Martin's view of Mediæval/Early Modern is qu dated – from his schooldays – ditto Tolkien's, also v much coloured by his ideologies, & both also v infl by mediæval literature – but at least they *thought* abt it. Rowling's 'mediæval origin' story for school is anachronistic, incl implausible names.
Oh I quite agree that people take too much credence from Westeros about the middle ages, like the Lord's right and so on. Of course, that was partially why GRRM did his own world rather than real history. But he still put a lot of work into his worldbuilding rather than sloppily hashing it together.
The same for Tolkien, I am sure. He was still working from Nordic literature. But the world is still there. It's still a very developed world. Even in The Hobbit you get a sense of the history that is there. Rowling set hers in the present day...ish... and is so sloppy with trying to worldbuild.
Yes. It's v slapdash & reliant on stereotyping.
Yes: and he also used mediæval *literature*: Daenerys's storyline owes a lot to Kriemhild's in the Nibelungenlied.
Oh god, I love meeting someone like you! I thought the exact same thing when I saw the first episodes of Game of Thrones in 2014! And that comparison of Daenerys and Kriemhild I think led me to this blog for the first time... racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/c... Following you now!
Yes: her relationship with Khal Drogo is essentially a blend of the Siegfried & Etzel/Attila storylines.
Jon's killing of her in the TV version paralleled Hildebrand killing Kriemhild in the Nibelungenlied.
Another literary thread is the assassination of Renly by his brother: this owes a lot to the Spanish romance traditions around the death of Sancho II at the Siege of Zamora. Brienne of Tarth's rôle parallels that of Sancho's standard-bearer, Ruy Diaz ('El Cid').
She has weird deterministic attitudes (the ludicrous 'sorting hat', labelling 'personality types' in childhood), also re: ethnicities – the diff schools depicted, also her performance on WDYTYA? re: her Alsace ancestry.
it also gets worse the more she expands it - like the entire world only has a handful of wizarding schools, and how wizards have creepy AF attitudes towards other people. Going from "whimsical kid's book" to "trying to be serious and realistic" didn't do it any favors!
Indeed. And I think, too, it was a bad mistake to depict wizards as effectively 'a superior species', rather than regular humans who get trained with a skill-set.
also how they're so creepily ignorant of normal people - in book 1, sure, whimsical kid's stuff, haha, whacky. After that, then they're kinda, uh, creepy racial supremacists with a casual attitude towards mental and physical domination of others, because it's convenient and they can!
Did you see her WDYTYA? episode? Tears of relief when assured her ancestry was 'French' (despite Germanic names). No-one said France only first took Alsace in 17C, so before then… Cdn't understand why she was so hung up on this. It's changed hands several times, population has German-based language.
not seen it, no - sounds a bit strange though, as a lot of people are going to be broadly "European" in messy ways, with ancestors from proto-France/Germany/Italy/Spain/etc. in some mixture (or brits will be English/Scottish/Welsh in some combination)
She had a French grandparent, originally from Alsace, & she was really obsessed with being 'French' & desperate not to be 'German' – whereas Alsace is more a 'both/and' than 'either/or' as it just depends on when you stop the clock.
But she was actually in tears over it.
I just cdn't get into the books at all. Gave up on them. OK, I wasn't the target age-group (am abt same age as author), but other adults were enthusing & I cdn't understand why. They're just v bad on so many levels.