** Civil War Pattern Matching**
A decade ago, I got front row seats to the low level Iraqi civil war playing outside my window. On a weekend off, I was stunned to discover that Game of Thrones was a nearly perfect analog to events happening in Baghdad: a story narrative that followed the story of post-invasion Iraq with uncanny detail.
Circling back to read the true Game of Thrones source material on the war of the roses, I was again surprised at the similarities — wars may vary, but civil wars are miserable in similar ways. Fundamentally, power vacuums allow lesser conflicts to turn into national conflagrations, and mutual injury among leading groups allow weaker parties seize the moment and rise to power.
Wars of the roses, in summary: After the death of Henry V, Henry VI (Joffrey) was neither politically savvy nor an adult, so the Duke of York (Stark) tried to take the throne, but died in a battle. His son, Edward IV successfully took the throne, and held on to it for 10 years. But then Edward IV’s son soon alienated the hand of the king, and lost the ensuing civil conflict. As part of that conflict, undisputed heirs were killed (i.e. Danerys), and a long lost relative, Henry VII (Bran?) was coronated after marrying a daughter of Edward IV.
Once a durable peace was established, the victors rewrote and simplified history with a piece of genius 15th century marketing. Rather than a mess of inheritance, conflict, and uncertainty, the Tudors recast the conflict as the red roses of Lancaster and white roses of York. The Tudors’ red and white rose could now unite warring factions in symbol, matrimony, and mythology.
- Everything the rose said was down to the split between the house of Lancaster and York. Everything the rose also said was now solved…. This was a simplistic view of history to say the least, but it was one that would endure for centuries. *
Like every civil war, the narrative ends up collapsed after the fact.
** 81st book of 2021 **