Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society

With the imminent release of the third series of HBO’s award-winning series Game of Thrones eagerly awaited by Christine and myself, I started to think about the representation of the Middle Ages in popular culture which seems to range from primitivism to high romanticism of The White Queen. The latter was slated by the critics for depicting such anachronistic features as zips on the back of the dresses of some of the leading female characters and hand-rails used by frailer visitors to the presumably National Trust properties where some of the scenes were filmed.

It seems rather ironic to say the least that some of the most convincing depictions of life in the high Medieval period are to be found not in historical series like The White Queen but in the fictional land of Westeros, the setting for much but not all of the plot in Game of Thrones.

The author J.R.R.Martin’s Game of Thrones series of novels (still unfinished) frequently draw upon archaeology and ancient and Medieval  history. Though set in the fictional kingdom of Westeros, this is recognisably a ‘high Medieval’ world comparable to England (the map of Westeros looks like an inverted map of the British Isles) during the Wars of the Roses, complete with a hierarchical society of king, lords, knights (who show off their prowess in  jousts), seneschals, castellans, men-at-arms, archers with longbows, crossbowmen and commoners. There are even trebuchets for siege warfare, each with its own name, reflecting the grim humour of Medieval besiegers.

But it is not only the setting and the social hierarchy that evokes the Middle Ages. Major parts of the plot recall pivotal episodes in English Medieval history. I refer of course to the dilemma faced by one of the most important characters, at least in the first series of Game of Thrones, Lord Eddard Stark played by Sean Bean. Eddard or Ned is the ‘Hand of the King’, the second most important man in the kingdom or rather group of kingdoms, for there are seven of them. Ned is honest, honourable, decent, hard-working and deeply moral. He comes from ‘the North’, a land of snows, moors, woodlands and outspoken characters. He is Lord of Winterfell, the capital of the North but he is a fish-out-of-water in in the capital at King’s Landing in ‘the South’ with its hot climate, slippery characters, devious plots and moral turpitude.

In the first series of Game of Thrones good king Robert (played by Mark Addy) was fatally wounded by a boar. During the hunt Robert had been deliberately plied with drink in order to incapacitate him by one of his Lannister in-laws. He lingers long enough to ask his friend Ned to become Protector of the Realm and oversee the succession of Robert’s son. What Ned knows but the dying king doesn’t is that the latter’s children by Queen Cersei (played by Lena Headey) are illegitimate. They are the offspring of Cersei’s incestuous relationship with her twin brother Jamie, and they include the odious heir to the throne Joffrey. Though Joffrey is bethrothed to Ned’s daughter Sansa, there is already bad blood between the Lannisters and the Starks. Acting as a scribe to record Robert’s last wishes Ned changes the wording of the document to read that the kingdom should pass not to Joffrey but to the king’s ‘genuine heir’. Ned had done the decent thing and warned Cersei to leave the capital with her children before he told the king of Cersei’s betrayal but that was before the boar hunt. As a decent man he does not want the blood of the children on his hands. This is typical of Ned. He does the right thing morally but subsequent events show this may have been naive of him. As Queen Cersei says “When you play the game of Thrones you win or you die”.

After King Robert’s death Ned is urged by some of the leading members of the High Council to move against the Lannisters and the heir Joffrey. If he arrests Joffrey, his mother Cersei and his siblings Ned can seize power and arrange for the succession to pass to a genuine heir, for King Robert had numerous illegitimate children, including a son. If he allows the succession to pass to Joffrey Ned’s position, indeed his life, will be in grave danger because the Lannisters want Joffrey to rule as king in their interests without a protector of the realm and they dislike Ned intensely because he threatens them and their hold on power. Lannisters and Starks are like chalk and cheese: Ned always does the right thing and cares nothing for the trappings of power. He serves the realm not himself. The Lannisters are morally corrupt, fixated with their own hold on power and treacherous.

Ned must act to arrest Joffery and members of his immediate family. He knows that whoever controls Joffrey holds power. Isn’t this the position of Richard III in 1483 following the death of Edward IV? Edward’s widow, Elizabeth Woodville, had a number of children, including the two male heirs – the Princes Edward  and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York – from her marriage to the king and from an earlier marriage. With the death of Edward his brother Richard became Lord Protector. If Richard secured the Princes he would indeed be Protector, if he did not, his in-laws, the Woodvilles, would influence the king and run the kingdom as they wished.

What I’m suggesting is that the dramatic climax of the first series of Game of Thrones is a fictional reworking of the events preceding Richard’s usurpation of 1483 with Ned as Richard, Robert as Edward IV, Cersei as Elizabeth Woodville, Joffrey and his brother Tomen as the Princes Edward and Richard of York. It shows why Richard had to act the way he did because not having control of the princes would have made him very vulnerable in the longer term to his in-laws who would use their influence to marginalise him. In fact in Richard’s eyes they had already given him reason to doubt their motives when the Woodvilles sent a large body of armed men to escort Prince Edward back to London from Wales. Richard acted decisively and arrested Earl Rivers who was accompanying Prince Edward at Stony Stratford. Richard himself led the escort to London. Later he questioned the legitimacy of the princes and had them placed in The Tower where they disappeared in mysterious circumstances. In Game of Thrones Ned Stark leaves his bid to seize Joffrey too late and pays the ultimate price. He is betrayed, thrown in prison and finally beheaded (though he’d agreed to plead guilty in return for saving not his own life but the lives of his daughters who he has been told are both held prisoner by the Lannisters).

It also seems to me that there are some very interesting dualities at work. Richard has close connections with the North. He has a reputation for good honest competent management and leadership and firm support for his retainers even at some cost to himself. Ned Stark too is from the North and is supported by devoted retainers. Richard and Ned share similar qualities or have had similar qualities ascribed to them. J.R.R.Martin emphasizes the dualities in Game of Thrones to make these defining qualities clearer:

North: South
Cold: Hot
Honest: Corrupt
Moral: unscrupulous
Service: self-serving
Temperate: self-indulgent

Richard in Shakespeare’s Richard III is utterly selfish, unscrupulous and self-serving whereas J.R.R.Martin’s Game of Thrones with Ned Stark as Richard III places him at the good, honest and decent end of the spectrum: the Richard III of revisionist historians who challenge the creation of Tudor propaganda. Does Martin in Game of Thrones show the terrible consequences for Ned Stark/Richard III of not acting utterly unscrupulously?

This is a longer version of a blog I posted originally on Manchester Museum’s Ancient Worlds blog. Don’t get me started on the Dothraki and the Mongols…