Game of Thrones, the Norman Conquest and Political Violence
The violence and gore in the hit TV series simply reflect the bloodiness of the Middle Ages, right? Not necessarily, says Marc Morris.
So I finally got round to watching Game of Thrones. This was partly because my partner wanted to watch it and I wanted to sit on the same couch, and partly because almost all the other medievalists I know have been talking about it a lot over the past couple of years, leaving me feeling very much out of the loop. I quite enjoyed it. The dwarf is very good, isn't he? And the princess with the dragons: she definitely gets a huzzah.
Game of Thrones, in case you've just arrived by spaceship, is a fantasy-adventure type saga with a very medieval flavour. As lots of other commentators have pointed out, it contains, in its plots and characters, historical parallels with the real Middle Ages. People have pointed out similarities, for example, with England in the fifteenth century during the Wars of the Roses. York and Lancaster/Stark and Lannister - you don't have to concentrate too hard to spot that one.
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