Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. History is merely a list of surprises, it can only prepare us to be surprised yet again, Game of thrones is mixed with historical truth and pure fantasy. Game of thrones is revolving around the aspect of historical fantasy.

In Game of thrones, fantasy plays a significant role by different leading characters like The Night king, The faceless man ( and Arya ), Bran stark, Daenerys, Melisandre.

Magic creatures like White walkers used in these imaginary world, supernatural animals like fire spitting Dragons, representing bravery and courage.

There are many symbolism used as historical fantasy, The night king has sent a message in the form of a dead young boy hung up with some dismembered limbs around him. When the White walkers are shown there have been some strange spiral pattern depicted on various scenes. All this adds historical fantasy to this work greatly.

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In simply, we can say that historical fantasy is a sub- division of genre of literature, music, film related to historical fiction.

We are going to analyze Game of thrones from the angle of history - To find out a fictional show, Game of thrones as historical fantasy. The entire outline gives us a view of Game of thrones is all about a pure historical fantasy, which draws everyone to the world of imagination with supernatural elements.

Literary analysis is very little known, George R.R Martin uses traditional literary devices such as themes, symbolism and foreshadowing.

There is some pop culture analysis about the historical background. So juxtaposing the historical fantasy with historical experiences is what needed to understand the mystery behind this work.

Historical fantasy

Disneyland, is often called a magic Kingdom because it combines fantasy and history, adventure and learning, together with every variety of recreation and fun designed to appeal to everyone. Like that Game of thrones as historical fiction about history that never happened, is flavoured with a dash of sorcery and spiced with dragons.

Dragons were used as supernatural animal spitting fire used as a weapon for Daenerys to tackle the Iron throne and gain the power all over the seven kingdoms. Usually dragons are a mythical creature, beliefs of dragons are different by region. In western culture since the high middle ages depicted it as winged, horned, four legged, capable of breathing fire. Dragons were believed to be naturally tied to magic in the world. That is why summer grew shorter and winter became colder and crueler. There were some literary sources and historical influence on Martin's dragons because in Tolkien's Middle- Earth, his dragons are terrifying and threat to the good people of fantasy England. In Anne McCaffreys, Pern books, her dragons bond with single rider and more magical properties than usual fire lizard. These sources greatly influenced and born Daenerys Targaryen, Aegon Targaryen, in the minds of Martin. In Game of thrones R.R Martin shows dragon as courage, bravery and bring fear to the eyes to other kingdoms because of the power of three dragons which creates huge fantasy to the spectators.

One of his strongest fantasy element was the white wakers, with blue eyes and terrifying image, we can be compared this with zombie creation because here dead restore to life as foot soldiers for the white army. Long ago they were an superhuman race same like spirits and elf that found in Irish and Scottish mythology. In this game of thrones, Martin showed them as one of the most dangerous villain and they animated very wildly as a whole.

The Red Woman

Next is the connection of power of apparently influencing events by using mysterious or supernatural forces in Game of thrones, God had messages for the faithful believer, so did the devil and demonic followers. In later Middle Ages, women's with mystical experience not allowed to become priests. Women's in this period were drawn into visions and prophecy.

Inspired from this Martin recreated Melisandre of Asshai, often referred to as the Red Woman is one of the complex and powerful character known as the Red priestesses in the religion of R'hllor, the Lord of Light, advisor to Stannis Baratheon to take over the Iron Throne. She had a special spell working potential that used again and again with time. She brings Jon back from the death after he was murdered b various members of the Night's Watch, lights the trenches in the long night during the Great war between the humans and the dead and her enchanted necklace gives her prolonged life and makes her look much younger. When she takes off the necklace, her older state revealed and she dies in the snow. She can see prophetic version of the future and have the ability to see vision in the flames. In game of thrones it is also showing the prevelance of red faith, because stannis always took the advice of this Red women, Melisandre worships the lord of light which is on the grounds of ancient Persian religion Zoroastrianism, the significance of this was the spiritual awareness and wisdom was through the medium of fire and also the worshipper's used to pray in the presence of fire. With all these statements we can come to conclusion that the character Melisandre and the faith in the Lord of the Light all these were the smart works of R.R Martin, the writer of Game of thrones, which adds slice of fantasy with historical concepts beautifully.

The Faceless Man

Martin portraits the faceless man as Magic Man, he serve many faced god and the trainer of Arya Stark to kill the people on her revenge list by using different face masks which enables her to fight for the people who took over her family entirely. Face mask itself put on creativity to the work, we could say that Martin might have got inspired the concept of Faceless man from Hashshashins: The Assasins of Persia, they were infamous for secretly murdering to eliminate the enemies, whose founder was Hassan-i-Sabbah who belonged to Nizari Ismailis. There were mentions about Assasins in the famous crusaders account of Marco Polo, a Venetian wanderer, describing about them creating fear in the minds of people. They were highly trained in sword fighting and the art of disguise, and generally extremely well educated and intelligent so that they could even be amoung the rich people and society. In order to eliminate their targets, the Assasins would carefully study the language and culture of their targets and observes their actions and understand them and they would even infiltrate the court or inner circle of the intended victim, sometimes serving for years as an advisor or servant; at an opportune moment, the Assasin would stab the person with a dagger in a surprise attack. In season 5, after a long voyage Arya reaches the city of braavos where she is trained under Jaqen H'ghar in the house of Black and White, to be a Faceless man an Assasin. She is trained under extreme and strict condition and at one point she even goes blind and asks to fight. As mentioned Assasins plan ver well and and observe their targets ver closely and studies their routine and they stab them with a dagger in a surprise attack similarly Aryas first assignment was to pose as a shellfish merchant to study a target known as 'The Thin Man'. Like this she observes her target many days but gets distracted while she sees a name on her kill list: Mern Trant and she follows him to a brothel and the next night she pretends to be another girl in the brothel and when he approaches towards her she quickl stabs him in the eyes and several times in the chest and slits his throat. Similarly, in season 6 episode 10, to avenge her family for the red wedding on which her family got butchered by Freys mens she gets into castle of walder frey pretending to be a servant and serves him his son's flesh baked and reveals her identity as Arya Stark b removing her mask and says 'The last thing you ever going to see is a stark smiling down at you as you die' and slits his throat.

Martin realising the need to make the character Arya to be a cold blooded Assasin he would have gone through many sources which details about Assasins and their history to learn their behaviour, the mode of killing and the way they get trained and all this might have inspired him in his work adding some elements of his own creativity and fantasy to it by giving them a name called faceless man, the idea to become anyone using the masks and many Faced God to worship where they get trained in the House of Black and white with full of many faces on the walls