Great Change

CHAPTER 1The WAY things get done

Game of Thrones is an American fantasy drama series created by HBO based on the stories in A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin. Since it debuted in 2011, each of its 73 episodes has been watched by more than 44.2 million people, according to Fiction Horizon (fictionhorizon.com). It's a huge epic, shot on location across Europe and North America, involving a massively talented cast, amazing production values and a political web of intrigue across the storylines. Its combination of drama, sex and romance, and action scenes involving sword fights, pitched battles and dragons, saw it win 59 Primetime Emmy Awards, the most by a drama series.

The sword fights are amazing and play a central role in the storyline to punctuate the drama with violence. From the choreography to the way that it's portrayed, the producers have done a great job of capturing the techniques and strategies associated with the long-lost art of sword fighting. Of course, no-one really knows what it was like for two European knights to go at it with their swords because this knowledge has dimmed and disappeared over the past 500 to 600 years. Although there are some medieval swords gathering dust in some cathedrals or museums, the actual way of applying the physical sword techniques, the ways of thinking and the approach to strategy and combat are long gone. These ways, which were so critically important to the social, political and military fabric of Europe for so many ...