Disillusionment in A Game of Thrones

[Note: I have felt for a while that I should probably put those of my academic essays that fit this blog's purview up here. As it would be hard to find a book more fitting to what I do on The Hat Rack than A Game of Thrones, I figured that this is where I would start. This paper was originally written for the class "Fantasy Literature and the Historical Imagination" and was intended to explore Martin's usage of both in-world history and world-building. 

Alas, I do have the habit of copious footnoting in my academic writing, and I don't know a graceful way of integrating that with a blog's formatting. I'd recommend having a second tab open at the bottom of the page to read them as you go.]

A Game of Thrones is the first book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. In it, Martin sets out to shatter his characters’ illusions. After building up a great store of cultural knowledge and ideals, he sets about destroying it. He shows his characters that war and politics are nothing like that they expect. But he doesn’t sotp there. By the time he is done, he has shown them that their very world is not as they thought it was.

The people of Westeros^[1] have a great deal of lore. Knowledge and ideas are preserved and spread in a large body of songs and stories that are often alluded to. ^[2] The oldest woman in service to the Starks is Old Nan, whose purpose seems to be telling bedtime stories to each generation of new lords. Not all of what the Westerosi know comes from general knowledge and oral traditions. Chroniclers record the details of major events (Martin 102), and lords’ castles hold large libraries. Books are so prized that they can be considered sufficient wedding gifts for a princess: Daenerys receives – and cherishes – volumes of songs and histories of the Seven Kingdoms (Martin 86). The past isn’t just something for the political elite to toy with. The maesters are a Westerosi institution that can be cheesily summed up as the “knights of the mind” (Martin 484). Groan-worthy propaganda aside, maesters study for years in Oldtown before dispersing through the realm as learned advisors. They are educated in  histories, herbs, ravens, architecture, and far more (Martin 485), and their chambers are overflowing with books (Martin 615).

This knowledge – particularly the stories and songs – serve as a guide to the world for Martin’s many child characters. Bran, for instance, thinks he knows what to expect in the capital from the stories that he has heard (Martin 64). Sansa goes farther, building her life around songs, desiring nothing more and nothing less than “for things to be nice and pretty, the way they were in the songs” (Martin 119-20 This isn’t just idle dreaming about how things should be. Betrothed to Prince Joffrey, Sansa believes that her life will be just like the Age of Heroes, only with more lemon cakes.

Alas, treating life as a story ends disastrously. As Littlefinger says, “life is not a song” (Martin 395). The children learn this to their great sorrow. Bran dreamed of being a knight. Instead, he watches the knights ride to war while he sits by, crippled. Jon discovers that the legendary defenders of the realm, the Night’s Watch, are not heroes driven solely by honor. As one character Jon complains to eloquently puts it, reality likes to “piss on the stories” (Martin 153). But it’s Sansa that gets the most brutal blow. Long after the others have given up their idealized dreams Sansa becomes capable of “seeing [Joffrey] for the first time” (Martin 622). That moment of revelation comes when her gallant prince decides to display her father’s severed head for all to see.

Adults, too, suffer from their ideals. Ser Hugh came to participant in the Hand’s Tournament, the tournament that, to Sansa, proves “better than the songs” (Martin 246). Hugh came because he was “desperately” seeking glory to justify his recent knighting (Martin 256). In the jousting, he gets a lance through the throat. If the killer’s brother can be believed, that deadly deviation from the songs was no accident (Martin 253). Indeed, knighthood falls far short of its romanticism throughout the text. One telling difference between storied battle and actual combat is how “in songs, the knights never screamed nor begged for mercy” (Martin 453). Of course, there are things to believe in besides stories. Not all of the novel’s^[3] characters go on believing their adolescent fantasies to and through their knighting. Martin delights, therefore, in showing that these mature ideals are just as impractical and illusory Eddard believes in honor. When he gains documented proof that King Robert supports him, he thinks the battle won. Cersei tears the document to pieces. “Is this meant to be your shield, my lord?” she asks him. “A piece of paper?” (Martin 441) His honor, and even the king’s legal will, are as much paper shields against reality as a cherished book of childhood stories. No storied knowledge or grand virtues, it seems, matter in the face of the real (Westerosi) world and the men in it with swords.

The final source of disillusionment is the greatest, and it is also where the disillusionment moves from the histories created by the people of the world to the very history of the world and the world itself. The world of Westeros is not what the Westerosi believe it is. The children delight in Old Nan’s stories of Others and other fantastic creatures. But the rational adults know that these stories are just stories, irrelevant to today’s modern (medieval) world even if they might once have had some grain of truth. As Ned says, “The Others are as dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they never lived at all” (Martin 20). The Maesters confidently state that “magic ha[s] died” (Martin 197), their only qualifier being that it may never have existed. In legends, the Night’s Watch raised the Wall to combat the Others, but everyone knows the Night’s Watch really just keeps the nasty northern barbarians out. As Tyrion mocks, the Night’s Watch is “watching for grumkins and snarks and all the other monsters your wet nurse warned you about” (Martin 104). The Others have been left with no more dignity than the monsters in a children’s movie.

But the Others are not extinct. The prologue shows three men of the Night’s Watch venturing beyond the wall. Ser Royce, a knight new to the Watch, leads them, and, before long, they are slaughtered by the Others. On the surface, this seems the typical story of an inexperienced and overconfident commander leading his men to ruin. That is true, but it is also insufficient, because the good Ser Royce is not really a buffoon. He is intelligent enough to realize that the temperature was too warm for the men they were pursuing to have simply frozen (Martin 4), and he is courageous. He alone stands and “bravely” face the Others (Martin 7). He was out of his depth, but any commander would have been. Only silly stories passed down through the ages shed any light on the Others, and the three are forced to rely on tales from their “mother[s]” and “wet nurse[s]” as soon as they pass the Wall (Martin 3). ^[4]

The supernatural was likely dismissed from official records and general belief for political reasons. Dragons, unlike Others, are not from the Dawn Age or the Age of Legends but from the Targaryen Conquest a mere three hundred years ago. Nonetheless, characters confidently assert that “dragons are gone,” and “it is known” that they are not coming back (Martin 197). Part of their reasoning is that the last known dragons are dead. Similarly, when proving that Others do not exist and maybe never did, Eddard says “no living men has ever seen one” (Martin 20). But the dismissal of dragons is also political. When the Targaryens ruled, they kept the memory of dragons alive, for the symbol of the dragon was tied to their power and reign. When King Robert dethroned the Targaryens, he took down the dragon skulls that adorned the throne room (Martin 102). It was in his interest to forget the old, to have the people dismiss dragons as a relic of the past that could never recur, and to embrace his new reign. The same reason could explain why Others are so categorically dismissed despite ancient evidence. When the Targaryens took over three hundred years ago, it was in their interest to have the people forget their prior rulers and the legendary foes those rulers strove against. Unfortunately, neither Others nor dragons care much for Westerosi politics. The Targaryens may have reduced the Others to a laughingstock, and Robert may have stuffed all the dragon relics out of sight, but both beasts are returning in defiance of all the rational learning of the maesters.

Admittedly, these supernatural beasts are not yet in Westeros, and the maesters are correct for the moment that magic is dead in the world. After all, they define the world as Westeros. The Wall marks the “end of the world” (Martin 173), no matter that there is plainly territory beyond it. But while the Others and other magic are still outside the world, they are coming. A Song of Ice and Fire could be called the story of magic gradually but inexorably returning. In A Game of Thrones, we have direwolves returning to the realm for the first time in two hundred years (Martin 15). Outside Westeros, we see Others, dragons, and Wights, the last of which end up attacking the Wall itself. By the second volume, A Clash of Kings, one of the faction’s competing for the throne has a sorceress of sorts. In the third, A Storm of Swords, we have the Night’s Watch battling Others. The progression continues from there.

A Song of Ice and Fire, therefore, becomes something like a secondary world intrusion fantasy. This can be seen in contrast with The Worm Ouroboros. E. R. Eddison’s sub-creation is wholly consistent and integrated. Its denizens know the rules of the world and what is possible. They might express amazement at the exploits of the wondrously named Brandoch Daha or at the spells of one of the many Gorices, but their awe would be like our awe at someone who climbed Mount Everest. These are incredible feats, but they are not impossible feats. It would not be like our reaction to someone who claimed they could fly. No fundamental (or seemingly fundamental) rules of the world are violated by their exploits. It is not so in Martin’s work. The seemingly impossible does happen. The maesters are convinced that magic is gone, but what could be accurately described as a frozen zombie attacks the Night’s Watch. Now, this does not actually violate the rules of the world. By starting with his prologue and the Others, Martin makes sure to let the reader know the real rules of the game. But the characters do not have that luxury. Their worldview is incomplete, and it is violated by what is (to them) the supernatural. From the Westerosi viewpoint, the Others marching south of the Wall is the quite literal intrusion of the fantastic into the world. Martin’s characters are subjected to something akin to Cthulhu rising from the Pacific.

This does not, of course, mean that A Game of Thrones or A Song of Ice and Fire is not an immersion fantasy. It is set in a detailed secondary world and, save the paratexts^[5], contains no hint of Earth. Its story is certainly one about the world of Westeros. In fact, the idea of ancient evils returning – essentially, intrusion fantasies – is not a rare one in immersion fantasies. Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time – another recent, sprawling, and best-selling fantasy series – uses the same concept. Even The Lord of the Rings plays on similar ground. Suaron, after all, is a foe from past ages, though characters like Galadriel that can speak about that ancient history with perfect accuracy complicate the effect in Tolkien. The techniques of an intrusion fantasy are compatible with the world of an immersive fantasy and allow an author to create a different effect than can be had from simply establishing one set of rules and never toying with them.

For Martin, this technique is the final hammer he can use to hit his characters’ illusions. A Game of Thrones and the books that follow it set out to prove to their cast that nothing is what they thought it was. The characters’ songs, stories, and ideals of honor and knightly valor hide the truth of death screams and begging for mercy. Even their world, Martin reveals, is vastly more complex than they imagined.^[6]

Works Cited

Martin, George R.R. A Game of Thrones. New York: Bantam Books. 1996. Print.

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^[1] Westeros is the continent on which the vast majority of the series’ action is set. It is also (somewhat confusingly) the name of the world.

^[2] In later volumes, Martin does include the words to some of these songs, such as the Rains of Castamere, but none are present in A Game of Thrones.

^[3] Though A Game of Thrones has many aspects of a romance, Martin’s too concerned with “character development” and the psychology of his narrators to not be considered a novelist. Indeed, it is precisely that character development that he so often uses to poke holes in romance and romantic ideals. [Note: a central issue in our class was whether works of Fantasy qualified as true Novels as opposed to as Romances.]

^[4] It’s too simple, therefore, to say that Martin thinks all knowledge – songs, stories, books – is misleading. In the first place, he seems to divide between cultural lore or stories and what is critical, studied. The former is a very poor guide to the day-to-day world, while the maesters really are valuable advisors. But the maesters are worthless against supernatural menaces that defy all reason.

^[5] Though it’s never stated in the text itself, an argument could be made that the genealogies in the back are in-world texts. They never explicitly address an out of world reader, and, as we see Ned reading The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses, we know that there are genealogies created by and for Westerosi.

^[6] Finally, I should note that A Game of Thrones did, thankfully, hold up to my memories of it. I can no longer quite call it the greatest book of all time, but my fears of finding out that everything I’d loved about it were just cool due to having read less at the time proved unfounded.