Read The Realm: The True history behind Game of Thrones for Free Online

capital of the eastern Roman Empire, where the north men were employed in the emperor’s Vangerian guard as mercenaries. This second Rome was a place of outstanding riches and sophistication at the very edge of the continent. It was here that Greek Fire was developed, the inspiration for the Battle of King’s Landing; it was first used by the Byzantine Greeks during the Arab Siege of Constantinople in 674, when a navy under the second caliph Yazid I was scorched. It was formed from a mysterious substance still unknown today, which caused water to burn. x
    Haadraada had been persuaded to invade by none other than Tostig, with whom he set sail from Norway towards the Shetlands and down the coast of eastern Scotland. The armada consisted of 300 ships and the invading army met a pitiful English force led by Edwin and Morcar, and after the battle they walked over English heads lying in a river ‘like stepping stones’. The brothers, however, escaped, and Harold’s army marched north in record time and met the invaders at nearby Stamford Bridge, killing both the Norwegian king and Tostig. Harold, magnanimously, allowed the surviving Scandinavians to go home, the pitiful band filling only 20 or so ships, and a visitor to the area in the 1120s recalled that there was still a mountain of bones visible on the battle site.
    By now the Normans had landed in Sussex, along with mercenaries - sellswords, as they are called in Martin’s world - from across the continent, and plundered the land. Harold could have stayed in London and let the Normans run out of food, but he was tempted out, for as lord he could not stand by while the people of Sussex, the heartland of the Godwinson family, were plundered. By the evening of October 13th the two armies were camped near Hastings, and the English, despite their tiredness, had the advantage of higher ground. Their army also included 3,000 of the elite housecarls, each carrying an enormous two-handed axe that could chop a horse in half. At 9am, 7,000 Englishmen went into battle against 7,000 invaders, the English shouting ‘Ut!’ (out) and the enemy ‘Dex Aie’ (with God’s help). The fighting went on for most of the day.
    The Normans charged and charged, but there was deadlock. Then the Bretons on their left side began a retreat and, thinking that the enemy were in tatters, the English were fooled into chasing them. Their formation collapsed and the higher ground was lost, and Harold’s brothers Gyrth and Leofwine were killed. The English now on the retreat, William ordered four knights to go after the king; they hacked him to death, and it was left to Harold’s mistress, Edith Swan-Neck, to identify him by a part ‘known only to her’. After the battle, the Normans went from town to town until on Christmas Day London surrendered, supposedly after a traitor let the invaders through the Lud Gate, where the old gods had been worshipped a millennium before.
    On Christmas Day 1066, William was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey, the celebration ending with his men firing on the crowd, before setting fire to the surrounding buildings. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle lamented: ‘They built castles far and wide throughout the land, oppressing the unhappy people, and things went ever from bad to worse.’

The Conquest
    A central theme running through Game of Thrones is the warrior code known as chivalry, which in England reached its high point in the reign of Edward III in the 14th century. It had been brought to England with the Normans, differing from other medieval warrior codes in that it prohibited the killing or mistreatment of aristocratic prisoners, who in Anglo-Saxon times would have expected to be killed. xi (Chivalry also encompassed ideas about the treatment of women, although most of what we imagine by chivalry towards women today is a later romantic idea from the far gentler Victorian era.) The invasion also brought a new elite, the barons, and with baronial power came