The Real Game of Thrones

Since the New Year began, I’ve been busy writing my next novel, but I’ve also found myself missing Game of Thrones. If you’ve been missing it too, Conn Iggulden’s Wars of the Roses series might offer the perfect remedy. After all, the Wars of Roses were the real game of thrones.

The Wars of the Roses Inspired “A Game of Thrones”

George R.R. Martin has long made it known that the historical Wars of the Roses helped inspire A Game of Thrones, and the evidence is quite stark (pun intended). The two warring house, York and Lancaster, became houses Stark and Lannister. Like Winterfell, York is in the north of England, and up the road is Hadrian’s Wall. It was not made of ice, but you get the idea.

There have been scores of novels written about the Wars of the Roses, but so far, Iggulden’s series is my favorite. The prologue to the first book, Stormbird, portrays the death of King Edward III—the event that laid the groundwork for the real-world game of thrones—before jumping ahead sixty-six years to focus on the origins of this fifteenth-century civil war.

Most of the significant characters in Stormbird are historical figures, but in a twist from A Game of Thrones, I found my sympathies lying with the Lannisters—err Lancasters. Richard of York (the real-world Ned Stark) is the novel’s chief antagonist. While Margaret of Anjou, the very un-Cersei-like wife of the sometimes enfeebled King Henry VI, becomes one of the story’s most likable characters.

My favorite character, however, is Derry Brewer, one of the novel’s few fictional personages. Brewer is the king’s spymaster who conspires with the Duke of Suffolk to arrange Henry’s marriage to Margaret. While I imagine Brewer to be the spitting image of Ser Bronn of the Blackwater, his personality is much more like Tyrion Lannister’s. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the spymaster steals the show.

Iggulden’s writing reminds me of Bernard Cornwell’s, so if you enjoy his novels, I suspect Wars of the Roses will not disappoint. And if you are still longing for tales of nobles caught in a Game of Thrones-style war of succession, you might find the Yorks and Lancasters to be a worthy replacement for the Starks and Lannisters—at least while waiting for The Winds of Winter to finally arrive.

Thanks to Amazon, you can read a preview of Stormbird here.