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...And a further thought RE Game of Thrones: I think one major underlying issue that I'm having with the material is that it's about a lateral power struggle, for shades of distinction within a relatively narrow band at the very top of a hierarchy. We're focusing on the nobles as they duke it out amongst themselves, at the expense of giving a damn which of them might eventually win because we know that in any case it's not going to be us.
The thought that prompted me to bring this up is the realization that, within actual history, what often breaks up this sort of a lateral struggle is some unexpected external factor: consider the Black Death, which killed so many people that it was impossible to maintain a feudal surplus-labor-based economy and thus skills and knowledge became more vital, or the first World War, which also killed a lot of people and shook up the entrenched (...I SEE WHAT YOU DID THAR) class expectations of the societies thrown into the meatgrinder -- there were other factors at work, of course, but when half the Eldest Sons are dead and the survivors have spent time being ordered around by a baker, because he knows what he's doing, reassessments tend to happen.
There are some thinky-thoughts in that somewhere about Modernity, and the Enlightenment versus Romanticism, and the peculiar phenomenon of American fantasy writers obsessing on aristocracies rather than trying to come up with something more informed by the democratic experience, but I guess where I'm going with that right here is, is the "game of thrones" a red herring? IE, is all the maneuvering and People Behaving Badly really more of a setup for society hitting the fan when winter does come? Because if it is, that's actually pretty cool, but how many damn books of setup would I have to slog through first...?
The thought that prompted me to bring this up is the realization that, within actual history, what often breaks up this sort of a lateral struggle is some unexpected external factor: consider the Black Death, which killed so many people that it was impossible to maintain a feudal surplus-labor-based economy and thus skills and knowledge became more vital, or the first World War, which also killed a lot of people and shook up the entrenched (...I SEE WHAT YOU DID THAR) class expectations of the societies thrown into the meatgrinder -- there were other factors at work, of course, but when half the Eldest Sons are dead and the survivors have spent time being ordered around by a baker, because he knows what he's doing, reassessments tend to happen.
There are some thinky-thoughts in that somewhere about Modernity, and the Enlightenment versus Romanticism, and the peculiar phenomenon of American fantasy writers obsessing on aristocracies rather than trying to come up with something more informed by the democratic experience, but I guess where I'm going with that right here is, is the "game of thrones" a red herring? IE, is all the maneuvering and People Behaving Badly really more of a setup for society hitting the fan when winter does come? Because if it is, that's actually pretty cool, but how many damn books of setup would I have to slog through first...?
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