Behind the Scenes: 9 Historical Inspirations for Game of Thrones

Westeros is governed via a feudal system, with the head of state ruling from King’s Landing over the seven kingdoms, equivalent to vassal states or fiefdoms. Among the vassal states are the Kingdom of the North (ruled by the Stark family), and the Westerlands, ruled by the Lannisters, who have married into the royal Baratheon family. The vassal kings are liege lords to an array of minor nobility and their serfs. The former are frequently referred to as “bannermen” in the series. Because these vassals were once independent kingdoms, centuries worth of blood feuds and general resentment complicate their rule. Feudalism was the prevailing system of government in western Europe from the 5th through the 12th centuries, providing Martin with a wealth of historical documentation to draw upon.

There are definite echoes of ruthless Elizabethan spymaster Francis Walsingham in the character of Varys. Known as the “master of whispers,” he harvests information from a vast network of spies and informants and uses that capital to manipulate and coerce anyone that might be useful to him, be they commoner or royal. Like Walsingham, Varys claims that his machinations are for the good of the realm. Perhaps, indeed, they are. Their willingness to arrange er, permanent solutions to troublesome Scottish and Targaryen queens, respectively, certainly testifies to the lengths to which they’ll go to preserve political stability.

The tribal Dothraki society that Daenerys—"mother of dragons"—marries into lives a nomadic lifestyle centered upon the horse, which provides transportation, food, and spiritual inspiration. The Dothraki are somewhat analogous to the Mongols, an extant ethnographic group, most of whom live in the country of Mongolia and China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. For centuries they were nomadic pastoralists who were known as superb horsemen and traveled with their livestock over the grasslands of Central Asia. Traditionally they organized their society into clans and tribes, much like the Dothraki. The Dothraki may even more closely resemble the warlike ancient Mongols, as they existed under Genghis Khan—who extended the Mongol empire from China to western Russia.

While incest is usually taboo in Westeros, that hasn’t stopped Cersei and Jaime Lannister from carrying on an affair that resulted in three children (who are passed off as her husband Robert’s). Though Cersei and her brother are forced to hide their forbidden love, not all cultures were so prudish. The Targaryen family, to which Daenerys belongs, is known for preferring incestuous marriages. In real life, Arsinoe II and her brother Ptolemy II married and ruled Egypt together, establishing a precedent of "brother-loving." The couple were known as "Philadelphoi." The custom was already well-established in Egypt prior to Greek arrival and the Philadelphoi may have observed the custom as a means of subsuming Egyptian culture into their own.

The Night’s Watch garrisons the Wall, a massive fortification separating Westeros from the savage hinterlands of the north. The wall is equivalent in significance to the Great Wall of China, which was intended by the various Chinese dynasties that built and expanded upon it to repel nomadic invaders. Martin actually based the structure on Hadrian’s Wall, a barrier erected by the Romans in Britain to fortify their settlements there. Though the Wall in Game of Thrones is magical and made of ice, it has not proved much more effective than the Great Wall, which was breached on a multitude of occasions.

Torture is never off the table in Westeros, so to speak. One Game of Thrones episode had the internet a-twitter over a savage scene of torture in which a rat is forced to eat through the victim’s stomach (a form of torture that humans, sadly, had dreamed up way before the invention of television), and a gruesome scene of castration had viewers gasping. Records of torture stretch back to ancient Egypt and Greece; most countries abolished it, at least nominally, prior to the 20th century. (For a more in-depth discussion of torture methods, check out our list Cruel and Unusual Punishments: 15 Types of Torture.)

Ned Stark, who decapitated an errant Night’s Watchman in the first episode of the series, himself lost his grizzled melon at the behest of King Joffrey in the penultimate episode of that season. Capital punishment is widely seen as a just and efficient means of punishing certain transgressors in Westeros, and a trial isn’t always necessary. The "eye-for-an-eye" dictum has been enshrined in the codes of most societies, starting with the Code of Hammurabi, though debate over the ethical nature of killing criminals continues to rage.

In Game of Thrones Dragons were thought to have been extinct for over a century until Daenerys Targaryen hatched a trio of them in a magical conflagration. The members of House Targaryen were once known as skilled dragonriders. In our world, dragons have been variously considered representative of good and of evil throughout history. The Chinese held dragons in high esteem, using one as the emblem of the royal family, while the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans feared and reviled them, a perception that remained into Judeo-Christian times, when dragons became emblematic of sin.

At the beginning of the series, the Stark children find the corpse of a dire wolf and adopt her orphaned pups. Those that survive become loyal companions and defenders of the Starks. These Pleistocene creatures, though heftier than modern grey wolves, were not nearly as massive as they are shown in the series. Now extinct, they are among the most common prehistoric animals pulled from California’s La Brea Tar Pits.