Written by Game of Thrones is as fantastical as a fantasy series could be. George R.R. Martin’s unapologetic world of mad kings, ruthless queens, sadistic bastards, and unsung heroes began its journey in the most mundane of manners. Soon after, the world would come to realize that A Song of Ice and Fire was far from predictable and devoid of clichés in the best way possible.
Game of Thrones [Credit: HBO]
Partly inspired by the War of the Roses and partly by feudal and Roman history, A Song of Ice and Fire singlehandedly presents a view of the world that transfixes and stuns the viewer into a temporary paralysis of the senses. Stacked with tragic realism, sadistic deaths, and irredeemable character arcs, the novels reinvented fantasy despite being a derivative of Tolkien’s works.
George R.R. Martin Reinvents the Genre of Fantasy
The Lord of the Ring: The Rings of Power [Credit: Amazon Prime Video]
After J.R.R. Tolkien popularized high-fantasy and magical realism through his work, The Lord of the Rings, in the mid-1950s, the world spun itself into a cocoon of escapist literature that imitated (often poorly) the one created by the English writer. But fantasy was turned into a cliché by authors who were inspired only by certain aspects of Tolkien’s work but disregarded most of it.
George R.R. Martin was irked by such writers and their limited understanding of a world divided by class structures. In turn, Martin aspired to create a body of work that brought a degree of realism to the genre of high fantasy, merging the two traits of literature into one brilliant philosophy.
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The product that resulted from the union of those two genres was exceptional. A Song of Ice and Fire would retain itself under the broad umbrella term of fantasy but embedded within the saga were moments of indifferent class distinctions, apathetic rulers, and powerless subjects who truly shocked the world into coming to terms with its tragic but inevitable reality.
George R.R. Martin Criticizes the Clichés in Fantasy
Game of Thrones [Credit: HBO]
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth was clearly segregated into good and evil that could be distinguished from each other simply by looking at it. The Elves were the pinnacle of divine beauty and as such pure and good. However, much could be said about characters like deformed creatures like Sméagol, Smaug, and Sauron who represent greed and evil.
A lot of novels derived from Tolkien’s oeuvre follow that simple ideology, taking benefit of that superficial distinction to craft a world brimming with magic and saturated with power. George R.R. Martin detests such simplicity. Instead, he created a world that was layered and complex in its strengths and weaknesses.
In an interview with TIME, the author explained one aspect of class distinctions in medieval fantasy that has seemingly been completely misinterpreted in modern fantasy adaptations.
The bad authors adopt the class structures of the Middle Ages; where you had the royalty and then you had the nobility and you had the merchant class and then you have the peasants and so forth. But they don’t seem to realize what it actually meant. They have scenes where the spunky peasant girl tells off the pretty prince. The pretty prince would have r*ped the spunky peasant girl. He would have put her in the stocks and then had garbage thrown at her.
Although the picture that Martin paints is depressing and can be avoided or reformed in works of fiction and fantasy, the author presents a strong argument for the case of the era in which these fictional characters live and operate.
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Despite being works of fiction and high fantasy, survival is a strong motivator for most of these protagonists who hail from the peasant class, and yet, suspension of disbelief makes the readers root for the hero when they rebel against the “pretty prince” only to have him fall in love with her for being defiant and so “different from the rest”.
Game of Thrones is streaming on Max.
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