Breaking on the wheel.
The iron boot.
The Pear
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)
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
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.
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.
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.”*