How often do you think about the Roman Empire?
Was a fun question that went viral recently, but in this
episode, we're concerned more with how often George R Martin
thought about Rome when writing A Song of Ice and Fire.
And not just the Empire, the Republic, the Kingdom.
What came after the various TV shows about Rome?
Not all of them, but some of them.
To be fair, it's arguably two Americans and Europeans.
Many of us anyway, the most influential historical nation of
all time, Rome's history is one of the most popular forms of
history. Latin is extremely prominent in
English and several other languages.
I mean, I probably just used several Latin words just now in
those preceding sentences and didn't even realize it.
History says Rome was founded in 753 BC.
Legends says it was by the twin sons of Mars, Romulus and Remus,
who were set in adrift in a basket, placed in a river, only
to be rescued by a she wolf and then raised by a shepherd.
Surely not the true story, but it's entertaining and very
popular and probably contains some grains of truth.
And over 3000 years later Rome still exists and people are
still telling the story. Like me just now.
I just told it to be sure George knows that story as well.
And so many other stories about Rome, some of them made-up, some
of them historical. And he too lives in a society
like we do with Caesar salads and the Roman calendar and HB OS
first foray into mega budget world building shows.
George liked that show, the first season more than the 2nd,
and he loved I, Claudius even more.
And over the years he's pointed out some Roman influence
directly in interviews for his own writing.
Well, some other Roman influences in his writing are
plain enough to just be seen without him telling us it's
there. He might not even be aware.
It's Roman influence. Sometimes he is, you know,
creative genius and things just come from his mind.
Sometimes he doesn't always stop to think about where they came
from. And that's the point of
subconscious influence, right? When something is so prominent,
so overwhelming, like Roman culture's influence on us, we
can't always pick out where it all comes from and what's what.
And yeah, from little things like the use of words like
legion and magister. See, those ones I do know are
Latin to big things like the Wall and Valyria to one of the
most famous assassinations of all time at 2 Jon Snow, or at 2
black brothers that stabbed him. Bow and marsh, bow and marsh.
But we have all that and more on this episode of History of
Westeros podcast. Hello and welcome everybody.
We are back. It's our usual time, 3:00
Eastern on YouTube, doing our live streams almost every
Sunday. Every video you can find
afterwards, edited on Spotify. It'll still be on YouTube, of
course, and the audio only version is available everywhere.
You can listen to a podcast and it's ad free if you listen on
Patreon. Sean, you've been busy lately
with your it's it's been Oscar season and that's a time for you
to to shine, huh? Yeah, I'm bubbling with thoughts
right now, and I'm happy to talk about that.
But real quick, I want to add to your little intro saying that,
you know, the idea that someone might think about the Roman
Empire every day, it's 1000 year span of time.
It's like saying I think about the 1900s every day.
Well yeah, it's like part of our life.
We live in it every day, and that's only 100 years.
Right. And additionally, the Roman
Empire, it it's not just like the Roman Empire was England and
France and Germany and Italy and Turkey and Saudi Arabia and
Egypt. You know what I mean?
Like. Palestine and yeah.
And Persia. Yeah, it's just crazy.
Yeah, all that far over. So it it just bled into so much
of of human culture for so long, it's hard to think about almost
anything without that road leading back to Rome.
Hey, good one. Good one.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's Oscar season, and every year I do a
one minute preview of each of the Academy Award nominees or
Best Picture nominees anyway. And so in 10 minutes you can get
a full synopsis of the top, ostensibly top movies of the
year. And I try to do it without
getting into, like, plot details.
I talk about, you know, the aesthetic and the stars, the
director or the genre, the tone, you know, maybe recommendations
based on that movie or whatever. But I want to give you a feel
for whether or not you might like the movie at all, but
without spoiling any plot stuff. So check that out on YouTube.
Hard to get into the plot with only one minute anyway, but
yeah, Sean. I highly recommend Sean's
reviews Dancing Sean. That's your YouTube channel.
Check it out and enjoy his takes on the best movies of last year.
You know what else it is, by the way?
In addition to Oscar season, Saint Patrick's Day.
And I think we both dressed up and didn't wear green.
But I'm drinking green at least. There's no Saint Patrick's Day
in Westeros or in Rome. The Saint Patrick hadn't even
been born by the time the Roman Empire was.
Yeah, he he It's anachronistic to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day
today, but I do want to give a shout out to our good friend
Nina, AKA Good Queen Allie, Good Queen allie.tumblr.com is where
you can find her thoughts. Her blog and latest question she
got is what do you see as the end game for Slaver's Bay?
Do you think Danny will return or will we just see the
beginnings of the Shave Pates takeover from Barristan's POV?
Yeah, it's a good question. It's a big question.
And Nina has weighed in on different parts of Slavery's
Bay. Throughout a lot of our
episodes, throughout Val Arboretas, there were a lot of
different things when this when the time when it's been
appropriate to speak on. But here you can get it all
concentrated in one place and that's a good thing to read.
Good Queen allie.tumblr.com. If you have questions for us,
you can send them to westeroshistory@gmail.com or you
can just type them here in the chat if you're watching live.
Especially if you have a thought on a Roman influence on A Song
of Ice and Fire that we missed 'cause I'm sure there are some.
It's as I said in the intro, it's such a huge topic, there's
no way we caught it all. Some of them are going to be
debatable. So I'd love to hear your
thoughts on what you perceive as an influence as Roman.
Maybe it isn't, but maybe it is. I think that could be an entire
podcast. Oh, yeah, Things we might.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
So, yeah, not just one episode. Like a whole, like recurring.
Yeah, that's the whole point of the show.
Yeah. And of course, as usual, I'll
mention some episodes at the end that relate to this one.
Things that we touch on will definitely relate to other
episodes we've done. Also at the end of this episode
will be the trivia answer. The question being what is
supposedly the most common first name among the Ghiscari of
Slaver's Bay, which will be part of one of our topics today.
Slaver's Bay has a lot of Roman influence, so that's why I
picked that one and the answer will be found during the episode
and revealed at the end. Are there any bonus points for
knowing who the first person with that name is?
Yeah, I think there might be, but I don't know if we know that
we know who the famous most first person is with that name.
But the actual first person? Yeah, why not start with Rome's
first story, one that actually comes even before Romulus and
Remus? Sean, why don't you kick us off
there? Yeah, there's, you know, a
fantastic mythological story, you know, about the origins of
Rome. And then there's a slightly less
fantastic mythological story. The idea is it in in the wake
of, you know, again, you could get into all of Greece and the
Trojan wars and everything. But ostensibly Prince Aeneas
escaped Troy. Huge epic adventure he went
through, sailing around the Mediterranean and at some point
eventually lands in you know what we now know of as Italy, I
think by the the Tiber river and a group of people who don't want
to voyage run anymore. They want to settle, burn the
ships down so that they have to stay there, attempt to, they
don't burn them all down. But the idea is this is very
similar to Nymeria, right. And some of the details of this
story are are, you know, questioned about whether or not
they're true. A lot of it seems maybe to be
retrofit to set Roman, I don't know, propaganda, you know, to
teach lessons that they want to teach and attach its history to
something bigger, like, you know, Greek history and
everything but the ring. In some of these stories, the
ringleader, the people who set the ships on fire, was named
Roma, and she is ostensibly where Roma's named after.
But immediately, just the origin story of Rome, you see some
parallels to some stories that George has in this world too.
Yeah, like Valyria of course, is a big one.
And yeah, like you said, Nymeria there.
Now The funny thing about Nymeria, this is where we get
into one of those, Well, what's really the pair?
What's really the influence here because is that just the
Odyssey, a different version of the Odyssey given to Aeneas
instead? Well, the Odyssey predates this
story, but it comes from the same time.
It's the you know, Odysseus returning from the Trojan War.
So it's kind of a similar thing. The problem with is the founding
of Rome is dated around 7:50 and the Trojan War is around 1100 or
1200. So yeah, there is a lot of time
in between there, but it doesn't matter because the the story is
what's influential. The truth of it isn't important.
We don't care if that's true. It happened so long ago.
It's a neat story and and, well, we're never going to know the
real story anyway. Some stories, especially ancient
stories, even if later we discover some details about
them, aren't true, that doesn't stop the influence of those
stories had on culture and writing and history and George
Martin and everything else you. Know and one of the big things
you'll see throughout history and founding Miss is that, yes,
cultures try to connect themselves to other cultures, a
lot of times to seem older or grander, or to connect it to
their best ideas. Like one of the reasons the
Romans loved the story about being connected to Aeneas is it
connected them to greet gods. I mean, well, Aeneas was
descendant of these gods. That means we are too.
All right. Yay.
Now there's a lot of babies in baskets on the river story.
In terms of the Romulus and Remus story that's there's a lot
of those Paris from the Trojan War.
It happened to him too supposedly.
There's just lots of those And Paris was suckled to health by a
she bear just as we're told Romulus and Remus was suckled by
a she wolf and then and hey Tormund giant Spain suckled by a
she bear as well. So there you go.
That's a good circle, square, complete whatever.
So it's not that it's not a Roman story, it's just a story
that has appeared in a lot of different traditions.
But the Roman version is particularly popular because
Rome is popular. So even though it's not an
original Roman story, it might be the first one George heard
out of all these versions, right?
It might be the one that impacted him the most.
So that's a little thing we were we have to weigh as well.
One might not be the original, but it might be the one that got
heard first. And Nina points out the same
thing. The character Venius has had a
lot of different versions told about him.
Not all of them end with him founding Rome.
Not all of them end with him, you know, having this long
odyssey around the Mediterranean.
But yeah, lots of versions. In both cases, Earth and
George's world, the stuff is all made-up, right?
Scholars recognize this founding story about Rome as that.
It's a story. We acknowledge that for Westeros
as well we but even though there's magic in the world of
Westeros, we acknowledge that a lot of those things are probably
made-up in world too. There, the Grey King probably
didn't live 300 years. It's possible though we have
more room to believe that one than we do in the real world.
But we still doubt the the, the one in even in Westeros.
And it's a good point to say that stories can be more
influential than history. I mean, the word story is in
history. So they are, they are connected,
especially when they're historical stories.
I mean, I love historical fiction and this is a good place
to remind ourselves that fantasy is the oldest literary genre.
All these founding myths are not historical fiction.
There's magic in them. There's impossible things in
them. That's fantasy.
Y'all. So for a certain Gilgamesh,
that's an epic poem. It's like 1800 BC that was
written. It's itself a fantasized version
of a real king, so it was written a fantastical version of
a real person. So this is how fantasy and
reality bleed together quite a lot and and where a lot of these
stories come from. So what makes this a good place
to start is not only because it's Rome's start, but it's an
example of something that isn't completely Roman.
So much of Rome's origin story is borrowed from other myths.
Yeah. So that's pretty neat.
And there's a lot to bleed over and other things like, well,
Greco Roman. And like you said, Sean, Roman
influence was literally everywhere in the Mediterranean.
So like, every single city has some sort of Roman influence
like today, you know? So we've got a lot of quotes
from George and a lot of parallels, and some of those are
influences rather than parallels.
Some of them are direct influences.
We're not always going to know whether it's just the same or
whether George Pacific say you know, this is Roman, I'm going
to do it like that. Yeah, I'm, I'm almost scared.
I'm saying this stat wrong. But just to give you an idea, I
think the Roman Empire spanned 2,000,000 square miles, to give
you an idea, right? Like when you say like the whole
Mediterranean, like the whole Mediterranean was like, again,
the world almost has to be divided in the East and West,
'cause there just wasn't that much crossover from from Asia to
Europe. And then of course, the Americas
had their entire history happening, separated, you know,
by the ocean. But for that section, you know,
we'll say approximately 1/3 of the world.
The Mediterranean was like the center of it for 1000 years and
Rome was it. Yeah.
And that's why, and I say the word parallel.
It's an agnostic term usually, but especially in this case,
when what I mean by that is we know there are similarities
between these two things that we're comparing.
We just don't know if it's a direct influence, an indirect
influence or just a coincidence. It's perhaps the best place for
us to start in terms of direct influences is one that helps
George get started on a song by some fire.
Now we know the first scene George ever imagined was the
dire wolf pups in the snow. That's an actual scene, Brandon,
his brothers and all that. But the first inspiration he
cites directly is Hadrian's Wall as an inspiration for the Wall.
You might think of the Great Wall when you think of the Wall,
and undoubtedly that it has things in common, it's in terms
of size they're much more similar.
But other than that, it's really Hadrian's Wall.
Is the better comparison other than sheer size, because most
everything about Westeros is Roman Britain anyway, or just
Britain, you know, England. He was asked about historical
influences and he answered that he usually amalgamates.
For example, he said it would be wrong to call the Dothraki the
same as Mongols, but it would be also wrong to say they aren't an
influence. The point is that he rarely does
one to ones. He combines things, mashes them
up. For example, the Dothraki are
part Mongol, but they're also Huns and Allens and other horse
riding step peoples. But he did say that occasionally
he does basically a one to one parallel.
After all, it's not that he never does them, it's just that
it's rare. And here is one such example
quote. The one that comes most
prominently to mind was the Wall, which was inspired by my
visit to Hadrian's Wall the first time I visited England in
1991. I was driving around England and
Scotland with my friend and we got to Hadrian's Wall at the
close of the day when the tour buses had all left.
We kind of had the place all to ourselves.
And I climbed up on the Wall and I stood there and it was a cold,
windy day and the sun was going down.
I just stared off across the hills and tried to imagine what
it would be like to be a Roman legionary stationed on that wall
in 50 AD, staring out and wondering what would come from
those hills, what enemies? Because you were at the end of
the known world, and it was sort of a profound moment that stayed
with me. It was more than a decade before
I began writing A Song of Ice and Fire, but I still recalled
that moment. Of course, in fantasy, you take
real world things and you make them bigger, more colorful and
more interesting. So Hadrians Wall, which I think
is about 10 feet tall, became this 700 foot tall wall of ice
in my books. And the things that come out of
the northern woods are a lot scarier than Scotsman.
And Scotsman can be pretty scary, especially those ancient
ones, right? No, there you have it.
One of the Seminole inspirations for A Song of Ice and Fire.
Not the first one, of course, it's by then he had read a
bajillion books and knew a lot of things about history and
those are obviously influences as well.
But perhaps the first real world location, like those are the
things that he read are different than like the physical
inspiration of standing there and and actually feeling that
now. It's funny, there's a few things
in that quote that that don't quite add up.
Like he says, I just stared off the hills and tried to imagine
what it would be like to be a Roman legionary on that wall in
50 AD. Well, Hadrian's Wall wasn't
built till 120AD122AD, so a little earlier.
That's not an important thing. He had a little extra
imagination going. On.
That's right. That's right.
And he also says it was more than a decade before he began
writing A Song of Ice and Fire. But he also says it was 1991 and
he started writing A Song of Ice Fire in 93.
So I'm not sure now he actually went.
Lysa Tuttle, who is the friend he's referring to here, moved
there in 1981, so maybe he meant to say 81.
Or maybe the quote is wrong and he went there in 81, which we 12
years and it says more than a decade.
Yeah, I like that idea that maybe the quote he visited
England for the first time in 81, not 90.
One, unfortunately, she lived in.
She didn't move to Scotland till 1991.
She moved to England in 81, in Scotland in 91.
So I don't know what she said either way.
It doesn't quite work. But it's not important.
It's it's not really that, not really a part of the episode,
just kind of an idol wondering about this quote.
It's so worth pointing out it's really funny.
Yeah, it's kind of funny, he says.
It's about 10 feet tall. He was pretty close.
It's 12 feet tall. And of course it actually varies
depending on what part of the wall it's very long.
It's not the exact same height all the way across.
And and and ultimately George also did the why not both thing
because there are things that come out of the northern woods
that are a lot scarier than Scotsman.
But there are also people who who are kind of like the Scots
that that come out of those woods as well with a free folk
AKA the wildlings. Right.
And those are very similar in in a lot of ways to the peoples the
Romans would have faced. That's what the Romans actually
would have been thinking about. So think about that.
Hadrian's Wall was begun in 122 AD because those ancient Scots
were scary enough the wall didn't keep them from getting in
really. They could climb over that 12
foot wall. I mean people climb over the
wall of Esteros, so you can climb over a 12 foot wall.
The thing is, it's a lot harder to steal stuff when you have to
get back over that wall leaving. You know, like if you're
stealing people or livestock, how are you going to get back
over that wall? That's the problem.
So it really it didn't stop them from coming in, but it did keep
them from stealing a lot of things.
It makes it harder to get across on horseback.
It makes it harder to get large amounts of like food and
supplies across. It's not impossible, but it just
severely slows down how quick you can get across, and a lot of
times that's enough time to get warning to get defenses up and
stuff. And it severely limits how much
they can take once they do come across.
Yeah. So it's 73 miles long.
That's 117 kilometers. Now.
The wall is about 300 miles long.
So way longer, but 73 miles. It's really, really, really long
now. A works project of this
magnitude is going to have a huge impact in a number of
undocumented and immeasurable ways.
You've got lots of people working on it.
You got lots of money going into it.
You've got people getting moved. You've got people like raids.
I don't know, lots of stuff. A huge project, right?
One of the many unintended consequences.
Is inspiring our favorite author about 1000, eighteen, 160 years
later. So, like, they couldn't have.
I don't think Adrian predicted that part.
He's like, you know what? This is going to inspire some
writing later. You know, this wall is so big
and cool. You know it's it's might be a
funny idea that they thought they would inspire something
1800 years later. Exactly.
Or Martin, they had no idea. But I I can imagine they thought
that their stories might be written about this.
It's epic enough. I can imagine they they might
have had a the idea what it might inspire.
People might exaggerate it too, like, oh, it's really, you know,
they the stories would make it twice as tall.
It's 203040 feet tall. You can't see.
You know, it's it's actually, like we said, 12 feet tall.
And George, by the way, has admitted that he made his wall
too, too tall. He's like, yeah, I wanted to
make it bigger, but I didn't have to make it 688 feet taller,
You know, 100 would have been fine. 200 would have been pretty
huge. Even if you want to be epic and
fantastic, find 400. But 700 is like pushing the
limits of believability. Now, there's some evidence that
Hadrian's Wall was covered in limestone originally.
Now that that didn't stick over the long term, you know, like
maintaining that Cove coating over 73 miles of wall would have
been expensive, but it may have been how it was launched.
And that would have really the stories about it then would have
spread even farther and wider, 'cause it would have looked like
ice. It would have looked shiny.
It would have actually looked kind of like the Wall of
Westeros. Now.
Most of it's gone now. The decline began around the 7th
century. What's left is a World Heritage
Sites. You can of course still visit
it, as George did. Also, there's a bit of the
Antonine Wall left, which was built 40 years later but only
stayed for about 8 years. They abandoned it after only
eight years. It didn't last long.
I wanted to mention it because it's also a bit of a parallel.
Aries, as in the Mad King also wanted to build a second wall.
He's like, you know what, let's build another wall north of the
1st Wall, which of course he didn't do, but it likely would
have been about as successful as this one.
Probably less successful and much harder to build because
farther north of the wall of Westeros it's the land is much
wider. Like it would have to be way
more than 300 miles to get that across from coast to coast.
So bad idea. But the also the Antonine Wall
had 19 forts which is the exact number of castles on the wall.
So maybe a coincidence, but 19 is kind of a funny number to be
a. Coincidence.
Like three or five are kind of standard numbers you might
choose but 19? Yeah, I was like, interesting.
So now here's a shorter version of George answering a similar
question about the wall, but you'll notice some important
differences that I wanted to speak to.
Hadrian's Wall was an inspiration.
In fantasy everything is bigger. A friend of mine, Lisa Tuttle,
we wrote Wind Haven together, had just moved to Scotland and
was giving me a tour. We were driving in her car and
got to Hadrian's Wall. At the end of the day, the tour
buses were leaving. We walked along the top of the
wall just as the sun was going down.
It was the fall. I stood there and looked out
over the hills of Scotland and wondered what it would be like
to be a Roman centurion from Italy, Greece or even Africa,
covered in furs and not knowing what would be coming out of the
north at you. I wanted to capture that
feeling, yeah. That's really powerful.
That's a really provocative idea.
Because it's not just the like. You may not have occurred to you
or me or anyone to consider where this particular legionary
was from. You would think, OK, it's a it's
a Roman legionary in England. Standing on the wall, you might
forget that this guy isn't from there.
He might be from Italy, Greece or Africa.
And here he is it to them, a part of the world they may not
have even known existed when they were growing up.
It's so far remote and so far north.
Yeah. What's coming out like?
Well, we there, you're told this is a place that needs guarding.
Because there's Daniel. What?
Why did we must have built this wall for something, something
dangerous. Must be just The idea that this
wall exists implies there's danger beyond it, and it's cold
and and windy and scary. So yeah.
Great idea. Bigger wall means bigger danger.
Yeah, yeah, like this is like, wait, how long is this wall?
It's, it's from coast to coast. Whoa.
They've never heard of such a thing.
So it's like, wow, they must as a really.
It's both a testament to Roman power and engineering, but also
a testament to how dangerous the things beyond that wall must be.
And this is right at the heart of George's POV style.
Not just telling the story so much as putting yourself in the
shoes of the characters and imagine what the story is like
from their perspective. Exactly what he's doing here.
Capturing the feeling of what this Roman person would be
feeling standing atop that wall, looking out just as he did for
the brothers of the Night's Watch.
You also come from all over Western some of them had never
even seen snow before getting to the Wall.
Probably if you come from Dorne, you might not have seen snow
before, or if you're really young, you know and hadn't been
a winner yet, Something like that.
So not only did it inspire world building, it inspired the style
and format, the very conception of the series the way it's
presented to us now. To be fair, that influence also
came from other places like Tad Williams, Memory Star and Thorn
series, which is also POV style George cites.
That is a major influence. And of course Tad Williams is
not the first person to write in POV style either.
So, you know, that's not, that's another example of George
getting influence from somebody. But that person isn't the
originator of that idea. We also know Roman forces
patrolled the frontier beyond Hadrian's Wall.
Kind of like Rangers, right? They're looking for bad guys.
You know what counts as bad guys to them, right?
That's that's a little morally Gray in terms of who the actual
bad guys are, if anyone. But you know what I mean?
They're looking for enemies, foes and people causing
problems, whatever. And you know, those are
obviously people that are going to have a lot more in common
with Scotsman than the others will.
So. So this is not an example of
something that could have happened elsewhere.
This is a truly unique inspiration.
George's inspiration from a top Hadrian's Wall was a grand
confluence of events, countless factors bringing him to that
place that day, countless factors long before his birth to
create those conditions. If he had stood atop the Great
Wall of China, I'm I would have probably been inspiring, but a
totally different kind of inspiration.
Different wall, different country, different landscape,
different history behind it. He's not going to be thinking
about legionaries. He might be thinking about, you
know, Chinese guards on that wall or, you know, whatever.
But it's different. In the same way that someone
from China who went to visit the Great Wall, when they stand
there looking out, they're going to imagine something different
than if they had gone to Adrian's Wall and stood there
looking at right. There might be some parallels,
but some of the details of what gets evoked in you is going to
be connected to the experiences and culture you've already
experienced in your life up to that point.
Yeah, So he tried to put himself in their shoes specifically of
that those specific people, not just a person atop the wall, the
specific people that would have been there at that time.
Or maybe sandals, Caligay, as they would be called in Latin.
And surely George had been on top of other walls, on other
castles, you know, But those weren't as inspirational as this
one. Now, beyond that, Lisa Tuttle
and George were more than co-authors.
He says he they wrote Wind Haven together.
That was her first novel and one of his first.
They were in a relationship and it was his first serious
relationship. So they stayed on good terms
because they weren't dating at this time.
They had already broken up a while before.
So he might have had some feelings, little extra feelings,
you know, being around his ex or whatever.
I'm I'm maybe reading into it too much, but that seems like
the kind of thing that would have you feeling a little more
emotional than usual, especially with all the other combination
of stuff happening, all the sites and everything.
She actually gets a little bit of partial indirect credit for
launching A Song of Ice and Fire, since this trip was such a
big inspiration and he was specifically going there to
visit her. And they surely inspired each
other in a number of ways. They lived together, worked
together, wrote a book together, and their breakup certainly
inspired some things because he wrote a song for Leah, which is
his nickname for her set in his Thousand World universe.
He once said it was inspired by his quote first serious romance,
and he won a lot of awards for it.
If I knew better what kind of personality she had or has,
she's not, she's not passed. I would be looking deeper for
characters that might be like her within the story.
Like hey, that's a little bit like Lisa Tuttle, but I don't
know much of what she's like as an author.
She was known for her sci-fi stories and her feminist stories
and her non fiction feminist writings, one of which is the
encyclopedia of feminism written back in 1986.
Now the in in a song for Leah. There's two characters, Rob and
Leanna. Yes, Rob with two BS.
Yes, and he's Rob. He and she's Lyanna.
In this story, Lyanna leaves Rob there in a relationship to join
this alien collective consciousness called the
Grishka, and it's a proto version of the Werewood network.
If I had a nickel for every time a loved one left me to join an
alien conference. You'd have $0.10 because it's
happened twice, right? Three times 3015.
Wow, Dang rough man. Rough.
I'm sorry, You might want to check with your partners to see
if how interested they are. And like, what's your general
feeling on alien collectives, you know?
8 nurses Bliss OK. Yeah, exactly.
That's that's why they joined these these collectives in the
1st place. So Lisa Tuttle first moved to
London, then relocated to Scotland.
Like I said, she lives in Scotland in a very small village
called Torrenturk, which is very small.
It is really remote too. I looked it up.
It comes from the Gaelic phrase Hill of the Boar, and it has
that name because it is the spot where the last wild boar in all
of Scotland was killed. Small chance George's boar
killing Robert's story is related to this, but probably
not. I just wanted to throw that out
there. And this trip clearly inspired
George in other ways. After all, it's not just
Hadrian's Wall that makes The Wall.
I mean, Westeros is basically England and Ireland mashed
together, flipped left to right horizontally, and made a lot
larger. Here is some images on the
screen that Ashea has prepared for Y'all.
Very likely when he conceived of the Wall, he went ahead and
conceived of this continent and the shape and size at the same
time. And well, here's a simple quote
from George that shows how easily it comes to mind as a
reference point. In very general terms, however,
King's Landing is more populous than medieval London or Paris,
but not so populous as medieval Constantinople or ancient Rome.
Yeah, now some of you will know ancient Rome actually ruled all
those places that were just named, except for King's Landing
of course. And of course some of them had
different names, like it wasn't Paris at the time, although the
first tribe to live in that area apparently were called the
Parisi. Rome made London they it was
called Londinium at the time. It was a diverse city that grew
extremely fast and suffered pirate attacks from Saxons,
causing them to build city walls, something we just
described happening to the early days of King's Landing in
Valarita. So by no means a direct
influence. I mean, pirates just do that
sort of thing. That's not that's just all,
that's what happens everywhere. And the triple walls of
Constantinople have been cited as a parallel to Karth, which
also happens to dominate trade via a crucial sea lane.
And Sean, you noted that's not the only place to have triple
walls. Yeah.
Highgarden, right? Yeah.
Highgarden has a triple set of walls.
I I again, that's the type of thing that maybe isn't direct in
Rome. Inspiration at Georgia's having
just a coincidence that walls get built.
Three's not a crazy number. But I don't know.
I I kind of suspect. I kind of suspect it was, at
least in the back of his mind. It's worth a mention and.
And with Constantinople and Karth, I mean the whole dominant
sea power, you know, controlling the Black Sea versus controlling
the Jade Gates, I think that is another thing.
Plus the city being super ancient like it's been around
forever. And that's another parallel
because Constantinople's super old.
It became the capital of the Roman Empire.
Constantinople did about 330, which is about 200 years after
Hadrian's. Well, Istanbul of course was
Constantinople. If you have a date in
Constantinople, they'll be waiting in Istanbul.
Why did they change it? I can't say people just liked it
better that. Way liked it.
Better that way. But before that it was Byzantium
and before that it was possibly Ligos.
So another one of these things that just had a lot of names and
it's been called other things by other cultures like Rumiat al
Kubra, it means great city of the Romans and Mick Lagarde is
what like the Norseman called it.
So example of this in a song by fire is how not everyone in
Essos calls it Westeros. Sometimes they call it the
Sunset Kingdoms or just you savages or whatever.
So surely there's some other names too that are said in their
own languages. And yeah, we haven't been to all
those places in the story, so we don't know.
But they surely exist. They must have a word for that
big old continent far to the West.
They probably don't just call it that.
Big old continent far to the West.
Let's talk about Rome and Valyria.
One of the more perhaps straightforward parallel is one
of the one that I think is the most popular and we'll work our
way towards lesser known ones throughout this episode.
Here is George in 2001 quote. Valyria at the zenith of its
power was neither a Kingdom nor an empire, or at least it had
neither a king nor an emperor. It was more akin to the old
Roman Republic, I suppose. In theory the franchise included
all freeholders, that is freeborn land owners.
Of course, in practice, wealthy, highborn and sorceressly
powerful families came to dominate.
Now in Rome you would say wealthy, highborn and connected
to the priesthood, powerful and that's the equivalent of of
sorceress stuff would be religion.
Of course Roman religion was very powerful it it had a huge
impact. Priests were very powerful.
Auguries and prophecies were a big, big deal.
We'll we'll have several examples throughout the episode.
And of course prophecies obviously that's a big part of A
Song of Ice and Fire, a big part of Valyrian history, big part of
that world. Continent wise.
Valeri is a peninsula, So is Italy.
While there may not be 14 flames in Italy, there are certainly
volcanoes. One of the most famous eruptions
of all time is Vesuvius and encased Pompeii and Ash.
It's still studied today because of how well it was preserved and
Rome of course was infected by eruptions elsewhere.
It's just Pompeii grabs a lot of the headlines, but there were
others. And in the ancient world, as
we've talked about in our episode on the doom and we
talked about in another episode on volcanoes that's slipping my
mind at this point, where we discussed how there can be a
like volcanoes in Chile as in South America were were
impacted. Rome because of just how big the
volcano was and how big Rome is and how like it's such a big
empire. So many parts of it are
impacted. Vesuvius is close to passing for
a Valyrian name, especially the way it was written in sometimes
back in the day, which was VESAEVUS.
That looks very Valyrian. Or perhaps it should be the
other way around, that Valyrian looks very much like that.
Valyrian names also seem to have a lot in common with Old English
with all the AE names, which that's a more clear influence
since Westeros's looks like England.
But Rome is just full of AE names.
Latin is just full of that. And it had them first before Old
England Pretor Questor Prefectis, Caesar, Nias,
Emilius. There's just so many I could
just keep going. Even the word prey nomen, which
is PRAE, means personal name. So yeah, Nina adds.
The parallel between Rome and Valyria also extends to the
language of High Valyrian. George intended in his he has
said this High Valyrian to be like the Latin of Essos, a
language built up over time but which was altered after its
civilization collapsed. This alteration has happened and
has been going ongoing for centuries.
Because it's languages change over time, over the centuries,
High Valerian might not actually resemble Latin and its
construction. David Peterson specifically
chose to distinguish Dracaris from his word from dragon
because he disliked connecting Dracaris to the Latin word for
dragon, which is Draco. But still it still has a lot in
common and it certainly functionally the the equivalent
of like a lot of highborn people in Westeros learned Valyrian.
Tyrion knows Valyrian. Jamie and Cersei were taught it.
It's just a court language that for for fancy people to learn
and we're talking only the fancy.
So like, like, I don't think Sansa learned High Valyrian.
Maybe she started learning it at when she got to King's Landing,
but I don't remember that being a part of her lessons.
So I'm not even sure that that, like some of the great houses
bother with that. But they may have, they may have
back earlier. They might be less likely to
learn it High Valerian after they overthrow the Targaryen.
They might, I can imagine, like a a policy shift there, but.
That's a good point. Now we don't know as much about
the founding of Valyria. We've had done several episodes
on Valyria, different time periods of different subtopics,
and there's a lot of mystery there.
But there's the the story about the shepherds, right?
Being the first Valyrians were shepherds, which Romulus and
Remus were raised by a shepherd and made to be shepherds, 'cause
that was his trade and he that's what he knew how to do.
So they learned from him. Valyria didn't have kings like
Rome doesn't, but Rome did in its earliest days, and maybe
Valyria did. Maybe Valyria had kings in its
far-flung past that they finally they moved past that, But we
haven't heard it. Roman kings were very connected
to the gods. One of their most important
functions was being chief executive of the church.
Like I said before, that's a big deal.
I like it was in a lot of ancient societies and even
current ones, whereas Valyrian dragon Lords were maybe the
rough equivalent. Maybe a combination of people
who both had lots of religious power and lots of military
power, which a lot of these biggest Romans did have.
So we're missing a lot of details with Valyrian
government. But power was highly
concentrated in the capital, just like it was in Rome.
Like all roads go to Rome, all the power flows into Rome, all
the rulers live there. That wasn't explicitly true for
the entirety of its very long existence, as Sean said.
But basically that's a simple fine to think.
Think of it that way. Because when it ceased to be
concentrated in Rome, it was concentrated in Constantinople
instead. Or Ravenna, or one of these
other places where that were the capital for brief periods.
You know, another thing that's exemplifies exponentially adds
to whatever the the relevance of Rome and its connectedness to
history and everything is it. That's where the central
religions of the world, or the Western world at least sprouted
from too right. Christianity, Islam and Judaism,
they all came out of that same region and time period and were
kind of spread along with the Roman Empire.
And the interweaving of power between the government and the
church was is prominent in that time as I don't know ever in
history anywhere. And it's clearly represented in
Game of Thrones also. Yeah well said.
Nina points out there was 1 Emperor of Valyria.
A very short lived literally he tried to name himself Emperor
after the Doom. And remember he took his army
and his dragon into the peninsula and vanished.
So what happened there? Now?
Of course, Speaking of of slaves and slave states, both of them
were slash R The mines of Valyria are very similar to the
mines of Spain. The mines of Spain produced huge
amounts of silver and were just a horror to read about them.
It's just terrifying to read about the conditions and the
treatment of of those workers, those slaves.
Lots of people dying of fumes, of cave insurance, of
explosions, of exposure or whatever.
Very similar to what you read about the the the conditions
that created the first Faceless Men.
Well, it's worth it, 'cause they were paid well.
Oh wait, no, they were. Oh.
Oh yeah, and since Andal cultural values seem so often to
be the direct opposite of Valyrian cultural values, we've
we've theorized that they develop in response.
For example, Valyrians are OK with incest.
Well, Andal's think it's an abomination.
And all sexuality is very conservative.
Perhaps Liberians were more liberal about it in that sense.
Obviously I'm not using modern political terms when I say
Conservative and Liberal, but to simplify, Roman sexuality was
conservative for women, wide open for men.
As long as you're in the dominant role, men could do
whatever. As long as they're the dominant
partner with another man, with a woman, with whatever, as long as
they're dominant, it's fine. So it's hard to compare to, like
modern American values, whatever that even means.
So overall they were more fluid with their gender boundaries as
compared to, say, ancient Greece.
But there were heavy taboos and they could get you like removed
from office, like 'cause they were illegal, not just being
kicked out of social circles, which is the normal penalty for
violating social taboos and stuff like that.
Speaking of sexuality, the word prostitute, which does exist in
Westeros is a Latin word. So sometimes opposite seem like
parallels with Rome being very strict and conservative with
dress and nudity. They were not strict with
inheritance and adoption like emperors were often just chosen
to be and then adopted by the previous emperor rather than
being the child of their body or even a relative.
Very opposite of Valyria, right? Got to keep it in the family to
the point of incest. Now, as we've noted in our own
interview with George, he says that wasn't true at all levels
of society, which is also sort of true with Rome.
Because adoption and inheritance isn't really a concern when
you're of not rich. You know, you're like, it's not
doesn't matter as much. It's not a big issue to like
well, 'cause it's you're part of it is who's going to own this
stuff. When you don't have a lot of
stuff to own, then it's not such a big thing to argue over.
And that might be a thing that could have happened in Valyria.
There may have been Roman style adoptions in Valyria to keep
their families going. We see it in Westeros, like all
these great houses. There's no way they've actually
existed this long without some break in the line.
They've they've fibbed like bail the Bard is is an example of
that, that there was shenanigans there with a a person being
named Stark who might not have been it may have been a bastard
etcetera. But that nearly probably every
house has that on their record. Maybe multiple cases.
An exception to Rome's taboo on nudity was there public baths.
And I suspect we we've talked about Valyria guessing that they
had baths too because of all the volcanoes and the like, the
natural springs that would be they'd be able to make use of
that. Roman Valyria were generally
very tolerant of other religions.
They allowed other religions to be practiced, though there were
definitely exceptions. Of course, persecutions of Jews
and Christians under the Roman Empire as well attributed.
And then eventually Constantine became Christian.
And then it kind of was the the in reverse.
The persecution went the other way.
And yeah, it's just, again, it's hard to refer to these things as
a monolith when the Rome has existed for so long and it's not
hasn't been the same always. You just made me think of
something. Where were Jamie and Brienne in
that bath scene? Paranol.
Who was it located that was Harrenhal?
Which is a newer castle, but those are huge baths.
Yeah, you're right, those are giant baths made for lots of
people. So that's a good point.
That's a very good catch. I didn't think of those baths in
Harrenhal. That's less than 300 year old
castle and it's probably what he probably wasn't the first guy to
build baths, though it is interesting that it was an iron
born king that made those. Yeah, it might not have been
totally public, it might have just been for the the elite of
the castle. Maybe.
But. But it makes me wonder, what if
other castles had them? I don't know.
Yeah, that's a great catch. I didn't think of that.
The baths. Good one.
Master of horse OK, we've heard that term in the Song of Ice and
Fire a bunch of times. It's an official position in
several European nations and was common.
And there's also some in Asia. There's in China and maybe
Japan. It was common in the days of
monarchies. The as an official title, but
the title originated in the Roman Republic.
It was originally the dictator's second in command.
Dictator was a temporary office for when Rome was at war
originally, and when they were named, they got to name a second
in command when the dictator's term of office expired.
The Master Force also left office.
Marc Anthony was Caesar's master force for a while.
Holland was Winterfell's master force, so it's not nearly as big
a title. It's not as fancy.
It's not for nobles only. Now he was killed in the Red
Keep during the fallout after Joffrey's ascension.
But remember, Harwin is his son and joins the Brotherhood
Without Banners and he's still alive now.
The master of horse at Winterfell was Joseph and he's
the one who trains Dancer. So that's after 'cause we know
Holland goes S with Ned and they have to appoint a new one.
Joseph is probably dead because of the Bolton's Roman roads
versus the Dragon roads. Of course, we cannot forget the
roads. Yes, we've already talked about
them all roads leading to Rome, all roads lead to Valyria too.
You can pretty much still see that even after the doom.
Look at the map. The roads are visible there, and
they're pretty much all going there, and they're considered A
Wonder of the World by Lomas Longstrider.
Tyrion notes that they are a quote, a ribbon of fused stone
raised half a foot above the ground to allow rainfall and
snowmelt to run off. Pretty clever.
Still largely undamaged despite the passage of so much time.
Maybe a little bit of magic in there, but the Roman roads are
similarly amazing. A lot of them are still there.
Well of course they've been you know repaved and Re picked up
and all that. They required more upkeeping
this, but Rome was good about upkeeping them and they had that
same feature of the slight angle to allow water to run off and
being slightly raised above they would come with gravel paths on
the side for foot traffic and they had they would have like
ruts for wheels to fit in around corners, things like that.
So it wouldn't you wouldn't fall off the side.
Maybe some of those innovations were done by the Valyrians, but
regardless, it's very similar. Romans were very, very stubborn
about making those roads as straight as possible.
They're like, we're not going to curve.
If there's a hill, we go through it.
If there's a mountain, we go under it.
If there's a river, we go over it.
We aren't curving unless we absolutely have to, unless
there's like the sea, you know? So they made lots of bridges,
tunnels and such. And they used concrete, which
they didn't invent that, but they did innovate it.
Volcanic ash was added by Romans to concrete to make it set
underwater and they added blood to make it resistance to frost.
So really, yeah, they added ash and blood.
It's like fire and blood was added to their concrete.
So I love that. It's kind of a not really a
parallel, but kind of is just kind of a fun little coincidence
I guess. They also added horse hair to
concrete to make it less likely to crack.
Seawater. Also, they added seawater, which
made it. It was like a secret ingredient
that made it more sturdy. Yeah.
It was like, so obvious to them that they didn't write it.
They just put water, you know, like the ingredients of water.
And they were like, Oh yeah, of course it's seawater.
Why would you use fresh water? They just took that for granted
so that when you hear stories about blood being added to the
mortar again, Harrenhal, that comes up again, supposedly that
was the thing, blood being added to the mortar.
It's not entirely fantastical and that this is not something I
knew prior to looking this episode, researching this
episode. Because yeah, that's where it's
like, really? They actually put blood in there
and it had a a meaning other than just to intimidate people,
but it was also probably both. It also probably wasn't like the
blood of virgins sacrifice. It was probably like from the
butcher shop, you know, it probably wasn't human.
Extra blood. Yeah, maybe sometimes it was the
blood of virgins. But yeah, not not always.
So it's a little fun fact. Trivia here.
Concrete is the most used human made substance in the world.
It's there's about 1 cubic meter of concrete for every person in
the world. It's been used since 5600 BC.
Concrete has existed that long. It's super old.
So roads. Now the basic point of these
roads is, yeah, it connects thing place to place, right?
But that. But that's not the entire
purpose of it, right? What are the people in power who
built these roads? What are they after?
Wealth and more power because it enables connectivity to the
places that you're making money from.
If anything goes wrong, you can send your soldiers there really
fast. More goods flow back and forth,
which means more taxes, which means more power, but it also
means peace. It also, there's it's not all
cynical. We shouldn't look at it all just
that way, although it's fair to say that's how a lot of it is
originated. It also curtails starvation.
It gets food. That's one of the main goods.
It gets moved. Especially in ancient times, it
gets moved around. Is food you?
Need to move quickly because of spoilage, right?
Like. Right.
And and just cause the distance of how far away that the fields
are to where the centers of population are.
As cities get bigger, you have more people living there than
land to grow food. So you need to bring it from
farther away. And it's even if it's, you know,
this greedy plan by the rulers of the city to not let their
people starve, OK. It's so important.
It's still a good thing that's happening.
And once that happens, whether it's for power or food, you also
end up spreading knowledge and culture, make it easier for
people to move and explore and visit and everything else.
And they would take advantage of that.
While a lot of that's happening, incidentally, they're also
spreading Valyrian hegemony and making sure everybody knows how
powerful the Dragon Lords are and putting reminders of of who
they are and and what kind of power they wield.
Because it's not like they have, you know, videos to show people
like everyone. You got to see a dragon every
once in a while to remind you know, what you're up against.
Let's don't get uppity, you know?
So yeah, that's a big deal. And of course, like I said, the
armies are a big deal. Now, the army thing is would
have mattered less to Valyria, because the Dragons don't need
that. But it still matters.
It still matters a lot for for military purposes.
And of course, it's enormous for for trade.
Yeah, the dragon can fly to someone's castle and burn it
down, but the dragon can't take over the castle.
You got to get soldiers, people, humans there to take over
anything. And you want them to be able to
get there quickly, Yeah. Yeah.
That's good. Yeah, makes sense.
So Nina adds another parallel here.
Rome and Valyria also have this this thing where people, it was
so big, so powerful for so long, that people want to connect
themselves to it after it ceases to exist.
Volantis calling themselves the New Valyria, trying to take up
all that mantle, calling themselves.
They literally called themselves the First Daughter of Valyria.
Only direct descendants of Valyrian citizens are allowed to
live within their black walls, that inner part of the city.
It's ruled like a freehold. They do so many things like
Valyria did on purpose, to recapture that awe, that
intimidation. Likewise, it's super common in
the real world for Roman stuff to have been referred to where
you just like the Romans did in their early days, trying to
connect themselves to Troy and to these ancient gods long after
that. When Rome was the big dog,
everyone was trying to connect themselves to them.
Everybody's like Charlemagne styled himself Augustus, an
emperor of the Romans. This guy lived in Germany.
Caesar is Kaiser, right? Imperator is emperor.
Like these are all these are Roman words but there's so many
right of people using Roman titles.
The Holy Roman Empire is nothing.
There's nothing Roman about it really.
It's it's another that was that was in Germany.
You know it didn't Rome wasn't a part of it.
Rome was not part of the Holy Roman Empire.
It wasn't even really that holy, but so So this is a rich
parallel for sure. And George's descriptions of of
volunteer elections, chaotic. People bribing each other
openly, not not like people bribing of each other like
officials. Although it's really that's
happening too that that more often happens behind closed
doors. I mean, candidates bribing the
people openly. Like I'm holding a party for
people that live in this neighborhood.
Everybody gets wine and food and all this.
And it's a it's an old strategy. It's been used in every culture
probably of getting people to forget their woes by giving them
a little something. Something showing that, yeah,
look, rich people giving back, yeah, a little tiny bit one week
of the year, you know, But it it it's something, it's more than
the other guy gave them. So it's it's a reason to pick
this guy over everybody else. Like you want you want me to go
vote, like give me some wine and food to go vote for you.
OK. A lot of people are willing to
do that, which is one of the one of the reasons why at a
functional society we need people to not be so easily
bribable, which means they need to not be so broke.
It is a flawed democracy, is it? You can pay people off to vote
your way, wherever, whoever, however you're paying them, but.
And this is very much like how Roman Republic elections were.
Like during the Empire, well, they don't really have elections
anymore, or they did have them. They were different or they
didn't have them at all. But during the Republic, same
thing, very chaotic, very like riots, free food and drink, same
sort of public bribery, just swaying people with speeches,
manipulating them with with things that aren't true,
appealing to fear and and religion and things that we
still see to this day. Not explicitly Roman things, in
other words, but on a grander scale, because Rome was so big
that these things had a had an impact on much more people than
they would in most any other time or place.
I I I can imagine a lot of like manipulation, you know?
It might have been harder to coordinate or organize, but also
harder to discover if it was happening, you know?
But all these flaws and issues and turmoil aside, it's still
better than oldest born son. That's still so lame and random.
It's. Still better.
It's so better. Yeah.
Yeah, especially given how now you see some of the same things
like, well, the problem, one of the problems with the oldest
born son is that the youngest, younger sons can just kill their
brother and move on up. That still happens in scenarios
like this where it's, well, Emperor Augustus, we're going to
come back to this later. He's like, well, I can, I've got
a bunch of different candidates who I can name as my successor.
Well, if those are all known well then one of they can just
kill each other and it's the same, ends up being similar.
I was like, well, now only one of them has left.
I got to name this one, you know, and it isn't.
And it's the same problem happens.
It isn't necessarily the younger one who killed the other ones.
It was people who would benefit more from that one being in
charge. I still got to say another big
problem is that you eliminate half of the population.
Oh yeah, that's bad. Yeah, no doubt.
Yeah, that's that's not good. Which is actually an interesting
difference that George gave to Volantis.
Volunteer elections are women can win those.
But Roman Republic? No, not so much.
So here's a few. We're close to our halfway
point. Let's here's a few kind of
miscellaneous things. And then we'll come back to talk
about the stabbings and Slaver's Bay and the great Empire of the
Dawn and lots of other fun stuff.
Yeah. So, Sean, you've got one here
for us. Take it away.
Yeah, about 400 BCE the Gauls won the battle of Aliyah and
they're pressing Rome. And again, these stories have a
lot of like kind of minor variations.
Some pieces are suspect, but. But the idea is that to stave
them off, Rome was going to give them 1000 lbs of gold, which is
like a huge amount of money, right?
And it would be a chore to like gather and give it to him.
It reminds me a little bit of that story in Dorne where didn't
they pay a huge gold ransom but but they realize in the process,
when they're when they're going through that the payment of the
gold and they're using scales to measure it.
They realize that the Gauls are using rigged scales to get extra
gold. And they're like, hey, you know,
like the the treaty's off and General Marcus Camillus rallies
the troops to counter attack the Gauls, fights them off and
defeats them. And he's reported to have said
with iron, not with gold. Rome buys her freedom and that.
I wonder I if that was a specific Ironborn inspiration
for George. Maybe just a coincidence, but
that seems really close, you know?
I don't know. I'm saying the gall of those
galls, the. Gall.
That's where the that's where they got that that word.
For putting their finger on the scales.
That's right. That's hilarious.
Yeah, that's good. That's a very good one for the
iron Prize. I love it.
I I imagine there's a few other examples out there in the real
world of people saying iron versus gold making that
comparison of buying it versus fighting with it.
I'm sure that's that symbolism comes up.
But this is such a famous example, like George has
probably heard this one. Maybe it's the first time he
heard that reference because again, this one would stand
above a lot of other similar tales because it's a Roman story
and that thus more famous, more popular.
There's a city in Valyria, of course, quite ruined now called
Aquos Dayan, and it reminds me of a little bit in name of
Aquileia, which is a famous Roman city, a big Roman city.
The word Valerian, like Valyrian, is Latin.
It's an herb, the Valyrian herb. It's also an emperor.
There was an emperor, Valyrian. He reigned about 130 years after
Hadrian's Wall began, meaning his reign started then.
He didn't reign for 130 years. Valyrian was the first Roman
Empire captured in battle, loosely similar to Ares as a
captive king at Duskendale. Because he was treated very
shabbily. They they mocked him and
humiliated him and did all this stuff to him while he was in
captivity. One version of Valyrian's death
is that he was flayed so a little Bolton for you, but
another one is that he was forced to swallow molten gold,
which is a little Valerian. Viserys.
Well, he was also a Valyrian. So there you go, I said Master
of horse is, you know, a Roman title.
It's actually the word is magister equitum.
Because yes, magister is also a Latin word.
So, Magister Illyrio, the Magisters of various other Free
Cities. Not every free city uses that
title, but a lot of them do. Implication being that word is
Valyrian probably came from Valyria.
Yeah? And Speaking of horses, there's
an Otho Bracken. Of course Bracken, because of
the brackens are horse sigil and used to be horse breeders.
Back in the day, there was an Emperor Otho, same spelling.
So that might be a might be a little parallel there.
It might be a little miniature inspiration.
As far as I know, Emperor Otho didn't have anything to do
special with horses, but I'm sure he rode one.
He was an emperor. Yeah, all right.
That's our first half. So I wanted to take a moment for
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drawing for the lifetime membership, which that's
valuable. Also want to shout out my Friday
Twitch streams? I rarely mention them, but they
happen almost every Friday. We had a lot of fun playing
Malice the Monstrous taking over the Seven Kingdoms.
We won the war against Targaryens.
I executed Egon the 5th and took his wife as my own.
Malice the Monstrous is sadistic so I role play my characters.
So I have to be a cruel jerk psychopath.
And now Malice has passed and his son Mainar who is also
sadistic like father like son. He's married to Mina Tyrell and
doesn't have a child yet, so whether or not this dynasty will
last is up in the air every Friday at six Eastern.
We play twitch.tv/history of Westeros.
I found this quote while digging into this topic that we're
talking about today and it doesn't relate all that much,
but it does a little bit and I definitely wanted to share it.
So here we go. This is from questions he was
asked about wild cards in 2008. Well, we played in Walter John
Williams's Rome game Gerps for a decade or more, but Walter
hasn't been running that lately. More recently, we're playing a
space game run by Ty Frank, which uses AD 20 system.
Ty's game is great fun, but frankly I don't like D20 nearly
as much as Gerps. OK, first of all Gerps, if you
haven't heard of it, is stands for Generic Universal
role-playing system. I've played it not recently, but
I have played it and it's just a yeah, it's a it's a it's a
role-playing system designed to fit any style campaign whether
fantasy, sci-fi, whatever you can you can fit it to anything
And that was the idea. I I don't think it's around that
much anymore. But maybe, maybe it isn't.
I just don't know it. But of course the space game run
by Ty Frank, that's The Expanse. Before it became novels, it was
a role-playing campaign and there you go, proto version.
How cool is that? And of course Rome Gerps.
That's that's why I discovered this quote, because apparently
this Walter John Williams guy was running a generic universal
role-playing system in ancient Rome.
And that sounds pretty sweet. TK OK Podcast Network, sends a
super chat and says What is Sean's favorite Rome centric
movie? The first couple that pop into
mind are like, oh, gladiator, maybe Spartacus.
No, no, no, no. Monty Python's The Life of
Brian. Hands down.
Definitely my favorite one. Absolutely the same too, apart
from the roads, They're aqueduct, they're education.
What have the Romans ever done? For what else?
There's this. People's Front of Judea.
The scene where he's painting, where he's doing graffiti,
Romans go home and he's like, and the guy catches him, he's
like, what are you writing there?
This is, this is Romans go home. This is no, it doesn't.
He corrects his grammar. I write it 1000 times.
I think about. I think about Rome twice a day
because I think a Life of Brian. He's not.
Now Life of Brian is also a very good parallel to Dune.
It takes place in the desert and it's about you shouldn't be the
Messiah. You know he's not the Messiah.
He's a very naughty boy. And it has that same line where
he's like, I'm not the Messiah. Only the true Messiah would
divide would deny his divinity. All right, I am the Messiah.
He is the Messiah. Yep.
All right, enough Life of Brian quotes.
I would do it. We would.
Sean and I would just do this all day.
But. But we have more.
Jokes. I got to get one.
I gotta tell you, it's one of my favorite.
Funniest OK, not enough like Brian?
Here's one. More film in history when he's
when he's got this huge crowd gathered out of his outside his
house and his mom's mad at him making these people go away and
he's trying to convince him he's not the Messiah.
You don't need me, You don't need anyone.
You're all individuals and the whole crowd, in unison,
responds. Yes, we're all individuals and
one guy's like, I'm not. Everyone's like, it's so good,
Anthony de Palma sends a comment, says.
I wonder if George thinks SPQR, which means Senate people.
People of Rome. It's not an actual acronym.
That's the that's the mistake I made.
But anyway, probably is for. For for Latin, yes.
It's Latin. It's sent it to his populist
romance. OK.
I don't know. Anyway, Anthony Palma suggested.
Maybe it stands for Scorching Prince Quentin's rectum, or
still plotting carthine regicide.
Or Stannis prohibits questioning relor or silly pretty queer
recalio. Or Seriously, please quit
reminding me to finish wins. Yeah, good one, Anthony.
That's got us a good laughing both when we first read it and
now again when we're reading it live on the episode.
Let's talk about the stabbings. Yes, the stabbings are a great
parallel in A Song of Ice and Fire to Rome.
Here is another quote from George from the year 2001. 2000
years after the assassination of Julius Caesar, people are still
debating whether or not that was an honorable act.
Dante put Brutus and Cassius in the lowest level of hell for
what they did right next to Judas Iscariot.
But Shakespeare wrote that Brutus was, quote, the noblest
Roman of them all. So argue on.
And I suppose the pizza place Noble Romans would agree with
Shakespeare, but you never know. Yeah, what is?
Little Caesar's saying two different pizza places named
after the Roman Empire or Roman. It's probably more than that
too. Just two famous ones, at least.
Obviously, Domino, Emperor, Domino.
Domino Domician. There's some ones that sound
kind of like Domino. We all know Pop, Pope John,
Papa. Where does the word domino
originate? Is that a Latin word?
I don't know. Sounds like Dominus, but I I
guess, I bet it is. Yeah, it sounds like.
Dominant Domino. Domino.
I mean they say Domino is a title and means master or
mistress. Yeah, so Caesar's assassination
is quite possibly the most famous assassination of all time
and John's killing is pretty damn famous in fiction too.
Interestingly, Caesar's death is probably the world's first post
mortem. Like discussed what killed them
and how, how it killed, you know, things like that, all the
things that go into a post mortem John stabbing.
Well, we don't argue whether it was justified, but we do try to
imagine the position other people nights watch were put in
and try to put ourselves in their shoes and see why they did
it. Now, later in the episode, as I
said at the beginning, we're going to talk about the TV show
Rome a little bit. But for now I'll remind you all
that Kieran Hines played both Mance Raider and Julius Caesar.
Caesar was killed in part because he was making a lot of
changes that Rome was uncomfortable with.
Some of these will be very familiar.
John was doing some of the same things.
Yeah, I think that that was like the one thing that Caesar wasn't
supposed to do if you that's that's going too far is crossing
Rubicon. Yeah, It was illegal to bring
your army across that border. Yeah, Yeah.
And and I feel like that's like the one thing the Wall is
supposed to do is keep the free folk out.
And he brought him across like they could put up with a lot of
other stuff. But that was.
Yeah, that's a good point. Now that didn't directly into
his his assassination, but it it started the chain of events.
It was the first thing he did that had he not done that, he
might have just been executed or or exiled.
So that was kind of why he did it from his perspective.
Yeah, same thing with Caesar. It's not like you cross the
Rubicon and then the eggs out him.
It was just a piece of the things that were happening,
which were basically all the sort of standards and
expectations and traditions or whatever that have been
established. He was chipping away at him, but
that was the most clear, physical, obvious crossing in
the Rubicon. Thing.
Same thing. Just imagine the Watchmen, the
brothers of the Watch, witnessing these people that
they've been fighting. They're just walking in, just
walking in like, you know, like, even if it there's all sorts of,
you know, prejudices and whatnot behind that.
You know, again, like Martin wants to do is put us in our
shoes. Like we want to root for John,
'cause we're more in his shoes than anyone else.
He's our POV. But when you put yourself in
someone else's shoes, if Martin had written APOV of a couple of
those nights, Watchmen who just would have been aghast at what
was happening here. Some of those would have been
people that killed some of their friends, You know, like they're
they're, it's hard for them to look at the bigger picture,
'cause it's very personal and and like you said, it's been
that way for thousands of years. John is breaking violating
something that's been in place for so long that the the prime
directive of the watch. So there's other parallels too,
though. Some people thought Caesar would
make himself king. Now the watch had a similar
fear. They were all they were
concerned both over King Stannis and who.
John gave too many concessions to too many broken traditions
along that as well. And maybe some of them thought
he would make himself king too, like John himself, like Knights
King did way back in the day. And he was acting a lot more
like a Lord than a Lord commander in a lot of ways.
He was kind of. He wasn't getting consensus for
a lot of his decisions. He was kind of just saying this
is how it's going to be. And while we kind of agree with
some of those decisions, we definitely have stated that
this. He didn't go about it very well.
It was too authoritative. He need he should have tried to
win over some more of his men and definitely not leave himself
exposed. And sending all his friends
away, which Caesar kind of also did.
He didn't send his friends away, but Caesar didn't have a
bodyguard like John. He relied on his intimidating
friends, many of whom were veterans of his campaign.
So they were scary people. They weren't, but they weren't
allowed in the Senate House. You can't go in there if you're
not a senator. And that's where they stabbed
him because they knew that'd be the place where he wouldn't have
his guards. Now one of the issue, one of the
three major triggers for season's assassination was
disrespecting the Senate. They gave him more honors.
He didn't stand because he was like this is too many honors
like so arguably he was doing it because they were over over
rewarding him over glorifying and he was like no too much but
they saw it as an insult that he didn't stand to accept these
honors but also he gave more power to foreigners.
It wasn't just letting crossing the Rubicon is is sort of two
different examples or there's two different examples that
parallel the the letting the free folk in.
One is the one Sean said one is that he gave more powers to
foreigners. He allowed there were Gaelic and
German and other foreigners given seats in the Senate and
things like that and other leadership positions, which a
lot of Romans, very conservative traditions did not like that
same as free folk. It's been this way forever.
Not only did he let people in, he gave people like Leathers
positions of authority. That guy's trading their
recruits. Now that is very offensive to
traditionalists. Even Caesar didn't let women
into the Senate, right? Like like, put women on the
wall, even. So, yeah, exactly.
So there, yeah, he put, you're right, he put women, he he spear
wives. He was like, well, we need
everyone we can get. And to him it's just just makes
logistical sense. To us, it's the same.
But to them, it's like we've never done this before.
Women, We can't count on them. Like what if they stab us in the
back? What if we.
What if they run away at at a crucial time?
You know, they're just, they have all these prejudices.
Hey, well, imagine that. So, yeah, so they see them as
savages. They see the not only are they
the enemies, but they also see them as lower a lower people.
They're not as cultured, not as civilized, which is exactly how
the Romans saw these Gauls. And Germans are like, oh,
they're not, they have long hair and they smell bad and blah blah
blah. You know, just stuff that's very
just personal opinion, you know, not really.
One isn't actually better than the other.
It's just they're very strict preferences.
And even if maybe some of these decisions, you might see the
logic behind him. And maybe even if you can see
that he's got the authority to do this, whether you're talking
about John or Season, it still gets you thinking along the
lines of what next? If he'll do this, what else
would he do? You know, and like the idea that
you're worried you're comparing the idea that he might like,
seize king like power there. It's not crazy to think that he
might take it to contingency to Winterfell.
Wait he. Yeah.
OK.
So yeah. Yeah, exactly Right.
So it wasn't personal animosity, Nina points out.
In both cases, Brutus liked Caesar.
He saw him as a father. And Bowen Marsh maybe didn't see
John as a son because obviously that the ages are flipped in
this case. But he's crying when he does it.
There's tears pouring out of Bowen Marsh's eyes when he stabs
John. And that is not the man who is
like, yay, let's do this, this is, I have no choice from his
perspective, right. And Nina writes the emotional
toll that it took on him, that decision, the decision and the
ACT itself. Yeah.
And the consequences afterwards might be similar, because the
assassination of Caesar did not really work out for the
senators. They didn't reverse his changes,
they didn't restore the Republic.
And a lot of it ended up dead, thanks to Caesar's friends and
his popularity and and the the transfer of power to people like
Marc Anthony who who riled up the the the crowds and made
people remember how Caesar was so good to them.
And war started back up again. The 2nd triumvirate happened.
Anthony, Octavian, Lepidus, all sorts of stuff happened.
Now it won't be so big in terms of the entire nation going to
war over John's death but it is a reasonable guide for what will
happen in the aftermath of John stabbing.
The conspirators won't be hailed as heroes by not by everyone.
Some people will say good job. But the free folk, John's
friends, No, that's good. You could see it immediately
turned to blood and someone they're going to see it as a
villainous act. Some some of the nights watch
will say, hey it had to be done. But we don't know what's going
to happen by the time it's all said and done, when the scene is
done, when more has passed, we might find ourselves with more
parallels to the assassination of Caesar.
Because frankly we're still in the midst of this still you
know, like the book John's final chapter.
Like we don't know what what comes afterwards.
But it's pretty interesting right?
Like the end of the Roman Republic came not long after the
death of Caesar. Is this gonna be the end of the
wall or the watch as we know it at the end of following the
death of John? What do you think, Sean?
It was the end of the Roman Republic, but just the beginning
of the Roman Empire. Right, right.
Yes. I don't know if the Wall is
gonna become the Roman Empire, but you know John John maybe
become some sort of supreme leader of Westeros or whether
it's to get troops to fight off the.
Is he king in the North? But, but he, you know, you could
see him ending up in some very powerful position if he leads an
army, especially the coalition of an army, including wildlings
or whatever, against the others. But but you know, maybe the the
North maybe mobilizes its military in general and becomes
more powerful and especially if the South doesn't support them
once the war is over and they need to go deal with, I don't
know, Cersei or Danny. Yeah, it's hard to say, but.
Not just strong parallel, because you're right.
If like they tried to, they tried to stop Caesar from
becoming king by killing him and ended up starting the empire and
they created an emperor out of that.
They tried to stop John and he's going to maybe become king in
the north after he rises so that that parallel could be even
deeper than I first realized. There's also some, like magical
parallels here. There's post facto omens
assigned to the day of Caesar's death.
Like, oh, his wife had a dream there was a skull.
Even the TV show Rome had some birds fly like a skull.
There was all this stuff that said after the fact, supposedly
actually happened before. Probably not.
I guess it's possible, but I would guess no.
Also, after the fact, any of these things you can attach,
like if it didn't happen, these different omens would have been
completely ignored. It's only once it matters that
you try to attach meaning to them.
We had 100 omens that day. This is the one that actually
happened. Yeah.
So we threw out the other 99 but John had was basically ignored
Melisandre's daggers in the dark warning which is pretty similar
and especially cause both assassinations were yes done
with daggers so which that parts not so weird but not the
strongest part of the parallel but it is yet another parallel
so that's pretty cool. That's a big one and like I said
there could be more to it. Once more of John's story plays
out let's move on to Rome and Slaver's Bay.
With Rome as Valyria it might be tempting to see Carthage as
Slaver's Bay. There's a lot and there is and
that is indeed a rich vein of parallel.
The Punic wars between Carthage and and Rome have a lot of
similarities between the the wars between Valyria and
Slaver's Bay. A good example of a false Roman
story comes to us here. It said that Rome sowed the
fertile lands of Carthage with salt after conquering them after
destroying them. But most modern scholars doubt
this because salt was really expensive back then, really
expensive, so this would have been extremely costly so not
very likely to have happened. And George uses a line like that
though when describing what Valyria did to old gifts after
defeating them. The fifth time, there were three
tunic wars between Rome and and Carthage.
Rome won all three. There were five wars between
Valyria and Slaver's Bay, and Valyria won all five of those.
So you can see the parallels there.
George again just made it a little bigger, adding two more
on the top and throwing Dragons in there.
And he said when Old Gifts was destroyed, just the city was
annihilated by Valyria after that fifth one, which is what
happened after the third one, Rome was like, we're not going
to let this happen again. We're just going to destroy
Carthage and this will never happen again.
And that's obviously what Valyria did, George wrote the
line. The very fields were sown with
salt, sulfur and skulls, probably not the sulfur.
And the skulls would have actually helped the the ground
would have actually made the fields more fertile.
There's a lot of salt and blood. That's true.
But there's probably a lot of
other nitrates and carbon, everything else that the field
needs as bodies decompose to. Now despite this Valyria,
Carthage, Punic Wars, Slavers Bay, Rome parallel we Slaver's
Bay is is very Roman influenced and since that's our folks
today, we'll stick with that. And I guess to be fair, Carthage
was also very Roman influenced after Rome conquered them, just
like how Valyria conquered Slaver's Bay and now everyone in
Slaver's Bay speaks Valyrian. So yes, they still have a lot of
their Giscari heritage, their traditions, the way they dress.
But there's some undoubtedly Valyrian veneer over a lot of
it. Weren't olive trees, Wasn't that
was that outside Marine? Yes.
Yes, olive trees. That's another.
That's a big. I think Mediterranean food
stuff. Anyway, yeah, so that's that's
meant to make us think of that. I I agree.
A straightforward example, gladiatorial games.
Now in A Song of Ice and Fire, they're not called gladiatorial
games. There's no word.
Gladiator does not exist as a term.
Fighting pits and fit pit fighters do.
However, Nina points out Dasmak's pit is very obviously
drawing on classic Roman Colosseums.
The lowest levels are reserved for the Emperor, senators and
members of the equities class which is the the Knights.
Basically Roman Knights equities.
Danny even spots the graces in what seems to be a box opposite
hers, just as the Roman Vestal Virgins were given pride of
place in a box across from the Emperor's at the Coliseum.
So even the layout of this das next pit is very similar to the
way a Roman Colosseum would be done.
And yes, the and the Graces. Don't forget, a lot of the
Graces are virgins. So even that part is similar.
Legion. The word legion comes from the
Latin Legio, and the meaning has changed over time, but basically
it's the largest military unit in the Roman army.
The term apparently existed prior to the Roman Republic,
like back in the days of when Rome had kings.
So really, really old school. But George didn't give that to
Valyria. There's no Valyrian legions that
we know of. The term legion is only used in
Slaver's Bay that we've seen so far.
It comes up several times, but only to refer to Slaver's Bay.
Here's a quote that shows us how very, very far back this dates.
This is Krasnis Monaclas speaking through Misande to
Daenerys as translator. The Unsullied have something
better than strength. Tell her they have discipline.
We fight in the fashion of the old Empire.
Yes, they are the lockstep legions of old Geese.
Come again? Absolutely obedient, absolutely
loyal, and utterly without fear. So old geese, a much older
nation than Valyria acquired it's early in ancient empire
based on the strength of their loyal, fearless and disciplined
legions. These those legions conquered
the surrounding areas. We don't know much about the
founding of Old geese. We do have some art that might
represent what they look like. Old geese as drawn by Sanrixi,
An empire of old. Geese.
I found it funny earlier this episode when you said old geese.
I know. And then I realized I don't say
that. Got to say old geese to set up
the joke. It was a mistake on my part.
Yeah, there's these old geese. I would not, Yeah.
Don't, don't, don't move there. Do not live under the Kingdom of
Old Geese, the Empire of Old Geese.
Also, if you say guess, you might affect how we pronounce
amies. We don't want to do that.
Oh yeah, we gotta go EE on every.
Day No no. Anus allowed on this stream.
No anus. Now we we don't know much about
the founding of Old Geese and what style of government they
had, but of course they said it was an empire, so that gives us
a pretty strong clue. But regardless, this is very
similar to what happened with Rome in their early days.
They eventually dominated some very powerful smaller neighbors
who were, you know, as small as they were the the Sam Knights
and the Etruscans and some other nearby people campaignians.
But the Roman Legion was superior not because of the men
fighting in their with their Shields and swords were just
better, but they came up with a better strategy, a better way to
manage their army. And that was such an effective
thing that it worked on all their neighbors and kept working
for centuries. And this is similar apparently
to what old geese did. And they expanded outside their
territory because of this extremely well organized,
extremely disciplined military. And that's the key here.
What Krasny's MO Nat clause says is discipline is what was
crucial. And indeed discipline was
crucial for the Roman Empire, for the Roman Republic, for
their legions, and and they were strict.
They would at night build an entire Fort, every night they
would dig ditches, and every single day they would build a
fortified camp to sleep in so they could not be attacked.
They did, they did. Took very few chances or maybe
zero chances depending on how you look at it.
And the Unsullied are kind of similar, or at least that's what
they're going for here. And if what Krasny's Monac Laws
is saying is even remotely true, it was that way for their
citizen armies back in the day. Tokar versus Toga, Very similar.
Once again, this is a Roman style dress, but we have no
evidence that it existed in Valyria.
It's a Slaver's Bay thing, The toga.
Let's talk about the toga compared to the Tocar.
But even though they're very similar at first, the toga was
usually woolen, usually white, round, and that is what defines
it. The roundness is what set it
apart from other antiquity style cloaks which were usually
square. That was new to me.
I didn't realize that. Yeah, not neat.
That's kind of cool. Yeah.
So it was draped over the left shoulder and worn about the body
supposedly worn by Romulus himself, Romulus Waratoga, and
the most important symbol of kingship.
There's a bunch of symbols of of legitimacy for a Roman king.
Of course Roman kings died out, but at the time they had several
things. The most important symbol
amongst those symbols was the toga picta, which is the purple
toga with gold thread. Just like in Westeros and Essos.
The regal color is purple because of purple snails, the
rarest color also in in Westeros and Esso purple snails or snails
that produce purple, same thing the murex snails.
So it was formal and reserved for citizens.
The toga not the toga picta that was only for the king.
So if you weren't a citizen it was illegal to wear a toga.
Getting your first toga was like a rite of passage, like an
adulthood. You're you're you're becoming a
man or a a a woman, but usually women were a different garment.
At first. The toga was for for all
genders, but it was eventually replaced by the stola which is
like a stole right? Similar term, the Toga was set
aside on Saturnalia, which was something like opposite day
Romani opposite day, which is when the slaves take place with
the masters you switch places for a day.
Even that is has a little bit of a parallel in a long waste of
fire because Astapore's butcher King Cleon invoked a Saturn, a
permanent Saturnalia. All the masters became slaves
and all the slaves became masters under his rule, which of
course didn't last very long lower class, but eventually it
changed. Like all things the the upper
classes sometimes kind of build walls around it.
Lower class citizens stopped wearing togas.
Then eventually middle class citizens stopped wearing togas.
Eventually only the highest classes started wearing them,
and eventually only on special occasions, and it started to
spread more variety. Instead of the plain white
woollen standard, it started to add lots of colors and styles
for different events. There was like party toga and
wedding toga and inauguration togas and all these things.
No longer were they only woollen.
But you didn't want it to be silk because that's too feminine
and too Eastern. So togas are supposed to be
manly. So despite the colors and all
the things, they still had to be manly.
And you couldn't be too ostentatious or feminine.
The the poet Virgil wrote Romans, Lords of the World and
the toga wearing people. So it's definitely drawing a
distinction between toga wearing people as as better as some sort
of somehow superior, more civilized, Which, you know, I
would disagree with, but it certainly is certainly an
opinion that was held Augustus, AKA Octavian, right?
First Roman emperor. He was very socially
conservative. He wanted Romans to return to
the old school togas. He decreed that anyone attending
the theater in colored or dark or dirty clothing had to sit in
the back. The front seats were for people
wearing togas. So it was important not just for
like official events, but for just social events.
Kind of plain part of me that's like imagining some of the
social events I go to. Imagine if it was like people in
fits only at the front. If you're in casual clothes, if
you're in jeans and AT shirt, you will sit at the back.
I I think it's laughable and wrong, but I would be in the
fit, so I would I would like this policy.
Yeah, you got to see how things like this still happen to this
very day. You know there's black tie
events. And yeah, there are.
Ball gown parties. You got to you know got to wear
a costume. You know, like a lot less
restrictive and not so important, but but still that I.
Still think it's a difference between like this is a black tie
event only or you can wear what you want, but you will only sit
in a good seat if you're in a good tap.
Like there's a slight difference there that I really like.
Some clubs won't let you win if you're wearing a ball cap.
That's. True again, I think I'm used to
that policy of you can't come in.
I'm not. You can come in, but you got to
stand in the back. That's the that's the part that
we're not. Doing and it's.
It's interesting because a lot of times maybe you want there to
be a certain vibe or you want to look nice.
I I'm thinking about that that John Wilson episode where they
like he wasn't look like and he had enough fun at the MTV party.
You know, like you need to get out.
You're on. Dude, you don't look like you're
having a good time. You need to be like, yeah.
But, but, but also The thing is that a lot of times this is
racism in disguise. Like, you know, yes, your proper
dress is just really just, this is just how I'd buy culture
dresses. And this is considered hot.
You know, like fancy in my culture.
What was it in Curb Your Enthusiasm where where Leon he
like gets asked to like take off his do rag?
And. He's like, this is like an
Ascot, This is an. Ascot, you can't ask me to take
this off, so let's move on to the tow car for the comparison
now. So here is a quote to the first
time we ever hear about a tocar. It was the fringe on the tocar
that proclaimed a man's status. Danny had been told by Captain
Groslio in this cool green room atop the pyramid.
Two of the slavers wore tocar's fringe in silver.
Five had gold fringes, and one, the oldest, Grazdan, displayed a
fringe of fat white pearls that clacked together softly when he
shifted in his seat or moved an arm.
I love that phrase. The oldest Grazdan.
There's so many Grazdan's It's the most popular name.
It's it's necessary to to qualify that.
So this is definitely more fancy and effeminate for Romans, but
it's it's still the same idea a a garment that wraps itself
around you with nearly the same name, Tokar versus toga that
displays your status. Only the masters wear these.
It's a it's a slave master garment slaves don't wear this.
Probably a long, long history. This tokar has probably existed
for a long time. Unlike Rome, it's not gendered.
Although technically even Tokas weren't gendered originally, but
they did become that over time. In Slaver's Bay they're not.
You see women wearing tow cars and and men is wearing it as
well. It doesn't seem to matter.
But also, just like early Roman law, it's a law.
You cannot wear a tow car if you're not freeborn.
That's the law in Astapore. It's probably the law in marine
and young Kai as well, but specifically we only hear about
an Astapore, that krasnismo naclaus.
The first one is the first person we see to wear one.
He's very he was very doomed. Of course he his green, his it
was a sea green silk tow car. And I say was because it was
almost certainly burned with him because Drogon got him good.
Now he is shown holding it on like you have to keep one hand
on it to keep it on, which is just to show that you can do
that because you don't need to do any work.
I can. I can use one hand to hold my
garment up because I'm so rich that my slaves do everything
else for me. And in his other hand, a whip,
extremely symbolic. It tells you that everything you
need to know. Fancy garment and whip.
Like if you saw that if you saw fancy garment and whip, wouldn't
you think slave owner like that's just like just a scream
slave owner. But George is go ahead.
Depends on what club you're going into.
That's true. It might just be a BDSM thing,
yes. But still that person wants to
take a dominant role. It's still that that dynamic is
still called master slave a lot of times.
Yeah, it's still, it's still got that same connotation.
It's just it it also has, you know, consent embedded into it,
unlike real slavery. So.
But look how George uses it. This is something I think is
great. This is more than just a Roman,
A song of Ice and Fire peril. It is that also.
But this is just great writing, George, focusing on the tocar
and showing how it is both what marks them for death because of
the evil and also what makes them an easier target quote.
Then the Plaza of Punishment blew apart into blood and chaos.
The good masters were shrieking, stumbling, shoving one another
aside, and tripping over the fringes of their tocars.
In their haste, Drogon flew almost lazily at Krasny's black
wings, beating as he gave the slaver another taste of fire.
Eerie and Jiki Unchained Vissarion and Ragal, and
suddenly there were three Dragons in the air when Danny
turned to look. 1/3 of Astapore's proud demon horned
warriors were fighting to stay atop their terrified mounts, and
another third were fleeing in a bright blaze of shiny copper.
One man kept his saddle long enough to draw a sword, but
Jogo's whip coiled about his neck and cut off his shout.
Another lost a hand to Recaro's Iraq and rode off, reeling and
spurting blood. AGO sat calmly notching arrows
to his bowstring and sending them at tow cars, silver, gold
or plain. He cared nothing for the fringe.
Those last two lines, calmly notching arrows was bowstring
and sending them at tow cars, Not at people, at tow cars, not
at good masters, at tow cars. That's the symbol.
That's the thing that needs to die.
Silver, gold or plain. He cared nothing for the French.
What a great. That's such a good line.
I mean, that whole scene is incredible.
It's one of the most like raw. Yes moments of the whole series.
It's a great. You don't necessarily see it
coming. Every time I read it, it makes
me excited. Yeah, it's great.
And that did like peel it back down for Negrandis 2, just to
remind you of the fringe and the tow cars just.
Like. Pull those details in and put
you in. I'll go shoes for a minute.
It was, yeah. It's really great.
It's so good. Long after that, when she's also
beaten asked for entirely, she's claimed her Unsullied and
conquered marine because of its association with the master
slave relationship. Danny wants to ban the Tokar
outright, but she's talked into not only keeping it, but wearing
one herself, which is kind of like, yeah, I guess we got to do
that rabbit, you know? Dude, where are the rabbits?
Floppy ears. That's goes in with that whole
thing where she's got to be one of them to change them.
You do see it in a different light with the context of that
passage just now, though, right? It's almost like she's putting a
target on herself that she's become one of them, etcetera,
yeah. Yes, yes, absolutely.
And if you look it up, if you look up Tokar in the world, in
the Wiki of Ice and Fire People, it's it's typically like our
fandom. Every single tokar in the entire
series is mentioned because it's just and you and you look at it
as a list. It's like wow, that is a lot of
variety. Every single color and fabric
with gems and and all this other stuff.
Yeah. But you can see how it's like
the status is embedded in it. Like one of them had pearls on
his tow car. All of them could afford pearls
on their tow car. They're all insanely rich.
But but it's still there's a hierarchy in there.
Like no, you're not allowed. It would be presumptuous for you
to to wear pearls like oldest Grazdan.
You know when you're that old, you can wear pearls, you know,
So it's it's, it's embedded. There's definitely a hierarchy
in there. If it's not quite clear, but
it's there, you can sense it. Let's compare the two, since we
said Valyria and slavers may have a lot in common with each
with both have Roman influences and have things in common with
each other because one conquered the other.
And that's also why it's also the case with Rome and
somebody's places like Rome didn't invent this, but they
conquered the people that did and the two things kind of
merged. So instead of Rome having what
he did basically George took Rome's long evolution and gave
parts of it to to Valyria and parts of it to old geese and
kind of in reverse like the Roman Republic became the Roman
Empire in the real world and when Kingdom, Republic, empire
in the real world here it was more like old geese became was
the powerful empire and then Valyria like the Republic came
along and and overtopped them over a much longer period of
time. And like so many historical
parallels, don't look at it as a one to one.
It's more of a many to many similar things.
But that is how I think about it.
Valyria's Roman Republic overtook Geese's Roman Empire.
And I kind of guess they both started with kings.
You know, they both started with individual rulers that maybe
that wasn't the official title king, but it's how so many
ancient societies started. It's a reasonable guess, but not
an assumption we should be certain about.
Let's talk about Rome and the Great Empire, the Dawn, a nation
that preceded either Valyria or the Ghiscari, the Bloodstone
Emperor, was said to worship a Blackstone that fell from the
sky and that was led to the the betrayal and the blood betrayal
and which caused the Long Night. According to that particular
legend, there's other reasons for the Long Night and other
legends, but this is one of them.
Let me tell you of Sextus various Avitus Bassianus, AKA
Heliogabulus, AKA Elegabulus, which was the same name as her
Arab Roman Sun God. Yes.
This guy named himself after a God.
He was an Arab Roman himself, related to a royal Roman family
and the royal family of Syria. So he was royal on two sides,
and he was the Emperor of Rome as a teenager.
Yeah. He was assassinated by the
Praetorian Guard after only four years, in the year 222, which,
funnily enough, is exactly 100 years after the construction of
Hadrian's Wall began. And let me tell you why they
killed him. Well, he's part of why.
There were a lot of reasons. He flaunted a lot of Roman
religious and sexual traditions and which I have explained
earlier they were very conservative about.
And it's a major parallel here because that's what the
Bloodstone emperor was doing. He was trying to change their
religion, trying to start a new cult, a new form of worship.
He took an existing temple of Jupiter, which you know that's
Zeus, the parallel the same God, and switched it, called it the
Elegabalium Elegabalium. Ashay and I had a lot of fun
pronouncing, which housed A conical Blackstone that
personified the God. It fell from the sky.
Most archaeologists and historians believe this was a
meteorite. So an actual Blackstone that
fell from the sky. Yup, this is called a beteal.
Consider the word Bethel. Like Bethlehem, it's the Semitic
meaning House of God, or from the Semitic meaning House of
God, BAETYL. So it's it's best tile.
It's your most beloved TYL Bay Teal.
It is a sacred stone that was either endowed with life or gave
access to a deity. And yeah, meteorites.
I just want to make a quick joke.
I wonder if at the temple of Elaga elagabalium is blah blah
blah. Yeah, that's.
Where he lives, blah blah blah does live at the El Gabadon
also. Is Bateal what you did go with?
Is that your name for your new Baldur's Gate 3 character?
Elegabulus. No.
Didn't you go? Where did you say Batel?
Oh yeah, Bateal. Yeah, I did.
I took it.
I knew I had a Baldur's Gate character, an evil 1A, a Dark
Urge character called Bateal. He's Drow.
So the ancient historian Herodian writes quote.
A6 Horse chariot carried the divinity.
The horse is huge and Florida State white with expensive gold
fittings and rich ornaments. No one held the reins and no one
rode in the chariot. The vehicle was escorted as if
the God himself were the charioteer.
Elegabalus ran backward in front of the chariot, facing the God
and holding the horses reins. He made the whole journey in
this reverse fashion, looking up into the face of his God.
So this guy walked backwards in front of the chariot and the
Blackstone sat in the seat like this.
This this stone was like the driver of this chariot.
Yeah, the Romans thought this was weird too, even though their
version of normal would also look pretty weird when it comes
to religious rituals. No matter how you slice it
though, getting people to switch gods.
Tall task? Cough cough.
Stannis, Melisandre. Free poke.
You know, they're nothing like Elegabula, Stannis and
Melisandre, but they have this. They do have lots of aggressive
conversions, attempted or otherwise, on their resume.
It just doesn't go very well. Like forceful conversions.
Like the whole nature of belief is you have to believe it, you
can't. Like forcing someone to.
It just goes against the whole idea of faith and belief in the
1st place, right? Forcing it, yeah.
You know, this reminds me a little of that one Martin book,
or I don't know if it's the whole book, a short story, a
short book where these stones were sort of captivating people
and be directing them. And seven times.
Never kill man. That's it.
Yes. I I bet he took some inspiration
from this. The idea of how this stone is,
as this ruler under its control almost, you know.
Those were little black pyramids sent by the Rangans to fit
people's religious beliefs and make them fall deeper into
religious awe and zealotry. Yeah, it's really good story.
We talked about it during, I think, the packed episode of El
Ariridis. I'm not sure.
It was definitely one of our weirwood Children of the Forest
episodes. And we've talked about the
Blackstone and the great Empire of the Dawn episode, I believe
as well. I mean the Elegabulus part of
it. Anyway, the quote continues.
Here is more Ellegabulus craziness.
Ellegabulus forced senators to watch while he danced around the
altar of ellegabel to the sound of drums and cymbals, and that
each summer Solstice became a great festival to ellegabel,
popular with the masses because of its widely distributed food.
During this festival, Ella Gabelis placed Ella Gabel on a
chariot adorned with gold and jewels, which he paraded through
the city, after which he threw gifts into the Roman crowds.
I should have altered that quote to have it say ella gabel more.
Yeah, you should have. I mean, I really that was hard
for me to keep a straight face because of how silly we got
before the episode saying Ella Gabelis.
Also, I was cracking a smile as I read this, like really
struggling not to laugh. So it.
Was a temple of Ella Gabble next to the Tower of Babel, blah blah
blah I. Understand I should just call
him Gabby. Gabby.
I just call him Gabby. Gabby was, yeah.
What did I say before about Romans and how men had to be not
effeminate and all dancing around and adorning A chariot
with gold? This is not masculine in their
eyes at all. Nor is this stuff about the
changing of of sexualization. Yeah, this was unpopular with
Roman elites, not unpopular with the masses as it says because he
gave out food. He again, the bribery thing.
This didn't have to do with elections.
Because he was an emperor, he didn't have to be elected, but
he still it mattered. His popularity amongst the
people still matters. For his political career, we
have associated tales of human sacrifice along with Ella.
Gabel may not have actually happened because there was
efforts to make him look worse after the fact, even though he
looked pretty bad anyway. But he may have been getting
children from noble families and sacrificing them, which also
happened under the Bloodstone Emperor because there was human
sacrifice under the Bloodstone Emperor.
And it's an example of several things.
This, this tale story, it's a piece of Roman history that
doesn't necessarily sound all that Roman, right?
This stuff. It's like a Roman emperor did
this, but if you didn't attach Roman emperor to that, you
wouldn't guess it. You'd guess something else.
The name doesn't sound Roman. Yeah, it just wouldn't sound all
that Roman. It didn't originate in Rome.
It was. It came from Arab, from Arabia,
from Syria, and was brought over to Rome by an Arab Roman
emperor. So it's also a story that is
both true and scandalous without being embellished.
No, probably was also embellished at the time, right?
And even if it wasn't true, and we believe it is, it would still
be a great story worth telling. True or not, it's still a good
story, whether fictional or not. And that is the kind of thing
that could capture George's imagination.
George could read that and be like, I don't care if this is
true or not. It's a great thing for my world
building. It's more interesting, perhaps
because it is true, or sort of true.
But had this been entirely fictious, fictitious George
could have still borrowed it and we would still count it as Roman
influence, because there are a lot of people in Rome that would
have believed this stuff at the time.
If it was told it was propaganda told during Roman times, then it
would have been a belief held by a lot of Romans.
So that's just kind of an interesting little meta analysis
of Roman influence doesn't have to mean truth.
Influence doesn't mean it doesn't have to come from
accurate history, right? I mean, the National Enquirer
influences people. You know, tabloids influence
people, you know, and TV influences people.
So let's talk about Rome on television.
That's where a lot of things just kind of get glossed over,
where truth or things that are commonly believed get
perpetuated in place of things that are more accurate because,
well, it wouldn't be as fun on TV if we told the real story.
And yeah, the mega influence of Rome in the real world has led
to countless productions. Books, movies, shows, games, you
name it right. There's two major influences
that we'll discuss here, both of them TV shows.
The 1st is a great example of the point that the true story
isn't often the influential one. The Roman author Suetonius is
considered kind of sketchy at best.
He's likened to an ancient tabloid writer because George
laughs about how Suetonius wrote some extremely raunchy, gossipy
pieces with no source or corroboration of any kind.
And he compares Suetonius to mushroom.
Right on. Yeah, there you go, George.
That's awesome. So it gives you kind of an idea
of what kind of focuses on this particular author had.
And George's like, yeah, I know this stuff is probably made-up,
but I'm going to use it. It's great.
It's good stuff. It's it's it's good fodder for
my story because it's just clever.
And whether it was happened or not doesn't matter.
Before going on to point out that Suetonius version is what
also inspired Robert Graves to write I, Claudius, which is the
TV first TV show we'll talk about.
But this is one of those rare examples where George was more
influenced by the TV adaptation of I, Claudius than the books.
He, of course, has consumed both.
So let's talk about I, Claudius. The show is framed as Emperor
Claudius, who was the 4th Roman Emperor telling his biography.
So it's like a framing device where he's old and dying.
I mean not he's not like on his deathbed, but he's old and his
he knows his time is shortish. So he's writing a biography
dictating a biography. So he's telling the tale of his
family, and his family is Augustus and Tiberius and
Caligula and Livia and lots of these famous names.
Agrapina, lots of famous Roman names.
And Claudius's own ascension to power is kind of similar to
Aegon, Unlikely because he was not considered a candidate.
He was very far down in the line of succession.
He has physically some things in common with Bran and Tyrion had
some had a lisp which made people not take him
mysteriously. He had a limp and he was a
scholar. So.
So it's kind of like Maester Eamon in that sense where he was
a historian and that was kind of where his his focus was.
His family didn't like him that much because he was too honest
in his writings, historical writings.
He wasn't like favoring to his own family.
He more just told the truth and they didn't really like that,
which kind of made him unpopular with his own within his own
family. And as I said before, you know,
there was no line of succession directly, but there was a bunch
of people who were candidates to be the heir to succeed Caligula.
And there wasn't really a custom developed yet like this was he
was the 4th emperor. So yes, it's customary for the
Roman Emperor to choose his heir, but that custom was brand
new at this. Point even sometimes the custom
still takes time to develop all its protocols and etiquettes and
yeah, trappings, traditions and so on.
And but Roman adoption was well established at that point.
So even you could adopt people into the imperial family, you
could adopt people into a noble patrician family.
So why not the imperial family. Most of the show is flashbacks
then of course because he's telling the story of his family
and his own history. So and it's start, it's
basically the the time period is just after Caesar's
assassination to his own reign which of course 4th emperor.
So we're talking about you know about 100 years span everything
in between Augustus reign was really long.
It was a 13 episode miniseries. It aired back in 1976 to 1977.
The books were written start starting back in 1934.
So quite a while ago. George himself says that George
Baker, who played the actor, who was the actor for the the role
of Tiberius, who was the 2nd Roman Emperor and was, you know,
Claudius, was around Tiberius a lot.
George says that Tiberius is a big influence on Stannis quote.
Baker was one of the unsung heroes of I, Claudius.
Derek Jacoby and Sean Phillips got an incredible amount of
praise for their portrayals of Claudius and Livia deservedly,
while Brian Blessed and John Hurt were already well
established and well recognized. But I never felt Baker got
nearly enough attention for his Tiberius.
A thankless role since the character was so unlikable, but
one that he performed brilliantly.
There's a lot of his Tiberius in my Stannis, for what it's worth.
George would later add that Stannis is righteous and
Tiberius isn't. That's one major difference
there, as Tiberius isn't like about doing the right thing.
He was more about doing things and he was aggrieved.
He fought a lot of battles, fought a lot of wars for his
family and didn't think he got enough praise for it, didn't get
thanked enough, was very bitter about it.
Does sound like Stannis. That's that's familiar for sure.
I. Wonder if Stephen Delaney is
aware of this. I wonder if he watched I,
Claudius to to play Stannis. You.
Know it's possible, Stephen Delaney said.
He was very confused about his, about Stannis, about his role.
He's like, I don't, I don't understand this character, so
that might have helped. So here's a quote from I,
Claudius, the book the short one.
Tiberius never gave his men a smile or a word of praise, and
often overmarched and overworked them.
Let them hate me, he once said. So long as they obey me.
You could definitely hear Stannis saying that I'm pretty
much. Stannis has said that, like,
just just in different, slightly different words, right.
Tywin and a few other leaders are like that too.
But you can see why George specifically singled out Stannis
is the one who most fits that. Nina also points out that the
story of Sarah Targaryen is very similar to Augustus and Julia
from I, Claudius, because Augustus was a lot like Jehari's
sexually conservative, wanted his daughters to be all chaste
and virtuous. And so did Augustus want that
about Julia. And Julia was not about it, just
like Sarah was not about it. There's like, Nah, I want to.
I want to do my thing. I want to be.
I want to get out there and have some fun.
And Augustus and Jeharis didn't like that.
So overall, I, Claudius is absolutely jam packed full of
intrigue, violence, ambition, powerful people doing callous
things. And of course, incest.
Yes, you know, there's of course there's incest.
We've talked about the Accursed kings of bajillion times on the
show for good reason, and George loves it.
He's called the Accursed Kings the French, I Claudius.
So there you go. Nice, nice comparison.
But two things that he loves. He says he's seen I, Claudius at
least 20 times. The last time maybe being during
COVID, he definitely said he watched.
During COVID, he found out that one of his assistants hadn't
seen it, so they watched it all together.
Yeah, that's often how you end up seeing something 20 times is
you're like, what? You haven't seen that?
Let's watch it together. And you get to vicariously live
through someone else, which is one of my favorite experiences
I've ever had, which is just reliving my favorite shows or
someone else love it. It's also worth noting George
did a lot of work in TV, so the idea that he would have been
influenced by TV is not surprising.
TV shows have writers and they also get to incorporate acting
and editing and all these other elements of, I don't know, art.
So the the idea that he would be influenced by TV shows as much
as books doesn't surprise me. And I think it's good, you know,
he gets a better feel for how to organize this story and put
imagery on screen. And it's not surprising that his
shows trans. His His books translate well to
shows because, at least subconsciously, he's presenting
it the way that we have for generations been presented.
Literature, you know. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that.
Well said so, And he says it still holds up after all this
time. He says it's still worth
watching because what makes it good is the writing and the
acting. Yeah, there's like nothing to do
it all with production. It's a it's a production wise,
it's bottom of the barrel. But he says.
It's like a play. It's like they're just filming a
play, exactly. Like he says, you can see like
the columns move and flap in the air when people pass them by.
And you know, because it's just a stage, it is a stage
production, but it doesn't matter what the acting is.
Just so good that who cares? And and you know, I I get that.
So I have seen it technically, but I was so young when I saw it
that I remember so little of it. I'm going to have to check it
out again. 13 episodes again, folks.
It's pretty easy to find, apparently.
Anyway, there's a great little point here too.
George's love of I, Claudius expands into his personal life
in another way. Here's a quote.
This is from our interview with George.
To be clear as well, I mentioned I, Claudius that I loved, so we
had a cat named Augustus and we had a cat named Caligula, which
of course is Roman for little boots.
Paris. Paris is not as big a fan of
Rome as I am and refused to call him Caligula.
She always called him Boots, but Augustus and Caligula, sadly,
are both gone. Although Sid, my assistant,
who's been coming and going, that's the one he watched
Claudius with to be. Clearly, clearly had an
influence on her given his next part.
Without any inspiration from me, completely independently, she
has a cat named Caligula and a cat named Claudius, and that was
where I was going. I wanted to name our next cat
Claudius. I wanted to name a cat,
Messalina, for his wife. Paris threw down the gauntlet.
Said No, you've had your Romans. Now it's my turn to name the
cat. You had your Romans.
She went with a bunch of Irish names.
She likes her Irish history too. He should have said she put her
boot down and she put her caligulas down and said no.
Yeah, Paris didn't want her cats named after all these awful
people. Like, we just got through
telling you. Like these were intrigue,
violence, murder, incest, Yeah. This is heroic figures for her
cat names. Yeah, Irish women and whatnot.
Yeah, we've met SIDS, Roman Cats, we.
Have. Yeah, they're they're
bloodthirsty. You know, they came right at.
Us. Oh, I see in the chat.
April May. Hey, I had a cat named Caligula.
Little boots, I mean. I've seen lots of cats named
boots too, because they often cats often have boots.
They're they're fur, it's not iron.
So, like, it makes sense to me. Whether all of these cats had
boots or not, I don't know, but it it makes sense.
We have, yeah. Two of our four cats have boots.
So yeah, we don't. We're all about the boots.
Here's a great quote from George again about I, Claudius that
includes and A Song of Ice and Fire comparison.
It includes Patrick Stewart with hair in a minor role in a very
young John Hurt and things like that.
And it captures all of, you know, all of the reign of
Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and of course Augustus's wife Livia,
who's portrayed very, you know, she's like a smarter version of
Cersing. But it's a great show the but
the point is, it's framed because when you come into the
show, you see the old Claudius, he's emperor now.
He's in his old age, but he's writing the secret history of
his family to pass down the real story of what happened.
And you know, he opens every episode writing it, and then you
see the flashback, you see the episode.
So all of the episodes are framed by old Claudius.
Actually, the first two, I think he's not even born yet but old
Claudius was writing about that and he also brings this up in
his interview with us or our interview with him, in which he
he compared it to how he wanted that to be the framing device
for House of the Dragon. That same type of thing.
He he you would have Arch Maester Gildane telling that
story, telling the story he he was quite fond of it.
And you know, he mentioned not not many things do that these
days. Yeah, he said that.
That style is falling out of favor in Hollywood.
It used to be more common that framing device, but it's not so
popular now. Wes Anderson did it with that
series of short films he made last year.
He also start off with a person talking about what he's going to
tell you. Those short films are all Rodol
short stories, yes, for what it's worth as well.
So if you're curious, Patrick Stewart played Sujanis who was
the commander of the of the Praetorian Guard and had a
Kristen Cole ish type role where he moved higher up and got more
and more involved in politics, which a bodyguard really
shouldn't be doing, you know, But it happens, he says It's
probably in his top five shows of all time.
George does. It's actually number 75 on IMD
BS all time top 250 voter list which places it a heaven 11
spots ahead of HB OS Rome. Shout out to Kelly Vella on
Tumblr. Nina shared her posts with me
and a lot of what IA lot of this detail came from there.
This person had put together a lot of this in one place which
made it really easy for me to research.
I found some of it before and then Nina's like look all of
it's here like oh look at that. So thanks to Kelly and thanks to
Nina super chat from ray ciphers or sifers Sorry if I said that
wrong. The headpiece Rainier is wearing
when she is officially made bysters heir looks like a Roman
Stephane. A woman's crown scene on old
coins and statues. Yeah I remember at the time a
lot of people pointed out how that looked very Byzantine.
Byzantine is but Roman Empire is was.
The Byzantine Empire came from the Roman Empire when it split
in two. So yes later Roman period that
that can be considered. I agree.
Good catch Ray. Let's move on to the HB OS Rome
in 2005 in in Albuquerque. A question was submitted by
Oathkeeper and to George and according to this rundown,
George discussed the HBO series Rome and said he hadn't watched
the finale but he had a feeling Caesar might die.
You know, spoiler, he demands that everyone get HBO because of
the quality of their shows. He compared Rome to HBCAABCS
Empire, which he said sucked. Same story, but done.
Really stupid. George actually wasn't as big a
fan of season 2 of Rome because it was very rushed, which it was
very rushed. They had to wrap it up.
They piled a bunch of history into a short period of time
because they knew the show was getting cancelled, so that's too
bad. Anyway, a similar question also
in 2005, asked by Science Fiction Weekly.
He was asked about the potential of bringing A Song of Ice and
Fire to screen. It would need to be HBO or
something like that. They're doing wonderful things
right now with shows like Deadwood and Rome.
Indeed. Deadwood by the.
Way yeah. Deadwood is really good.
I have recently rewatched Rome personally like as in finished
it and do that 2024 started in 2023.
I've probably seen it about four times, which is a lot, but not
as many times as George has seen I, Claudius.
And now while I, Claudius mostly covers the 1st 4 emperors and
the end of Caesar or the death of Caesar, Rome covered the time
like focused on before Caesar's death and just after it.
So it's a lot of overlap. Octavian is in both meaning
Augustus, so there's a lot of overlap Livia.
Julia come. Other characters.
So of course it also has Rome, HBO's Rome.
A lot of you, a lot more of you will have seen it than I,
Claudius. But so you know, and and
wouldn't be surprised if you haven't seen it, that it has
lots of intrigue, family drama, violence, ambitiousness,
powerful people doing callous things again.
And yes, incest. Both shows have incest.
Yep. No Dragons.
Though no Dragons, No, no, unfortunately, but but lots of
wolves, You know, the capital lion Wolf being such an
important symbol of Rome. The one who raised who raised
the she Wolf who raised Romulus and Remus.
She Wolves of Winterfell, you know, Etcetera.
Here is another quote. This one's pretty fun.
This is George talking about the crossovers between his show and
Rome. Game of Thrones is already using
two actors from Rome, Kieran Hines and Tobias Menzies.
But the casting on that show was marvelous, and I am a huge fan
of many of the other actors who appeared with them, including
Ray Stevenson, Polly Walker, Max Perkis, Carrie Condon, Ian
McNeese, Indira Varma, David Bamber, and yes, James Purifoy
and Kevin Mckidd. Whether any of these actors will
ever appear in Game of Thrones, well, that's not up to me, and
it's not that easy anyway. These are working actors, many
of them have other jobs and we already have a huge cast, so
budget is always a concern. So yeah, Heinz was Mance and
Julius Caesar as we said earlier Tobias Menzies was Brutus and Ed
Muir Tully and and so he said I never, I know, I won't know if
anyone else will ever be in the show And and one of them did
Indira Varma was in Rome and did end up in Game of Thrones.
She was Ellaria. She was Niobe in in Rome, and
she was Kevin Mckidd's wife. He was Lucius Varinas.
Now, Kevin Mckidd was a very, very popular fan cast as John
Connington, The seething rage of Varinas.
He's really good at playing a constantly angry guy, which is
perfect for John Connington. And he's a big muscular redhead,
which is also what John Connington is.
It was so perfect. And that fan cast has endured
over the years because nothing ever came to replace it.
No actual actor was cast to be John Connington.
So that remains in our memory as a perfect casting that was never
like overtaken by someone else being on the show.
He was never cast at all. I'm curious, those of you with a
fandom, how how many of you see Kevin Mckidd when you picture
John Coddington, 'cause I definitely do.
It was I I saw I honestly, there were very few alternative fan
casts in like gift sets, edits on Tumblr and stuff Back in the
day. It was all Kevin Mckidd.
Everyone was agreed. It was kind of amazing.
Yeah, Likewise, Ray Stevenson was a very popular fan cast for
Victorian and it and it looked even more perfect in hindsight
because he was amazing as Blackbeard in Black Sails.
And be like, yeah, just give him a different costume with that
same beard, maybe add a little Gray to it and unleash him.
You know it was, yeah. Aziz and I were talking about
this before the episode and I was saying, yeah, Ray Stevenson
was super popular. I did see a lot of that.
But for me, when I picture Victorian, I just don't even
picture a face. I picture like the helm.
I picture the big beard. I just, I picture, as I realized
a different Blackbeard a little bit.
I picture in the beginning of our flag means death when
there's just like Blackbeard with the glowing eyes.
You. Know there's just like no face.
And that's kind of my visual for Vic.
Yeah, I picture Victorian's kind of faceless, too, because I
picture him in his armor and that would cover at pretty much
everything. So you'd like the details of his
face. I would picture like, a beard
emerging from it, but like, yeah, his actual face would be
concealed. That's cool.
I try to not think about Victorian.
Not mentioned by George as well as Indira Varma is James
Faulkner. James Faulkner?
Well, he wouldn't have mentioned James Faulkner in this mention
because James Faulkner was not in the showroom.
But he was in I, Claudius as Herod Agrippa, and he was then
Randall Tarly in Game of Thrones.
So he's the only actor I know of that was in both Game of Thrones
and I, Claudius. And damn, wasn't he good as
Randall Charlie? That was.
How long was he back in I, Claudius?
I wonder how young he was back in I, Claudius.
He was pretty, yeah, pretty young cause Faulkner is 75 now.
Yeah, yeah, I looked like I just saw that last night.
He's still alive. Yeah.
Herod Agrippa was a Roman, was half Roman, half Jewish,
historical final king of Judea. Interesting character in the
show as well and in in real life.
One of Rome's showrunners was Bruno Heller.
He was one of the writers and showrunners of Rome on HBO.
He is now, or was developing the Sea Snake slash 9 Voyages show.
I don't know if he's still involved in it because it's been
switched to an animated version. The development and that
doesn't. I don't know if he's still
involved, but either way, that might be another connection from
from Rome into Game of Thrones stuff.
Now, earlier I said that George didn't like how season 2 of Rome
ended. He said he'd have to watch I
Claudius again to get the taste out of his mouth.
The ending was rushed, which unfortunately is kind of
foreshadowing for what would happen to his show as well.
Ending was was rushed. Yep.
And a lot of people felt like they needed to get the taste out
of their mouth by reading the books or something.
But I don't know. Your mileage may vary, but
that's certainly that attitude was out there at the time.
So as I said, surely we missed some Roman influence.
There's, as you can see, it's a huge topic.
Sean went so far as to say it could be a whole podcast, not an
episode, a whole podcast. So multidirectional, we couldn't
have caught it all. So if you caught something or
if, especially if you're doing a reread, if you're in the midst
of a reread us right now, we're about to start one.
Your mind may be freshly primed for this.
Just keep your eyes peeled. Keep your mind open for Roman
influences or other influences. We love to collect influences
and when we have enough of them, we make an episode.
This one was easy in terms of how much material there was.
Not necessarily easy to write it all.
It was a long document and had to put a lot of things in order,
had a lot of organization, a lot of reading, a lot of
researching, but it wasn't hard to find things to talk about.
There's a lot there. So if you also want to send us
influences from other topics that you think George is is in
his wheelhouse. We like doing episodes like this
and so do you all because you voted for this one, topics Moot
chose this episode. So thank you all for choosing a
topic that I really enjoyed digging into.
Yeah, send your questions and thoughts if you have them, not
just on this episode, but on any of our past topics or future
topics. Sean, you have picked out a
group of patron supporters whose names stand out to you.
Why don't you regale us with these fun names?
As always, I've got a a couple old and a couple new.
We've got the Bastard of the Bay of Seals, a friend of the
Night's Watch, commanding a ship made entirely of Weirwood.
By the way, That's cool as hell. Derek.
Dark first sword of House Blackfire Lord Donaris Poolar,
head of House Poolar, Lord of Amora and Warden of the South,
Sir Terran of House Dalvin Woods, Witch L And finally,
fellow Atlanton Lord Chuck Liz, Captain of the Droman
Nightblood, Destroyer of Evil. Is it Chuck?
Liz. Chuck Laz.
We usually say Chuck Laz because his name is Lazaro.
Yeah, so cool. Yes, thank you.
You can also get a fun nickname like this by signing up to join
us on patreon.com/history of Westeros.
We really appreciate your support.
The podcast industry has not been doing great lately.
It had, you know, the two steps forward, one step back thing
that a lot of rising industries have and we're in the step back
phase right now. So yeah, this would be a time
that your help would be even more appreciated than it might
otherwise be. We will keep it going, but we
would appreciate the help. Yes, trivia question.
I started the episode with a trivia question.
The question was what is the most common name in in Slaver's
Bay among the Gaskari? The answer is Graz Dan, which I
like to think of as like it's not, it's Dan, but with Graz
added on. So we know the name Dan, but
this is Graz Dan and it's kind of like Grazzi or Gracias.
So it's like a thank you. So this is a thankful Dan, which
is not the vibe you get from a slaving society.
But hey, the answer is Graz, Dan.
So I guess we don't know who the first Graz Dan is, we just know
who the first living Graz Dan is.
Right. Graz, Dan, the great, the the
apparently the founder of the the Ghiscari empire.
Kind of a Romulus figure, I guess, or maybe more of an
Augustus depending on what kind of government they had before
that, I don't know. Either way, an important figure
in history from a time so far gone that maybe they don't even
have the records of it. Because Olgis was destroyed by
Valyria. That may have sacked, a lot of
their records may have gone with it, and then whatever records
Valyria may have had was sacked even more thoroughly in the
Doom. Whatever the truth in those
records might have been, I bet there's still a mythology that
goes along with. It you're right.
And one that is pro Gras, Dan, if you're Ghiscari, certainly we
mentioned a lot of different episodes on Valyria in this one
because we have a lot of different episodes on Valyria.
We have their armies and wars. We have one on their just their
culture. We have different comparisons to
some Greek history and stuff we did.
We've done a lot of episodes on Deliria.
Guess that should be one of our playlists.
Yeah, Valyrian playlist. Good idea 'cause we also have it
on the Doom. The Century of Blood would be
relevant to that 'cause it's post Valyria just after the fall
of it. Great Empire of the Dawn is pre
Valyria and even that is somewhat relevant and it's
certainly directly relevant to the topics today, Blackstone
stuff and others. And that is a shorter list than
often I give you all. But there is more of course lots
of episodes that I just forget what crossovers they have with
current episodes. We do have, you know, over 400
episodes of history of Westeros, so I can't keep track of all of
it, but I do thank you nonetheless for being a
listener. I thank you for joining us and
helping us out and being part of the conversation.
Thanks as well to Nina who is a big part of the conversation.
Her notes and ideas are a huge part of almost every episode.
Our discussions are much better because of her input.
Thanks as well to Joey, Jesse Bran and Michael Klarfeld for
their assistance and creativity with music and maps and video
intros. That makes our show look so much
cooler and so much more professional.
We will see you all next time for another episode.
You know what to do in the meantime.
Valar Reridis None.