![]() We should also define the European Middle Ages for the purpose of this comparison. Moreover, to be honest, the ‘defense of historicity’ repeatedly made for the show seems less common as a defense for the books (perhaps, in part, because book fans seem to feel the books need less defending). ![]() The show – reaching many millions more people and being far more culturally pervasive – is going to have a much larger impact on the public perception of the past. This is part of why I have opted to look primarily at the show, Game of Thrones and not the book series, A Song of Ice and Fire. 1540, well within the Early Modern Period (c. It takes more to make a Middle Ages than knights such as this! Not the least of which because these knights aren’t medieval – they date to c. To argue that Game of Thrones is more true to the ‘real’ Middle Ages is making a claim not only about Game of Thrones, but about the nature of the Middle Ages itself. Sometimes that praise is simply extrapolated to ‘the past’ as if human experience was a binary between ‘the now’ (when things are good) and ‘the past’ (when things were uniformly bad). The number of times I have been told by enthusiastic fans that Game of Thrones was superior to other fantasy works because it showed a medieval society ‘how it really was’ or ‘more realistically’ is beyond counting. People are people, no matter when they lived. In particular, the tendency to view the distant past as a time of unrestrained barbarism provides us with both an unearned sense of superiority and often a dangerous hubris – ‘we’re not like that anymore, that can’t happen anymore – people in the past were just stupid.‘ But they were not just stupid or just maniacs – they were people. How we view the past has a tremendous influence on what we think about the present. ![]() For a great many people, Westeros will become the face of the European Middle Ages, further reinforcing distorting preconceptions about the period. ![]() But – for once – I think this is useful nitpicking. Finally, Part III, linked here, will look at political structures and norms (and also have the conclusion).īut first, I want to answer a question: Why am I bothering? Isn’t this all a bunch of useless nitpicking? Well, first – what did you expect from a blog named A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry? Useless nitpicking is our specialty. Part II, linked here, will instead pose this question from a social history perspective, looking at cultural and religious norms along with questions of gender and family structure. Part I, which you are reading now, will deal with this from the perspective of the structure of war and conflict. The following post is the first part of a three part series where we look at the question “how medieval is Game of Thrones?” and – if not the European Middle Ages – what period of history does it most draw from? In each part, we will draw on a different historical framework: first military, then social and finally political history. This series is now available in an audio format the entire playlist can be listened to here. ![]()
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