Worlds Without End Blog

Okay, we waited a week to make this post, so we think we’re out of the most egregious parts of spoiler territory, and besides, WWEnd is a community of readers. Many of us have known about the Red Wedding for 13 years.  That said, if you haven’t seen last week’s episode and haven’t read the books, go correct that error and then come back.

Whenever I come across a plot point in Game of Thrones, the first thing that goes through my mind is “where did that come from?” It’s impossible to look at the broad strokes in Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire without recognizing The War of the Roses right away, but elements of this series are, in fact, cherry-picked from many different parts of history: ancient, medieval and modern.  So when I experienced the Red Wedding I immediately wanted to know where Martin lifted that particular atrocity.  Entertainment Weekly asked that very thing last week in their interview with the author.  He answered:

The Red Wedding is based on a couple real events from Scottish history. One was a case called The Black Dinner. The king of Scotland was fighting the Black Douglas clan. He reached out to make peace. He offered the young Earl of Douglas safe passage. He came to Edinburgh Castle and had a great feast. Then at the end of the feast, [the king’s men] started pounding on a single drum. They brought out a covered plate and put it in front of the Earl and revealed it was the head of a black boar — the symbol of death. And as soon as he saw it, he knew what it meant. They dragged them out and put them to death in the courtyard. The larger instance was the Glencoe Massacre. Clan MacDonald stayed with the Campbell clan overnight and the laws of hospitality supposedly applied. But the Campbells arose and started butchering every MacDonald they could get their hands on. No matter how much I make up, there’s stuff in history that’s just as bad, or worse.

Incidentally, Stacy Conradt (at This Week) dug up this Sir Walter Scott quatrain, describing the Black Dinner:

“Edinburgh Castle, toune and towre,
God grant thou sink for sin!
And that e’en for the black dinner
Earl Douglas gat therein.”

Here’s the rest of that Conan interview, which includes a similar explanation:

The three takeaways I get from this:

1. Martin’s goal in killing main characters comes as a reaction to reader beliefs that a protagonist is never truly in danger. It is the “anyone can die” trope, which he has mastered. Is there any reader who doesn’t truly fear for ANY character who appears to be in danger? Certainly not this one.

2. HBO is far more ruthless than Martin himself.  They killed four more characters than Martin did! What happens if one of those “dead” characters becomes pivotal in the books?

3. While Mr. Martin admits to losing some readers as a result of the Red Wedding, he believes he has gained far more.  That sounds right to me. On HBO, the same trend appears to be holding, as last week’s gruesome episode saw a bump in ratings.

Dorothy Pomerantz at Forbes naturally takes a more fiscal view of HBO’s penchant for killing characters:

What happens on most TV shows is the cast is paid a modest (by TV standards) amount the first season unless there are any big celebrities on board. Then, as the show starts to succeed, the cast starts to demand more and more money and more of the lucrative syndication dollars. The cast members start to have serious leverage and they use it. We’re currently working on the earnings numbers for our Celebrity 100 list and the stars of Friends still rake it in even though that show was canceled in 2004.

As these books were written long before HBO picked them up, such financial considerations were not part of Martin’s equation.  Still, I’m not sure how I feel about future story-lines being driven by actor salaries. Accountants don’t necessarily make good screenwriters.

Gus Mastrapa (over at Geek Empire) points out the difference between how readers and viewers experienced the slaughter:

Nobody was watching when we got the bad news. We were up late devouring A Storm of Swords way past our regular bedtimes. Or turning pages bleary-eyed on a cross-country flight. There was no-one around to watch our faces turn pale as we turned the page. Nobody heard our gasps. I read the words but didn’t digest them until chapters later, when I was forced to go back and read the whole passage again to make sure I wasn’t crazy. Yes, that did happen.

Tasha Robinson at A.V. Club sees a silver lining in Martin’s work:

I have a long-brewing theory that Martin is the world’s most cynical romantic. I’ve never yet read a Martin novel or story that ended in utter despair for any character who hadn’t thoroughly earned it—and I’ve read him extensively, from his 1977 debut novel, Dying Of The Light, to his many short-story collections and the entire Song Of Ice And Fire series. His work has always embraced bleakness, loneliness, and hardship, with tough-minded people muddling through traumas that perpetually threaten to break them. His protagonists rarely get exactly what they want; often, they can consider themselves lucky if they become wise enough to realize they wanted the wrong thing. His characters often make hard, ugly choices to survive, but those choices make them stronger and fiercer, and more capable of protecting themselves from the hatefulness of the predatory worlds they live in.

I love this analysis, because it dovetails with something I’ve articulated for years: It takes a romantic to write about despair.  After all, why describe injustice unless you believe your words have some power to curb it? Martin isn’t just a cynic. He’s someone who seeks to rouse our better angels from the slumber that obsequious optimism puts us in. He is a whistle-blower, come to alert us to horrors that exist not in his imagination, but in human nature. Ignoring those aspects of ourselves isn’t positive. It’s unjust. Seen in that light, Martin’s project is more optimistic than all of the fairy tales of our youth put together.

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Rico enthroned at Worldcon

Posted in Film and TV | Tags: Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin, Television