDonald, to spend the night. During the night, however, the Campbells killed all the MacDonald men in their sleep.

Replacement Limbs Happened
 Over the course of the series, Jaime Lannister has his hand cut off and replaced with a golden hand. This is comparable to the real-world Gottfried von Berlichingen, a German knight whose severed hand was replaced with an iron hand after his fleshly one was blown off with a cannon.

The prosthetic metal hand of Gottfried von Berlichingen (Public Domain)

An Ancient Game of Thrones Comparison
In addition to Medieval history, there may also be references to classical history. In the books, though not the Game of Thrones series, Lyanna Stark, the sister of Eddard Stark, is kidnapped by Rhaegar Targaryen. This is one of the events that triggers the War of the Usurper or Robert’s Rebellion. The story depicted is similar to the story of Lucretia. Lucretia was a Roman woman who was raped by the son of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin the Proud, the last Etruscan king of Rome. This crime outraged the Romans who subsequently overthrew King Tarquin. This was quickly followed by the establishment of the Roman republic, at least so the story goes.

The Rape of Lucretia (by Felice Ficherelli, 17th century) (Public Domain)

Religious Conflicts
Another example of a parallel between Game of Thrones and real-world history might be the order of the Sparrows, a religious movement within the Faith of Seven, the major religion of Westeros. The Sparrows believe the religious establishment of Westeros to be corrupt and decadent, advocating humility and poverty. This mirrors the Protestant Reformation during which the former monk, Martin Luther, denounced the Medieval Catholic Church and accused it, among many other things of a more theological nature, of having become corrupt and more concerned about money and power than spiritual renewal.

The Wider Game of Thrones World
In addition to depicting European cultures and events from European history, there are also ethnic groups featured in the show which appear to be derived from non-European cultures. An example of this would be the Dothraki, a dangerous group of nomads who dwell on the continent of Essos. In the world of the Game of Thrones, the Dothraki pillaged the Kingdom of Sarnor and the Qaathi cities several centuries before the books or the television series start. This is comparable to the Mongol threat which came to bear on European and Asian civilizations in the 13th century. It can also be compared to the invasion of Attila the Hun in the 5th century AD which rocked the late Roman Empire.

Detail of Attila the Hun from ‘Attila and his Hordes Overrun Italy and the Arts’ (1847) by Eugène Delacroix. (Public Domain)

 Family Matters in Game of Thrones
Incest is something that, in the past, was more common in royalty than in the general population mainly for dynastic reasons. Ruling dynasties wanted to keep the throne in the family, so they would ensure that their children married into the family even if that meant marrying their siblings.

A Game of Thrones depiction of this tendency among royals towards incest in the series is Cersei Lannister who engages in an incestuous relationship with her brother Jaime. There is actually a close real-world parallel in the form of a rumor about Ann Boleyn, one of the wives of King Henry VIII. One of the reasons that she was executed by the king may have been related to an accusation that she had slept with her brother.

Another example of a real-world parallel of a frowned upon relationship can be drawn between Talisa Stark and Elizabeth Woodville. Rob Stark seriously angers certain parties when he marries Talisa even though she is not wealthy and has no significant family connections. This is very similar to what happened to Edward IV when he married Elizabeth Woodville more out of her beauty than her status. This gained Edward IV enemies including a former ally, the Earl of Warwick, who aided Henry VI in overthrowing him in 1470, as a result. The reason for such a reaction was that a marriage based on romance rather than social or political considerations compromised the political and social ambitions of the nobility.

Elizabeth Woodville (1437–92), Queen Consort of Edward IV of England (Public Domain)

The best stories are those that contain some realism. These stories, since they are based on real-world events, have an air of credibility since something like them actually happened. This is probably also true of the most enduring myths. They endure so long because there probably is some truth to them. The story of Game of Thrones is fictional, but many of the themes and situations it discusses are realistic situations that actually happened to someone once. It may be partly for this reason that it is so appealing.

Top image: View of the Castle of Zafra, Campillo de Dueñas, Guadalajara, Spain. The castle was built in the late 12th or early 13th centuries (CC BY SA 4.0)

 By Caleb Strom

Game of Thrones season six: the real-life medieval history

History Extra

Maisie Williams as Arya Stark in the sixth season of Game of Thrones, which airs on Sunday (Monday morning in Britain). © 2016 Home Box Office, Inc.

George RR Martin, author of the books upon which the Game of Thrones television show is based, notes that the battle for the Iron Throne is loosely based on the 15th-century Wars of the Roses; the chime of Stark and York and Lannister and Lancaster suggests as much. But Martin draws much more eclectically on medieval cultures, as the following examples demonstrate.

 

Queen Cersei

Cersei has been compared to a good number of medieval queens, such as Margaret of Anjou (d1482), wife of Henry VI. To my mind, though, Cersei, the “green-eyed lioness” of the Lannisters, is much more like Edward II’s queen Isabella, the ‘She-Wolf of France’. Daughter of King Philip IV (the Fair) of France, Isabella was sister of his three successors. She was married, probably aged 12, to Edward II of England in 1308. Edward gave her four children, but, notoriously, he neglected her for his good-looking male favourites.
His barons forced Edward to give up one of these favourites, Piers Gaveston, 1st Earl of Cornwall, who was executed in 1312, but by 1320 Edward was deeply involved with Hugh Despenser the Younger. As a consequence of Isabella’s hostility to the Despenser faction, her lands in England were taken from her, as were her children, and her household was broken up.

_{Cersei Lannister played by Lena Headey and Jaime Lannister played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. ©2015 Home Box Office, Inc.}
Isabella and Edward had effectively separated. When, in 1325, her eldest son, the future Edward III, went to France to do homage for the province of Gascony, which the English crown held from the French king, the queen seized her chance. In Paris Isabella took the exiled English lord Roger Mortimer as her lover, and they plotted against her husband.
Young Edward was promised in marriage to Philippa, daughter of William, Count of Hainault, in the Low Countries. In return William provided men and an advance on Philippa’s dowry. Borrowing heavily from Italian banking houses, Isabella, her son and Mortimer invaded England in 1326 and Edward II was overthrown. How far Isabella was complicit in her husband’s horrible death in 1327 isn’t clear, but she and Mortimer ruled England for the next four years.
In 1330 her son, Edward III, took charge of the kingdom, imprisoning his mother and executing her lover. Perhaps King Tommen will similarly assert himself against his mother in this sixth season?

_{Isabella of France, aka the 'She-Wolf of France', queen consort of Edward II of England. From the book ‘Our Queen Mothers’ by Elizabeth Villiers, c1800. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)}

 

The Iron Bank of Braavos and the Sparrows

The parallels between Isabella and Cersei are striking: adultery, complicity in their husbands’ deaths and attempts to rule through their sons. Isabella and Mortimer were able to raise funds for their expedition from the Italian bankers because Edward II had defaulted on his debts to them; Isabella and Edward III promised to resume repayments.
Just so, the Iron Bank of Braavos was ready to support Stannis against Tommen, once Cersei had defaulted on the huge sums owed to the Bank. The Crown’s financial crisis also drove Cersei to strike a deal with the Sparrows, the fanatical grassroots movement that has taken over the Faith, and to allow them to arm themselves in return for forgetting the money the Crown had borrowed.
The Sparrows resemble the Franciscan movement, founded by St Francis in around 1209. The Franciscans sought to return to a simpler, less money-obsessed form of Christianity. Franciscan brothers (friars) were sworn to poverty and wandered from place to place preaching the Gospel to ordinary folk in language they could understand. The Sparrows of the Faith, however, combine their contempt for riches with a strict sexual morality and with the power, like that of the Inquisition, to compel sinners into religious courts and to punish them for their offences – as Cersei and Margaery have discovered.

_{c1220, a portrait of Saint Francis of Assisi kneeling at an rock altar to pray with a skull in his hand. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)}

The Ironborn

We haven’t seen much of the Ironborn, the Westerosi sea-borne warriors, since season four. Fierce piratical fighters, depending on their swift, stable and beautifully designed longships for speed and manoeuvrability, the Ironborn live by raiding their neighbours and by selling their captives into slavery in Volantis. So too the Vikings (9th-11th centuries) depended on their longships to raid along the coasts of Europe, journeying down the rivers of Russia to the Black Sea, around the Mediterranean, and of course across the North Sea to the British Isles.
We tend to think of the Vikings as mostly interested in easily portable plunder, but in fact they were active in the European slave trade. One Icelandic saga relates how a beautiful slave-woman was acquired by an Icelander at the market on an island off southern Sweden. Melkorka turned out to be the daughter of an Irish king and her son became one of the richest men in Iceland.
Vikings exploited the market for blond-haired, well-educated slaves in the Greek empire. They raided in the Baltic territories and sold their Slav captives in Constantinople: the origin of our word ‘slave’. Vikings were also farmers and traders as well as raiders; the Word of House Greyjoy, ‘We Do Not Sow’, would not have resonated with those Vikings who lived long enough to settle with a wife and family wherever they could find land, in Scandinavia, northern Britain, Ireland or Iceland.

_{Viking ships arriving in Britain, c1130. Found in the collection of Pierpont Morgan Library. Artist: Abbo of Fleury. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)}

The Dothraki

After a long absence from Game of Thrones the Dothraki are set to return. Loosely based on the central Asian Mongol peoples, these copper-skinned nomadic warriors are also involved in slaving and raiding around the grasslands of the Dothraki Sea.
The Mongols ruled over the largest land empire the world has ever seen, from the Pacific Ocean to Hungary. Western churchmen often visited them during the 13th century, bringing letters from western kings and from the pope. The friars wrote detailed accounts of their journeys, relating how difficult the weather was and how strange the food and drink. Fermented mare’s milk, or kumiss, was a poor substitute for wine, though they liked the spicy horsemeat sausages.

_{Genghis Khan, Mongol ruler, originally named Temujin, 1683 Woodcut. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)}
The Mongols held all other peoples in contempt, reports one writer. Hearing about the kingdom of France, they asked “whether there were many sheep and cattle and horses there, and whether they had not better go there at once and take it all”. Will the Dothraki who have captured Daenerys be quite so ambitious? Khal Drogo swore to take his men in the “wooden horses” (ships) to attack Westeros and capture the Iron Throne for his beloved wife, but traditionally the Dothraki have never sailed across the Narrow Sea.
Overall, then, Game of Thrones’ extraordinary hold on people’s imaginations has much to do with the way it harnesses mythology and legend: archetypes such as the dragons and the Three-Eyed Raven; the tales of lost children and reanimated corpses. Yet it’s the realness of the re-imagined medieval pasts it brings so vividly to life that makes viewers believe in Essos, the Seven Kingdoms and the battle for the Iron Throne.

Carolyne Larrington teaches medieval English literature at St John’s College, Oxford. She is the author of Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones (IB Tauris, November 2015).

Game of Thrones season six: the real-life medieval history

History Extra

Maisie Williams as Arya Stark in the sixth season of Game of Thrones, which airs on Sunday (Monday morning in Britain). © 2016 Home Box Office, Inc.

George RR Martin, author of the books upon which the Game of Thrones television show is based, notes that the battle for the Iron Throne is loosely based on the 15th-century Wars of the Roses; the chime of Stark and York and Lannister and Lancaster suggests as much. But Martin draws much more eclectically on medieval cultures, as the following examples demonstrate.

 

Queen Cersei

Cersei has been compared to a good number of medieval queens, such as Margaret of Anjou (d1482), wife of Henry VI. To my mind, though, Cersei, the “green-eyed lioness” of the Lannisters, is much more like Edward II’s queen Isabella, the ‘She-Wolf of France’. Daughter of King Philip IV (the Fair) of France, Isabella was sister of his three successors. She was married, probably aged 12, to Edward II of England in 1308. Edward gave her four children, but, notoriously, he neglected her for his good-looking male favourites.
His barons forced Edward to give up one of these favourites, Piers Gaveston, 1st Earl of Cornwall, who was executed in 1312, but by 1320 Edward was deeply involved with Hugh Despenser the Younger. As a consequence of Isabella’s hostility to the Despenser faction, her lands in England were taken from her, as were her children, and her household was broken up.

_{Cersei Lannister played by Lena Headey and Jaime Lannister played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. ©2015 Home Box Office, Inc.}
Isabella and Edward had effectively separated. When, in 1325, her eldest son, the future Edward III, went to France to do homage for the province of Gascony, which the English crown held from the French king, the queen seized her chance. In Paris Isabella took the exiled English lord Roger Mortimer as her lover, and they plotted against her husband.
Young Edward was promised in marriage to Philippa, daughter of William, Count of Hainault, in the Low Countries. In return William provided men and an advance on Philippa’s dowry. Borrowing heavily from Italian banking houses, Isabella, her son and Mortimer invaded England in 1326 and Edward II was overthrown. How far Isabella was complicit in her husband’s horrible death in 1327 isn’t clear, but she and Mortimer ruled England for the next four years.
In 1330 her son, Edward III, took charge of the kingdom, imprisoning his mother and executing her lover. Perhaps King Tommen will similarly assert himself against his mother in this sixth season?

_{Isabella of France, aka the 'She-Wolf of France', queen consort of Edward II of England. From the book ‘Our Queen Mothers’ by Elizabeth Villiers, c1800. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)}

 

The Iron Bank of Braavos and the Sparrows

The parallels between Isabella and Cersei are striking: adultery, complicity in their husbands’ deaths and attempts to rule through their sons. Isabella and Mortimer were able to raise funds for their expedition from the Italian bankers because Edward II had defaulted on his debts to them; Isabella and Edward III promised to resume repayments.
Just so, the Iron Bank of Braavos was ready to support Stannis against Tommen, once Cersei had defaulted on the huge sums owed to the Bank. The Crown’s financial crisis also drove Cersei to strike a deal with the Sparrows, the fanatical grassroots movement that has taken over the Faith, and to allow them to arm themselves in return for forgetting the money the Crown had borrowed.
The Sparrows resemble the Franciscan movement, founded by St Francis in around 1209. The Franciscans sought to return to a simpler, less money-obsessed form of Christianity. Franciscan brothers (friars) were sworn to poverty and wandered from place to place preaching the Gospel to ordinary folk in language they could understand. The Sparrows of the Faith, however, combine their contempt for riches with a strict sexual morality and with the power, like that of the Inquisition, to compel sinners into religious courts and to punish them for their offences – as Cersei and Margaery have discovered.

_{c1220, a portrait of Saint Francis of Assisi kneeling at an rock altar to pray with a skull in his hand. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)}

The Ironborn

We haven’t seen much of the Ironborn, the Westerosi sea-borne warriors, since season four. Fierce piratical fighters, depending on their swift, stable and beautifully designed longships for speed and manoeuvrability, the Ironborn live by raiding their neighbours and by selling their captives into slavery in Volantis. So too the Vikings (9th-11th centuries) depended on their longships to raid along the coasts of Europe, journeying down the rivers of Russia to the Black Sea, around the Mediterranean, and of course across the North Sea to the British Isles.
We tend to think of the Vikings as mostly interested in easily portable plunder, but in fact they were active in the European slave trade. One Icelandic saga relates how a beautiful slave-woman was acquired by an Icelander at the market on an island off southern Sweden. Melkorka turned out to be the daughter of an Irish king and her son became one of the richest men in Iceland.
Vikings exploited the market for blond-haired, well-educated slaves in the Greek empire. They raided in the Baltic territories and sold their Slav captives in Constantinople: the origin of our word ‘slave’. Vikings were also farmers and traders as well as raiders; the Word of House Greyjoy, ‘We Do Not Sow’, would not have resonated with those Vikings who lived long enough to settle with a wife and family wherever they could find land, in Scandinavia, northern Britain, Ireland or Iceland.

_{Viking ships arriving in Britain, c1130. Found in the collection of Pierpont Morgan Library. Artist: Abbo of Fleury. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)}

The Dothraki

After a long absence from Game of Thrones the Dothraki are set to return. Loosely based on the central Asian Mongol peoples, these copper-skinned nomadic warriors are also involved in slaving and raiding around the grasslands of the Dothraki Sea.
The Mongols ruled over the largest land empire the world has ever seen, from the Pacific Ocean to Hungary. Western churchmen often visited them during the 13th century, bringing letters from western kings and from the pope. The friars wrote detailed accounts of their journeys, relating how difficult the weather was and how strange the food and drink. Fermented mare’s milk, or kumiss, was a poor substitute for wine, though they liked the spicy horsemeat sausages.

_{Genghis Khan, Mongol ruler, originally named Temujin, 1683 Woodcut. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)}
The Mongols held all other peoples in contempt, reports one writer. Hearing about the kingdom of France, they asked “whether there were many sheep and cattle and horses there, and whether they had not better go there at once and take it all”. Will the Dothraki who have captured Daenerys be quite so ambitious? Khal Drogo swore to take his men in the “wooden horses” (ships) to attack Westeros and capture the Iron Throne for his beloved wife, but traditionally the Dothraki have never sailed across the Narrow Sea.
Overall, then, Game of Thrones’ extraordinary hold on people’s imaginations has much to do with the way it harnesses mythology and legend: archetypes such as the dragons and the Three-Eyed Raven; the tales of lost children and reanimated corpses. Yet it’s the realness of the re-imagined medieval pasts it brings so vividly to life that makes viewers believe in Essos, the Seven Kingdoms and the battle for the Iron Throne.

Carolyne Larrington teaches medieval English literature at St John’s College, Oxford. She is the author of Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones (IB Tauris, November 2015).
The first episode of the sixth season of Game of Thrones airs in Britain on Sky Atlantic at 2am on Monday 25 April (and in America on HBO at 9pm EST on Sunday 24 April).

Game of Thrones restaurant pops up in London to celebrate season four DVD

 The Game of Thrones pop-up restaurant All Men Must Dine at the Andaz Liverpool Street, London. Photograph: Joe Pepler/Rex

All Men Must Dine, set up by HBO, serves up medieval banquet inspired by the show and food mentioned in the book

The seven deadly sins get a pretty good showing on Game of Thrones. If one character isn’t poisoning another in the name of envy or greed, they are almost certainly engaged in some lust-fuelled activity, often with a sibling. But at the Game of Thrones pop-up restaurant, in London for three days, the sin at the heart of the whole affair is unadulterated gluttony.
As one of the first guests to be ushered in to the opulent dining hall and confronted with a banquet table decorated with overflowing platters of fruit, feathers and a real-life human contortionist, one thing swiftly became clear: this whole affair was a monument to culinary excess. We were also warned there may be a couple of potential assassins or Dothraki whores in our midst, but in the world of Westeros such things are really par for the course.
The lavish, immersive restaurant, called All Men Must Dine, has been set up by HBO to mark the release of season four of the popular fantasy drama on DVD. Open from 13 to 15 February, the selected diners (winners of a Sky competition) temporarily leave behind their ordinary identities to become the elite lords, ladies and princes privy to the clandestine meeting of the Small Council in King’s Landing.
Slightly reluctantly embracing my regal new persona as Lady Hannah of Beyond The Wall, I took my seat at the table on Thursday night – easier said than done when you have to carefully avoid the limbs of the female contortionist on one side and the feathers of a taxidermied peacock on the other.

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Game of Thrones pop-up restaurant All Men Must Dine. Photograph: Joe Pepler/Rex

Nonetheless, the medieval authenticity of the banquet’s ambience was truly impeccable, helped by the flickering candlelight and group of serenading lute players – though their novelty wore off quite quickly on the sixth rendition of the Game of Thrones theme song.
This was not to be a feast for the faint-hearted, nor one that tolerated any modern food fussiness. Vegetarians, vegans, fruitarians, those intolerant to wheat, dairy, insects or food doused in flames and dry ice were not welcome at this table.
The first of the six courses, which overall featured around 15 different dishes each symbolising a significant moment in series four, was a spiced pigeon, dried fruit and almond pie (to honour the murder of King Joffrey), accompanied by a dandelion salad and a poached veal tongue, a dish to symbolise the lies of Tyrion Lannister.
And while in my shamefully sporadic watching of Game of Thrones I’ve never had any hankering to sample what a dragon’s egg might taste like, when it is made of a buttery pastry shell filled with ham hock, prunes, apple and sage, it is actually pretty tasty. Quickly abandoning my medieval cutlery (turns out that third prong on a modern fork is quite essential) I dived in, hands first, with medieval gusto.
If the tongue was a little on the slimy side (a tad too tongue-like) everything else was fragrant and delicious. Even small loaves of spiced bread, so heavy they more closely resembled small leaden weapons than edible foodstuffs, proved worthy of the intense jaw work they required to chew.

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As more courses followed, each handed to the diner with an explanatory handwritten scroll and several served in a flourish of smoke and fire, our silver platters began to overflow with everything from glazed eel to quail stuffed with apricots, almonds and sultanas, stuffed vine leaves and even fried locusts, which tasted like a mouthful of dust.
As we approached the fifth course, all the eating had begun to prove exhausting and by the time the whole suckling pig was brought to the table – unnervingly pierced upright on a stake and subsequently set alight in a pyre of herbs – I started to worry my usually never-ending appetite would let me down.
But, in the true spirit of Man v. Food, I persevered, spurred on by the friendly friars. Even the presence of a comedy singing ukelele duo, usually enough to ruin absolutely any occasion, proved strangely likeable, helped along by the free-flowing tankards of wine.
By the time dessert was served, we had all become so used to the unorthodox presentation of medieval delicacies that the bone filled with bone marrow custard and laced with red cherry sauce hardly caused a single raised eyebrow. Indeed, it even turned out to be a bizarre highlight of the banquet – though, as head chef Jamie Hazeel admitted afterwards, had been the course “most fraught with difficulties”.
Speaking about how he had come up with the elaborate menu, Hazeel said it had taken six weeks of research and experimentation.
“We took our inspiration from three different places,” he said. “Firstly, the image one has of medieval food, the drama of how it’s served and evocative dishes like piles of quail, a whole sucking pig and pigeon pie, that we thought were important, atmospherically to include.”
“The second source of inspiration was food that was actually mentioned in the book, such as the veal tongue which we served with oldtown mustard, which was our conception of something that was actually mentioned in the book.”
“And then the most important source of inspiration was just from different events that happened during season four of the show and celebrating those through the dishes we created,” Hazeel said.
“We are massive fans of the show, so it was a huge amount of fun.”

Hannah Ellis-Petersen
The Guardian

How Real Is the 'Game of Thrones' Medieval World?

Daenerys Targaryen with one of her dragons in season 4 of HBO's "Game of Thrones."

By Stephanie Pappas

The upcoming season of "Game of Thrones" will take viewers to a magical world harboring dragons, sorceresses and supernatural ice creatures. But the contested kingdom of Westeros is not entirely a flight of fancy — with its knights and lords, the setting is at least quasi-medieval.
George R. R. Martin, the author of "A Song of Ice and Fire" book series on which the HBO series is based, has said he draws inspiration from certain historical events, including the English Wars of the Roses. And viewers appreciate the series' dedication to reality, as brutal as it may be. So how close is the "Game of Thrones" world to the real Middle Ages?
Spot-on, in some aspects, experts say, but the real medieval Europe was likely far more boring and somewhat less brutal than Westeros. It was also far more religious, with the Christian Church involved in every aspect of life.

Defining the Middle Ages
First, two caveats: Middle Ages are roughly defined as the time between the fall of the Roman Empire in A.D. 476 and the Protestant Reformation, which began in 1517 and wrapped up around 1648, though historians do quibble about the exact definition of "medieval." Regardless of the actual dates, 1,000 years is a long time, and Europe is a big place, so generalizations about "medieval times" are hard to make.
Second, Martin's fantasy world is a gritty twist on the high fantasy settings first popularized by J.R.R. Tolkien's concept of Middle Earth. Comparing Westeros with real medieval Europe is not intended as criticism of the stories; fantasy is obviously not concerned with historical accuracy. [Game of Thrones: How Characters Echo History]
That being said, Martin does capture some medieval realities, said Kelly DeVries, a medieval historian at Loyola University Maryland.

Arya Stark and "The Hound" modeling an armored tunic in "Game of Thrones."
Credit: HBO

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"The arms and armor are very well-respected," DeVries told Live Science. Typically, modern filmmakers go for flashy beheadings and limb-amputation-by-sword in battle, he said. In actuality, medieval armor did a good job of protecting against the weapons of the time. Someone "wearing his wealth" on the battlefield was much more likely to be captured and ransomed than killed. Longbows and distance weapons were also less accurate than typically portrayed, so the impressive through-the-helmet hits to the eye often seen on television were rare, to say the least.
"Bleeding out was the way that people died in battle," DeVries said. "The weapons would very rarely hit something vital enough to kill on impact." [Medieval Torture's 10 Biggest Myths]
Some of the show's flashier battle sequences are rooted in truth, too. Wildfire — a volatile, flammable liquid used in the Season 2 episode "Blackwater" — echoes an incendiary called Greek fire used by people in the Byzantine Empire. No one knows exactly what the substance was, but it probably included some combination of pine resin, sulfur or other incendiary chemicals.
Martin also gets historians' applause for his accurate portrayal of the Middle Ages as more violent than the world inhabited by today's audience.
"It's certainly true that homicide rates per capita were very high," said Carl Pyrdum III, a doctoral candidate in medieval history at Yale University. "It's true that most people would have encountered some sort of violent spectacle in their daily life. Public executions were common."
Justice could also be grisly, Pyrdum told Live Science. In one case, a woman was convicted of stabbing someone to death. Her sentence was to be stabbed the same number of times as she had stabbed her victim. The convicted woman died long before all 50 or so stabs had been carried out, Pyrdum said, but the stabbings continued until the sentence was complete.
"That would be really gross if it were on TV," he said.
Creative license
But life probably wasn't quite as horrific as portrayed in the war-torn world of Westeros, at least not most of the time. Back then, commoners worked hard, but they were "just people," Pyrdum said.
"We have lots of records of peasants having fun — getting really drunk, celebrations, parades," he said.
Holidays and daily mass would have given peasants a break from their labor, DeVries said. Life was simple, and not particularly exciting.
During times of war, however, things may not have been so peachy. But even then, DeVries said, the nobles who were slugging it out over territory often made attempts to leave the peasants and their farms out of it.
"If you are trying to fight for that region of land, you don't want to cut off all the economic possibilities for the future," he said.
Similarly, battles were more often geared toward getting the other side to run away than toward the wholesale slaughter seen in several "Game of Thrones" battles, DeVries said. An exception to these rules was the English Wars of the Roses, a series of battles between the House of York and the House of Lancaster for the throne, from which Martin has drawn inspiration. Those wars were more widely fought and included more peasants as combatants or innocent victims, DeVries said.
Medieval women
"Game of Thrones" is famous among fantasy novels for including a number of women in the cast. Women did occasionally rise to power in the Middle Ages, but it was Henry VIII who brought them a dubious kind of equality: His wife Anne Boleyn was the first woman put to death for treason, said John Ashdown-Hill, an independent medieval historian involved in the real-life search for Wars of the Roses victim King Richard III.
"It's only from Henry VIII's time on that you get any women being executed [for treason]," Ashdown-Hill told Live Science. "That's something that only comes in at the 16th century."
Westeros' pitched battle for the throne would have been quite an unusual situation, Ashdown-Hill said. Most civil wars happened when a king left no clear successor, he said, unlike in "Game of Thrones," where Joffrey is acknowledged as the dead king's son (at least by name — his actual father is his mother's brother). [Fight, Fight, Fight: The History of Human Aggression]

Joffrey Baratheon becomes king of Westeros when his supposed father dies -- though he is actually the product of incest between his mother and uncle.
Credit: HBO

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In fact, had Joffrey come to the throne as a child king in medieval England, his uncles would have no reason to win the throne through combat, Ashdown-Hill said; rather, they would have held the power in their nephew's stead. In France, on the other hand, it was standard for the Queen Mother to hold power for her minor children on the throne, which Joffrey's mother Cersei tries to do in "Game of Thrones," with varying degrees of success.
For women in Martin's novels and the HBO show, sexual violence is a constant specter, with rape an everyday threat for many of the female characters. No doubt such violence existed in the Middle Ages, historians say, but women had some protections. Muslim armies rarely raped conquered populations, because rape was an unforgivable crime in Islam, DeVries said. Christian armies had slightly less-stringent religious prohibitions, but women were more protected than commonly depicted in popular culture, he said. The uptick in sexual brutality actually occurred after the Middle Ages, during the Wars of Religion kicked off by the Protestant Reformation, he said. In those conflicts, opposing sides saw each other as heretics and thus felt free to commit brutalities.
Rape was not accepted as a fact of civilian life, either, though the definition of sexual assault was limited. In early-medieval England, only a previously chaste or virgin women could prosecute a man for rape. In 1285, Edward I's parliament changed the definition of rape to allow for prosecution of men who raped nonvirgins, and allowed women to bring suit against attackers themselves instead of through a male relative.
The legal change suggests that rape was, indeed, seen as a serious crime in medieval Europe. But just as today, convictions could be hard to come by. Between 1208 and 1321, 49 percent of rape accusations brought to court ended up with the alleged victim arrested for false appeal, according to a 2009 master's thesis by Emory University student Stephanie Brown. In practice, patriarchal society was unable to cope with women bringing legal accusations against men in court, Brown concluded.
Magic and religion
The most outlandish plot points in "Game of Thrones" might have felt the most realistic to medieval Europeans. Magic was part of everyday folk belief back then, Pyrdum said — though it was "really kind of boring."

One of Daenerys' dragons in HBO's "Game of Thrones."
Credit: HBO

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"I was depressed when I found out what medieval magic and dragons were really like, because I grew up on a steady diet of Tolkien and 'Dungeons & Dragons,'" he said. [Beasts & Dragons: How Reality Made Myth]
Instead of "fireball spells," he said, tales of medieval magic revolved around things like a magical communion wafer that made everyone who touched it stick to it. Or someone might cut down a tree and — gasp! — find another tree inside of it.
Witches were considered a danger, but even their powers tended to be surreal: For instance, women accused of being witches were blamed for removing men's genitals and sending the organs to perch in trees like X-rated birds.
Dragons were perhaps the biggest disappointment of all, Pyrdum said. They were not the undefeatable fire-breathers of "Game of Thrones."
"The idea seems to be that all you had to do to a dragon was to tell it that it no longer had power because Christ had come and the Christians were in charge," Pyrdum said. "Then, the dragon just had to go, 'OK,' and leave like, 'I was hoping you wouldn't mention the Christ thing.'"
Beowulf, the Old English epic poem, may have been told as a tale of the horrors that occurred before Christian times, when people had to fight monsters instead of sending them away, Pyrdum said.
The pervasiveness of a major religion in all aspects of life is what "Game of Thrones" and most fantasy epics leave out of their Middle Age-style worlds, he said.
"The thing that always strikes me is, these people don't seem to be that interested in religion," Pyrdum said of fantasy authors. "When I see a fantasy work, they seem to be modern people stuck with medieval technology … It's hard to separate the medieval world from the presence of the church." [8 Ways Religion Impacts Your Life]
Indeed, both Christian and Muslim armies were full of believers, DeVries said. Without that aspect of overwhelming religion, he said, "you can't really get the same exact feeling of what it would have been like to be in the Middle Ages and fight similar wars."
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