The Realm: The True history behind Game of Thrones

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: A young pretender, barely more than a boy, raises an army to take the throne. Recently learning of his father’s beheading, the young man, dashing and charismatic and descended from the old kings of the north, vows to avenge him on the field. Despite his youth, he has already won several battles and commands the loyalty of many of the leading families of the Realm; he is supported in this war by his mother, who has spirited away her two younger sons for safety. Against them is the queen, ‘passionate, proud and strong-willed’, and with more of the masculine virtues of the time than most men, battling for the inheritance of her young son, not yet a man but already a sadist who takes delight in watching executions.

This was the Realm of England, the world that inspired Game of Thrones, where on Palm Sunday, 1461, the bloodiest battle in British history took place in a thick blizzard on a spot called Bloody Meadow. Lasting into the night, the Battle of Towton was marked by extreme brutality, with many executions taking place afterwards and all the rules of war abandoned.