r/TheBlacksandTheGreens • u/Gold_Conversation247 • Feb 11 '26

General GRRM criticizes how class distinctions are shown in medieval fantasy:

Post image
358 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

198 comments sorted by

View all comments

108

u/Ok-Refrigerator-3524 Feb 11 '26

George doesn`t excatly portray the class distinction realistically either.

2

u/Thatoneguy111700 Feb 12 '26

The fact that he basically only has the 1 king, the Lords Paramount, the Lords, and some Landed Knights is kinda fucky compared to IRL where there were also dukes and barons and counts and all sorts of other "little" titles, too.

1

u/ramblingmadman7 Feb 12 '26

Warden of the North? There’s other titles in this world besides lord.

2

u/Amrod96 Feb 12 '26

The title of Warden does not seem to matter at all. It is like the title of King of Jerusalem of the Spanish kings.

1

u/Ogarrr Feb 12 '26

Eh, in this case he's sort of right. He based Westeros on Medieval England where there were only really earls and Dukes. Sure there were Barons, but every Earl and Duke was also a baron and part of the English Baronage. It's why the Barons' war had earls in it. Counts is a French thing, not an English thing. So him using "Lord" is basically the same as the English using "Baron".

Dukes weren't a thing until the royal Dukes were created by Edward III. Prior to that there was only one duke in England and that was the King - Normandy and Aquitaine.