20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About George RR Martin

3. Childhood Pets Inspired Game Of Thrones

A lot of the inspiration from Game Of Thrones came from real-life history. Which makes sense, since Martin himself has said that Westeros is essentially Earth - albeit a parallel one to our own, with the same geography but a totally different history. And dragons. And ice zombies. Along with the terrifying true tales for the Red Wedding, the author drew a lot on accounts of the War Of The Roses. But he also sought inspiration from a little closer to home. Whilst he was growing up Martin was relatively poor, and used to fall asleep imagining be able to travel the world. His world didn't expand much further than his back garden where, amongst other distractions, he had a load of pet turtles. A load of pet turtles with short life expectancies, who lived in a toy castle. The high mortality rate owed to the less-than-stellar conditions the turtles were bought from, and then kept in. Still, it gave the young Martin something to do - making up back stories for the turtles, and imagining elaborate and violent deaths for them when they did finally pop their tiny clogs. In a tiny castle.