There comes a moment in the fifth season of Game of Thrones (and I believe the third book of A Song of Ice and Fire) when Lord Varys, of all people, possibly reveals what the entire series is all about. In pleading with Tyrion Lannister to hold on to hope at the lowest point of his life, Varys asks him to imagine a world in which the strong do not prey on the weak, and where the neverending political intrigue and blood feuds are left behind. This being the shifty Varys, such lofty words are best taken with a grain of salt. Still, his suggestion makes one wonder: Is A Song of Ice and Fire ultimately the story of a long, bloody transition from a feudal, monarchical system to some kind of proto-democracy, in which all castes have a voice, and the nobles and the various religions must yield to the rule of law? In other words, can the game of thrones finally end, replaced by a civilization that actually works?
This leads to another question, a far simpler one: Why is Westeros so hopelessly fucked up in the first place? We are told that recorded history goes back over 10,000 years, much longer than our own, and yet we find so little in the way of progress, innovation, new theories, or new philosophies. It’s a wonder Varys even considers an alternative to the status quo. What gives?
To recap, Westeros (and its neighboring countries and islands) remains permanently stuck in a simulacrum of medieval Eurasia. Most of its residents survive within an agrarian economy, with simple farmers segregated from the elites by their poverty, illiteracy, and a total lack of any say in how their government operates. So dire is their plight that the motto of House Stark—“Winter is coming”—is code for “A lot of these poor schlubs are going to starve when it gets cold again.” The political system is a simple hereditary monarchy, with all the peril that entails. To make things worse, the various houses essentially fragment the kingdom—not to mention the intrigue that takes place within each house.
Though the elites have access to education, and the field of history seems valued and well developed, nothing resembling the scientific method is ever applied. As a result, Westeros suffers from a lack of innovation and technology. The First Men—the original settlers of the region—would be impressed by the size of some of the castles, but little else. Few things have improved, from clothing to medicine to the modes of transportation. Most surprising, even the oft-used military technology remains frozen. For all the warfare that takes place, no one has developed poison gas, hot air balloons, submersibles, armored transports, artillery, or even a bicycle. Everyone seems content with hacking each other to pieces as an efficient method for killing.
This slow progress contributes to the backward culture and regressive social customs we find in Westeros. In this world, overtly powerful women are an anomaly—an appalling fact given the number of dangerously incompetent male rulers, bureaucrats, and religious leaders. Meanwhile, foreigners, people with disabilities, eunuchs, bastards, anyone who even hints at having gay tendencies—all of them are marginalized in some way. And despite every indication that the gods have abandoned this place, religion wields an enormous amount of influence, making it a tool of control and a catalyst for bloodshed. Even with all those history books lying around, few people seem to have learned from past mistakes.
Thus, while the civilization of Westeros desperately needs improvement, civilization itself is holding things back. This is not a world in which good kings and brave knights strive to bring order to chaos. Instead, institutions such as the septons, the Wall, and the filial loyalties are in fact the problem. Most of the characters are unaware that such a problem even exists, and instead hold fast to their traditions. Others, such as Petyr Baelish, cynically adopt the mayhem as a fact of life that only the wise and the strong can overcome. In his words (from the show):
Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.
In this sense, A Song of Ice and Fire presents the same conundrum that we find in the graphic novel Watchmen. Rather than saving the world, the “heroes” of that story contribute to endless war and destruction—some inadvertently, others on purpose.
As the story edges toward its conclusion, with numerous holy wars on the horizon, issues of religion, magic, and superstition have been moving to the forefront of the conflict. We have the Sparrows running amok in King’s Landing; the Lord of Light overtaking the Faith of the Seven at the court of Stannis Baratheon; the Sons of the Harpy staging terrorist attacks against Daenerys in Meereen; the religion of the Drowned God spurring the ironborn to a new destiny; and the old gods of the north playing a role in the war to come with the White Walkers. A recent article by Biblical scholar David G. Garber provides insight into the vital role of omens, oracles, and prophecy in the series. At this point in the saga, the power of belief, the spectacle of magic, and the appeal of superstition drive the action in almost every subplot.
Author George R. R. Martin has discussed on several occasions how his experience as a “lapsed Catholic” has influenced the world-building process for the series. In a 2011 interview with Charlie Jane Anders at San Diego Comic-Con, he went into more detail:
Anders: There are several competing religions in this series now. Should we be wondering if some are more true than others? In a world with magic, is religion just magic with an extra layer of mythos?
Martin: Well, the readers are certainly free to wonder about the validity of these religions, the truth of these religions, and the teachings of these religions. I’m a little leery of the word “true”—whether any of these religions are more true than others. I mean, look at the analogue of our real world. We have many religions too. Are some of them more true than others? I don’t think any gods are likely to be showing up in Westeros, any more than they already do. We’re not going to have one appearing, deus ex machina, to affect the outcomes of things, no matter how hard anyone prays. So the relation between the religions and the various magics that some people have here is something that the reader can try to puzzle out.
Though Martin cannot let on which, if any, of the religions are “true,” it matters little. The magic appears to be true, more so than any magic we’ve seen in our world. And the religions, under some circumstances, seem to hold real, tangible power. Melisandre really can tell the future, Beric Dondarrion really can rise from the dead, the boogeymen of the north really are coming. And the prevalence of magic, perhaps more than any other factor, holds Westeros back from maturing into a functional society.
Some of the most important moments in the development of our own civilization revolve around old superstitions yielding to facts that are observable in the real world. Thus germ theory replaces humorism, demons, and curses. The earth goes from flat to round, and before long it is no longer the center of the universe. Evolution replaces creation myths. Modern social sciences disprove junk theories supporting racial superiority. In other words, evidence gleaned from the scientific method undermines the self-appointed authorities of the world. The scientist becomes a subversive, like the boy shouting that the emperor has no clothes. But in Martin’s world, that boy would be disemboweled. Westeros goes in the opposite direction, with rational, skeptical people routinely proven wrong by the fickle actions of the gods.
In our world, many beliefs that found purchase in religious traditions have been dismantled not by revelation or exegesis, but by the simple act of uncovering indisputable truths through rational inquiry. The current debate over LGBT rights puts this process on display in real time. Many dogmatic traditions have put forth truth claims regarding this issue, often suggesting that LGBT people contribute to social decline, cannot be trusted as teachers or parents, and cannot have authentic, loving relationships. The evidence against these claims is overwhelming and, at last, widespread, which is why so many people have changed their minds (or, in politician-speak, “evolved”). People who cling to the past tend to blame this sea change on a rotting culture. Kids these days with their iPhones! What happened to traditional values? But no—for many people it’s a simple matter of evidence, the same kind that helps children outgrow their fear of the dark.
In Westeros, this process of rational inquiry remains stunted. And on the rare occasion when reason wins the day, or when the religions fail, the septons and the witches announce that they simply misinterpreted the will of the gods. Or, like the priest in Albert Camus’s The Plague, the leaders accuse the people of being blinded by their sin, cursed by the heavens. Sometimes they even come up with a new form of magic to keep everyone in line.
This is not to say that destroying religion is the answer. Our species has already played that game, with dire consequences. A more realistic path for Westeros might be for the religions to adapt, to undergo a long process of reinterpretation. Given the complex ties between religion, politics, class, and other systems of power, it seems safe to say that the gods (or, I should say, their spokesmen on earth) tend to be more diplomatic and compromising in times of peace and prosperity. In times of war, famine, crisis, or sweeping change they tend to be more judgmental, viewing everything as a zero-sum competition, painting everything in black and white, pointing toward scapegoats and hurling jeremiads in an effort to assign blame and thereby rein in the chaos. So, perhaps an end to the conflict will make everyone lighten up a bit—even the fiery god R’hllor. In a more stable context, the faith systems would have the flexibility to modernize, and maybe even loosen their hold on temporal power. After the corruption of the High Septon and the fanaticism of the Sparrows, a separation of church and state might be an easier sell these days in King’s Landing.
Given all the reforms that are needed, I wonder if an extra book detailing the reconstruction of post-war Westeros is in order. Regardless, Varys’s hopeful words about a new era call to mind the proposed title of the final volume in the series: A Dream of Spring. Maybe, in the long run, this bloody, unsparing story is about the rebirth of hope, the stubborn kind that can rise only from the darkest despair and suffering; the kind that even a millennia-old status quo cannot destroy.
Robert Repino (@Repino1) grew up in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. After serving in the Peace Corps in Grenada, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College. He is the author of Mort(e) (Soho Press, 2015), Leap High Yahoo (Amazon Kindle Singles, 2015), and D’Arc(Soho Press, forthcoming). He works as an editor for Oxford University Press and has taught for the Gotham Writers Workshop.
Excellent essay!
As much as I enjoy A Song of Ice & Fire / Game of Thrones, George RR Martin’s need for grimdarkness, rape and murder supercedes realistic character behaviour quite often. I mean, this is a world where almost everyone’s answer to *every* conflict is to injure, torture, maim, poison, rape, and/or kill. Every time someone who isn’t a total sociopath shows up, they’re promptly murdered, and there is a seemingly inexhaustible supply of amoral sadists running around. No wonder society hasn’t evolved on Westeros.
Interesting take, but I would interpret somewhat differently. Martin’s world isn’t a sufficiently direct analogue to ours for the solution of religion becoming more flexible, philosophical and open to science to be feasible. To the extent that the extreme cultural conservatism of the world is plausible (and to be blunt, to some extent I think we are dealing with Martin making some errors with an excessively long timeline, some of which he seems to be self-aware of at this point but not in a position to change), it’s plausible because the world is hopelessly unpredictable, such that any serious attempt at scientific rationalism will fail. The climate really does vary to an extent that survival through the winter is questionable, and all attempts at predicting it have failed (except that we get the hint in The Hedge Knight that the cyclical seasonality got worse with the death of the last dragon). Supernatural events, which are often connected with an object of worship, do occur on a regular basis. The whole of history revolves around an event (the Doom of Valyria) that resists rational explanation–none of the purely rationalizing explanations of it in The World of Ice and Fire believably account for the fairly insane scenario of nine simultaneous volcanic eruptions. And to top things off, the Citadel, the only institution in which serious research is being conducted (and from which, it should be noted, some decidedly post-medieval innovations have emerged) knows perfectly well that the world is basically irrational and addresses this fact with an organized conspiracy to hide the reality of magic.
How does religion evolve in this scenario? Or even, should we be drawing distinctions between religion and magic? The fabric of the world seems to be constructed in such a way that Frazer’s account of the evolution of the sorcerer into the priest wouldn’t necessarily work–sorcerer/priests get visible results from the gods much too often. And likewise, Martin’s quote doesn’t in any way rule out that some kind of divine force “really” exists in his world and sometimes manifests in various ways. If anything, I’d read it as confirming that manifestations of the divine have already occurred (Beric’s resurrection and Davos’ potential epiphany of the Mother seem like the most obvious candidates) but that he isn’t going to give the reader any hints to help them pick a specific religion as better representing the nature of that divine than others.
I agree that an endgame would be interesting, but at least as far as book canon goes, I no longer think that an alternative-history endgame like the one described here would fit into the series. I see two options: either the war against the Others leads to a cosmic shift in the world that restores enough order that scientific, technical and political progress becomes possible (it’s implied that the seasons have changed in the past, which suggests that they could revert to predictability in the future), or else the other extreme of magic in all its forms being restored to a position of supremacy in society, with perhaps the implication that a second Doom could result.
I could see either scenario being black enough for Martin’s taste. (Nothing in this should be taken as an HBO prediction. The HBO version seems to be going in a more straightforward “alternative history with a little magic” direction, and the blogger’s prediction might work as a TV prediction. Maybe that was what it was. At this point, it’s in Martin’s interest to write a series ending that is very different thematically and in content than Benioff and Wise’s version of the ending if he wants to keep his readership.)
What a wonderful and thought provoking essay. And how wonderful for GRRM to make us care so much about words on paper.
I have always chalked up the lack of scientific progress in Westros and Essos to magic. While most magic in this world may have rational explanations, it would always be easier for the religiously devout to attribute it to the gods. There is much less of a need to understand the basic laws of both physics and human nature when there is such a readily available and easily manipulated form of pseudo science to fall back on.
What really seals the deal for me is that since the Doom fell upon Valyria, and magic began to die out, we have seen some amount of progress both in both politics and science in this world. So for me at least, Magic is what has caused this world to never evolve past a Medieval setting.
Hopefully, No tl;dr here.
Another book to show the uplifting of a new social order? Are you mad! We’re likely not to see the foretold end of the tale as it stands. Why himself, the GRRM, would needs advance in age past that of the late Maester Aemon in order to extend ‘the Song’ to that degree. The bards observable physical condition would seem to eschew such a lifespan.
There’s a fan theory that the maesters were actively working toward the elimination of magic in the world, principally by eliminating the dragons which seem to be tied to it, in order to literally create a more rational world. Seen in that light, Dany’s dragons are the biggest setback in over a hundred years.
You must abandon your heathen ways and convert to the true religion in Planetos: that of the Summer Isles. We should worship the gods by having lots and lots of sex.
One thing that bugs me about the worldbuilding, is that women in this world have access to reliable and safe birth control, yet this has not effected the status of women AT ALL. I just find that hard to swallow.
The idea of democracy or proto-democracy doesn’t really have any advocates in Westeros. Dany cares about the common people more than your average noble, but she still wants to be a queen and has no notion of the rule of law. Varys may talk about the good of the realm and the common people, but there’s good evidence that he’s just a monarchist of a different stripe. In the first book, he’s one of the people pulling the strings to start a war, even if his timeline gets a little rushed.
As other posters have said, magic seems to play an important role in stagnation. As long as the social and political elites can solve their problems with magic and are confident that they are not risking rebellion, they will continue to use it. There are strong hints that Valyria’s destruction in the Doom stems from a long-deserved backlash against the tyranny employed by the Freehold’s rulers.
It’s also worth noting that Westeros is something of a backwater in its own world. Most people seem to be living a subsistence life and there is not a large merchant class. The continent’s known exports can be counted on one hand, and only one of those is a finished product (wine). The Targaryen Dynasty did not seem to invest heavily in infrastructure to bring the realm together (with one notable exception, the Kingsroad, which varies widely in usability and quality). Contrast this with the Free Cities, where technological innovations are taking place, high quality products and luxury goods are made and traded to the rest of the world.
@9 Aeryl
Access to birth control is only a part of the equation. Throughout history, elite women have had some access to contraceptives without wide-ranging women’s equality being the outcome. As long as social structure and inheritance laws for the upper class are based on bloodlines, society will continue to place an emphasis on women’s role in producing legitimate blood heirs.
Even in Dorne, where inheritance rights are equal between men and women, there isn’t true equality in the way we would view it. Some noblewomen can get away with doing as they please, but familial duties will claim them at some point. Bastards are the one group of people who really have increased freedom in Dorne. They can benefit from the privilege and patronage of their noble parents, taking noble lovers without consequence, and still be free of most familial obligations.
Why is Varys shifty? Surely he’s the most moral character in the story?
@11 Groucho Jones
I’ll offer an answer if you’re not asking sarcastically. If it was sarcasm, ignore this.
Varys reveals himself as one of the plotters in the Game early in the first book, working with Illyrio. At first, it looks like they’re championing the dispossessed Viserys and Dany. He comes right out and says he’s planning on a war of succession, but the rate at which events are moving is too fast for him and his partner. Later in the series, a new wrinkle is introduced that provides reason to think they’re backing someone else.
In the fifth book, when it looks like things are starting to stabilize a bit, Varys takes action to destabilize them again. This is to prepare the way for someone he sees as an ideal monarch.
Varys is very perceptive about power, and a good schemer, but he’s not above fomenting war and chaos to put the person he wants on the throne.
I’ve wondered if the lack of progress is, in part, due to the extreme climate of Westerns, specifically Winter. By way of analogy, I’m thinking of the world in Isaac Asimov’s “Nightfall” in which civilizations rise only to collapse every 2000 years on the day when the suns all set, darkness falls, and everyone goes mad. More applicable, perhaps, is the example of Pern where every 27 years, everything stops in a fight for survival.
I suspect that a Westerosi Winter has the same effect, killing off many and making the survivors beholden to the Houses that fed and sheltered them.
Meh. Anyone arguing that civilization advances through scientific progress, who uses a clause like “the world goes from flat to round” without acknowledging that the Sumerians almost certainly believed in a round earth and the ancient Greeks certainly did, loses all credibility with me. Simple-minded scientific determinism at its least interesting.
Is there a lack of progress? It’s not like Westeros hasn’t advanced at all over the last 12,000 years. The First Men used bronze weapons and built hill forts, the Andals introduced iron weapons, castles and siege weapons developed, etc. Saying that Westeros existed in a medieval stasis for all that time is like saying that the culture and technology of Europe didn’t change from say 2000 BC to AD 1400, because Europeans also didn’t invent radios, hot air balloons, or even bicycles by then.
Of course, Westeros seems to be advancing more slowly than Europe did. That could be a result of the harsh climate as some have already pointed out. It could also be that Westeros’ history doesn’t stretch that far back. The Andal invasion is generally stated to have happened 6,000 years prior to the series in the books, yet is alternatively said to have occurred either 4,000 or just 2,000 years ago. Other events are given various contradictory dates, and it also seems likely that like some real histories, the authors have retroactively added or misunderstood details, creating anachronistic accounts (e.g. knights existing in the age of heroes, well before knights existed).
Alternatively, Westeros could just be advancing at a different rate. Not all cultures develop technology at the same rate, or may change rates over time. Luck sometimes plays a role in the advancement of technology. For example, gunpowder was only invented once in history. Its creators were Chinese alchemists in the 9th century who accidentally discovered a flammable mixture while trying to create an elixir of immortality.
As for why Westeros is so shitty, why not ask the same of the real Middle Ages, or of some modern third world countries? I’m not sure that Westeros is that unrealistic, even if it sounds like one of the places you’d least want to live in.
I would say Westeros is no more f’d up than our world. Only difference is that its not as all-encompassing in ours. We have functional democracies and are working on social systems to protect all of us, though we have a long way to go. But everything sickening in ASOIAF still occurs somewhere on this planet. Depressing!
There’s one interesting contrast with our world that hasn’t been discussed.
In our reality, most claims of “miracles” are pretty flimsy. Yes, this hurts religion in general… But it arguably helps religious claims of exclusive truth, up to a point. Confirmation bias helps people ignore any holes in claims made by their own faith, but they can easily debunk those made by others – so they can carry on dismissing those others as false.
But on Planetos, every religion has verifiable miracles to its name. Therefore none can possibly be the only truth – it’s a demonstrable fact that there’s truth in all of them. Shouldn’t that promote ecumenism
@10: Right, it’s a chicken-and-egg thing (ha). Access to reproductive control is essential to creating gender equality, but has limited effectiveness as long as (legitimate-)child-bearing is considered a woman’s primary purpose, aside from providing sex to men. Cersei secretly had Jaime “find a woman to cleanse her” of Robert’s child, but many married women probably couldn’t do so. Even unmarried women may have trouble, given the surprising number of bastards in Westeros. Asha Greyjoy found a “woods witch” to teach her how to make moon tea, but Margaery had to (allegedly) get it from a maester.
Note: This is all in reference to the books, not the show.
Mr Thomas Shap @14:
What is the evidence that the Sumerians believed in a round Earth? We know that the Greeks came up with this idea (traditionally attributed to Parmenides, in the early 5th Century BC), but I’ve never heard that the Babylonians or the Sumerians before them had any other conception than that of a flat world.
(And, somewhat curiously, the Chinese seem to have not figured this out, either — they were surprised by the globes that Jesuits introduced to them in the 17th Century.)
But, yes, this was something known in Europe, the Middle East, and India from Classical Greek times onward.
Why Westeros is messed up seems pretty simple. You had stable rule by the dragon lords for a long time. They lost their dragons and then one or more went dangerously batty and the local lords rebelled.
Between that and the beginning of the story you have one king, Baratheon.
It would take a generation or more to recover from that sort of re-arrangement. They haven’t gone through even one given that the King Slayer is still alive and healthy.
( Stable rule did I say? Just read up on the 280 years the folks from Dragonstone tried to run things. A huge mess with at least one succession battle that cost them most of their dragons. )
The most obvious answer is that the unpredictable mini ice-ages kick the continent into touch on an irregular basis and that the people most likely to survive the ice ages are the people with the vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
Another reason, in my opinion, is that there is no “cvil society” or whatever you may call it, it’s pure, undiluted feudalism. Martin has mentioned that the Wars of the Roses in England were an inspiration for the story but one key difference between mediaeval England and Westeros is that England had an underlying political structure in place that was separate from both nobility (but not necessarily the Crown) and church. Despite the Norman conquest which imposed a feudal nobility England retained much of the older Saxon system of governance with it’s Shires (which had appointed rather than hereditary Sheriffs) and Hundreds, it’s courts (expanded and reformed – for the better, largely – by Henry II and later kings, Inquests, Common Law, Red Judges etc) and a nascent central government based in Westminster. This reduced the influence of the nobility on several areas particularly taxation and the administration of justice, the “smallfolk” had a direct-ish connection to the Crown (and thus the “Community of the Realm”) that Westeros doesn’t have.
So when England had it’s “Winters” in the form of the Black Death (and the major famines that preceded it) it bounced back surprisingly quickly with dynamic and all-free commoners and when the Plantagenets fought amongst themselves for generations the kingdom as a whole managed to keep going.
Sounds like our world to me, until very recently, which was part of the reason Martin started the series in the first place. The biggest issue for me in making Westeros believable is the lack of technological advancement. I think we’ve come to expect it from fantasy settings. Remember when the first bits of information about Legend of Korra were coming out, and people were absolutely flipping out over how unrealistic it was that a world that had functional airships and tanks might have cars and motorcycles 80 years later. I don’t understand where that mindset comes from. Maybe it’s the assumption that a form of “magic” would negate the need for scientific or technological progress because you can just get a healing spell or cast a fireball instead – but that’s a fairly easy argument to tear down anyway, and not the point. There isn’t much magic at large in ASOIAF (south of the wall, anyway), and the same families have been around for thousands of years. That kind of stasis is what strikes me as unrealistic. Then again, there are enough catastrophic events, from dragon attacks to generation-long winters, that the setting may just be harsh enough to hit the reset button on any kind of advancement every couple of generations.
The reason for social, political, and scientific stagnation is that GRRM wrote it that way. Its like asking how warp drive works in Star Trek; its a literary device to push the story forward. GRRM has done the same thing.
Makhno @17:
… every religion has verifiable miracles to its name. Therefore none can possibly be the only truth – it’s a demonstrable fact that there’s truth in all of them. Shouldn’t that promote ecumenism
Not necessarily. All one has to do is argue that the “miracles” of the other religions are the work of deceitful demons trying to confuse people and lure them away from the One True Faith.
Plenty of early Christians, for example, argued that the gods of other religions were indeed real — except that they were actually demons working to deceive people. Plenty of medieval and early modern Christians genuinely believed in the supernatural abilities of witches and demons, but since this was (obviously) due to the Devil, they didn’t take it as affecting their belief in God.
I think one of the reasons that Westeros is so terrible, at least within the scope of the story, is the logistics involved with trying to rule a South America-sized tract of land – whether it’s by Targaryen, Baratheon, or Lannister, such a process is doomed to result either in balkanization or multiple genocides like those the Ottoman Empire committed during its final years (except on a geographically larger scale). It’s also worth noting that the reason that places like Russia experience Communist revolutions was because of large-scale agrarianism, especially compared to places like Germany and England, where industrial and intellectual opportunities also presented themselves to the non-upper-class.
Also, let’s take a look at what the effects of magic existing on a large scale in Westeros would be. The faith of R’hllor, being both a proselytizing religion and one that readily offers supernatural powers to its clergy, is the best candidate for dispersal, at least at in the foreseeable future. The success of Thoros with the Brotherhood Without Banners and Melisandre with the Thenn/Karstark union indicates that by the time the series has ended, R’hllorism will probably be a significant minority religion in Westeros, perhaps like Islam in Bosnia when it was a part of Yugoslavia, or perhaps it’ll manage to overtake even the faiths of the Old Gods and the Seven, especially with the second Long Night about to happen. Either way, lots of people will be clambering to join the clergy and become wizards. Syncretized forms of the R’hllorism would likely emerge in regards to the faith of the Northmen, due to the latter faith’s lack of strong sociological establishment. The septons and Drowned Men, on the other hand, would largely be at a loss.
(Oh, and on a tangential note to the author of this piece, the “world being flat” thing was long known as a myth to the average European long before Columbus or Magellan. Please do history a favor, Mr. Repino, and stop perpetuating the myths of the conflict thesis.)
There is a textual reason for this. While the recorded history of Westeros is longer then ours, it is not our world; this is a world where magic and Gods are real. And its only been about 400 years since the magic began to wane. Imagine a world where the completely unpredictable (at least through the scientific method) happens regularly? Where you only get 300-400 years of scientific progress before magic comes in and blows all your assumptions to hell? How would the scientific method even WORK in that scenario? Why would you bother? Why develop weapons or poisonous when you can simply fly dragons that are bonded only to YOU, that almost no one else can use? Since rulers and monarchs control the economy, they are not incentivized to fund such endeavors, throughout most of Westerosii history.
Are we certain of that? Maybe there’s something GRRM has said, or in the books, but the fact that clerics have magical powers does not necessarily mean their gods exist.
@25: “[E]xperience Communist revolutions” should have been “experienced Communist revolutions”. My bad.
Surely the important difference between Westeros and our world is that Westeros is a world where magic works. This means that science and scientific thinking don’t have the power they do here and so they can’t develop as fast, if at all.
Every 3-10 years, a massive winter comes along and all stops while mankind tries to survive. And you wonder why technology and culture hasn’t progressed.
300 years before, an entire section of a continent, where the most advanced civilization of the day resided, was destroyed by volcanic action. And you wonder why technology and culture hasn’t progressed.
For the last 300 years until about 80 years ago, dragons have been used to reduce all dissent in Westeros. Again, technology and culture hasn’t progressed.
Periodically, a winter of gargantuan proportions comes along. Again, technology and culture hasn’t progressed.
The amazing question is how they managed to get as far as they have.
I agree with Ragnarredbeard that conditions in Westeros (or any other fantasy world) are that way because GRRM wrote them that way. I would add that he’s probably working with a common stereotype of the European Middle Ages as a dark, dreary, and violent time (as opposed to the “more enlightened” Early Modern period). Of course violence, inequality, and other undesirable elements were real parts of medieval history, but like most stereotypes it’s an excessively simplistic, caricatured image of a different time and place that doesn’t do it full justice. More than anything else, Westeros as portrayed by GRRM reflects our modern prejudices about medieval European times, hence why it seems so bleak.
Westeros has a rapid, reliable communications system (the ravens) that most pre-industrial societies did not possess, but societies that did (the Persians, the Romans, the Inca, the Mongols, etc.) maintained very large dominions successfully for centuries. The real question is why the Targaeryen dynasty continued to rely on duplicitous vassals for its military force instead of cultivating a professional warrior class loyal to the imperial authority first and foremost. We can surmise that the dragons made the Targaeryens complacent–you don’t need an army of thousands when you’re bringing the equivalent of three B-29 bombers to the Hundred Years War, and it’s telling that the only major conflicts in Westeros between the Targaeryen conquest and Robert’s Rebellion (e.g., the Dance of Dragons) happen much later in their dynasty, when their dragons are dead or dying.
But surely through the raven communications system, which required so little upkeep and infrastructure compared to the horse/foot messengers of real-world empires, the Targaeryans could have maintained tighter control on their domains. Seed loyal retainers throughout the Seven Kingdoms to spy on potential threats, have them send a raven at the first hint of sedition, and ruthlessly crush the traitors. The rest will fall into line. (This maybe doesn’t work on the Ironborn, but it’s not quite clear why they remain loyal once the threat of dragons is gone anyway.) This worked for Tokugawa Japan for over two centuries, because like Westeros, there were no real external threats to the realm. No one in Essos (before Viserys’ exile) had any designs on Westeros, and barring the occasional Wildling raid, no one in Westeros ever challenged the Seven Kingdoms.
But like many secondary-world fantasy-settings, the logistics really haven’t been thought out. The Dothraki are portrayed as a backwards, nomadic people, and yet Khal Drogo’s personal host (40,000 warriors) is more than twice the size of Robb Stark’s army (18,000), which is already on the high side for armies of the High Middle Ages. (And that’s implied to count just fighting men, not camp followers, support staff, or families.) How are the Dothraki able to hold together much larger armed hosts–mounted cavalry at that–for much longer periods of time if they’re so “savage”? You can’t sustain armies on plunder forever. Is every Khal also up to his eyeballs in debt to the Iron Bank?
I’ve read that the Second World War was the first major war where there were more casualties from direct violence than disease, starvation, and displacement. I find that pretty credible, but most modern fiction (understandably) doesn’t want to address that, as it’s so alien to our modern experience of war, especially from the perspective of the industrialized West. But if a work of pseudo-medieval fantasy doesn’t address it, and you can’t just handwave it and say “magic” (there’s real magic in Westeros, but it’s so rare and limited and legendary to most people, I don’t see it having a major impact on day-to-day living), it’s kind of pointless to apply real-world arguments to the setting.
For the long period of technological stagnation, look at e.g. China. Very little change in technology from about 3000 BC to 1000 AD or so, and that mostly stimulated by contacts with Europe and the Middle East. And before that, Sumeria also had thousands of years of cultural stasis, but it was subject to foreign invasion from all directions.
It’s quite credible in a world where magic really does work that science as we know it never gets anywhere. Those who might do that can get much more dramatic results by studying and applying magic, or any nascent scientists might simpoly be killed by the magic wielders..
What does seem incredible is that the same families remain in power for thousands of years, despite frequent civil wars. Given the “win or die” nature of these conflicts, there would be a high extinction rate of noble houses. For a dozen to endure for thousands of years is absurd.
2. Matthew Wing re: “…amoral sadists running around.” Maybe they have lead in the water?
I’ve thought about this idea before too, especially because I’ve been listening to Mike Duncan’s Revolution’s podcast which started in 2013 with the English Civil War. The parallel everyone draws with Game of Thrones is the War of the Roses and the Anarchy, but there may be something of the English Civil War/Irish Confederate Wars and Thirty Years War here. However, it seems like Martin might end up heading more towards an “Enlightened Absolutism” such as Louis XIV, Maria Theresa, and Fredrick the Great than the Parliamentary system of the British. Dany could definitely work as a stand in for Maria or Catherine the Great. On the TV show at least the Sparrow’s are also sometimes feel like the beginning of the Wars of Religion in Europe and the Huguenot wars so that’s worth following.
One reason why Westros is so different from the real England is that it lacks the moderating influence on the monarchy that Parliament represented. Westeros also lacks anything that acts as a control of people, especially leaders, behavior. They aren’t as close to foreign powers which would cause them to have to constrain actions to keep from being invaded, nor does the Church hold the type of power which the Vatican held through the 17th Century. There’s no Ottoman Empire either. Obviously there was extreme violence in the middle ages and the Church was responsible for a lot of it, but the Church/other nations/ more dynamic social systems could also check certain things.
The series does imply some higher technological growth than we would have expected from the real middle ages, depending on how you interpret some of the throw away lines about certain things in Bravos and Kings Landing/Winterfell. I think it is a mistake, and one Robert Jordan made as well, to keep the technology of this series in the Middle Ages when the culture, actions, and philosophical issues raised in the series makes more sense in the 15th-17th century. The ultra-violence in Game of Thrones feels closer to something out of the Thirty Years War, English Civil War, or Huguenot Wars than from the War of the Roses. The scale likewise is closer to this.
Speaking of which, the closer historical comparison to GoT might actually be the Chinese and Japanese of the 15th-17th Century. In both of those cases there was more long running internal civil war, and the size is closer to Westeros. In China, the Manchu were overrun by a rebellion from inside then conquered by the Jurchen tribes from without who formed a new dynasty (Dany?). In Japan, a long running civil war ended when a new dynasty was created out of the warring high lords, who were then subordinate to the Shogun (Jon?). I don’t know how interested Martin is in that part of history, but his books/GoT makes more sense to me as a mix of the Japanese, European, and Chinese history of the 1500’s-1650’s than as straight middle ages. His series also has some serious Roman Empire feel to it, but that is a discussion for another day.
This article is making me doubt it the author has really read the books, because it seems to be describing the world of the show rather than the books.
First off, religions are not stopping progress in Westeros. I’m not even sure how the religions as described in ASOAIF would even do that. They are, with some exceptions, tolerant, much more than most religions used to be in world (as seen in the co-existence of the Faith of the Seven and the old religion in Westeros; in Braavos, the religion of the Many-Faced God encompasses and recognizes all other religions; Damphair is crazy, but even the Ironborn aren’t trying to impose their religion on everyone; Mel’s R’llor evangelism and burning of statues of the Seven is an exception,but Thoros is incredibly tolerant. It’s hard to judge the attitudes of R’hllorism as a whole, as neither of those two don’t even seem to be representative, as rogue Red priests with little contact with other Red priests). More separation between church and state (the Faith and the Iron Throne) would indeed be good, but it’s because the Faith is too controlled by the royal family, who use them for their purposes, rather than the other way round (the previous two High Septons were both obedient to Lannisters).
The official history, scientific and philosophical thought are not shaped by religion or the High Septon – they are instead utterly shaped by the Maesters of the Citadel, who embody the rational thought and skepticism, to the point of outright denial of any form of magic, including the existence of Others (White Walkers) and Children of the Forest. Ironically, this is an example of dogmatism and narrowmindedness, because magic does exist in their world. It’s like a mirror image of our Middle Ages, with reversed positions.
Whatever the reasons for lack of progress, it is unlikely that it has much, if anything, to do with religion.
Also, the Sparrows of the books are not the crazy, gay-bashing, property-destroying, alcohol-banning Straw Fundamentalists of the show. The movement has a dark and prudish side, for sure, in the form of High Sparrow’s misogynistic preoccupation with sexual purity of queens, but their actual main interest is protecting their own as well as the smallfolk from the victimization they suffered during the War of the Five Kings. They haven’t so far shown any interest in whether dudes are sleeping with other dudes, or in sex lives of anyone who is not a queen or a candidate for the High Septon.
As for democracy, the only societies that are democratic in ASOAIF are the free folk (the largest faction of wildlings beyond the Wall) and, up to a point, the mountain clans of the Vale – two groups considered “uncivilized” – and both of these leave a lot to be desired in terms of their understanding of human rights. Mainstream Westerosi don’t even have democratic ideas. Varys of the books is definitely not fighting for democracy, and book Tyrion, who’s far from the perfect, progressive Gary Stu of the show, finds the democratic ways of the Vale clans outright ridiculous (he finds it really weird that everyone is given a say in their meetings – even women).
“Every time someone who isn’t a total sociopath shows up, they’re promptly murdered, and there is a seemingly inexhaustible supply of amoral sadists running around”
I’m pretty tired of people claiming this, since it is not true, but it has become a stereotype of sorts. There are plenty of people who are not complete sociopaths and who are alive, including such unambiguously good people as Brienne, Samwell and Davos, and other non-sociopaths including main characters such as Bran, Sansa, Daenerys, not to mention Barristan, Arianne, Doran, heck I would argue even Stannis, Asha, Jaime and Arya (no, she’s not a socipath). The idea that Ned and Robb Stark were the only good people in ASOAIF is nonsense and needs to die.
Not to mention that many of the amoral sadists have been also murdered (Viserys, Joffrey, Tywin, Vargo Hoat, Rorge and Biter, Gregor Clegane [he IS dead, just a walking dead), a few of the assholes who worked for him, several of the Freys, Kraznys and the slavers…). Of course, there are still evil assholes who are alive – because there are two more books and you need villains!
I don’t even have to read this article. Unless the premise is some kind of trick question, the answer is simple. Westeros is f’d up because GRRM is stuck in his adolescent state and cannot help but write f’d up stories that appeal to the more prurient interests of the typical teenage boy. Really not that far removed from the abhorrent GOR stories written by John Norman. I enjoyed them before I grew up and realized that they were totally misogynistic (even the female heroes in GRRMs work are misogynists at heart). I haven’t touched either in a long time and feel like my reading interests are better served by authors that write stories that don’t rely on a pornographic imagination.
@38: “even the female heroes in GRRMs work are misogynists at heart”
Unless you consider Cersei a hero, that’s very obviously nonsense. As is the rest of your post, for that matter.
“This is not to say that destroying religion is the answer. Our species has already played that game, with dire consequences.”
I’m trying to draw a solid historical reference when religion was eliminated and what those consequences were…
@40, You have the word witch in your name and you need to learn about religious eradication? OOOOKAY
@40: I’m guessing that was an oblique reference to Communism and the Socialist Block during the Cold War?
I read the first novel when it came out and liked the grittiness, and even the ring mail in the north vs plate armour in the south made sense – if you were living in that area so far from cities, chances were you’d be wearing Grandad’s armour. I assumed there was a physics reason for the climate situation. I liked the idea of fantasy with a bit of SF sneaked in, as in Jennifer Fallon’s Second Sons trilogy(actually, that was SF posing as fantasy). And there was only a bit of magic. After three books, I’m afraid I’ve given up – the whole thing reads, to me, like a medieval soap opera, and I’m disappointed that magic rather than physics controlled the climate.
So sue me.
Yes, I too am unclear as to “destroying religion.” Do you mean religions such as Druidic/naturalistic, as 41 seems to be implying, or the Cold War/communist ban as 42 indicates?
@32: Even with messenger ravens, the logistics of holding an empire that large is still highly impractical and impossible in the long run without fully-grown dragons.
@36: Best comment I’ve seen so far on this board. (I’m an unashamed book loyalist.)
@43 – sbursztynski: I’m not sure at what point in the books stuff happens, because I’ve only seen the show. But with Bran’s warging dreams, the spotting of the White Walkers/Others, and Dany surviving fire and hatching dragon eggs, I was quickly aware (at least at the end of the first season) that one of the themes of the saga was “the return of magic” .
Gweilo @33:
… look at e.g. China. Very little change in technology from about 3000 BC to 1000 AD or so, and that mostly stimulated by contacts with Europe and the Middle East.
Nonsense. There was enormous technological progress in China over that time frame — arguably even more than in other parts of Eurasia. In 3000 BC, China was either not yet or just barely in the beginnings of the Bronze Age. By 1000, China had gunpowder, paper, printing (with movable-type printing developed in the 11th Century), compasses, a massive iron and steel smelting industry, etc., etc. Some of that was, of course, due to contacts with other parts of Eurasia (though mostly not Europe, which tended to lag behind other regions), but much of it was locally developed and spread to the rest of Eurasia from China.
@36: I’ve wondered why the Ironborn didn’t evangelize on the mainland, but I guess they think the religion should be theirs alone and/or don’t want to waste their time on what they consider wimpy “greenlanders.” It’s a shame, that pride. Aeron may or may not be the Drowned God’s true prophet (I maintain that Patchface is), but he converted me many times over in his first chapter alone. Oh well. Manderlys also celebrate the sea, and have fun while doing so.
Winter is coming – yes the poor slobs are gonna die — but the winter can last a decade or more — remember the Stark children have never seen winter before.
Hope?! Ha, this is Westeros.
The milieu of ASoIaF is pretty much the norm for sword & dragon fantasy; GRRM has extrapolated that to its logical conclusion.
There are, of course, many ways that the world of ASoIaF is similar to something like medieval Europe, but it’s certainly far less complicated than the reality of, say, 12th Century England, let alone 13th Century Italy or the contemporary Islamic world.
Ignoring, for now, the real reason it is the way it is — authorial prerogative — there can be a number of reasons for the seeming lack of progress.
1) Westeros, at least, does not seem to have a strong urban culture. It wasn’t the guys in the castles innovating; it was the city-dwellers. Specifically, the Renaissance was started by a bunch of middle-class city dwellers in trade-dominated cities in the least feudal part of Christian Europe. However, the Renaissance also required a religion where reasoned discourse and logic were valued (just read anybody from St Augustine on) and which placed value on retaining knowledge from the past. The closest thing Westeros seems to have to a powerful religious leader is the High Sparrow.
2) Westeros does not have any supra-national organization. Medieval Europe had the Catholic Church; while not as all-powerful as it was caricatured, it could come very close to breaking a monarchy. A Holy Roman Emperor didn’t stand around in the snow to avoid excommunication because he liked cold feet, nor did Henry II flagellate himself because he was into BDSM: they did so because the opprobrium of the Catholic Church could break them, even if the Pope had no soldiers (oaths sworn to an excommunicated king were null and void)
3) Dragons. If I’ve got effective firearms, dragons stop being useful. If a humanity has MANPADS, dragons either realize that a) attacking humans is suicidal or b) extinct. More generally, I think Zelazny dealt with this in the Amber series: if magic works, gunpowder doesn’t. Without gunpowder, castles and armored knights reign supreme, and with castles and armored knights, feudalism continues.
Fascinating take on the pseudoanalogous world of Westeros, which does indeed have mimetic qualities to our own Eurasian medieval period. However, there are some logical conclusions that I would suggest an alternative to (in the spirit of scientific inquiry, supposedly so lacking). The main problem with this argument is one of scale as well as our assumption of its analog to our world. On both ends, from we seem to have incorrectly assigned a scale that is smaller and therefore less impressive.
Let us first examine the far end, the one closer to our known world, and the perception of historicity that pervades discussions of the validity of Westerosi culture. It is assumed that this fantasy world (much like its textural siblings, the Elder Scrolls games being a prime example) is an analog to Medieval Europe, which while not entirely untrue is misunderstood in two ways. Primarily, our collective understanding of the medieval period has been simplified and consolidated into one that does not recognize a) non-western cultural advances in the time between ~500 CE and ~1500 CE as well as b) an understanding of the mutability these assigned periods of human experience have. In most understandings of the medieval period outside of a period-specific undergraduate history course, this culturally complex and geographically vast period of intense turmoil and growth (yes, growth) is understood as a unified and singular experience of feudal struggles, famine, and the Black Death. It is, then, refreshing as a reader of medieval history to see George R.R. Martin lean into the complexity of Eurasian medieval culture. To the argument of technology–we see a wide breadth of technological advancement, in instruments of war, medical practice, and the pursuit of knowledge within this world. The crossbows used and the creation of Valyrian steel (analogous to the pre-medieval invention of Damascus steel) are indeed mimetic to the technology available to late medieval Europe. And what of Qyburns Scorpion, the mechanical lance designed to slay the dragons? That is an invention worthy of the Early Modern period–certainly, the Ars Nova–which many would argue was in full breadth of distinction by the early 17th century. And, as in the Middle East in the medieval period, Essos holds significantly advanced cultures such as the Free Cities and Qarth. Certainly, Martin drew from the mathematicians in the Levant and Persia to illustrate the distinct scientific advantages of Qarth. This is not to nitpick the details of the technology, however–the point is more that the distinctions and categories that we assign to history are as arbitrary as any other categorization of human experience, and as such is susceptible to simplification and misunderstanding. And, to be fair, Martin has crafted a sufficiently complex universe that our own reaction to such a fantastical history might be similarly consolidated and simplified.
This oversimplification of our own history is, as previously noted, just one issue with the argument of historical scale and progress. As some others have mentioned, the transition from First Men to “modern-day Westeros” is not unusually long given the presence of Long Winters. Bronze age remains (the closest analog to the First Men being somewhere between Stone and Bronze age humanity) in Northern Europe have been found to be over 5000 years old; the cave painting in Lascaux, France are over 20,000 years old. It, therefore, stands to reason that the timeline is analogous to our own historical advancements, with Valyrian culture representing Greece, the Levant, and Rome (sufficiently lost and mysterious for Late Medieval/Early Modern peoples), the First Men representing those that bridged the gap between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age, the Andals as those that defined and refined agrarianism in Europe from areas in the Levant and Middle East. This is sufficiently mimetic to the recorded history we have of Eurasia from the agricultural revolution to the Early Modern period.
With this in mind, let us look to this issue at hand–stunted scientific advancement. Is rational inquiry truly more stunted in Westeros than in our world, with this analogous timeline in mind? We see records of attempting to treat Greyscale using such a scientific method as well as attempts to quarantine the afflicted, demonstrating the effective (again, for the analogous timeline) uses of scientific inquiry. The maesters and even common people understand the mode of transmission is not through divine retribution but through contact, a very basic analog to smallpox and leprosy which was effectively understood as early as the Babylonian settlements in the Middle East. Wildfire, too, and certain potions and remedies, while sometimes assigned a magical cause, are manufactured and understood through rational and logical understandings. And, as we know from Arthur C. Clarke, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
And why does all of this matter? Myth building and storytelling are integral tools, old as our First Men, that help us reconcile our past, present, and future. By understanding the complexity that we miss, the categorization and compartmentalization that we engage in with our past and our stories, we can understand how we do so in our present. By understanding this, we thereby understand what we miss, and we can shape our future with purpose. It is, after all, a fantasy story–and yet, it is compelling because it shows us an alternate reality that is based in our own missteps. Perhaps, then, we can learn through that lens if we cannot see it in the reality that surrounds us.