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The Real Families That Inspired ‘Game of Thrones’

You may not have known that the Wars of the Roses are practically source material for Game of Thrones.

Doug Patterson
By Doug PattersonMay 12, 2015
Doug Patterson
Doug is a writer and producer from Ohio. After taking films to Sundance and SXSW as an associate producer, he helped develop and produce Amazon's "Transparent." He joined GOOD in 2015 to write and produce content.
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If you’re a human, you probably can’t get enough of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” for all its political intrigue and familial battles. However, you might not know that the Lannisters and Starks can be traced back to Lancasters and Yorks – the families that were at the center of the Wars of the Roses in the 1300s. I won’t promise that it will hold you over until Sunday, but this animation makes for a great history lesson and should remind us all to be grateful that we don’t live in either a time, or a fictional universe where this kind of thing happens.

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