Fans of the Game of Thrones series know that it’s an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin’s series of fantasy novels. The series, set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos at the end of a decade-long summer, interweaves several plot lines. Continue reading to see what some of its characters would look like as cats.
The settings, characters and plot elements of the novels and the TV series are derived from a very broad range of periods in European history. A principal inspiration for the novels was the English War of the Roses (1455-85) between the houses of Lancaster and York, reflected in Martin’s houses of Lannister and Stark. Most of Westeros, with its castles and knightly tournaments, is based on High Medieval Western Europe.
The scheming Cersei, for instance, calls to mind Isabella (1295-1358), the “she-wolf of France”. But the series also combines such varied inspirations as Hadrian’s Wall (which became Martin’s great Wall), the fall of Rome and the legend of Atlantis (ancient Valyria), Byzantine “Greek fire” (“wildfire”), Icelandic sagas of the Viking Age (the Ironborn) and the Mongol hordes (the Dothraki), as well as elements from the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) and the Italian Renaissance (c. 1400-1500).
