The Many, Many Inspirations for Game of Thrones


Cersei Lannister’s line from the first book/season of Game of Thrones sums up the theme of the series:
“When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”
This willingness to kill any character in the story anytime is one of the most appealing things (oh c’mon, this is fiction) of the series. On that front, author George RR Martin acknowledged the influence of The Lord of the Rings:
““The minute you kill Gandalf, the suspense of everything that follows is a thousand times greater, because now anybody could die,” Martin says. “Of course, that’s had a profound effect on my own willingness to kill characters off at the drop of a hat.”

What were (some of) the other inspirations for Martin?
  • “The Wall” was based on Hadrin’s Wall (Roman empire);
  • Lord of the Rings: ergo, a story world that is similar and different from the world we know + a “restrained use of magic” through the story;
  • Martin’s own TV writing experience: End every chapter in the books with a “revelation, a twist, or a cliff-hanger”;
  • War of the Roses + historical fiction: Inspired, not copied, says Martin: “simply rewriting history with the names changed has no appeal for me. I prefer to re-imagine it all, and take it in new and unexpected directions”;
  • Sci-fi and fantasy novels: Aha, that’s why we have both dragons and zombies in the same series!
  • World religions: The Lord of the Light, for example, is based on Zoroastrianism.


But it was only when I was reading this Nat Geo for Kids magazine for/with my 8 yo daughter that I realized why Martin (probably) named his book series not Game of Thrones but the highly uninspiring, almost ballad sounding A Song of Fire and Ice. Given how well travelled and diversely read Martin is, he probably knew these things about Iceland (which I discovered only via that magazine):
  • Iceland has sheep dogs known as “Dog of the Viking”, which don’t look all that different from the direwolves in his books;
  • There are ravens in Iceland, the bird-form that Bran takes;
  • It has crystal blue ice caves, that look similar to the land of the Wildlings;
  • Iceland is freezing cold (obviously); but also has volcanoes, hot water springs and geysers;
  • But the point that clinched it (to me, at least): Iceland is called the “Land of Fire and Ice”. So much cooler than being called “Land of the Rising Sun”, eh?


Still, Game of Thrones sounds so much better than A Song of Fire and Ice…

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