Pastiche Fantasy in Song of Ice and Fire

30 September 2012, 1800 EDT

There’s much to like about what George R.R. Martin does in his juggernaut of a fantasy franchise: his juggling of a ginormous cast of compelling characters, his willingness to kill and maim those characters in horrible ways, and his relentless critique of the way that high fantasy handles class and gender.

I appreciate that there’s something barking mad about demanding ‘realism’ in fricking high fantasy, but medieval Europe was not populated by well-fed and endearing freeholders, chivalrous knights, and free-thinking warrior-maidens. And let’s not even get started on whether the political economy of feudal society is compatible with low-cost extra-dimensional energy sources.

Given all of the ways in which Martin breaks with tropes found in the bulk of high fantasy, it can be easy to forget the degree to which his underlaying fantasy architecture is dungeons-and-dragons level pastiche — complete with Dire Wolves, cliché “barbarian” steppe nomads, pseudo-vikings, and other flotsam and jetsam from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

The series even refers to the undead as “wights.” We’re in pure Monster Manual territory here. Our good friend Colin Wight’s last name does not mean “sinister undead dude.” The etymology of “wight” as “undead creature” derives, as I understand it, from a misreading of Tolkien.

In the early part of the Fellowship of the Ring (in a section that gets cut in the major audio and film adaptations) the Halflings face an undead creature called a “barrow-wight.” This simply translates as “barrow man” or “barrow creature.” So what we have is kind of metonym that developed within the fantasy genre and diffused down to Martin.

There’s nothing wrong with this.* Much of the “breakout” high-fantasy series of the last few decades, such as Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time and Eddings’ Belgariad, were arguably even more pastiche — and not even remotely subversive.

I suppose we could make a case that its pedestrian fantastical elements enhance the critical dimensions of A Song of Ice and Fire. Perhaps it might turn out that Martin’s subversive instincts extend not only to issues of class, gender, and power, but also to the so-far ambiguous status of the distant history of Westeros. But still… the underlying world-building is glaringly bereft of imagination given the other strengths of the books.

… And, of course, after I finished writing I searched for “song of ice and fire pastiche” and found this ground well-trodden. Here’s an example: a thoughtful discussion in the context of computer role-playing games.

*Heck, I wish I could find people to play tabletop fantasy rpgs with!

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.