20. Game of Thrones: The Horrifying True Story Behind A Song of Ice and Fire

The Book Club - Goalhanger

This episode explores George R.R. Martin's 'A Game of Thrones,' examining its gritty realism, complex world-building, and the challenges of its sprawling narrative. The hosts discuss the book’s historical inspirations, f

Key takeaways

• Martin’s unstructured writing style led to an expansive, unwieldy series.

Transcript preview

This episode is brought to you by the Folio Society. A Game of Thrones is a story built on kingdoms, banners and bloodlines, where loyalty is fragile and power is always shifting. George R. R. R. R. Martin's world feels so immersive because Westeros is governed by history. From dawn to castle black and beyond the wall, there is no such thing as neutral ground or of course harmless hospitality. that sense of detail into the reading experience right from the very first pages of a song of ice and fire. So it's beautifully illustrated by Jonathan Burton and the book has a fold-out map. It's got these amazing illustrations of the house, Sigeels, it's got family trees. And all of this brings the scale of the world and the complexity of its tangled loyalties to life. Follios, a game of Thrones is available now, with a limited edition launching launching on the 40th. of July. You can order a Game of Thrones and explore the other books we keep coming back to at folio society.com slash the book club. That's folio society.com slash the book club. Tell me my honourable Lord Eddard. How are you any different from Robert or me or Jamie? kill children. You would do well to listen, my lady. I shall say this only once. When the king returns from his hunt, I intend to lay the truth before him. You must be gone by then. You and your children, all three, eh? And not to Castile rock. Exile, she said. A bitter cup to drink from. A sweeter cup than your father served Raghgh's children, and kinder than you deserve. Your father, your father and your brother and your brothers would well to go with you. Lord Tywin's gold will buy you comfort and hire swords to keep you safe. You shall need them. I promise you, no matter where you flee, Robert's wrath will follow you to the back of beyond if need be." And what of my wrath, Lord Stark? She asked softly, her eyes searched his face. You should have taken the realm for yourself. It was there for the taking. Jamie told me how you found him on the iron throne the day. King's landing fell and made him yield it up. That was your moment. All you needed to do was climb those steps and sit. Such a sad mistake. I've made more mistakes than you can possibly imagine, but that was not one of them. Oh, but it was my lord. When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground. So hello everybody, welcome to the book club. That was of course from George R. R. Martin's. a game of thrones published in August 1996. It's the first of the five books, well so far five book series that makes up his a song of ice and fire series. There are two more books forthcoming. Supposedly. Supposedly forthcoming exactly and we'll be discussing whether or not he will or even can finish this legendary series after the break. And this book, the book that sets it all off, it's an immense fantasy epic and it's about these noble houses battling and scheming for ultimate power to sit atop the iron throne while an ancient supernatural threat bruise in the north and it's based in this kind of medieval world of sex and violence and betrayal kind of loosely based has lots of historical precedence but loosely based on the Wars of the Roses and we'll discuss that too. We will indeed so hi everybody these were books that were celebrated at the time. for injecting high fantasy with a dose of gritty realism, weren't there? There's a lot of sex and there's a lot of, a lot of violence. They are one of the great literary phenomena of the last, what, 20 years or so. I think he's sold something getting on for a hundred million books, 90 million books, something like that. He's become George R. R. Martin, one of the most recognizable novelists in the world. And obviously a lot of that is because of the television series. So, so, the world, of course there are lots of readers beforehand but it was the television series done by HBO in 2011 that really cemented Game of Thrones as one of the cultural sensations of the 2010s and it turned all of the books into bestsellers people started naming their children didn't they de Naras or Aria or whatever yeah I think they came to regret that later on but yes exactly yeah how many sursis are there I don't know And I mean one of the fun things about this this book and this series George R. R. Martin we will obviously talk about how he creates this enormous host this biblical host of characters but there's something there for everybody isn't there so everybody looks at this and champions a different contender to the throne and whether you are a Lannister or Stark or a Bolton or whatever it becomes you know it's a fun game to play as that we're and actually Tabby we should we should decide at the end of the show who we should decide at the end of the show who we most Oh we definitely will I think we should work out which characters we most resemble which houses we would belong to and we're also going to make our predictions for who we think should George R. Martin ever finish this series who we think will win well not least because the TV ending was so controversial so not everybody will agree with the TV ending who has seen it and actually I have strong views as you know Tabby about the ending in the TV series such a poor take which we well we'll get to that supposedly poor take So let's talk about the experience of reading the book first of all. So did you read it before you'd seen the series or after? No after I actually stumbled across the series kind of by accident but I think like it wasn't massive massive yet I'm one of those really annoying people that sort of says that I love Game of Thrones before it was mainstream but I was really I was really I was captivated by it and also I was very intrigued by the fact I came across so many people that compared it to Lord of the Rings because the TV series didn't seem very Lord of the Rings to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me. I was I was intrigued by that and then I went and I read the series over lockdown and obviously you know anyone who loves fantasy I loved it and I actually liked it the more able I was to separate the TV series in my head from the book the more I liked it because it came alive as you know much more medieval in terms of the chivalric romance of it or whether or not that's there or the sigels the color vase dothrach for instance the home of the kind of the horse lords in the book is this remarkable is this remarkable is this remarkable complex civilization and it doesn't quite translate in the TV series. And so I really, really enjoyed it, but I didn't, it's not comforting and it's not, it's not easy, I would say. What about you? Well, actually, so I saw the TV series first, I saw the first series, and I really enjoyed it. And then I sort of said to myself, well, I obviously never read these terrible books. And then, whenever I was getting a train, and I was waiting for a train, the Smith's in station bookstores and I was sort of loiter hoping that my train was delayed looking at the books like standing in the shop and like flicking through the books slipping a different book jacket on top though like yeah crime and punishment pretending I was read something you reading East of Eden surely anyway eventually I cracked and I was just like I'm gonna read this okay I'm gonna read it and then I was absolutely addicted I have no shame admitting this I was riveted all night I would be reading the books I couldn't The one thing I noticed though was my interest kind of peaked with about book three and then started to decline as to my disbelief George R. Martin started to introduce yet more characters. I was totally the same and also we'll be discussing the start of these books but the thing is you spend a lot of time in lots of different characters heads and as the books progress there are more and more and more of them and it becomes more and more tedious because you're just hoping to get to the characters that you want to be with and they want to be with and their plot lines and their plot lines that you want to follow We'll talk about this. I think it's an object lesson actually in this is a It's an odd thing to say, but if you were teaching creative writing I think this would be an excellent thing to teach because one of the key things that any writer needs is a degree of discipline and focus and whether George R R. Martin has Has those qualities we will discuss Later in the episode actually let's talk about George R. Martin Yeah Exactly. Let's talk about him himself because he's an unusually recognizable figure I would say for a lot of contemporary authors like everyone quite distinctive. He has a bit of a reputation for being fairly irascible in interviews and stuff. I think probably in part because people are constantly asking him when the next books are coming. But I've watched a lot of interviews with him now and he always just seems, you know, quite sweet and you know, a massive nerd essentially and that might also explain why this world got out of control. He's born on September the 20th, 1948 in Bayon, New Jersey. His mother's family were once very wealthy but they lost all their money during the Great Depression. And then. And then. And then. And then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, In 1953, Martin and his family moved into public housing and his world at this period during his upbringing was very small and quite confined. You know, the same sites every day, the same routes, the same people. And I think that's important because it meant that he developed a voracious imagination. He read extensively, I guess, if you can't kind of travel and your opportunities are more limited, it allows you to see and experience things that you might not otherwise be able to. And so fantasy was his escape was his escape. and he began writing as well. So he would sell monster stories to other children for pennies, which I think is charming. And then at high school he started writing superhero stories and he fell in love with science fiction and fantasy in part because of comic books. And so he said, you know, rather than Dick and Jane and Sally, the suburban family with a dog called Spot, you know, it was magic and fantasy and heroes. And I kind of get that because you know some of the books that you're made to read when you're a prep school when you're kind of a prep school, you're kind of six, you're kind of six, you're kind of six, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of, and all those I know you love those books but I had no patience for them whatsoever. Well first I'm I'm never here for Biff and Chip slander I think Biff and Chip is brilliant I know it's just it's such a flaw in your personality also Tubby I mean you're giving yourself away there are you still reading Biff and Chip when you're eight really I mean when did you learn to read to read? 15. No I just remember being in year two at my prep school and my mom actually wrote you know wrote to school to read, you know, what they want to read. Obviously at that time for me it was Proust. Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. Anyway, so yeah, he has this, he's a reader, he loves writing, all of this kind of thing. He discovers Tolkien. So what is, so he would discover Tolkien and actually the point when America discovers Tolkien generally, which is the mid-19's when there was a very famous kind of pirated paperback edition of the Lord of Rings that outrage Tolkien because he didn't get any royalties. But anyway. But anyway. But anyway, but anyway, but anyway, but anyway, but anyway, but anyway, this, but anyway, this, this, this, this, but anyway, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, but anyway, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, around America like wildfire. Precisely the point where George R. R. R. Martin is what in his late teens early 20s. So he reads it. He says you know completely blew my mind. I couldn't wait to kind of get into that world and to create worlds on my own. He interestingly given that war is such a big theme in his books. He was a conscientious objecter during the Vietnam War and then he became a double and teaching and stuff and then became a full-time writer at the end of the 70s, specializing, specializing really in science, specializing in science, specializing in science, specializing in science, specializing in science, specializing in science, specializing in science, specializing in science, and in fantasy and he actually won some awards I think for some of his early books and his short stories. Apparently has this brilliant vampire book about vampires going down the Mississippi and it sounds great. I think we should still on the show sometime. His big thing in the 80s was TV. He worked on a sort of reboot of the Twilight Zone and all of this time you know he wasn't a name he wasn't a well-known name to people outside. He wasn't a well-known name to people outside. He was this first book a game of thrones and I think it started more science fiction than fantasy he has this idea of a boy you know so often these books start with a single image or a single incident it's insane how often this happens though I'm so struck by that it's almost like some kind of strange divine inspiration or something this image that floods a person's mind and they get captivated by and they have to write it down and then they have to create a world and a narrative to sustain it I suppose so in this case so in this case it's the is somebody being beheaded and then discovers these wolf cubs or pups in the snow and this is an image that you see right at the beginning of a game of thrones he says it came out of nowhere in 1991 when I began I didn't know what the hell I had I thought it might be a short story it was just this chapter where they find these dire wolf pups and then I started exploring these families and the world started coming alive it was all there in my head I couldn't not write it of the image, the scene, and then he starts to create the world to justify it almost. One thing he doesn't do is work out the world and the story before he starts writing. And that explains, I think, why over time the project becomes larger and larger and larger and there's a lack of, there's a, frankly, a lack of discipline. Yeah, he didn't plot it. So it's very different from a JK rolling, let's say who does famously plot everything out in the Harry Potter world before the Harry Potter world. writing she's got all written down and exercise books or whatever. George Ira Martin absolutely does not. So he has this idea, he's really into it, so he completes this first chapter, this thing with the boy and the dial, the wolves in the snow in only a matter of days. And then as with so many of these epic fantasies comes the map, and he draws this over the summer and I have to say it's a magnificent map. I was looking at it just yesterday. But again, it's not like he has it all planned out. It's kind of still expanding, as he's And you can feel this in the book, you know, you start in Winterfell, the home of the Starks, who I suppose are our protagonists, and it's quite limited, it's quite bare, you know, you have you know glimpses of the world beyond, and then the further we travel into the story, even in Book 1, the more and more and more is going on. Anyway, he had planned it as a trilogy because most epic fantasies during this period were... the more he writes, the more it expands, and so the initial draft was already just way too big and so he had to split the initial draft into different volumes right away and so we have a song of ice and fire and this is why the first three books were written in the space of four years so quickly. Oh, they were originally one thing. Yeah, exactly. And then I don't know there's a slightly longer hiatus and then a slightly longer hiatus and then a slightly longer hiatus and then a the winds of winter, the second last book we've been waiting for for 15 years. Whether it will ever come, we will discuss. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So when it first comes out, which is 1996, it's not a colossal hit, but it does get a following. I mean, there are a lot of reviews. I was looking at some of the reviews actually before we started recording. There are a lot of reviews, generally quite positive, I think, even at the time, with the first book, with this book, some people said, there are too many characters. You know, I find it, I find it and the number of names and so on he took the the chapters about one of the characters de Nerest Targarian didn't he publish them as a standalone kind of novella I can see how that would work it works very well it's a very good story so for people who don't know it's this princess effectively who is exiled who is sold off to these horse lords and she you know it's a classic example of us seeing an alien world through the eyes of an outsider to that world you know so we're traveling with her and it's a portal fantasy so it's like you know it's like you're with a character who doesn't know what is on the other side and you're seeing through their eyes this this new and exciting kind of landscape. Anyway he publishes more books and then obviously the TV series 2011 turns it into this tremendous phenomenon with which surely everybody listening to this podcast is reasonably familiar even if they've never seen so much as a frame of the TV series or read a single line of the book. Everybody's heard of Game of Thrones. Yeah definitely. But just a quick, but just a quick, I mean, word here on the style before we dig into the plot which will be recognizable to most people. As we've said it unfolds via multiple characters perspective so this is a limited third person so you have an external narrator who has access to the thoughts and feelings of only one character so in this book we have seven of those. They're mainly Starks and they're mainly nobles and that's probably why it's the noble houses and particularly the Starks that we sympathise with most over the course of the series and why the peasants often seem like I don't, I don't of I suppose the most basic view a person might have of medieval peasants, you know, they always seem a bit uneducated and a bit naive. It's not interesting, I hadn't thought of that, but it's a very much a top-down view of this world, definitely it is, you know. The peasants, people who are not aristocrats, generally what do they call them, MPS, you know, they're not, they don't appear to have in a lot, I mean they're must have in a life, they're not, they're not, they're don't have, they're don't appear to have, and that's exception and this is the prologue where we're inside the minds of a low-born member of the Knights watch. These are the people that guard the wall that separates Westeros from kind of the wildlands beyond. And I actually think this opening is so good because you know straight away you're in some kind of medieval magical world from the clothes, the descriptions, there's a high-born night and then there are the kind of, you know, the low-born men around him and it's very eerie and it's very creepy. But as the series. As the are more and more and so it becomes more unwieldy but something that is brilliant I think about it is that it is so unreliable throughout because you have different perspectives and so people come across in different ways and there are moments when you might be tricked into wondering whether oh are the Stark's really the good guys so for instance as a character called Juroramomont who is helping the princess deneres through her travels and he sees the guy who in this book is essentially our protagonist Ned Stark as a terrible man you know Whereas for us spending a lot of time this book in Ned's mind he seems like a very decent good you know honorable man I think it's a it's a deceptively simple device but allows quite a sophisticated characterization so the funny thing about this is on the surface a game of throne seems to be very very simply and excessively written so the pros is I think you're more keen on the pros than I am I think the is unremarkable and quite workmanlike. I don't really mean that as a criticism because as we've said before on the book club, sometimes very simple and accessible prose works greatly to your advantage. You don't always have to be writing like Charles Dickens or Vladimir Nabokov or something. If you want to write a successful popular book, you know, simple, clean, unremarkable prose is a great way to get lots of readers in and to prioritize your narrative. But what Martin does I think by focusing you know he'll have a chapter called Caitlin a chapter called Edard a chapter called Aria or whatever and we're seeing the world through that particular person's eyes What he does is exactly as you say he allows us shifting perspectives on the events that are going on He allows you to appreciate and particularly in later books as you as as these Point of View chapters multiply you begin to realize that it's actually not as simple as you thought when you when you started that actually an event that happened in the past is capable of having multiple different interpretations and actually you know with my historians hat on I think that is a nicely complicated and nuanced way to think about political events and all kind of you know things that have happened great traumatic moments in people's lives or whatever where you think oh it's a simple clash of good and evil but actually because Martin allows you to see that through the eyes of