GoT Violence and Real World History (NO SPOILERS)

[Elheru Aran]

Greetings all. With the recent season finale finally happening, there's been the requisite increase in discussion of GoT online. I wasn't quite sure where to post this, but in the same forum as GoT discussion seems appropriate enough.

I've been noticing a certain amount of criticism is arising largely from the various violences, acts of rape, and other atrocities that happen on the show on a fairly regular basis. The general notion is that this is excessive even by real-world historical standards (apart from the appropriateness of portraying same on a regular basis).

George RR Martin has countered by bringing up Shakespeare and the Bible. The counter-proposition is that, more or less, such things did happen in actual history.

What I would like to know is whether such claims are substantial. The events depicted in the show do seem to stretch credulity somewhat, such as the Red Wedding, Jaime and Cersei's incest, the highly public poisoning of Joffrey, Ramsay Bolton's cruelties, the various atrocities inflicted upon Westeros by one army or another. Are there similar specific historic examples? I'm looking for mostly Western history as that's probably the easiest to find. Certainly I'm aware of some examples such as Egyptian dynastic intermarriages, but Jaime and Cersei seem a little more explicitly different.

Thank you!

[LaCroix]

Edward II's death comes to mind for stretched cruelty, among others.
Or Sultan Ibraham I, who drowned 280 harem concubines in a rage of envy.
Ivan IV (the terrible) was quite similar to young Ramsey but Prince Sado of Korea is also a contestant for that title (among others).

http://madmonarchs.guusbeltman.nl/madmonarchs/
This is a pretty good list about how many cruel and crazy people reigned over people. You will find everthing that happened in GoT in here, too, I'd wager.

[Kingmaker]

The Red Wedding is based on a couple of historical events, including the Massacre of Glencoe and the Black Dinner.

[Guardsman Bass]

I think it's worse than real-life (on average), but that's a deliberate choice along the lines of making the in-universe timelines long and the Wall 700 feet tall. George RR Martin has said the whole "everything is bigger in fantasy" line before, and this applies to the violence and conflict as well.

That said, you can find some pretty nasty stuff in real-life history (beyond just medieval history) that corresponds with it. The event that might have partially inspired the Red Wedding was the Glencoe Massacre in 1692. The issues with the Slavers' Bay cities feels a lot like dealing with the post-Civil War South in Reconstruction whether intended or not, as Steven Attewell has pointed out at Tower of the Hand.

EDIT: Kingmaker beat me to Glencoe.

[Purple]

Edward II's death comes to mind for stretched cruelty, among others.
Or Sultan Ibraham I, who drowned 280 harem concubines in a rage of envy.
Ivan IV (the terrible) was quite similar to young Ramsey but Prince Sado of Korea is also a contestant for that title (among others).

http://madmonarchs.guusbeltman.nl/madmonarchs/
This is a pretty good list about how many cruel and crazy people reigned over people. You will find everthing that happened in GoT in here, too, I'd wager.

Thanks for that link. You just made my day.

[Elheru Aran]

I think the thing that makes me lift my eyebrows at it is how all this is happening at once in a continent roughly the size of South America, in the span of... what, a couple years or so, on TV? (Possibly longer in the books but I'm not sure). Plus Dany's adventures over in Essos. I suppose that's part of the whole 'bigger in fantasy' bit, though...

[Imperial Overlord]

The show would be unwatchable if it tried to accurately represent a continent sized civil war in a medieval society. The show gets lots of flack because the producers like to show us naked women and raped a teenage girl, but when it came to showing the Dothraki sacking a town we got only a few moments of fairly sanitized brutality. We don't see what The Mountain does to peasant villages, although the books have a survivor recount an episode of his brutality and cruelty. This shit is ugly and most of it falls not on the people in pretty costumes but on the poor bastards without any power that they're fighting over.

[Thanas]

I think it's worse than real-life (on average), but that's a deliberate choice along the lines of making the in-universe timelines long and the Wall 700 feet tall.

No, it is not. Not at all. In fact, if anything, it is a more sanitized description of medieval warfare.

[Elheru Aran]

Can you elaborate? Not asking for torture-porn mind you, but for example, what does the show omit/sanitize?

Bear in mind that I've only watched the first couple seasons or so; I have a broad idea of what happens up to season 5 as I did read the books through Dance of Dragons. It does seem largely realistic (from the books at least), I cannot say I've seen much in the way of military action in the show apart from the before/after of various battles...

[Thanas]

Can you elaborate? Not asking for torture-porn mind you, but for example, what does the show omit/sanitize?

What goes really on in a sack. I am saying things like cannibalism, women having their breasts chopped off and stuffed into their mouths, ears being sliced off and carried like a trophy, enslavement, widespread rape, the treatment of people of the opposing faith, torture etc. All of that is sanitized. FFS, the english used to boil prisoners alive. People we view as honorable knights like Richard I regularly broke oaths to surrendered people. Mercenaries were hanged. Prisoners, male or female, could and would be gangraped. Mutilation of prisoners was commonplace. All of that stuff.

EDIT: Heck, the Schwedentrunk was pretty tame with regards to torture but it still is disgustingly vile, more vile than a lot of things in the show. See here.

Or in simpler terms, think Ramsay Bolton being the norm, not the exception.

[biostem]

Wasn't there that thing, I think portrayed in "The Immortals", where a prisoner was placed into a large bronze bull, which had a wire lit under it, and the prisoners dying moans would echo/be amplified by the bull?

Or just read up on the Crusades, the Inquisition, and so on.

[Thanas]

Wasn't there that thing, I think portrayed in "The Immortals", where a prisoner was placed into a large bronze bull, which had a wire lit under it, and the prisoners dying moans would echo/be amplified by the bull?

Likely not a real thing, at least not common. Most of the stories are christian martyr stories, which are per rule completely false and untrue. There are only a few anecdotal cases in antiquity as well.

[Sinewmire]

Ramsay makes me think of a young Vlad Dracul.

[Lord Revan]

Ramsay makes me think of a young Vlad Dracul.

The implaler or his father (seem to remember them both being named "Vlad")?

[Sinewmire]

Well, ok Vlad Dracula. The son. Similar use of terror tactics.

Of course, Vlad was educated in warfare by his enemies, whereas Ramsay was by.... Locke? A hunter.

[biostem]

Wasn't there that thing, I think portrayed in "The Immortals", where a prisoner was placed into a large bronze bull, which had a wire lit under it, and the prisoners dying moans would echo/be amplified by the bull?

Likely not a real thing, at least not common. Most of the stories are christian martyr stories, which are per rule completely false and untrue. There are only a few anecdotal cases in antiquity as well.

Apparently it is/was a real thing... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_bull

[Thanas]

Wasn't there that thing, I think portrayed in "The Immortals", where a prisoner was placed into a large bronze bull, which had a wire lit under it, and the prisoners dying moans would echo/be amplified by the bull?

Likely not a real thing, at least not common. Most of the stories are christian martyr stories, which are per rule completely false and untrue. There are only a few anecdotal cases in antiquity as well.

Apparently it is/was a real thing... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_bull

Please explain how it follows that it was a real thing from that article.

[FTeik]

Other examples are
the Thirty-Year-War, which killed two thirds of Germany's population (it took two-hundred years to recover from that), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War ,
the Sack of Magdeburg during that war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Magdeburg ,
the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Barth ... y_massacre ,
the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Cr ... tantinople ,
...
Coming to think of it, Stannis march and failed campeign against the Boltons at Winterfell is highly reminiscent of Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

[Simon_Jester]

I think it's worse than real-life (on average), but that's a deliberate choice along the lines of making the in-universe timelines long and the Wall 700 feet tall. George RR Martin has said the whole "everything is bigger in fantasy" line before, and this applies to the violence and conflict as well.

That said, you can find some pretty nasty stuff in real-life history (beyond just medieval history) that corresponds with it. The event that might have partially inspired the Red Wedding was the Glencoe Massacre in 1692. The issues with the Slavers' Bay cities feels a lot like dealing with the post-Civil War South in Reconstruction whether intended or not, as Steven Attewell has pointed out at Tower of the Hand.

EDIT: Kingmaker beat me to Glencoe.

Yes. What makes it a bit credulity-stretching is that in Westeros, things as bad as the worst things that have ever happened in centuries of medieval history on Earth happen... all at once. Which is within the bounds of (as you say) 'everything is bigger with fantasy.' No one is more corrupt and wicked than the worst corrupt and wicked people from real life, but there are more of them walking the same region of the Earth at once than was normally the case in real life.

[Imperial Overlord]

Yes. What makes it a bit credulity-stretching is that in Westeros, things as bad as the worst things that have ever happened in centuries of medieval history on Earth happen... all at once. Which is within the bounds of (as you say) 'everything is bigger with fantasy.' No one is more corrupt and wicked than the worst corrupt and wicked people from real life, but there are more of them walking the same region of the Earth at once than was normally the case in real life.

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. It's a continent sized civil war, a horror show of staggering proportions. This isn't breaking new territory when it comes to medieval warfare, hell I don't think any large city has been sacked yet (in Westeros that is and Dany did took cities without annihilating the slaver aristocracy).

I think you need to recalibrate your sensors.

[Thanas]

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

[fgalkin]

Yeah, what the Mountain/Amory Lorch/Vargo Hoat did in the Riverlands is actually pretty mild compared to what happened in France in the aftermath of Poitiers, for example. Nor did we see any proper massacre of 20,000+

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Thanas]

And it wasn't just confined to there - heck, I have read job applications for the army of Lithuania which included graphic descriptions of the applicant murdering and raping. Because that was to prove his worthiness in irregular warfare.

[Broomstick]

EDIT: Heck, the Schwedentrunk was pretty tame with regards to torture but it still is disgustingly vile, more vile than a lot of things in the show. See here.

I have never heard of the "schwedentrunk" until now. Um...er... thanks?

Honestly, though, you don't have to go back that far in history to find appalling torture and violence. How about the Hutus massacring somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsis in just 100 days or so, often by literally chopping up, while still alive, people who had been their neighbors for years? Not to mention the raping, stealing, and other atrocities. That was in 1994. With things like that in such recent memory why is GoT violence so unbelievable?

[Batman]

Ah, but that was done 'by' black people, 'to' black people, at the ass end of nowhere. Certainly nothing like that could ever happen in 'civilized' countries.
Oh wait.