Rise, fall and rewriting: The House of Northumberland's literary architecture

Presented at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2018). George R.R. Martin's novel A Game of Thrones begins not with the seat of the throne itself, King's Landing in the south of Westerns, but in the North, with the Household of the Starks at their castle of Winterfell, set just south of the Great Wall separating the brutal wildings and the White Walkers from the civilized folk of the seven Kingdoms. In many ways, at least early in the series, readers are invited to identify with the Starks rather than the other households vying for royal power. The Stark family is at the heart of the series. Now, many have recognized the similarities between the topography and political geography of Martin's Westerns and that of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so I am not saying anything new when I point out that the Starks and Winterfell align with the Percy family and their aristocratic seat in Northumberland, which of course encompasses Hadrian's Wall and borders Scotland.