A list of historical parallels

[Alyn Oakenfist]

So there are a lot of historical parallels in ASOIAF especially from medieval England. So I'm gonna try to write as many as I can but obviously I don't think I can find/remember them all.

War and Battles:

Ghisacri Wars - Punic Wars

Rhoynar Wars - Dacian Wars (maybe, not 100% sure about this one)

Andal Invasion - Roman Conquest of England

Century of Blood - The was following the fall of Rome and Justinian's Conquest

The Conquest - The Norman conquest

Faith Militant Uprising - Investiture Controversy

The Dance - The Anarchy

The Dornish Wars - The Iberian War

The Blackfyre rebellions - The 100 years war (we'll come back to this later)

The War of the 5 kings - The war of the roses

Slaver's Bay campaign - Invasion of Afganistan/Iraq

Burning of Harrenhal - Fall of Constantinople

Battle of the Last Storm - Battle of Gaugamela

Battle between Stannis and Renly - Golden Spurs (though it didn't end up happening it's still to similar)

Battle of the Blackwater - Siege of Constantinople 717/ Siege of Vienna

And soon to be:

Battle in the Stormlands - Agincourt (again Blackfyres = England, Targs = France in the conflict)

Siege of Winterfell - Battle on the Ice.

Characters:

Aegon I: William of Normandy

Rhaenyra - Matilda

Aegon II - Stephen I

Aegon III - Henry II

Aegon IV - George IV

Aerys II - Lucius Tarquinus

Rhaegar - Tarquin

Lyanna - Lucretia

Tywin - Julius Caesar

Bobby B - Charles II (especially the baby brought in the pan)

Joffrey the little shit - Richard II

Stannis - Frederick II, The First Servant of the State

Locations:

Westeros - England

Dorne - Spain/North Africa

Iron Isles - Norway

Braavos - Venice

Volantis - Constantinopole

Free Cities - Italian city-states

Dothraki sea - Central Asia and Russia

Slaver's Bay - North Africa

Old Ghis - Carthage

Qarth - Bagdad

Yi Ti -China

Leng - Japan

Moraq - India

Plains of Jaqos Nagai - Mongolia

Sothoryos - Africa

Rhoyne - Nile

Valyria - Italy

Events:

Too many to count, best example would be Jon Snow's Death = Ides of March

[Moiraine Sedai]

You have some bias there. I disagree with some of your examples.

The War Against Slavery in Slaver's Bay is most similar to the Civil War in the states. Both conducted to end a sadistic, evil practice called slavery. It is the only justified conflict in the story.

[Ygrain]

A lot of very loose parallels, not to mention that some characters may have multiple inspirations, whereas others may be individual facets of a single person. For instance, Tyrion is very much Richard III - the vile disfigured uncle who murdered his own nephews, but so is Ned - an "uncle" who declared his "brother's" offspring illegitimate so that he could seize the throne. Cersei is here Elizabeth Woodville, the beautiful blonde wife to Edward IV, accused of having an incestuous relationship with her own brother, Lord Rivers. At the same time, some Shakespearean action of Richard III is assigned to Joffrey - his order to drown Dontos in wine is an echo of the legend that Richard had his brother George of Clarence  drowned in Malmsey wine; the quick execution of Ned is much like that of Lord Hastings, a former ally of Richard's. 

And while Lyanna's alleged rape may have taken a book from Roman legends, her historical parallel is Isabella of Angouleme -famed for her beauty and betrothed to a powerful nobleman, at a young age kidnapped by John Lackland to become his queen and mother of his heir. The abduction led to a diplomatic conflict between England and France (not so much over Isabella but over who is whose boss) followed by war, which John lost, along with his lands in France.

The brutality of the war in Riverlands is basically the practice of chevauchée during the Hundred Years' War.

The tokar as a sign of status is apparently an echo of the Roman toga.

 

[Rose of Red Lake]

10 hours ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Slaver's Bay campaign - Invasion of Afganistan/Iraq

I think T.E. Lawrence's campaigns fit as well. Fictionally, it's similar to Paul Atreides. 

Paul, Dany, and Lawrence are cultural outsiders leading native forces as messiahs to overthrow an oppressive regime.

Critical thinking here, they're not as straightforwardly messianic to us as they appear to the natives. We can see elements of manipulation, false belief, and the dangers of following people without question. Best view them with skepticism. 

[Alyn Oakenfist]

5 hours ago, Ygrain said:

but so is Ned - an "uncle" who declared his "brother's" offspring illegitimate so that he could seize the throne

That's a very interesting idea especially seeing as Richard was vilified by the Tudors and his supporters (especially Shakespeare) when in real life though probably very ruthless he was not nearly the monster he is depicted (there are strong doubts that he did actually murder his nephews, Henry Tudor would be just as likely). So yeah I can see a Lannister victory resulting in Ned being portrayed as some kind of Richard III.

[Ygrain]

11 hours ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

That's a very interesting idea especially seeing as Richard was vilified by the Tudors and his supporters (especially Shakespeare) when in real life though probably very ruthless he was not nearly the monster he is depicted (there are strong doubts that he did actually murder his nephews, Henry Tudor would be just as likely). So yeah I can see a Lannister victory resulting in Ned being portrayed as some kind of Richard III.

I don't think the Lannisters are going to be around long enough to establish such legends.

But I wonder if GRRM had anything particular in mind, given that Richard had a long, stern face, estates in the north and an illegitimate son named John.

[Alyn Oakenfist]

11 hours ago, Ygrain said:

I don't think the Lannisters are going to be around long enough to establish such legends.

But I wonder if GRRM had anything particular in mind, given that Richard had a long, stern face, estates in the north and an illegitimate son named John.

Now you say it yeah, there quite a lot of parallels. Maybe GRRM is implying that Richard was actually kinda of a good guy? I mean until Edward's death he was his best and most loyal servant, and yeah by medieval laws and social views it wouldn't have been so far fetched to say his children were bastards. And there isn't any proof he did murder his nephews (I mean murder is different from usurpation). And the Lannisters have already spread some nasty stories about Ned. So all in all GRRM is probably doing a very interesting parallel between his most noble character and England most vicious monster (at least in popular consciousness).

[Ygrain]

I suppose GRRM might have read Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time - it paints quite a different picture of Richard III and undermines the idea of "it is known".

[Lord Varys]

George got most of his positive Richard III nonsense from Thomas B. Costain - whose piece on the princes in the tower at the end of his Plantagenet history is really a textbook case of faulty reasoning and using logical fallacies. If you buy that, all hope his lost.

[This doesn't mean there is no good Richard III apology stuff out there - but it is not one of the most prominent sources George actually used for ASoIaF.]

Richard III did usurp the throne, he betrayed his royal brother by doing that. He may have had his reasons for that - pretty good reasons if his priorities were to keep his power and titles.

What charade that was can be seen from the fact that he had Parliament rule on the status of a marriage - which was actually a religious matter (I don't recall any other Parliament of the middle ages ever so much as ruling on the marriage of a king). But the Woodvilles were essentially grasping commoners. They didn't have many friends. A couple of decades later Henry VIII couldn't depose of Catherine of Aragon as easily as Richard dealt with his nephews and nieces.

Even if Richard III didn't murder his nephews - he also didn't prevent the murder, did nothing to investigate it or deal with the culprits. And if the boys had still been alive after Richard III was dead then Henry Tudor may have never become king.

[Alyn Oakenfist]

9 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

George got most of his positive Richard III nonsense from Thomas B. Costain - whose piece on the princes in the tower at the end of his Plantagenet history is really a textbook case of faulty reasoning and using logical fallacies. If you buy that, all hope his lost.

[This doesn't mean there is no good Richard III apology stuff out there - but it is not one of the most prominent sources George actually used for ASoIaF.]

Richard III did usurp the throne, he betrayed his royal brother by doing that. He may have had his reasons for that - pretty good reasons if his priorities were to keep his power and titles.

What charade that was can be seen from the fact that he had Parliament rule on the status of a marriage - which was actually a religious matter (I don't recall any other Parliament of the middle ages ever so much as ruling on the marriage of a king). But the Woodvilles were essentially grasping commoners. They didn't have many friends. A couple of decades later Henry VIII couldn't depose of Catherine of Aragon as easily as Richard dealt with his nephews and nieces.

Even if Richard III didn't murder his nephews - he also didn't prevent the murder, did nothing to investigate it or deal with the culprits. And if the boys had still been alive after Richard III was dead then Henry Tudor may have never become king.

I'm not really an apologist for Richard III, but let's look at the objective facts. Up to Edward's death, he was his most loyal servant. His only problem would be his personal rivalry with the Woodvilles (long story short Richard participated in his father in laws plot against the Woodwilles that ended with several of them being hanged as witches). So when the princes take power he's in deep shit, because he has every reason to suspect (probably for good reason) that their mother will use her children to have him and his own son executed (his son's mother was a Neville). So what does he do. Well using his temporary power and the princes minority, meaning that for now the Woodvilles are very weak, he declares the children illegitimate, therefore usurping the throne. Up to this point it can be argued all he did came from a sense of self-preservation (plus with the Woodvilles being little more the commoners, in the period mindset it wasn't a stretch to say the marriage was invalid). However there is one thing that above all else soils Richard's reputation.

The princes in the Tower. Now here's what we know. Following his coronation, Richard had the princes locked up in the tower, and some point in time they seem to have died. Now there are 2 suspects, who had both reason and means to do it. The first is obviously Richard (the only problem is that he would be committing kinslaying which is both pretty ghastly and would tarnish his reputation even more, were it discovered).

The second suspect is Henry VII. He actually had better reason seeing as his legitimacy was incredibly bad (his mother's grandfather had been a legitimized bastard) and to make it worse for him he had revoked to decree to make Edward's children illegitimate in order to marry Edward's daughter, making the princes an even bigger threat. Plus we know that Henry VII didn't have any qualms about murdering precedents to the throne.

So all in all the things we know Richard did aren't that bad, while the really bad thing he is suspected of doing could just as well been done by another man altogether. Why is there this misrepresentation of Richard the III? Simply put Shakespeare. The play ,,Richard III" was probably less historically realistic then ,,Blackadder".

[Daemon of the Blacks]

I think that Joffrey and Tommen might be based on the Severan boy emperors from Roman history. They carry some similarities with emperors  Elagabalus and Alexander Severus. They are child rulers manipulated by their ambitious mother but especially by their ambitious grandparent. One of the child rulers is insane which gets him assassinated while the other is naive and timid which turns him into a puppet ruler. In this comparison Joffrey is naturally Elagabalus though without the later's weird six drive while Tommen is Alexander Severus. Cersei plays the role of their mother while Tywin is comparable to their grandmother who was the true power behind the Severan throne. 

Stannis is pretty obviously inspired by emperor Tiberius. The bitter ruler who finds himself exiled on a small island and who sees people who slighted him in every corner. I think Martin is even on record as stating Tiberious was his inspiration for Stannis. 

[Ygrain]

Hm... this Roman talk reminds me that Tyrion might have a bit of Emperor Claudius in him - an intelligent man whom his relatives consider an idiot ("low cunning") due to his physical handicaps.

Which brings me to Olenna Tyrell as a bit of Livia Drusilla, the matriarch pulling the strings behind the scenes (and, yeah, the poison thing).

 

[Hugorfonics]

Livia strikes me as a Cersei type. Rich and powerful noblewomen whos only claim to the throne was her bank account.

And then of course, her husbands lineage does not inherit the throne, but her kids.

Claudians straight up stole the throne with Lannister proficiency 

[Alyn Oakenfist]

26 minutes ago, Hugorfonics said:

Livia strikes me as a Cersei type.

I don't know, I always felt Cersei was more of Agrippina the Younger. You have the incest (Agrippina slept with both her brother Caligula and her son Nero, yuk). Now in both Agrippina's and Livia's case their son inherited instead of their husbands children (Britannicus and Julia respectively). However there is no real proof that Livia had anything to do with her husbands death, while it's almost sure that Agrippina murdered Claudius. However the parallels  stop after Joffrey's death (again Joffrey is much more like Nero then Tiberius, Tiberius is very similar to Stannis) seeing as both women were always perfectly sane while Cersei in AFFC and ADWD is going barking mad.

[Ygrain]

40 minutes ago, Hugorfonics said:

Livia strikes me as a Cersei type. Rich and powerful noblewomen whos only claim to the throne was her bank account.

And then of course, her husbands lineage does not inherit the throne, but her kids.

Claudians straight up stole the throne with Lannister proficiency 

I'd say Cersei is too stupid to be Livia, she seemed quite cunning.

[Alyn Oakenfist]

1 minute ago, Ygrain said:

I'd say Cersei is too stupid to be Livia, she seemed quite cunning.

Also Livia was a very behind the curtains person, she never held any official power but was her husbands greatest adviser. So yeah she looks a lot like Alysanne,

[Hugorfonics]

1 hour ago, Ygrain said:

I'd say Cersei is too stupid to be Livia, she seemed quite cunning.

I don't think Cerseis that stupid. More lucky then intelligent for sure, but you could make the same case with Livia.

1 hour ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Also Livia was a very behind the curtains person, she never held any official power but was her husbands greatest adviser. So yeah she looks a lot like Alysanne,

Livia was her husbands greatest advisor (maybe, shoutout Agrippa) But she was also her sons greatest (maybe. (And grandsons)) advisor. Which is similar to Cersei. 

1 hour ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

I don't know, I always felt Cersei was more of Agrippina the Younger. You have the incest (Agrippina slept with both her brother Caligula and her son Nero, yuk). Now in both Agrippina's and Livia's case their son inherited instead of their husbands children (Britannicus and Julia respectively). However there is no real proof that Livia had anything to do with her husbands death, while it's almost sure that Agrippina murdered Claudius. 

Theres 0 proof that Livia killed Agustus. Send forensics down and theyll be just as clueless with Livias trial then they will with Richard III. 

However if we look at the times and connect the dots, well Claudians stole the Julian throne and the moment Tiberius was back in grace the Emperor died. 

Similarly the Woodvile boys were locked up during Richards reign, and they were always destined to be combatants to the Throne.

A+B=C man. Livia almost definitely killed him, as guilty as Richard

Ps. Im of the theory that Nero killed Claudius. And that Claudius oversaw the execution of Caligula.

1 hour ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

However the parallels  stop after Joffrey's death (again Joffrey is much more like Nero then Tiberius, Tiberius is very similar to Stannis) seeing as both women were always perfectly sane while Cersei in AFFC and ADWD is going barking mad.

Tiberius is very Stannis. The whole brother issue too, which would make Renly, Drusus? (God who can remember all these names?) Also now hes in the North acting like its Germany

I see Joff as Caligula. Tiberius was way smarter and (somehow) way more self composed. Annoying little kid, acting like an absolute ruler till he gets murked.

Im, sorry, did you say Agrapinna was sane? 

[Alyn Oakenfist]

30 minutes ago, Hugorfonics said:

I don't think Cerseis that stupid. More lucky then intelligent for sure, but you could make the same case with Livia.

Maybe in the first 3 books. Cersei in AFFC is beyond dumb, she's the female version of Baldrick in regards to ,,cunning plans".

33 minutes ago, Hugorfonics said:

However if we look at the times and connect the dots, well Claudians stole the Julian throne and the moment Tiberius was back in grace the Emperor died. 

Similarly the Woodvile boys were locked up during Richards reign, and they were always destined to be combatants to the Throne.

A+B=C man. Livia almost definitely killed him, as guilty as Richard

Ps. Im of the theory that Nero killed Claudius. And that Claudius oversaw the execution of Caligula.

It's very hard to say. First off Tiberius was the undisputed heir at that point and all his contenders had mysteriously died or been exiled by then (that Livia was almost certainly responsible for). So the question is, was Livia willing to wait, or did she fell the need to act as soon as possible. Given how she played such a long game to make Tiberius heir I just don't think she would take the risk to murder Augustus. Also remember that Augustus health was declining preceding his death (though to be fair he did seem to recover only to almost instantly die, so yeah that is a bit suspicious. However one thing that is 100% sure is that Agrippina murdered Claudius. Plus with Claudius there was a real problem with succession that was solved with his death (again Cersei is more similar to Agrippina then Livia). Plus as I said before while Richard remains the most likely candidate for the murder of the princes one cannot rule out the possibility that they were still alive at the time of Bosworth and that Henry had them killed after he took power.

 

43 minutes ago, Hugorfonics said:

I see Joff as Caligula.

I don't know, Caligula was mad but he wasn't a sadist. Also Caligula was shall we say ,,sexually active" while Joff seemed to use sadism to compensate for an acute lack of sexuality (maybe just my opinion but I don't think he was interested in sex).

 

45 minutes ago, Hugorfonics said:

Im, sorry, did you say Agrapinna was sane? 

Fair point.

[Ygrain]

1 hour ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

I don't know, Caligula was mad but he wasn't a sadist. Also Caligula was shall we say ,,sexually active" while Joff seemed to use sadism to compensate for an acute lack of sexuality (maybe just my opinion but I don't think he was interested in sex).

Don't forget that Joff was only thirteen, and, IMHO, sexually awakening. Having Sansa stripped and beaten definitely had sexual undertones, and Tyrion was of the same opinion. He even intended to take Joff into a brothel, and I have a theory that LF actually went ahead with the idea, and that this was the influence he had with Joffrey which GRRM mentioned, IIRC.

[Hugorfonics]

2 hours ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Maybe in the first 3 books. Cersei in AFFC is beyond dumb, she's the female version of Baldrick in regards to ,,cunning plans".

Idk who that is.

Her plans worked. Well, some of them. Margery is about to face trial. And so is Robert Stone.

2 hours ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

It's very hard to say. First off Tiberius was the undisputed heir at that point and all his contenders had mysteriously died or been exiled by then (that Livia was almost certainly responsible for). So the question is, was Livia willing to wait, or did she fell the need to act as soon as possible. Given how she played such a long game to make Tiberius heir I just don't think she would take the risk to murder Augustus. Also remember that Augustus health was declining preceding his death (though to be fair he did seem to recover only to almost instantly die, so yeah that is a bit suspicious. However one thing that is 100% sure is that Agrippina murdered Claudius. Plus with Claudius there was a real problem with succession that was solved with his death (again Cersei is more similar to Agrippina then Livia). Plus as I said before while Richard remains the most likely candidate for the murder of the princes one cannot rule out the possibility that they were still alive at the time of Bosworth and that Henry had them killed after he took power.

I pretty much agree to all this. Nothing, in terms of their death, can be proven.

This does not excuse them from their heinous reputation however. They are usurpers who had no care for the wellbeing of their family. 

2 hours ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

I don't know, Caligula was mad but he wasn't a sadist. Also Caligula was shall we say ,,sexually active" while Joff seemed to use sadism to compensate for an acute lack of sexuality (maybe just my opinion but I don't think he was interested in sex).

As @Ygrain noted, Joff was 13 while Caligula was like 30. Caligula was married (to his sister lol) while Joff croaked on his wedding night.

2 hours ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Fair point.

Lol. But yea, I agree with what you were saying. Cersei and Livia stop being similar after their sons death