Winning the Game of Thrones: The Host of Characters and their Agendas (14 page)

     
There are rumors the folk of Bear Island are like
Tolkien’s bear-man Beorn, the skin-changer.

     
Marillion the Singer is an homage to the band Marillion, in turn a reference to
The Silmarillion.

     
Daenerys’s husband is named Drogo, possibly after Frodo’s father of the same name.

     
A castle on the Wall is named Oakenshield, like Thorin’s name from
The Hobbit
.

     
Several characters like Theon mourn that they aren’t in a fantasy tale where heroes save the day and everyone lives happily ever after.

     
The elves (children of the forest) and dragons have nearly vanished and many ancient creatures are regarded only as legend. Wights are undead monsters.

     
“I have crossed many mountains and many rivers, and trodden many plains, even into the far countries of Rhun and Harad where the stars are strange,” Aragorn says, compared with a description of a “town on the Summer Isles, where men were black, women were wanton, and even the gods were strange.”

     
Doom came to Old Valyria and to Numenor. In both cases, a minor house of the ruling class had a premonition of doom and escaped to the new continent, of which they then became hereditary rulers. Both dooms are specific echoes of Atlantis as well.

     
Tyrion escapes in a ship at one point by hiding in a barrel. The dwarves of
The Hobbit
 do likewise, though without the ship.

     
Arya in the third book thinks of “the day without a dawn,” a phrase appearing in the great battle of the Pellenor fields.

     
Hodor throws a stone down the well and Bran says, “You shouldn’t have done that. You don’t know what’s down there. You might have hurt something, or...or woken something up” (III:763). Pippin does that same act in the mines of Moria and indeed wakes a dark evil.

Other Fantasy Series

Robert Jordan

Martin is a fan of Jordan’s and has cited the cover blurb by Robert Jordan for the first book to have been influential in ensuring the series’ early success with fantasy readers. In
A Clash of Kings
 there is a Sir Jordayne of the Tor whose banner is a golden quill – Tor was Jordan’s publisher. The lord of the House is Lord Trebor, whose name reverses to “Robert.” According to the
Song of Ice and Fire Campaign Guide
, their motto is “Let it be written.”

Considering Robert Jordan’s real name is James Oliver Rigney Jr., the following gains especial significance when said by Theon Greyjoy’s uncle: “Archmaester Rigney once wrote that history is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again, he said” (IV:165). The opening of each Robert Jordan book touches on this theme.

The Princess Bride

There’s speculation that Rugen the undergaoler references the villain Count Rugen and his monstrous dungeon. Oberyn Martell’s repeating, “You raped her. You murdered her. You killed her children” when fighting Gregor Clegane certainly echoes Inigo Montoya’s repeated “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” from
The Princess Bride.