Just because

it is magic you idiot

Magorn: Wehn Martin set out to right a "medieval" high fantasy, he decided that by , god his world would closely resemble the actual middle ages, which for 99% of the population, sucked rather badly.

His understanding of the Middle Ages is restricted by the same failure of imagination as most people, then. And I mean it's much tougher to realistically visualize what you're reading into an accurate portrayal than imagine what you want. First, "sucked" is a relative term. They certainly didn't have modern amenities, but since no one did, this was a luxury they didn't miss -- with no modern HVAC systems, summers were hot and winters were cold whether you were peasant or royalty. Yes, girls were married young but many of these "marriages" were just financial transactions -- there was nothing particularly tragic about your classic "forbidden love". The expectation was to have a kid, but not necessarily his (they didn't have DNA testing back then). There really wasn't any requirement that the two even touch each other until the church started derping around, which happened neither everywhere nor all the time. Meanwhile, both would fark whoever they wanted. In this context, arranged marriages were only tragic if you viewed history through the prudish modern Christian revision that sex was a Big Deal. It's also romanticized for entertainment. In many other cases it was two sets of parents teaming up to prevent problems for their children; they knew what they were doing. We all know that modern technology has failed to significantly change human folly, but it should also be pointed out that it didn't create our capacity for empathy either. There were many people back then who really gave a shiat, and they didn't all die violent deaths for it.

Not to mention "the Middle Ages" generally covers a span of around 1000 years, from after the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Renaissance. That is a LOT of time, and the stage typically discussed is all of western Europe. My point is, war was NOT everywhere and everywhen. Granted it wasn't evenly distributed either, but if some countries did have a war every decade (which if you think about only matches America's 20th-21st century expeditions), others were peaceful for many decades at a time. Even within a war, few areas were constant battlefronts and not every occupation was sustained through genocide. Even China's "Three Kingdoms" era, perhaps the bloodiest in human history, spanned about 60 years. Historical accounts are compressed for brevity; people generally aren't interested in daily life anyway -- they want to read about the wars and rebellions and explorations and shiat. But for the vast majority of people living in the Middle Ages, life went on -- they spent the bulk of their lives doing their thing. Bad things did happen, and certainly weren't as rare as in modern America, but neither was war nearly as common as perceived by reading your typical history text. This is GRRM's "failure of imagination". I imagine he read a historical text that was cover-to-cover full of war and concluded every medieval European lived in constant fear of it without considering the time or geographic scale covered by said text. In fact, your typical farmer was more terrified of crop disease.

In his defense, GRRM is obviously writing about the war and rape and pillaging because it's interesting, and that's fine. There's also nothing inherently wrong with focusing on a particularly bloody time in history, such as the War of the Roses. The problem is that he compressed his timeline within the childhoods of a few characters while expanding the violence to many countries -- I'm saying his portrayal of medieval life is not realistic. Is it interesting? Nothing wrong with that. Is it detailed? Oh yeah. Is it well-written? I can accept that. But it is not realistic. It only seems realistic to people who make the same mistake in thinking the Middle Ages were a living hell.

its a fake planet in a fantasy world with dragons and zombies. Jesus christ, SF nerds have to obsess over the dumbest shiat.

I find it funny that people are trying to apply science to a work of fiction that is based in mythology, mysticism. and the occult. Just enjoy the show and stop trying to apply science and reason to things that aren't supposed to have science applied to them.

Icetech3: Now how bout they explain why the show is so horrible compared to the books.... might want to ask peter jackson for his input on it also..

Dude, shut up.

Now how bout they explain why the show is so horrible compared to the books.... might want to ask peter jackson for his input on it also..

George Martin has stated that the weather of Westeros is magical in nature and will be explained at the end of the series.

LINK