Tag Archives: Maurice Druon

Voyager US |

The Iron King: The Book That Inspired Game of Thrones

The Iron King by Maurice Druon is the story that inspired George R. R. Martin’s epic work, Game of Thrones, and is the first book in the acclaimed historical novel series The Accursed Kings.

In what George R.R. Martin calls, “The original Game of Thrones,”The Iron King features Philip the Fair. While he governs his realm with an iron hand, he cannot rule his own family. His sons are weak and their wives adulterous, and his red-blooded daughter Isabella is unhappily married to an English king who prefers the company of men. A web of scandal, murder and intrigue is weaving itself around the Iron King, but his downfall will come from an unexpected quarter. 

Druon, who died in 2009 at the age of 90, was not only a passionate Anglophile but also a French resistance hero, a Knight of the British Empire, and a holder of the Grand Croix de la Légion d’Honneur. He was also a member of the Académie française and a celebrated novelist, best known for his seven historical novels in The Accursed Kingsseries, which were twice adapted for television.

For more information on The Iron King, click here.

Voyager UK |

George R.R. Martin interview with Jane Johnson – Part One

Jane: I’ve heard you say that historical fiction and fantasy are “sisters under the skin”. Can you tell me more about what you mean by that?

George: Historical books are a little grittier, which is one of the things I wanted to do when combining the two; to take that sort of gritty realism you find in a historical novel and combine it with the imagination and wonder of Fantasy.

I have thought about writing historical fiction myself, when I interviewed Bernard Cornwell for Harper a few months ago we talked about this.  For me the frustration in writing real historical fiction is that if you know history you know how it comes out. You can write about the actual Wars of the Roses and you know what’s going to happen to those princes in the tower and you know what’s going to happen at the battle of Bosworth Field. With my books I like to keep them a little off balance. Ultimately you don’t know what’s going to happen to the kids in my books or who’s going to live or die or end up with their head on a spike.

But the reading experience can be quite similar. Jane has been reading the Accursed Kings series by the great Maurice Druon – a wonderful series of historical novels.  One of the great things for me when I read them was that I didn’t know a lot of the history. You know, French people may know all of this but for me it wasn’t something that was covered on our history courses, nor presumably, in history courses here. I didn’t know who these people were, even only the most abstract terms, or how this was going to come out. That was a very similar reading experience to a fantasy novel.

Jane: They read incredibly fresh. We’ve just bought the world rights to publish them because they’ve been out of print since the sixties, I think it’s going to be great fun to make them available to people. They read as if they were written yesterday, they’re really sharp and funny, as well.

The brothers Goncourt said: “History is a novel that has been lived…” I think that’s a really good quote but I feel also that with A Game of Thrones, you feel that every character in your books has a life that goes on behind the scenes: they’re not just walking out on stage and playing out what you want them to play out. You do see them as real people. How much of that elaboration do you have in your head before you set out writing your characters?

George: I’m not actually deluded enough to think that they are real people. I know that I’m making them up. It seems obvious but I’ve met some writers over the years that have peculiar views on the subject and seem to think they’re receiving emanations from other dimensions or something. I don’t buy into that but certainly when I’m writing these characters and living with them they achieve enormous reality to me.

You know, many years ago I wrote a short story, a novelette actually, that won the Nebula award called “Portraits of His Children”. It is about a writer and his relationship with his characters. Its sort of a cliché that characters are a writer’s children but there’s a great amount of truth to it. At least for a writer like myself; the characters I have created over the years are a part of me, are a part of my life. They are not me, but they are created by me and are a part of me. The analogy with the children has a certain apt-ness to it.

Jane: Well you’re a cruel father

George: I take after the Romans; they had the whole “paterfamilias” thing going on there. If you were a disappointing son “I’m sorry son you’re disappointing me would you please commit suicide”…“Yes dad I’d be happy to”. We’ve lost some of these traditions over the years.

Voyager UK |

George R.R. Martin in conversation with Jane Johnson

Last night at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London, 500 George R.R. Martin fans had the opportunity to listen to the man himself in conversation with his UK editor (and Voyager Publishing Director, and successful author in her own right) Jane Johnson. Tickets were sold through Waterstones Gower Street, who were wonderful hosts for George and Jane, and who delivered a sell-out event.

The scheduled 30-minute conversation overran to just under an hour, but no-one in the audience was complaining – in fact, most tweeters were annoyed that it didn’t go on longer! George opened with two very exciting announcements: that both Game of Thrones the TV series and A Dance with Dragons had been nominated for Hugo Awards (for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form and Best Novel, respectively) and that Game of Thrones has officially been picked up by HBO for a third season.

Then Jane opened with the questioning, beginning with a note on how closely related Fantasy and Historical fiction are – as George said, they are “sisters under the skin” – which gave George the opportunity to expand upon his love of Historical fiction. Any George fan should read his excellent interview with Bernard Cornwell, and he also cites the brilliant French author Maurice Druon (The Accursed Kings) as one of the influences for A Song of Ice and Fire.

Following on were questions concerning how he manages to hold all the character threads and settings and histories of A Song of Ice and Fire in his head while writing (George admits: sometimes at the expense of real-life memories!) and his views on war and why fantasy writers in particular find it such fascinating subject matter. A few questions from Jane’s Twitter feed (Follow her: @JaneJohnsonBakr) caused a few laughs and a bit of consternation from George – like the question about how he manages to write so well from the point of view of a teenage girl! The answer, said the author, comes down to empathy – he’s not a dwarf, a crippled boy or a teenage girl but all of those characters are, at their heart, just people, and that common thread of humanity helps George get into the skin of any person he needs to. Look out for a full transcript of the interview, coming shortly on this blog.

A very successful signing followed, with fans lining up to have their books ‘defaced’ (as George calls it) by one of their idols.

It all went very smoothly and we have it on good authority that George RR Martin loved his time meeting and greeting the UK fans. Voyager would like to extend a special thanks to anyone who came out to the event and contributed to being such a gracious audience – it was a great event and that’s all down to the fans.