G. R. R. Martin: The defense of fantasy in the ironic mode
It has been two weeks since the first episode of the third season of TV series Game of Thrones was aired. I became interested in GoT in 2011 during the first season. Since the time, I have seen the complete first season, some episodes from the second and the first two episodes of the third. Since I prefer reading to watching, I was dragged to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire on which the ongoing series is based. As I am not a native speaker of English and I have other work to do, I have been able to read the first two volumes only - Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings.
Many people who like fantasy say that they like the George R. R. Martin’s saga, because it is an unusual piece of fantasy. The book is rich of many different and interesting characters, and the narrative does not seem to fit the cut-and-dried struggle of the good against the evil, the cornerstone of any classic fantastic story which we know from the works of J. R. R. Tolkien or R. E. Howard. Here I attempt to offer more conscious insights in what makes Martin’s novels interesting (I am not intersted in the TV series here). Reader should be aware that spoiler information follow.
A Tragic Hero
The first volume begins as an ordinary fantastic story. There is a nobleman Eddard ‘Ned’ Stark who dwells in his castle named Winterfell in the northern part of the kingdom of Westeros. Ned Stark is presented in a manner which must be familiar to any reader of fantasy. Ned is a prudent ruler and takes a conscientious care of his serfs and his fiefdom. At the very beginning of the book, Ned beheads a deserter. Ned does not enjoy doing the job, but he knows he must do his duty. As it is revealed later in the book, Ned’s distaste for killing is rather an exceptional feature that a reader can find among the throng of Martin’s characters.
Not only is Ned Stark a dutiful ruler, he also takes care of his family. He loves his wife and his children. Yes, years ago he fathered a bastard, John Snow. But Ned treats his bastard son equal. When you compare Ned to other characters in the saga, he is so far the most perfect embodiment of a highly virtuous character, well-known from high fantasy novels. Ned is the island of high fantasy while the dark ages are ravaging all around. There are lots of greedy characters, while the others employ the subtlest ways to achieve the power like intrigues and lies; there are characters who are lustful and enjoy whoring. Compared to them Ned Stark stands as the classical hero - he is the perfect warrior, husband, father, ruler and peer. When king asks Ned to become the king’s highest advisor, Ned accepts, because he feels he has got a duty to maintain the uneasy stability of the kingdom.
Ned has got another virtue worthy of archetypal heroes. He is truthful. His truthfulness manifests itself when Ned accepts to become the hand of king and is dragged to day-to-day politics in the kingdom’s capital called King’s Landing. He is surrounded by the incompetent king who immerses himself in whoring and feasting, by a treasurer who runs his own brothel, by a master of whisperers who controls the delicate net of spies and who seems to know everything of what is happening in the capital city and using this knowledge for the sake of his own aims, and by an old advisor who from time to time seems to pretend a dementia, and by an easy to corrupt leader of the city watch. Here, Ned’s exceptionality comes to the fore. This looks like as a classical high fantasy setup.
Nonetheless, Ned’s virtues have disastrous consequences. He fails to play game of thrones and incriminates himself, his family and possessions of danger. He is charged for treason and imprisoned. Ned is sentenced to death, but he is given one chance. He must confess of his treason and take the black (to become a part of the Night’s Watch, a military brotherhood which guards the kingdom’s northern borders and where outcasts are sent). Reader gets the impression that having given another chance. One day, after the kingdom falls to endless plots and rivalries of the noble houses, Ned will return. In the Napoleonian fashion, he will muster his forces, drive the unrighteous from the capital and establish a peace in Westeros.
Ned is brought to his execution. He publicly announces that he accepts the charges of treason and that he is willing to take black. Reader feels relieved, Napoleon will come back. But in another moment, something quite different happens. The capricious child king, Joffrey Baratheon, accepts Ned’s enforced avowal but decides to execute him anyway. While the headsman swings his sword to cut Ned’s head off, the reader is shocked.
Martin diverts from the ordinary fantasy plot where the good guy is expected to stand victorious in the end. The reader’s expectations are failed, because the writer gets ruthlessly rid of his most promising hero in the saga’s very beginning. Of course, the plot of the first book sets up many different lines of many different characters, and Ned’s line is only one of these. Some of the other characters may later meet the heroic expectations. Ned’s character embodies the virtues (or maybe imperfections) of high fantasy characters. When they cannot meet their enemy in the battlefield, they become rather tragic than romantic heroes. As we shall see, this is not the only case in which G. R. R. Martin maliciously immerses himself in failing readers’ expectations.
Failed Expectations
There are two other moments in the second book which seem to be fitting the same scheme.
In A Clash of Kings we are witnessing a betrayal of Theon Greyjoy. Greyjoy, who wants to please his father and prove himself as a skilled leader, turns against the Starks. He joins his father’s rebellion against the Iron Throne. During one of his raids, Theon decides to disobey his father’s commands and with a small force sets out to take the Winterfell castle. Unfortunately for Theon, shortly after his small victory, castle is besieged by Rodrik Cassel and his soldiers. Reader expects Theon’s fall, which Theon rightfully deserves. But things run an absolutely unexpected course. Cassel’s troops are slayed by another traitor, Ramsay Bolton, Winterfell is sacked and Greyjoy is taken captive.
Paralel to Theon’s line a similar line is developed in King’s Landing. Stannis Baratheon, pretender to the Iron Throne, besieges the city with his grand army. Everything seems to imply that the city will fall to the Stannis’s force. After hundreds of pages of Joffrey’s ruthless rule, reader might, again, expect the rightful punishment. Impaling Joffrey’s head on a stake might seem to be a proper punishment for what Joffrey did to Eddard. But in the very end, when everything seems to be lost for Lannisters, a third party meddles in. It is the army of Tywin Lannister who left the castle of Harrenhal a couple of chapters earlier, but the reader was then manipulated into thinking that the Tywin’s force set out to meet the Stark armies coming from the north not the Stannis’s force.
Fantastic Satire
These are the three cases in which the Martin’s irony manifests itself on the level of a plot. The ordinary devotee of fantastic literature usually expects something else to happen: a good guy overcomes a bad guy and the bad guy is punished for his sins. The exact opposite is true in the case of all the important events from the first two books - the execution of Ned, the sack of Winterfell and the battle of the King’s Landing. As Hayden White wrote in his Metahistory: “the Ironic mode, of which Satire is the fictional form, gain their effects precisely by frustrating normal expectations about the kinds of resolutions provided by stories cast in other modes.”
One could think that the story of Ned Stark is a tragedy rather than a satire; tragedy of a man who was too truthful. But Stark is not purely a tragic hero. His downfall may symbolize some kind of disillusionment of romantic characters. They are too perfect to be true and too perfect to fit the requirements of today’s readers. The satire must be obvious when Stark visits queen Cersei in a garden and tells her that he knows everything about her incestuous relationship with her brother, and that her son Joffrey is not the rightful heir to the throne. Alone, Ned’s story might be considered as a kind of tragedy. When you put Ned’s story in the context of other characters’ plots, the story seems to be rather satirical than tragical. Even the characters who play the game of thrones and who employ lies, intrigues and bribery, like the Machiavellist Tyrion Lannister, and who are expected to meet the requirements of the Westeros natural selection, fall sooner or later too.
What makes Martin’s books interesting is that they explore another possibilities of fantastic genre by writing it in a satirical rather than in romantic mode which is usual in fantasy. The Song of Ice and Fire is not yet complete - there are two other books to be published. Martin’s chronicles of Westeros are still far from being complete and we still do not know what the major form of emplotment is. Shall Martin fail our expectations once again by letting the good guys win?
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