The Realm: The True history behind Game of Thrones by Ed West

Author:Ed West [West, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

Winter is coming

The Cousins' War, as the War of the Roses was known at the time,xxi had its origins in the third king Edward, who along with his grandfather, Edward the First, epitomized the medieval warrior ethos, and who most strongly resembles Tywin Lannister – a man prepared to do what is necessary.

The first Edward, standing at 6’3”, was a commanding, terrifying figure nicknamed ‘Longshanks’ and ‘the Hammer of the Scots’.

Edward I had a slight lisp and his left eyelid drooped like that of his father, Henry III, but was totally unlike him in temperament. The dean of St Paul’s died on the spot when he went to complain about taxation; the Archbishop of York, being told off by the king, sunk into depression and expired. Like his ancestor William two centuries earlier, his ferocity to his enemies was matched by his tender love for wife Eleanor of Castile, with whom he was betrothed when he was 15 and she just nine. They had 16 children. The king would outlive 12 of them; such was the age.

The Lord Edward was in Sicily when his father died, but it took him two years to arrive home, so confident was he that all potential opposition had been crushed. However a new series of wars began soon after when the Prince of Wales, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, refused to turn up to his coronation. Edward demanded he pay his respects, and when Llywelyn again refused, the king even travelled up to Chester to make it easier on the Welshman. Again the prince declined, and in total Edward sent Llewelyn five summons.

The prince explained that he was waiting for Edward to hand over rebel Welsh factions, including his brother, who were given sanctuary in England. To add further insult the 50-something Llywelyn married the 23-year-old daughter of Simon de Montfort, without the king’s permission (and without even having met her). Prince Llewelyn had reason to be confident; he had won control of two-thirds of Wales, and had a court large enough to include a bard, a harpist, falconers and a ‘silentiary’, whose job it was to keep the rowdiness to an acceptable level. The Anglo-Normans had been encroaching on southern Wales for 200 years, but in deepest Wales (pura Wallia), where Llewelyn’s rule held sway, the old laws still applied; disputes were settled by blood feuds, and a thief would be pardoned if he had passed 10 houses and ‘failed to obtain anything to eat’.

Edward raised an army and marched west, crushing opposition by building a series of castles. Having kidnapped his cousin Eleanor who was en route to marry the Welsh leader, he agreed to the match, part of a scheme by which he would ensure his powerbase there; however she died in childbirth, and he had her daughter imprisoned almost from birth in case she might prove a rallying point for rebellion. She lived to her fifties, a prisoner her entire life. By the end of 1282 all Welsh resistance was over. Llewelyn

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