The official story was the arrow glanced off a tree and struck William in the chest, killing him instantly. Ironically, his elder brother, Richard, had died in the same manner, and in the same place, 30 years before. William ‘Rufus’ (son of William the Conqueror) was struck down by an arrow while hunting deer in the New Forest on Aug. The assassination of Robert Baratheon in a contrived hunting accident has a real-life precedent in the death of King William II of England. A Song of Ice and Fire also shows traces of earlier medieval history. The epic conflict between York and Lancaster is not the only historical influence on Martin’s fiction. Martin is notorious for gore, but even his fiction has yet to match the real life brutality of Towton. When the sun set, 28,000 lay dead in the snow. Some 50,000 Yorkist and Lancastrian soldiers fought all day in a snowstorm. Towton (March 29, 1461) was the largest battle ever fought on English soil.
Thousands of Englishmen slaughtered each other in the bloody battles of Wakefield, Towton, Barnet, Tewkesbury and Bosworth, making and unmaking kings. The very names ‘Stark’ and ‘Lannister’ echo ‘York’ and ‘Lancaster,’ and England had its own ‘Mad King’ (Henry VI) and ‘twisted Imp’ (Richard III). University of Oxford professor Carolyne Larrington, a medievalist, has published a best-selling book entitled Winter is Coming: the Medieval World of Game of Thrones.įor the most part, discussion of Martin’s historical influences has concentrated on the Wars of the Roses, the bitter conflict that divided England for 30 years (1455-1485).
There is a website entitled History Behind Game of Thrones: Striving to Make Game of Thrones more complicated. Martin’s fantasy fiction series A Song of Ice and Fire – and the spin-off HBO show Game of Thrones – has generated much popular interest in medieval history.
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