Pod Insights Gone Medieval Game of Thrones: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms About this episode Matt Lewis journeys into the world behind the latest story from the Game of Thrones universe, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, to discover how it illustrates that medieval history is far more colourful and spectacular than you might think.
After nerding out about the world created by George R. R. Martin with Dr. Eleanor Janega, Matt is joined by Dr Hugh Doherty, the show’s historical advisor, who worked with its writers to build a believable world of knights, codes, and clashing swords, bringing authentic medieval life to Westeros. They discuss what the show gets right — and why it matters.
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Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. Audio editor is Joseph Knight, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.
Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Matt Lewis? From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Yarnagger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:42 Speaker 01 Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.
1:18 Matt Lewis? Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots, and murders to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.
1:58 Matt Lewis? The latest spin-off from the world of Westeros has been enthralling TV audiences, myself included, in recent weeks. The new series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, is based on a series of novellas by George R.R. Martin that plunges audiences into the brutal and ruthless world of Westeros politics. It follows Sir Duncan the Tall, a humble hedge knight, and his clever squire Egg as they travel across Westeros. And it's a quieter realm in this series, marked by political tension, fading of dragons, and rigid feudal hierarchies. There are questions of chivalry, identity, and moral choices as small, personal actions ripple into larger historical consequences.
2:41 Matt Lewis? And I've loved every minute of it. As you may know, Game of Thrones is rooted in The Wars of the Roses and House of the Dragon in the Anarchy. So how does a production like this get the history right? A little later on, I'll be talking to Dr Hugh Doherty, who's worked as a historical consultant on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. But first, do better to take a closer look at A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms with me, then Gone Medieval's co-host, Dr Eleanor Jarniger. Hello Eleanor, it's great to be talking Game of Thrones.
3:12 Eleanor Janega? Listen, this is a special side interest of mine, I can tell you that, and I am hyped to get into it.
3:20 Matt Lewis? So I guess people, if you're involved in the world of Westeros, people will be aware of Game of Thrones as what we perhaps all watched to get us into this. I know I did. I always remember watching it, nine o'clock on a Monday night, having to send the kids to bed because they were still so little at this point. It was not suitable for them to watch. And then being like, "Why are you watching that rubbish? It's gonna be no good." And then all of them, when they turn 18, I'm like, "Now go and catch up on four seasons of Game of Thrones", and then having their minds blown by this incredible, incredible series. So from a history point of view, it's really clear to see where George R R Martin is wrapping these things up in Game of Thrones, in The Wars of the Roses, for example. And one of the things I really enjoy doing is trying to work out where he's picked character traits
4:02 Matt Lewis? from people and added them into his other people. You know, Eddard Stark, you know, this pinnacle of chivalry, is he the Richard Duke of York? Is he a bit of Richard III? Because I think what he does really well is mix some of those things together so that we can see some elements in composite characters and we can keep going, oh, I recognise that from The Wars of the Roses.
4:20 Eleanor Janega? Oh, absolutely. And I think that probably one of my favourite things is just how he makes entire civilizations that are really recognisable. So for example, the minute the Dothraki were introduced, and I was like, it's Mongols, it's Mongols, you know, and I was just so excited to see them, you know. There is this real sense of an entire world that is really closely mirroring the way that we think about the medieval world is so important to me.
4:50 Matt Lewis? And I think some of the ways that things play out, you know, he very clearly positions Daenerys Targaryen is Henry VII coming to bring an end to The Wars of the Roses. But the way that he wraps dragons up in that, because Henry VII relies so much on dragon iconography, the red dragon of Cadwaladr, and this melanic prophecy that the red dragon will return to defeat the white dragon, he's really drawing on some interesting bits of ancient folklore and mythology and making it cool because it's a real life dragon when he gets it.
5:18 Eleanor Janega? I think that in, you know, the heart of hearts of every medievalist, you know, we want to believe in the dragons, you know, we want to deal with all of these things. But also, I think that you are bang on. What is interesting here is how much medieval people would find that recognisable. Medieval people would really be able to deal with this story and the magical elements of it. This idea that there is more behind the power of a ruler than just the violence they're able to meet out. There has to be this sort of spark.
5:52 Eleanor Janega? Of something supernatural, right? And whether or not that's thinking about God's will, or if it's, you know, a literal dragon, that's two different things. And I think that that is a really interesting thing to think about. And also how, you know, he really asks the question of, you know, when you're going to be using things that are magical, well, what is the offset of that? Because on the one hand, you've got cool dragons. That's great. But if this is a world that has magic in it, well, that's not always good, right? And so we get to see things like that in the personages of the white walkers. And this has a real close correlation to ideas of demoniac magic that we see really commonly in the medieval period.
6:36 Matt Lewis? Yeah, and medieval stories of revenants and things like that, people would recognize this idea of the dead rising up again to come to torment you and to try to kill you. It absolutely would not be alien to a medieval audience.
6:48 Eleanor Janega? You know, even just the way that we see, for example, the seven kingdoms come together. I think that English people would really see, oh, the riverlands. That's sort of like the Midlands. Yeah, you know, the, the north. Oh, yep, okay, there's York. Even stuff like, I really like the culture of the Iron Islands and this kind of recently de-Vikingized kind of group of people who are still holding on to some of these ideas and are kind of only begrudgingly brought into the fold of the seven kingdoms. I really like just all of those little bits.
7:22 Matt Lewis? And I think what Game of Thrones did really well was demonstrate that you can also talk about the really deep, long game politics that is going on throughout periods like this, that it's not just about whether you can win a battle, that there is so much more going on, that women can exercise real political power in the background of all of these men fighting all over the place, but that there is a much longer game to be played. And you can wait, in some cases with Game of Thrones, several series for the climax of somebody's political scheming. And I think In an age where people think you need a really quick fix and a quick hit and you know, you've got to get there in 15 seconds or you've lost the audience.
8:04 Matt Lewis? Game of Thrones demonstrated that there is really an appetite for that kind of in-depth, medieval politicking to play out as well.
8:11 Eleanor Janega? I completely agree, and this is something that I think we really try to do here on Gone Medieval. I think the average person is incredibly clever, actually. I think the average person can deal with complexity, can deal with layered ways of thinking about the world. And the success of Game of Thrones really shows that. People are willing to sit through political world-building in order to get a good payoff. And whether or not that is knowing more about medieval history generally, the world's biggest payoff, obviously. Or if it's just getting to see something like the climax of, oh god, when Ned Stark got killed and I lost my mind and my sister had shown me Game of Thrones the first time
8:56 Eleanor Janega? and she already knew what was going to happen and she was just staring directly at me. I believe that I actually threw something, you know, and it's because they also do this great job of taking away all the rules, you know? They say that it doesn't matter if someone is an incredibly important character, they're as vulnerable as anyone else. But because of the slow creep of the way they build things, you are still invested one way or another.
9:22 Matt Lewis? I remember watching that as well, and you watched the first season, I think it was the end of the, the last episode of the first season made me realise just how cool this was going to be because you watched the whole first season believing Ned Stark is your main character and then he's dead. So, hang on, what? We've just got invested in this guy and he's dead? But that's history, isn't it? You have no control over when those people manage to get themselves killed or die. And I think that made me think, okay, this is something really different from what you usually expect to see where, you know, people put on a bit of plot armour and survive the most ridiculous things. And I guess we ought to then talk about House of the Dragon, which is kind of set, what are we, about 150 years before Game of Thrones, something like that?
10:05 Eleanor Janega? Yeah, that is the Anarchy. You and I both love us some Anarchy, right? So when House of the Dragon came out, I was delighted because I was like, oh, Game of Thrones with more dragons. It's, it's happening, it's, it's happening. But I'm also incredibly biased to House of the Dragon because one of my dear friends is in it. She is Shrocko Lothar, she is a pirate queen. That's my girl Abby. Shout out.
10:31 Matt Lewis? Sweet. That is very cool.
10:33 Eleanor Janega? I had to tell her not to tell me anything because I was like, I can't hear it. I have to watch you do it, you know, so.
10:40 Matt Lewis? And House of the Dragon, you know, it so closely parallels the Anarchy. You've got a succession crisis and, and the question about can the crown be settled on a woman? Or does it always have to be a man? And all of those things playing out. And again, the deep politics, the ongoing politics and the family feuding that's happening all the way through that. Who do you trust and who do you not trust? And I think part of the reason, aside from all of that, that House of the Dragon is so good is because we get to see the Targaryens at the height of their power with all of their dragons. Game of Thrones tells us that there used to be Targaryens who had dragons and then Daenerys, she gets hold of a few, but this is a world in which dragons are still very, very real
11:21 Matt Lewis? and are the tool through which people wield power and authority in Westeros. And I'm always slightly struck by, so I wondered to what extent we're supposed to understand dragons in the Westeros world. Are dragons the representation of royal authority, royal power? Because we see dragons coming into conflict with dragons so much and only a dragon can fight another dragon. And is it, is this a way of saying, you know, royalty will fight amongst themselves, but they're on a different plane to ordinary people. The fights that they have are not things that people can, ordinary folk can get involved in. If you want to bring down a dragon, you better make sure you've got a dragon. You want to bring down royal authority, you better believe you can wield some royal authority.
12:04 Eleanor Janega? Yeah, and I do think that there is a real thing that is happening in House of the Dragon as well, which is saying.
12:12 Eleanor Janega? All right. And then how do people who are also nobles who may come into the family relate to that? You know, if you have children who can ride dragons, what does that mean to you? How do you wield your own power as a result of that? And indeed, I think one of the things that is really interesting in House of the Dragon as a result of that is there are all these questions of interpretation. You know, what do people's various oaths mean? If someone says something, how are we supposed to understand that? And if you are one of the individuals who does not have that ultimate authority that
12:53 Eleanor Janega? comes in the shape of a dragon, how do you then attempt to use what interpretive things you can to your own advantage?
13:03 Matt Lewis? But at the moment, we're on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which kind of plonks us almost smack in the middle of the setting for House of the Dragons and the setting for Game of Thrones. We're in a world in which Westeros is slightly more at peace. The Targaryens are the ruling power, but they don't have dragons anymore. So there are a lot of Targaryens hanging around. There seems to be innumerable Targaryens in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, but they don't have dragons. So they're a slightly different prospect. We're sort of seeing them at the height of their power, but how long can that last when they don't have dragons that got them there?
13:39 Eleanor Janega? Yeah, so for me, I think that we're kind of placing them in my head. I'm kind of like, ooh, maybe like late 14th century, early 15th century English. That's kind of like my amalgam for it, where it's like, okay, these people definitely have this country under control. They can do a lot of things, but you know something weird is coming, right? We know about that. But also, I really like A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms because I do think it is a pretty close mirror of this kind of late medieval world, right? Where you've got all of the things kind of ticking over smoothly. You know, there are things like tournaments. You can be a knight who's sort of like wandering around doing, you know, the circuit.
14:24 Eleanor Janega? You can be involved in these sorts of things. And things are stable enough in order to allow for that.
14:33 Eleanor Janega? But there is going to be a tipping point later. That means all of this is going to be sort of taken away from you. So I think that it sits really comfortably in a really particular period of time in the European Middle Ages, and I find that delightful.
14:50 Matt Lewis? Yeah, and I think as well, because we see so many Targaryen princes hanging around, and they all have slightly different personalities. Some of them seem fairly nice. Some of them seem particularly vicious and cruel. But there's all of those ideas of what influences a medieval king, I guess. You know, what is it that forms their personality? What experiences do they have that make them either cruel or aware of the problems of people in their kingdom? Or not care about that? Or just want to use their power for their own ends?
15:20 Eleanor Janega? It's asking the kind of nurture versus nature question. And I suppose that is sort of the interesting conundrum of Egg, because, well, yeah, he's got the Targaryen thing, which means that eventually he can wield power. You know, maybe he will go mad and hurt other people. But there is something inside of him still that makes him interested in ordinary people, interested in the real world around him. So it does constantly call into question what it is we expect from Targaryens and what it is we expect from rulers, right? Like, every king is ultimately still a human somewhere in there. So they have this ability to become more empathetic,
16:05 Eleanor Janega? to become more involved. And whether or not they choose to do that is the question. And so, I mean, ultimately Egg is, he's giving us what we have as an ultimate fantasy. As medieval historians, we're like, what if a member of the royal family was kind of nice?
16:21 Matt Lewis? It's going to happen one time. And I think as well, what's been interesting, so it's all set around a tournament. And I think it's been interesting to watch the atmosphere of that tournament kind of play out. So I think there's some things that stand out to me. The way that they have those kind of lots of rows of lists where knights are charging at each other with lances feels very much more like a Tudor tournament, but a lot less organized than that. There is this element of slight chaos to it as well. And I'm interested to see where the rest of the tournament goes in the rest of the series compared to a high medieval tournament, which is basically just a rampage through the countryside, knocking each other off horses as fast as you can.
16:59 Eleanor Janega? Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think people sort of forget that the original tournament was just melee, you know, because we are conditioned to think of the early modern tournaments, you know, the sort of stuff that Henry VIII was doing as ordinary. And I do think that we definitely see a little bit more chaos than we see, for example, in Game of Thrones, you know, when we see tournaments in Westeros, you know, when Sansa is at her first tournament and that sort of thing. That's the kind of tutor. Yep, that's what I kind of expect to see. And so I was pleased to see that there is more disorganization, but I would, I would like a crumb of melee.
17:37 Matt Lewis? Everybody bash some people. And I can't help wondering if we get back to the history just before we head off and have a quick chat with Hugh Doherty about the series. To get us back to the history, is Sir Duncan the Tall William Marshall?
17:49 Eleanor Janega? I am forced to think of him as such. That's just how I've always read it, I suppose. And granted, yeah, it's because I'm a giant nerd. So of course, you know, the first thing that I do when presented with anything in Westeros is I try to map it on to a named name. And I do think there are a lot of similarities here. You know, we've got the physicality, the tallness, the fact that he's this really impressive individual, which is something that we certainly see a lot of discussion of for Sir William Marshall. Definitely the fact that he is not necessarily well-connected, he's just sort of rolling the dice and seeing where he can go as a result of his inbuilt advantages
18:33 Eleanor Janega? like his physicality. And, you know, also in a kind of an ability to make friends. You know, people like William Marshall. People like Sir Duncan. These are likable, affable guys at their heart, you know?
18:45 Matt Lewis? And here in Sir Duncan is someone who is trying to make his name and his fortune on the tournament circuit, which is kind of exactly what William Marshall ended up doing. And carrying around with him this young, impressionable Figure who initially, at least unbeknownst to him, is a royal heir. You know, is that Henry the Young King, perhaps? Could that be Henry the Third? You know, who's a young boy when Marshall acts as his regent. So I think there's lots of opportunities to think about the real medieval history that is feeding into some of these characters and the stories that are going on as well.
19:16 Eleanor Janega? Absolutely.
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20:33 Speaker 04 After civil war, regicide, and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.
21:16 Matt Lewis? Well, thank you very much, Eleanor. Let's catch up again at the end of the episode after we've heard from Dr Hugh Doherty. He's a lecturer in medieval history at the University of East Anglia, and he also worked as a historical consultant on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. I began by asking him why it's a good watch for someone who listens to Gone Medieval.
21:34 Speaker 05 I think that many efforts at recreating the medieval world on screen are often less accurate than the sort of things that we've seen, for instance, with Game of Thrones and with Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. These are fantastical worlds, but they capture something of the texture of medieval society that other dramatizations of historical events in the medieval millennium fail to do so. They simply don't have the texture. And I think texture is all. Knight of the Seven Kingdoms makes you think about the exercise of power, about knightly virtue, about tournaments, the business of tournaments. I think it's very
22:17 Speaker 05 thought provoking, and I don't think a tournament has ever been recreated with this attention to detail as in Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. I think it's never been done like this. That's utterly gripping for me. I've only seen the first two episodes, but I was completely wowed. Nothing to do with me, but I was completely wowed by what I saw. The drama, the dynamism, that really captured the appeal and power of medieval tournaments.
22:46 Matt Lewis? And I think medieval tournaments are such a big part of the medieval world that hopefully listeners will be encouraged to go and watch it by that. It would be fascinating to see the idea of a medieval tournament sort of brought accurately to life for us to watch, almost as if we were spectators back in the day.
23:00 Speaker 05 Yes, and there were instances where you could say, well, that's not quite right. But in a way, it's the dynamism of the tournament. You can feel the hooves. You can see the power, hear the smashing of lances, the unhorsing of riders. That's done brilliantly.
23:17 Speaker 05 Or make it a very attractive and very important, I think, to anyone with an interest in the medieval world.
23:24 Matt Lewis? And the story follows Sir Duncan the Tall, or in his quest to become Sir Duncan the Tall, and his squire Egg. And I wondered whether you felt like it would offer listeners also an accurate representation of what it meant to be a knight, or to aspire to be a knight, or be that kind of class of almost landless knight who is desperately trying to make his way in the world. Does it give us a feel for what that was like?
23:49 Speaker 05 It does. And I think in all sorts of ways, the businesses of tournaments, acquiring the gear for this knightly display, both on the tournament field and in warfare, was not easy. Gear gets smashed up. How do you acquire new gear? What kind of deals are done? So there are the mechanics of knighthood here, which are very, very interesting. And also the values, and that's very interesting. What drove these knights? What powered chivalric society? What inspired knightly action? I think that, as does the Game of Thrones and House of Dragon, they offer meditation and exploration of these values.
24:31 Speaker 05 And I think what they also do is they highlight the contradictions of these value systems and the difficulties that there were. No value system is coherent. Compromises have to be made. There are shortcomings. There's hypocrisy. There are double standards. There are flaws. There are strengths. And I think that's always brought out. And again, I think the series is very provocative in that context, in making us think about what was the real experience? And what was it like to be someone on the outside desperate to get into these aristocratic clubs?
25:06 Matt Lewis? I'm really glad to hear that it pursues that, because one of the things that I've always been struck by in Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon is how much it looks at those ideas of knightly values, chivalric values, the ideals and values of nobility. And what happens when they come into contact with the real world? Do you remain rigid? Or do you bend? Do you flex? Are there things that you're willing to compromise or not? And what are the implications of either compromising or refusing to do so? It's really interesting that it pursues those, because it occurs to me that lots of people in the medieval world must have been juggling all of those things and trying to make sense of those contradictions. And as you say, the hypocrisy in their minds.
25:43 Speaker 05 Absolutely, and you see that at so many different instances in the medieval world. This elite that espouses these powerful values that remain, to some extent, rooted in the fabric of our own society about the importance of oaths, of loyalty to family and friendship, and yet who often do pursue a course of action that contradicts those very values. And while there are others who live it to the very letter, you know, you think of the French knight and author Geoffroy de Charny, you know, who was part of Philip VI's il-omened Order of the Star, the so Chevalier Club created to rival Ed of the Third's Order
26:27 Speaker 05 of the Garter. And the knights of this new order took a sacred vow never to leave a battlefield, which led to horrendous casualties. And Geoffrey de Charny loses his life at Poitiers, hacked to death, holding the royal standard, the aura flam, next to King Jean. Here is a man who wrote about knightly values and indeed would give his life, living these knightly values, in terrible circumstances.
26:55 Matt Lewis? Yeah, it kind of makes me wonder if you and I could sit at a screening of a few episodes of this with a medieval knight sat in between us with his bucket of popcorn, his upside-down helmet full of popcorn, whether he would recognise the world that he's looking at, you know, he might go, oh, maybe that's not quite right. But would he recognise the meat of what's going on?
27:13 Speaker 05 I think so. That's what I really love about working on these sort of things. I mean, the actors are always very interesting, but it's the armours, it's the military experts, it's the horse masters, it's the riders and stuntmen and stunt women, because they bring a reality. They know what it's like to master a horse and move in on a horse at speed in armour. And I think our friendly knight sitting between us would absolutely appreciate and value and assess.
27:44 Speaker 05 The quality of horsemanship and fighting skills on display. He might take umbrage at certain things, but there'd be a conversation here where he would be directly responding to what he saw. And it's always worth reminding ourselves that the knightly elite, women as much as men in the Middle Ages valued the kind of tales that are depicted in A Knight of Seven Kingdoms. This is part of their literary entertainment. Reading Cretian de Trois or Thomas Mallory, we are confronted with a world that is as fantastical, as gripping, as rooted in a reality as A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
28:28 Speaker 05 There is a continuity there that Thomas Mallory, Cretian de Trois, Geoffrey of Monmouth would all, also if they could join us, now we have a quartet in the cinema, they'd all say, wow, yes, because their storytelling is just as engaging and fantastical. And the conversation between a literary author and a real knight would also be fascinating for their differences of opinion. I think we're part of a conversation that's been happening for a very long time.
29:03 Matt Lewis? That's such an interesting aspect of it that I don't think I'd thought of before. I've just started reading a new English translation of Apollodon, which is the story of the greatest knight and all that kind of thing. And it's exactly that, isn't it? It's that literary version of a knight and the ways in which medieval people would have listened and enjoyed stories of knights that sometimes are quite fantastical and involve feats beyond human abilities and might involve monsters sometimes and all of that kind of thing. But that Arthurian chivalric desire to tell these stories is something that both the knight and the literary writer who are sitting with us in the cinema might recognise in something like A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
29:41 Speaker 05 Absolutely. And it's there in the very fabric of medieval society that they did not have HBO and Netflix, but they did have these literary creations. You know, how did they entertain themselves after a great feast? What stories did they listen to? And the Song of Roland, this epic, epic verse celebration of a battle, Roland and his knights are slaying tens of thousands of enemy, you know, the body count is vast, completely unbelievable, but it clearly captures the imaginations of men and women in the 11th and 12th centuries.
30:21 Speaker 05 And there's that wonderful, wonderful letter of Alquín to a Mersian bishop in which he says, what has Inghild to do with Christ? So the letters of the 790s, I think, early 790s. And he's referencing a minor character who turns up in Beowulf. And he's upbraiding a monastic audience for spending too much time thinking about this sort of daring do, heroism, monsters, tales that bishops and their monastic households were also enjoying. So it's omnipresent, it's everywhere. And I think this is just a continuation of this.
31:04 Matt Lewis? You've blown my mind. You've given me, literally given me a whole new way to think about Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon and stuff like that when I watch it now, that we're watching someone more like Geoffrey of Monmouth telling a medieval story to us. I wondered if we could talk a little bit about how you got into being a historical consultant. You've consulted on this. How do you get into that line of work? Do you go looking for that work? Does that work come looking for you because of your expertise?
31:27 Speaker 05 So it's the latter, and it's serendipity. One of my friends at the university when I was in Oxford, in the history faculty, you know, she was in the faculty office. And she got a phone call at the end of the day, and it was from a studio, and they said, we need a historical advisor now. Can you recommend someone? And she said, you know, put you in touch with Q to H T. And so I went for an interview. And that was my first film. And then I've just word of mouth. They know where to find you, I think. They look for experts. And it's also about, I think, knowing, as it were, what to say and when to say it, which I have had to learn. And it's not easy. And I almost got the sack once for saying something I shouldn't have done.
32:09 Matt Lewis? You've got to tell us that story.
32:10 Speaker 05 Well, essentially, something was produced and the director asked me, what did I think of it? A set dressing. And I said, I think it was my third day on set. And I said, no. And this caused much offence to the people who'd made it. It's been a lot of hard work. And they knew it was inaccurate, actually, but it was part of the creative vision. And I had sort of rudely stepped on their toes and said, no. And they were very upset, understandably. And that taught me, in a way, just to be a bit more sensitive to the amount of work that goes on here and the investment at every level
32:51 Speaker 05 in the production of a film and television series. That's been very interesting. And usually, they know where to find you on set. If you're on set, I'm usually trying to read or eating, you know, I'm at the coffee van or talking to the military advisor, talking to all these wonderful people with all these skill sets. That's taught me as a historian, it's taught me a great deal.
33:12 Matt Lewis? What are the kinds of things have you consulted on? Is there things that people might have seen that you've consulted on? And does it tend to be medieval in focus? Or do you consult on a wide variety of things? Is consultation kind of a transferable skill? Or do you really have to know the detail of a period?
33:26 Speaker 05 It's a bit of both. It's a bit of both. Occasionally, they just want a historical advisor who they can trust, who's not going to be difficult, who's going to be able to provide information. More often, it's about the expertise. I've certainly earned a reputation, I think, for helping on military matters and etiquette.
33:46 Speaker 05 So I've worked on things like Snow White and the Huntsman, the Leficent, the King, about Henry V, and Agincourt, and lots of others. I mean, I haven't really kept a record, but sometimes it's just an email. They'll write to me out of the blue and say, would you read this script and give us your feedback? Sometimes it's in a moment of desperation, costume department have written to me and said, does this work? Or what can we do here? So it varies in its intensity. I've even done a Marvel film where I was helping them direct the battle sequence. Not for very long. It was sort of a three day, but that was really interesting because they hired myself and they hired a dance expert to choreograph the
34:30 Speaker 05 battle sequence. So we spent a wonderful day, this brilliant former ballet dancer, now choreograph master, discussing how the fighting can take place. That was very eye opening.
34:44 Matt Lewis? Are you usually the only historical consultant on a film? Or will there be different people for different aspects? So you mentioned there might be a military advisor. Are you expected to deal with everything from kind of clothes to sets to food? Or are there separate people who deal with separate parts of that?
35:00 Speaker 05 Usually it's all encompassing. Sometimes a film, they'll hire one or more researchers, depending on the budget. And then sometimes those researchers will then say, look, enough's enough. We better get an academic. But it's usually a military advisor, the historical consultant, the military advisor, and the weapons expert, and the horse master are the four sort of the people I spend most time with. So the military advisors, in my experience, have usually been former soldiers. They're always fascinating figures. And the weapons experts are just as interesting. And they take their business very serious because of course there's safety,
35:41 Speaker 05 again, always former soldiers. Once on one film set where there was a group of us, the military advisor, costumes, because we were seated around talking, because filming is often very boring. And I'm just trying to read or chatting. And we were talking away and we're talking about the most accurate battle scene ever made on film. And various suggestions and uh and then the weapons expert, a big chap, big, big chap, worked on many, many films, came over, very, very gentle giant, gentle, gentle giant. He came over and he said, I'll tell you what it was. And everybody went quiet. Because here was someone who knew what he's talking, former soldier and you know what he's talking about. And he said, the most accurate battle ever put on screen?
36:22 Speaker 05 The fight between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones's Diary. The street fight, which he thought is a classic example of two twits having a street fight, two posh twits. That's how I would fight if I was in a, in a street fight. Um, I've always remembered that and I'm sure he's right.
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37:22 Speaker 06 I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one. And I'm Carter Roy and this is What the Fact? Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.
38:02 Matt Lewis? I always think that one of the things The King does really well, so you mentioned you consulted on that, the one about Henry V and Agincourt, which is sort of Shakespearean version of Henry, but not quite. I always thought one of the things that did really well is in particular the fight scene, the duel between Henry and Hotspur, Percy Hotspur. Just in the fact that it is such a clumsy mess and they're both wheezing and out of breath within a minute and just desperately trying to be the last one to give up and fall over. And it's that sense that, you know, you quite often see in Hollywood films, you used to get all these massive set piece fights where they'd be at it for, you know, half an hour, running up and down stairs and charging around and jumping off this and into that and sword fighting. And you physically can't do that. And it always struck me with The King
38:47 Matt Lewis? that there is, is what I imagine, one of those medieval duels would actually really look like.
38:52 Speaker 05 Yes, yes, I remember that vividly because we filmed that scene. All of the main battle sequences were filmed in Hungary and the photographer waited for the end of the day, for that glorious sun setting, which added to the light of that scene. And the director did a brilliant job, I think, in bringing that out. So it looks beautiful, but it also, I think he wanted to capture the exhausting aspect of this kind of combat. That's something that's in all his films. The brutal, tough nature of combat, the horrific nature of that kind of violence.
39:32 Speaker 05 And he brought that, I thought, to that close combat at Agincourt and at other sequences in The King. And I remember when they filmed some of the sequences of Agincourt with the mud in The King, a number of the actors and the stuntmen said it was awful. It was so claustrophobic. They had this beautiful, beautiful field in northern Hungary. Beautiful, full of flowers when we turned up and then they made it into this quagmire for the battle sequence and... You know, we know that in the horror of Agincourt, men were either being crushed to death, the French were crushing each other to death, or they were drowning in the ground.
40:14 Speaker 05 And some of the actors said it was, the experience was just really horrific. So I thought that was brilliantly highlighted. I think too, here of the Lion in Winter, which has a fight scene towards the very end, where Eleanor of Aquitaine sends the knight that has always accompanied her in the film to release her sons from the prison of Shinor Castle. And there's one guard on the principal door and Eleanor of Aquitaine's knight goes down, draws his knife, and there's this brutal, brutal struggle between these two men. It's horrible. They're both sort of gasping and they're trying to kill each
40:54 Speaker 05 other. You know, it's a brilliant film. It's a brilliant play. But that scene there was done so realistically and horribly. You're absolutely right. They bring that out very well in The King.
41:06 Matt Lewis? Are there any common misconceptions about the medieval period that you can use something like your experience on the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms to dispel those myths or to confront them and challenge them?
41:17 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think I always try and point out in knightly culture, the emphasis on etiquette, on good manners, on courtesy, charm, generosity. It's not just about prowess on the tournament field or even the battlefield. There's also, it's cutting a figure at the feasting. That's just as important. The generosity, the largesse of being a knight, of being a great lord, if you could afford it, that was really important. So just underlining the power of these knightly values, I think was always important to me, of honour, of courage, their
42:02 Speaker 05 resort to violence. The complex dynamics of this knightly culture is always something I'm keen to emphasize. And the role of women as actors, as active actors in all of this. It's not a male dominated. World, it's a world in which women participate in tournaments actively as assessors, judges, participants in tournament spectacle in all sorts of ways, in ways that challenge us. I think of Alice Perez, Edward III's mistress, who with other ladies of the court, began a tournament in Cheapside by leading the tournament nights by horse bridles.
42:44 Speaker 05 So the actual tournament heroes had horse bridles and were being led onto the tournament field by these women. That's an astonishing fact. It's such a complex and rich world that challenges almost every assumption that we project about it.
43:01 Matt Lewis? And then it feels like things like TV and film must be such a good opportunity to deal with and confront those and present a kind of more realistic medieval world because you're reaching such a huge audience who are all going to see it and maybe even only subconsciously absorb the fact that this is what that world was really like.
43:21 Speaker 05 Absolutely. I mean, a whole generation of medievalists in the late 19th and 20th century were shaped by reading Ivanhoe. I studied the medieval past because of this great interest in the medieval world that emerges in 19th century with the growth of universities. And that's powered by a renewal of interest in the medieval era because of Walter Scott. We owe so much to Walter Scott and to Ivanhoe. And generations of schoolgirls and schoolboys were introduced to the Middle Ages by Sir Walter Scott, brilliantly so. And then, of course, it was Tolkien, the deeply learned Tolkien. And Game of Thrones and Knight of Seven Kingdoms simply continues that.
44:06 Speaker 05 I did read something recently written by an eminent medievalist in a way denouncing Game of Thrones for the damage it's doing to the subject. And I know of medievalists who have denounced it. That's not my position at all. It introduces the medieval world to new audiences, to wider audiences. It makes them Think and if it inspires even in the smallest way, an interest in the long millennium that we inaccurately describe as the Middle Ages. I think that is a wonderful thing. And so, you know, it creates a momentum. You know, most of my students have come to the Middle Ages through Game of Thrones, even more now, I think, this generation than Lord of the Rings.
44:52 Speaker 05 And I think that is really interesting. The joy is, of course, is that you can say, well, you know, what's right about it and what's not right about it. Of course, you could do all of that with historical films and historical novels. So I think it's very, very important and it's creating a conversation about the Middle Ages and that can only be a good thing.
45:11 Matt Lewis? This has been so incredibly fascinating. I feel like I could talk to you forever. But just to finish on, I wanted to ask you if there was your ideal project out there somewhere that you would love to work on. Is there a film that you wish someone would make so that you could be a historical consultant on it?
45:25 Speaker 05 Do you know something? I have to say that in a way, Game of Thrones, House of Dragon and Knight of the Seven Kingdoms answers that need in me, that appetite. And I'm not just saying that, I really mean, because I had, after Game of Thrones, it had ended, I was in, you know, withdrawal symptoms, in constant negotiation with family and friends about how it was resolved, whether they liked that or not. And to some extent, I'd had enough. Brilliant, brilliant though it was, and I was hooked on it, I think, seven wonderful years with friends in, then I was in Oxford and then in Norwich, moments of my life shaped around this TV series. And then I hadn't watched House of Dragon, I watched the two episodes of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and was wild.
46:08 Speaker 05 Utterly, you can feel the hooves. I mean, just brilliantly done. And that made me want to, I went back and this Christmas, when I get a chance, I've been watching my way through the first, see just bits where I can. And I've been absolutely enthralled by it. I mean, just utterly gripped. And I've loved talking, my wife is a curator at Norwich Castle, a medievalist, a romanesque art expert. And she hasn't been able to watch it because she's been working also, but talking to her about it and saying this and that and what's so accurate. So to some extent, this has been answered, this appetite. I don't know, there's never really been anything, I mean, apart from, as it were, continued interest in Henry V.
46:54 Speaker 05 There's never been anything about the Hundred Years' War that I think has conveyed the sort of the daring do, the raw courage and the drama of it all. I mean, Sumption in his five magnificent volumes has given us that. It's very scholarly, it's beautifully written and it has a cinematic quality. Sumption's History of the Hundred Years' War. So that's a lame answer to that question. I can't answer it.
47:22 Matt Lewis? Thank you very much to Dr Hugh Doherty for a fascinating chat. So Eleanor, we're back again to try and wrap this up and think about why listeners of Gone Medieval might enjoy watching A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. What is there for an audience to enjoy?
47:38 Eleanor Janega? I think that if you are interested in medieval history, this is sort of the closest you can get to a big costume drama that is going to hit all of the notes that I expect to see in an actual medieval world. It's the level of detail that I really enjoy about everything from Westeros, you know, down to, you know, how the costumes are made, how the tents look. They do a really great job of looking into what medieval life actually looks like. And okay, yeah, there are dragons, but I do think that this is also a good nod to
48:21 Eleanor Janega? the magicality that the ordinary medieval person has live in their heart, right? Now, and if the dragons really bothered you before, well then, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is perfect for you. You don't even have to deal with the dragons, right? You're gonna have all of the medieval fun, all of the tournaments, all of the intrigue and drama, all the armour, I mean, come on, without having to worry yourself about magic. But also, if you're that mad about magic, grow up.
48:49 Matt Lewis? I also think by setting it in a tournament, it kind of condenses this atmosphere in which all of the various layers of society are there and they're all doing what they do. You know, you've got sex workers hanging around, you've got people, blacksmiths making armour for people and trying to sell their wares. You've got people like Sir Duncan who are just trying to get rich and make a name for themselves and try to progress. But you've got royal princes there, you've got the heir to the throne, you've got the most famous knights in the kingdom. And I think it's really interesting so far to watch how the show deals with the interactions and separations between those two. So they live in different worlds, and yet they do encounter each other. And people like Knight, people like Sir Duncan,
49:30 Matt Lewis? is kind of moving between the highest and the lowest echelons within society, all packed into this tournament environment. They're all there for the same reason, but also for very different reasons.
49:41 Eleanor Janega? Oh, absolutely. And I think for me, one of the things that is really exciting about all of the Game of Thrones universe, but particularly Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, is I do like that you get to see ordinary people. You get to see the sex workers, you get to see the blacksmiths, you get to see the people that you and I are obsessed with, but that are very difficult to find just using documentary evidence. So it's nice to have attention paid to the fact that this is an inevitable part of any society, and that it's not just rich toffs hanging out in throne rooms drinking wine. You know, someone's doing all the work around here, and a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
50:25 Eleanor Janega? does a really great job of emphasizing that point.
50:27 Matt Lewis? I feel like we really need to get George R.R. Martin as a guest on Gone Medieval. I'm sure he listens. He must listen to us. Please, George. George, come and talk to us.
50:35 Eleanor Janega? I'm begging George.
50:37 Matt Lewis? Because it feels like Westeros is the gift that keeps on giving for a medievalist. It might be fantasy, and yet it is so much closer to the history than historical films and series often tend to be. And the thing that frustrates us is that they frame it as a historical series and then diverge from the history so much, whereas George R.R. Martin is like, here's my fantasy. It is so rooted in the history that you can watch this and recognize real world examples of what I'm talking about. There's just dragons.
51:06 Eleanor Janega? Exactly. It's actually, I think, more helpful a lot of times. If you want to know about the medieval period, I would rather that you watch Knight of the Seven Kingdoms any day more than Braveheart, because it's actually more accurate, right?
51:20 Matt Lewis? That's a deeply controversial take. Oh, something is more accurate than Braveheart.
51:24 Eleanor Janega? I know. It's a shock to everyone.
51:26 Matt Lewis? I don't understand. Well, thank you very much again to Dr Hugh Doherty and thank you very, very much to Eleanor for joining us for a chat about Westeros II. I hope you enjoyed this episode, something maybe a little bit different, but we try to keep things new every once in a while here at Gone Medieval. By the time you hear this, you might have had a chance to watch an episode or two, or maybe even all of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. So what do you think of it? Can you spot Hugh's work, bringing some historical accuracy to this fantasy fiction? If you'd like to hear more about the medieval world on film, you might like an episode that Eleanor and I did together when we have a medieval movie night, night with a K. Get it? Yeah? No? Okay. We discussed some of our favourite medieval films, so you can check that out and see whether you agree with us or not.
52:09 Matt Lewis? There are new instalments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week at historyhit.com/subscribe. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.
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