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A Song of Ice and Fire / A Song of Ice and Fire / Tidbits of English History

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KAH
User ID: 0541004 Feb 12th 3:33 PM
You know, I came over this nice medieval history site, while looking for some background on the battles of Hastings and Stamford Bridge.

I picked some tidbits that might have inspired GRRM's Westeros. I cannot recall if this have been touched upon before?

England and the Continent being connected during the last Ice Age, with the Iberians venturing over, and the 'bridge' later opening up for the English Channel. Doesn't this mind you of the First Men (the Iberians) and the Broken Arm (before it was broken :P )?

And then there was explicit mention of the Celts invading, Celts who had more advanced weaponry, since their culture had reached the Iron Age, while the Iberians were still backwards 'Bronze people' :o). There's the invasion of the Andals for you.

There were also mention of 'the heptarchy' - Seven Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms...

Ran
User ID: 0867924 Feb 12th 3:58 PM
Mrm, that's interesting. I always connected the original inhabitants of Britan to ancestors of the Celts -- although, certainly, there were Celts in the Iberian peninsula once.

The heptarchy is probably more concidence though, I should think. It would have worked better if there had been dozens of little kinglets throughout England, thus mirroring the state of Westeros at the beginning of the Andal invasion.

Good stuff. Do you have the URL for the site? :)

Dirjj
User ID: 1954724 Feb 12th 5:46 PM
Yeah Kay, I want to read up on this too.

ab

Anon
User ID: 2205324 Feb 13th 6:15 AM
There is a still debate over whether the 'Old Ones' came from Portugal and Asturia or from Scythia, like the Picts(although being Welsh I come down on the Iberian side).

I always figured that the Seven Kingdoms = Heptarchy (Dorne, different in custom, being equivalent to Kent), and the Field of Fire being the Westerosi version of Senlac - hell wasn't Aegon a bastard too. This leads on to the whole Tyrell thing.

I'm buggered if see a parallel with Stamford Bridge though.

Anon
User ID: 2205324 Feb 13th 6:26 AM
Sorry, Aegon wasn't a bastard, he had a bastard brother. Still both known as 'the Conquerer' though.

KAH
User ID: 0541004 Feb 13th 7:23 AM
Here it is;

http://historymedren.about.com/ education/historymedren/mbody.htm

You should find the stuff in the lengthy introduction to the Battle of Hastings - they gave a quite thorough background overview. I also found a nice review of the preliminary battles to Hastings - Harald Sigurdsson's (nicknamed Hardraade) victory against earl Morcar at Fulford, the yielding of York to him, and his catastrophic venture to Stamford Bridge.

I was kinda amused of just how surprised Hardraade and Tostig was by Godwinsson's appearance - I suppose the thoughts running through their heads must have been akin to...well;
"Houston...we have a problem..." :o) :o)

It's now wonder they were almost annihilated - they were badly armored due to the blistering heat, Harald didn't know the terrain, their force were split twice over, first since Harald had left a third of his force to guard his ships at Raccall, and second at Stamford itself.

In short - it was a complete disaster for the Norwegians. Perhaps one out of ten survived the battle.

I don't know if this was due to sloppiness on Hardraade and Tostig's part, or because Godvinsson's march was so incredibly fast...a bit of both, I guess.

BTW - Ran, the site meant that the Oath Harold Godwinsson supposedly made to William might never have happened - they argued that it might have been propaganda on William's part, to justify that his claim was better than Harold's.

Ran
User ID: 0867924 Feb 13th 7:32 AM
I know about that. But it was always one of the most interesting bits of the histories, that Harold was somehow fooled to swear on holy relics.

I, Claudius
User ID: 0505634 Feb 13th 9:47 AM
KAH, those iberians that you are talking about are the people that lived in the Iberian Peninsula?. Well here, in Spain, the Iberians are considered to be a culture of the Iron Age that flourished in the Eastern Coast of Spain in the firts century B.C.. The Iberian culture is known by its fortified town and villages, a very close relation with the greeks and phoenicians, among other things. I didn't know that the Iberians were considered to be a Bronze Age culture of the British Islands.
BTW, as Ran says, there were celts in the Iberian Peninsula, they were contemporary to the Iberians, and they settled in the central plateau (la Meseta). Clasic authors call them Celtiberians, and they gave the romans a real hard time. It's not clear the moment of their arrival, some authors point the early iron age and link them to the expansion of the Urn Fields Culture in the Late Bronze Age (1200 B.C.).

KAH
User ID: 0541004 Feb 13th 1:54 PM
Well, I couldn't say. The introduction only mentioned that 'the Iberians' wandered into England when it was still connected to the Continent, at the end of the last Ice Age, or thereabouts.

I assume the idea runs that the 'English' Iberians were isolated from the 'continental' Iberians, and perhaps was stuck in the Bronze age still when the more advanced Celts appeared.

Or something. I don't know.
I just noticed the apparent likeness to GRRM's Andals and First Men.

Considering that this is not a very well emphazised bit of Martin's story, as well as originating from a piece of English history (albeit early) - which we _know_ GRRM has been inspired by; well, I think I am on a bit safer ground for claiming a connection, than I was in relation to the Kingssaga faux pas of mine.

Jeff
User ID: 1536664 Feb 18th 12:36 PM
I mentioned something along these lines way back when but put a few different labels on the people involved because the island of Britain has had such a succssion of conquests. For example, the the celts or Brythonic inhabitants might be the "Children", with the nature/druidic overtones. The First Men would be analogous to the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who invaded the island and reached a rough accord with the previous inhabitants. The Norman invasion, along with the armored knights, would be equivalent to the invasion of the Andals. The "Normans" (Andals) populated all of England (Westeros) except for the scots, picts, celts in Scotland (the First Men), and except for the Rhoynish influence in Dorne (Wales?).

I think Martin took the general pattern of Bristish invasions and assimilation as an isnpiration, and then tweaked them. You could move back and make the Angles the Andals, the Brythonic inhabitants the First Men, and the Iberians the Children. I guess that might make the Targaryens the Normans, huh?

Ran
User ID: 0867924 Feb 18th 12:58 PM
I do think the latter works a bit better, and was always something of how I saw the invasions, for my part.

Although that picture does miss the Romans entirely, and doesn't really account well for the Rhoynar invasion. :)

LindaElane
User ID: 0276214 Apr 3rd 0:30 AM
I looked the term "Iberians" for the mesolithic inhabitants of Britain. `Here is the thing, they were not the first. Britain was last connected to the continent approximately 12,000 years ago, and mesolithic people were there befor that. About 7000BC some other mesolithic people came over, there are three places they may have been from, I Iberia is one, but they would not be related to later day Iberians, they were "Mesolithic Iberians" There was a successive wave of people who came over in boats. They were agricultural, whereas the first inhabitants were hunter gatherers. There were even "Beaker People" who buried their dead in beaker things after cremation instead of in long burrows. The Celts showed up about 500 BC, and had a golden age of nearly 1000 years. The Romans partly drove them back, of course, but many of them intermarried with Romans.

I don't know who GRRM is thinking of for his various people, except that the Starks seem an awful lot like Celtic Scottish people to me. Andals probably parallels Angles, which sort of makes Targaryens Normans if anything. I just learned that the NOrmans were Vikings, isn't that amazing? They had conquered Normandy 150 years before the battle of Hastings and adopted their language.

Rhiannon
User ID: 1153984 Apr 9th 9:46 AM
It is quite a bit later than all the stuff you guys have mentioned, but in 1588 the English sent burning ships down the English Channel to halt the Spanish Armada. It sounds to me like it was the same thing Tyrion did.

Malice
User ID: 1759784 Apr 9th 7:09 PM
So Tyrion's Queen Elizabeth, huh? :)

Yep, the Normans were Vikings. Not too different from the Saxons they scorned when you think about it. Even their feudal system (very French) almost paralleled that of the English. (I say almost, and mean this broadly.)

I think if I had to drawn similarities between Westeros and Medieval Europe, I believe that the Andals would be Normans. They seem very Norse, often pale-haired and tall. The Starks, to me, fit into the Wars of the Roses background of ASOIAF as Yorkists. The Wall seems positioned almost to parallel Hadrian's Wall -- which, I suppose, makes the Wildlings Scotsmen!

Dornishmen seem only vaguely like the Welsh/Cornish, and I get the idea that they've also got Moorish inflences mixed up in there, too. Dorne also has more of a sense of independence. By the time of the Wars of the Roses, the last traces of real Welsh independence had died with Owain Glyndwr, during Henry (IV) Bolingbroke's reign.

Son of Hot Pie!!!
User ID: 0276214 May 19th 9:20 PM
On that note and regarding the War of the Roses . . . . does anyone have a good general book on the subject to recommend, as well as another that focuses on the battles/intrigue?

Thanks!

tyler
User ID: 9377263 May 23rd 11:31 AM
Just a question, After William won at Hastings, how long was it before an actual english speaking king sat the throne of England. i think for the next hundred years or so most English kings lived in France and spoke french. Just wondering

Ran
User ID: 0867924 May 23rd 11:56 AM
SoHP,

Charles Stanley Ross, _The Wars of the Roses: a concise history_, in case you haven't seen the recommendation to sparhawk at the barbaric ways of killing people thread.

tyler,

I know that Richard I did not speak English, and it's a commonly pointed out thing about him. However, given the old bias against Richard I (because he considered England a lesser holding and spent more time on the continent than England during his reign) among the primary scholars of the beginning and middle of this century, this means nothing about whether the ones before him spoke it or not.

I suspect the figure you give is about right,in any case. I'd say that Henry III or Edward I probably spoke English (though not necessarily as their primary language), but before them the chances of any of the kings speaking it seem slimmer. Of course, John was rather bookish and well-eductated, so he might have spoken it now that I think about it . . .

tyler
User ID: 9377263 May 24th 1:00 AM
Thanks Ran, i figured ole Longshanks probably did

Nynaeve
User ID: 2345204 May 24th 3:28 PM
I would like to add that I believe the Eyrie can be compared to the Welsh. For one thing, another name for NW Wales is, in fact, Eyrie - it means Haunt of Eagles in Welsh. Given the mountainous, yet lush landscape of the Vale -- it's totally NW Wales. And the Welsh kept their native castles (not the ring of Castles constructed by the vile evil Edward I) up in mountain fastnesses similar to Jon Arryn's hold.

Also, the Welsh symbol is a red dragon...just throwing that out there for no purpose whatsoever.

As for the English language, it started to seep into the Royal Norman's vocabulary around the time of Henry III (Vile Longshanks fool father) When Edward I had conquered the Welsh and killed their last native prince, they clammored for a leader of their own. He asked them if it would appease them to have a Prince of Wales that had been born on Welsh Soil and spoke nary a word of English? They said 'yes'. So he held aloft his mewling newborn babe - Edward II - and said, "Here then, is your Prince of Wales" and since that time the title of Prince of Wales has belonged to the English heir-apparent.

Nyn
Obsessed With Wales

Malice
User ID: 1759784 May 24th 7:40 PM
Nyn, you're not the only Wales obsessionist. I'm attempting to learn that godawfully difficult language. :) The actual spelling, however, of "The Haunt of Eagles" is "Eryri." Interesting story about Edward II (the guy was homosexual, by the way and later privately executed--the supposed method would only be fitting for that torture topic we have somewhere on these boards, I believe!). Only thing that I can think of against the Vale/Eyrie being the equivalent of NW is that most non-Norman/English castles were wooden, I believe, and so have not survived. Here's a sight about the castles of Wales:

www.castlewales.com

Hwyl,
Malice

Next 20 Messages Newest Messages

KAH User ID: 0541004	Feb 12th 3:33 PM You know, I came over this nice medieval history site, while looking for some background on the battles of Hastings and Stamford Bridge. I picked some tidbits that might have inspired GRRM's Westeros. I cannot recall if this have been touched upon before? England and the Continent being connected during the last Ice Age, with the Iberians venturing over, and the 'bridge' later opening up for the English Channel. Doesn't this mind you of the First Men (the Iberians) and the Broken Arm (before it was broken :P )? And then there was explicit mention of the Celts invading, Celts who had more advanced weaponry, since their culture had reached the Iron Age, while the Iberians were still backwards 'Bronze people' :o). There's the invasion of the Andals for you. There were also mention of 'the heptarchy' - Seven Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms...
Ran User ID: 0867924	Feb 12th 3:58 PM Mrm, that's interesting. I always connected the original inhabitants of Britan to ancestors of the Celts -- although, certainly, there were Celts in the Iberian peninsula once. The heptarchy is probably more concidence though, I should think. It would have worked better if there had been dozens of little kinglets throughout England, thus mirroring the state of Westeros at the beginning of the Andal invasion. Good stuff. Do you have the URL for the site? :)
Dirjj User ID: 1954724	Feb 12th 5:46 PM Yeah Kay, I want to read up on this too. ab
Anon User ID: 2205324	Feb 13th 6:15 AM There is a still debate over whether the 'Old Ones' came from Portugal and Asturia or from Scythia, like the Picts(although being Welsh I come down on the Iberian side). I always figured that the Seven Kingdoms = Heptarchy (Dorne, different in custom, being equivalent to Kent), and the Field of Fire being the Westerosi version of Senlac - hell wasn't Aegon a bastard too. This leads on to the whole Tyrell thing. I'm buggered if see a parallel with Stamford Bridge though.
Anon User ID: 2205324	Feb 13th 6:26 AM Sorry, Aegon wasn't a bastard, he had a bastard brother. Still both known as 'the Conquerer' though.
KAH User ID: 0541004	Feb 13th 7:23 AM Here it is; http://historymedren.about.com/ education/historymedren/mbody.htm You should find the stuff in the lengthy introduction to the Battle of Hastings - they gave a quite thorough background overview. I also found a nice review of the preliminary battles to Hastings - Harald Sigurdsson's (nicknamed Hardraade) victory against earl Morcar at Fulford, the yielding of York to him, and his catastrophic venture to Stamford Bridge. I was kinda amused of just how surprised Hardraade and Tostig was by Godwinsson's appearance - I suppose the thoughts running through their heads must have been akin to...well; "Houston...we have a problem..." :o) :o) It's now wonder they were almost annihilated - they were badly armored due to the blistering heat, Harald didn't know the terrain, their force were split twice over, first since Harald had left a third of his force to guard his ships at Raccall, and second at Stamford itself. In short - it was a complete disaster for the Norwegians. Perhaps one out of ten survived the battle. I don't know if this was due to sloppiness on Hardraade and Tostig's part, or because Godvinsson's march was so incredibly fast...a bit of both, I guess. BTW - Ran, the site meant that the Oath Harold Godwinsson supposedly made to William might never have happened - they argued that it might have been propaganda on William's part, to justify that his claim was better than Harold's.
Ran User ID: 0867924	Feb 13th 7:32 AM I know about that. But it was always one of the most interesting bits of the histories, that Harold was somehow fooled to swear on holy relics.
I, Claudius User ID: 0505634	Feb 13th 9:47 AM KAH, those iberians that you are talking about are the people that lived in the Iberian Peninsula?. Well here, in Spain, the Iberians are considered to be a culture of the Iron Age that flourished in the Eastern Coast of Spain in the firts century B.C.. The Iberian culture is known by its fortified town and villages, a very close relation with the greeks and phoenicians, among other things. I didn't know that the Iberians were considered to be a Bronze Age culture of the British Islands. BTW, as Ran says, there were celts in the Iberian Peninsula, they were contemporary to the Iberians, and they settled in the central plateau (la Meseta). Clasic authors call them Celtiberians, and they gave the romans a real hard time. It's not clear the moment of their arrival, some authors point the early iron age and link them to the expansion of the Urn Fields Culture in the Late Bronze Age (1200 B.C.).
KAH User ID: 0541004	Feb 13th 1:54 PM Well, I couldn't say. The introduction only mentioned that 'the Iberians' wandered into England when it was still connected to the Continent, at the end of the last Ice Age, or thereabouts. I assume the idea runs that the 'English' Iberians were isolated from the 'continental' Iberians, and perhaps was stuck in the Bronze age still when the more advanced Celts appeared. Or something. I don't know. I just noticed the apparent likeness to GRRM's Andals and First Men. Considering that this is not a very well emphazised bit of Martin's story, as well as originating from a piece of English history (albeit early) - which we _know_ GRRM has been inspired by; well, I think I am on a bit safer ground for claiming a connection, than I was in relation to the Kingssaga faux pas of mine.
Jeff User ID: 1536664	Feb 18th 12:36 PM I mentioned something along these lines way back when but put a few different labels on the people involved because the island of Britain has had such a succssion of conquests. For example, the the celts or Brythonic inhabitants might be the "Children", with the nature/druidic overtones. The First Men would be analogous to the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who invaded the island and reached a rough accord with the previous inhabitants. The Norman invasion, along with the armored knights, would be equivalent to the invasion of the Andals. The "Normans" (Andals) populated all of England (Westeros) except for the scots, picts, celts in Scotland (the First Men), and except for the Rhoynish influence in Dorne (Wales?). I think Martin took the general pattern of Bristish invasions and assimilation as an isnpiration, and then tweaked them. You could move back and make the Angles the Andals, the Brythonic inhabitants the First Men, and the Iberians the Children. I guess that might make the Targaryens the Normans, huh?
Ran User ID: 0867924	Feb 18th 12:58 PM I do think the latter works a bit better, and was always something of how I saw the invasions, for my part. Although that picture does miss the Romans entirely, and doesn't really account well for the Rhoynar invasion. :)
LindaElane User ID: 0276214	Apr 3rd 0:30 AM I looked the term "Iberians" for the mesolithic inhabitants of Britain. `Here is the thing, they were not the first. Britain was last connected to the continent approximately 12,000 years ago, and mesolithic people were there befor that. About 7000BC some other mesolithic people came over, there are three places they may have been from, I Iberia is one, but they would not be related to later day Iberians, they were "Mesolithic Iberians" There was a successive wave of people who came over in boats. They were agricultural, whereas the first inhabitants were hunter gatherers. There were even "Beaker People" who buried their dead in beaker things after cremation instead of in long burrows. The Celts showed up about 500 BC, and had a golden age of nearly 1000 years. The Romans partly drove them back, of course, but many of them intermarried with Romans. I don't know who GRRM is thinking of for his various people, except that the Starks seem an awful lot like Celtic Scottish people to me. Andals probably parallels Angles, which sort of makes Targaryens Normans if anything. I just learned that the NOrmans were Vikings, isn't that amazing? They had conquered Normandy 150 years before the battle of Hastings and adopted their language.
Rhiannon User ID: 1153984	Apr 9th 9:46 AM It is quite a bit later than all the stuff you guys have mentioned, but in 1588 the English sent burning ships down the English Channel to halt the Spanish Armada. It sounds to me like it was the same thing Tyrion did.
Malice User ID: 1759784	Apr 9th 7:09 PM So Tyrion's Queen Elizabeth, huh? :) Yep, the Normans were Vikings. Not too different from the Saxons they scorned when you think about it. Even their feudal system (very French) almost paralleled that of the English. (I say almost, and mean this broadly.) I think if I had to drawn similarities between Westeros and Medieval Europe, I believe that the Andals would be Normans. They seem very Norse, often pale-haired and tall. The Starks, to me, fit into the Wars of the Roses background of ASOIAF as Yorkists. The Wall seems positioned almost to parallel Hadrian's Wall -- which, I suppose, makes the Wildlings Scotsmen! Dornishmen seem only vaguely like the Welsh/Cornish, and I get the idea that they've also got Moorish inflences mixed up in there, too. Dorne also has more of a sense of independence. By the time of the Wars of the Roses, the last traces of real Welsh independence had died with Owain Glyndwr, during Henry (IV) Bolingbroke's reign.
Son of Hot Pie!!! User ID: 0276214	May 19th 9:20 PM On that note and regarding the War of the Roses . . . . does anyone have a good general book on the subject to recommend, as well as another that focuses on the battles/intrigue? Thanks!
tyler User ID: 9377263	May 23rd 11:31 AM Just a question, After William won at Hastings, how long was it before an actual english speaking king sat the throne of England. i think for the next hundred years or so most English kings lived in France and spoke french. Just wondering
Ran User ID: 0867924	May 23rd 11:56 AM SoHP, Charles Stanley Ross, _The Wars of the Roses: a concise history_, in case you haven't seen the recommendation to sparhawk at the barbaric ways of killing people thread. tyler, I know that Richard I did not speak English, and it's a commonly pointed out thing about him. However, given the old bias against Richard I (because he considered England a lesser holding and spent more time on the continent than England during his reign) among the primary scholars of the beginning and middle of this century, this means nothing about whether the ones before him spoke it or not. I suspect the figure you give is about right,in any case. I'd say that Henry III or Edward I probably spoke English (though not necessarily as their primary language), but before them the chances of any of the kings speaking it seem slimmer. Of course, John was rather bookish and well-eductated, so he might have spoken it now that I think about it . . .
tyler User ID: 9377263	May 24th 1:00 AM Thanks Ran, i figured ole Longshanks probably did
Nynaeve User ID: 2345204	May 24th 3:28 PM I would like to add that I believe the Eyrie can be compared to the Welsh. For one thing, another name for NW Wales is, in fact, Eyrie - it means Haunt of Eagles in Welsh. Given the mountainous, yet lush landscape of the Vale -- it's totally NW Wales. And the Welsh kept their native castles (not the ring of Castles constructed by the vile evil Edward I) up in mountain fastnesses similar to Jon Arryn's hold. Also, the Welsh symbol is a red dragon...just throwing that out there for no purpose whatsoever. As for the English language, it started to seep into the Royal Norman's vocabulary around the time of Henry III (Vile Longshanks fool father) When Edward I had conquered the Welsh and killed their last native prince, they clammored for a leader of their own. He asked them if it would appease them to have a Prince of Wales that had been born on Welsh Soil and spoke nary a word of English? They said 'yes'. So he held aloft his mewling newborn babe - Edward II - and said, "Here then, is your Prince of Wales" and since that time the title of Prince of Wales has belonged to the English heir-apparent. Nyn Obsessed With Wales
Malice User ID: 1759784	May 24th 7:40 PM Nyn, you're not the only Wales obsessionist. I'm attempting to learn that godawfully difficult language. :) The actual spelling, however, of "The Haunt of Eagles" is "Eryri." Interesting story about Edward II (the guy was homosexual, by the way and later privately executed--the supposed method would only be fitting for that torture topic we have somewhere on these boards, I believe!). Only thing that I can think of against the Vale/Eyrie being the equivalent of NW is that most non-Norman/English castles were wooden, I believe, and so have not survived. Here's a sight about the castles of Wales: www.castlewales.com Hwyl, Malice