History That Inspired ASOIAF

[The Bard of Banefort]

Are there shades of James I in Aegon III? The circumstances were very different, but they were both melancholy kings who united their “factions” (which were two separate countries in James’ case), after their famous mothers were brutally executed/removed from power. Both had a revolving door of regents and, while I don’t know enough about James to know for sure, it wouldn’t surprise me if he harbored the same suspicions about the nobility that Aegon did for betraying his mother. And since Viserys was originally Aegon’s son and not his brother, they both would have been the last remaining legitimate sons of their house.

[Craving Peaches]

11 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Are there shades of James I in Aegon III? The circumstances were very different, but they were both melancholy kings who united their “factions” (which were two separate countries in James’ case)

I guess it depends on what you mean by unite? He ruled Scotland and England in personal union but Scotland was still independent, and to be honest he kind of abandoned us, said he'd come back to Edinburgh but never did. You can also see the beginnings of the impending crown vs parliament struggle with him.

[BlackLightning]

Daenerys Targaryen is basically a female Alexander the Great.

The Seven Kingdoms is high medieval Europe with the North being evocative of pre-Christian but still high medieval Russia and Slavic Europe. The wildlings are the Germanic and Scandinavian barbarians of the Roman. The Free Cities are Renaissance Italy. Slaver's Bay and Qarth, on the other hand, is like sword-and-sandal, Romanesque Middle East and North Africa...only with the technology and systems of the early modern and imperialist eras.

The imprisonment, mistreatment and disappearances of King Edward V and Prince Richard from the Tower of London is an inspiration for Theon's capture of Winterfell and his supposed murdering of them. Which is interesting as Richard III serves as both an inspiration for Theon and Tyrion...Tyrion, who is almost a carbon copy of Richard III, was originally supposed to have been the one to sack Winterfell and murder Bran and Rickon.

 

The attempt of Anna Komnena and her husband to usurp her brother John II and become the Empress of the Romans and Queen of the Byzantine Empire is a lot like the whole Rhaenyra vs. Aegon II concept in the Dance. Anna's rebellion was the brainchild of her mother, Irene. As it were, Irene was from another very popular, very powerful Greco-Roman family.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

6 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Daenerys Targaryen is basically a female Alexander the Great.

There seem to be many different inspirations for Daenerys. In one video GRRM says that Dany is in part inspired by himself and a factory in New Jersey that his family once owned but lost during the Great Depression. He often had to walk past it on his way to school and thought "This was ours once", or something to that effect. 

[The Bard of Banefort]

37 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I guess it depends on what you mean by unite? He ruled Scotland and England in personal union but Scotland was still independent, and to be honest he kind of abandoned us, said he'd come back to Edinburgh but never did. You can also see the beginnings of the impending crown vs parliament struggle with him.

I suppose, but this was basically the first time England and Scotland weren’t at war with each other, right? So that’s definitely nothing to sneeze at. James I may have assimilated with the English, but there would have been no hiding his name, or appearance, or accent. In the end, the Scottish monarchy prevailed over the English. The Stuarts outlived the Tudors, and their descendant is the current king of the UK.

I do find it ironic that Elizabeth I spent decades preventing Mary Stuart from taking her throne only for it to pass to James. And James dumping Elizabeth with her sister in the mausoleum and giving his mother a much nicer tomb is some terrific passive-aggressive shade.

[The Bard of Banefort]

Speaking of the Targaryens and the Stuarts, have there been any other monarchical restorations that have lasted longer than a generation besides the Brits’?

[Craving Peaches]

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I suppose, but this was basically the first time England and Scotland weren’t at war with each other, right?

There had been periods of peace before. There were usually tit-for-tat border raids but they weren't full on wars.

[Alester Florent]

2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I suppose, but this was basically the first time England and Scotland weren’t at war with each other, right? So that’s definitely nothing to sneeze at. James I may have assimilated with the English, but there would have been no hiding his name, or appearance, or accent. In the end, the Scottish monarchy prevailed over the English. The Stuarts outlived the Tudors, and their descendant is the current king of the UK.

There are those who would disagree, seeing the Glorious Revolution and subsequent Act of Succession and Act of Union as imposing a functionally "English" rule on Scotland in the face of opposition from the native Scottish dynasty (i.e. the Jacobite Stuarts). Indeed, it wouldn't be too hard to argue that the Anglicisation of the Stuarts started almost immediately after personal union, with the "Civil War" being triggered by Charles I's attempts to Anglicise the Scottish church (and by extension, government), the subsequent conquest of Scotland by Cromwell, etc.

Quote

Speaking of the Targaryens and the Stuarts, have there been any other monarchical restorations that have lasted longer than a generation besides the Brits’?

Spain, twice. The First Spanish Republic was followed by a restoration of the monarchy which lasted two generations until 1931, then the period of civil war and dictatorship, followed by a restoration of the monarchy which is now in its second generation.

Some of the French satellite republics lasted only a fairly short time before a lasting monarchical return, such as Naples. Florence has a longer and more complicated history. An argument could also be made for the Netherlands, although the extent to which it was a monarchy before 1795 is debatable (it self-defined as a republic, but had a hereditary head of state).

It also depends how you count France. None of its post-revolution monarchies lasted longer than one generation but collectively they lasted ages: all told and despite the revolutions in 1789 and 1792, during the 19th century France was a monarchy for more than half the time.

[Craving Peaches]

29 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

There are those who would disagree, seeing the Glorious Revolution and subsequent Act of Succession and Act of Union as imposing a functionally "English" rule on Scotland in the face of opposition from the native Scottish dynasty (i.e. the Jacobite Stuarts).

Yes. English economic pressure was a big part of why the Scottish parliament agreed to the Act of Union 1707 and to having Mary and William as monarchs before that. Scottish representatives at the time of signing the Act noted the common people opposed it. I think there were riots in Edinburgh.

Edited March 24, 2023 by Craving Peaches

[The Bard of Banefort]

I knew about the similarities between the Targaryens and the Ptolemys, but I recently realized that there are some between the Targs and the Romanovs too. Both families reigned for roughly 300 years, and Elia/Rhaenys/Aegon’s shadowy murders are reminiscent of how the Romanovs were murdered by the Bolsheviks, both due to the informal brutality and how the following regime tried to obscure what happened from the public. (And then there are all the theories about whether Anastasia/Aegon secretly survived and fled overseas).

On another note, after finally reading up on the Jacobites a bit, I must say. . . they definitely had a better argument than the Blackfyres did lol. The coup against James II is pretty bullshit from a modern perspective. My knowledge of British history is limited, but it’s so crazy to contemplate how a country that was entirely Catholic managed, in the span of a generation, not only to become almost entirely Protestant but also virulently anti-Catholic.

 

[Alester Florent]

2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

On another note, after finally reading up on the Jacobites a bit, I must say. . . they definitely had a better argument than the Blackfyres did lol. The coup against James II is pretty bullshit from a modern perspective. My knowledge of British history is limited, but it’s so crazy to contemplate how a country that was entirely Catholic managed, in the span of a generation, not only to become almost entirely Protestant but also virulently anti-Catholic.

The real issue with James was that he was trying to use the royal prerogative to override statute, which was a constitutional no-no. All the stuff about religion and the warming-pan baby was really just gravy. I find the (English) Stuarts an interesting case of odds and evens: I think they were all absolutists at heart, but where James I and Charles II were capable enough politicians to keep all the relevant balls in the air and maintain their popularity, Charles I and James II didn't really understand the political game they were trying to play.

There was also an unbelieve amount of political paranoia and conspiracy theorising surrounding British politics in the 17th century (not uniquely, but I think particularly so, given the sharp rise in pamphleteering during the period and the foreign situation). There was a theory going round for instance that James I had been murdered by the Duke of Buckingham, possibly with Charles's connivance, and during the war this became an article of faith for Parliamentarians. What eventually prompted the civil war (in England at least) was the king's belief that the puritan faction in Parliament intended to murder him and his family. The puritan faction meanwhile believed that the king was intending to restore the country to Catholicism (which in turn they believed to be headed by the antichrist). Both were of course completely wrong, but these were genuinely held beliefs on both sides which contributed both to the outbreak of hostilities and the corresponding recruitment for each cause.

[The Bard of Banefort]

30 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

The real issue with James was that he was trying to use the royal prerogative to override statute, which was a constitutional no-no. All the stuff about religion and the warming-pan baby was really just gravy. I find the (English) Stuarts an interesting case of odds and evens: I think they were all absolutists at heart, but where James I and Charles II were capable enough politicians to keep all the relevant balls in the air and maintain their popularity, Charles I and James II didn't really understand the political game they were trying to play.

There was also an unbelieve amount of political paranoia and conspiracy theorising surrounding British politics in the 17th century (not uniquely, but I think particularly so, given the sharp rise in pamphleteering during the period and the foreign situation). There was a theory going round for instance that James I had been murdered by the Duke of Buckingham, possibly with Charles's connivance, and during the war this became an article of faith for Parliamentarians. What eventually prompted the civil war (in England at least) was the king's belief that the puritan faction in Parliament intended to murder him and his family. The puritan faction meanwhile believed that the king was intending to restore the country to Catholicism (which in turn they believed to be headed by the antichrist). Both were of course completely wrong, but these were genuinely held beliefs on both sides which contributed both to the outbreak of hostilities and the corresponding recruitment for each cause.

Based on what I’ve read about James I, he appears to have had a unique talent for navigating religious factionalism. Is it fair to say that he was more tolerant than Elizabeth in that regard?

[SeanF]

On 3/24/2023 at 10:14 PM, Alester Florent said:

There are those who would disagree, seeing the Glorious Revolution and subsequent Act of Succession and Act of Union as imposing a functionally "English" rule on Scotland in the face of opposition from the native Scottish dynasty (i.e. the Jacobite Stuarts). Indeed, it wouldn't be too hard to argue that the Anglicisation of the Stuarts started almost immediately after personal union, with the "Civil War" being triggered by Charles I's attempts to Anglicise the Scottish church (and by extension, government), the subsequent conquest of Scotland by Cromwell, etc.

Spain, twice. The First Spanish Republic was followed by a restoration of the monarchy which lasted two generations until 1931, then the period of civil war and dictatorship, followed by a restoration of the monarchy which is now in its second generation.

Some of the French satellite republics lasted only a fairly short time before a lasting monarchical return, such as Naples. Florence has a longer and more complicated history. An argument could also be made for the Netherlands, although the extent to which it was a monarchy before 1795 is debatable (it self-defined as a republic, but had a hereditary head of state).

It also depends how you count France. None of its post-revolution monarchies lasted longer than one generation but collectively they lasted ages: all told and despite the revolutions in 1789 and 1792, during the 19th century France was a monarchy for more than half the time.

Cambodia reinstated the monarchy in 1993.

[SeanF]

4 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I knew about the similarities between the Targaryens and the Ptolemys, but I recently realized that there are some between the Targs and the Romanovs too. Both families reigned for roughly 300 years, and Elia/Rhaenys/Aegon’s shadowy murders are reminiscent of how the Romanovs were murdered by the Bolsheviks, both due to the informal brutality and how the following regime tried to obscure what happened from the public. (And then there are all the theories about whether Anastasia/Aegon secretly survived and fled overseas).

On another note, after finally reading up on the Jacobites a bit, I must say. . . they definitely had a better argument than the Blackfyres did lol. The coup against James II is pretty bullshit from a modern perspective. My knowledge of British history is limited, but it’s so crazy to contemplate how a country that was entirely Catholic managed, in the span of a generation, not only to become almost entirely Protestant but also virulently anti-Catholic.

 

James II had simply lost the confidence of the people who mattered.

[Leonardo Abreu]

Despite the different scenarios, I like to think of Robert as a parallel to Conan, if Conan instead of eventually becoming a good ruler for Aquilonia, had given in to whoring and drinking as would be expected of him.

[BlackLightning]

6 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

On another note, after finally reading up on the Jacobites a bit, I must say. . . they definitely had a better argument than the Blackfyres did lol. The coup against James II is pretty bullshit from a modern perspective. My knowledge of British history is limited, but it’s so crazy to contemplate how a country that was entirely Catholic managed, in the span of a generation, not only to become almost entirely Protestant but also virulently anti-Catholic

Isn't the coup against James II is bullshit from any perspective?

As to the bold, I think you can thank Elizabeth and Mary (but mainly Elizabeth) for that.

The British Crown (and maybe the world) would've been better off if she had just found a husband and kept on with him until she gave birth. 

[Loose Bolt]

To me ruling Targs seemed to be partly some kind mythical incarnations of kings who ruled Rome. For instance last king of Rome was Lucius Tarquinius Superbus and he lost his crown bc his son raped wife of nobleman and that woman made suicide by jumping from tower. Or it looks like GRRM reused myth about how Rome became republic and gave role of that poor woman to both Lyanna and Ashara.

[The Bard of Banefort]

22 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Isn't the coup against James II is bullshit from any perspective?

As to the bold, I think you can thank Elizabeth and Mary (but mainly Elizabeth) for that.

The British Crown (and maybe the world) would've been better off if she had just found a husband and kept on with him until she gave birth. 

I suppose if you were a devout Protestant who feared persecution and believed your salvation was at risk, then it would make sense. But it also makes queens Mary and Anne both look pretty vile, and it sounds like Mary had some Lady Macbeth-esque guilt for the rest of her life because of it. 

For some reason, I had thought James II was mad or tyrannical or something; I didn’t realize the problem was just that he followed the wrong denomination of Christianity. Ironically, I also only recently learned that George III was considered “the mad king.” People exaggerate the poor quality of history education in America, but it is true that there’s very little focus on monarchs. I didn’t start learning about Elizabeth I/Louis XIV/Peter the Great until high school. But the one king we did learn about, starting way back in elementary school, was George III. Yet even though we were taught he was a tyrant, his “madness” was severely downplayed. So somehow the Brits have an even worse opinion of him than we do lol.

(George III being essentially placed under house arrest by his son seems to mirror what Rhaegar planned to do with Aerys.)

[Alester Florent]

2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I suppose if you were a devout Protestant who feared persecution and believed your salvation was at risk, then it would make sense. But it also makes queens Mary and Anne both look pretty vile, and it sounds like Mary had some Lady Macbeth-esque guilt for the rest of her life because of it. 

For some reason, I had thought James II was mad or tyrannical or something; I didn’t realize the problem was just that he followed the wrong denomination of Christianity.

Well, as above, it wasn't just that. He was about as popular as Catholics could get in England at the time, being both a war hero and in popular conception the saviour of London during the Great Fire. His Catholicism caused some unease but it was tolerated on the assumption that it would be just for his reign and then it would revert to a Protestant succession. Indeed, everyone who mattered stuck with him during Monmouth's rebellion.

The problem was precisely that he was (viewed as) tyrannical in the way he started to exercise personal power. To put it in US terms, he was taking executive actions that were illegal by the law of the land. Then the prospect that this wouldn't just be for his own lifetime but that he now had a Catholic heir apparent who might well be even more absolutist in tendency was just too much for the Parliamentary establishment.

The actual impact of the Glorious Revolution (i.e. the coup/Dutch invasion) is much-debated but traditionally is the origin point for the British constitution, such as it is. The Civil War a generation earlier gets much more popular attention, but in one sense both king and Parliament lost those wars in the end, and the result (after the end of the dictatorship) during the 1660s and 1670s was a fudge held together by goodwill, bad memories of the war on all sides, and the political skill of some of the period's leading lights (most obviously Charles II himself). But the constitution was still essentially the same as it had been during the war, and required another violent (if much less bloody) upheaval in order to establish and confirm the new consensus: i.e. that the sovereign entity was "King-in-Parliament", not king alone (or Parliament alone, for that matter) and the personal power of the king was to be constrained in future.

This was something James II never really grasped. By the time Anne was looking for a successor, the new system seemed sufficiently well-established that James's son would probably have been considered acceptable because the damage he could do was now limited - so long as he renounced his Catholicism, which he refused to do.

Quote

 

Ironically, I also only recently learned that George III was considered “the mad king.” People exaggerate the poor quality of history education in America, but it is true that there’s very little focus on monarchs. I didn’t start learning about Elizabeth I/Louis XIV/Peter the Great until high school. But the one king we did learn about, starting way back in elementary school, was George III. Yet even though we were taught he was a tyrant, his “madness” was severely downplayed. So somehow the Brits have an even worse opinion of him than we do lol.

(George III being essentially placed under house arrest by his son seems to mirror what Rhaegar planned to do with Aerys.)

 

While George is most famous over here for being mad, it was essentially a harmless madness: running naked round the palace, talking to trees, mistaking a pillow for his dead son, etc. In ASoIaF terms, more Rhaegel than Aerys. In Britain, he's generally viewed as a comedic and/or tragic figure, not a villain.

With regard to American independence, while I think our standard history education covers it, it obviously does so in much less detail, and the person who gets blamed for it is Lord North, the Prime Minister at the time. To the extent George gets pulled in personally, it's for failing/refusing to intervene rather than as the driving force.

My instinct is that Americans tend to overestimate and/or overstate George's power and influence on American policy because "the tyrant king" was an obvious target for a nascent republic in a way in which "the Prime Minister" was not, and that this has led to successive generations of Americans overestimating the power and influence of the British monarch both during the independence struggle and indeed down to the present day to an extent. (Indeed, it's my understanding that before negotiations broke down completely, the Continental Congress made a direct appeal to George to overrule his ministers, as protector of their liberties, and only when he refused in snotty terms did republicanism really take hold). Meanwhile in Britain, we probably don't give George enough of the blame, because there was still such a convention of deference in the period that bad policies were blamed on ministers where possible and not on the monarch directly.

[Hugorfonics]

1 hour ago, Alester Florent said:

While George is most famous over here for being mad, it was essentially a harmless madness: running naked round the palace, talking to trees,

Lol

1 hour ago, Alester Florent said:

mistaking a pillow for his dead son, e

Aw, that turned sad

 

1 hour ago, Alester Florent said:

In Britain, he's generally viewed as a comedic and/or tragic figure, not a villain.

With regard to American independence, while I think our standard history education covers it, it obviously does so in much less detail, and the person who gets blamed for it is Lord North, the Prime Minister at the time. To the extent George gets pulled in personally, it's for failing/refusing to intervene rather than as the driving force.

My instinct is that Americans tend to overestimate and/or overstate George's power and influence on American policy because "the tyrant king" was an obvious target for a nascent republic in a way in which "the Prime Minister" was not, and that this has led to successive generations of Americans overestimating the power and influence of the British monarch both during the independence struggle and indeed down to the present day to an extent. (Indeed, it's my understanding that before negotiations broke down completely, the Continental Congress made a direct appeal to George to overrule his ministers, as protector of their liberties, and only when he refused in snotty terms did republicanism really take hold). Meanwhile in Britain, we probably don't give George enough of the blame, because there was still such a convention of deference in the period that bad policies were blamed on ministers where possible and not on the monarch directly.

Lord North tried to resign a few times before and during the war but George kept saying no. That's why in America we say the monarch was the tyrant and not the minister who kept trying to quit.