I’m pretty resolute about not giving my evil cable ISP any more than absolutely necessary so the chance of me having cable television service is zero. You can extrapolate the odds of me having HBO. I tend to get TV shows and films I want to watch from the library. I’d heard so much about HBO’s Game Of Thrones that I put in a request. I thought that being five years late to the party would reduce contention, but, no, the wait list was quite long. Instead I decided to read the books the show was based on. I’m glad I did.

The first thing to say about the series is that it’s extremely long. One source puts the word count of the five extant books at 1.749e6 words. That’s 3.7 times longer than the entire Lord of The Rings series, the mention of which invites comparisons. Besides the bizarre double R middle initials shared by Tolkein and George R.R. Martin, both of these epics would probably appeal to the same audience. Both works feature gritty day to day narratives set in huge sprawling hyper-detailed worlds. The level of magic and "fantasy" is similar. There are dragons, talking trees, dead people fighting living ones, and unreliable prophesy and clairvoyance.

LotR seems more like "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away" while ASoIaF seems extremely historical. Indeed I noticed several things that were just lifted out of real history. For example, most of the Dothraki horse lord detail was accurately describing the 13th-14th century Mongol empire, right down to dining on fermented mare’s milk and horse blood.

There were other works that ASoIaF reminded me of. I’m a big fan of Robert E. Howard's Conan series and I think there were many similarities and influences. Martin even has a character named Cromm, Conan’s god who, like the gods in ASoIaF, was not too reliable to call upon for help. Conan is pretty light reading and I found ASoIaF to be the same whereas Tolkein can require more stamina and someone like the excellent Gene Wolfe can be quite fatiguing.

What separates ASoIaF from Tolkein and the Conan tales is the scheming characters whose motives are almost always extremely complicated. While I was waiting on one of the books, I was in the library and I stumbled upon the exact precedent for this kind of writing, Shakespeare. Shakespeare is sadly quite unreadable to an English speaker today, but I found a book of Shakespeare translated into modern English and set as short stories. Reading through these I realized, ah ha, this is exactly like ASoIaF. Girls dressing as boys, dream visions, complex betrothals, complex inheritance issues, wars, betrayals, light magic, nobility, peasants, it’s all there in Shakespeare. Seriously, if you know ASoIaF and you read some Shakespeare in English, any of it, you won’t fail to notice the similarities.

The obvious Shakespearean influence made me wonder about some of the odd words I found in ASoIaF. I downloaded all of Shakespeare so I could grep through it and discovered that, indeed, some quirky words were traceable. The best example is the word "nuncle" (meaning "uncle") which the OED says is first attested in "King Lear". I also found "capon" and "doublet" in "As You Like It", and a few others.

This literary lexical analysis caused me to eventually stumble upon something even more profoundly foundational to ASoIaF than Shakespeare. In 1470 (or so) a man with a pretty extensive criminal past (according to historical records) named Sir Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte d’Arthur (Full text).

Looking over this work, I was stunned at the similarities with ASoIaF. It turns out that just looking over the (massive) table of contents of Le Morte d’Arthur is enough to demonstrate how clearly inspirational it was to ASoIaF.

For example, there’s the normal fighting battle stuff.

Book 1 Chapter 12 - How the eleven kings with their host fought against Arthur and his host, and many great feats of the war.
Book 1 Chapter 13 - Yet of the same battle.
Book 1 Chapter 14 - Yet more of the same battle.
Book 1 Chapter 15 - Yet more of the said battle, and how it was ended by Merlin.

But it goes far beyond that. Both Tolkein and Martin seemed to have a fascination with dwarfs but I didn’t realize the deep historical nature to this. "Le Morte d’Arthur" is filled with references to pet dwarfs! Seriously!

Book 4 Chapter 20 - How a knight and a dwarf strove for a lady.
Book 7 Chapter 20 - How Sir Beaumains rode after to rescue his dwarf, and came into the castle where he was.

And Giants.

Book 5 Chapter 5 - How a man of the country told to him of a marvellous giant, and how he fought and conquered him.

Eddard Stark is a main character in ASoIaF and adultery is a big theme.

Book 4 Chapter 22 - How Sir Gawaine came to the lady Ettard, and how Sir Pelleas found them sleeping.

Poisoning and familial intrigue.

Book 8 Chapter 2 - How the step-mother of Sir Tristram had ordained poison for to have poisoned Sir Tristram.

Dragons.

Book 11 Chapter 1 - How Sir Launcelot rode on his adventure, and how he helped a dolorous lady from her pain, and how that he fought with a dragon.

Seriously, just read the table of contents.

Feeling such deja vu reading the table of contents, I was curious about the idiosyncratic words in ASoIaF and wondered if "Le Morte d’Arthur" was an influence there as well. For example, characters in ASoIaF never "eat breakfast", they always break their fasts. And, sure enough,

And on the morn he arose early and heard mass and brake his fast and so he rode unto the plain without the gates where hoved the two brethren abiding him.

Because I am a consummate nerd I did a word frequency analysis with the following omissions.

  • Anything that was found in the top 2000 most common (modern) English words.

  • Any derivative form of the 2000 that I noticed (e.g. encounter, encountered).

  • Most archaic pronouns (thee, thy, etc) and prepositions (betwixt, unto) that when modernized would be on the common list.

  • Proper names.

The resulting words with 80 or more occurrences pretty much capture the essence of exactly what A Song of Fire and Ice is all about. Take a look.

knight(4714), lord(728), sword(668), departed(621), smote(618),
castle(607), wit(605), shield(512), damsel(485), slay(464),
spear(462), noble(430), slain(428), anon(373), sore(313),
worship(292), kings(291), justed(233), alas(219), deeds(216),
adventure(190), nigh(187), fellowship(184), helm(178), fellow(172),
bare(171), wounded(170), sorrow(169), forest(168), dame(167),
wist(158), joy(158), brethren(158), maiden/maid(157), behold(153),
nay(148), morn(148), espy(148), counsel(145), wroth(138), rescue(133),
treason(133), madam(132), abide(132), mercy(129), hermit(129),
chamber(129), ado(129), adventures(128), alight(127), wound(127),
squire(125), yonder(123), tournament(123), feast(121), sake(119),
cheer(117), pavilion(117), marvel(115), horseback(113), hight(111),
whom(108), brake(108), quest(107), pity(103), duke(103), holy(100),
encounter(98), ware(97), dwarf(94), marvellous(93), knighthood(93),
harness(93), realm(93), prince(92), grace(91), prowess(89),
prisoner(86), lodging(85), prison(82), baron(82), wept(82), evil(80)

I found the text to be pretty readable from a modern perspective. I think it’s just less complex writing than Shakespeare. Here are some anachronistic words that were apparently popular in the 15th century.

  • ware= wary, as in beware

  • brake= broke, spears on shields and fasts

  • hight= named, e.g. "…and his name hight Sir Pelleas"

  • wit/wot/wist= know, like German, e.g. "…said king Arthur, now I let thee wit that I am king." "Well I wot said the queen that I bare a child by my lord king Uther but I wot not where he is become."

  • just/justed= joust/jousted

  • espy= see

Scanning this list farther down, I was able to recognize a lot of other terms which were seemingly idiosyncratic to ASoIaF.

yield(79), unarmed(79), dread(77), promised(76), tidings(75),
riding(75), armour(75), traitor(73), loth(71), gentlewoman(71),
siege(70), buffet(69), wound(60), joyous(60), destroyed(60),
saddle(59), nephew(59), kneeled(59), kin(59), shamed(58), defend(58),
perilous(57), mighty(57), chapel(57), smitten(56), revenge(56),
stone(55), fairest(55), damsels(55), honour(54), earl(54), lion(46),
seneschal(43), horn(38), dolorous(34), palfrey(21), privy(18), cloth
of gold(9)

If you’ve only watched the TV show, this may not be interesting, but if you’ve read the books, the relationship between these two works is obvious and fascinating. Apparently we English speakers really love this kind of story. It seems when Malory wrote his tales, it was as common a theme for his time as stupid comicbook superhero stories are to ours. For example, the Auchinleck Manuscript contains the similar story Of Arthour & of Merlin which is so old that I can’t even begin to read it (and I have recently read a textbook for teaching Old English — so much for that idea).

I did finally acquire and watch the first season of the Game Of Thrones TV show and I have to say, it’s pretty good. I was especially grateful that the producers remained very true to the books, something that George Martin himself commented on in the (season one) DVD bonus material.

It seems many people found the TV show rather salacious but I didn’t feel that the novels were exceptional in this regard. I don’t think the books were even slightly abnormal for modern novels. Did you know there’s a whole wall at every public library dedicated to pornographic books targeted to women?

When I read the book I was picturing an aesthetic more like the 1981 film Excalibur which was directly based on Le Morte d’Arthur, but the TV show actually reminds me just as much of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Still, that’s not criticism, it’s very well done.

While I was reading the novels I kept thinking, ah ha, the people at Bethesda Game Studios who made Skyrim must also have been reading these. In that game, the giants were accompanied by mammoths and ASoIaF finally gives a clue why. Also there were many similar names (e.g. "the Reach") and the baroque plotlines and organizational scheme of the known world were very much inspired by ASoIaF.

These novels have definitely inspired Game of Thrones and Skyrim and probably a lot of other things too and all of this will continue to inspire our culture with a strong fascination with our brutal romantic warrior past. As part of that culture, I’m a fan.