by Ed West
10. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/black-death-plague-spread-by-dirty-humans-and-not-rats-study-finds-a3741411.html.
11. Jean de Venette’s Chronicle of the Hundred Years War (although not everyone is sure he wrote it).
12. Frederic C. Lane says plague killed 60 percent of Venice, or 72,000 people.
13. One possible legacy of the plague is the folk song “Ring a Ring a Roses,” the children’s rhyme that ends ‘we all fall down’, although this is heavily disputed and many people think it originated in the nineteenth century. This Plague link only appears after World War Two.
CHAPTER 16
1. Lewis, David Levering God’s Crucible.
2. Brown, Peter The Rise of Western Christendom.
3. Jordanes’s Getica.
4. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
5. A Clash of Kings.
6. Clements, Jonathan The Vikings.
7. Wilkinson, Toby The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.
8. Goldsworthy, Adrian The Fall of the West.
9. Parker, Philip The Norsemens’ Fury.
10. Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
11. Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
12. Pye, Michael The Edge of the World.
13. Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
14. Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
15. Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
The Army of the Dead, or das germanische Totenheer, was according to Offo Hofler’s 1934 book Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen (Secret Cultic Societies of the Germanic Peoples) ‘the mythological reflection of real warrior fraternities operating in the Iron Age among the Germanic peoples.’ From Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
16. Price, Neil S. The Viking Way.
17. Ibid.
18. Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus.
19. http://www.electrummagazine.com/2017/04/neanderthals-scandinavian-trolls-and-troglodytes/.
The grave of a female Viking warrior was supposedly discovered in September 2017, but experts treat it with skepticism https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/have-we-finally-found-hard-evidence-for-viking-warrior-women/.
20. A Dance with Dragons.
21. A Feast for Crows.
22. This, of course, could have been a later rationalization after Ethelred’s disastrous reign.
23. A Feast for Crows.
24. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
25. Parker, Philip The Norsemens’ Fury.
26. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/03/10/one-million-brits-viking-descendants_n_4933186.html.
27. Iceland’s is older, but did not function for many years.
CHAPTER 17
1. ‘Carolyne Larrington: there’s no place for the High Septon on the Small Council, no communal prayers within the palace, no regular attendance at the equivalent of mass for the nobility or the knightly classes.’
2. Mortimer, Ian A Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England.
3. This comparison is made by Carolyn Larrington. Among the other masters of the English middle ages were Eadmer, William of Malmesbury, Symeon of Durham, Henry of Huntingdon, Orderic Vitalis, William of Newburgh, Gervase of Canterbury, Ralph of Diceto, Roger of Howden and Ralph of Coggeshall, men who provide the bulk of sources we rely on.
4. Bartlett, Robert England under the Norman and Angevin Kings.
5. Ibid.
6. Horne, Alistair Seven Ages of Paris.
7. Gies, Frances and Joseph Life in a Medieval Village.
8. Hibbert, Christopher The English, a Social History.
9. A Feast for Crows.
10. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
11. Ziegler, Philip The Black Death.
12. Ziegler, Philip The Black Death.
13. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
14. Ibid.
15. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
16. Ibid.
17. Gies, Frances and Joseph Life in a Medieval City.
18. https://twitter.com/douthatnyt/status/747584810693042176?lang=en.
19. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-201388/Gunpowder-Plot-ruined-city.html.
CHAPTER 18
1. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
2. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
3. Mortimer, Ian A Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England.
4. Crowley, Roger City of Fortune.
5. Ibid.
6. Reid, Peter Medieval Warfare.
7. Crowley, Roger City of Fortune.
8. Gies, Frances and Joseph Life in a Medieval City.
9. Martin, George R.R., Garcia, Elio M. Jr., Antonsson, Linda The World of Ice and Fire.
10. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
11. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
12. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
13. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
14. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
15. Crowley, Roger City of Fortune.
16. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
17. Crowley, Roger City of Fortune.
18. Martin, George R.R., Garcia, Elio M. Jr., Antonsson, Linda The World of Ice and Fire.
19. http://kengarex.com/real-life-game-of-thrones-locations-you-can-actually-visit-23-photos/15/.
20. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
21. http://www.oldpicsarchive.com/23-most-unusual-and-strange-sculptures-from-around-the-world/2/.
22. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
23. Bergreen, Lawrence Marco Polo.
24. Crowley, Roger City of Fortune.
This sort of language test is known as shibboleth, from the Biblical story in which the Gileadites identified the Ephraimites by their inability to pronounce the word. Several such grizzly tests have marked groups down the years for death. If you’re REALLY interested you could learn more in my book England in the Age of Chivalry.
CHAPTER 19
1. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
2. Ibid.
3. Castor, Helen Joan of Arc.
4. Poole A.L. From Domesday Book to Magna Carta.
5. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
6. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
7. Bartlett, Robert England under the Norman and Angevin Kings.
8. A Clash of Kings.
9. A Dance with Dragons.
Of course a writer of fantasy is not constrained by this so it doesn’t matter, and no doubt GRRM is aware its myth. But it has appeared in historical fiction, too, mostly famously in Braveheart.
10. Alan MacFarlane’s The Origins of English Individualism changed the way many saw this period, making the idea of ‘peasants’ at the time seem obsolete.
11. This is a historical comparison made by Carolyn Larrington.
12. http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Smallfolk.
13. Braudel, Ferdinand The Identity of France.
14. Rosen, William The Third Horseman.
15. Kelly, John The Great Mortality.
16. Horne, Alistair The Seven Ages of Paris.
17. As Parliament described it in 1363.
18. Audley, Anselm Death Keeps His Court.
19. There hadn’t been a coronation for 50 years so almost no one would know what to do from first-hand experience. The coronation’s organizers used a book called Liber Regalis, written by Abbott Lytlyngton, which is still used for the coronation of British monarchs today.
20. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
21. Although mass break outs of medieval prisons were common, the prison at Bishop’s Stortford had breakouts of 16 in 1392, of 18 in 1393 and ten in 1401, all by ‘convicted clerks.’
22. Froissart’s Chronicle.
23. Ibid.
24. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
25. Or possibly Maidstone.
26. There is debate about the circumstances of Tyler’s death, and who drew a weapon first and why. Suffice it to say that the meeting didn’t go well for him.
&nb
sp; CHAPTER 20
1. Crowley, Roger 1453.
2. Crowley, Roger 1453.
3. Ibid.
4. McLynn, Frank 1066.
5. Petrus Gyllius’s De Topographia Constantinopoleos.
6. Larrington ‘a huge port city, owing its prosperity to the great guilds (the Ancient Guild of Spicers, the Tourmaline Brotherhood) and the merchant princes who trade in spices, saffron, silks and other exotic wares from further east beyond the Jade Sea.”
7. Martin, George R.R. A Clash of Kings.
8. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
9. http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Xaro_Xhoan_Daxos#cite_note-Racok 27.7B.7B.7B3.7D.7D.7D-0.
10. Martin, George R.R. A Clash of Kings.
11. Crowley, Roger 1453.
12. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
13. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
14. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
15. Allegedly. Quite a suspicious large numbers of such items were running around at the time.
16. From his Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana ad Nicephorum Phocam.
17. As Jaime Lannister put it.
18. Although she may also have been stabbed or scalded to death.
19. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
20. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
21. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
22. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
23. Bridges, Antony The Crusades.
24. Herrin, Judith Byzantium.
25. A Clash of Kings.
26. Jean de Joinville’s Life of St Louis.
27. http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/mar/24/game-of-thrones-realistic-history.
28. Herrin, Judith Byzantium.
29. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
30. Frankopan, Peter Silk Roads.
31. Herrin, Judith Byzantium.
32. Norwich, John Julius Byzantium: The Apogee.
33. Martin, George R.R., Garcia, Elio M. Jr., Antonsson, Linda The World of Ice and Fire This is at least according to Harald’s own sagas which were, in fairness, notoriously unreliable and filled improbable boasting, the sort of person who today would have claimed to be in the SAS.
34. This story may have not be 100 percent accurate, as with most of the stories told about Harald.
CHAPTER 21
1. The Thenns also acknowledge a lord and have discipline more typical of southern people, but in the television series, for simplicity reasons, they’re conflated with the cannibalistic ice river clans.
2. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
3. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
4. Ibid.
5. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
6. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
7. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
8. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
9. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
10. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
11. Froissart’s Chronicles.
12. Chronique de Religieux de Saint-Denys, contenant le regne de Charles VI de 1380 a 1422.
13. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
14. Ibid.
15. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
16. Tuchman, Barbara A Distant Mirror.
17. Hibbert, Christopher The English, A Social History.
18. Gies, Frances and Joseph Life in a Medieval City.
19. The Vierzeiliger oberdeutscher Totentanz, written around 1460.
CHAPTER 22
1. The World of Ice and Fire.
2. http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/viruses101/hiv_resistant_mutation?isForcedMobile=Y
3. http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Category/C91/P90.
4. Jager, Eric The Last Duel.
5. Bartlett, Robert The Making of Europe.
6. This is disputed by some historians, who suggest her father was actually quite respectable. At any rate people believed it, and later taunted William.
7. Borman, Tracy Matilda.
8. Wilkinson, Toby The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.
9. Bridgeford, Andrew 1066: The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry.
10. William of Newburgh.
11. Gies, Joseph and Frances Life in a Medieval Castle.
12. Gies, Joseph and Frances Life in a Medieval Castle.
13. Duby, Georges France in the Middle Ages. One suspects that the entire system of medieval European civilization was largely designed by Frenchman to ensure that their supply of wine was safe.
14. Duby, Georges: ‘Just as early medieval kings brought up the sons of their vassals, so the territorial princes made the sons of castellans welcome at their courts, and the castellans in turn took in and trained the sons of local knights.’
15. Gies, Joseph and Frances Life in a Medieval Castle.
16. The Ecclestiastical History of Orderic Vitalis.
17. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming The names of the Houses reflect their environment; alongside the dominant House Reed are House Fenn, House Quagg, House Peat and House Boggs’, named after artificial islands.
18. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
19. This is one story. In truth very little is known about him.
20. Clark, Gregory The Son Also Rises.
CHAPTER 23
1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264402032_From_Swords_to_Words_Does_Macro-Level_Change_in_Self-Control_Predict_Long-Term_Variation_in_Levels_of_Homicide With thanks to Ben Southwood – @bswud – for the hat-tip.
2. The Real History behind Game of Thrones documentary with George R.R. Martin and historians https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odw3Nxdqq4o.
3. D’Elgin, Tershia The Everything Bird Book: From Identification to Bird Care, Everything You Need to Know about our Feathered Friends.
4. Or suffocated beneath a featherbed. The net effect was the same at any rate.
5. Ackroyd, Peter Foundations.
CHAPTER 24
1. https://www.oddee.com/item_96620.aspx.
2. Gies, Frances and Joseph Life in a Medieval Castle.
3. Bartlett, Robert The Norman and Angevin Kings.
4. Tuchman: ‘As penetration by outsiders increased, so did snobbery until a day in the mid-15th century when a knight rode into the lists followed by a parade of pennants bearing no less than 32 coat-of-arms.’
5. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
6. According to French medievalist Karl Uitti.’
7. The closest translation would be ‘cunt’, con being a very crude word.
8. Jones, Terry Medieval Lives.
CHAPTER 25
1. Hackett, David Fischer Albion’s Seed.
2. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
3. Ibid.
4. Larrington, Carolyne Winter is Coming.
5. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
6. Goodwin, George Fatal Rivalry.
7. Rose, Alexander The Kings in the North.
8. Steven Attwell, Race for the Iron Throne, writes that in Westeros ‘the Umbers don’t get along with the Glovers; the Manderlys (who like to build public works at Stark expense), Tallharts, Flints, Karstarks, and Boltons are interested in expanding their territories at the expense of the Hornwoods; the Boltons have only been relatively recently brought under Stark control, and clearly require a strong hand to keep in check.’
9. Goodwin, George Fatal Rivalry.
10. From Walter Scott’s Poetical Works.
11. Hackett, David Fischer Albion’s Seed.
12. Hackett, David Fischer Albion’s Seed.
13. Saul, Nigel For Honour and Fame.
CHAPTER 26
1. History of William Marshal.
2. Asbridge, Thomas The Perfect Knight.
3. There is only one reference to this, Marshal’s own biography.
4. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
5. http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Keep.
> 6. The second most recent Gilbert Leigh, born in 1884, was from the Norman-descended Grosvenor family, the grandson of the 2nd Marquess of Westminster.
7. Seward, Desmond Demon’s Brood.
8. Frankel, Valerie Winter is Coming.
9. Castor, Helen She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England before Elizabeth.
10. http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/03/nyregion/the-royal-family-tree-sprouts-unofficial-limbs.html?pagewanted=all.
11. Seward, Desmond The Demon’s Brood.
12. Bradbury, Jim Stephen and Matilda.
13. Ibid.
14. Poole, A.F. Domesday to Magna Carta.
15. Ibid.
16. From his Historia Anglorum.
17. Ibid.
18. Bradbury, Jim Battle of Hastings.
19. Ibid.
20. https://ew.com/article/2014/04/13/george-r-r-martin-why-joffrey-killed/.
21. The Peterborough Chronicle.
22. Gies, Joseph and Frances Life in a Medieval Castle.
CHAPTER 27
1. The English account in the Gesta Henrici records: ‘For when some of them, killed when battle was first joined, fall at the front, so great was the undisciplined violence and pressure of the mass of men behind them that the living fell on top of the dead, and others falling on top of the living were killed as well.’
2. A Game of Thrones.
3. Some believe he was also a Lollard, like Oldcastle.
CHAPTER 28
1. Or at least it was suspected.
2. Jones, Terry Medieval Lives.
3. Gies, Frances and Joseph Life in a Medieval Castle.
4. Hibbert, Christopher The English, a Social History.
5. Larrington, Carolyn Winter is Coming.
6. Hibbert, Christopher The English, a Social History.
7. Bartlett, Robert The Norman and Angevin Kings.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. The evidence is mixed, however, and causal arrow not known.
11. Bartlett, Robert The Norman and Angevin Kings This is from an adventure involving Burnel the Ass, the main character in a fable written by Nigel, a monk in Canterbury.
12. In Britain alcohol consumption increased in the late 20th century, but is still nowhere near its 1800 rate, and has since declined sharply. In France the average person drinks one-third the amount of wine as 50 years ago.
13. Morris, Marc King John.
14. Horne, Alistair The Seven Ages of Paris.
15. Duby, Georges France in the Middle Ages.
16. For more—see my fantastic book 1215 and All That.
17. Clause 39: ‘No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any other way ruined, nor will we go against him or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.’ Again, buy my book on the subject.
