Westeros map is Ireland turned upside down

[tian]

The Wall is protecting humanity from its worst threat, the Scotts

[walterbackgammon]

>hey guys look at this crazy map
>covers 3/4 of map with face for entire video

[sheealex]

George did say that a lot of the inspiration for The Wall came from Hadrian's Wall.

[BehuraStudio]

I love that George even admitted to this in a funny interview lmao

[jochem]

Yea because a lot of the Game of Thrones story is based on 'the war of Roses' from medieval England, they even had their own red wedding

[MrDuck]

Here’s what I think each region’s real life counterparts are:

The North: Northern England, so obvious. The Wall is the Wall of Hadrien.
The Vale: Switzerland (the Alps more in general), very high and usually snowy mountains, Gulltown I guess could be a bit like Genoa being a port city.
The Riverlands: A mix of Ireland and Germany, contains fertile fields, lots of redheads, and even some of the accents that make it Irish. Harrenhal also sounds very German.
The Westerlands: Obvious south England inspiration. Not much to go over here, English lords commonly beared sigils of lions.
The Iron Islands: Scandinavia, Denmark in particular. Ironborn are most like Vikings. They love the sea, raid and pillage all they want, and don’t get along at all with other regions.
The Reach: France. Religion is prominent here, knighthood is commonly practiced, and, of course, wine.
The Stormlands: Mix of Wales and Germany. Harsh storms, but also many misty forests that encompass the parts of southern Germany.
Dorne: Moorish Spain, except if they converted to Catholicism and didn’t try to invade everyone. Here, dry deserts are common.
King’s Landing: Constantinople. Most people see it as London, but geographically, it makes much more sense as the City of Constantine.
Dragonstone: Normandy. Both William the Bastard and Aegon the Conquerer sailed from their respective holdings to conquer the entire land. Also, both were used as the holding to the heir, until of course John Lackland lost Normandy to the French and Wales replaced it.

Now some bonus cities in Essos
Braavos: Venice. Their whole power is based entirely on the Iron Bank, and it was built by refugees.
Volantis: I see this most as India. It is humid, very populous, and elephants and tigers were two organizations in Volantis, the two animals together could really only be found in India.
Valyria: Rome. Once ruled half of Essos, then lost it in the blink of an eye. I think the particular fall of Valyria could be more comparable to the legendary Atlantis as well as Pompeii.
Qarth: Carthage. It’s kind of obvious when literally the first part of that is their name. Qarth praises themselves as the greatest city ever.
Yi Ti: China and Japan, two eastern giants slowly awakening were largely unnoticed by the western world and only came to contact with them through trade.
Dothraki Sea: Mongolia. The Dothraki are the Mongols. They love horses and enjoy raiding and pillaging random villages. However, the Dothraki do it just because they want to, and the Mongols wanted to conquer the Song.

[fameasser]

Huh interesting how Ireland matches up with the Vale like that. I always thought Dorne was supposed to be the lower southwest arm of England and that Wales looked like the Stormlands

[LiamMaher]

The Blackwater is a river lake/river surrounding Dublin, the capital of Ireland

[Grant-gkmw]

Did everyone not know this. It's obvious that it's Britain.

[LilySaintSin]

Yeah, before the UK was thing, there were 7 independent kingdoms.

[derekclinton]

Lannisport is in approximately the same location as Dublin.

[jasonvazquez]

Honestly, I always felt that the Eurropean countries that matched up most with Westeros went like this,

1.) The North: Russia/Scottland
2.) Riverlands: Poland
3.) Vale: Switerland
4.) Westerlands: England
5.) Reach: France
6.) Stormlands: Germany
7.) Dorne: Spain
8.) Iron Islands: Scandinavia
9.) The Wall: Hadrain's Wall
10.) Land's beyond the wall: Scottish Highlands

[Sullzyy]

I live in County Kerry, the exact region that the Vale is based on 👌🏻

[LzyShky]

Yeah we knew. George mentioned it in an interview.

[raskolnikov]

Beyond The Wall: Scotland (kinda, only because of geographical location)
The North: Northern England (kinda because geographical location, but any cold country fits)
Iron Islands: Viking countries
Riverlands: Ireland (kinda, similiar-ish cultures)
The Vale: Switzerland (again kinda, but The Vale was neutral in TWO5K, so that's a similiarity)
Westerlands: Southern England and maybe northern Germany/The Netherlands
The Reach: France, Italy, Spain and Portugal
Crownlands: Southern England (Terrain fits and London is there)
Storms End:Southern England (Next to sea and terrain is mostly the same as with the Crownlands. Could also be Germany, but in a different way than what the Westerlands are)
Dorne: Spain, Arabia (There's no real culture really all that similiar to Dornish)

GRRM definetly took heavy influence from history, but not that much. It's not easy to say what is what.

[DaymanFOTN]

He copied Tolkein's idea of making his world main story take place in a mimic of England.

[pedrosabino]

The North is mirrored Great Britain, its eastern part looks Wales and the western part looks East Anglia

[loganm]

Wait until you hear about the War of the Roses

[GuffGuffGuffy]

You had to flip England around for it to match the westeros map lol

[Gprojects]

you gotta flip great britain horizontally