The Realm: The True history behind Game of Thrones Read online

  Robert invaded the following year but foolishly agreed to a compromise under which Henry made him heir and gave him a pension on condition he go back across the Channel. In 1106 the younger brother invaded Normandy and took Robert captive, which is how he remained for the last 28 years of his life.

  Henry married the daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland, who was also from the old English royal line of Ethelred and Alfred the Great, giving him both peace with the Scots and a greater claim to rule the English. He also managed to sire numerous other children, estimated between 22 and 25, by ‘six or eight’ different mistresses, which even in a period when lords often sired bastards was impressive.

  Henry also kept the Church onside, which at least could not accuse him of homosexuality, but he was cynically pious. He promoted Roger of Salisbury to archbishop because he said Mass the quickest, and tried to make his doctor Archbishop of Canterbury, although the Church blocked the appointment as they thought it an inappropriate job for a man who inspected women’s urine for a living. Like Alfred the Great, Henry was a younger brother and groomed for the Church, and so could read and write. His nickname, beauclerc, means ‘fine scholar’, but he was also a brutal leader. While fighting Norman rebels with his brother William in 1090, Henry dealt with one, Conan, by throwing him out of a castle window. He allowed two of his granddaughters to be blinded by an enemy knight rather than concede his demands. Their mother, his bastard daughter Juliane de Fontevrault, tried to assassinate Henry afterwards with a crossbow. He also once blinded a Norman minstrel who sang a song critical of him.

  The War of the Roses was not the first time the Realm had been crippled by feuding warlords. In 1120, after Henry I’s only legitimate son William Atheling drowned crossing the Channel (along with 200 other aristocrats, all of them inebriated), the country had been plunged into 19 years of warfare between followers of Henry’s daughter Matilda and nephew Stephen. It was a war that Matilda – betrothed to the German emperor Heinrich V when he was 32 and she 11, and having grown up effectively running Germany while her husband was away – had lost the chance to win by her haughtiness and arrogance.

  But after Stephen’s eldest son died in 1153 and, weary with ‘the Anarchy’ as it was called, he had agreed to pass the throne to Matilda’s son by second husband Geoffrey of Anjou, the young Henry, who had previously invaded the country with a group of friends when just 13.

  Geoffrey, whose descendents came to be called Plantagenets after the planta genista broach he wore, was from a line considered by some to be descended from Satan himself. His great-grandfather, Fulk III the Black, a notorious rapist and pervert of ‘fiendish cruelty’, had his first wife burned at the stake in her wedding dress on discovery of her adultery with a goatherd.xii When St Bernard of Clairvaux saw the future Henry II he is said to have uttered ‘from the devil they came, and to the devil they will return’. The first of the Angevin kings was extremely fidgety, had a harsh, cracked voice and a red face that went even redder when he was angry (which was often). On one occasion ‘the king, flying into his usual temper, flung his cap from his head, pulled off his belt, threw off his cloak and clothes, grabbed the silken coverlet off the couch, and sitting as it might be on some dung heap started chewing pieces of straw’.

  Henry’s reign was dominated by conflict, first with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, and later with his four surviving sons by his wife, the older, risqué Eleanor of Aquitaine, a divorcée previously wed to the King of France, Louis VII.

  Henry was a charismatic and clever ruler who led a kingdom on the rise, centred on a capital city the population of which had grown to 25,000. He was one of few medieval kings to read, spoke a number of languages and innovated the use of trial by jury rather than battle or torture, establishing in 1166 a public prosecution service and a central court of justice at Westminster. The jury system he introduced was a great innovation; in Saxon times defendants would have to walk over nine red hot ploughshares (the knife of a plough), or they could endure trial by blacksmith, by which a suspect had to hold two hot irons and walk nine paces, and then have his hands bandaged. After a week, if his wounds were healing, he was innocent and so freed, but if they had gone septic he would be found guilty and hanged. (Although if the wounds had become infected, he’d probably die in agony soon anyway.) Defendants could also plump for trial by drowning or boiling; the only exemptions were priests, who could choose ‘trial by morsel’, which involved eating a certain amount of food in a given time – understandably a rather more popular option. Just as in Westeros, justice had been extracted through blood money, Wergild in old English (‘man money’ – the word were still survives in werewolf) the value of a man’s life, and the amount his family had to be compensated if he was killed or injured, ranging from 1,200 shillings for the most noble down to just 50 for the lowest rank of slave. (Slavery had been abolished by William the Conqueror.)

  The Normans had introduced trial by battle, so that knights fought with swords and lances, peasants used staves with iron heads, while women and priests could appoint a champion. One recorded case of trial by battle from 1221, in Gloucester, ended with the loser being castrated and his testicles thrown to a group of boys, who cheerfully had a kick about with them. (For having introduced the jury system Henry II was voted number 90 in the BBC’s 100 Greatest Britons list, a few places below Bono and Robbie Williams.)

  In 1162 Henry II made his crony Becket, an ostentatious rich merchant’s son who wore the finest coats around town and kept a pet monkey, Archbishop of Canterbury. However, the move backfired when the new religious leader began to take his role too seriously, wearing hair shirts and blocking the king’s plans to remove clerical exemption from prosecution. Becket fled the country but when he returned in 1170 and attacked the king from the pulpit on Christmas Day, Henry erupted in fury. ‘What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a lowborn cleric?’ Four young knights in attendance, eager to impress the king, rode to the Channel to confront Becket at Canterbury. The men, led by Reginald FitzUrse (‘son of a bear’), were severely hungover by the time they arrived in England the following day, and having picked up another 12 men on the way, were pumped-up for a fight.

  When they arrived at the cathedral, Becket, ever the diplomat, shouted ‘Pimp!’ at FitzUrse. This led to a slanging match, and as the knights were leaving, Becket goaded them again and the quarrel erupted, and at some point one of the knights drew his sword and struck Becket in the head. Another blow slit his skull open, mixing brain and blood on to the cathedral floor. The murder shocked the nation, and Henry donned sackcloth, the traditional clothes of penance, and allowed himself to be whipped by clergymen in public – five lashes for each of the dozen or so bishops in attendance and three for each of the 80 monks.

  The final eruption of the feud was caused by Henry, in Becket’s absence, choosing the Archbishop of York to preside at his son’s coronation in 1170. Henry wanted his eldest son, Henry the Young King, to be crowned in his lifetime to reduce the risk of another war, but the gifts he bestowed on him only led to a conflict with his jealous brothers.

  After being crowned once, Henry demanded his father let him have a second ceremony, this time with the new Archbishop of Canterbury (who, after Becket’s exit interview, was very accommodating). Despite now being joint King of England, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, young Henry felt that he was hard done by – after all, his father had his own duchy when he was 16 and a kingdom at 19. At a banquet, Henry made his father wait hand and foot on him, and when the older man complained, ‘No other king in Christendom has such a butler,’ he replied: ‘It is only fitting that the son of a count should wait on the son of a king.’ History does not record the angry middle-aged king’s response.

  Richard and Geoffrey, the king’s middle sons, were unhappy about their elder sibling receiving so much of the inheritance. Geoffrey was described by Gerald of Wales as ‘ove
rflowing with words, soft as oil… able to corrupt two kingdoms with his tongue; of tireless endeavour, a hypocrite in everything, a deceiver and a dissembler’.xiii The two brothers started an almost-Freudian armed rebellion against their father in 1173, the boys aged just 16 and 15. They were supported by their mother Eleanor, now estranged from her husband, as well as the kings of Scotland and of France. But later that year, when Eleanor fled the country in men’s clothing and sought refuge with Louis VII – the former husband she had supposedly committed adultery against with her own uncle – he handed her back. Richard’s 1174 rebellion ended with him throwing himself at his father’s feet and begging for forgiveness. Father and son were reconciled.

  But before long Henry the Young King rebelled, upset that youngest son John had been given Cornwall and three castles in Normandy, which he wanted for himself. While in southwest France in 1183, Henry died of a fever, his last act being the plunder of a shrine. Geoffrey followed him three years later, trampled to death during a tournament. His friend, the young French king Philippe II, was so distraught that he tried to throw himself into the grave.

  The king’s woes did not end there. Again he attempted to intercede on behalf of John, demanding that Richard part with Aquitaine. For the heir to hand over this large, wealthy region of France, ancestral home of his mother, was an insult too much; now older, wiser and more dangerous, he raised an army against his father. With his mother, Richard joined forces with the young King of France against Henry, and father and son met at Le Mans, where the two men appeared to embrace. The old king whispered in his ear: ‘God spare me long enough to take revenge on you.’

  The two rival armies were camped close to each other during the peace talks of January 1189, and the atmosphere was extremely tense. In the no man’s land between them, Richard and a gang of men accidentally caught up with some of the king’s followers, led by Henry’s loyal knight William Marshal, an old friend of Richard’s and the very pinnacle of chivalry.

  Marshal had experienced the most incredible life, much of which found its way into medieval tales and later novels and films (most recently in A Knight’s Tale, in which Heath Ledger re-enacted a number of incidents from his story). The fourth son of a Wiltshire baron, he’d made his money as a professional jouster, earning a fortune by taking the armour of his defeated opponents. He won partly because he had an unusually thick skull, although on several occasions he’d needed blacksmiths to remove a bashed-in helmet from his head.

  Such games were incredibly important, being essentially training for war: among the popular sports were cudgelling, which was won when blood poured down the opponent’s scalp; quarter-staff, in which poles over six feet long were used to knock the opponent over, preferably out; or single-stick, similar to quarter-staff but which ended when one of the competitors was covered in blood. Although brutal, they were an accepted feature of life among the aristocracy; Henry III tried to ban them but only because he feared they would promote conspiracies. The Church had been opposed to tournaments on moral grounds, refusing burial to those who died in them, but abandoned this stance in 1316, when Pope John XXII concluded they were good training for crusaders. But they did become less violent. In the 12th century such games were basically mock battles and brute force was the important factor. By the 14th there were two horsemen in a joust, and more emphasis on skill rather than just smashing the other man’s face in, and far fewer fatalities, although these were still regular. Barriers between the two knights weren’t introduced until the 15th century.

  But Marshal was lucky to be alive at all. His father, John, had sided with Matilda during the Anarchy and King Stephen had taken the 10-year-old William hostage. When he threatened to kill the boy, his father replied to go ahead, for: ‘I have the hammers and anvil to forge an even finer son.’ (Similar to a line used by Walder Frey in Game of Thrones.) William was taken to be hanged in front of a horrified crowd that included his father, but as his head was placed in the noose Stephen grabbed the boy and took him away, promising from that point to look after him. Marshal later became a knight of Prince Richard, but the two had fallen out over a woman, and by now they were firm enemies. That day in January 1189 they hadn’t expected to fight and neither was wearing a helmet, but Marshal rode straight at the prince. ‘By God’s legs do not kill me, Marshal’ Richard cried out, ‘that would be wrong, I am unarmed.’ At the last moment Marshal ran his lance into the prince’s horse instead.

  Now the king learned that favourite son John had joined the rebellion. Broken-hearted, he surrendered to Philippe in July 1189 and expired two days later from a massive brain haemorrhage. The only son to stay by the king at his deathbed was Geoffrey, a bastard spawned by a lowly woman called Ykenai, described by contemporary Walter Map as a ‘base-born, common harlot who stooped to all uncleanliness’.xiv As the king had said of the young man on a previous occasion: ‘The others are the real bastards.’

  Henry’s son became Richard the First, called ‘the Lionheart’, and one of his first acts was to call for William Marshal. ‘Marshal,’ he told him. ‘You are pardoned. I bear you no malice.’ He gave him Isabel de Clare to marry, a great catch, as she came with most of south Wales and eastern Ireland.

  Richard spent most of his reign on crusade during a decade-long orgy of violence which he seemed to find hugely entertaining, right up to the point that it killed him. Even before landing in Palestine he had managed to sack Sicily, after getting into an argument with King Tancred, who was supposed to be his ally. He also invaded Christian Cyprus in a ‘fit of pique’,xv freed the captive French king Philippe, and then sold the island to the Templars, the elite band of sworn brothers who had formed to protect pilgrims on the way to the Holy Land, but who soon ended up controlling the region. Comprised of knights who were sworn to chastity, the Templars strongly resembled the Watch in being an elite organization sworn to protect civilization from without.

  The crusades may have inspired Martin’s ‘Unsullied’, in particular the Mamluks of Egypt, an Islamic slave army comprising boys who had been captured from Europe, Africa and the Middle East and raised to be soldiers, who were famous for their bravery and fought off the Mongol invaders, who like the Dothraki were terrifying nomadic horsemen. (However, in their Hoplite tactics, and the cruelty of their early lives, the Unsullied far more resembled the people of Sparta, the unusual Greek city-state which had evolved a militaristic and egalitarian society after enslaving its neighbours; just as the Unsullied could only complete their training by killing a newborn in front of its slave mother, so too Spartan boys were encouraged to murder Helots.)xvi

  While on crusade, however, Richard was captured and sold to the German Emperor Heinrich VI, who demanded a 100,000 marks payment, as well as various marriage alliances and the provision of 50 galleys and 200 knights on Heinrich’s invasion of Sicily. No amount of diplomatic protest could free him, even after Richard’s mother sent off an abusive letter to the Pope, signed ‘Eleanor, by the wrath of God, Queen of England’. The ‘king’s ransom’ cost the English treasury 34 tons of gold, the equivalent of four years’ national expenditure.

  The people groaned under the burden as sheriffs collected the tax, and despite the Lionheart’s triumphs in far off lands, the kingdom was disintegrating, crime became widespread and a pirate called Ragnald of Man now ruled the Irish Sea. During his imprisonment, Richard’s brother John revolted against his rule, in alliance with Philippe of France, who had also sought the help of the King of the Danes, a plan that came to naught. The two men also appealed to William of Scotland, who refused because Richard had freed him in 1189, and so to take up arms against the English king would be dishonourable. Likewise, Richard’s other allies, including Dietrich, Count of Holland, Henry, Duke of Brabant and Archbishop Adolf of Cologne, all remained loyal.

  The king arrived back in March 1194, and while hunting in Sherwood Forest, met his brother, forgiving him with the words: ‘You are only a child who has been led astray.’ John was 28.

 
; He then left almost immediately to return to fighting.. However in 1199, in Limousin, southwest France, a longbowman took aim at Richard during a siege. The king stood posing to mock the sniper, who was using a saucepan as a shield. Despite wearing no armour himself, the king applauded his first shot: the man fired again and hit him in the left shoulder, fatally, as it turned out. The peasant claimed that Richard had killed his father and two brothers, but as a last act of chivalry, the dying king pardoned him and asked that he be released after his death. Afterwards Richard’s men had the longbowman flayed alive.

  Richard is usually remembered in stark contrast to his younger brother John. Though extremely violent, he always stuck by his word – he was nicknamed ‘Richard yay-or-nay’ – and was forgiving. John, meanwhile, broke every promise he ever made. Even before his brother’s death, his rule as regent was unforgiving and harsh, leading the people of London to revolt, and conditions worsened.

  Drunkenness had always been a common feature of life in the Realm. As far back as the eighth century St Boniface, the Devonian who converted the Germans, complained that it was ‘a vice peculiar to the heathens and to our race, and that neither Franks, Gauls, Lombards, Romans nor Greeks indulge in’. Twelfth-century writer William of Malmesbury said of the English that ‘Drinking in parties was an universal practice, in which occupation they passed entire nights as well as days.’ In the early 13th century England went through one of its periodic booze epidemics, so that ‘the whole land was filled with drink and drinkers’, and leading the way was the drunken King John, whose fondness for booze and lechery inadvertently gave the world its most important legal document – Magna Carta.