With the fifth season of Game of Thrones beginning next month, acclaimed novelist Margaret Atwood explains why she finds the show – inspired by literature and the real monarchs of our blood-soaked medieval history – so compelling, while five other famous fans share their devotion to Westeros

Once sucked in, you stay sucked. Be warned.

On one side of the artefact/audience interchange, avid faces will be squashed up against the screen; on the other side, avid faces will simply be squashed, and then cut off, attached to other people’s heads, sewn on to wolves, painted with tar, or stuck on spikes. As the Immortal Name, Robert Burns, has it: “Clap in his walie nieve a blade, He’ll make it whissle; An legs an arms, an heads will sned, Like taps o thrissle.”

Those legs and arms and heads are as good as snedded, because this series must surely have not only the longest cast list of all time, but also the highest body count. Will it be last man standing? Last dragon standing? Or last metaphor-for-climate-change standing – the pale, deadly-cold Others and their troops of the barrow-wightish, zombie-ish Undead with their LED blue eyes who bring endless winter? Funforall, as James Joyce punned of funerals. And it is fun for all, except for the underage, because this is Ivanhoe with the rape and gutting scenes included. Not to mention the incest, the patricide, and the kiddie murders. Freud goes on the rampage! The return of the repressed, times 100!

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Yes, it’s Game of Thrones, that mesmerisingly popular television series that surely draws its inspiration from so many fictional sources it’s hard to keep track. The Iliad, the Odyssey, Beowulf, ancient Egypt, H Rider Haggard, The Sword in the Stone, the Ring Cycle, Tolkien, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Mabinogion, Harry Potter, The Jungle Book, Ursula K Le Guin, Hans Christian Andersen, Idylls of the King, Conan the Barbarian – himself the stolen-away downmarket twin of Walt Whitman – and The Wind In the Willows. You may laugh at this last citation, but mark:

“They were but four in all, but to the panic-stricken Lannisters the hall seemed full of monstrous warriors, grey, black, brown and yellow, whooping and flourishing enormous swords; and they broke and fled with squeals of terror and dismay, this way and that, through the windows, up the chimney, anywhere to get out of reach of those terrible weapons.”

I changed only four words: “weasels,” “cudgels,” “sticks,” and “animals.” Maybe I should have substituted “shouts” or “screams” for “squeals,” squealing not being a thing a Lannister would do unless subject to unspeakable physical or spiritual tortures in underground caverns; but otherwise, be honest with yourself: it fits. In the sword-and-sorcery formula at work in Game of Thrones, the sorcery has its moments, but the swords prevail. There are no unemployed ironsmiths anywhere in the north, the south, or the points west on the useful maps at the fronts of the books.

A sidenote on the dragons. The past thousand-and-a-half years has given us a range of dragons, from the lucky dragons of China, to the tussling red and white dragons of Welsh lore, to the dragon of St George fame, substitute for Satan, to the Zen-ish, wise, riddling dragons of Le Guin’s Earthsea, to the hoarding, miserly dragons of Beowulf and The Hobbit. George RR Martin’s dragons are more like superweapon bazookas. They’re aesthetically attractive – more so in the books than in the series, where they have less delicate pink tracery and more scaly pterodactyl beakiness – but, so far, they don’t talk.

Luckily they’re in the hands of a character we can actually approve of, more or less. Daenerys Targaryen surely has the blood of Uther Pendragon flowing in her veins, and we expect she will live up to it. The hairstyle is a bit High Elven, but why carp? There are only so many high fantasy hairstyles to go around, and, unlike Cate Blanchett in the Tolkien films, she doesn’t have pointed ears. Not that Cate doesn’t look good in them, mind you.

So what else can be said about Game of Thrones, apart from I can hardly wait? I asked some people younger than myself what it was they especially love about the series. The acting, said some: so well done! The characters, said others. (Nobody said “the lavish outfits”, but I wasn’t fooled.) “What is it about the characters that you like?” I enquired. They’re mixed, they answered. It’s not all good on one side and bad on the other. They behave well or horribly according to the circumstances which they find themselves in. They’re like real people.

Except that some of them are like real psychopaths. Was it absolutely necessary, as “necessary” might be defined by, say, that helpful arch-pragmatist, Machiavelli, to cement one’s power position by cutting the head off darling Robb Stark and sewing his direwolf’s head onto his neck at that aptly named Red Wedding? No, it was not necessary, it was gratuitous. But the Game of Thrones folk go in for symbolism, in addition to conceptual needlecraft.

We might also say: if Game of Thrones is a game, what then is reality? What are “real people” like? Or possibly real aristocrats battling lethal rivals, most of whom are family members, since they are all so stunningly inbred. By mere chance, I happened to pick up Terry Breverton’s Richard III: The King in the Car Park, which attempts to explain why who was killing whom in the Wars of the Roses, and largely succeeds. (You have to pay close attention, because the bodies fall like snow.) “The Plantagenets had been their own worst enemies, killing nearly all claimants to the crown. Sons had rebelled against kings, brothers had fought brothers, wives had fought husbands, various Plantagenets had usurped the rightful monarch and so on. Plantagenet history is drenched in bloodshed and intrigue…” Those were real people. Lancaster and York, Lannister and Stark? Suggestive, at any rate. Kill or be killed was the watchword; without it, there would never have been a golden age of Elizabeth I, the Faerie Queene.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons. Photograph: Helen Sloan/HBO

Also by chance, I’ve been reading the 1970s Maurice Druon series of historical novels, Les Rois Maudits – The Accursed Kings – that trace the Capetian monarchs of France in the 13th and 14th centuries. Burnings at the stake, adulteries, castrations, stranglings, poisoned candies, baby murder, and hot pokers up the rear, just for starters; plus daring escapes from such strongholds as the Tower of London, intrigues, necromancy, money-lenders pulling the strings, religious leaders ditto, and more. What a treat to discover that this series strongly influenced George RR Martin; but, on second thought, how unsurprising. Because these, too, were real people, every murderous one.

Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, we wish you well, even though we have trouble spelling your name. May the Force be with you! We think you will make a dandy Faerie Queene, once you’ve obliterated those cold Snow King Others thanks to the fire at your command. Unlike Elizabeth I, you may even get married and have some little Pendragons, though we hesitate to place bets on the identity of the groom. Odds on it won’t be Tyrion Lannister, though he does have a touch of nobility, as his Tyrian purple name suggests. We do hope he survives the bloodbath, or baths. After all he’s been through, we’d be sad to see his neck with a donkey’s head sewn on to it. Or something equally Shakespearean.

© OW Toad Ltd 2015. Game of Thrones returns to Sky Atlantic on Monday 13 April at 9pm





WHAT WE LOVE ABOUT GAME OF THRONES…

Al Murray, comedian, standing for MP for South Thanet



On the face of it Game of Thrones is a simple thing: it’s just dragons, swords and sorcery and all that. But actually it’s a dense and interesting musing on politics and power, and what those things do to people. I also like that it has a gloriously bleak, pessimistic view of human nature: it’s not a redeeming drama where everyone’s friends again at the end. What you know will not happen with Game of Thrones is that the sun will come up and everyone will be happy.

Will I be using some of its characters’ political techniques in South Thanet? Oh yeah, I’m sure if we could have dragons in the constituency, that would be a great thing. Which politician doesn’t wish for dragons, as a way of persuading populations?

I watch the show with my eldest daughter - sometimes two or three episodes at a time if we’ve got behind. She was 14 when we started watching it so it has led to some very embarrassing moments, with both of us sitting there silently during a sex scene and desperate for it to end.

I really love Tyrion Lannister; he’s brilliantly presented and realised. The show’s attitude to portraying disability is fascinating. My eldest daughter has a disability and that’s one of the things she adores about the programme: it takes at face value that Tyrion is “the imp”, and they see where that would lead you in a kind of real world. He’s a completely fully rounded character and I think that’s brilliant.

Bola Agbaje, playwright

It’s such an amazing show. I love that you can just escape into this world and its different kingdoms. I love the role of women as well: in terms of TV shows with women at the forefront - powerful female leads - Game of Thrones is definitely one of the leading ones. I recently watched an old episode with my little sister, who’s 21, and it was really interesting to watch it with a young woman and see how influenced she is by Daenerys Targaryen. She’s such a great character for young women: she’s independent, she does what she needs to do, and - even though we’re not sitting in the same world - in terms of what it means to be a powerful woman in a male-dominated world, I think they’ve got some of those female characters right. Even the bad ones are great to watch. As much as I love to hate Queen Cersei, I still want to see her in it - eventually, hopefully, I would like to see her have a change of heart and be a better person.

William Dalrymple, historian

Our entire family are total addicts, although it has provided some slightly embarrassing moments. My wife is related to Rose Leslie, who plays Ygritte, the wildling, so we had a slightly uncomfortable family session around the telly seeing their cousin getting down to it with Jon Snow at a waterfall in front of all my children and my father-in-law. But I think it’s the best-plotted, highest production-value show - it’s an incredibly successful formula. The characterisation, the brilliance of the script, with all those separate storylines running so flawlessly between each other. And it’s completely addictive. The only thing I have a problem with is the incredibly long torture scene, with the mutilation of Theon Greyjoy. I have quite a high tolerance level for violence, but that seemed to go into the seriously perverse and sadistic.

KT Tunstall, musician

One great thing about television series is having the time to develop characters. There is such a slew of excellent leading characters in GoT, it always impresses me that they are able to coexist in this one show. The fact that many of them are female is a bonus, as so often there’s only one standout female character in a storyline, and here you have real gender equity in the cast. The power play among the women massively ramps up the excitement.

I also love that anyone could be a goner at any given time. Predictability in a storyline can feel like a huge waste of creativity, and thankfully there is no safety here. I still miss Khal Drogo though, dammit.

Sue Perkins, broadcaster

I like the fact that there aren’t the binary opposites of good and evil: everybody is infused and tainted with a bit of both. Those characters who seem to possess a spirit of nobility are hacked down pretty early on, because they don’t have what it takes to be players in the game of thrones.

The show makes acute comments about humanity, greed and power, while placing it in a fantasy environment. If it were set in the contemporary world, it might be tedious, but because it’s displaced to this strange dystopia, it’s just brilliantly laughable and horrific and silly as well as acute and sad and moving.

I’ve got loads of favourite characters. The imp has slowly become the moral centre of the piece: I think we empathise with him not because he is particularly moral but because he is bullied, overlooked, treated unfairly, and that’s what resonates with people. I love Brienne of Tarth, I love the Hound. Arya Stark’s a very dark little soldier: her character shows that you can’t see terrible things and not become a rather dark and pessimistic person. I loved to hate Joffrey. He’s one of the greatest villains of all time: he took over where Caligula left off, that simpering man-boy with an icy heart, who’s totally whimsical and capricious, roaring with laughter one moment then killing the next, like Joe Pesci’s character in Goodfellas: utterly mercurial, and not in a fun sense.

I broke my toe dancing to the show’s theme tune. It’s like a ritual in my house: you have to do a full, unexpurgated, free-form dance to that fantastic title track. But I ended with a flourish of my left foot, smacked it into the side of the sofa, and just destroyed it. So I hobbled for about a month as it got better, and I blame Game of Thrones.

Interviews by Kathryn Bromwich