On Tax Policies and Abandoned Epics

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, George R.R. Martin once said the following:

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

Both George R.R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien forever transformed the fantasy landscape with epic tales of swords and sorcery, but in terms of tone and theme, they could not be more different. I want to be clear that I have immense respect for George R.R. Martin, and whether he finishes his magnum opus or not, I consider him to be one of my favorite writers. With that said, I think that Martin has literally and figuratively lost the plot. With each passing year it seems more and more likely that Winter is not coming. I believe that this is at least partially to blame on the kinds of questions Martin chooses to ask.

In fairness to Martin, when he gave this quote he had no idea of the microscope that the world was about to put it under. He was simply trying to illustrate a difference in philosophy between himself and Tolkien. Tolkien was a devout Catholic. He considered The Lord of the Rings to be a fundamentally Catholic text. Tolkien believes in an all-powerful, all-knowing God who cares about us and who intervenes in our lives. Tolkien believes that his God will ultimately cleanse the world of Evil and reward the servants of Good with eternal bliss. Tolkien also believes that there are demonic forces at work in this world, tempting us to stray from the righteous path. Needless to say, George R.R. Martin does not share these beliefs.

Martin believes that “Outside Evil”, the idea that demonic corruption prompted original sin and cast humanity from paradise, does not exist. Instead, Martin believes that “Evil” is the result of a complex interplay of forces. Martin believes that men with good intentions can often do more harm than good, and that men with selfish intentions are sometimes best equipped to provide for the common good. He believes that no human being is wholly good or wholly evil. In the year of Tolkien’s Lord 2025, Martin’s philosophy rings more true to many readers.

George R.R. Martin writes some of the most compelling interpersonal and political drama in all of fantasy. His preference for morally grey, complex, damaged characters makes for much more fascinating character interactions than anything Tolkien wrote. This is Martin’s strength. This is what he was getting at when he asked those questions of Aragorn. What does the good man do when faced with necessary evil? Will he be able to remain good after his choice? How many times can he be put through such a trial before he loses his soul?

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way Martin lost sight of why he asked these questions and became trapped by the answers to the questions themselves. I’m not even sure that this shift in focus is intentional. He has said, perhaps infamously, that he is more of a gardener than an architect. He plants seeds and sees what grows. This becomes a problem when one of his plants overgrows his fence. Instead of pruning the offending branch, Martin expands the garden.

Both Tolkien and Martin drew heavily from myth and history when constructing their narratives, but in my opinion, Tolkien was more interested in myth than history. Lord of the Rings is meant to be a heroic epic set in our own world’s mythological past. Aragorn is fighting a Dark Lord, not a scheming noble. In a Song of Ice and Fire, Westeros exists in an alternate reality or on another planet. There are otherworldly threats, but for the bulk of the text, we are dealing with scheming nobles. Martin has more incentives to draw from history as he considers the conflict in his work to be more realistic than the struggle against Satanic influence that Tolkien gives us.

Martin takes a lot of inspiration from British history. Aegon’s Conquest reminds me of a certain William’s Conquest. The Dance of Dragons takes inspiration from The Anarchy. A Game of Thrones is clearly influenced by The War of the Roses. There are a lot of seeds we can plant here. But Martin is also interested in periods much earlier than that. Valyria, a far off magical empire with lost technology and knowledge we can only dream of seems vaguely Roman to me. That’s at least another row of seeds. The North is filled with tree worshipping pagans who have dealings with fiendish giants and the fairy-like children of the forest. That’s enough seeds for a whole separate book series. The Iron Islands are peopled by people who seem a lot like a British peasant’s idea of Vikings. I’m not sure why we need this seed, but it looks interesting. Of course, we can’t forget The Church, a highly corrupt and largely vestigial religion that looks a lot like Christianity. But in the real medieval period the church did some good stuff too, but I don’t want to complicate this too much and make people think organized religion is desirable. Bring me the Citadel seeds. And also Dorne was there. And the Free Cities. And Yi-Ti. And there might be something West of Westeros.

Ok, now that we’ve got our seeds ready, let’s plant them and see what their tax policies are. Do they maintain standing armies? What do they do in times of flood and famine? And most importantly, how does the complex interplay of all of these systems influence our characters that actually drive the story? How do we show that it is actually a complex interplay of systems and not random chance or Gods that create opportunities for both great good and great evil? This is written point of view style, so I suppose we’ll need more characters. Those characters will probably meet more characters, and that will have a cascading effect on…oh dear.

It would seem obvious at a glance that this has grown too complex to ever be satisfactorily resolved. Perhaps some branches should be pruned. Perhaps some plants need to be uprooted entirely. Perhaps the story needs to be simplified so that it can be told and the core themes can be understood. Perhaps…we don’t need to know Aragorn’s tax policy?

Unfortunately for Martin, knowing the tax policy has become a core theme. A Song of Ice and Fire is so successful in part because it feels so real. If we start pruning the garden now, if we cut out the non-essentials, then it will feel like important things just start happening randomly. Dany won’t be lead by a complex series of interconnected factors, combined with her own choices, strengths, and weakness into a massive tactical blunder. Instead she’d just…kind of forget…about the Iron Fleet?

Martin has often commented that writing A Song of Ice and Fire novel at this stage is not like writing one novel, but multiple interconnected novels. He is trapped in constricting vines of complexity that he grew himself. To simplify at this stage would be to engage in a kind of mythmaking that he found dishonest in Tolkien’s writing. It simply wouldn’t be A Song of Ice and Fire anymore. This is the core theme of A Song of Ice and Fire, and yes, I know, themes are for eighth grade book reports. This blog post is basically an eighth grade book report, though, so humor me.

I believe that the show runners did not invent the ending of HBO’s Game of Thrones. I believe that they gave us something close to the ending Martin intended. Bran on the throne, with all of the ugliness, and the complications, and the humanity swept under the rug. The violent struggle with all of the beauty and ugliness of humanity wrapped up in a neat little story of Bran the Broken. A new myth forged to bind a realm together. A new myth that finds meaning in the meaningless so that people can go on living in this world. But not the reader. The reader will have all the gory details. They will have seen too much truth to enjoy the myth. For them the ending is bittersweet.

Martin is attempting to deconstruct mythmaking by demonstrating how myths are made. It’s an excellent idea, in theory. In practice, it requires some careful decision making. One needs to introduce enough complexity to be believable, but not so much complexity that it becomes unmanageable. George R.R. Martin may be a gardener, but even a gardener needs to learn to work within the boundaries of their garden. Unfortunately, the ship has sailed. Under the weight of 5 books of established complexity, the opportunity to manage this has passed. There is no way to simplify now without resorting to the kind of glossing statements that he found frustrating with Tolkien.

Maybe there was a reason Tolkien didn’t feel the need to explore Aragorn’s tax policy, after all…