Winning the Game of Thrones: The Host of Characters and their Agendas (19 page)

     
Martin’s
Haviland Tuf
series from the 70’s and 80’s inspired many
Game of Thrones
names. The short stories, attached together as a novel, were rereleased from Bantam in January 2013 as
Tuf Voyaging.
 
Characters include:

v
Jefri Lion (Joffrey of House Lannister)

v
Jaime Kreen

v
Rikken

v
The planet Vale Areen (Vale of Arryn)

v
Celise (Lady Selyse)

v
“Ma Spider” (Varys the Spider)

v
Cregor Blaxon (Gregor Clegane)

Mythology and Religion

Bible

     
Aeron Damphair is chief priest of the Drowned God on the Iron Islands. Moses’s brother Aaron was chief priest of the Israelites.

     
Lot’s wife looked back while fleeing the cursed city of Sodom, and she became a pillar of salt. “Val stood on the platform as still as if she had been carved of salt. She will not weep nor look away” (V:137).

     
Jacob was born clutching the heel of Esau, whom he betrayed for his birthright and fought with all his life. Jaime was born holding the heel of Cersei – a rough time may be coming for them.

     
Stannis accuses Alestor Florent of trying to sell his birthright for a bowl of porridge, a reference to a similar scene between Jacob and Esau.

     
The new seven-part gods who are different aspects of a single one are “similar to the concept of the Trinity in mainstream modern Christianity,” one critic notes.
^[43]
Martin
 
has said the same in interviews.
^[44]
Much like Christianity in our world, the faith is a strong part of Westeros, from trial
 
by combat to casual expletives and sacred oaths.
The Great Sept of Baelor echoes great cathedrals of Europe.
The
High Septon anoints the king, and his support is essential for the monarchy. He himself echoes the pope or archbishop, with crowns, rings, and vestments of his office. Below him are Septons, brothers and sisters, sparrows, and so forth, much like the ranks of the church.
In the fourth book, the Faith’s emerging power
 
likely alludes to an era of religious warfare and violence ranging from the Crusades
 
to the Inquisition.

     
The world of public burnings,
proselytizing
and devotion to the “one true God” sounds Christian, but it is based more in Zoroastrian tradition: In ancient Persia
, Ahura Mazda was the lord of light and wisdom, ever-battling his dark counterpart Angra Mainyu. Likewise, R’hllor’s priests call him
“the Heart of Fire, the God of Flame and Shadow,” and pray he will save them from the Other and his darkness (II.20).
The word “Maegi,” source of the words “magic” and “magician,” comes from the Zoroastrians: The Maegi (the wise men who attend Jesus’ birth) were seers and mystics, and sometimes charlatans, echoing the red priests
 
from Melisandre
 
to Thoros
 
of Myr.

King Arthur

     
Much of the courtly love tradition, including trial by combat and the queen whose adultery brought down the realm, are made famous by King Arthur.

     
The Tower of Joy where Rhaegar takes Lyanna echoes the Joyous Garde where Lancelot takes Guinevere. Lancel Lannister is appointed to be the queen’s special knight, but he has an affair with her instead, like Lancelot.

     
There’s a tale that King Arthur’s father Uthor took the name Pen-dragon, head of the dragon, after he saw a dragon-shaped comet in the sky.
^[45]
A comet also heralds the start of Daenerys’s queenship and the birth of her dragons.