ABSTRACT
As the story unfolds, Game of Thrones presents one war of roses after another. In contrast to the Wars of the Roses, the fifteenth-century historical event, a war of roses is a non-specific occurrence—whether a literary trope with a certain plot structure or a social phenomenon with a certain group dynamic—where internal squabbling within a group weakens its solidarity and defenses, allowing a hostile foreign entity to conquer it easily. And all of these wars of roses unfold in the context of the overarching existential war of roses between the living and the dead. While the most obvious imagery associates the roses with the English houses, Shakespeare also attached that imagery to decay and death. As much as Game of Thrones adapts certain character types from Shakespeare’s first tetralogy, it adapts the plot typology the author has been describing: a war of roses in which power disputes within groups make them vulnerable to conquest from external enemies.
