lluewhyn asked: Any chance we can get a write up of your thoughts of why you didn't like the histories that much? What caused the suspension of disbelief?

cynicalclassicist said: You say your suspension of disbelief as a historian goes to hell. As one with a history degree I am particularly interested in that statement. Would you care to expand for me and your other readers?

Anonymous said: Hello Turtle ! I’m a huge fan of your analyses and I check them every day, thank you so much for the time you put into it. I have a question regarding one of your latest comments on the histories AWOIAF, F&B. What do you mean by suspension of disbelief? More generally, what is your opinion on the way GRRM writes pseudo history? Thanks again and best wishes.

It seems people want to hear me whining about why the person dramatising their area of expertise is Doing It Wrong. And, look, a lot of this is fine (in a technical sense) for a work of fiction providing background for a more detailed novel series to do, but just like I’ve got doctor friends who can’t watch medical dramas and lawyer friends who can’t read legal thrillers, novels written in the fake history style make me twitch. GRRM is not a historian, it shows, and it shows worst when he’s trying to write about periods of Westerosi history a bit lighter on civil warfare.

Take the reign of Jaehaerys, which I reckon is the worst offender in Fire and Blood. There were massive changes to Westerosi law in Jaehaerys’ reign, and massive infrastructure overhauls. Any history of Jaehaerys’ reign should by rights be full of

“The Stormlands did not have a precedent for this manner of tax dispute. Lord Bob relied on the Reach’s precedent, while Lord Jim adopted a novel approach, and the matter at last reached the king’s court. […] The king adopted the better part of Lord Jim’s reasoning, a decision which had lasting effects on the taxation of dairy products throughout the land. More immediately, however, it hardened Lord Bob against the king and threw him in with those lords who opposed Jaehaerys’ approach to Dornish policy…”

And

“When it came time to decide the course of the road, Jaehaerys and his advisors had to weigh carefully the engineering considerations with the political. The course preferred by the king’s engineers ran straight through Lord Mike’s lands, but Queen Alysanne warned the king that Lord Mike would toll a bird for flying past if the king gave him half a chance. This presented a year-long dilemma for the crown and a diversion in the road, on which the fortunes of three towns turned…”

The depiction of Aegon I’s reign has those problems too. The chapter on governance in Aegon’s reign is, like, 20 pages in my ebook version. In that 20 pages it deals with the building of King’s Landing, the formation of the Kingsguard, the beginning of the Grand Maester tradition, Rhaenys’ influence on the perception of the fledging Targaryen monarchy and one of her notable common law rulings, and the unification of the tax code. Does Gyldayn wanna slow down and devote some page space to show how this actually changed Westeros and then fed right back into what shaped the Targaryen family? Nope. Blows right past it for the family drama. But even that is pretty shallow, and in a lot of places reads like a list of births, deaths, affairs and marriages.

Those lists in turn often read like they’re setting the scene, and they are. They result in moments of high personal drama…which don’t always link up to turning points in Westerosi history, or the identification of key trends shaping the fortunes of House Targaryen. Take the fate of Princess Aerea. Really effective horror writing! Does not substantially advance any thesis about House Targaryen or their role in Westerosi history.

As a purported work of history, Gyldayn’s work lacks the depth to give really worthwhile psychological pictures of the actors, and lacks the breadth to show how the personal drove anything but the most overt of political pressures. And he always comes back to that fixation on who’s sleeping with whom, often focusing on uncomfortably young women (or, you know, girls) in an uncomfortable level of detail. I cannot imagine any future in-universe historian referring to Fire and Blood without some serious hedging about Gyldayn’s predilection for recording various sexual exploits. Its primary historical value in-universe might well be to Westerosi historians discussing what the work says about the court of Robert Baratheon.

Which means that the long and the short of it is that Gyldayn is to fictional history what Mushroom is to Gyldayn.