10 times Game of Thrones intersected with real-world politics

Today, people in the United States will go to the polls and elect a new president. It's a touchy time, with folks on the edge of their seats to discover whether Donald Trump will return to the presidency or if the people will pick Kamala Harris to lead them for the next four years.

To distract from all that, how's about we talk about a show with dragons and swords and stuff: HBO's Game of Thrones. With its focus on the win-or-die contest for power, Game of Thrones recalled the real-life fight for political control more than once, and it was so popular that a lot of people across the political spectrum noticed and drew comparisons.

Before the polls come in, let's go over some of the high-profiles examples of Game of Thrones crossing over with real-world politics, starting with a comparison people loved to make:

A lot of people compared Donald Trump to King Joffrey Baratheon

One of the most popular comparisons people loved to draw was between the boy king Joffrey Baratheon, an entitled brat who preferred to use his power to torment his enemies rather than to effectively run his country, and Donald Trump. This was especially apparent during Trump's 2016 run for the president, which he won. From major media outlets to random people on Twitter, people drew this parallel a lot.

Why? I'll let George R.R. Martin, who wrote the Song of Ice and Fire books on which Game of Thrones is based, give his take: "They have the same level of emotional maturity," Martin told The New York Times in 2018. "And Joffrey likes to remind everyone that he's king. And he thinks that gives him the ability to do anything. And we're not an absolute monarchy, like Westeros is. We're a constitutional republic. And yet, Trump doesn't seem to know what that means. He thinks the presidency gives him the power to do anything. And so, yeah, Joffrey is Trump."

When HBO chided the Donald Trump campaign for coopting a Game of Thrones slogan

You'd think that being compared to King Joffrey might put Trump off Game of Thrones, and maybe it did, but people on his campaign still seemed to like the show. In November of 2018, two years into his presidency, Trump tweeted a picture of himself with the words "Sanctions Are Coming" styled in the Game of Thrones font. The phrase is a reference to the words of House Stark, "Winter is Coming." In context, it probably refered to sanctions the Trump administration was then considering reinstating against Iran.

HBO was not amused. "We were not aware of this messaging and would prefer our trademark not be misappropriated for political purposes," the network said in a statement. And later they got a little sassy, tweeting, "How do you say trademark misuse in Dothraki?"

When Barack Obama asked to watch Game of Thrones early (and got to)

Like I said, Game of Thrones was popular across the political spectrum. Trump or someone on his team liked it, and so did his political rival Barack Obama, who was president before him. In fact, in 2016, Obama asked to see episodes of the then-upcoming sixth season early. That was the season when HBO stopped sharing review screeners with critics; Jon Snow had just died and they were trying to keep a lid on things. But they made an exception for the president of the United States. “When the commander-in-chief says, ‘I want to see advanced episodes,’ what are you gonna do?” joked showrunner David Benioff.

Obama also once made a Red Wedding joke at the White House Correspondents Dinner, so you know he was seeped in this stuff.

Chinese president Xi Jinping sees Game of Thrones as a cautionary tale

It wasn't just western leader who liked Game of Thrones. Xi Jinping, the leader of China, one of the most populous and powerful countries in the world, once surprised aides, guests and fellow leaders by telling them, "we must all make sure the world we live in does not descend into the chaotic warring seven kingdoms of Westeros." According to the South China Morning Post, Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang squeezed "specially condensed" versions of episodes into their busy schedules. You make time for what's important.

When a British politician used Jon Snow to pass Brexit

Back in early 2019, when Great Britain was trying to separate itself from the rest of the European Union — a process known as Brexit — Environment Secretary Michael Gove appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today to try and convince people that it was a good idea. “If we don't vote for the deal tonight, in the words of Jon Snow, 'winter is coming',” he said.

People had fun with the comment on social media, with TV critic Toby Earle tweeting, "Remember Jon Snow also knows nothing," but Brexit did go through, so maybe the Game of Thrones reference was convincing.

When a politician gifted the king of Spain with a Game of Thrones boxset

People in Spain were particularly mad for Game of Thrones, so I'm not surprised to hear they made a lot of comparisons between the show and their political situation. But this is still extreme: when Pablo Iglesias, the leader of the left-wing Podemos party, met Spanish King Felipe VI in 2015, he gifted the monarch with a DVD boxset of the show. "I told him it's a series he'll definitely like, if he wants to understand the political crisis in Spain," Iglesias told reporters afterward, according to NPR.

Iglesias adopted "Winter Is Coming" as his slogan, and even edited a book called To Win or To Die: Political Lessons from Game of Thrones. This guy loved the show. Podemos tried to cast their political rivals as the Lannisters, often seen as the villain of the piece, but conservative Spanish politician Ruben Herrero was familiar enough with the show to flip that on him. "From Podemos, they try to say, 'We're good, we're like Khaleesi [Daenerys Targaryen], in favor of justice for poor people.' But that's not true," Herrero said. "For instance, the Lannisters are realists — classical realists. It's like, 'I don't mind the nature of my partners while in power.'"

The Spanish fans were serious.

When Hillary Clinton compared herself to Cersei Lannister

Back in the U.S., let's take a look inside Hillary Clinton's 2017 book What Happened, where she tried to puzzle through how she lost the presidency to Donald Trump the year before. Clinton remembers Trump urging his supporters to "lock her up" and remembers feeling very vilified, not unlike the shamed Cersei Lannister, who was marched naked through the streets of King's Landing in the season 5 finale.

“Crowds at Trump rallies called for my imprisonment more times than I can count,” Clinton wrote. “They shouted, ‘Guilty! Guilty!’ like the religious zealots in ‘Game of Thrones‘ chanting ‘Shame! Shame!’ while Cersei Lannister walked back to the Red Keep.”

When Elizabeth Warren compared herself to Daenerys Targaryen

So were there any politicians who didn't watch Game of Thrones? Probably, but we have at least one more to get to. In 2019, right after the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones had started to air on HBO, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren — then laying the groundwork for a presidential run — wrote an article for The Cut entitled, "The World Needs Fewer Cersei Lannisters."

Basically, Warren takes Cersei Lannister to task for relying on the Iron Bank to buy her armies whereas Daenerys Targaryen builds hers by inspiring loyalty. This was written before the end of the show, when Daenerys went mad with power and burned down King's Landing, which probably put a bit of a damper on those hopes.

What stands out is how much detail with which Warren writes about the show. She quotes Daenerys talking to Jorah Mormont about slavery, she's familiar with the ins and outs of the Iron Bank, and even references the meme then going around about Cersei Lannister wanting to add elephants to her army. Warren was into it, as were a lot of people around this time, as Game of Thrones was barreling towards an ending.

When Rudy Guiliani called for a "trial by combat" right before the Jan. 6 riot

On January 6, 2021, a mob of people angry that Donald Trump had lost the 2020 presidential election stormed the U.S. Capitol Building in a riot that resulted in the deaths of several people and the injury of over 100 police officers. Before the storming of the building, several people spoke to the group, including Donald Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani. “If they ran such a clean election, they’d have you come in and look at the paper ballots. Who hides evidence? Criminals hide evidence. Not honest people," Guiliani said, referencing debunked onspiracy theories about the election having been rigged against Trump. "Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent, and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. Let’s have trial by combat.”

After the mob invaded the capitol, people like Guiliani came under fire for inciting them with his violent rhetoric. Guiliani told The Hill that he was only making a reference to Game of Thrones, where Tyrion Lannister called for a trial by combat twice over the course of the series. “I was referring to the kind of trial that took place for Tyrion in that very famous documentary about fictitious medieval England,” Giuliani said. “When Tyrion, who is a very small man, is accused of murder. He didn’t commit murder, he can’t defend himself, and he hires a champion to defend him." He claimed that remark "incited no violent response from the crowd."

Regardless of who wins the 2024 election, we're all hoping that nothing like this happens ever again. And if it does, leave Game of Thrones out of it.

Game of Thrones was often used as a metaphor for climate change

Let's end on something a little less dispiriting...if only slightly. One of the biggest conflicts on Game of Thrones was between humanity and the advancing race of genocidal White Walkers, who wanted to wipe out all life in Westeros...or at least that would be a big conflict if the people of Westeros could stop fighting amongst themselves long enough to address it. A lot of commenters looked at that and saw an analogy for the real-world struggle to fight climate change, an existential threat to life on Earth that requires large-scale political, economic and social solutions...but those are hard to implement, so politicians often put the issue on the back-burner, if they're not denying that climate change exists in the first place.

Manjana Milkoreit, now an assistant professor of public policy at Purdue University, noticed that fans of Game of Thrones were talking intelligently about these kinds of issues. She thought that pop cultural artifacts like Game of Thrones could have a positive effect on moving the conversation forward, as she wrote in a paper a 2015 paper excerpted in the Pacific Standard.

“I think this show with these blogs might have an effect on how people think about climate change, and how people imagine their futures—futures they want, futures they don’t want—and that kind of imagination might affect how they make choices in the present,” Milkoreit wrote. “It’s a very complex undertaking to integrate scientific understanding, beliefs about how worlds change—social worlds, technologic worlds—and how those things play out over long periods of time. I think pop culture and things like Game of Thrones might help people do that.”

Politics will likely be a bit of a bloodsport for years to come, which should help Game of Thrones stay relevant. But maybe it can also help people reflect on their political reality, and how it can be improved.

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h/t CNET