# "Game of Thrones" question \[SPOILERS\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 22, 2013, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-of-thrones-question-spoilers/664167 "2013-07-22T06:32:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2013, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-of-thrones-question-spoilers/664167/21 "2013-07-22T20:07:46Z")
> [@Telperion](#): > > Most of those devices are in fact based on tall tales from the 19th century. Not that torture wasn’t common in medieval times, but it mostly involved nothing more sophisticated than the rack and hot pokers. [Breaking on the wheel.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_wheel) [The iron boot.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_%28torture%29) [The Pear](http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/what-was-pear-of-anguish) You are right about the Iron Maiden, it is indeed fabricated. The others, not so much. ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2013, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-of-thrones-question-spoilers/664167/22 "2013-07-22T20:15:24Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > [Breaking on the wheel.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_wheel) > [The iron boot.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_%28torture%29) > [The Pear](http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/what-was-pear-of-anguish) > > You are right about the Iron Maiden, it is indeed fabricated. The others, not so much. I’d say the pear looks pretty dubious too, considering that there are no contemporary accounts describing it and there’s not even any consensus about how it was used. Here’s what wiki has to say about it: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke\_pear\_(torture)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_pear_(torture)) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2013, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-of-thrones-question-spoilers/664167/23 "2013-07-22T21:00:08Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Well, Barbara Tuchman writes in “A Distant Mirror” of knights cutting off the hands and feet of peasants belonging to lords other than their own, strictly as a form of economic terrorism, not because the peasant had done anything bad. She writes of the siege of a French city where the besieger cut off the heads of some captured city residents and catapulted those heads into the city to “discourage” the residents. She writes of people in ordinary life walking past criminals who were broken on the wheel and left out for public display, or other criminals who were beheaded and their heads put on spikes. We got the pear, the Iron Maiden, the iron boot and a lot of other “fun” stuff from that period. > > I’ll grant you that most people probably lived peaceful pastoral lives in Medieval times, but let’s not pretend that the level of violence was not WAY higher than what we are used to now. And Game of Thrones is set in a bloody civil war and deals with the principals in that war, it’s hardly a chronicle of peasant life. So … I still think Game of Thrones is RESTRAINED compared to what actually went on in medieval history. I’m not saying these things didn’t happen. I’m saying they weren’t as common in real life as they appear in books or movies. It’s like how if you watch a lot of westerns, you’d end up thinking most men back then were either cowboys or gunfighters. But in reality both were rare occupations. Or bank robberies. Based on watching westerns, you’d assume outlaw gangs were robbing banks on a regular basis. It looks like every bank must have been getting robbed every week. Now if you think about it, I’m sure you realize that number must be exaggerated. But how much was it exaggerated? Two historians were writing a history of banking in America. So they checked the actual records of bank robberies and counted them up. They counted all the banks in western America. And they counted all of the robberies in any of these banks for the forty-one year period from 1859 to 1900. Guess the total number of bank robberies they counted: Eight ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2013, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-of-thrones-question-spoilers/664167/24 "2013-07-22T23:01:07Z")
Also, GoT takes place during a civil war and the events leading up to it. It sounds like the (to wiki!) 16 years since Robert took over have been mostly safe. Long periods of safe, if harsh peace, then brief periods of horror. Just try not to [del]elect[/del] not have a choice in which psychopath becomes king. It’s _based_ on some aspects of the Middle Ages. Of course cowboy movies aren’t accurate, but we don’t usually want to watch _Bill Smith: Frontier Carpenter_. At least _Oregon Trail_ is interactive. It’s way less graphic than _Spartacus_, if less stylized in the violence. It’s humorous, especially any Tyrion scene. ---
**Author:** ![typoink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@typoink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typoink)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2013, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-of-thrones-question-spoilers/664167/25 "2013-07-23T04:15:06Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’m not saying these things didn’t happen. I’m saying they weren’t as common in real life as they appear in books or movies. Sure, but…we’re talking _about_ a book or movie. The stuff that’s recorded is sensationalized, and the record is sensationalized. Nobody’s saying, “GoT is no more violent than day-to-day real-world medieval life.” **EvilCaptor** was being a bit glib, but there’s plenty of examples of violence and sex just as intense in histories and/or Medieval romances. GRRM has a pretty serious interest in the real medieval period, and he’s gone out of his way to ground a LOT of his world in reality. Down to having “in world” folk songs and stories that really do resemble comtemporary medieval art. ---
**Author:** ![Gukumatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/74df32/32.png) [@Gukumatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gukumatz)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2013, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-of-thrones-question-spoilers/664167/26 "2013-07-23T23:30:27Z")
Sure, there’s some humour going around, but it’s mostly quips, jokes and some sarcastic or droll characters. Very little is played only for a laugh and then usually still serves as a reflection on the cynic/world weary/etc nature of the character. Like Tyrion, who can’t keep his mouth shut even though it frequently gets him into trouble. Or “Dolorous” Edd Tollett, the Night’s Watch dour fatalist. (Quote in the spoiler box contains spoilers from the middle of the series.) _“I never win anything,” Dolorous Edd complained. “The gods always smiled on Watt, though. When the wildlings knocked him off the Bridge of Skulls, somehow he landed in a nice deep pool of water. How lucky was that, missing all those rocks?” “Was it a long fall?” Grenn wanted to know. “Did landing in the pool of water save his life?”_ \*“No,” said Dolorous Edd. “He was dead already, from that axe in his head. Still, it was pretty lucky, missing the rocks.”\* [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/game-of-thrones-question-spoilers/664167.md?page=1)