Game of Thrones

This is the TV show I am watching these days. It is quite entertaining and keeps you engaged for the whole 1 hour that each episode lasts. I am not the most experienced tv-show viewer but actors seem good, the production is very rich and the director has done quite decent job since each episode has a good pace without becoming tiring.

Here, I have to admit that I haven't read the books and probably I will never read them in the future. As a person that one day wants to become a writer am thinking why someone selects a subject like that to write. In other words what someone expresses by writing something like that? For god's shake I am not an elitist and am not trying to pretend I am but I am trying to understand the rational behind this choice. Furthermore, why the author selects to write 7 books on this particular subject. I have already expressed my opinion for the show but in my mind a simple tv-scenario (or movie scenario) would had been more than enough. Ok now that I express my questions let me explain myself:

The writing of the book should have a purpose, a higher goal, that is much higher than just entertain the reader; especially in the form that Game of Thrones does. Moreover, I wonder why someone writes a book on that subject when the history of the world is full of such stories. You don't have to think and create something from scratch but just open a history book. I can bring into my mind a vast number of emperors that had the same or even worse ending than King Robert in the show. The Roman history, the Byzantine history, the history of the Western world initially with the long feuds between the families of the big landholders and then the emerged emperors of western civilization. In all the previous cases conspiracy, assassinations and all the good stuff was something very common.

The point I want to make in this post is: Why we get all excited about this show (me including)? We know that in environments such as the one in the "Game of Thrones" crazy things happen; so no surprise. We also now that great power comes with slother; so again no surprise. We know that people in order to hold or conquer something that brings them or it will bring them great power, such as a throne in show's case, are cruel and take extreme actions; again nothing new. Then the other question is why someone writes 4,5,6,7 books about something like that? is not original, is not new, does not teach something after all and by writing so many books you most probably repeat yourself. Although, here comes the surprise: something that common has such a great success. I wonder if this is the real lesson I have to keep or if this is another good reason to get really depressed.

( To be fair, games of thrones is just an example. Twilight, Harry Potter in my mind are similar cases and could also work as demo-fields in order to express my questions)