Iron, Fire and Ice Quotes

“greatest Byzantine general, Belasarius, had already conquered the region”
― Ed West, Iron, Fire and Ice: The real history behind Game of Thrones

“Varys put it: “Why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?”
― Ed West, Iron, Fire and Ice: The real history behind Game of Thrones

“Game of Thrones is not history, and as historian Dan Jones put it: “It is alt-history, not a reconstruction of a known past. It is historically literate without ever claiming to be history.”1 And yet there are some clear and obvious historical parallels, and one that George R.R. Martin has spoken of is between Tywin Lannister and King Edward I. Like Tywin Lannister, Edward “Longshanks” was the ultimate medieval warlord,”
― Ed West, Iron, Fire and Ice: The real history behind Game of Thrones

“Northern France, aside from Brittany and western Normandy, is a huge wheat-growing region, among the most fertile areas for this staple on earth, along with England and Denmark.13 Wheat is the best natural produce for state-formation, being easy to tax and record, so it aided the creation of strong centralized authorities with functioning revenue-raising powers.”
― Ed West, Iron, Fire and Ice: The real history behind Game of Thrones

“English medieval history is impossible to understand without France, which exerted a huge cultural influence over its northern neighbor well into the modern era, and so the story of the Seven Kingdoms is not just that of England but rather Britain, France, and Spain in one. In Martin’s words, “Westeros is much much MUCH bigger than Britain. More the size (though not the shape, obviously) of South America.”9 Although the Seven Kingdoms all speak the same language, they are varied in their ancestry and racial appearance, while the geography varies hugely; so, while the five most northerly kingdoms correspond to Britain, the Reach strongly resembles France and Dorne is Moorish Spain. Paris is the model for King’s Landing, and in the books appears far less tropical than in the television series, which is filmed in Malta and Croatia.10”
― Ed West, Iron, Fire and Ice: The real history behind Game of Thrones