GoT Violence and Real World History (NO SPOILERS)

[Sea Skimmer]

Anything realistic wouldn't be be watchable for TV viewership. For all era's and times. IF you want reality check out the pilesof dead bodies on live leak or something. The racist bullshit that is youtube censorship sure isn't it, but fuck even the worst of ISIL makes centuries past look like a joke.

[Simon_Jester]

Simon needs to read up on the Hundred Years War, or the Ottoman conquests or what happened in Jerusalem.

Ah, I see the problem. I shouldn't have dropped my second paragraph for brevity- but I was in a hurry at the time, my apologies.

My second paragraph of the above post was intended to note that I was thinking more in terms of the weirdness and perversions of specific individuals, not of the scale of violence and death affecting the world as a whole.

It's not that more people are dying in the Westerosi Civil War than in [insert war here]. It's that you have a guy inspired by Vlad the Impaler AND a guy inspired by a treacherous host who killed a wedding party in 1600s Scotland or whatever AND the guy who practices human sacrifice to a fire-god and the incestuous royal twins and so on.

And that all the actions of these people with extremely disagreeable and vicious personal habits are in many ways the prime focus of the narrative. While no one of them is more wicked and corrupt than real people, in real life you generally didn't have a war where literally all the factions were dominated by exceptionally wicked and corrupt people.

That didn't mean the total amount of bloodshed didn't end up being huge and horrific, because the common foot soldiers of both sides would cheerfully engage in massive amounts of murder and pillage and rape and torture of nameless individuals throughout the world at all times.

But it was not my intent to compare total amounts of bloodshed or scenes of mass butchery. I was referring specifically to the weirdness and perversion of (relatively) many of the named characters.

[Imperial Overlord]

But it was not my intent to compare total amounts of bloodshed or scenes of mass butchery. I was referring specifically to the weirdness and perversion of (relatively) many of the named characters.

You list specifically the "evil" leaders but leave out guys like Renly, Prince Dorian, and Rob Stark who aren't total bastards so yes, it looks a little loaded. The other question is why you think this is totally out of whack with war in the real world. Stannis is a piker when it comes to killing people in the name of religion with comparatively minute bodycount compared to what Christianity and Islam get up to when it comes to killing heretics and apostates.

Lets take a look at a war we're all pretty familiar with and fought in the modern era. WW2 alone gives us Hitler and Stalin, who are heavyweight contenders in any conversation involving being goddamn evil. Add in some of the charming members of the Soviet Regime and some of our more delightful German war criminals and you've more evil than you can swing a stick at. That's without involving such staunch bastions of vileness like Arrow-Cross and so many of the participants in the Yugoslav Civil War. Even the "civilized" Western Powers have their darkness. Churchill's love of imperialism and poison gas is fairly well known and the list certainly doesn't end with him.

[Thanas]

Basil II had the entire Bulgarian army blinded except for one guy who he allowed to have one eye left to lead the terrible procession back to the king.

And he is regarded as a just and fair ruler.

There is nobody in GoT who approaches that level.

[Panzersharkcat]

Basil II had the entire Bulgarian army blinded except for one guy who he allowed to have one eye left to lead the terrible procession back to the king.

And he is regarded as a just and fair ruler.

There is nobody in GoT who approaches that level.

I thought it was "just" one in a hundred left with an eye or did I remember wrongly? Just a nitpick. No contention with your point.

[Thanas]

Yeah, you are correct. 15.000 prisoners, he blinded all but 150 of them.

[fgalkin]

It's not that more people are dying in the Westerosi Civil War than in [insert war here]. It's that you have a guy inspired by Vlad the Impaler AND a guy inspired by a treacherous host who killed a wedding party in 1600s Scotland or whatever AND the guy who practices human sacrifice to a fire-god and the incestuous royal twins and so on.

And that all the actions of these people with extremely disagreeable and vicious personal habits are in many ways the prime focus of the narrative. While no one of them is more wicked and corrupt than real people, in real life you generally didn't have a war where literally all the factions were dominated by exceptionally wicked and corrupt people.

Like people said, read up on the Hundred Years' War. Or the Thirty Years' War. There were indeed dozens, if not hundreds, of such psychopaths that would make Ramsay look nice running about, torturing and murdering with impunity. It was never one or two bad guys, it was dozens of them.

Hell, read up on the guards in, say, Treblinka. Every one of them was a sadist, but with a unique sort of perversion- so one would train dogs to eat living peoples' genitals, while another would roast babies over a fire in front of their mothers, etc.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Crown]

Basil II had the entire Bulgarian army blinded except for one guy who he allowed to have one eye left to lead the terrible procession back to the king.

And he is regarded as a just and fair ruler.

Well to be fair; he was a just and fair ruler. He weakened the Church and the Aristocracy while reducing taxes on the free small land owners. He also wisely absorbed Bulgarian territory and elite into the Empire and didn't over tax them since their economy could never support it. And at the time of his death he had actually left the treasury with a huge surplus, despite all his warring.

He was a brutal conqueror though, no argument there. But as a ruler? He was pretty much a success story.

[Thanas]

Basil II had the entire Bulgarian army blinded except for one guy who he allowed to have one eye left to lead the terrible procession back to the king.

And he is regarded as a just and fair ruler.

Well to be fair; he was a just and fair ruler. He weakened the Church and the Aristocracy while reducing taxes on the free small land owners. He also wisely absorbed Bulgarian territory and elite into the Empire and didn't over tax them since their economy could never support it. And at the time of his death he had actually left the treasury with a huge surplus, despite all his warring.

He was a brutal conqueror though, no argument there. But as a ruler? He was pretty much a success story.

Yeah, no doubt. Larger point, which I failed to properly articulate, is that it would be possible to be seen as a just and fair guy, the knightly ideal, no matter how much awful crap one did in war.

[Elfdart]

Simon needs to read up on the Hundred Years War, or the Ottoman conquests or what happened in Jerusalem.

Ah, I see the problem. I shouldn't have dropped my second paragraph for brevity- but I was in a hurry at the time, my apologies.

My second paragraph of the above post was intended to note that I was thinking more in terms of the weirdness and perversions of specific individuals, not of the scale of violence and death affecting the world as a whole.

It's not that more people are dying in the Westerosi Civil War than in [insert war here]. It's that you have a guy inspired by Vlad the Impaler AND a guy inspired by a treacherous host who killed a wedding party in 1600s Scotland or whatever AND the guy who practices human sacrifice to a fire-god and the incestuous royal twins and so on.

And that all the actions of these people with extremely disagreeable and vicious personal habits are in many ways the prime focus of the narrative. While no one of them is more wicked and corrupt than real people, in real life you generally didn't have a war where literally all the factions were dominated by exceptionally wicked and corrupt people.

Martin is more or less browsing for the ripest bits, what with GoT being a drama and all. It's like Platoon, where Oliver Stone picks out the dramatic things that might have happened to an army unit in Vietnam over the course of a year or more and condensing them into a period of a few days. Only Martin is doing a fantasy, so he can include dragons, wights and magic that works, as well as outrageous stuff from ancient history, mythology and folklore.

You can find incidents that are comparable to the shenanigans in GoT just by looking through the history of the Plantagenet family. You have human sacrifice of a teenage girl in order to appease a god and bring victory, only to fail miserably in the war to come (the burning of Joan of Arc). You have members of a royal family believing they had sanctuary and being slaughtered anyway (Tewkesbury). You have ghoulish mutilation and butchery of prisoners after a battle in snow and ice (Towton).

As for the incest, In a world where so much hinges on bloodlines, it's inevitable that one claimant will be accused by a rival of incest/adultery or of being the result of incest/adultery. George, Duke of Clarence accused his own brother (Edward IV) of being a bastard, as did his younger brother Richard III, when he was looking for an excuse to usurp the throne -and kill his own nephews while planning to marry their sister (his niece). Anne Boleyn was beheaded for adultery, witchcraft and incest -charges leveled so Henry VIII could get rid of her and try for a son with a new wife.

[Irbis]

My second paragraph of the above post was intended to note that I was thinking more in terms of the weirdness and perversions of specific individuals, not of the scale of violence and death affecting the world as a whole.

It's not that more people are dying in the Westerosi Civil War than in [insert war here]. It's that you have a guy inspired by Vlad the Impaler AND a guy inspired by a treacherous host who killed a wedding party in 1600s Scotland or whatever AND the guy who practices human sacrifice to a fire-god and the incestuous royal twins and so on.

If Westeros is the size of Europe, you can certainly find periods with many wicked rulers. Hell, look at Gilles, he was companion of saint Joan of Arc, yet made Mountain look like amateur (if the confession was true, that is). In France alone, the period was rich in things that make GoT look positively idyllic.

When Martin copies Elisabeth, then we can start complaining on overdoing wickedness, IMHO.

[Silver Jedi]

Basil II had the entire Bulgarian army blinded except for one guy who he allowed to have one eye left to lead the terrible procession back to the king.

And he is regarded as a just and fair ruler.

Well to be fair; he was a just and fair ruler. He weakened the Church and the Aristocracy while reducing taxes on the free small land owners. He also wisely absorbed Bulgarian territory and elite into the Empire and didn't over tax them since their economy could never support it. And at the time of his death he had actually left the treasury with a huge surplus, despite all his warring.

He was a brutal conqueror though, no argument there. But as a ruler? He was pretty much a success story.

Yeah, no doubt. Larger point, which I failed to properly articulate, is that it would be possible to be seen as a just and fair guy, the knightly ideal, no matter how much awful crap one did in war.

This is pretty much the actual standard for knightly chivalry in Westeros. Jamie describes Steelshanks Walton as exactly this sort of man. He'll ride off to war and rape, pillage, torture, and murder wantonly, because that's just how war is. Afterwards, he'll hang up his greaves, plant some crops and raise a pack of kids without a second thought. He's not like those monsters (like the Brave Companions) who actually enjoy all that stuff.

[Ralin]

Why would you possibly say that? The Boltons are fairly monstrous and unusual but the Tywin Lannister's distinguishing feature isn' his ruthless ambition but his high level of competency.

Uh, not touching on the other stuff but Tywin very much deliberately built a reputation as someone who was totally ruthless and shouldn't be fucked with that is well past the norm in Westeros. I'd say his ruthlessness and competence are more or less evenly matched as defining traits.

[Imperial Overlord]

Why would you possibly say that? The Boltons are fairly monstrous and unusual but the Tywin Lannister's distinguishing feature isn' his ruthless ambition but his high level of competency.

Uh, not touching on the other stuff but Tywin very much deliberately built a reputation as someone who was totally ruthless and shouldn't be fucked with that is well past the norm in Westeros. I'd say his ruthlessness and competence are more or less evenly matched as defining traits.

I was comparing him to historical figures. Tywin's ruthlessness is equaled or exceeded by many real world figures. He's not as terrible as Basil the Bulgar Slayer and an angel of mercy compared to Ivan the Terrible. What distinguishes Tywin isn't that he's a bigger dick than real world equivalents or even some Westeros characters (The Mountain is worse, the Boltons are worse, the Greyjoys are champion dicks, etcetera) is his power as one of the Lords Paramount and his competency which combine to make almost no one safe from him until his son shoots him in the gut.

[Alyrium Denryle]

My second paragraph of the above post was intended to note that I was thinking more in terms of the weirdness and perversions of specific individuals, not of the scale of violence and death affecting the world as a whole.

It's not that more people are dying in the Westerosi Civil War than in [insert war here]. It's that you have a guy inspired by Vlad the Impaler AND a guy inspired by a treacherous host who killed a wedding party in 1600s Scotland or whatever AND the guy who practices human sacrifice to a fire-god and the incestuous royal twins and so on.

How should I put this... In GoT we have a detailed look at all these people in situ. In history, we have have much less. We dont have the names of every single dickbag english mercenary captain raping their way across france in 1355. We only get examples of those people who were "lucky" enough to have their atrocities recorded by a reliable and literate witness, or who's crimes against humanity were so memorable that they passed into folklore and persisted for hundreds of years.

[dragon]

Don't forget the Inquisition, Salem witch trials.
Also even today some of the stories my friends that saw combat in Irag, Afghanistan.
The Rwandan Genocide which someone mentioned with an estimated 500,000 to 1 million killed where a lot were killed gruesomely.
The attempted Genocide of the Jews in WW2 the use of Mustard Gas in WW1
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
The beheading of prisioner by extremists
9/11
Abortion clinic bombings.
Oklahoma bombing by Timothy McVeigh
Vietnam enough said
The attempted Genocide by God when he sent the flood, if you belive in the bible
Khmer Rouge Regime where people deemed intellectual were killed as a threat to the regime, forced relocation of alot of people.
Black death while not the fault of people many took advantages of it, including witch hunts.
Josef Stalin’s forced starvation genocide against the Ukraine from 1932 to 1933.
and lets not for the Crusades.
And many many more.

As for inbreeding many of the Nobles throughout history commited incest.
Hell if you think about Adam and Eve did as well

As to incest, it was not considered a sin and was not prohibited for Adam and early man. If the race was to populate and fulfill the command of Gen. 1:28, there is little doubt that Adam’s sons and daughters had to have married their own sisters and brothers if the race was to populate the earth, but due to the purity of the race as evidenced also by the long length of life, there were no adverse effects as we see happening today

Adam and Eve

So no GoT does not over shadow the real world histories.