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

planet has gone through a number of extended periods of relative warmth and cold, rather similar to the long winters of Westeros, and cold spells, it was known, brought hunger. In pagan times Germanic people would hang evergreen trees outside their houses to ward off the winter, and Ded Moroz, the Slavic equivalent of the Germanic Santa Claus, has its origins in Zimnik, the pagan god of winter (transformed into a benevolent figure by Christians). The long summer that we now call the Medieval Warm Period started in the 10th century and lasted until the 14th, England in the 11th century being far hotter than it is now, with vineyards scattered across the south and London enjoying the climate of central France a millennium later. During that long medieval summer, Europe’s population exploded, reaching a level it would not again for another six centuries, but farming could not keep up. And so when winter arrived suddenly between 1310 and1330, millions starved.
    And Edward’s behaviour became increasingly tyrannical. In 1318 a lunatic called John Powderham turned up at court from Exeter claiming to be the rightful son of Edward I. He was mad, and the king thought of keeping him as a fool, but people were unhappy enough with the monarch, so the king had him hanged. During his trial Powderham claimed that his pet cat was possessed and so incited him, so the cat was hanged too.
    Briefly, Edward’s luck changed. He defeated a rebellion by Roger Mortimer, the leading lord in the border area with Wales, ‘the march’, with the help of the Welsh. Hugh Despenser captured the king’s cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, who was forced to ride to his execution in March 1322 on an old mare, wearing a ripped hat, while locals pelted him with snowballs. This was followed a week later by the murder of six of his leading followers.
    The killing of Lancaster, the first such judicial murder of someone of royal blood, shocked the Realm. At his tomb in Pontefract Priory there grew a sacred cult, where it was said that a drowned child returned to life, and a blind priest had his sight restored. A servant of Hugh Despenser defecated on the same spot, but some time later his bowels were parted from his body. A stone table in St Paul’s commemorating Lancaster became the site of further miracles, and the king could not stop it; this is what people wanted to believe.
    Isabella, sent to France on a diplomatic mission, began an affair with Mortimer, who had been imprisoned in the Tower of London but who, at the banquet on the eve of his execution had drugged the guards and escaped. Isabella was declared an enemy alien and her lands confiscated for the safety of the kingdom.
    But the king’s supporters were not popular. In 1326 a rioting London mob murdered the Bishop of Exeter, the king’s ally. Despenser’s end came soon: the rebels caught up with him and an associate, had nooses placed around their necks, roped them to four horses, and put them upon elevated gallows so that everyone could see their deaths. A fire was lit under the scaffold, and Despenser’s genitals were thrown in, followed by his intestines and heart, the dying man watching everything. Then the crowd cheered as his head was cut off.
    Soon after, Edward was captured. The usurpers moved the king from castle to castle, not knowing what to do with him, and in 1327 Parliament was called in the name of his son, with Mortimer appointed Keeper of the Realm. Mortimer declared that the magnates had deposed Edward because he had not followed his coronation oath and was under the control of evil advisers; the king was moved to Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where he was well treated, but after two rescue attempts he was murdered. Rumours afterwards circulated that the king, fond of his ‘minions’, had been finished off with a poker up his rectum. After his death, Parliament, for the first time without a king’s approval, chose his son as successor.
    In contrast to his weak and dithering