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Martin's goal was clearly a sort of political realism (e.g. a lot of what's going on is heavily inspired by the War of the Roses, a real historical scenario), so complaints about how something was politically unrealistic are probably most relevant. He's very concerned with "people really act this way" or "people really fight over things like this", and not as much with "people can really build a 700 foot tall wall with medieval technology".

(That said, the specific article danso linked to is actually one where being nitpicky about logistics makes plenty of sense, because the show chose to make the entire episode about logistics. Once you make a topic the centerpiece of an episode, you'd better get it right. :D)

It's also worth separating Martin's goals and the TV showrunners' goals. In some ways this is where a lot of the criticism of the last seasons of the TV show come from, as the showrunners had to break out on their own without Martin's plot to rely on. This changed the implicit priorities of the show, and the audience noticed and weren't thrilled. Perhaps best exemplified by the last part of the show where the surviving lords of Westeros elected Bran as king "because he had the best story". (Though there was also the way that armies started basically teleporting around, because although Martin didn't care that much about logistics, he still did care a bit.)

Everyone is aware AGoT has a lot of inspiration on the Wars of the Roses. Its fantasy depiction of fantasy nobility and feuds is more "realistic" than, say, The Lord of the Rings (the work of "medieval fantasy" that looms large over all others), so I'd say it does a good job at it. It also has dragons and magic, so let's not take this inspiration too far, shall we?

The author of the blog we are quoting understands this, fortunately. He's being nitpicky for fun's sake, as he readily admits in one of his initial articles about AGoT [1]:

> "But first, I want to answer a question: Why am I bothering? Isn’t this all a bunch of useless nitpicking? Well, first – what did you expect from a blog named A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry? Useless nitpicking is our specialty."

He then goes on to say:

> "But – for once – I think this is useful nitpicking. For a great many people, Westeros will become the face of the European Middle Ages, further reinforcing distorting preconceptions about the period."

It's true that fiction, especially in movies and TV shows, reinforces what people think they know about the past. See how many people (and games) repeat terrible tropes from the wildly inaccurate movie "Enemy at the Gates", and think the Soviets basically constantly mowed down their own troops at the first sign of wavering, or that at Stalingrad there were not enough bullets or weapons for every soldier.

So I feel the author's pain. Then again, neither the AGoT novels nor TV show pretend to be about real medieval history, they just claim to be inspired by it. If the audience thinks this represents real history to any degree, maybe they should have paid more attention to all the dragons, magical weapons and undead zombies in the show?

PS: the blog author's point about how medieval armies were raised, their numbers, and the involved logistics is fascinating and extremely interesting. It obviously doesn't work like this in AGoT or Lord of the Rings!

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[1] https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-wa...

> Game of Thrones completely disregards the real world, and because this is on purpose, I think criticisms from "realism" are unwarranted

This is not true, any work of fiction needs to be believable within the bounds it sets for its world. Those bounds are extended to include dragons and magic, but no more. The rest of it should be as close to the real world as possible. There's a term for this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude_(fiction)

> There's a term for this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude_(fiction)

Yes, I'm aware of this term, back from when I read Tim O'Brien masterful Vietnam War novel, "The Things They Carried" (which I recommend if you haven't read it).

A Game of Thrones has plenty of verosimilitude. The thing about it is that's about feelings, the emotions in the reader. If you read it and something takes you out of the moment -- "wait, this makes no sense! this character would never do this!", "dragons!? nobody ever mentioned dragons before!", "what, one man defeated an army of hundreds single-handedly!?" -- that breaks verosimilitude. But within AGoT, very few things do this. It's self-contained and, within the span of your reading it, self-consistent. It won't resist a medieval history scholarly review, but then again, it's not meant to, and neither is it "shallow".

That's a fair point, and I'm wrong to imply that, at least in the case of the "Loot Train Battle", that the problem is with GRRM, since IIRC, the books have not yet reached that plot point (and I haven't read the books).

But I do think it's fair to still critique the TV show, fantasy trappings and all, for shallow and inconsistent world-building and logic. The Loot Train Battle is an event that is symptomatic of the showrunners rush to wrap up the sprawling threads that they so carefully rolled out in the earlier seasons — by season 7, teleporting across the continent was just an accepted thing, and that correlated IMHO with a rise in incoherent and unsatisfying subplots.

What I liked about the early seasons of GoT was that even for a fantasy world, there was a real sense physical space. Many of the 1st and 2nd season's developments arise because distance is a factor — e.g. the time it takes to go from Kings Landing to Winterfell, from Winterfell to the wall, etc. The Red Wedding results because the only sensible crossing from north to south is controlled by a long-declining minor House.

Not sure how the showrunners could've worked around GRRM creating an improbable situation where Kings Landing is supplied by The Reach/Highgarden (again, haven't read the book, so maybe this is not the case?). But the showrunners seemed dead set either way to depict a big dragon-vs-army battle, logistics be damned.

Thanks for your reply.

I think a critique or analysis of the internal consistency of AGoT is valid and fun! The blog is fascinating in its depth. I just don't think it's necessary to call the books or show "shallow" when they deviate from real-world history or plausibility; like the late Terry Pratchett would argue, it's all about "the story". And the story is engrossing, in my opinion.

You'll get no argument from me about the TV show getting inexplicably rushed and inconsistent in the later seasons. I think most viewers were disappointed by that :(

I disagree, because I think you can't have it both ways.

I love Sci-Fi, but I generally don't like Fantasy as a genre. As soon as magic, wizards, dragons, orcs or elves enter the picture, I check out.

We can debate the logical consistency of my specific preferences (e.g. "Star Wars is more Fantasy than Sci Fi. The force is just magic!"), but I feel how I feel.

Game of Thrones was the first fantasy book(s) and show that I enjoyed in spite of the fantastical elements, and I grew to embrace them nonetheless. I'm not the only one. The reason why the books and show became such a massive cultural phenomenon is BECAUSE it was loved by people who normally don't like fantasy because the "medieval politics" of it all were beloved regardless of any fantasy backdrop.

I have to imagine this was by design. The tone was consistent, and George RR knew what he was doing. He created a world grounded in reality that forgot about magic, then brought it back in (remember, at the start of the series, all the characters except a few regard dragons and magic and zombies as myth and legend because they've been gone for so long)

So I think it's entirely valid to criticize the internal consistency and realism of his works and hold them to a realism bar.

I don't know why you disagree, because I think we're actually in agreement!

It's perfectly fine to judge the internal consistency of a work of fictional world-building. I think AGoT is fairly consistent, give or take.

It's not an accurate depiction of medieval warfare -- the blog's author argues it's actually a better match for the Thirty Years War, with its large professional armies and its loss of human life -- but then it doesn't claim to be. Judging the vassal system ("bannermen") and how it differs from medieval history is interesting, but it's unfair to consider the fictional world "shallow" or "ridiculous" simply because in real medieval history, vassal armies and levies were much smaller.

All things considered, the Wars of the Roses inspired political infighting and feuds that resulted in shocking betrayals and murders are pretty "truthy". Way more than say, how Lord of the Rings depicts aristocracy and the behavior of "rightful" kings ;)