Game of Thrones A-Z (15 page)

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VAMPIRES

Zombie-like creatures and vicious monsters may bump in the night Beyond the North Wall, but, in 1982, Martin used a different supernatural foe for his book 
Fevre Dream
.

Inspired by teaching at a girls’ school that overlooked the Mississippi River, Martin crafted a book that is becoming more and more beloved as readers of his fantasy series track down the writer’s earlier work. Unbelievably, this supernatural gem went out of print for two decades before it was reissued following the success of 
A Song of Ice and Fire
.

The book is set in 1857 on the Mississippi River, where steamboat captain Abner Marsh meets a rich gentleman named Joshua York. Plagued by financial problems, Marsh is promised a magnificent steamboat that will be the pride of the Mississippi River, and will be financed by York.

Christened 
Fevre Dream
, the steamer is a majestic beauty – one of silver and blue, charging through the river. The two co-captain the ship, but soon Marsh begins having suspicions about his mysterious financial benefactor, suspicions that are shared by the crew and passengers.

York and his friends rarely venture out of the ship during daylight, and when Marsh finds scrapbooks of mysterious deaths in York’s cabin he confronts him. Eventually, York confesses that he is a vampire. However, he has developed a ‘cure’ for the disease and he plans to free his people from their bloodlust. His group hail him the Pale King, but he is usurped after an evil vampire group led by Damon Julian board the boat and overpower him.

Damon takes over the 
Fevre Dream
, and an obsessive Marsh spends years trying to track his beloved boat. Now an old man, Marsh receives a letter from York asking him for his help in defeating Julian.

The novel was dubbed ‘Bram Stoker meets Mark Twain’, and was nominated for both the Locus and World Fantasy Awards in 1983. Celebrity fans of the book include acclaimed horror director Guillermo Del Toro.

Martin told 
Empire
, ‘
Fevre Dream
 is my only vampire novel. I do have some ideas for a sequel to that book, which I’ve had for decades. It’s a question of finding the time to write it, and whether I will. I don’t know if I ever will. I had always wanted to write something about vampires, going all the way back to the beginning of my career. For some reason, when I thought about vampires, having read 
Dracula
 and all that, it always seemed to me that it had to be a period piece, it couldn’t be modern day. But again I didn’t want to do something that had been done before; I wanted it to be something original.’

Martin continued, ‘It began to gel for me in the late ’70s when I took a job teaching college in Dubuque, Iowa. Dubuque is an old river town on the Upper Mississippi, when the steamboats used to ply their trade, and I got interested in the history of the place and suddenly it seemed to gel for me. Vampires and steamboats: there was a certain dark romanticism to both, and as far as I knew, no one else had ever done vampires on steamboats, and 
Fevre
 
Dream
 was the result.’

He added that to a certain extent vampires seemed to work with steamboats. ‘It was sort of a dark romanticism for both of them, which seemed to go together. There were certain aspects that didn’t go together; most notably that vampires can’t cross running water, according to the tradition, which would blow the whole thing right out of the Mississippi. So I said, “Well, I can’t go with that, I’ve got to get rid of that aspect.”

‘And then once I got rid of that, I said, “Well, let me rethink the vampires and make them more rational vampires, more science-fiction vampires, not living corpses that are cursed because, you know, they have no souls or whatever their traditional supernatural thing is.” A more science-fiction approach, a more realistic approach. And once I did that, they fit perfectly with the whole vampire riverboat thing.’

It was arguably his most famous book before 
A Song of
 
Ice and Fire
, and had been optioned for a movie adaptation – with Martin even writing a screenplay. Instead, it was adapted for a different medium.

‘The head of Avatar Comics called me up and wanted to do some [comics based on] my work,’ Martin explained.

‘They wanted 
Ice and Fire
, but I haven’t sold any comic rights to 
Ice and Fire
. People keep approaching me, I may do it someday, but it’s such a big project, I don’t know how they would do it.

‘But we got to talking about other stuff, and I said, you know, 
Fevre Dream
 would probably make a good comic series.’

VARYS

Every political counsel has one, a figure who plays people with ease and weaves lies and manipulation through the corridors of powers. In 
Game of Thrones
, there are two characters with such devious powers – Littlefinger and Lord Varys, the latter also named The Spider.

His spy network consists of many eyes that roam King’s Landing; he refers to them as his ‘little birds’. No one in the palace knows where they stand with Varys such is his skill at pitting people against each other and providing information to all sides.

Ned Stark is understandably reluctant when he first meets the Eunuch, Varys, a tag he wears with unease. As befits a man who you can never really trust, we only have his word about where he came from and it could all be just another lie from a man to whom duplicity comes as easily as breathing.

Varys was born to a life of slavery in Lys, one of the nine Free Cities. Surrounded by crushing waves and stormy seas, it is home to alchemists who, among many potions, make the ultra-rare poison ‘the Strangler’, a liquid that will crop up in a later series.

According to Varys, he was sold to a group of travelling performance artists and spent his time visiting the other Free Cities and also King’s Landing. He was later sold to a man who used him as part of a Blood Magic ritual, giving Varys a potion that made him unable to move or speak. However, his senses were very much alive and he felt every excruciating second of pain as his manhood was sliced off.

Tossed out in the Free City of Myr, Varys resorts to begging and other dubious means to survive, and quickly realises he is a skilful thief. After teaming up with a Sellsword named Illyrio Mopatis, they start a venture where Varys steals precious objects from thieves, and Illyrio retrieves them for their previous owners for a small fee. It makes them very rich, and their wealth continues to grow through his very first spy network. Realising that information is the key to power, he recruits his ‘little birds’ – orphans that can sneak around tight spaces and get into corners unseen where they can eavesdrop on the wealthy and powerful and steal information.

King Aerys hears of Varys’ talents and recruits him. He becomes the spymaster in King’s Landing, and fuels the Mad King’s paranoia, pointing out traitors and those that manipulate others in the area. He advises Aerys to close the gates to his former Hand Tywin Lannister, convinced that he cannot be trusted. But the Mad King refuses to listen to the Eunuch, choosing, instead, to seek advice from Grand Maester Pycelle, and opens the gates to Lannister’s 12,000-strong army.

It proves to be a fateful mistake. Despite pledging allegiance to the Targaryen cause, Lannister’s army pillages the city in the name of King Robert’s Rebellion. Aerys has feared this rebellion for some time, and has secretly placed the highly flammable wildfire underneath the city. His plan is to destroy the city, killing millions of its citizens rather than have the rebellion win. However, Jaime Lannister stops it from happening, slaying the King inches away from the Iron Throne.

Varys keeps his post when King Robert reclaims the throne, but he and Illyrio Mopatis maintain their loyalty to House Targaryen. They swap Rhaegar’s baby son, Aegon, with a peasant baby, and secretly smuggle him across the narrow sea. It’s seemingly Varys’ desire to see Aegon reclaim his throne and restore the Targaryen line to the Iron Throne. But wicked whispers and an over-reliance on spies is one thing – eventually, Varys must get his hands dirty to move things forward, and that he does.

SPOILER:
In the book 
A Storm of Swords
, we see Varys testifying against Tyrion, who is falsely accused of murdering King Joffrey. Providing damning evidence through detailed notes of their conversations, his testimony plays an integral part in the decision to sentence him to death. Jaime Lannister forces Tyrion to rescue his brother, and they do so, thanks to the secret tunnels beneath the Red Keep. They pass a ladder that leads up to the room of Tywin. Despite Varys’ protestations, Tyrion heads up there to kill his father. Varys returns to the secret passages at a later date, and kills Kevan Lannister. Kevan is a bright man who is helping Tommen command the role as King with respect, and has canny leadership skills. Unfortunately, that could hinder his chance to get Aegon to reclaim the throne. He kills Kevan with a crossbow, telling him that it’s not personal but that his leadership skills threaten to unravel years of hard work, and that his death will further antagonise tensions between House Tyrell and House Lannister.

On 15 July 2010, George R. R. Martin announced on his blog: ‘And to confirm the story that Mo Ryan broke earlier today in her column, the role of Varys the Spider will be played by Conleth Hill.’ His casting at first raised eyebrows from fans – he was an unknown entity. Bean, Dinklage and several others were well known. And, as Varys was such an integral character to the series, they had expected a bigger name.

Of course, now they couldn’t see anyone other than Hill playing the part. He remains reluctant to give interviews and is rarely seen promoting the show; he seems to enjoy doing his work and then going home – but perhaps that is just right for the character of Varys. The most mysterious man in 
Game of Thrones
 is played by the most mysterious actor in 
Game of Thrones
.

While Hill stays in the shadows, he lets others spread the word about the show and does his work for them – his fellow actors... his little birds.

W

WAR OF THE ROSES

Martin had grown tired of fantasy novels that he felt were nothing more than Tolkien imitators writing ‘Disneyland Middle Ages’. A keen history buff, he said, ‘I wanted to capture these two threads to get some of the magic and the wonder and imagination of fantasy and combine it with some of the grittiness and realism and complexity of historical fiction.

‘I saw Hadrian’s Wall for the first time in 1981. It was on the occasion of the first time I’d ever been to the UK, and in fact I think the first time I’d ever left the United States. I was travelling with my friend Lisa Tuttle, who collaborated with me on the novel 
Windhaven
. She had moved to the UK and married a British man, and she was showing me around. We were driving around the country and we reached Hadrian’s Wall and it was sunset – it was at the end of the day, so all the tour buses were leaving. We saw people getting on their buses and going away because it was just about to get dark. We really had the wall to ourselves, which I think was great because it was the fall, and it was kind of a crisp, cold day. The wind was blowing, and I climbed up on the wall and it was really just awesome... So that was a profound experience that stayed with me. It was over a decade later when I first began 
Ice
 
and Fire
, and I still had that vision and that sense of, “I’d like to write a story about the people guarding the end of the world.”’

Martin continued to explain the effect Hadrian’s Wall had on his ideas, and the impact historical influence has on his writing. ‘But, of course, in fantasy you always play with these things. Fantasy is bigger and more colourful, so a mere 10-foot-high wall wasn’t going to do it for me. My wall is 700 feet tall and made of ice. And the things that come out of the north are a good deal more terrifying than Scotsmen or Picts, which is what the Romans had to worry about.’

Medievalism was something of a massive influence on Martin, especially the period between 1455 and 1487 in England – dubbed The Wars of the Roses. They were a series of civil wars between the House of Lancaster and the House of York, with the name derived from the badges used by the two sides: one a white rose, the other red.

X

X-RATED

You know you’re a part of pop culture when you’ve been parodied, and, in a famous 
Saturday Night Live
 sketch, the show poked fun at
Games of Thrones
’ many scenes of nudity. The central joke was that there was a teenage consultant on the show to ensure there were just enough ‘boobies’.

The show certainly has had its fair share of complaints about nudity. Nothing new for HBO, but one blogger claimed that the show’s bosses had managed to create something new with male and female nude scenes.

Dubbing it ‘sexposition’, Myles McNutt coined the term to describe the amount of plot details and backstory through the scenes.
Time Magazine
 critic James Poniewozik added, ‘It’s something more than gratuitous or ample sex and nudity in a show – it’s using that sex to divert the audience or give the characters something to do in scenes that involve a big download of information or monologue. I wouldn’t say 
Game of Thrones
 is the first. I think of all the 
Sopranos
 scenes in the Bada Bing, with strippers on the pole while two characters discuss plot points, or
Deadwood
, when Al Swearengen would deliver long monologues to a whore who was fellating him.’

British cinema historian Matthew Sweet noted, ‘The nudity in 
Game of Thrones
 goes back to something even older – a classical context meant nudity was permissible and casual and every day, and that comes from 19th-century painting.’

So what’s new about the new wave of nudity? ‘What may be different here is that you didn’t have as much need for exposition in past TV shows,’ Sweet continued. ‘In the ’70s, when [cinema] producers had to be very aware of giving their audience the things they couldn’t get on TV, producers would say to the writer, “We need nudity and a murder before the titles.” The rules of screenwriting laid that down quite forcefully. You’d think HBO could be free of those diktats, but they’re not – they’re giving you something that’s not available on free-to-air TV. This is premium TV, but it gives you the same thrill that you got from ’70s exploitation movies.’