The Future of the Series

This episode is brought to you by the Folio Society. A Game of Thrones is a story built on kingdoms, banners and bloodlines, where loyalty is fragile and power is always shifting. George R R Martin's world feels so immersive Because Westeros is governed by history om Dawn to Castle Black and beyond the wall. There is no such thing as neutral ground or of course, harmless hospitality Folio Society brings that sense of detail into the reading experience right from the very first pages of a song of Ice and fire So it's beautifully illustrated by Jonathan Burton, and the book has a foldout map. It's got these amazing illustrations of the house sigils, it's got family trees. And all of this brings the scale of the world and the complexity of its tangled loyalties to life. Folios, a Game of Thrones is available now with a limited edition launching on the fourteenth of july. You can order a Game of Thrones and explore the other books we keep coming back to at folioety dot com slash the book cllub That's folio society d. com slash the book cllub This episode is brought to you by the London Review of Books. And now we are certainly not shy of digging into things on the book club, whether that is why it is that a classic novel endures or why more contemporary novels manage to capture a particular zeitgeist or mood. So the London Review of Books, an absolutely brilliant periodical, by the way, operates on much the same principlple Each issue is an archive of long form essays, poetry, cultural criticism, and of course the famed book reviews. In an age of clipped opinions and half baked insights, the LRB is the outlier. It's a trustworthy source that prioritises the thinking the word count. So try three months of the London Review of books completely free when you sign up today. Subscribe now at lRb. me forward slash book cllub. So that is lRb. mE forward slash book cllub to try three months of the London Review of books for free Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. 'Twas a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight We feast An offer you can feast on. seell your car today on Carmana Pick up these my Tell me, my honouraable Lord Edard, how are you any different from Robert or me or Jamie For a start, I do not kill children. You would do well to listen, my lady. I shall say this only once When the king returns from his hunt I intend to lay the truth before him. You must be gone by then You and your children all three, eh, and not a casterly Rock Exile She said bitter cup to drink from A sweeter cup than your father served Rhaegar's children kinder than you deserve Your father and your brothers would do well to go with you Lord Tywin's gold will buy you comfort and hire swords to keep you safe. You shall need them I promise you, no matter where you flee, Robert's wrath will follow you to the back of beyond, if need be And what of my wrath, Lord Stark She asked softly. herer eyes searched his face. You should have taken the realm for yourself. It was there for the taking. Jaime told me how you found him on the Iron throne the day King's Landing fell and made him yield it up That was your moment. All you needed to do was climb those steps and sit a sad mistake. I've made more mistakes than you can possibly imagine But that was not one of them. Oh, but it was my lord When you play the Game of Thrones You win or you die There is no middleground. So hello everybody. Wlcome to the Book Cub. That was, of course from George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones published in august nineteen ninety six It's the first of the five Well, so far, five book series that makes up his song of Ice and Fire series. There are two more books forthcoming. Supposedly. Supposedly forthcoming exactly. and we'll be discussing whether or not he will or even can finish this legendary series after the break. ook the book that know sets it all off, It's an immense fantasy epic and it's about these noble houses battling and scheming for ultimate power to sit atop the Iron throne, while an ancient supernatural threat brews in the North and it's based in this kind of medieval world of sex and violence and betrayal, kind of loosely based has lots of historical precedence, but loosely based on the wars of the Roses, and we'll discuss that too. we will indeed. so Hi everybody. These were books that were celebrated at the time for injecting high fantasy with a dose of gritty realism, weren't they? There's a lot of sex and there's a lot of violence They are one of the a great literary phenomena Of the last twentyenty years or so I think hes sold something getting on for one hundred million books, ninety million books, something like that He's become George R. R. Martin, one of the most recognizable novelists in the world. And obviously a lot of that is because of the television series. So There were readers, of course, there were lots of readers beforehand But it was the television series done by HBO in twenty eleven that really cemented Game of Thrones as one of the cultural Sensations of the twenty ten s and it turned all of the books into bestsellers. People started naming their children, didn't they Daenerys or Arya or whatever. Yeah, I think they came to regret that later on. but yes exactly.. How many Cerseces are there? I don't know This should be Exactly. Well, after that reading, I thought that was chilling actually. And I mean one of the fun things about this this book and this series George R. Martin, we will obviously talk about how he creates this enormous host, this biblical host of characters. But there's something there for everybody, isn't there? So everybody looks at this champions a different contender. to the throne. and whether you were a Lannister or Stark Bolton or whatever. it becomes, you know, it's a fun game to play as it were. and actually Tabby, we should We should decide at the end of the show who we most resemble Oh we definitely will. I think I think we should Work out which characters we most resemble, which houses we would belong to. And we're also going to make our predictions for who we think Should Georgearah Martin ever finish this series who we think will win Well, not least because the TV ending was so controversial. So not everybody will agree with the TV ending who has seen it? And actually I have strong views as you know, Tabby about the ending of the TV series.uch a poor take. Wh well we'll get to that supposedly poor take later on. So Let's talk about the experience of reading the book first of all So did you read it before you'd seen the series or after? No, after. I actually stumbled across the series kind of by accident. But I think like it wasn't massive, massive yet. I'm one of those really annoying people that sort of says that I loved Game of Thrones before it was mainstream. but I was really I was captivated by it. And also I was very intrigued by the fact I came across so many people that compared it to Lord of the Rings because the TV series didn't seem very lordd of the Ringsy to me So I was intrigued by that. And then I went and I read the series over Lockdown And obviously, you know, anyone who loves fantasy I loved it And I actually liked it The more able I was to separate the TV series in my head from the book, the more I liked it because it came alive as you know much more medieval in terms of the Chivalric romance of it or whether or not that's there. The sigils, the colour, Vis Dothraac, for instance, the home of the kind of the horse Lords, in the book is this remarkable complex, vast civilization and doesn't quite translate in the TV series Um And so I really, really enjoyed it, but I didn't it's not comforting and it's not easy, I would say What about you? Well, actually, so I saw the TV series first I saw the first series and I really enjoyed it. And then I sort of said to myself, well, I obviously never read these terrible books And then whenever I was I had this weird thing where whenever I was getting a train And I was waiting for a train The books were everywhere at this point in to of WH Smiths in station bookstores, and I would sort of loiter, hoping that my train was delayed, looking at the books, like standing in the shop and like flicking through the books. Slipping a different book jacket on top though, Yeah punishment. Pretending I was re reading East of Eden surely. Anyway, eventually I cracked and I was just like, I'm going to read this. Okay, I'm going to read it Absolutely no shame admitting this I was riveted. All night I would be reading the books. Couldn't wait to get the next one The one thing I noticed though was My interest kind of piqued about book three and then started to decline. As to my disbelief, George Ra Martin started to introduce yet more characters.. I was totally the same. and also we'll be discussing the style of these books, but the thing is you spend a lot of time in lots of different characters' heads And as the books progress, there are more and more and more of them and it becomes more and more tedious because you're just hoping to get to the characters that you want to be with and their plot lines that you want to follow. I agree. We'll talk about this. I think's I think it's an object lesson actually in this is a It's an odd thing to say, but if you were teaching creative writing, I think this would be an excellent thing to teach because one of the key things that any writer needs is a degree of discipline or focus. and whether George R and Martin has those qualities, we will discuss later in the episode. Aually, let's talk about George R. Ramartin, Tabby. Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about him himself because he's an unusually recognizable figure, I would say, for a lot of contemporary autors. E everyone knows kind of what he looks like. He's quite distinctive He has a bit of a reputation for being fairly irasble in interviews and stuff. I think probably in part because people are constantly asking him where the next books are coming. But I've watched a lot of interviews with him now and he always just seems you know, quite sweet and you know a massive nerd, essentially. and that might also explain why this world got out of control. He's born on september twentieth, nineteen forty eight in Bayon, New Jersey. His mother's family were once very wealthy, but they lost all their money during the Great Depression And then in nineteen fifty three, Martin and his family moved into public housing. and his world at this period during his upbinging was very small, and quite confined you know, the same sites every day, the same routes, the same people. And I think that's important because it meant that he developed voracious imagination he read extensively, I guess. if you can't kind of travel and your opportunities are more limited, it allows you to see and experience things that you might not otherwise be able to. And so fantasy was his escape and he began writing as well. So he would sell monster stories to other children for pennies, which I think is charming. And then at high school he started writing superhero stories and he fell in love with science fiction and fantasy in part because of comic books And so he said, you know, rather than Dick and Jane and Sally, they suburban family with a dog called Spot. you know, it was magic and fantasy and heroes. And I kind of get that because you know some of the books that you're made to read when you're at prep school when you're kind of six, seven, eight You know, Biff and Chip and all those. I know you love those books, but I had no patience for them whatsoever. Well, first I'm never here for Biff and Chip S slander. I think Biff and Chip is brilliant. I know, it's just it's such a flaw in your personality. Also, Tabby, I mean, you're giving yourself away there. Are you still reading Biff and Chip when you're eight? Really? I mean, when did you learn to read? U fifteen No, I just remember being in year two at my prep school and my m actually wr you know wrote to school and was like At least can they be allowed to read, you know what they want to read. Obviously at that time for me, it was prouced Yeah Sckles. Yeah, of course. Anyway, so yeah, he has this he's a reader. he loves writing, all of this kind of thing. He discovers Tolkien. so what? So he would discover Tolkien at actually the point when America discovers Tolkien in Germany, which is the mid nineteen sixties. That's when there was a very famous kind of pirated paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings outrageed talking because he didn't get any royalties. But anyway, this went around America like wildfire Precisely the point where George R. Martin is what in his late teens, early twenties. So he reads it He says, you know, it completely blew my mind. I couldn't wait to kind of get into that world and to create worlds of my own. He interesterestingly, given that war is such a big theme in his books, he was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. And then he became he did dabbled in teaching and stuff and then became a full time writer at the end of the seventies spepecializing really in science fiction. And in Fantasy, he actually won some awards, I think for some of his early books and his short stories. Parenty has this brilliant vampire book about vampires going down the Mississippi and It sounds great. I think we should out on the show sometime. His big thing in the eightes was TV. He worked on a sort of reboot of the Twilight Zone. And all of this time, you know, he wasn't a name. He wasn't a well known name to people outside the worlds of science fiction and fantasy. withithin those worlds, yes, maybe, but not outside And then he gets the inspiration for What becomes this first book, A Game of Thrones. And I think it started more science fiction than fantasy He has this idea of a boy. you know, so often these books start with a single image or a single incident. It's insane how often this happens though. I'm so struck by that. It's almost like some kind of strange divine inspiration or something. this image that floods a person's mind and they get captivated by it and they have to write it down And then they have to create a world and a narrative to sustain it, I suppose. So in this case, it's the image of the boy who watches somebody being beheaded and then discovers These wolf cubs are pups in the snow And this is an image that you see right at the beginning of a Game of Thrones. He says it came out of nowhere in nineteen ninety one. When I began, I didn't know what the hell I had. I thought it might be a short story. It was just this chapter where they find these direwolf pups. And then I started exploring these families and the world started coming alive. It was all there in my head couldn't not write it. Just one thing about this. He has the idea of the image the scene. And then he starts to create the world to justify it almost. One thing he doesn't do is work out the world and the story before he starts writing And that explains, I think, why over time, the project becomes larger and larger and larger and there's a lack of There There's frankly, a lack of discipline. Yeah, he didn't plot it. No, he didn't plot it. So very different from a JK Rowling, let's say who does famously plot everything out in the Harry Potter world before she starts writing. She's got it all written down in exercise books or whatever George R R. Martin absolutely does not So he has this idea He's really into it so he completes his first chapter, this thing with the boy and the d the wolves in the snow in only a matter of days And then as with so many of these epic fantasies comes the map. and he draws this over the summer and I have to say it's It's a magnificent map. I was looking at it just yesterday. But again, you know, it's not like he has it all planned out. It's kind of still expanding, as he writes And you can feel this in the book. you know, you start in Winterfell, the home of the Starks who I suppose are our protagonists. and it's quite limited, it's quite bare, you know you have you know glimpses of the world beyond. And then the further we travel into the story, even in book one. more and more and more is going on. Anyway, he had planned it as a trilogy because most epic fantasies during this period were copied from the Lord of the Rings. Exactly. Tolkien really is's the Godfather ofant I mean, he is now, but at this point he really is the imprint. But then the more he writes, as we've said, the more it expands And so the initial draft was already just way too big. And so we had to split the initial draft into different volumes right away. And so we have a song of Ice and Fire. And this is why the first three books were written in the space of four years, so quickly. They were originally one thing. Yeah, exactly. And then I don't know, there's a slightly longer hiatus and then a slightly longer hiatus. and then now you know the winds of winter, the second last book we've been waiting for for fifteen years. whether it will overcome we' discuss. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So when it first comes out, which is nineteen ninety six, it's not a colossal hit But it does get a following. I mean there are a lot of reviews. I was looking at some of the reviews actually before we started recording. There are a lot of reviews generally quite positive, I think. Even at the time in with the first book, with this first book, some people said There are too many characters. You know, I find it overwhelming the number of characters and the number of names and so on. He took the chapters about one of the characters, Daenerys Targaryen, didn't, he published them as a standalone kind of novella. I can see how that would work. It works very well. It's a very good story. So for people who don't know, it's this princess effectively who is exiled who is sold off to these horselords. And she you know, it's a classic example of us seeing an alien world through the eyes of an outsider to that world You know, so we're traveling with her And it's a portal fantasy. So it's like you've gone through a portal with a character who doesn't know what is on the other side and you're seeing through their eyes this new and exciting kind of landscape. Anyway, he publishes more books, and then obviously the TV series twenty eleven turns it into this tremendous phenomenon with which surely everybody listening to this podcast is reasonably familiar, even if they've never seen so much as a frame of the TV series or red single line of the book. Everybody's heard of Game of Thrones. Yeah, definitely But just a quick I mean, word here on the style before we dig into the plot which will be recognizable to most people As we've said, it unfolds via multiple characters' perspectives. So this is a limited third person. so you have an external narrator to has access to the thoughts and feelings of only one character. So in this book, we have seven of those. They're mainly starks and they're mainly nobles, and that's probably why it's the noble houses and particularly the starks that we sympathize with most over the course of the series and why the peasants often seem like I don't know, kindind of, I suppose the most basic view a person might have of medieval peasants, you know, they all seem a bit uneducated and a bit naive. Isn't that interesting? I hadn't thought of that but it's a very much a top down view of this world, isn't it? Definitely is, you know. Yeah, the peasants, people who are not aristocrats are generally, what do they call NPCs You know, they're not they're not they don't appear to have in a, I mean, they must have in our lives, but we're never given access to them They're like u They're like they're like sort of the great mass of the suffering majority, you know, and that's kind of it. But with one exception and this is the prologue where we're inside the minds of a lowborn member of the Night's Watch, These are the people that guard the wall that separates Westeros from kind of the wild llands beyond And I actually think this opening is so good because you know straight away you're in some kind of medieval magical world from the clothes, the descriptions, there's a highborne knight And then there are the kind of the low born men around him, and it's very eerie and it's very creepy. But as the series progresses, as we've said, these viewpoints multiply and there are more and more and more, and so it becomes more unwieldy. But something that is brilliant, I think about it is that it is so unreliable throughout because you have different perspectives. and so people come across in different ways. moments when you might be tricked into wondering whether oh are the Starks really the good guys? So for instance, there' aacter called Jura Mormmont who is helping the princess, Daenerys through her travels. And he sees the guy who in this book is essentially our protagonist, Ned Stark. as a terrible man, you know, harsh in his principles Whereas for us expending a lot of time this book in Ned's mind He seems like a very decent good, you know, honourable man. I think it's a deceptively simple device. allows Quite a sophisticated characterization So The funny thing about this is on the surface, a game of Thrones seems to be very, very simply and accessibly written So the pros is, I think, I think you're more keen on the pros than I am. I think the pros is unremarkable and quite workman likeke I don't really mean that as a criticism because as we've said before on the book Club Sometimes very simple and accessible prose works greatly to your advantage. You don't always have to be writing like Charles Dickens or Vladimir Nabakov or something. If you want to write a successful popular book you know, simple, clean Unremarkable prose is a great way to get lots of readers in and to prioritise your narrative But what Martin does, I think, by focusing, you know, he'll have a chapter called Caitlyn, a chapter called Edard, a chapter called Arya or whatever. and we're seeing the world through that particular person's eyes. What he does exactly as you say, he allows us shifting perspectives on the events that are going on. He allows you to appreciate and particularly in later books as these point of view chapters multiply, you begin to realize that it's actually not as simple as you thought when you started. that actually you know an event that happened in the past is capable of having multiple different interpretations And actually, you know, with my historian' hat on I think that is a nicely complicated and nuanced way to think about political events or kind of you know, things that have happened great traumatic moments in people's lives or whatever where you think, oh, it's a simple clash of good and evil But actually, because Martin allows you to see that through the eyes of different characters over time, you realize, okay, I was wrong about that. Maybe there wass another side to the story But he's also kind of playing with the idea the ideas of kind of sagas or songs or you know stories about legendary events from the past which are often kind of glorified. and people are turned into heroes as wellever, because he uses this slightly kind of Chavalric language You know, my sweet sister or you know, my lord father or whatever it may be. So you mentioned some of the Sivarit language In a lot of fantasy books, that is very annoying. And it's a very arch You know, it's very flowery and over the top. And even Tolkien, when they get to Gondor and stuff, there are bits that Tolkien critics scoff at because Tolkien is writing in a deliberately very archaic way Martin, I think has found a very nice middle ground. where it's not quite modern prose. You know it doesn't feel to twentieth century or twenty first century, but at the same time, it is not fake medieval prose that you would get in some sort of victorian, you know, some incredibly lush Victorian romance about knights. You know, he's found a nicely neutral narrative voice I think to tell his story. Anyway, let's talk a little bit about characters and the story. So this is particularly this is a bit of a reminder, I guess for people who've read it or seen the TV series and a sort of a crash course for people who haven't. So you mentioned already we have the prologue. The prologue is basically these blokes who are guarding effectively Hadrian's wall They go out into the north and they discover there's basically, you know, zombies out there We have come out of nowhere And this is absolutely terrifying because this is like a sort of climate change style event. That is going, I mean, ititerally is climate change, isn't it? Be winter is coming. And this is basically going this is an existential apocalyptic threat besides which petty arguing about who's king? is nothing Then we move on to the sort of petty argument becausecause we get to, you said they're our protagonists. I think they kind of are they' set up that way. the Stark family. So they are the Lords of the North You've got Ned, the father, Edard as his But we everyone calls him ned H married to Caitlyn and they've got these kids rob the oldest who's very he's your classic oldest son from Chronicles a Narnia or from whatever, you brave, dutiful, a good person, decent and all of this. Youve got Sansa who's very romantic and completely like obsessed with kind of the chivalveric stuff and also with boys. you have Bran who is mischievous and has a sort of there's a from the beginning you kind of think, oh, is he going to be our hero? A whiff of destiny. Yeah, exactly. he's fun and he's a bit naughty and you kind of think, okay, you know, he could be a character to kind of you know, to invest in. you have Arya who is a tomboy. She's a girl but she's a tomboy. she likes you know, fighting and swords and stuff. You've got poor Rickon. Everyone forgets him and no one cares about him because he's how old is he three or four or something? and basically no one cares. Yeah, he's the baby. yeah. There's another bloke hanging around called Jon Snow. He's their half brother because he's Ned's bastard child or appears to be anyway. And also Ned has a ward called Theon Greyjoy who is sort of more saturnine and sardonic and stuff. Yeah, I think we should have he's got red flags all over him right from the start because everyone comments on the fact that he laughs too much and he laughs at everything that he should kind of take seriously. But what I was going to say about the kids He's well on this show. He would do actually The thing about um this set up with the kids. I think this is classic a classic device like children's fiction or teenage fiction which is You have a family, you have all these siblings, each of them given different qualities And when I first read it or when I first saw the TV series, I thought, okay, I know exactly what how this is going to go Basically they're all going to split up the kids, they will all face challenges. It's kind of in a weird, I mean, this is a very weird comparison to make But this a slight You know, it's not unlike little women or something Each of the children is given a different identity. eachach of them is given different flaws. eachach of them is given a set of different challenges And our expectation is they will overcome these challenges They will mature and become well rounded people. and then at the end having separated and gone their separate ways, they will reunite. The fellowship will be reunited and they will you know the final scene will be the Starks, all grown up You know, laughing and exchanging happy memories because they have triumphed effectively, because that is the trajectory of so many children's fantasy novels and books for kind of you know, younger readers. They're given this kind of this portentiousness right from the start because they discovered these dire wolves in the snow they It's the sigil of the House of Stark And they each have one. It's the perfect thing.very single stark child, even the bastard has a diewolf to keep it company to defend it to fight for it. And so you kind of think, o, these are our heroes, you know, nothing can go wrong. Anyway, a little bit about Ned himself He is probably he's honorraable. He's a good man, he's stern he's dautiful He's probably the best You know, the most honest, the most admirable character in the book. Hiss the soul of integrity, isn't he, Neds? Yes He's sort of humoress, unfortunately, but he is incorruptible. Then he's married to Catlyn Tully, who is a family from the South. She loves her family. she's beautiful, she's a very strong woman. She makes mistakes though. And the other thing that you don't see in the TV series that comes across a lot in the book is Ned constantly has dreams or is flooded with memories from a time before present in the book from of the past and also this recurring memory of his sister's death, his sister dying. Anyway, Then we get the kind of the other I don't know, I suppose they are the antagonists of Game of Thrones The Lannisters arrive att Winterfell So this is the king That's old mate Robert Brathheon He just featured on the show. they amazing. So Ned and Robert basically teamed up in the past to overthrow This blokeer they thought was a terrible king, a tyrant, a mad king They overthrew him, Robert seized the throne. He's a Targaryen and they're the longstanding ruling dyast of Western. Exactly. They overthrew the Targaryen dynasty. Robert took the throne. Ned hasn't seen him for years because Ned's been up in the north and Robert, his pal has been down in the south ruling in this sort of very, you know Rome or Constantinople like capital in the sort of Mediterranean capital Robert turns up come on a great visit with all with his wife's family. His wife is from a very rich family of the Lannisters. who are kind of famously cynical and ruthless They all turn up and Robert to Ned's shock has got very fat, hasn't he? He's really let himself down. He drinks too much, she eats too much. He hates being a king. he's bored bidal Exactly. He stands up he's got his wife Ceri who you played in in the introduction who is very beautiful, but she's very cold She's chilling Isn't she? I mean, she'siter you know, she she's icy as a personality. She's manipulative as well. Shes she's However, she's wicked. She is. She has this twin brother called Jaamie, the king sllayer as he's known, because he supposedly killed a mad. ing during this uprising and betrayed his oath as as the king's bodyguard he but so people have a sort of a very conflicted view of Jamie Lannister I think when the book begins, maybe this is just my own personal prejudice But I assumed when you first read the book that he was going to be the primary antagonist. becausecause he is somebody who has betortrayed his oath, he is Save He is handsome. Yeah, but he is shown to be violent. cynical, ruthless, all of these kinds of things And I sort of thought, okay, they're setting him and his sister up as the primary antagonists. These are clearly the villains of the story. they also he also has a brother, doesn't he? So they have another brother, Cersei and Jaime and this is Tyrion who basically ends up taking over the entire series. I mean, he he's the character who kind of comes from nowhere to to grow and grow and grow and to dominate the story. He's probably the most iconic character from Game of Thrones, partartly because of the TV show, but partly because he's known to be kind of witty and intelligent and he you know, he's a very complicated character. He's actually the character that George Irmartin himself said that he liked the most And he said that he would be if he had, you know, if he could be any of them, it's he's the one he'd like to be. Nicole, after Jesus says that he's the most love lovable. in the ch. I think I think Nicole might be right about that He's very lovable. So the Lannisters have come because Robert wants to ask Ned to be his hand of the King, kind of his lord protector, his advisor. because his own hand of the King, a guy called John Aron has died under mysterious circumstances. Net therefore kind of reluctantly agrees. He doesn't want to enter the snake's pit, you know, in a sense. he't. he doesn't want to go south. The North is why the air is clean, you know, it's not corrupt. it's things are simpler and more honouraable, but yes, he finally does agree. And then something terrible happens. Bran his son who we were speaking about She falls out of a very, very high tower. and almost dies and he he loses the use of his legs. And we discover, this is a spoiler, but we discover that he was thrown out by Jamie Lannister because he had caught Jaamie and Cersei having sex incestuous sex because they are twins. But the thing is we know this, but none of the other characters know this. No no one knows what's happened to Bran. So we enter this phase of the novel that's kind of a murder mystery and I really like it. becausecause Ned goes south with his daughters. he goes to King's Landing Along the way, we learn a little bit about the malevolence of Robert's parents son Joffrey, who's a terrible, terrible person and he has Sansa's direwolf lady killed out of spite. Just a quick thing on him killing the wolf and the wolf being killed. Sansa's Wolf. This is I think the first moment in the book where we start to think that it mightccured that George Ra Martin is going to has been subverting your expectations Be as you said, Tabby When they you know that this was the first thing that came to him, remember? the scene of the child finding the wolves in the snow And I think that when the different wolves are allocated to the different children, You do think, oh, so the children and their wolves are the heroes and they're going to clearly survive and they'll all be reunited and isn't this going to be lovely? And Sansa really loves her wolf who's called Lady, you know, she sort of grooms it and she's, you know, she's in the way that a sort of teenage girl can be about a dog, right Lady is killed very brutally. Her father is basically ordered to put Lady down And I think that's the first moment as's what one hundred pages in or something. where you think G, this is actually pretty brutal Like you definitely wouldn't give this to a child because a child might be very upset about this. and you realize that Martin is doing something much more grittier and much more cynical with his world than you might expect. Also, lots of more wheels start coming off the minute we enter King's Landing, which is kind of like This It's this court of vipers, it's like some sort of byyzantine court of kind of corruption and scheming and whispers. And Ned begins investigating John Aaron's death and It takes it a very unexpected turn in that the truth behind his death is much darker and much more adult and much kind of you know, more salacious than you would expect from a book, the book that you've tricked into believing that you were reading with its direwolves and its children and its castles and its sorts. The tension and the drama really starts escalating because then his wife, Catelyn, takes Tyrion Lannister prisoner because she believes that he was responsible for Bran's near assassination. then Ned our hero is injured and in time also imprisoned after threatening to expose Cersei's secret, the secret behind parentage of her children with Robert Baratheon, and this is the scene from the very beginning. And so when Robert Baratheon dies, Ned tries to have his brother, Stannis Cred And instead, you know our hero is flung into a prison and his fate hangs in the balance And while this is happening, his son Rob goes to war and wages war on the Lannstters. So if you've never read the books by the way, and you're confused at this point, we should just say The thing to bear in mind is that basically George R. Martin has set up this world with this family And terrible things have started to happen to the family. They've split up. various of them have been locked up or whatever, their sort of high idealistic expectations of what life will be like have been completely punctured. And the question that's by about three quarters of the way through is, well, are they going to overcome these trials and everything ultimately be happily ever after Mm you start to think, you know, I kind't actually there's a point where I think when you're reading where you think I can't actually see a way out of this for them. You know, surely. He's not going to start killing off some of these characters in whom we've invested And so that creates, I think the ten, I mean, you you're right, there is a mystery element to it, which is very exciting But the question about whether He's going to actually sacrifice characters that you've come to know and like. That's what keeps you turning the pages, I think by the time you're at like page five hundred or something Now, meanwhile, there's there are two other elements to the story, aren't there? One of which Youve mentioned already So one of which is this character called Daenerys from the oldld Dynasty. She's in exile with her brother and she's basically been sold off to the horse lords. So they're like the Mongols or something, I think they're probably sort of step nomads. They ride around on horses. They're incredibly violent. They live by a completely different moral code There is an awful lot of sexual violence which we'll probably talk about after the break. And so she has been sold off at the age of fourteen. to this terrifying but also hunky f course, Lord. there's a lot of, you know, she's basically forced to sleep with him but then ends up falling in love with him. Yeah, it basically all culminates in in his death the death of the baby that she had been carrying and, you know, the possibility The dragons, which haven't been seen in Westeros for hundreds of years, since the Targaryens were at the height of their power may come back and that Daenerys may bring them back, you know by entering the flames of her husband's funeral pyre. And then the final narrative that we're following is the bastard, Jon Snow. He's at the Wall. he's joined the Night's Watch, the defenders of the Wall. And here is a very very different narrative. It's the narrative that allows us to play with the possibility of the supernatural because he's not that invested or interested in or close to the politics of King's Landing, the medieval world down there, the Byzantine medieval world The more historical world, he is kind of coming face to face with a terrifying ancient threat, supernatural ancient threat. and he encounters this firsthand. So we can see from all this that Westeros itself is an incredibly detailed sprawling world. On the map, it resembles Britain and you know the way that the North is depicted versus the south, there's something of Britain, I think in that historically. completely. And the wall, obviously. Yeah, we'll get into all the history behind this in a second. But I would say this world is much, much more complex than the TV series. And for instance, if you just look all the sigils for all the different houses and the way that he's plotted their family trees and stuff it's remarkable and the way that he melds So the sigils are kind of them heraldic emblems. Yeah, so it's the dire wolf for starks and they have their words, the Lannisters have their words and then you know, they have their lion and so on and so forth. And they and you know, the TV shows is deceptive and that you think there are a couple of main houses. There are so many in the book. and he mellds different histories, different cultures, he's pulling from all sorts of fantasy precedents, allusions to magic, politics. So it is an incredibly impressive world, I think I hit so Hi Dvil'svocate with their Tub U George R R Martin himself is One said there are two different kinds of fantasy writers, there are architects and gardeners So an architect designs the world and then puts you within it And he sort of said the gardener, The world somehow exists and you're discovering it and you're tending it and you're going through it and you're kind of planting new things and whatnot. The problem of being a gardener is I mean Tolkien was a bit of a gardener in a way because the Lord of the Rings didn't turn out as Tolkien expected. You know you can tell that when you read the book in that the first section is very much like the hobbit, it's set in thehire and so on. It's kind of a little tw And then there's this stuff with Tom Bomberdale and whatnot. You know, he's going off on little tangents and side quests and then he gets into his big story, which is drawn from his earlier kind of middle earth stuff that he'd been working on. George R R Martin is there's a definite element of him making it up as he goes along, I think and by the time he's in bit four or five, he thinks to himself I'm kind of a little bit bored of these main characters now I'm going to introduce some new characters and some new cities and things. Yeah. And I'm you know, if anyone ever played Age of Empires You know where the map It kind of expands and you go into the darkness, there's definitely a sense that he's doing that with this and he's like, o I actually I' really struggling to write the plot. So I'm going just work out what's going on with the red wines, who her family or whatever it may be. And he definitely, you can tell in this book elaborates the history behind the book as he goes. You learn more about the war that resulted in Robert Baratheon becoming king You learn more about the ancestors of Westeros, the children of the forest and things like that. That's something he's got from Tolgen, isn't it? The idea of a deep history behind the world and he gives you clues, little clues and hints. The characters sometimes talk about it. They sort of say, o, this is where the first men lived, or this is where the children of the forest came from all of this stuff. But it's kind of mythologized. It's like a bit like talking about I don't know, the Viking saaggas, the Nordic sagas or whatever, you know, you're never really en sure, you know how much of it is real And he says this lovely thing, where you can tell that he just loves painting the world. He loves doing his gardening much more than kind of shaping the narrative where he says, there are days when I sit down in the morning with my cup of coffee. I fall through the page and I wake up and it's dark outside and my coffee is still next to me, it's ice cold and I've just spent the day in Westeros. And I love that because you can see that he's just like a total fanty head. He's a toal nerd Is you I mean, this speaks to you, Tabby, but I know you love all this stuff and the kind of world building and the genealogies And the maps and all that. I can't tell you how many YouTube holes' fallen down just about like Westters But it is also heavily based on history. or is it heavily based? I would say that it draws on an idea of history. It draws on the sexiest, most popular version of historical events there are, kind of the guts and the Gory. and the medieval world This is a medieval world that we're in essentially in the same way that The Lord of the Rings, Middle earth has shades of a medieval world around it. It's the aesthetics of the medieval world, you know, it's Ct rituals, it's chivalry, it's soldiers. It's a feudal society I would say it wases more to kind of you know, the horrible histories interpretation maybe of the medieval world where it's because because it's so bleak, you mean? Yeah, it's so it it's all the it's only blood rape, brutality I mean, we can talk about the cynicism of the book, but I think it is a very Gim view of the Middle Ages So H ideals are always punctured. I mean, there are lots of things that are missing from his medieval world or relatively absent They're also absent from example of the Lord of the Rings. So he doesn't really care about the economics of how it works. He admits that though, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that would be perhaps a weird thing to put in a fantasy book. He's not terribly interested in ideers. So, you know, characters we're not really introduced to Scholars who are thinking about ideas or philosophers or any of these things. But then there are actual features of the medieval world that he draws on or events or organisations. so Hadrian's wall, probably most obviously. Yes. Yeah, you love that, don't you because he I do I do like this actually, because I would do this. He went to Hadrian's W in the eighties and stood out and kind of thought what it would have been like to have been a Roman soldier and looking into the wilds of Scotland and wondering what kind of terrible things were happening. Horrors are coming his way. Well you did that reccently, you went to Haag's W. D didn't you didid you gaze out and pretend to be a Roman soldier Totally I did. tootally I did. I know I actually probably did Yeah. I'm not joking. And then there's so the people on the u on the wall are themselves You know, there are clearly historical inspirations for the Night's Watch. So this is this kind of monastic order. protecting Westeros from you whatever horrors lie north And they're based on They're crusader knights that sort of knightly orders, you know the the Knights Templar or the hospitalers or whatever from the Middle Ages. But there's also a French Foreign Legion side to them, isn't they? Because they're kind of convicts and rapists and bad people who basically get sent to the wall to join the Knights Watch as part of their punishment. And a little bit about of the Black Watch, which is a battalion of the British Am in the eighteenth century there to police the Highlands. But I think the greatest precedent of all, and Martin himself has admitted this Historical precedent that is is the Wars of the Roses. So he said my model for this was the full volume history of the Plantaginist that Thomas B. Costain wrote in the fifties. So The Wars of the Roses are a series of bloody conflicts between two powerful English houses in the fifteenth century. You have the House of Lancaster, they have the Red Rose, the House of York, the White Rose, and they're fighting for the throne. this book The Yorks. are the Starks, They're a northern house. And then the Lancastrians are the Lannisters. They're the wealthy southern house And then you know people have actually used the Warves of the Roses to try to work out how the books will end by trying to follow the historical precedents. But then there are specific kind of characters based on specific historical figures. So you have the Duke of York who was appointed protector of the realm and that is kind of You know, Ned Stark is loosely based on him. They're both quite honorable men and they both Yeah, Richard of York. Yeah. Richard of York and they both face the same fate And then that means that Rob Stark is kind of a young Edward IVth. Young warriors, very good at battle. They win have a series of early victories, but Robert Baratheon is the most Edward I Fth figure of all because They both won the throne. They were both physically imposing and very good warriors in their youth And then turn it into Elvis in Las Vegas. Then they literally turn into Elvis in Las Vegas, exactly. They eat too much, they have mistresses. Yeah. bloody good lads. So there's basically two Edward IVth's in this book. Yes, exactly. the young one and the old one. Yeah. And then you have and they both had a kingmaker, Tywin Lannister, Ela Warwick. They grow increasingly reckless and they both have sort of troublesome brothers. So Robert has Stannis and Renley based on the Duke of Clarence and Richard IId But then there are other kinds of illusions, so Tyrion could be Richard III. But then is it historical Rich of III, or is it a more literary Rich of III? And we'll discuss this. And then Cersei is quite an Elizabeth Woodville character. So this Ed of the fourth' beautiful quueen who filled the court with her own family to have as much power as possible. and then also quite a mangaret of Anjieu character. You know, she fought tooth and nail to get her son on the throne, so she was the wife of Henry VI. So basically what George Armutin has done is taken a very, very sensational soap opera in the fifteenth century sort of that your classic medieval soap opera and taken aspect of all the characters and created different versions of them and basically set them at each other's throats, which is a very fun thing to do. And The Wars of the Roses, by the way, I loved the Wars of the Roses. Me too. I still do. Yeah. and actually I think we've both read the same Bodess Ripping historical novel The Sun in Slendor by Sharon Pennman. Yeah. You've read that havevent you? Yeah cool. I love that. So that's from the perspective of Richard III. It tells you the whole story of the Wars of the Roses. It's very, very romantic, isn't it? And there's a lot of sort of fumbling the dresses and stuff. So when I was thirteen, I thought it was the best thing ever written. Yeah, absolute heaven. Well other boys were like really getting into, I don't know, like page three in the sun or something. you were like, o the sun in splendor. Fantastic. But It's actually really relevant because I would say that what George Rr. Martin is doing is he is isn't basing the series so much on, you know ual history as the interpretation of history in Literature I think, particularly Shakespeare. Yes. So there are definite literary precedents. I know we' got to get to a break eventually others, Nico will never ever forgive us. However, he's obviously drawing on Shakespeare He's drawing on a French writer called Maurice Dron. Have you ever read him, Tubby? I can't say that I have no. So Maurice Dron was an ultra conservative. He's one of Vladimir Petin's favorite writers. No way. He's an ultra conservative writer. He wrote his books in the fifties, sixties and seventies L Hamodi, the accursed kings about sort of what is it fourteenth century France. And so they historical novels, I've actually tried reading them People rape about them. I found them very thin gave up. I thought they were bland ot as I genuinely, not as good as George R. Martin. And actually the author of himself, Mauris Jron thought they were rubbish He just wrote them for money. Anyway In an odd way I respect that. So they're based on these precedents Obviously Shakespeare, Macbeth You know, the idea of Cersei as Lady Macbeth that hangs over it, doesn't it? Totally. yeah. The idea of power ing The idea of a raign based on the bones a violence and therefore being inherently unstable Yeah, exactly. Then you've got obviously Tolkien. I mean Tolkien hangs over this whole project Martin himself admitted that what he was doing was, you know Partly a kind of homage to Tolkien. It would be inconceivable that you'd be writing medieval fantasy without Tolkien's model in your head. But at the same time, what he's doing is he is trying to escape from Tolkien's shadow because as he himself admits Tolkien is writing in a kind of heroic mythic moralistic. good versus evil vein the idea of evil is such a huge part of Tolkien's world. Martin's world is Much less idealistic idealism is punished. It's random as well It's yeah It's flawless. The operation of fate or destiny or Pidence which runs through the Lord of the Rings. the sense that everything is preordained, you don't get any of that in George Aramutin at all Yeah. and also it's this, you know, we said that Martin was a conscientious objective to the Vietnam War And he has said of Tolkien that he and Tolkien have they have very different perspectives on things. He even says that they have different attitudes about war and sexuality. So it's almost as though what Martin is trying to do is say, I'm actually showing you I'm not showing you the version that they sing about in the songs or they write about in the epics. I'm showing you the real world version. you know, This is what the Middle Ages was like, this is what war is like, it's blood, it's guts, it's rape, and everyone is stabbing everyone in the back. Isn't it interesting though that of these two men blloke who actually fought in one of the most horrendous battles in human history, The Battle of the Som Tolkien, in the trenches in the mud and amid the slaughter. that he writes the Lord of the Rings, which is much more idedalistic. And Martin who didn't fight in Vietnam slightly wallows in the violence and particularly the sexual violence. I actually think too much. I think he goes overboard with all that. But I think that's because if you had actually experienced the horrors of war, particularly if you were from the generation that Tolkien was, these were people that, you know didn't believe in leaning into your pain and they believed in kind of carrying on Yes And it's that painful and it's that raw. it's not going to be an easy thing to do to talk about war based on your experiences of war. So you probably subliminally channel it into other things Whereas when you write about war, it's probably easier for you to draw, especially if you're kind of if you love history as he did, to draw upon something that is idealistic and chivalrous and legendary because it's less painful for you, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, I thinks well I mean, it just would have run counter to the way that people talked about their experiences in wartime. It wasn't the ethos? No, absolutely. But I think it's psychologically interesting That's hoen. Still, You know, he's not blind, of course to the suffering and whatnot But he still presents us with quite an idealized version of medieval combat. Whereas Martin, who never had been in a war zone Absolutely, you know, he he, I mean, as you say, I think there is perhaps an element of it not self indulgent But I think there is a kind of voyurism sometimes, particularly to the sexual violence in game of Thones. Yeah. And they also have very different attitudes to like the supernatural and in, you know trying to make magic, trying to build a system into a kn. but But we have to get to a break now because this is actually just we're like Martin, we've gone off on total tangents. It's out of control. So we'll get to a break and then when we come back, we will talk about the way that George R Martin handles the supernatural in a Game of Thrones, We'll talk a little bit more about the sex and the violence and we'll talk about the most shocking moment in all of fantasy. 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Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack Hey, welcome back to the book Club. Tabby We' talking Game of Thres at great length, of course, We've done a George Ra Martin. So we've mentioned already the supernatural element of it The interesting thing about this is that this is kept really at arm's length, isn't it throughroughout the first book in the sequence. There is a sense that there's all this sort of very gritty realistic power politics in Kim's Landing But out there, almost beyond the imagination of a lot of characters who are very literal minded There is this sort of this otherworly the world of the kind of numinous and the divine and whatnot that is actually going to whether they like it or not that is going to kind of eventually get across the wall and consume Westeros and you know, undermine all their ambitions and stuff Yeah, it kind of exists in the north the hint of the supernatural. you know we're far away from King's Landing where it's politics and its' machinations and it's very human. And the implication is that The very human threats of the novel are drowning out the real threat of the novel, which is the supernatural. and it's almost as though in the prologue, George R. Martin is telling us to look out for the real dangerers at the heart of the book. and also Martin's very keen in interviews to always say that he's His is kind of a hard magic system. There's logic, there's laws to it. It makes sense. it's almost scientific and it's a departure from kind of the soft magic system of Lord of the Rings. So he's still trying to root it in the real world. But I think he does this very well, I think He lulls you into forgetting that this is a fantasy book and there is magic and there are dragons and there are zombies and then suddenly he lifts the curtain and particularly when you're following John Snow's narrative. And it comes as a really exciting shock when the zombie, for example, attacks the Lord commander of the Night's Watch. And it's not just about who's allied with who in King's Landing and who's closer to winning the, you know, the throne. and you know, it's at the very end of this book, A mass for Spoiler that we find out that the dragons actually exist. So that is kind of the ultimate reveal that, yes, we are, in fact still in a fantasy But the interesting thing about the Dragons though, is that the Dragons They're playing the part that you know, if this was a modern thriller, a Tom Clancy or something Theyre play the part of weapons of mass destruction aren't So Even though they're magical creatures or that we regard them as supernatural creatures They are actually their function is to be nuclear weapons or something, or to be chemical weapons that the Targaryens have used in the past to subjugate this world and that now Daenerys has the possibility of doing so again So they are magical, but they're not human. they're animals, if you see what I mean. They're not magical beings. you know, they're not like the dragons of Aragon or whatever. You know, he's even himself said that he wanted them to be realistic. I mean, they ask Dragons but he said, you know, they're not smmog. They're chat about burglars. Exactly. He said, you know, they could only have two legs and two wings because what animal do you see in the real world with six legs? I mean, I've never seen a dragon in the real world either, but you know what I mean? It's the hard magic again. But despite all this and the fact that there is a supernatural dimension to Game of Thrones The evil in the book is firmly rooted in humans. The worst parts of it are always humans. So it's not like say Stephen Erksson's book of the Fallen or the Wheel of Time series, where the evil is kind of some nameless and then very dramatically named supernatural threat that's coming in and the forces of good have to battle against it In this, it's Hans committing, you know, pillage, rape doing battle, shedding one another's blood, and that's the most violent and aggressive feature of the novel. Yeah. And so actually, do you not find when you read it that as much as, you know, the stuff with the whitealk what do they call the White Walkers? The others in this, yeah. The others, yeah The stuff for that is fine. you know, it I don't mind it. I like it. The real interest lies in the politics. That's where Martin's his heart really lies. becausecause as you say, the suffering, the wickedness, the cruelty is so much more intense When it's done by humans to each other than when it's done by you know these sort of zombie figures to the members of the Night's Watch. It's such a cynical take on, I mean, we said the medieval world, but it's such a cynical take on human nature. Ultimately, everyone will betray everyone and the people that refuse to betray someone will ultimately end up dead. It's quite like but then it's even It's not even a barbaric system in a way. There is no system. It's kind of like the crrusader states or something. Everyone's just fighting to get on top It's not a question of good or bad. and this is why you know you're lulled at points into thinking that this is, you know, a shivalric romance, something Ethurian even, you know, something came out of the reign of Edward I first or whatever. But then you're constantly reminded that that's just a story and that's not the real world of today. Well, this is the point about the children The children have grown up reading Cavll romances and certainly one of them, Sansa Stark, who's one of our Yeah, one of the characters in whom we invest, I mean, she's quite annoying, isn't she? She's a teenage girl. Yeah, she grows on you though she does grow on you, I think, because once she starts to suffer, you really start to feel for her. She hased she can be a little bit spoiled and a little bit selfish But not in an outrageous way. She likes pretty things. She's just very ladylike. She's a classic a teenage girl, protagonist. Okay. But I would never, ever, ever call my dog lady No that is terrible. A lot of them have bad names for their diewolves. Shaggy Dog? Shaggy Dog is a shocking name. Yeah. Anyway, she goes to King's Landing and she believes, you know, she idolizes Prince Jeoffrey. Yeah, her sweet prince. She has a massive crush on him. and she goes to see a tournament and I think this is actually very well done this scene You know, this is my favorite scene in the whole really book. Yeahah because you can see how I mean, I read books about tournaments when I was a kid You know, you would you be o, I can't wait, I can't wait. And then right away in the tournament very early on. There's a bit where this terrifying character called the Mountain, Sir Gregor Cigain who' an absolute horrendous bruiser He He's in a joust with this other night And quote, he strikes him Under the gorge it was such force that drove through his throat, killing him instantly. The point of Sir Gregor's lancer snapped off in his neck and his life's blood flowed out in slow pulses each weaker than the one before. And this is one of the first moments that in the book Again, one of the early moments when George R. Martin's like he's He's forcing you, he's got you and he's pressing you right up against the screen or something. He's saying, lookook, this is what it's actually like. It's very intense. It's very visceral. and it's kind kind of like that's the real nights, you know When Chivalry is dead, that's when nights real life. They're like this guy Soores, who wears beautiful armor and hands women roses as he rides around. They're like this. they kill and blood will be shed. And it's right after that moment actually that Sir Gregor's brother, who is called Sandor, who is called the Hound, he's just talking to Sansa and he says You know, his face is all being burned and he tells Sansa My brother, Sir Gregor did this to me, held me down and he pushed my face into a fire and whatnot. And it's a really kind of, oh my god, you know, again, a very sort of striking moment So you think that you're in this kind of traditional epic fantasy world, but it's far more brutal, it's random, it's unforgiving. It's unusually violent. And you know, when this book came out in nineteen ninety six, That wasn't unusual. It wasn't unusual to encounter genuine darkness. in all fatalism in fantasy. So you had Code and The Barbarian by Robert E. Howard, Dark, visceral, even quite sexy These stories were kind of about wizards, dragons, and destiny, but they in a sort of medieval world, a bit like this, very much walking in the footsteps oford of the rings. But they had delineated good and bad And they usually leaned heavily into the environment, you know, sweeping landscapes. Think middle earth, I guess And that's not something that Martin is particularly interested in. He has his maps and things like that, but it's constantly rooted, as we've said, in the human sphere, it's about people So what it does is and what he does very well is he mixes the radical and the new. He takes on a lot of these themes and a lot of the kind of furniture of the world. and coaxes you into a feeling of safety. You feel like you know what to expect, as you said, with the Stark children. And then something totally unexpected and shocking happens. and this was very unusual fantasy. It wasn't just dark It was shocking and Good and evil don't really exist, and the characters aren't good or bad? Well, I think this point about good and evil is actually is a really important distinction with Tolkien. So Tolkien, who's obviously to some extent Martin's kind of, you know, mentor or whatever, his godfather. Tolkien had an incredibly powerful sense because he's a you very, very serious kind of Catholic He has a very, very powerful sense of the issue of evil, what evil is, the evil that lies within us, original sin, all of these kinds of things. It's not true, I think that Tolki, peopleople s to say of Tolkien, oh, it's very simplistic. I don't think that's true at all because actually the whole Lord of the Rings is that we all carry the evil within us in the r. Bings out our inner corruption exactly. The ring equals temptation and we're all tempted. Even Frodo Baggins, the hero is tempted E Aragorn, who's kind of the perfect knight, rightight But in this All the characters Uh, It's not that there is evil within them, so much as The distinction between good and evil just doesn't really exist at all No, exactly. There's no system eachach of them in that from their own perspective Do the right thing to survive in this Darwinian world where as you said earlier You know, it's that classic line, this's the Cersei line when you play the game of Thrones, you win or you die. abbssolutely have you have to be a killer. You have to do what you have to do to survive, you have to sacrifice every principle, every friend. And if you don't do that, if you show mercy, if you show idealism then you will be punished for it. And this is, I suppose some readers of Martin think He has he has a sort of relish punishing Virtue So as we'll see some of the starks You know, they show mercy They show decency They showed kindness. O compassion And whenever they do, you think, oh, don't do that because Martin will punish them for it. Yeah. and this is this is very I mean, this is very Sam Brookian, I think in that basically, you know, you've always said that the more ruseless you are kind of in history, the better you tend to do. The better you do. Yeah. Yeah. wasas you know, Ned Stark, you know, so if you're Rober Baratheon and there's a Targaryian threat on the horizon The sensible thing to do is kill that threat, even if it's a young girl, whereas Ned is like, no, because it's just wrong, it's morally wrong. Cersei plays the game very well. She's a terrible person, but who wouldn't? And it actually asks you that question in a way Who I mean if you take if you take Ceri out of the mold of just wicked queen and you think to yourself as a mother, what wouldn't one do to save your children I mean, maybe sleep with your brother, but. Well you were at swin as well, Tavy I mean,read care. I was so afraid that would come up. But Cira, you see, we are led to believe through most of the book that she's an absolute monster But I think as certainly as the series develops We see that although she can be Tue you know, conniving All of these kinds of things In her own mind, she is simply doing what she has to do to survive. And actually no character captures that best than Tyrion Lannister than the Dwarf. becausecause he doesn't have an Well, actually, this is the funny thing, doeses he or doesn't he? He has been brutalized all his life by being treated as an unwanted child. Everyone's been horrible to him because he's a dwarf He once fell in love, didn't he? He fell in love. But actually it turned out that the girl had been pid that she was actually acting and then her father gave the girl to his guards to kind of u to sleep the guards all slept with her and she was handsomely paid for it. And Tyrion's heart was broken. And I think the fact that his heart was broken suggests that there is a kind of romantic side to him, an idealistic side that has been shattered and damaged, I guess. And so he purports to be more cynical than maybe he is Do you not think Yeah, and I think that's definite to the fact that he tries to help Bran to ride after Brand loses his legs, you know, because he understand what it's like to feel like a cripple. And it's interesting as well because he's always the character that's the most intoxicated by or fascinated by this almost mythological past, you know dragons and what exists beyond the wall, even though he purports to be a man of intelligence and reason. So yeah, I think that's definitely true. I think he's many things at once and that makes him very interesting And also that's I that's true of Jamie Lannister. So Jamie Lannister, who I said in the first half, I think at the beginning you're set up to believe that he's going to be the great villain, then Ned Stark will defeat him in a final duel for the, you know and get and good will triumph over evil D you not think that over time, over the books You start to become much fonder of Jamie Lannister and again, you see that actually he's not the cynical villain that everybody thought he was. And and actually then you take a good character. So Daenerys Targaryen in whom so many readers invest very early on and they end up naming their kids after her and all this kind of thing But actually she turns out to be much more morally ambiguous. Do't she? even in this book There's good in her, but she but she is capable of great ruthlessness. seven hundred pages into this book. Makes her a great queen. Yeah, because we're not even talking about the TV series where she has that very controversial ending In the books, she does a lot of very, very brutal things and you believe she's right to do it. And that is another massive element of Game of Thrones that sets it apart from other kind of epic fantasies is so very violent and there is so much sexual violence And you know in that way, it's actually I mean, you could say is it more Sarah Jay Maz than Tolkien because in her books there's always full of you know, sexual violence and stuff. In a different league though. Exactly. This is not a book for teenage girls. It is so gritty and it's full of references to brothels, prostitutes. I mean the Dothraki wedding, when the fourteen year old daenerys marries this massive Do I want to say hunk Definitely not my type, but Dothraki lord, Karl Drogo peopleeople having sex all around them, left right and centre. But also there's bloodshed, right? Men are grabbing women and having sex with them. and then if they're fighting over a woman, they will fight with knives and kill each other and then go back to having sex or whatever. There is an aggression. There is an definite aggression. Now George R.. Martin would say That's fine That's real world That's the real world. And of course it is, and we're much more aware now of how rape is used as a weapon of war And actually I do think Martin Rets between nineteen ninety one and nineteen ninety six One of the themes of the book is how the violence, is how political decisions have horrendous consequences for ordinary people. They're their villagers For the small folk. Yeah, The villages are put to the torch, they are massacred, all of this kind of thing. And actually probably the single biggest international news story of the early nineteen nineties when he was writing this was the war in Bosnia and It scens on the news every night and this would have been the case in America as much as in Europe of Paramilitaries invading villages, burning people's houses, driving them out You know, neighbor turning on neighbor For political reasons that you don't understand, you've suddenly been kicked out of your house, men are being separated from women being led off to be shot, all of this kind of thing. I mean, obviously you had the genocide in Rwanda at the same time So there's a lot of very bleak news going on at the time that Martin is writing. There's a lot of stuff about how Political violence is vented on ordinary people who don't you are completely helpless And I think that That's again, a big difference from Tolkien. and you don't get anything like that in Tolkien. And someone who objects to it anyway as Martin does, I mean, he might say that no, I'm not being voyuristic. I'm just telling you. Like I'm telling the truth. I'm saying that war has terrible consequences and it's not glorious and it's not kind of mytholog you know, it shouldn't be mythologized, I guess. Exactly. I mean, it's all just very intense though the violence, the rape, but also the the twists, you know, we we said how he slowly, slowly kind of lets you know what kind of a story you're dealing with and that it isn't going to be the chronicles of Narnia or whatever. And then there's probably, you know, there's so you have Bran being thrown out of a window very early on by You know, a couple having incestuous sex and you're like, whoa, And then you get Daenerys' brother's death which is appalling And this is where this was very iconic in the TV show as well. And this is where He has molten gold. poured over him. and so his skull sort of melts and then he collapses on the floor it's very shocking and you don't see it coming at all because you know, you see characters kind of being a bit you know, brash and rude and he's been knocking her around a lot anyway and then this happens and she just comes out of nowhere. And then the most shocking scene of all, a scene that I think Joanne Aber Combie, the guy that wrote the introduction for the Folio Society Edition said changed fantasy forever. and this is The execute massive spoiler alert, turn off if you're like one of the three people who hasn't you know, seen the series or read the books. Well, this is where our hero, Ned Stark, is unexpectedly executed after having shown weakness by admitting to treason that he didn't commit Yeah, so it's it's very well done this, I think. There are a couple of things to say about it. Number one, as you absolutely say Ned, he's tried to do the right thing and he's been punished for it He is he wanted to spare, Cersei, he wanted to u You know, he's when his friend died, he wanted to give the throne to his friend's brothers rather than his son who's not really his son, Jeoffrey And but he hass shown compassion. He hasn't moved quickly enough, he hasn't moved ruthlessly enough. He hasn't killed his enemies all of that. He's been grippled because he's been injured in the leg, and then he's locked up And it looks like he's going to be forgiven or because he grovels and to save his family, he grovels and he says, I was wrong and I committed treason But the other thing I think that's so interesting about this that makes it so effective. It's so effective precisely because of Martin's narrative method Be in Ned's head He's been one of our chief points of view characters, so a lot of chapters have been narrated through his eyes And it never occurs to us as a reader that one of those characters would be sacrificed. Now interestingly, we don't see his death through his own eyes. It's like the angle has changed and we see it through his daughter Arya's eyes because she's in the crowd. Which is horrific, she's a child And she barely understands. And it's a really clever moments because we have invested so much in this character, we assume he's the hero and then bang He's out. If you were watching the TV series, of course, the fact that he paid by Sean Bean should have been a giveaway. Sean Bean always Sean Bean Net never lives in anything since the fellowship of the Ring. I know. he dies so well. He really does. But then this is nothing in comparison to some of the shocks that come in the later books. I mean, I'm not going to say what it is, but the Red wedding. Yeah. I mean Massive shocks, although I think there is definitely a point. So people have always said about this Well, the effect of this is that you know no character is safe, that anybody could die I'm not sure about that because I think once you're about three or four books in You know that he's that there are some characters in whom George R R. Martin has invested so much there carrying so much of the narrative There's no way he's just gonna. So for example, Tyrium or Daenerys Targaryen. becausecause if Daenerys Targaryen suddenly died in book four, you'd be like, what, so the whole of that narrative was a complete waste of time This brings us nicely to The question hanging over the Game of Thrones books now it's so discussed, will he can he ever finish them? You know, becausecause the theory goes that he told the showrunners of Game of Thrones that that is loosely how his books would be tied up And then they obviously did the ending that they did on screen. There was huge, huge clatback And now he doesn't know what to do because he has to change his ending because he doesn't want the same response. And the thing is it is almost impossible because if you've put so many different stories in so many different characters' heads, how do you tie that all up? They're all in different places geographically, you know A lot of them don't know the others exist and don't relate to each other. Like, do you have a second red wedding, but bigger? But then how do you get everyone there? So I've rered them all as you have By the time I got to the last one, it was the last one called a Dance of Dragons, is it Huge,' likes seven thousand pages long There's a point at which he introduces a new claimant to the throne there and I just And I just said come on Come on, this is insane. Really? I like him. Now he's traveling under a false name, isn't he lands with some group of mercenaries. I can't remember the full details. Anyway, I just thought that's mad. You cannot now be introducing new characters. And I did also think by that point, you're never gonna wind this up becausecause the characters have traveled too far away. I mean, this goes back to the Their point about the discipline, right Token. has a small group of characters from the Lord of the Rings breaking of the fellowship and they go off in a couple of different ways, in groups, but it is clear that it would be relatively easy for Tolkien to reunite them You know, in, you know, in a few in a couple of hundred pages time, Frodo and Sam, Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli or whatever, you can bring start to bring them back together In this We are thousands of pages deep in the series and you like They've spent thousands of pages to travel further and further and further away Unless suddenly somebody they get to a civilization where they've actually invented air travel, there's no way that these characters are going be they're not going to be reunited before they're seventy. But also because in Lord of the Rings they have one goal, bothoth sides have one goal. You know, Frodo, Aragorn, and all those guys want to destroy the ring and they want to bring down Sauron. In this, they all have different agendas Some of them are trying to take down the White Walkers, someome of them are trying to, don't know, make deals in Tarth or whatever. And Martin himself has said The Winds of Winter is not so much a novel as a dozen novels, each with a different protagonist, each having a different cast of supporting players and antagonists and allies and lovers around them. And all of these weaving together in an extremely complex fashion So it's very, very challenging And he's not wrong. it's more than very challenging. It's impossibleible because their agenda, their goals and some of them are mutually exclusive you know, the Iron throne only one person can claim the throne the pla game that people play who do you want to win You know, I'd like Denerrys win, I' like Jon Snow to win or whatever. The fact is they can't all win and the rules of the game that Martin has established as such If one person wins, other people have to die And he I don't think could bring himself to kill off some of these characters. But who would you like to win If if it were possible you know perfectly well who I like you know that I have al reveal yourself Ver Reveal that you are a Well he's and uninteresting. He's dead, but I think the throne should go to Stannis Baratheon. Yeah. know proven soldier. He's very good governing. I think'd I think he'd be a good king. He's Tiberius. He's based on the Emperor Tiberius. He is based on the Emperor Tiberus who I don't like whereereas I think you are very much Someone have your sorty team readily on you or something like that. Radlely, are you doingkay? Yeah. I do I do like High Garden though I like Marjorie Tyrell. No, I want young Grif to win. So hold on. What were you doing in the first four books Like there was no one who appealed to you. I had my heart broken so many times that I decided to bet on an outsider because I couldn't keep losing my men Hry what you don't want? You You don't want mean, obviously, ideally daenerous, but you know, that is one thing I think they did really well in the TV series was marrying the threat of the North from the North of the White Walkers with the struggle for King'sanding by bringing together, you know Jon Snow and Diis and then settingfell I did like all that, but you like, I mean, I didn't like the way the TV series ended, you did So massive now we're massively into spoilers for people are going to watch the TV series. People don't like the ending because of Daenerys big spoiler, because of Daenerys revealing that she's basically been so brutalized by her experiences. She's become so ruthless herself, she's become so fanatical and so bloodthirsty that she will kill everybody in King's Landing if necessary, because she thinks she and her family have been wronged so much you know, and and that there was a darkness in her. People didn't like that because they'd invested massive in the character. I thought You just have me watching properly From the very beginning, I thought she'd be moving in that direction The way she was brutal to the slavers Wasn't she in all those kind of eastern cities? She's right though. But that's the point, isn't it? She thinks she's right You know, there's a point at the very end tragically I actually watched the last episode of the whole series to prepare for this I watched the first episode, What's wrong with you? Come on. So the bit where Jon Snow kind of confronts her and she says, comeome on, break the wheel with me, you know And he says, I know what's right And he says, but there's lots of people who belie know what's right. You know, how do you know Or whatever in his sl What was that? Well, it's in a slightly wooden way. He says. Well that goes our opportunity to have Kit Harrington on the show. I think it's in probably in the directing rather than the acting. Anyway, I think ye, she says I know what's right and all of that kind of thing. I think that that it's been building to that from the beginning. I felt it was consistent I thoughtel it was plausible with her character I thought that probably is what would happen, that she would lose the plot and she would kill everybody I liked it I think also, the fact that she's seen so much hideous sexual violence that she's been raped, that that would have no effect on her saintly character. Of course it would. Yeah, of course, of course. But the thing is it all happened too fast. The pacing was ridiculous. They managed to wipe out the biggest threat known to Westeros, you know the gathering might of the White Walkers who are going to wipe out human civilization You know, in the course of a night They weren't that well prepared. and they were all in the dark and also Why would Arya be the guy to kill the guy well, the girl to kill the Night King when she's had no connection to him whatsoever. Whereas Jon Snow has been You know, he's he's the boy of destiny, you know, he's been he's the son of ice and fire. And also Bran the Broken on the Iron Throne Madness. So I agree with that because no one cares about Bran boring Gar to get rid I also I told you before we started recording how I would have I would have had Arya kill Ceri and Jamie Lannister, and then I would have had Jon Snow kill the But I yess they thought that everybody thought that's what would happen and they wanted to That's the risk, I think. That's the other difficult thing for George R. Martin now is when everyone expects you to do radical things You start writing for the crowd and then you're no longer, you know, keeping to your own ethos. I feel sorry for the showrunners because I think I mean, this is very I know no one agrees to be on this. The showrunners had a really, really difficult task. Okay, much more interestingly. Let's finally, before we grow old and die, let's work out which houses we'd be in So I'm going to go for you first because I've already thought this through You would a hundred percent be a denizen of High Garden. You'd be a Tyrell Oh wow, I take it Nice. Okay. Well because they like is that perfumed poison? Perfumed, ye. So I'm hanging around with Dina Rig. You like M to be wara. Yeah, you like nice things, you know, You like thing, you know, nice things. you like nice things. but you know, you're cultculating. you're cultculating behind behind think I love Marjorie Tll of the character. I think it's great. Yeah. I think we'd be a great match actually. Yeah. Well she she she plays the game well Yeah She plays the game really well, but she's also sweet and nice. Do you think? Yeah, soy paper thin Yeah, Thank you Exactly. Okay, so I've massively overthought this. I've actually nailed you down to a character. Oh, okay So u Well, I mean, if you're you're obviously either going to be a Lannister or a Targaryen given your appearance. I'll take it. And I think here's the thing, you are We've actually alluded to this character already So this character urorts to be very cynical. and sardonic U It goes on an awful lot about much how much fun they're having, how much they love parties and drinking and you know, blub blah, blah, blah blah Act deep down, I think this character is much more sentimental Then people realize, very witty actually. So a lot of people really like this character. So you are so Tyrion Lannister, it's unbelievable. God. You knew that was com.elievablebelievable. I'll take it, I'll take it. Come on, it could have been worse Tepp. Yeah, could be worse. It could have been an old manan, which is what I said last night. Yeah, you did. you did. A I said, comeome on, I know I'm embarrassed You did say that. You said, if you say I'm varass on the show, I'll never forgive you. So I did. I thought you all came out of this. How many How many molten golden crowns? I'm gonna give eight I do think it's a masterpiece of fantasy writing, world builduilding, all of that. Yeah, I think it's undisciplined. I think he has lost the plot a little bit. but in this book it's quite cohesive, it's quite tight. You get a really good sense of all the characters when you're in their heads. and I was riveted to it when I read it. and actually when I rerade it this time So That's my take Boring. so boring I'm going to give you exactly the same ar. I'm going to give it an A to swell U I think it it's not high literature, It doesn't purort to be It's a absolutely as you say, riveting page turner. I loved reading it the first time I couldn't put it down The second time I thought, that's going to be a massive slow because I know what happens I can't believe I'm going have to through this again for this podcast. And do you know what I really enjoyed reading it again much meed. I I enjoyed being in the characters heads. I like the world, I think it's well done I think it's a fascinating case study in an author l completely losing control of his material But I I think there is so much to enjoy. I mean, this is why, for example, I gave it to Arthur, my son because I said to him, I think you'll love this. And of course he did love the first three books and then I could see him losing interest by about book four or book five. And I thought, that's just like how I felt when I was reading this, that I couldn't get enough of it at first And then the more complicated the narrative became,, the more the characters You know, the more characters Martin threw into it The more I could see his attention sort of waning and I thought This is the problem that George R. Mutin has. So What have we got coming up? We've got the thing called Book Club Notes and these are it's a weekly newsletter it's completely free. You get talking points, you get book recommendations, there's loads of insights from other listeners. So we want it to be a real kind of club newsletter There's a real sense of community, Tabby, which I know you love a community. Just like King's Landing So that will be delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. If you just go to the book cllub website and you just put in your email, you will get the newsletter and there's loads of stuff about. We'll be also giving updates about the books coming up So loads to look forward to. and on that bombshell Tyran Lannister, thank you very much and goodby. Thanks all done. Bye