It has a bit of a different angle in that it critiques works of fantasy in terms of realism, feasibility and consistency in a pretty nitpicky way (the hint's in the name, really). Still I find it mostly good-humoured.
What's pretty interesting about ACOUP is that when contrasting Tolkien's Middle Earth with George Martin's Game of Thrones, from a realism perspective... it's Middle Earth that ends up winning.
If you peruse the many articles of this blog on both works of fiction, you'll realize the author (a scholar on medieval history) thinks Lord of the Rings is more realistic (in scope, military logistics, scale of the armies and even tactics) than Game of Thrones. This was surprising to me, because GRRM "sells" Game of Thrones as a fantastic [1] but "more realistic" [2] take on the Middle Ages. ACOUP takes him to task, because almost every "realistic" detail in GoT is, according to him, wrong. This also includes the purported cruelty of nobles towards the populace, GRRM's take on religion, etc.
Let me delve on that last point: ACOUP asserts that GoT's take on religion is wrong. In GoT -- especially in the TV show, but also in the books -- the take on religion of many major players is cynical. While some characters are fanatics or really believe, others are skeptical. Most of the Lannisters seem skeptical of any gods. Cersei goes so far as to blow out the Sept (cathedral), an act that in the real Middle Ages would see her hanged, burned or beheaded, and would lose her the support of her army. ACOUP makes the point that the nobility and kings of the Middle Ages really believed in their religion and gods!
----
[1] after all, it's a fantasy work with dragons and zombies. Then again, LotR has orcs, elves, ghosts and wizards and it manages to be more realistic!
[2] George Martin: "I wanted my books to be strongly grounded in history and to show what medieval society was like, and I was also reacting to a lot of fantasy fiction. Most stories depict what I call the ‘Disneyland Middle Ages’—there are princes and princesses and knights in shining armor, but they didn’t want to show what those societies meant and how they functioned."
I think that the main difference between LotR and GoT is that LotR is told in a style similar to the actual legendary epics and epic sagas that we have from history. These stories (and in particular the written versions that survive for us) were about the nobility and for the nobility. Because of this many everyday details are assumed and skipped over, and unpleasant or ignoble facts are ignored or glossed over.
So for example LotR features half-orcs as creatures, and the text describes their creation as Saruman's most evil act. But it doesn't explicitly spell out that this likely involved rape of human women by male orcs. Whereas GoT directly describes Daenerys being raped from her own point of view.
This doesn't mean that LotR is less realistic. It describes a similar set of events as GoT, but they are presented in a different way.
I think this is what people are sensing when they say LotR is 'less realistic', even though GoT is actually the worse match to historical reality.
Also, what happened to Elrond's wife is hinted at, but never directly spelled out, because Tolkien rightly assumes we don't need the explicit details to be horrified by it.
In GoT, it would be several pages/several minutes of screen time.
It's why I could never get into the latter. Just goes for the absolute, lowest common denominator every time, but apparently that's what makes "grown up, serious" fantasy.
Tolkien was actually the master of fridge logic... and fridge horror. Martin describes everything in detail... with Tolkien, he only hints at things, but when you understand things he is hinting at... let's just say that Middle Earth has a lot in common with Cthulhu Mythos.
There's one of Tolkien's notes that implies that elves could and would die in preference to being raped:
> But among all these evils there is no record of any among the Elves that took another's spouse by force; for this was wholly against their nature, and one so forced would have rejected bodily life and passed to Mandos.
So I think this raises some doubts about whether Tolkien intended to imply rape in Celebrian's case rather than some other evil.
Torment in the dungeons of the orcs, what else could that be? The fact she had to leave Middle-earth forever after the ordeal, strongly suggests what actually happened, as does the fact it so galvanized her sons.
While crossing the Misty Mountains via Redhorn Pass, Celebrían was captured by orcs. She was held for some time, tortured and poisoned. Elrond and company eventually rescued her, but she was so traumatized that after a year she left Middle Earth. Elrond would not see her again for some 500 years.
That doesn't sound so dramatic, IMO. I wonder if there's a generational component there too...? Maybe in Tolkien's time, explicit gore and violence were less common. Then since modern video games and TV shows upped the ante, maybe RR Martin had to be more explicit to create the same emotional effect that Tolkien's subtle hinting used to have on his audience? I dunno.
Certainly Martin was writing for a different audience. I don't know that Tolkien's descriptions would have been read as 'subtle' by his audience at the time he wrote it. Generational implications come and go. What might sound horrific or lascivious in one era or culture would be tame to another.
> I think that the main difference between LotR and GoT is that LotR is told in a style similar to the actual legendary epics and epic sagas that we have from history.
Yeah, ASOIAF is very much a deliberate reaction against both the tropes (pure good vs. pure evil, characters whose morality or immorality is etched in stone disconnected from events and circumstances, etc.) and the romanticization in what is told and what is elided in the style that LotR deliberately leans into.
> This doesn't mean that LotR is less realistic
The tell vs. imply distinction isn’t a matter of realism, true, though other aspects of the difference, particularly around characterization, very much are, and those are deliberate stylistic choices on both sides.
I think ACOUP's point is that the grimmer tone of ASOIAF is not more realistic than LotR's romanticized tone, and that in many instances it's actually less so. And that while both are valid style choices, GRRM's insinuation that his choice leans towards realism is mistaken.
Examples being: kings believed in their own religion, they didn't randomly mistreat peasants, nobles and lowborn alike followed tradition, people weren't cynical about religion in private, and kings depended on their vassals to enforce their will, so mistreating vassals (at least, as the norm) was a no-go and everyone understood this. Other examples are about military logistics, the system of bannermen and what duties and obligations it entailed in both king and vassals, which are more realistic in LotR and less in ASOIAF (or so the blog claims).
I think ACOUP's main point is that GRRM is projecting modern sensibilities into his characters, which is valid but doesn't result in a less fairytale, more realistic depiction of medieval society, like GRRM claims was his intention!
It is totally predictable that a professor of historical languages would have a more accurate perspective on history than someone like Martin, right? ACOUP points out that Martin’s worldbuilding is better grounded in historical stereotypes than actual history…
Of course Lord of the Rings is fantasy, and sanitized (At least it doesn’t lie about it).
If we’re starting at Lord of the Rings and adding elements to get more realism, I’ve always thought Monty Python’s Holy Grail would be a better pickup than GoT. Everything is covered in shit in both, which is something Lord of the Rings really lacks, but the people in Game of Thrones are too clever and able to keep together these grand schemes. Python adds the stupid that defines us.
I think your take on Cersai would only happen in a period of the Middle Ages, with week kings and a strong church.
Right before the Middle Ages there are many examples like it, for example Charlemagne and his line. If they and the pope disagreed it was the pope that got the short end of the stick. There was also many example of viking kings and warlords converting to christianity and back again.
Right after the Middle Ages Henry the eight is another example.
Second, GoT seems to fit within the Late Middle Ages / Early Modern period. In fact, ACOUP points up that the armor worn on the TV show at times looks to be Early Modern / Renaissance! If this was Early Middle Ages, there would have to be a lot more chainmail and far less plate mail. The Early Modern period (not the Middle Ages) would make more sense for acts of sacrilege shown in GoT because it also saw the rise of professional armies who didn't act because of deference to neither church nor king, but because of pay. But besides Bronn and the mercenary companies outside Westeros, most of the armies within Westeros proper seem to be motivated by allegiances to noble houses, and so they must defer to tradition and religion.
Third, ACOUP is talking of religion in general. There are some characters in GoT that believe in their religion (possibly some of the Starks and their "Old Gods", Melissandre and her Lord of Light) but most of the world of Westeros is skeptical of any religions at all, not just the mainstream one. But as ACOUP points out:
> "This is the mistake my students make – they don’t believe medieval Catholicism or Roman paganism, and so they weakly assume that no one (or at least, none of the ‘really smart’ people) at the time really did either. Of course this is wrong: People in the past believed their own religion."
The vikings before converting to Christianity had their own gods, and they truly believed in them. In contrast, most of the nobles of Westeros don't believe in any gods, pagan or otherwise. Which a serious historical mistake if one is trying to reflect -- albeit with fantasy divergences -- "real medieval society".
I bet you Charlemagne truly believed there was a god judging him.
I thought GRRM was trying to set up a fictional European Middle Ages, at least in Westeros?
In any case, his depiction of "Asian" nomadic cultures is hilariously unrealistic as well. I recommend ACOUP's chapters on the Dothraki; their culture doesn't fit anything from the real-world, be it Huns, Mongols or Native Americans, all quoted by GRRM as references (so it's valid to mention if he misused them).
Someone mentioned GRRM seems to be using stereotype, not reality, as reference! Which is fine and dandy, except GRRM claimed he was aiming for realism...
But what does this have to do with whether the fictional world of "A Song of Ice and Fire" is more or less realistic in their depiction of "medieval society" [1] than the epic romances that came before, and that he compares to "Disneyland Middle Ages"? [1, again].
We are discussing GRRM's fictional depiction of a "realistic" middle ages, with a focus on Europe but some side-dishes of Asian steppe cultures -- which according to ACOUP he also gets wrong. Which wouldn't matter if GRRM didn't assert his depiction was more realistic!
That seems to contradict my understanding of Chinese history and culture. Historically they seem to be strongly spiritual like any people, and government support for religions. I admit most of exposure is from literature and not much more. Could you elaborate on the point?
Maybe the absence of a strong unified church which is separate(-ish) from a strong state, as the Catholic church related to European states? Like, there were religious institutions in classical Chinese civilization; the government did participate in it ("the role of the emperor is to maintain harmony between heaven and earth, he rules with the mandate of Heaven" etc); there was lots of "worshippy activities" in temple-ish buildings; the closest things to "official religion" were a bit syncretic but Christianity was also pretty syncretic in origin just presented later as something fully formed in unity; mythology overlapped with history in that mythological power structures resembled real power structures and government etc. One big difference seems to be the absence of Christian-style religious services in which a large audience listens to a preacher / regularly participates in a long shared ritual like Mass, but this is from the anecdotal perspective of comparing (very little) experience in modern Catholic churches vs received information and visiting historical sites in China
China did not have a unified religion, or even a unified pantheon.
Each region had its own sets of gods and traditions. Even the somewhat unified Confucianism is more of a philosophical teaching, and it works just fine alongside the traditional Chinese religions. People understood this and generally were content to leave each over in peace over the religion.
Compare this to Europe and Middle East where people (still!) wage actual holy wars over doctrinal matters.
GRRM's world is closer to China than to Europe in this regard.
I think their spirituality is more about mysticism rather than the apparatus of organized (and politicized) churches run by humans. There's not some huge clerical institution vying for power against the state, just a general background noise about the heavens and the ancestors and the such.
Even with the influence of Buddhism, that was only tolerated as a philosophical system of self improvement. When the Dalai Llama became an actual political threat, he was replaced with a puppet.
Modern China is pretty much an atheist state that is pretty religion unfriendly, but I think that's a lasting consequence of the Cultural Revolution and not something from their older history.
But it comparison the blog makes between religion in GoT and the Middle Ages don't make sense. In GoT we are explicitly told that the "church" was deliberately culled and broken by the kings back when they had dragons and only survived on the kings mercy, it might make sense that this could have lessened belief in religion. We are not told what religion the dragon lords had, but apparently they took over the local beliefs after breaking the "church".
I also don't see how a army with allegiances to noble houses must defer to tradition and religion, how would you then explain a king converting to christianity (or the other way)?
> But it comparison the blog makes between religion in GoT and the Middle Ages don't make sense
Why then would GRRM claim his Westeros was "to be strongly grounded in history and to show what medieval society was like" then? A society with the church "broken" by the kings and without any religion to supplant it wouldn't be like medieval society at all!
It would make more sense for GRRM to claim his take is transposing modern sensibilities to a fantasy middle ages world. That would work. His characters are cynical like a modern person would be, rather than like a medieval person. But GRRM is not claiming this as his intent, which is a pity.
> I also don't see how a army with allegiances to noble houses must defer to tradition and religion, how would you then explain a king converting to christianity (or the other way)?
Well, what religion did Cersei claim was the true one then? Kings and queens converted to other religions, they didn't become atheists. And frequently this was divisive anyway, sometimes leading to civil war. And let's remember that Cersei was already on shaky grounds, she was a humiliated woman whom people didn't respect and were stoning moments ago! An already unpopular woman burns down the most important religious building and ascends to queendom on which grounds exactly?
Which gods should the Lannisters pray to, now that Cersei destroyed the Sept? Are they not deeply religious, like in true medieval society?
I think you are looking for another kind of realism than what the books have. If it was a one to one society with our Middle Ages why would it not take place in our world.
GoT have a world with magic and dragons, I think it would be completely unrealistic if that world ended up with a religious life exactly as ours in the Middle Ages.
> I think you are looking for another kind of realism than what the books have
Again, let me stress this is ACOUP's opinions, not mine. I do find them convincing, though.
> GoT have a world with magic and dragons, I think it would be completely unrealistic if that world ended up with a religious life exactly as ours in the Middle Ages.
George Martin himself waves away this explanation, that because "it has dragons" then it cannot be realistic, consistent (which mind you, GoT is NOT) or follow the conventions of medieval society. (I cannot find the exact quote, but I'm sure you can if you search the web).
It's not that GoT doesn't fashion a religious/family/feudal life exactly like in our real middle ages -- it's just that he consistently deviates from it so that the end result is less realistic than the romantic epic of Lord of the Rings, while also at the same time claiming his vision is more realistic! And he did claim this.
He claims to have based the Dothraki on the Huns, Mongols and other steppe people, yet they behave nothing at all like them.
He claims to have based the Faith of the Seven on the Catholic Church, yet nobles don't treat it like such and they even blow up the Sept with no serious repercussions.
Westerosi are skeptical of gods and the supernatural, when in the real Middle Ages most would believe in both. In fact, it's almost like Westerosi have a modern mindset, rather than a medieval one!
I think we are using different definitions of realistic. If you take the meaning that realistic is that the world should be as in our Middle Ages you are right, if you take realistic as showing how things would a more practical look at how the world of GoT would be I think the above does not really matter.
That sounds like a no true scotsman argument to me. Given popular culture's tendency to already get things significantly wrong, claiming the mantle of "realistic" shouldn't have the level set at "eh, it kinda fine" (which is treating GoT very leniently).
But how would you define realistic for a fantasy world?
You can't expect people to believe as they would in our world, given that their world is different. If invaders with dragons took over England in our Middle Ages and crushed the church, peoples religion would realistically also evolve very differently from what it actually did.
But the Targaryens behave as atheists. They don't act as if they believed the gods were judging them. Even without dragons, the subsequent kings don't act as if they were divinely ordained [1]
The vikings who massacred Christians had their own religion. What's the Targaryen's? What's the Lannisters'?
You simply cannot claim to be depicting a realistic medieval society (with magic), as Martin does, without this. And many other details he got wrong.
By Martin's own admission, dragons and magic are not an excuse for being inconsistent or "unrealistic". Vast armies cannot be raised and teleported to battlefields just because there are dragons. Dragons are no excuse for blowing up a major cathedral with no consequences.
----
[1] If you watch HBO's prequel, it's even worse: at a time when the Targaryens had plenty of dragons, there were warring factions within them, all vying for the throne, each claiming to have the "rightful" heir. But where's the legitimacy of each claim supposed to be derived from? Kings claim "rightful" inheritance through lineage, but somewhere up the line there must be a divine right to rule. So they may have disagreements about whether it's matrilineal or patrilineal (cue Henry V and the Hundred Years War), or whether someone was a bastard, but ultimately every feudal king though he had a god-given right to rule. Otherwise what would the different claimants be arguing about?
But the thing is, the world of GoT isn't a realistic depiction of how medieval society would mutate due to dragons and zombies; it has so many divergences that George Martin's claim to be depicting a more realistic medieval society than in other fantasy worlds just does not hold. Like ACOUP points out, Westerns looks more like the Renaissance or even Victorian England.
It's not just religion (which, by the way: why do the dragon-riding Targaryens also do NOT believe in zombies or gods?).
It's also the feudal system. It didn't work like in GoT, as Brett from ACOUP shows. Medieval tactics (without dragons, how much of the battles happen in the books and show) don't work like that either. The bannermen system cannot sustain such large armies. Kings didn't randomly mistreat their populations. Logistics don't work like in GoT -- and that's current real world logistics, not even medieval! Steppe people weren't like the Dothraki. And so on and on.
Martin's world is pretty cool (to me, anyway) but is in no way more "realistic" than the Disneyland worlds he complains against.
I don't know. I find both Tolkien and GRRM excellent, but very different. I think it's easy to sell hating on GRRM as a smart take because of the popularity and spectacle of the TV show, but the books were very popular before the show came out.
GRRM cut his teeth as a TV writer and (because of that | despite that) he understands story very well. At least through the first four books his plotting was impeccable, his characters had meaningful arcs, he built excellent tension and resolution and his use of dramatic irony was perfect. His writing was never clumsy and lacked the purple quality that's prevalent in most fantasy. Is his world building perfect? No, but its top 1% compared to the other garbage fantasy being sold.
Tolkien was after all an academic medievalist, and so it's unsurprising that he gets a lot of stuff right (but he also leaves a lot of bits off stage.)
I'll say it's comparing apples and oranges and I like them both.
Brett is very clear that he’s evaluating Game of Thrones based on Martin’s explicit claims of historical accuracy, nothing more.
He isn’t reviewing Game of Thrones for its artistic qualities and I don’t know why lots of people need to jump to GoT’s defense every time his blog posts come up. Everything you just mentioned is irrelevant to whether or not GoT is historically accurate like GRR claims.
He's merely evaluating historical realism according to the claims of the respective pieces of work. GRRM claims he set up to write a fictional version and a more "realistic" take on "medieval society"; and claims other depictions are like "Disneyland Middle Ages" -- his words! However, his take is actually less realistic than romantic epics like Lord of the Rings.
Other than that, I really enjoy both. It's a critique, not hatred :)
> At least through the first four books his plotting was impeccable…
I mean, it was supposed to be three books, so I think the pacing must have gone awry somewhere. Can he tell compelling stories? Yes, but he is like a developer who only wants to work on greenfield projects. As soon as the plot gets messy, introduce a completely new character +setting elsewhere.
The thing that stood out to me in my most recent reread of LOTR is the complete and utter lack of farms. Outside of Farmer Maggot in the shire, the main characters almost never encounter random, normal people living outside of the main city centers. It feels like an empty world waiting to be explored, not one that has been heavily populated for thousands of years.
Acoup does point out that the pelenore (sp? The ones outside Minis Tirith) fields in the book has farms and small towns, but the movies just make them flat nothings.
Though true, the characters don't I retract with said farmers, who have mostly evacuated at this point.
To be fair most of the books take place in either total wastelands or areas ravaged by war once you leave the Shire.
- The civilisation of men east of Isengard apart from the Shire was more or less destroyed by the Witch King of Angmar before the books.
- Frodo and Sam spend books 2 and 3 wandering swamps, desolate mountains, and eventually Mordor (specifically avoiding roads and civilisation to avoid being caught).
- The rest of the fellowship spends book 2 in Rohan - most of their economy seems to be rearing horses on pasture rather than growing crops (not an uncommon situation in the pre-modern past)
- They then spend book 3 in and around the front lines of the war between Gondor and Mordor. Gondor is also explicitly depopulated - it had been ravaged by plague in the years beforehand. That’s why Gondor is so weak.
Tolkien’s world probably could have contained more of a realistic agricultural economy, but it does seem that the reason the world outside of the Shire feels so desolate is that Middle Earth is more or less in the process of total societal collapse.
Also Elves are weird and it’s not entirely clear what they eat or how they maintain their civilisation in the forests…
The late Third Age Middle-Earth of Lord of the Rings is largely post-apocalyptic. It was heavily populated a thousand-plus years ago, but it isn't anymore.
This isn't casually obvious from the text, as The Shire and Bree are near pastoral paradises within their borders, and Gondor is a functioning kingdom (the farms surrounding Minas Tirith are mentioned briefly in the book), and we all remember the Lonely Mountain, Laketown, and Dale from The Hobbit. But the vast majority of Eriador used to be inhabited, but no longer is, at least not with any density.
Arnor and its successor kingdoms are gone, the great dwarf-Kingdoms are gone (with the Lonely Mountain as a very local and very recent successor-state), the Elves have dwindled to the level where the Havens and Rivendell have no military capability, roads have crumbled, and almost all the cities and towns of Men outside of Gondor (and its allied state of Rohan) have been in ruins for centuries.
Although the main characters tend not to encounter farmers, they're noted in a few places, as Devereaux (from ACOUP) points out:
> "the townlands [of the Pelennor] were rich, with wide tilth and many orchards and homesteads there were with oast and garner, fold and byre, and many rills rippling through the green from the highlands down to the Anduin.” (Rotk 23)
Tolkien was not a medieval historian himself, but he was the next best thing to it: he was a professional linguist. And lingistics require knowing and understanding historical context in which languages had developed. Add to this Tolkien's own experience in the First World War, and it is not very surprising that his world is very realistic and internally coherent.
GRRM was... a script writer. He manages to get some of the details correct, but once you scratch below the surface, his worldbuilding largely falls apart.
I love how accessible it is. His willingness to talk about where fantasy stories and video games hit and miss the mark make it so much easier to get into a post.
Here for this content. Also, why is that person not the one who did the Amazon series. The Tolkien fan in me is cringing heavily when observing the "plot" of the Rings of Power
The Amazon series is not about making a good LOTR movie. It's about making money for the studios and also removing any/all sympathy for the striking writers. Its incredibly insidious in that way.
ROP is clearly just using the Tolkien universe as wrapping paper. No one seems very serious about the lore anymore (or much of anything, really). The barest of efforts will still drive massive revenue so why bother trying very hard?
You will find those that trip over themselves to defend ROP (and new Star Trek, et. al.). This is the target audience. I am not sure what convinced this audience that the new content is good - Part of me suspects it's mostly Stockholm syndrome. Those without the courage to adopt a more stoic attitude towards life.
I feel like if more people would quit consuming pointless shit all the time, we might wind up with better pointless shit. As it stands, anything will generate some amount of revenue when you launch it on Netflix. This is really bad game theory for high quality content producers and the risk/reward tradeoff they have to negotiate with publishers.
"We need 2 years to run the traps on lore" and "casting will be an on-going and convoluted process" == you are kicked out of the Netflix green light meeting without any additional courtesy.
Whether or not RoP is true to the themes of Tolkien or not or not is in the eye of the beholder I suppose, but it certainly has dispensed with the existing lore. I've read more than my fair share of Tolkien, and the show just doesn't feel like Tolkien to me. It's a serviceable Tolkien flavored generic fantasy show, if you are looking for that sort of thing.
The tragedy is that the source material for the second age is so great yet they chose to take the show in a baffling and arbitrary direction, almost completely decoupled from the existing lore.
For instance attention to detail was a pretty important theme in Tolkien’s works. He was pretty strict about timeframes, military planning etc. in Amazon’s show everyone seems to have a teleportation device, boat hulls breaks the law of physics considering how much stuff you can fit into them and “Galadriel” is the best swimmer in history multiplied by 100…
It pretty much a cheap 90s fantasy tv show with an inflated budget that takes itself way to seriously than it has any right to.
Dude, if you think the ROP is bad... don't know if you've seen the Foundation from Apple TV, but holy hell.
Kinda follows the plot, also completely demolishes it in other ways. Mad times
I love the Foundation series(the books) and I actually really enjoyed the TV show - I just don't think they are very related other than some surface level connection.
I don't think it's too bad either. It's very pretty, I like the cast (the Emperor is just the perfect amount of 'regal' and 'ewww'), and the plot is actually pretty interesting so far. It just isn't the plot of "Foundation" beyond the thinnest veneer of "math predicts future and bad things are gonna happen but if we do this right we shorten bad stuff...cue drama happening". If it wasn't called "Issac Asimov's Foundation" and constantly screwing with my expectations from the books (which are a favorite), I'd give it a solid B+. I gotta get better at shutting down the "expectations from book" part of my brain.
Most of these shows are so badly written, I can't help to think there is a conspiracy to demolish sympathy for writers, if this is the best that a billion dollars could do.
The saddest part for me is that the RoP could have done something very similar to what they did, while still staying true to the canon 2nd Age, and arguably telling a much better story. Instead we got sometinf that felt more like ham-handed generic 80s fantasy, coaplaying as Middle-earth.
From the moment it opened with elf-children acting like orcs, it was clear not only that she showrunners had missed the mark, but they lacked enough of Socrates "beginning of wisdom" that they couldn't even understand how they were missing it
Not just any elf-children, but children of the Noldor. And not just any Noldor, but the scene implies that many of them are from the House of Fëanor. Who are the biggest assholes in the history of Middle-earth. The Silmarillion is largely a story of that.
The series has many issues, but the showrunners not understanding the works of Tolkien is not one of them. Many of the issues arise from the main premise of the series. Like with many recent big-budget adaptations, the showrunners are retelling the story from the perspective of a subset of 21st century Americans. If you are not in the target audience, many things may feel off.
Also, it's good to remember that big-budget adaptations usually fail. Any story worth adapting is likely exceptional. Because you are retelling the story in a new format, you usually have to change many things. But the new things you create are unlikely to be exceptional, because exceptional things are rare.
Also, it's good to remember that big-budget adaptations usually fail. Any story worth adapting is likely exceptional. Because you are retelling the story in a new format, you usually have to change many things. But the new things you create are unlikely to be exceptional, because exceptional things are rare.
D&D has only a couple big screen adaptions, and as far as I know (although I certainly could be wrong), Warhammer Fantasy has none. These seem to a the bombastic tone that should work better for a big budget translation.
An interesting article. I think one of the major challenges in deep dives like this that rely heavily on HoME is that there is so much material that was clearly discarded, reconsidered, or reworked later in Tolkien's life. The steel ships/rockets/etc. of some of the earlier versions of Ar-Pharazon's fleet is a great example of this, which I don't think has a proper disclaimer in the article.
It is one of the downsides of using HoME as a source, it is a collection of rough drafts over the course of Tolkien's entire life and the textual history, and evolution, is a critical part of discussing anything you find within especially the earlier volumes.
78 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadFor a related article see, e.g. this one: https://acoup.blog/2019/06/14/collections-the-siege-of-gondo...
It has a bit of a different angle in that it critiques works of fantasy in terms of realism, feasibility and consistency in a pretty nitpicky way (the hint's in the name, really). Still I find it mostly good-humoured.
If you peruse the many articles of this blog on both works of fiction, you'll realize the author (a scholar on medieval history) thinks Lord of the Rings is more realistic (in scope, military logistics, scale of the armies and even tactics) than Game of Thrones. This was surprising to me, because GRRM "sells" Game of Thrones as a fantastic [1] but "more realistic" [2] take on the Middle Ages. ACOUP takes him to task, because almost every "realistic" detail in GoT is, according to him, wrong. This also includes the purported cruelty of nobles towards the populace, GRRM's take on religion, etc.
Let me delve on that last point: ACOUP asserts that GoT's take on religion is wrong. In GoT -- especially in the TV show, but also in the books -- the take on religion of many major players is cynical. While some characters are fanatics or really believe, others are skeptical. Most of the Lannisters seem skeptical of any gods. Cersei goes so far as to blow out the Sept (cathedral), an act that in the real Middle Ages would see her hanged, burned or beheaded, and would lose her the support of her army. ACOUP makes the point that the nobility and kings of the Middle Ages really believed in their religion and gods!
----
[1] after all, it's a fantasy work with dragons and zombies. Then again, LotR has orcs, elves, ghosts and wizards and it manages to be more realistic!
[2] George Martin: "I wanted my books to be strongly grounded in history and to show what medieval society was like, and I was also reacting to a lot of fantasy fiction. Most stories depict what I call the ‘Disneyland Middle Ages’—there are princes and princesses and knights in shining armor, but they didn’t want to show what those societies meant and how they functioned."
I think that the main difference between LotR and GoT is that LotR is told in a style similar to the actual legendary epics and epic sagas that we have from history. These stories (and in particular the written versions that survive for us) were about the nobility and for the nobility. Because of this many everyday details are assumed and skipped over, and unpleasant or ignoble facts are ignored or glossed over.
So for example LotR features half-orcs as creatures, and the text describes their creation as Saruman's most evil act. But it doesn't explicitly spell out that this likely involved rape of human women by male orcs. Whereas GoT directly describes Daenerys being raped from her own point of view.
This doesn't mean that LotR is less realistic. It describes a similar set of events as GoT, but they are presented in a different way.
I think this is what people are sensing when they say LotR is 'less realistic', even though GoT is actually the worse match to historical reality.
In GoT, it would be several pages/several minutes of screen time.
It's why I could never get into the latter. Just goes for the absolute, lowest common denominator every time, but apparently that's what makes "grown up, serious" fantasy.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic
> But among all these evils there is no record of any among the Elves that took another's spouse by force; for this was wholly against their nature, and one so forced would have rejected bodily life and passed to Mandos.
So I think this raises some doubts about whether Tolkien intended to imply rape in Celebrian's case rather than some other evil.
That doesn't sound so dramatic, IMO. I wonder if there's a generational component there too...? Maybe in Tolkien's time, explicit gore and violence were less common. Then since modern video games and TV shows upped the ante, maybe RR Martin had to be more explicit to create the same emotional effect that Tolkien's subtle hinting used to have on his audience? I dunno.
Yeah, ASOIAF is very much a deliberate reaction against both the tropes (pure good vs. pure evil, characters whose morality or immorality is etched in stone disconnected from events and circumstances, etc.) and the romanticization in what is told and what is elided in the style that LotR deliberately leans into.
> This doesn't mean that LotR is less realistic
The tell vs. imply distinction isn’t a matter of realism, true, though other aspects of the difference, particularly around characterization, very much are, and those are deliberate stylistic choices on both sides.
Examples being: kings believed in their own religion, they didn't randomly mistreat peasants, nobles and lowborn alike followed tradition, people weren't cynical about religion in private, and kings depended on their vassals to enforce their will, so mistreating vassals (at least, as the norm) was a no-go and everyone understood this. Other examples are about military logistics, the system of bannermen and what duties and obligations it entailed in both king and vassals, which are more realistic in LotR and less in ASOIAF (or so the blog claims).
I think ACOUP's main point is that GRRM is projecting modern sensibilities into his characters, which is valid but doesn't result in a less fairytale, more realistic depiction of medieval society, like GRRM claims was his intention!
Of course Lord of the Rings is fantasy, and sanitized (At least it doesn’t lie about it).
If we’re starting at Lord of the Rings and adding elements to get more realism, I’ve always thought Monty Python’s Holy Grail would be a better pickup than GoT. Everything is covered in shit in both, which is something Lord of the Rings really lacks, but the people in Game of Thrones are too clever and able to keep together these grand schemes. Python adds the stupid that defines us.
Right before the Middle Ages there are many examples like it, for example Charlemagne and his line. If they and the pope disagreed it was the pope that got the short end of the stick. There was also many example of viking kings and warlords converting to christianity and back again.
Right after the Middle Ages Henry the eight is another example.
It's not "my take", it's ACOUP's (though, to be fair, I'm convinced by it): https://acoup.blog/2019/06/04/new-acquisitions-how-it-wasnt-...
Second, GoT seems to fit within the Late Middle Ages / Early Modern period. In fact, ACOUP points up that the armor worn on the TV show at times looks to be Early Modern / Renaissance! If this was Early Middle Ages, there would have to be a lot more chainmail and far less plate mail. The Early Modern period (not the Middle Ages) would make more sense for acts of sacrilege shown in GoT because it also saw the rise of professional armies who didn't act because of deference to neither church nor king, but because of pay. But besides Bronn and the mercenary companies outside Westeros, most of the armies within Westeros proper seem to be motivated by allegiances to noble houses, and so they must defer to tradition and religion.
Third, ACOUP is talking of religion in general. There are some characters in GoT that believe in their religion (possibly some of the Starks and their "Old Gods", Melissandre and her Lord of Light) but most of the world of Westeros is skeptical of any religions at all, not just the mainstream one. But as ACOUP points out:
> "This is the mistake my students make – they don’t believe medieval Catholicism or Roman paganism, and so they weakly assume that no one (or at least, none of the ‘really smart’ people) at the time really did either. Of course this is wrong: People in the past believed their own religion."
The vikings before converting to Christianity had their own gods, and they truly believed in them. In contrast, most of the nobles of Westeros don't believe in any gods, pagan or otherwise. Which a serious historical mistake if one is trying to reflect -- albeit with fantasy divergences -- "real medieval society".
I bet you Charlemagne truly believed there was a god judging him.
In any case, his depiction of "Asian" nomadic cultures is hilariously unrealistic as well. I recommend ACOUP's chapters on the Dothraki; their culture doesn't fit anything from the real-world, be it Huns, Mongols or Native Americans, all quoted by GRRM as references (so it's valid to mention if he misused them).
Someone mentioned GRRM seems to be using stereotype, not reality, as reference! Which is fine and dandy, except GRRM claimed he was aiming for realism...
Sure. I'm just noting that having cultures that don't care too much about religion is not unprecedented in the actual history.
We are discussing GRRM's fictional depiction of a "realistic" middle ages, with a focus on Europe but some side-dishes of Asian steppe cultures -- which according to ACOUP he also gets wrong. Which wouldn't matter if GRRM didn't assert his depiction was more realistic!
----
[1] George Martin's words.
Each region had its own sets of gods and traditions. Even the somewhat unified Confucianism is more of a philosophical teaching, and it works just fine alongside the traditional Chinese religions. People understood this and generally were content to leave each over in peace over the religion.
Compare this to Europe and Middle East where people (still!) wage actual holy wars over doctrinal matters.
GRRM's world is closer to China than to Europe in this regard.
Even with the influence of Buddhism, that was only tolerated as a philosophical system of self improvement. When the Dalai Llama became an actual political threat, he was replaced with a puppet.
Modern China is pretty much an atheist state that is pretty religion unfriendly, but I think that's a lasting consequence of the Cultural Revolution and not something from their older history.
I also don't see how a army with allegiances to noble houses must defer to tradition and religion, how would you then explain a king converting to christianity (or the other way)?
Why then would GRRM claim his Westeros was "to be strongly grounded in history and to show what medieval society was like" then? A society with the church "broken" by the kings and without any religion to supplant it wouldn't be like medieval society at all!
It would make more sense for GRRM to claim his take is transposing modern sensibilities to a fantasy middle ages world. That would work. His characters are cynical like a modern person would be, rather than like a medieval person. But GRRM is not claiming this as his intent, which is a pity.
> I also don't see how a army with allegiances to noble houses must defer to tradition and religion, how would you then explain a king converting to christianity (or the other way)?
Well, what religion did Cersei claim was the true one then? Kings and queens converted to other religions, they didn't become atheists. And frequently this was divisive anyway, sometimes leading to civil war. And let's remember that Cersei was already on shaky grounds, she was a humiliated woman whom people didn't respect and were stoning moments ago! An already unpopular woman burns down the most important religious building and ascends to queendom on which grounds exactly?
Which gods should the Lannisters pray to, now that Cersei destroyed the Sept? Are they not deeply religious, like in true medieval society?
GoT have a world with magic and dragons, I think it would be completely unrealistic if that world ended up with a religious life exactly as ours in the Middle Ages.
Again, let me stress this is ACOUP's opinions, not mine. I do find them convincing, though.
> GoT have a world with magic and dragons, I think it would be completely unrealistic if that world ended up with a religious life exactly as ours in the Middle Ages.
George Martin himself waves away this explanation, that because "it has dragons" then it cannot be realistic, consistent (which mind you, GoT is NOT) or follow the conventions of medieval society. (I cannot find the exact quote, but I'm sure you can if you search the web).
It's not that GoT doesn't fashion a religious/family/feudal life exactly like in our real middle ages -- it's just that he consistently deviates from it so that the end result is less realistic than the romantic epic of Lord of the Rings, while also at the same time claiming his vision is more realistic! And he did claim this.
He claims to have based the Dothraki on the Huns, Mongols and other steppe people, yet they behave nothing at all like them.
He claims to have based the Faith of the Seven on the Catholic Church, yet nobles don't treat it like such and they even blow up the Sept with no serious repercussions.
Westerosi are skeptical of gods and the supernatural, when in the real Middle Ages most would believe in both. In fact, it's almost like Westerosi have a modern mindset, rather than a medieval one!
And so on and on.
You can't expect people to believe as they would in our world, given that their world is different. If invaders with dragons took over England in our Middle Ages and crushed the church, peoples religion would realistically also evolve very differently from what it actually did.
The vikings who massacred Christians had their own religion. What's the Targaryen's? What's the Lannisters'?
You simply cannot claim to be depicting a realistic medieval society (with magic), as Martin does, without this. And many other details he got wrong.
By Martin's own admission, dragons and magic are not an excuse for being inconsistent or "unrealistic". Vast armies cannot be raised and teleported to battlefields just because there are dragons. Dragons are no excuse for blowing up a major cathedral with no consequences.
----
[1] If you watch HBO's prequel, it's even worse: at a time when the Targaryens had plenty of dragons, there were warring factions within them, all vying for the throne, each claiming to have the "rightful" heir. But where's the legitimacy of each claim supposed to be derived from? Kings claim "rightful" inheritance through lineage, but somewhere up the line there must be a divine right to rule. So they may have disagreements about whether it's matrilineal or patrilineal (cue Henry V and the Hundred Years War), or whether someone was a bastard, but ultimately every feudal king though he had a god-given right to rule. Otherwise what would the different claimants be arguing about?
It's not just religion (which, by the way: why do the dragon-riding Targaryens also do NOT believe in zombies or gods?).
It's also the feudal system. It didn't work like in GoT, as Brett from ACOUP shows. Medieval tactics (without dragons, how much of the battles happen in the books and show) don't work like that either. The bannermen system cannot sustain such large armies. Kings didn't randomly mistreat their populations. Logistics don't work like in GoT -- and that's current real world logistics, not even medieval! Steppe people weren't like the Dothraki. And so on and on.
Martin's world is pretty cool (to me, anyway) but is in no way more "realistic" than the Disneyland worlds he complains against.
GRRM cut his teeth as a TV writer and (because of that | despite that) he understands story very well. At least through the first four books his plotting was impeccable, his characters had meaningful arcs, he built excellent tension and resolution and his use of dramatic irony was perfect. His writing was never clumsy and lacked the purple quality that's prevalent in most fantasy. Is his world building perfect? No, but its top 1% compared to the other garbage fantasy being sold.
Tolkien was after all an academic medievalist, and so it's unsurprising that he gets a lot of stuff right (but he also leaves a lot of bits off stage.)
I'll say it's comparing apples and oranges and I like them both.
He isn’t reviewing Game of Thrones for its artistic qualities and I don’t know why lots of people need to jump to GoT’s defense every time his blog posts come up. Everything you just mentioned is irrelevant to whether or not GoT is historically accurate like GRR claims.
I'm not selling that, and neither is ACOUP.
He's merely evaluating historical realism according to the claims of the respective pieces of work. GRRM claims he set up to write a fictional version and a more "realistic" take on "medieval society"; and claims other depictions are like "Disneyland Middle Ages" -- his words! However, his take is actually less realistic than romantic epics like Lord of the Rings.
Other than that, I really enjoy both. It's a critique, not hatred :)
I mean, it was supposed to be three books, so I think the pacing must have gone awry somewhere. Can he tell compelling stories? Yes, but he is like a developer who only wants to work on greenfield projects. As soon as the plot gets messy, introduce a completely new character +setting elsewhere.
Wtf this is nonsense. I'm not even a general, and I know to maintain my supply lines.
I lost a lot of interest after that happened. Seemed quite nonsensical.
The thing that stood out to me in my most recent reread of LOTR is the complete and utter lack of farms. Outside of Farmer Maggot in the shire, the main characters almost never encounter random, normal people living outside of the main city centers. It feels like an empty world waiting to be explored, not one that has been heavily populated for thousands of years.
Acoup does point out that the pelenore (sp? The ones outside Minis Tirith) fields in the book has farms and small towns, but the movies just make them flat nothings.
Though true, the characters don't I retract with said farmers, who have mostly evacuated at this point.
- The civilisation of men east of Isengard apart from the Shire was more or less destroyed by the Witch King of Angmar before the books.
- Frodo and Sam spend books 2 and 3 wandering swamps, desolate mountains, and eventually Mordor (specifically avoiding roads and civilisation to avoid being caught).
- The rest of the fellowship spends book 2 in Rohan - most of their economy seems to be rearing horses on pasture rather than growing crops (not an uncommon situation in the pre-modern past)
- They then spend book 3 in and around the front lines of the war between Gondor and Mordor. Gondor is also explicitly depopulated - it had been ravaged by plague in the years beforehand. That’s why Gondor is so weak.
Tolkien’s world probably could have contained more of a realistic agricultural economy, but it does seem that the reason the world outside of the Shire feels so desolate is that Middle Earth is more or less in the process of total societal collapse.
Also Elves are weird and it’s not entirely clear what they eat or how they maintain their civilisation in the forests…
This isn't casually obvious from the text, as The Shire and Bree are near pastoral paradises within their borders, and Gondor is a functioning kingdom (the farms surrounding Minas Tirith are mentioned briefly in the book), and we all remember the Lonely Mountain, Laketown, and Dale from The Hobbit. But the vast majority of Eriador used to be inhabited, but no longer is, at least not with any density.
Arnor and its successor kingdoms are gone, the great dwarf-Kingdoms are gone (with the Lonely Mountain as a very local and very recent successor-state), the Elves have dwindled to the level where the Havens and Rivendell have no military capability, roads have crumbled, and almost all the cities and towns of Men outside of Gondor (and its allied state of Rohan) have been in ruins for centuries.
> "the townlands [of the Pelennor] were rich, with wide tilth and many orchards and homesteads there were with oast and garner, fold and byre, and many rills rippling through the green from the highlands down to the Anduin.” (Rotk 23)
GRRM was... a script writer. He manages to get some of the details correct, but once you scratch below the surface, his worldbuilding largely falls apart.
You will find those that trip over themselves to defend ROP (and new Star Trek, et. al.). This is the target audience. I am not sure what convinced this audience that the new content is good - Part of me suspects it's mostly Stockholm syndrome. Those without the courage to adopt a more stoic attitude towards life.
I feel like if more people would quit consuming pointless shit all the time, we might wind up with better pointless shit. As it stands, anything will generate some amount of revenue when you launch it on Netflix. This is really bad game theory for high quality content producers and the risk/reward tradeoff they have to negotiate with publishers.
"We need 2 years to run the traps on lore" and "casting will be an on-going and convoluted process" == you are kicked out of the Netflix green light meeting without any additional courtesy.
The opening theme alone represents the music of the ainur so well, I never skip it.
The tragedy is that the source material for the second age is so great yet they chose to take the show in a baffling and arbitrary direction, almost completely decoupled from the existing lore.
That’s the silliest thing I read today.
For instance attention to detail was a pretty important theme in Tolkien’s works. He was pretty strict about timeframes, military planning etc. in Amazon’s show everyone seems to have a teleportation device, boat hulls breaks the law of physics considering how much stuff you can fit into them and “Galadriel” is the best swimmer in history multiplied by 100…
It pretty much a cheap 90s fantasy tv show with an inflated budget that takes itself way to seriously than it has any right to.
From the moment it opened with elf-children acting like orcs, it was clear not only that she showrunners had missed the mark, but they lacked enough of Socrates "beginning of wisdom" that they couldn't even understand how they were missing it
The series has many issues, but the showrunners not understanding the works of Tolkien is not one of them. Many of the issues arise from the main premise of the series. Like with many recent big-budget adaptations, the showrunners are retelling the story from the perspective of a subset of 21st century Americans. If you are not in the target audience, many things may feel off.
Also, it's good to remember that big-budget adaptations usually fail. Any story worth adapting is likely exceptional. Because you are retelling the story in a new format, you usually have to change many things. But the new things you create are unlikely to be exceptional, because exceptional things are rare.
See: Asimov's "Foundation"
Just read up on how much influence Sir Christopher Lee had on Lord of the Rings movies.
It is one of the downsides of using HoME as a source, it is a collection of rough drafts over the course of Tolkien's entire life and the textual history, and evolution, is a critical part of discussing anything you find within especially the earlier volumes.