George and Maurice Druon

[Lord Varys]

Just reading Maurice Druon's Accursed Kings series. And, hell, is that an eye opener:

- The whole concept of bastards growing up faster than legitimate children is taking from there. I always wondered where he got that thing - it isn't something that, to my knowledge, anyone in the actual middle ages ever believed.

- The Stark crypts are basically the burial places of the French kings at Saint Denis (when Philip the Fair is buried, his son Louis X thinks how on the one side are their dead predecessors, and on the other side are the empty graves that will take him and his successors).

- Stannis as being an 'iron king' is taken from a description of Philip the Fair.

- Cersei's entire plot to ruin Margaery is basically a ripoff of the scandal around Marguerite of Burgundy (Louis X first wife) and her cousins (even Margaery herself is named after Marguerite) - all George changed there is basically adding another cousin (but he actually took the entire part of a cousin not committing adultery herself, but merely helping her cousins to do it).

If you combine that with the things George took from Thomas B. Costain this casts are rather interesting light on his writing process. He is pretty outspoken about the fact that he allows himself to be inspired, but I actually had no idea how far this goes.

[HexMachina]

Im assuming your versions have the foreword by GRRM where he acknowledges the influence? 

But yes, the influence is very striking, particularly the Marg plotline for me

[Ser Uncle P]

Tywin certainly springs to mind when reading about Philip. Also Littlefinger can be traced to Guillaume de Nogaret..

 

[Lord Varys]

12 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Im assuming your versions have the foreword by GRRM where he acknowledges the influence? 

I'm reading German translations, but I know that George has written a foreword for the new English edition.

2 hours ago, Ser Uncle P said:

Tywin certainly springs to mind when reading about Philip. Also Littlefinger can be traced to Guillaume de Nogaret.

Those would be rather mild parallels. The thing I listed are effectively passages where you realize at once that George took those things directly from those books. That's not just modelling a character on another or something like that. It is taking the plot germ or the scene or the description and basically using it with, at best, cosmetic changes (a cousin more in the Margaery thing - and, of course, the change that Margaery is only accused of adultery without being actually guilty -, the Starks crypts being a cave under a castle and not in a cathedral, etc.).

But the bastard thing, for instance, is literally directly taken from Druon.

Littlefinger is actually George recycling a plot he already used in Dying of the Light. Littlefinger is very much based on Arkin Ruark, just as the entire plot around Lysa's letter and Ned being used, etc. is also a (much more complex) version of the plot in that novel.

[Lost Melnibonean]

10 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I'm reading German translations, but I know that George has written a foreword for the new English edition.

Those would be rather mild parallels. The thing I listed are effectively passages where you realize at once that George took those things directly from those books. That's not just modelling a character on another or something like that. It is taking the plot germ or the scene or the description and basically using it with, at best, cosmetic changes (a cousin more in the Margaery thing - and, of course, the change that Margaery is only accused of adultery without being actually guilty -, the Starks crypts being a cave under a castle and not in a cathedral, etc.).

But the bastard thing, for instance, is literally directly taken from Druon.

Littlefinger is actually George recycling a plot he already used in Dying of the Light. Littlefinger is very much based on Arkin Ruark, just as the entire plot around Lysa's letter and Ned being used, etc. is also a (much more complex) version of the plot in that novel.

Are you suggesting cribbing? 

[Lord Varys]

6 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

Are you suggesting cribbing? 

Do I have to understand that term in this context as a guy who isn't a native speaker?

A wictionary search later:

Ah, now I get it.

No, nothing that severe, those things are hardly crucial parts of the story or even particularly detailed in and of themselves.

Rather, I just find it very striking that the connections there are so obvious that they directly jump you when you read those books. I'd have expected those things to be much more subtle and less obvious.

Investigating such things can actually help to uncover how parallels from history and historical literature actually influence George's writing style. You can actually write articles proving the connections. You don't have to speculate or draw on broad similarities.

And @Corvo the Crow, it might be interesting for you to check the stuff on military matters that's given by both Costain and Druon in their books - the latter talks about banners and the way men were recruited and equipped during the reign of Louis X, and Costain basically gave George the entire background for both the free companies and the Free Cities (which, especially after FaB, can be identified as his versions of the Italian city-states during the Renaissance - Lys even has the same office as Florence in the gonfaloniere).

If George draws such things from history, he would draw it from books he actually read, not from historical information that's generally available but which he may or may have not known about.

[White26]

On 8/1/2019 at 1:18 AM, Lord Varys said:

Just reading Maurice Druon's Accursed Kings series. And, hell, is that an eye opener:

- The whole concept of bastards growing up faster than legitimate children is taking from there. I always wondered where he got that thing - it isn't something that, to my knowledge, anyone in the actual middle ages ever believed.

- The Stark crypts are basically the burial places of the French kings at Saint Denis (when Philip the Fair is buried, his son Louis X thinks how on the one side are their dead predecessors, and on the other side are the empty graves that will take him and his successors).

- Stannis as being an 'iron king' is taken from a description of Philip the Fair.

- Cersei's entire plot to ruin Margaery is basically a ripoff of the scandal around Marguerite of Burgundy (Louis X first wife) and her cousins (even Margaery herself is named after Marguerite) - all George changed there is basically adding another cousin (but he actually took the entire part of a cousin not committing adultery herself, but merely helping her cousins to do it).

If you combine that with the things George took from Thomas B. Costain this casts are rather interesting light on his writing process. He is pretty outspoken about the fact that he allows himself to be inspired, but I actually had no idea how far this goes.

I was recommending this book several times there. Wait for Guccio's Baglioni's son.

[Seams]

I've been listening to the audio of Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel. It's historical fiction about the fall of Anne Boleyn, told from the point of view of the "Hand of the King," Thomas Cromwell. It's a 2012 book, so GRRM had laid out and published Cersei's plot against Margaery in ADwD long before Mantel's book was available, but I was struck by the similarities in Cersei's strategy (supported by Qyburn) and the approach taken by Cromwell in the Mantel book.

There are other details that also mirror ASOIAF: one of Cromwell's informers against the Queen says that she slept with her brother because she thought a bastard child that looked like a Boleyn would be less suspicious than one who looked like another man of the court.

It seems likely to me that GRRM was drawing on the same historical sources Mantel used when constructing her version of the plot to remove Anne Boleyn from the bed of Henry VIII. We know that GRRM took pieces from the War of the Roses, so it would not be surprising if he also borrowed from the Henry VIII story.

In other words, GRRM may have been inspired by several different historical incidents and/or contemporary writers.

[Corvo the Crow]

@Lord Varys Thanks! I don’t have much free time these days but I’ll keep it this in mind for the future. As for George being inspired, I think you may already know but another thing that was inspired is the noble houses with their traits, taken from the dune series. So yes, it apparently goes far.