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The Song of Ice and Fire

Like the white rabbit, we're late, we're terribly late, but that's hardly an excuse not to go to Wonderland, so snatch up your hat and coat if you will, and hurry down the hole. This way, and quickly now . . .

George R. R. Martin

The worlds of fantasy are deeply connected with music. Music adds spices to the worlds authors share with us. Literature itself is like a song. During the Middle Ages, without books available to the masses, stories and legends were passed down generations and brought to people by bards and minstrels, wandering storytellers, in a form of a song. In ancient Celtic tradition, only Druids (those at the highest rank of Celtic society) themselves were more respected than minstrels. Music helps us feel the mood expressed in the story and to add details. It helps us awaken feelings deep inside us, in the part of the soul which is a child still – sweet and innocent, watching for a fairy-tale with the wide-open eyes. Everybody still has this child within, only some bury this tender part of us, the memory of how big and magical the world seemed once, deep in distant corners of the hardened hearts under the layer-wall of adulthood and maturity. And children sing whenever and whatever they like, not thinking about morals.

What is music? Music is a distant call of a horn over the hills and far, far away. It’s a tender voice of a flute in slim hands of the skilled minstrel. Songs are the love confessions of birds under the emerald treetops and the silvery ringing of the crystal waters of the mountain stream. Music are the ballads, new and long forgotten, carried on and on by human performers. Based upon the skill of the performer, it depends whether music will make its way to people’s hearts. We want to taste honey and mead and to be closer to what we like. Sometimes, music helps us do it. Sometimes musicians combine their wishes in plot-based lyrics, being authors of wonderful stories themselves. It often happens that whole novels are written, based on one song – as, for example, happened to the novel “Curved Mirrors” by K.Verbitskaya under the influence of the song “Conspiracy” by Jovin. But songs don’t have to be written after novels, and vice versa. And it happens that through the chain of associations and coincidences an amazing connection and similarity between a song and a literary work can be found. Thus it happens with the works of the band “Blackmore’s Night”, such as songs “Now and Then”, “Written in the Stars” and “No Second Chance”, which show strong connection with The Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.

George Martin is beyond any doubt one of the greatest writers of the whole genre of fantasy. His masterly usage of deep knowledge on medieval history, lifestyles and people’s minds leaves the readers nothing than to stay in awe in his masterpiece The Song of Ice and Fire.

George Raymond Richard Martin was born September 20, 1948 in Bayonne, New Jersey. He began writing very young, selling monster stories to the neighborhood children for pennies. When in high school, wrote fiction for comic fanzines. His first professional sale was made in 1970, at age 21: The Hero. From then on, Martin earned a reputation as a creative short-story writer, racking up three Hugos, two Nebulas, a World Fantasy Award and a Bram Stocker Award, all for his short fiction. He wrote a handful of novels, starting with 1977’s Dying of the Light, before moving to the West Coast to work in TV and film. He served as a writer on the new Twilight Zone revival, the executive producer of Doorways and the sсript editor of the Beauty and the Beast television series. At the same time, he edited the monumental shared-world series Wild Cards, which ran to 15 linked novels over 8 years. But a few would dispute that his most monumental achievement to date has been the groundbreaking The Song of Ice and Fire historical fantasy series. Now George R.R. Martin is a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (was South-Central Regional Director 1977-79, and Vice President 1996-98), and of Writers’ Guild of America, West.

Martin doesn’t write about ‘white’ or ‘black’ characters. All his characters are gray to a greater or lesser extent. His characters are real and human; they have both good and evil, noble and selfish, all well mixed. And that’s right, as in real life as well, even the darkest of villains had some good things about them; and even our greatest heroes had their flaws and weaknesses. One of Martin’s strongest themes in this novel is the nature of justice. “…even in fantasy – it comes from the realm of imagination and is based on fanciful words, but there’s still a necessity to tell the truth, to try to reflect some true things about the world we live in”, says George R. R. Martin in his interview with Tasha Robinson (“George R.R. Martin continues to sing a magical tale of ice and fire”, December 11, 2000).

George R. R. Martin’s magnum opus, The Song of Ice and Fire, tells an epic tale of honor and treachery, love and vengeful hatred, intrigue and heroism set in a world where summers and winters can last for years, decades, even lifetimes. These intense novel leaps among many different (and unquestionably interesting!) character perspectives in describing the political clashes between noble families in a proto-medieval world of Westeros. The story fashions itself around the House of Starks of Winterfell, with Eddard (Ned) Stark as a head of the House and the king Robert Baratheon’s Hand, his wife Catelyn and six children with the direwolves bound to them by fate. (F.y.i. – Robert Baratheon is the king of the 7 kingdoms, what is actually one state.) The Houses of the Seven Kingdoms will find their loyalties torn and themselves at war for the throne of the Seven Kingdoms after Robert’s sudden death. King Robert leaves a heir who is not of age, and the intricate intrigue for power is woven by Robert’s wife, Cercei of the rival House of Lannisters, and her kin.
At the same time, in a very different land across a narrow sea, Daenerys, the last of the Targaryens, whose reign Robert and Eddard toppled, gathers her strength to return the House of Dragons to power in the Seven Kingdoms.
A huge yet surprisingly well-developed cast of characters interact in a story intricately told, weaving through plots and counterplots in the deadly quest for power. Martin's prose is gripping, pulling you quickly and fully into this world so vividly described that it almost is real.

In the game of thrones, you win, or you die. – Eddard Stark

* * *

The song Written in the Stars by “Blackmore’s Night” shows a strong connection with one of the major plotlines of The Song of Ice and Fire. The characters both in the song and in the novel are longing for truth, trying to find their way back home following the silent code of stars…
“Once written in the stars/A pathway set in stone/A candle in the night/To guide your way back home"; Daenerys (Dany) follows the trail of the shooting star (which, Dany believes, will lead her to her long-lost home), believing it’s a part of the prophecy that proclaims her return to power in her own land – her homeland, the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Just the same as the heroine in the song, Dany leads her people (new-gained Dothraki tribe) following the path of the shooting star. The way is not easy (The pathway set in stone…), but Daenerys’ll overcome everything standing on her way, as the desire to reach the dream is way stronger than anything else.
Both song and story mention some fulfilling prophecy as one of the steps leading closer to the final goal: The prophecy fulfills/The dream that never dies. Dany was given a prophecy earlier in the story, while visiting a temple of Carth. And fulfilling this prophecy only will bring her to the resolution of the dream. Explanation: Daenerys was told of the three treasons, «One of love, and one of gold, and one of faith.» The treason of love comes to be her closest faithful vassal personal bodyguard, lord Mormont, who is in desperate love with his Queen, liege mistress, Mother of the Dragons. Lord Mormont will do anything to protect Dany, but so it'll happen that that would be just the reason of his unconscious treason…
Thus we can see that the song Written in the Stars expresses strong connection with the story and lifeline of Daenerys Targaryen and the plot of the story.
Another example of the connection is shown through lines:
This house we had together/Might still be in its place/But the rest of this is much too hard to face/There'll be No Second Chance... The family’s home, the castle of Winterfell, still stands as it did for years before. But nothing indeed is going to be the same as it was before. “But the rest of it is too hard to face”, admits the character of the song – the same as does Catelyn Stark. As the father of the family is dead, and her 15-year-old son has to take over control of their people, forced to take sword in his hands and lead the war in the name of the Starks and Winterfell. The whole family is split throughout the realm, one of the daughters is being captive of the Lannisters, another one lost and probably dead, and two youngest sons murdered mercilessly…

But time... it went on,/Minutes... they ran too fast./Like you they were gone.../Into the past... Time passed, children has grown up, and all the lovely moments they used to have are now gone, and bitter memories would remain even if they returned to hteir home and usual flow of life. But everything is already gone… into the past…
Thus, we can see that there is a strong connection between Martin’s novel The Song of Ice and Fire and musical works of Blackmore’s Night, that shows that music and literature are interconnected.

The Lyrics used

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