Martin's "Castles" - Winterfell

Winterfell, as seen in HBO's Game of Thrones

Is Winterfell a castle?

While the much-loved home of the Starks shares many features in common with historic medieval castles, in fact it is better described as a walled town.

Just as castles are a major part of medieval history, they are a key feature in most works of fantasy from Tolkien onwards.

Martin’s Westeros is dominated by two major castles, the Red Keep and Winterfell (pictured above) Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire, at least at the beginning, take place mostly in or near these two castles. There is a major problem however – they are not castles.

Winterfell is a fortified city, plain and simple. While it represents the seat of a “noble” family, it is far too large to be considered a fortified residence (compare Conwy from below with Winterfell for instance). This isn’t a problem necessarily, but it is interesting that Martin and the creators of Game of Thrones would choose to depict Winterfell as a castle. A World of Ice and Fire explains that Winterfell was in fact a large series of fortifications, built upon one another.¹

While Martin rarely calls Winterfell or any of his invented locations castles, he does use explicit castle imagery in describing them, not to mention labelling Winterfell as a castle on his maps.

The walls of Dubrovnik show castle-like defensive features being used to defend a town, though Dubrovnik is a fortified town rather than a castle. Winterfell resembles fortified towns such as Dubrovnik much more than castles like Conwy.

Conwy is one of the larger castles in Britain, though its interior space is very limited – this is true of most castles of the High Middle Ages. Compare this historical example to the depiction of Winterfell.

This fan sketch of Winterfell is a good estimate of its total size – the Godswood takes up three acres, to give some scale to the interior of the castle.²

Doune Castle in Scotland is the set of Winterfell in HBO's Game of Thrones. It has also featured in films Ivanhoe and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. As a fifteenth century royal estate it shows how luxury could be combined with defensive features and military aesthetics to reinforce the identity of the owner - in this case, the Scottish crown.

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¹Martin, George R.R., Elio M. Garcia Jr. and Linda Antonsson. The World of Ice and Fire: The Untold of History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones, (New York: Bantam Books, 2014): 142-3.

²Martin, George R.R., A Game of Thrones (New York: Bantam Books, 1996): 22.