Oh, quite a bit of the stuff alluded to is horrible shit happening to peasants. It seems that the mark of a character you should root for is that they treat commoners like actual human beings, even if they are kind of scary otherwise: Arya, Varys, Robb, Danaerys, Jon, and so forth.
Part of this, I think, is because the world of Game of Thrones draws not so much on the history of the Dark Ages as it does on fiction, poetry and scholarship *from* the Dark Ages. I talked with Alex about this a while back, and it stuck me how the whole world of the story seems like a realisation of how early mediaeval people thought the world was, or at least how they portrayed it. Which includes members of the nobility seeming to believe that peasants are another species, among other things.
This is kind of a minor point, but "Dark Ages" is considered an improper way to refer to the medieval periods, as it makes implications that aren't representative of those eras. That's also one of my problems with Martin's treatment of the period; he's got a "Dark Ages" mentality going on much of the time, but the eras between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Early Modern period were largely more peaceful than the periods that followed, and the Renaissance saw a decline in natural philosophy in favour of pseudosciences.
If we take the Renaissance to begin in 1452 (which is widely accepted, but not uncontested), then witch hunts, various civil wars (including the Wars of the Roses and the Thirty Years War) fall under Renaissance or Early Modern history moreso than medieval history, although the lines are very blurred between c.1450-1550. I feel this is worth bringing up because Martin is selling us a particularly loaded view of the medieval eras, conflating them with one-another and other eras, and underselling political and social diversity. For instance, central Europe alone contains the Italian peninsula (a collection of independent city states that share a language), the HRE (an empire only insofar as a ruler had theoretical authority over regional kings, and also included its own city states, and initially the Old Swiss Confederation), and Poland (a traditional, medieval, Catholic kingdom), just to name a few big players that represent different styles of government.
Martin provides a particularly twisted view of the era, despite his intentions, through presenting us with a scenario not unlike the Thirty Years War, with late medieval technology (or transitional 13th-early 14th century technology), with Westeros having a political climate representative of earlier medieval eras. As for how medieval people viewed themselves? That very heavily depends on the region, time, socio-economic class, and how those factors mingled. The Witcher 3 provides a particularly good take on this, because it provides the examples of rural backwoods, major cities, and an island kingdom; these three central areas provide a glimpse into different time periods and cultures. Skelligers see themselves as both free and honourable, not unlike Englishmen or Norsemen (and Skellige definitely comes across as a combination of both those cultures, specifically, around the 11th century).
What I'm getting at here is that while there is a case for Martin holding up the medievals' perceived reflection, it is still a plethora of reflections, and Martin does a pretty poor job of representing medieval ways of life outside of Feudalism 101.
fiction set in a fictional place isn't really beholden to accurately reflecting history
i mean, you might prefer it that way, but what you want out of it isn't the be-all-end-all
But on the other hand, if it's a selling point that this fantasy series is more realistic than every other fantasy series, then not accurately reflecting history does undermine that.
I mean, is that a selling point? From the chatter about GoT, I got the impression it was.
the impression i've gotten has been "a generic fantasyland, but the asshole nobles act like actual asshole nobles, nobody has plot protection (ostensibly at least), and you have political intrigue that works in a believable manner"
the impression i've gotten has been "a generic fantasyland, but the asshole nobles act like actual asshole nobles, nobody has plot protection (ostensibly at least), and you have political intrigue that works in a believable manner"
Pretty much.
Incidentally, there are actually quite a few different cultures, forms of government, religious groups, and even languages and language families presented within the series. It's just that in the case of "forms of government," the hypocrisy of oligarchies posing as democracies is right up front, and we're looking at the story mainly from the perspective of people under the delusion that being the proverbial Holy Roman Emperor means something once you go far enough north or south.
Oh, quite a bit of the stuff alluded to is horrible shit happening to peasants. It seems that the mark of a character you should root for is that they treat commoners like actual human beings, even if they are kind of scary otherwise: Arya, Varys, Robb, Danaerys, Jon, and so forth.
Part of this, I think, is because the world of Game of Thrones draws not so much on the history of the Dark Ages as it does on fiction, poetry and scholarship *from* the Dark Ages. I talked with Alex about this a while back, and it stuck me how the whole world of the story seems like a realisation of how early mediaeval people thought the world was, or at least how they portrayed it. Which includes members of the nobility seeming to believe that peasants are another species, among other things.
This is kind of a minor point, but "Dark Ages" is considered an improper way to refer to the medieval periods, as it makes implications that aren't representative of those eras. That's also one of my problems with Martin's treatment of the period; he's got a "Dark Ages" mentality going on much of the time, but the eras between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Early Modern period were largely more peaceful than the periods that followed, and the Renaissance saw a decline in natural philosophy in favour of pseudosciences.
Don't get pedantic with me. I know that.
And again, you kind of glossed over the point I was making, which is that being "accurate to the period" is an entirely different kettle of fish from "accurate to the extremely unreliable second-hand sources of the period" or "accurate to how people behave regardless of the relative realism of the setting."
Really, just because a story isn't something that you wanted it to be and has a somewhat inflated reputation for a quality that you feel is lacking doesn't mean that you have licence to talk down to anyone who happens to feel differently. You also seem to be under the impression that Martin is trying to convince people that history was exactly like this, which is... honestly somewhat preposterous.
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