Fantastical Historical Fiction -- an essay by WWS
May 14, 2016 2:39:06 GMT
voice, SlyWren, and 4 more like this
Post by whitewolfstark on May 14, 2016 2:39:06 GMT
Forward: I have been working on a rather long essay (it's about 4,800 words down below, and I'm only part-of-the-way through it), and I thought that I could post it in parts to help with the digestion of it. As such, here is part one, do enjoy, and keep in mind that this is only the beginning. YouTube videos and other links are provided as further evidence for my points and a chance for you, the reader to take a break and digest a point, if needed.
Consider the perspective that A Song of Ice and Fire is a fantastical historical saga, written down and distributed for you, a modern day reader from a suburb of King’s Landing, Wintertown, or even Shadow City that’s now overtaken the ruins of Sunspear. To you the events are as much history as they are legend. If such is a step too far for your imagination, and you need help imagining such a thing, consider how you might feel reading one of the many Viking Sagas about their journeys across the northern Atlantic, or of Homer’s Illiad with its Greek and Trojan characters based on an earlier culture lost but not completely forgotten—even if slightly exaggerated, or of Charlemagne’s activities during the Matter of France, or of Camelot and King Arthur or the other half legendary Brittonic kings such as Cymbeline, Lear, and Mark of Cornwall during the Matter of Britain. Half of the story clearly shrouded in myth with gods, magic, and sorcery, the other insisting to be taken seriously as a history and written record. From that perspective, I then ask, what does the story tell you about Westeros?
In analyzing A Song of Ice and Fire, too often I see reviewers, YouTubers, and essayists approach the above sentiment by either trying to look purely at the myth or purely at the historical in some attempt to separate the two and keep them from touching one another. As though each aspect must be kept in separate marked out containers on a four-year-old's plastic plate, and heaven help if any of the different foods mix or even, dare I say it, touch one another. There’s rarely an attempt to try and see both at the same time occupying the same space, though the story and our authors clearly demands that we do. In the course of the following essay, I will approach the series with that mindset, discounting neither the mythic nor the historical in an attempt to answer that question: What does the story tell us about Westeros? It’s only by answering that question I believe we can come then presume to apply the story's message and theme to our larger world, and perhaps Martin's commentary upon it.
Since most people are familiar with the historical influences regarding A Song of Ice and Fire and there are essays, videos, and DVD featurettes devoted to exploring the topic. If you want a greater exploration of the topic, I highly suggest checking a few of the links above. As such, I’ll try and keep this subject to an overview within A Song of Ice and Fire, and instead look to examining the hows, whys and wherefores within historical fiction--taking it apart and asking: what makes it tick? That said, when looking at the historical narratives and influences on our favorite novel series, I think most people approach it all wrong. They look to real life history, which George has stated he’s taken from but then “sawed the serial numbers off and amplified the event to an eleven” (Season 5 DVD Feature, The Real History Behind the Game of Thrones) as much as he can, and they then attempt in isolation of each event or character to play “A Game of Flip Cards” as I like to call it. Usually having made the match that thought on the event or character stops, as if considering what their borrowing might mean or not mean is of little value to consider. A few, Jamie Odair (linked above) being one in particular, on their favorite comparisons try and take it a few steps further (her wonderful essay on Tywin in comparison to Edward I “Longshanks” Plantagenet of England, and what such a comparison might clue us in to the common values of the character with the real life historical person is what I have in particular), but on the whole once the match is made the historical essayist usually pats themselves on the back for being clever enough to disassemble, sort, and reassemble the historical puzzle pieces, and treat any further discussion beyond the match as being “over”. As such, we can play along by flipping the cards along with them. The War of the Five Kings? The Wars of the Roses & the Armagnac-Burgundian War mixed together. The Red Wedding? The Black Dinner & a massacre of Glencoe hybrid. Cersei Lannister? Margaret of Anjou and Joan of Kent. Robb Stark? The young Edward IV. Robert Baratheon? The old Edward IV and Henry VIII. Sansa Stark? A concoction of Elizabeth of York, Anne Neville, and Elizabeth the First. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera and so forth.
The above "game of flip cards" ignores the question of why those historical events are remembered and retold through adaptations of historical fiction and drama, or re-imagined for other settings such as in A Song of Ice and Fire. The reason why such stories are told is because they tell how and why our society came to be the way it is today. Often historical periods will be revisited when artists feel that there’s a parallel playing out in our current times. The go to example of this type is typically Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible being a parable for 1950s McCarthyism, the same parallel being expressed in Bernstein and Hellman's adaptation of Voltaire's Candide (a picaresque novel with some historical settings), here the carnival frenzy of the Catholic Inquisition's auto da fe in response to the 1745 Lisbon Earthquake was equivocated to McCarthyism by Bernstein and Hellman. Or alternatively, the collective conscious of society makes the connection between the past and nowadays for the artists, post-hoc. The classic example of this nearly got Shakespeare in trouble, late in Elizabeth I's reign, which I'll touch upon later, but another example that immediately jumps to my mind being Derek Jarman's interpretation of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II as retelling the Gay Liberation movement's struggles through Thatcher's administration and aftermath, using the play as an allegory for gay rights' struggle through the 1980s.
For instance there was a tremendous outpouring of adaptations of American Civil War & Reconstruction era books, films, and television mini-series from the 1960s – 1980s in the United States: North & South (1985 – 1991) and the popular book series it was based on (Love & War, and North & South respectively), The Killer Angels, its sequels, and the movies based on those books (Gods & Generals, The Last Full Measure), the TV series The Blue and the Gray (1986), Roots (1977), while telling its family story from the Colonial period to modern day wasn’t wholly unaffected by Civil War nostalgia either, and then there’s several episodes of The Twilight Zone such as The Passerby, where it was outright used as an allegory for the death of the Old South and old grudges and the hopes for a New South to be born out of its ashes, etc.. The 1960s makes some bit of sense, that was the centennial for the war after all, and the grandchildren of the veterans of that war were just beginning to die off and take with them the legacy of their grandparents’ memories of that era with them. However, when one stops to reconsider that the allegory of the Civil War was being resurrected during the era of Civil Rights and the readjustment in American culture of racial relations between black and white societies, in a way it makes sense that artists were drawn to the era that more than any other era between the two in question, defined the beginning of the period of time that came between them, a kind of “look back” at how the beginning of an era of time began as that era was felt to be drawing to a close in the present day. It can also address the fear that if these tensions aren’t resolved, that if things don’t change again, that history just might repeat itself. That’s the underlying threat that comes with every historical drama, and as the South was being reinvented along racial lines over the course of the 1960s – 1980s, the concern that some sort of war fought over the issue of race might happen again if not play out right on their television sets, must have passed through the thoughts of those alive during that day even if only on a subconscious level.
A similar effect can be found by looking at Shakespeare and his treatment of the Wars of the Roses, from whom it’s rather obvious George has nodded his head to in some respects in A Song of Ice and Fire. When looking at Shakespeare’s history plays, it’s rather easy to see a few set of plays that run together one right after the other. We get not just a treatment of the Wars of the Roses themselves in Henry VI Parts 1, 2, & 3 as well as in Richard III (which I should note is the most popularly performed Shakespeare play of all time), but Shakespeare takes the narrative back with his own prequel tetraology of Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, and Henry V. There is some question as to how much Shakespeare contributed to a play about Edward III, which is clearly a mishmash of various authors writing collaboratively, but for the overall narrative, Edward III works as a prequel to the prequels and should be considered separately itself. In any case, Shakespeare eventually winds up pinning the inciting influences of the Wars of the Roses occurring in the first place by going back approximately 80 years before they were even fought in the first place, by depicting the fall and deposition of Richard II and the rise of the House of Lancaster, and thus eventually the arrival of the Wars of the Roses when the House of Lancaster fell from its greatness and opened up the door for the opportunistic House of York (that his how Shakespeare portrays them, rightly or wrongly) to come in and allow the nobility to squabble among each other, pretender kings to pop up, and for England to bleed.
Seeing Shakespeare’s start point with Richard II, we see how the Tudor society saw the change of dynasties, and ultimately the original sin of dispossessing the anointed King that started the Wars of the Roses, which remained as an accepted narrative for the English historians and people interested in the subject well until the 20th Century when that viewpoint was called into question. However it should be noted that for centuries that viewpoint stood. For those unfamiliar with this original sin, and are curious, I’ll give a brief rundown, it is the violation both by the King and by the Country of the social contract that held the country together. Richard II through the violation of inheritance rights to the House of Lancaster and allowing base human corruption, flatters, and favoritism to sway and thus corrupt him, and the nobles themselves violating that social contract by overthrowing Richard II nearly unanimously to support an unlikely pretender from a younger, but more powerful branch of the family who’d been wronged by Richard. This conflict is distilled here as a dying John of Gaunt (the elderly patriarch of the House of Lancaster) uses his deathbed to finally tell Richard II off and about what he really thinks of him and his reign:
Richard II is forced to abdicate, which, as promised above is the controversial aspect that nearly got Shakespeare in trouble during Elizabeth I's reign. As Elizabeth I's life was drawing to a close, there were a few figureheads pressuring for Elizabeth to put aside her crown and let someone younger, and not the son of Mary Queen of Scots rule. One of these pretenders got it into his head to organize a rally, and planned to use a performance of Shakespeare's previously written Richard II, with specific attention brought to the deposition scene (see it below) in order to "rally support" for his movement to force Elizabeth's hand and install himself as King.
Elizabeth I luckily for her ran what we'd essentially label today as a police state, with her spies hearing about the gathering, and arresting the pretender before the play could finish.
Returning to the meta narrative of Shakespeare's history plays, in an attempt to maintain the social contract, the new heir to the House of Lancaster, Henry Bolingbrooke (Henry IV), is chosen to be the new King in order to restore faith, but just as it seems that faith had been restored (after many troubles of Henry IV’s reign) through the great achievements of Henry V (Henry IV’s son), England was cursed to lose Henry V and have his infant son inherit the throne, leaving the noble lords of England who’d conquered France under Henry’s guidance, and won the Battle of Agincourt to lose France and quarrel among each other. Shakespeare makes that relatively plain in his epilogue to Henry V, as view-able here:
England was capable of achieving greatness because they got rid of corrupt and tyrannical Richard II (imagine a Joffrey-like persona merged with the eccentricity of Michael Jackson), but England was also cursed because they overthrew their anointed King—God’s chosen representative on Earth to lead and guide his people as a ruler, and it was thus God who had punished them, the English people, by raising them up and giving them the taste of greatness and then taking it away once a single drop had fallen onto England’s metaphorical tantalized tongue. And after all, the forced abdication of Richard II in such a narrative, sets the precedent that the King can and should be overthrown when he does not benefit the nobles, thus allowing when the weak-willed and often mad Henry VI appears for challenges to his anointed person to be taken seriously as “anointed kings have been overthrown before”, thus setting the stage for the power struggles of the Wars of the Roses. And if Shakespeare had a collective hand in Edward III as most scholars now agree he wrote a few scenes for, the blame for why Richard II comes to power himself is taken back to his grandfather’s ambition and claim to crown himself King of both England and France (Edward having a claim on the French throne through his mother, Isabella, the daughter of Philip IV the Fair), thus beginning the Hundred Years War that will come to an end under Henry VI. A war the English would love to fight on again and off again, and hate the kings who would try and bring a peaceful end to the conflict (Richard II, and Henry VI). After all, if Edward III hadn’t gone to war over the French throne, Edward the Black Prince wouldn’t have died, and Richard II wouldn’t have inherited the throne at such a young age, almost as if Richard II and his “tyranny” as his reign is often called in English history, were a punishment from God, for Edward III’s over ambition—well, at least that’s how that narrative framework would work, and the fact that subsequent houses would pop up such as the House of Lancaster and York, would also be due to Edward III and his multitude of progeny he left the world (Edward III as a play has a good deal of time spent on Edward III wooing a Northern England Countess, thus hinting Edward could hardly keep it in his pants, so to speak, hence why he left so much progeny that would turn into the Houses of Lancaster and York eventually). But this is getting away from the point, the point being that somewhere along the line the social contract of the people and the king was broken, both through the tragic flaws of certain rulers, and the dissatisfaction of the nobles and populace to submit to the rule of law of a King with too many flaws to ignore, in their books. Somewhere along the lines, the social contract becomes thinner and thinner as more stress and strain is put on it until it is completely broken, and then it is only a matter of time until disaster and destruction dooms them all.
What is this social contract I am mentioning? To be brief, it is a sociopolitical theory first developed in ancient Greek (Plato) and Buddhist thought (so it is both an Eastern and Western concept, with respective differences in each sphere) that in order for a society to exist it must maintain the consent of the governed to be ruled, and that in exchange for giving up certain freedoms for the sake of the authority or majority rule, other freedoms are protected by the ruler or majority. It is largely known in its modern form from Enlightenment era philosophers such as Hume and Rousseau who debated and further developed the concept in their philosophical treatises. The idea being that once a social contract is writ between a ruler and his or her people, or a ruling elite and their people, or a majority rule and the rest of the population, that as long as that social contract is held to, that the society will hold together. Part of America’s social contract has a physical form in the US Constitution, as is part of the English social contract in the Magna Carta—however social contracts do not have to be explicitly or even wholly written down, as long as an understanding is made between the powerful and the powerless of what the relationship between the two is. Social Contracts can thus grow and change over time as understandings of what they mean change and grow.
Let us stop for an instant now that we’ve arrived at the point of the social contract and look back to historical fiction and drama, which is but half of ASOIAF. As previously stated, historical fiction and drama is partly retold because it explains why our society is the way it is, and as such these stories, are, if you examine them, stories about when the social contract came into an unexpected problem or had worn out its welcome, and needed to be rewritten badly for whatever reason. Typically what starts these historical fiction dramas is a depiction of the event that breaks the social contract, and the slow unraveling of society that follows as it descends increasingly into chaos, until some amendment or figure to rewrite the social contract can be found and renew faith. However typically, what historical fiction and drama spends the most time depicting, is a society collapsing in on itself after the social contract has been broken. The reforging part of the social contract is less interesting to historical fiction authors, truth be told, though they do sometimes include a truncated version of that reforging. Whether the author ends on a cheerful note as the contract is rewritten, or a woeful one before any sign of social renewal is lost to the ether, is up to artistic license. A clear example beyond Shakespeare’s history plays can be found in another influence on A Song of Ice and Fire; Les Rois Maudits aka The Accursed Kings, which as George says, "The Accursed Kings has it all. Iron Kings and strangled queens, battles and betrayals, lies and lust, deception, family rivalries, the curse of the Templars, babies switched at birth, she-wolves, sin, and swords, the doom of a great dynasty ... and all of it (well, most of it) straight from the pages of history. ... This was the original game of thrones." -- GRRM, foreword to Le Roi De Fer or The Iron King.
The epic narrative is a series of books which covers how over a period of twenty years France went from being the Medieval superpower of France under Philip IV “the Iron King” aka “the Fair” Capet, to being invaded and doomed to a century of warfare now known as The Hundred Years War (taking that argument of what led to the English Wars of the Roses back to yet another grandfather). What is the original sin which condemns France? It’s two-fold, but as the legend goes, the Capet dynasty is cursed when it completes a seven year round up of the Knights Templar and then eliminates them upon Philip IV’s orders in an attempt to wipe out his debts that he owed them. Infamously the curse being cast upon Philip IV and his dynasty by the leader of the Knights Templar as he was burned to death, with the curse lasting unto the 13th generation of his progeny (the English kings fall under this curse remember because, though the Wars of the Roses occurs at the 7th generation from Philip for them—the 13th ending up as far as I can tell on James II, the last English King to be deposed by popular revolt… oddly coincidental, isn’t it?). The other event of the two-fold event that begins the doom of France being the legitimacy of the dynasty being called into question when the three wives of his princely sons are caught cheating on their husbands (or in the case of one of them, assisting the other two to commit adultery) in what is historically known as the Tour de Nesle Affair, a fact that is used as political ammunition by Robert of Artois in his constant inheritance dispute with his Aunt Mahaut over a county, an inheritance dispute that Philip IV had originally decided in favor of Mahaut so he could marry her daughters to two of his sons and they’d have something themselves to inherit, and the richest lands in France would eventually come back into possession of the crown. The traditional narrative is called into question by Maurice Druon, the author of the book series, but essentially it’s relatively easy to see: because the Knights Templar were persecuted (on Friday the 13th I should note), the Capets and with them France, was cursed by God with a hundred years of war. Druon, who is typical of early – mid 20th Century thinkers and writers calls this divine wroth perspective into question by showing that the true players, in his mind, are not the Kings and Princes and all the other high rulers of France, but instead the more important players are the Lombard bankers, the wily Cardinal who aims at being Pope, and most especially the lesser nobility involved in an inheritance dispute, that really brought about the weakening and ultimately the end of the Capet Dynasty, while the Templar curse took all the credit for their work. Ultimately Druon argues that it was the Capet’s inability to truly control their subordinates coupled with simple bad luck that brought about doom for France.
It’s this last viewpoint that I believe George has especially borrowed from Druon, as it seems a Pentoshi cheesemonger and a Lyseni spymaster team versus a minor Vale lord with a chip on his shoulder against several high lords, and the Braavosi Iron Bankers who everyone owes money are the true arbiters of power and the players in political games and machinations—everyone else seem to be pawns or dependents of them in some form or another (eventually even The Night’s Watch when Jon in-debts the watch to the Iron Bank). High nobles and the royal family attempt to play their own political games, but ultimately are swept away by the powers underneath chipping away at them until they collapse and fall. As such, I think we’ve arrived at the viewpoint to best examine one of the major plot points of A Song of Ice and Fire, and that’s the “game of thrones” that dominates the story of the southern half of Westeros.
As I prepare to draw back from examining other examples of historical fiction, how they work, and their potential influence on Martin, there’s one last aspect of historical fiction I’d like to mention as we prepare to transition to speaking about what I’m sure all of you are waiting for me to mention: the magic. And that last aspect of historical fiction is the sense of historical inevitability. George himself has stated that: “as much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what’s going to happen.” And that is our last piece of the puzzle, mentioned above, but now fully explored. When we read historical fiction, or watch history plays penned by Renaissance authors such as Shakespeare or Marlowe, we’re watching or reading with the full knowledge of where the story will go. It’s a perspective that literary critic Northrop Frye mentioned in his third essay "Theory of Myths", of his 1957 publication: Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays:
“[T]he natural cycle, the steady unbroken turning of the wheel of fate or fortune. It sees experience in our terms, with the point of epiphany closed up, and its motto is Browning’s “there may be heaven; there must be hell.” Like the corresponding phase of tragedy, it is less moral and more generalized and metaphysical in its interest, less melioristic and more stoical and resigned. … The refrain in the Old English Complaint of Deor: “Thaes ofereode; thisses swa maeg” (freely translatable as: “Other people got through things; maybe I can”) expresses a stoicism not of the “invictus” type, which maintains a romantic dignity, but rather a sense found also in the parallel second phase of satire, that the practical and immediate situation is likely to be worthy of more respect than the theoretical explanation of it.” (pp 237 – 8)
It is that sense of the “unbroken turning of the wheel of fate or fortune” that niggles at the back of our minds, knowing the historical endings to our historical fiction as we do. We know, when we read Phillipa Gregory that Anne Boleyn is going to be beheaded when Henry begins his wooing her to be his mistress, and as we read along we can’t help but watch as everything seems to line up perfectly in place for her to meet her fate, step by step by step. Sometimes historical fiction authors take advantage of the audience knowing more than the characters, and thus, like Shakespeare does at the beginning of Richard III, invites us in on the manipulation, revealing to us all the manipulations, step by step by step.
George however takes issue with historical fiction because of that knowledge of the outcome for us as his real life readers, and yet I think it an important aspect to view his series by in the end. For, while he doesn't wish us to know now while we're reading it, all the twists and turns he has planned for the series, after A Dream of Spring is finished in 2028, and the entire series will be clear to us that we can look back at the story and ask that question: What does the story say about Westeros? In the introduction of the essay I asked you to think of A Song of Ice and Fire exactly in these terms in the first place, as a member of Westerosi society, and what will be ultimately clear to us at the end of the novel series, even if in the immediate duration we are not meant to know all the twists and turns. What is the story that is being told? This cannot be examined by thinking of it as a historical piece of fiction alone, as said above that is to ignore the magical, fantastical part, which becomes increasingly obvious is the other part of our story, and just as important as that wheel of fate, and we’ll explore how in the next segment of this essay.
Next time: Part 2: The Myth, the Legend, and the Magic
Fantastical Historical Fiction
by WhiteWolfStark
by WhiteWolfStark
Introduction: What does the story tell us about Westeros?
Consider the perspective that A Song of Ice and Fire is a fantastical historical saga, written down and distributed for you, a modern day reader from a suburb of King’s Landing, Wintertown, or even Shadow City that’s now overtaken the ruins of Sunspear. To you the events are as much history as they are legend. If such is a step too far for your imagination, and you need help imagining such a thing, consider how you might feel reading one of the many Viking Sagas about their journeys across the northern Atlantic, or of Homer’s Illiad with its Greek and Trojan characters based on an earlier culture lost but not completely forgotten—even if slightly exaggerated, or of Charlemagne’s activities during the Matter of France, or of Camelot and King Arthur or the other half legendary Brittonic kings such as Cymbeline, Lear, and Mark of Cornwall during the Matter of Britain. Half of the story clearly shrouded in myth with gods, magic, and sorcery, the other insisting to be taken seriously as a history and written record. From that perspective, I then ask, what does the story tell you about Westeros?
In analyzing A Song of Ice and Fire, too often I see reviewers, YouTubers, and essayists approach the above sentiment by either trying to look purely at the myth or purely at the historical in some attempt to separate the two and keep them from touching one another. As though each aspect must be kept in separate marked out containers on a four-year-old's plastic plate, and heaven help if any of the different foods mix or even, dare I say it, touch one another. There’s rarely an attempt to try and see both at the same time occupying the same space, though the story and our authors clearly demands that we do. In the course of the following essay, I will approach the series with that mindset, discounting neither the mythic nor the historical in an attempt to answer that question: What does the story tell us about Westeros? It’s only by answering that question I believe we can come then presume to apply the story's message and theme to our larger world, and perhaps Martin's commentary upon it.
Part One: Historical Fiction: Its Hows, Whys, and Wherefores
Since most people are familiar with the historical influences regarding A Song of Ice and Fire and there are essays, videos, and DVD featurettes devoted to exploring the topic. If you want a greater exploration of the topic, I highly suggest checking a few of the links above. As such, I’ll try and keep this subject to an overview within A Song of Ice and Fire, and instead look to examining the hows, whys and wherefores within historical fiction--taking it apart and asking: what makes it tick? That said, when looking at the historical narratives and influences on our favorite novel series, I think most people approach it all wrong. They look to real life history, which George has stated he’s taken from but then “sawed the serial numbers off and amplified the event to an eleven” (Season 5 DVD Feature, The Real History Behind the Game of Thrones) as much as he can, and they then attempt in isolation of each event or character to play “A Game of Flip Cards” as I like to call it. Usually having made the match that thought on the event or character stops, as if considering what their borrowing might mean or not mean is of little value to consider. A few, Jamie Odair (linked above) being one in particular, on their favorite comparisons try and take it a few steps further (her wonderful essay on Tywin in comparison to Edward I “Longshanks” Plantagenet of England, and what such a comparison might clue us in to the common values of the character with the real life historical person is what I have in particular), but on the whole once the match is made the historical essayist usually pats themselves on the back for being clever enough to disassemble, sort, and reassemble the historical puzzle pieces, and treat any further discussion beyond the match as being “over”. As such, we can play along by flipping the cards along with them. The War of the Five Kings? The Wars of the Roses & the Armagnac-Burgundian War mixed together. The Red Wedding? The Black Dinner & a massacre of Glencoe hybrid. Cersei Lannister? Margaret of Anjou and Joan of Kent. Robb Stark? The young Edward IV. Robert Baratheon? The old Edward IV and Henry VIII. Sansa Stark? A concoction of Elizabeth of York, Anne Neville, and Elizabeth the First. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera and so forth.
The above "game of flip cards" ignores the question of why those historical events are remembered and retold through adaptations of historical fiction and drama, or re-imagined for other settings such as in A Song of Ice and Fire. The reason why such stories are told is because they tell how and why our society came to be the way it is today. Often historical periods will be revisited when artists feel that there’s a parallel playing out in our current times. The go to example of this type is typically Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible being a parable for 1950s McCarthyism, the same parallel being expressed in Bernstein and Hellman's adaptation of Voltaire's Candide (a picaresque novel with some historical settings), here the carnival frenzy of the Catholic Inquisition's auto da fe in response to the 1745 Lisbon Earthquake was equivocated to McCarthyism by Bernstein and Hellman. Or alternatively, the collective conscious of society makes the connection between the past and nowadays for the artists, post-hoc. The classic example of this nearly got Shakespeare in trouble, late in Elizabeth I's reign, which I'll touch upon later, but another example that immediately jumps to my mind being Derek Jarman's interpretation of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II as retelling the Gay Liberation movement's struggles through Thatcher's administration and aftermath, using the play as an allegory for gay rights' struggle through the 1980s.
For instance there was a tremendous outpouring of adaptations of American Civil War & Reconstruction era books, films, and television mini-series from the 1960s – 1980s in the United States: North & South (1985 – 1991) and the popular book series it was based on (Love & War, and North & South respectively), The Killer Angels, its sequels, and the movies based on those books (Gods & Generals, The Last Full Measure), the TV series The Blue and the Gray (1986), Roots (1977), while telling its family story from the Colonial period to modern day wasn’t wholly unaffected by Civil War nostalgia either, and then there’s several episodes of The Twilight Zone such as The Passerby, where it was outright used as an allegory for the death of the Old South and old grudges and the hopes for a New South to be born out of its ashes, etc.. The 1960s makes some bit of sense, that was the centennial for the war after all, and the grandchildren of the veterans of that war were just beginning to die off and take with them the legacy of their grandparents’ memories of that era with them. However, when one stops to reconsider that the allegory of the Civil War was being resurrected during the era of Civil Rights and the readjustment in American culture of racial relations between black and white societies, in a way it makes sense that artists were drawn to the era that more than any other era between the two in question, defined the beginning of the period of time that came between them, a kind of “look back” at how the beginning of an era of time began as that era was felt to be drawing to a close in the present day. It can also address the fear that if these tensions aren’t resolved, that if things don’t change again, that history just might repeat itself. That’s the underlying threat that comes with every historical drama, and as the South was being reinvented along racial lines over the course of the 1960s – 1980s, the concern that some sort of war fought over the issue of race might happen again if not play out right on their television sets, must have passed through the thoughts of those alive during that day even if only on a subconscious level.
A similar effect can be found by looking at Shakespeare and his treatment of the Wars of the Roses, from whom it’s rather obvious George has nodded his head to in some respects in A Song of Ice and Fire. When looking at Shakespeare’s history plays, it’s rather easy to see a few set of plays that run together one right after the other. We get not just a treatment of the Wars of the Roses themselves in Henry VI Parts 1, 2, & 3 as well as in Richard III (which I should note is the most popularly performed Shakespeare play of all time), but Shakespeare takes the narrative back with his own prequel tetraology of Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, and Henry V. There is some question as to how much Shakespeare contributed to a play about Edward III, which is clearly a mishmash of various authors writing collaboratively, but for the overall narrative, Edward III works as a prequel to the prequels and should be considered separately itself. In any case, Shakespeare eventually winds up pinning the inciting influences of the Wars of the Roses occurring in the first place by going back approximately 80 years before they were even fought in the first place, by depicting the fall and deposition of Richard II and the rise of the House of Lancaster, and thus eventually the arrival of the Wars of the Roses when the House of Lancaster fell from its greatness and opened up the door for the opportunistic House of York (that his how Shakespeare portrays them, rightly or wrongly) to come in and allow the nobility to squabble among each other, pretender kings to pop up, and for England to bleed.
Seeing Shakespeare’s start point with Richard II, we see how the Tudor society saw the change of dynasties, and ultimately the original sin of dispossessing the anointed King that started the Wars of the Roses, which remained as an accepted narrative for the English historians and people interested in the subject well until the 20th Century when that viewpoint was called into question. However it should be noted that for centuries that viewpoint stood. For those unfamiliar with this original sin, and are curious, I’ll give a brief rundown, it is the violation both by the King and by the Country of the social contract that held the country together. Richard II through the violation of inheritance rights to the House of Lancaster and allowing base human corruption, flatters, and favoritism to sway and thus corrupt him, and the nobles themselves violating that social contract by overthrowing Richard II nearly unanimously to support an unlikely pretender from a younger, but more powerful branch of the family who’d been wronged by Richard. This conflict is distilled here as a dying John of Gaunt (the elderly patriarch of the House of Lancaster) uses his deathbed to finally tell Richard II off and about what he really thinks of him and his reign:
Richard II is forced to abdicate, which, as promised above is the controversial aspect that nearly got Shakespeare in trouble during Elizabeth I's reign. As Elizabeth I's life was drawing to a close, there were a few figureheads pressuring for Elizabeth to put aside her crown and let someone younger, and not the son of Mary Queen of Scots rule. One of these pretenders got it into his head to organize a rally, and planned to use a performance of Shakespeare's previously written Richard II, with specific attention brought to the deposition scene (see it below) in order to "rally support" for his movement to force Elizabeth's hand and install himself as King.
Elizabeth I luckily for her ran what we'd essentially label today as a police state, with her spies hearing about the gathering, and arresting the pretender before the play could finish.
Returning to the meta narrative of Shakespeare's history plays, in an attempt to maintain the social contract, the new heir to the House of Lancaster, Henry Bolingbrooke (Henry IV), is chosen to be the new King in order to restore faith, but just as it seems that faith had been restored (after many troubles of Henry IV’s reign) through the great achievements of Henry V (Henry IV’s son), England was cursed to lose Henry V and have his infant son inherit the throne, leaving the noble lords of England who’d conquered France under Henry’s guidance, and won the Battle of Agincourt to lose France and quarrel among each other. Shakespeare makes that relatively plain in his epilogue to Henry V, as view-able here:
England was capable of achieving greatness because they got rid of corrupt and tyrannical Richard II (imagine a Joffrey-like persona merged with the eccentricity of Michael Jackson), but England was also cursed because they overthrew their anointed King—God’s chosen representative on Earth to lead and guide his people as a ruler, and it was thus God who had punished them, the English people, by raising them up and giving them the taste of greatness and then taking it away once a single drop had fallen onto England’s metaphorical tantalized tongue. And after all, the forced abdication of Richard II in such a narrative, sets the precedent that the King can and should be overthrown when he does not benefit the nobles, thus allowing when the weak-willed and often mad Henry VI appears for challenges to his anointed person to be taken seriously as “anointed kings have been overthrown before”, thus setting the stage for the power struggles of the Wars of the Roses. And if Shakespeare had a collective hand in Edward III as most scholars now agree he wrote a few scenes for, the blame for why Richard II comes to power himself is taken back to his grandfather’s ambition and claim to crown himself King of both England and France (Edward having a claim on the French throne through his mother, Isabella, the daughter of Philip IV the Fair), thus beginning the Hundred Years War that will come to an end under Henry VI. A war the English would love to fight on again and off again, and hate the kings who would try and bring a peaceful end to the conflict (Richard II, and Henry VI). After all, if Edward III hadn’t gone to war over the French throne, Edward the Black Prince wouldn’t have died, and Richard II wouldn’t have inherited the throne at such a young age, almost as if Richard II and his “tyranny” as his reign is often called in English history, were a punishment from God, for Edward III’s over ambition—well, at least that’s how that narrative framework would work, and the fact that subsequent houses would pop up such as the House of Lancaster and York, would also be due to Edward III and his multitude of progeny he left the world (Edward III as a play has a good deal of time spent on Edward III wooing a Northern England Countess, thus hinting Edward could hardly keep it in his pants, so to speak, hence why he left so much progeny that would turn into the Houses of Lancaster and York eventually). But this is getting away from the point, the point being that somewhere along the line the social contract of the people and the king was broken, both through the tragic flaws of certain rulers, and the dissatisfaction of the nobles and populace to submit to the rule of law of a King with too many flaws to ignore, in their books. Somewhere along the lines, the social contract becomes thinner and thinner as more stress and strain is put on it until it is completely broken, and then it is only a matter of time until disaster and destruction dooms them all.
What is this social contract I am mentioning? To be brief, it is a sociopolitical theory first developed in ancient Greek (Plato) and Buddhist thought (so it is both an Eastern and Western concept, with respective differences in each sphere) that in order for a society to exist it must maintain the consent of the governed to be ruled, and that in exchange for giving up certain freedoms for the sake of the authority or majority rule, other freedoms are protected by the ruler or majority. It is largely known in its modern form from Enlightenment era philosophers such as Hume and Rousseau who debated and further developed the concept in their philosophical treatises. The idea being that once a social contract is writ between a ruler and his or her people, or a ruling elite and their people, or a majority rule and the rest of the population, that as long as that social contract is held to, that the society will hold together. Part of America’s social contract has a physical form in the US Constitution, as is part of the English social contract in the Magna Carta—however social contracts do not have to be explicitly or even wholly written down, as long as an understanding is made between the powerful and the powerless of what the relationship between the two is. Social Contracts can thus grow and change over time as understandings of what they mean change and grow.
Let us stop for an instant now that we’ve arrived at the point of the social contract and look back to historical fiction and drama, which is but half of ASOIAF. As previously stated, historical fiction and drama is partly retold because it explains why our society is the way it is, and as such these stories, are, if you examine them, stories about when the social contract came into an unexpected problem or had worn out its welcome, and needed to be rewritten badly for whatever reason. Typically what starts these historical fiction dramas is a depiction of the event that breaks the social contract, and the slow unraveling of society that follows as it descends increasingly into chaos, until some amendment or figure to rewrite the social contract can be found and renew faith. However typically, what historical fiction and drama spends the most time depicting, is a society collapsing in on itself after the social contract has been broken. The reforging part of the social contract is less interesting to historical fiction authors, truth be told, though they do sometimes include a truncated version of that reforging. Whether the author ends on a cheerful note as the contract is rewritten, or a woeful one before any sign of social renewal is lost to the ether, is up to artistic license. A clear example beyond Shakespeare’s history plays can be found in another influence on A Song of Ice and Fire; Les Rois Maudits aka The Accursed Kings, which as George says, "The Accursed Kings has it all. Iron Kings and strangled queens, battles and betrayals, lies and lust, deception, family rivalries, the curse of the Templars, babies switched at birth, she-wolves, sin, and swords, the doom of a great dynasty ... and all of it (well, most of it) straight from the pages of history. ... This was the original game of thrones." -- GRRM, foreword to Le Roi De Fer or The Iron King.
The epic narrative is a series of books which covers how over a period of twenty years France went from being the Medieval superpower of France under Philip IV “the Iron King” aka “the Fair” Capet, to being invaded and doomed to a century of warfare now known as The Hundred Years War (taking that argument of what led to the English Wars of the Roses back to yet another grandfather). What is the original sin which condemns France? It’s two-fold, but as the legend goes, the Capet dynasty is cursed when it completes a seven year round up of the Knights Templar and then eliminates them upon Philip IV’s orders in an attempt to wipe out his debts that he owed them. Infamously the curse being cast upon Philip IV and his dynasty by the leader of the Knights Templar as he was burned to death, with the curse lasting unto the 13th generation of his progeny (the English kings fall under this curse remember because, though the Wars of the Roses occurs at the 7th generation from Philip for them—the 13th ending up as far as I can tell on James II, the last English King to be deposed by popular revolt… oddly coincidental, isn’t it?). The other event of the two-fold event that begins the doom of France being the legitimacy of the dynasty being called into question when the three wives of his princely sons are caught cheating on their husbands (or in the case of one of them, assisting the other two to commit adultery) in what is historically known as the Tour de Nesle Affair, a fact that is used as political ammunition by Robert of Artois in his constant inheritance dispute with his Aunt Mahaut over a county, an inheritance dispute that Philip IV had originally decided in favor of Mahaut so he could marry her daughters to two of his sons and they’d have something themselves to inherit, and the richest lands in France would eventually come back into possession of the crown. The traditional narrative is called into question by Maurice Druon, the author of the book series, but essentially it’s relatively easy to see: because the Knights Templar were persecuted (on Friday the 13th I should note), the Capets and with them France, was cursed by God with a hundred years of war. Druon, who is typical of early – mid 20th Century thinkers and writers calls this divine wroth perspective into question by showing that the true players, in his mind, are not the Kings and Princes and all the other high rulers of France, but instead the more important players are the Lombard bankers, the wily Cardinal who aims at being Pope, and most especially the lesser nobility involved in an inheritance dispute, that really brought about the weakening and ultimately the end of the Capet Dynasty, while the Templar curse took all the credit for their work. Ultimately Druon argues that it was the Capet’s inability to truly control their subordinates coupled with simple bad luck that brought about doom for France.
It’s this last viewpoint that I believe George has especially borrowed from Druon, as it seems a Pentoshi cheesemonger and a Lyseni spymaster team versus a minor Vale lord with a chip on his shoulder against several high lords, and the Braavosi Iron Bankers who everyone owes money are the true arbiters of power and the players in political games and machinations—everyone else seem to be pawns or dependents of them in some form or another (eventually even The Night’s Watch when Jon in-debts the watch to the Iron Bank). High nobles and the royal family attempt to play their own political games, but ultimately are swept away by the powers underneath chipping away at them until they collapse and fall. As such, I think we’ve arrived at the viewpoint to best examine one of the major plot points of A Song of Ice and Fire, and that’s the “game of thrones” that dominates the story of the southern half of Westeros.
As I prepare to draw back from examining other examples of historical fiction, how they work, and their potential influence on Martin, there’s one last aspect of historical fiction I’d like to mention as we prepare to transition to speaking about what I’m sure all of you are waiting for me to mention: the magic. And that last aspect of historical fiction is the sense of historical inevitability. George himself has stated that: “as much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what’s going to happen.” And that is our last piece of the puzzle, mentioned above, but now fully explored. When we read historical fiction, or watch history plays penned by Renaissance authors such as Shakespeare or Marlowe, we’re watching or reading with the full knowledge of where the story will go. It’s a perspective that literary critic Northrop Frye mentioned in his third essay "Theory of Myths", of his 1957 publication: Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays:
“[T]he natural cycle, the steady unbroken turning of the wheel of fate or fortune. It sees experience in our terms, with the point of epiphany closed up, and its motto is Browning’s “there may be heaven; there must be hell.” Like the corresponding phase of tragedy, it is less moral and more generalized and metaphysical in its interest, less melioristic and more stoical and resigned. … The refrain in the Old English Complaint of Deor: “Thaes ofereode; thisses swa maeg” (freely translatable as: “Other people got through things; maybe I can”) expresses a stoicism not of the “invictus” type, which maintains a romantic dignity, but rather a sense found also in the parallel second phase of satire, that the practical and immediate situation is likely to be worthy of more respect than the theoretical explanation of it.” (pp 237 – 8)
It is that sense of the “unbroken turning of the wheel of fate or fortune” that niggles at the back of our minds, knowing the historical endings to our historical fiction as we do. We know, when we read Phillipa Gregory that Anne Boleyn is going to be beheaded when Henry begins his wooing her to be his mistress, and as we read along we can’t help but watch as everything seems to line up perfectly in place for her to meet her fate, step by step by step. Sometimes historical fiction authors take advantage of the audience knowing more than the characters, and thus, like Shakespeare does at the beginning of Richard III, invites us in on the manipulation, revealing to us all the manipulations, step by step by step.
George however takes issue with historical fiction because of that knowledge of the outcome for us as his real life readers, and yet I think it an important aspect to view his series by in the end. For, while he doesn't wish us to know now while we're reading it, all the twists and turns he has planned for the series, after A Dream of Spring is finished in 2028, and the entire series will be clear to us that we can look back at the story and ask that question: What does the story say about Westeros? In the introduction of the essay I asked you to think of A Song of Ice and Fire exactly in these terms in the first place, as a member of Westerosi society, and what will be ultimately clear to us at the end of the novel series, even if in the immediate duration we are not meant to know all the twists and turns. What is the story that is being told? This cannot be examined by thinking of it as a historical piece of fiction alone, as said above that is to ignore the magical, fantastical part, which becomes increasingly obvious is the other part of our story, and just as important as that wheel of fate, and we’ll explore how in the next segment of this essay.
Next time: Part 2: The Myth, the Legend, and the Magic
