Chivalry in Westeros

Chivalry is easier to discuss as an ideal than as a historical phenomenon. Students and fans of chivalry often try to identify and live up to some impossible standard of “true chivalry.” This idolatrization often leaves chivalry unexplained. In Game of Thrones, chivalry is key to the culture of Westeros. Like chivalry in the late Middle Ages in Western Europe (roughly the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), chivalry in Westeros is both an ideal and a set of practices central to aristocratic life and to culture as a whole. This double nature creates problems when discussing chivalry. This chapter explores the most important features of chivalry in medieval Europe and how those features compare to similar phenomena in Game of Thrones.