Season 5 DVD feature: George R.R. Martin on the true history behind the Red Wedding
The Red Wedding, with its unexpected shock and awe, is one of Game of Thrones‘ most memorable sequences, and it isn’t all fiction. In this clip from HBO’s Game of Thrones: The Complete Fifth Season (released this upcoming Tuesday on Blu-ray and DVD), creator George R.R. Martin reveals how his infamous dinner-ambush is modeled after two real massacres from Scottish history.
“The Real History Behind Game of Thrones” is one of the special feature on the boxset. In it, Martin and a number of historians discussing what actual historical events inspired storylines on Game of Thrones. It ends up that the Red Wedding isn’t any bloodier than some other famous Scottish dinner parties. As George R.R. Martin put it:
"Scottish history is an amazing source for all of this because it’s one of the most incredibly bloody histories of any country that I’ve ever, ever studied."
Martin talks about how he borrowed elements of his bloody Red Wedding scene from ‘The Black Dinner’ (1440 AD) when two members of Clan Douglas were assassinated by the 10-year old boy King of Scotland, James II:
"The Black Dinner occurred when the King of Scotland was having a dispute with the Black Douglases. The Lord (William) Douglas was a young man, eighteen or nineteen years old, kind of a Robb Stark figure, and he brought his younger brother with him and then had a marvelous feast and everybody was having a great old time. But then when the feast was over, a single drum began to play, just boom, boom, boom."
Lord William Douglas and his brother were dragged outside, given a mock trial and beheaded.
Martin also drew upon the true history of the ‘Glencoe Massacre’ (1692 AD), in which around 120 men under the command of Robert Campbell were given lodgings by the MacDonalds of Glencoe. Then, the Campbell men rose up in the night and butchered 38 of their hosts. Another 40 women and children died of exposure after their homes were burned. “Guests slaughtering their hosts,” Martin said. “In the case of the Red Wedding, I reversed that. Those two incidents I blended together to make the Red Wedding.”
Methinks Macbeth would be proud.
h/t USA Today