I confess–Arya’s Revenge for the Red Wedding in GOT Inspired Me.
If you aren’t a GOT (Game of Thrones) fan, I’ll excuse you from reading this first Monday, Myself post. However, if you are at all curious about what inspires authors, read on.
Years ago, when I needed a villain for Knight Protector, I created Ranulf MacFearann, impoverished son and heir of Baron Finn MacFearann, the most hated man in Scotland. Now one might think that Edward 1 of England would be the most hated man in Scotland at that time, and many Scots did dislike the English King intensely–especially after what he did to William Wallace. However, in my fictional Scotland the MacFearann ‘crime’ if you will is still remembered, even in the Victorian era. Believe me, what Baron MacFearann did far outshines (shine might be a poor word choice) Edward’s measly drawing and quartering of William Wallace.
What did Baron Finn MacFearann do, and how could Arya Stark’s revenge be inspiring? Well Baron MacFearann murdered a bishop who wanted to force the baron to tithe very profitable lands to the church. The bishop may or may not have been within his rights, but the Baron was so insulted by the whole idea of giving away good land and losing all the income, that he deemed murder an appropriate punishment.
I know, I know. I still haven’t gotten to the point of inspiration from Arya Stark’s murder of Walder Frey and his sons for engineering the red wedding. Well, the point is that George R. R. Martin dipped into a long literary tradition of cannibalism (going all the way back to the Greek legends of Tantalus* and Pelops and beyond) for Arya’s revenge. Some episodes after the Red Wedding, we see Arya at Frey’s holding. She’s in disguise as some sort of serving wench. And she is ordered to serve Walder dinner. She is pleased to do so, for she has already assassinated his sons, butchered their corpses and cooked them into a delicious meal which Walder enjoys so much he wants his sons to share in it. That’s when she tells him he’s been dining on rather than with his sons at which point she assassinates Walder as well.
Now you know what very few of my readers know, (because I never put this into his son Ranulf’s story) that Baron MacFearann is the most hated man in Scotland because he served the missing friar to the Bishop for dinner just before killing the prelate and his escort. The bodies were left at the border of MacFearann lands as a warning to any who might try to take by force or manipulation what belonged to MacFearann. As gruesome as cannibalism is in and of itself, the idea of deceiving a holy man into committing the act, telling him what he’s done, then murdering him struck me as an inspired way to give MacFearann the reputation of the most hated man in Scotland.
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*Tantalus was condemned in Hades to sit in an ever rising pool of water and starve while an apple from a nearby tree hung just out of reach.
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