Chivalry: You're Doing It Wrong (Series, Part 10)

Part 10: Chivalry Now

Warning: Spoilers

The complicated issues of chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight remind me of the Songof Ice and Fire Series by George R. R. Martin (Or, if you’re like me and really only pay attention to the title of the first book in a series, the Gameof Thrones books). 

Like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, A Song of Ice and Fire is a commentary on the complicated and negative aspects of chivalry.  Like Sir Gawain, Ned Stark is very proud of his chivalric values and never deviates from them, but finds that they cause more problems than they solve.  Like Sir Gawain, he is threatened with beheading after refusing to bend in his beliefs, and this causes him to deviate from his values.  Unlike Sir Gawain, however, he actually does get beheaded, proving even more clearly than Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that chivalry can actually be detrimental to your health.

            









Another way in which Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Game of Thrones (this particular comparison doesn’t go farther than the first book) are similar is that both have a striking dearth of magic considering that they are both Medieval-style romances.  I was expecting dragons in both of these books. 

While both did deliver some (Sir Gawain fights them on his journey, and Daenerys hatches some dragon eggs), the dragons in each were only the focus of attention for a few pages. 

Instead, each plot focused on politics and court intrigue, and how these things can take a turn for the deadly. 

Each has powerful female characters, although The Game of Thrones actually takes the time to name its strong women, while Sir Gawain and the Green Knight just leaves us to call Lord Bertilak’s wife Lady Bertilak for want of a better title.  While the plots of the two books are very different, it is clear that George R. R. Martin drew heavily off of the Medieval romance genre encapsulated in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.