Not having read his takedown, IMO Game of Thrones has more "realism" in the behaviors of people vis-à-vis each other, and at least some semblance of feudal castes, at least in Westeros. But the more core systems of society and war aren't deeply thought through. When people say it's "realistic" it's more so in the sense of "yup, nobles and soldiers really would rape peasants," not in any tremendously larger sense. And they consider LOTR unrealistic not because the battles are unrealistic, but because the infrastructure of society is mostly invisible, especially outside of the Shire.

You should read his articles. It will fairly quickly disabuse you of some preconceptions. In particular, the shire is a quite realistic portrayal of peasants and lords and such once you realize Bilbo is mostly nobility.

I think I noted that the Shire is different, if not wildly different, from most other locales in LOTR. In general the Shire is much more realistic than other LOTR Locales (IMO). Though there's for sure an element of just ignoring things that don't matter too much - like how Lothlórien works economically.

But I'll look at the article, I've read other ACOUP stuff and enjoyed.

There's also that Peter Jackson's movies botch (intentionally, for dramatic purposes) some things that are present in the books.

For example, the city of Gondor seems like a giant fortress without any fields or farmers working outside its walls to sustain it. This even before any siege. So what do they eat?

Tolkien wouldn't have made this mistake, it's likely Jackson's. And I understand why: people want to see epic battles, farmers doing their thing are a low cinematic priority.

You really should read his articles.

> IMO Game of Thrones has more "realism" in the behaviors of people vis-à-vis each other, and at least some semblance of feudal castes, at least in Westeros

Devereaux argues precisely the contrary, that LotR is more realistic than GoT at presenting faux-medieval societies and the feudal caste! Perhaps Tolkien simply did his research better... or that simply by taking medieval and ancient literature as his sources, he got it better.

He has quite a bit to say about the system of vassallage as depicted in GoT, as well as the relationship between the Church and both the common people and the nobles. Devereaux argues that the cynical take in GoT, i.e. that most nobles didn't believe in their religion and only cynically used it when it suits their purposes (which is the norm, not the exception in GoT!) is at odds with the real middle-ages.

Also, none of Deveraux's objections focus on obviously fantasy things like zombies or dragons, he's not trying to score cheap points, and he explicitly states he's living magic & dragons out of the equation. No realistic explanation could come out of them, anyway.

Again, none of this would be a problem if we accepted GoT as pure fantasy (as I do, by the way -- I'm a fan), but it was actually hyped as "more realistic"!

I must be looking at the wrong articles because the two I started reading were all about logistics. (For both universes.)

My memory of Lord of the Rings is that the Shire mostly makes sense, but outside of the Shire, the world doesn't totally add up. The Roharim seem like romanticized Ango-Saxon eorls, but basically on grass plains and without obvious agriculture, the elves kind of just magically subsist, Orthanc is populated with orcs going through a secret industrial revolution without a food supply, large stretches of the world are basically empty... Once out of the Shire I don't really remember there being serfs or peasants or churches or much agriculture. It's possible my memory is betraying me, though.

That said my view on why there's a perception of Game of Thrones as more realistic than "most fantasy" is that in the 1200s through 1600s there really was a ton of plotting and power seeking, and a ton of violence, and social status really was a huge determinant of who could do what and how much would be overlooked. And lots of fantasy pre GoTs had various kinds of chosen one narratives, with side of light overcoming obvious evil, with middle ages trappings being little more than window dressing on permutations of Luke Skywalker or just sort of pre modern alternative societies. While GoTs goes hard on the violence, corruption, actual class differences, and power struggle plotting, and mostly does so without basing those things on magical or spiritual alignments. So IMO it's got flaws and is not a fantasy retelling of the real middle ages, but just clears a low bar of not really romanticizing feudalism and having power struggles that are more people-driven.

I do think Tolkien is much more influenced by and matches way more pre-1200s stuff. And particularly things like the Hobbit, his outside LoTR writings, fit super well into what I'd label kind of the "Beowulf to Egil" sort of era/time period.

I do agree that the relationship of religion and behavior in the middle ages is very hard to understand from a modern perspective - and I don't think it's some GoTs even tries at. (Though obviously we did eventually get the reformation because the divide between the Bible and the Church grew too large and too obvious, but it's also not very likely the case that those precipitating the reformation disbelieved.)

GoT is basically Medieval War of Roses meets LoveCraft (especially obvious if you read up on the map the author published with cities not visited). The lovecraftian parts got pretty much cut to the bone. None of the moongrass, that is overgrowing the dothraki steppe. Barely any of the insanity that goes with wizzardry.

It would be cool to see an interpretation of the Mongol horde in the sense that Devereaux uses them; in contrast to the silly Dothraki. Dudes riding high-grass-mileage little mares and pulling off preposterous feats of logistics…

moderately off-topic because we're here discussing acoup.blog, but i just finished the fall of civilizations podcast episodes on the rise and fall of the mongols. it's really fascinating and sheds quite a bit of light on some things that have been mythologized about chinggis khan

I think the same happens with any history of warrior cultures. Same with Japanese samurai, etc.

They enter into popular culture, get mythologized, and all nuance flies out the window.

The Dothraki were united by a woman who controlled 3 dragons and had gained a highly disciplined Unsullied army, then was gifted with a navy.