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Fave Real life historical inspirations(other than Wars of roses)


Rachel of Oldstones

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I know GRRM has said the wars of the roses was an inspiration.. but there's so many more characters and stories in the series that had to have come from else where...

I looove reading about Eleanor of Aquitaine ( I can't think of characters inspired by her other than maybe bits of pieces for a few different ones) which is crazy to me because she is the most impressive female of the time (yes I'm bias). But I also love Henry II and the other Angevins...

I can't seem to think of ASOIAF characters inspired much by any of them... 

But who are your favorite historical inspirations for characters (outside the obvious)?

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GRRM says one of his main literary inspirations was Maurice Druon's Accursed Kings series, which is a set of historical novels set in medieval France from the time of Philip the Fair until the beginning of the Hundred Years War. While he doesn't recreate any of the historical events exactly, many of the over-arching themes, particularly the nature of power and what it is to be a good ruler, are there.

There are also adulterous queens and princesses, regicides and poisonings. 

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While I do not think that a lot of characters are based on just one persons (else we would not be able to give them the freedom that  blessed us with - mostly - logical and in-depth developements of characters and cursed us with massive knots GRRM has to untight), I like the topoi and pictures he uses, for example here one maybe not all have noticed:

Dany (a woman) riding a white filly (and not a black stallion) while wearing the fur of a lion is a reminiscence of Alexander the Great, who was often depicted wearing the lions fur of Herakles on coins and whose stallion Bukephalos was black.

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