The Anarchy: The Real Civil War That Inspired ‘House of the Dragon’

“House of the Dragon” transports viewers to a world of fantasy, rife with conniving characters, treason and treachery. But behind fire-breathing dragons, the story presents parallels with true events from medieval history. The show, based on George R.R. Martin’s novel Fire & Blood, draws inspiration from a period called The Anarchy (1135-1153), a civil conflict wherein a controversial queen attempted to claim her throne from a usurper.

“It’s a civil conflict where we have these two parties vying for authority, and it comes down to who’s able to line up enough help to assert the claim,” says David Routt, a medieval historian at the University of Richmond.

King Henry I ruled England between 1100 and 1135. “He had a couple dozen illegitimate children with various women—maybe even more,” Routt says. He had two legitimate children: William and Matilda.

Tragedy struck in 1120 when 17-year-old William and his friends drunkenly commandeered a ship and attempted to sail the English Channel at night. They hit a rock, and William and his friends died. Approximately 300 people drowned in the event, now known as the White Ship Disaster.

“At that point, Henry doesn’t have a male heir, and his queen had already died,” Routt says. “He makes this very interesting decision to name Matilda queen.” Queens mainly served as consorts who bore children, explains Routt, and did not lead in the governance of a kingdom. But King Henry I had his noblemen swear oaths to his daughter.

At the tender age of 8 in 1114, Matilda had been betrothed to Henry V, King of the Romans, and sent to live in Germany. There, she was educated in governance as the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. “In terms of her upbringing, she is almost more German than English,” Routt says. Her husband died in 1125.

After Matilda was named heir apparent, her father pressured her to secure a line of succession. She reluctantly married Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, and they had three sons.

“It’s an interesting dynamic because the Count of Anjou is a traditional enemy of the Dukes of Normandy, so many of the English nobles find this problematic from the beginning,” Routt says.

Another crisis followed. During a hunting trip in Normandy in 1135, King Henry I feasted upon a “surfeit of eels” and died shortly thereafter—probably from food poisoning, says Routt. After his death, the carefully laid succession plans collapsed.

While Matilda was pregnant in France, her cousin Stephen of Blois rushed to London and seized the throne. Stephen’s experience in court had fostered a kinship among the nobility. His brother, Henry of Blois, was the Bishop of Winchester, so Stephen also had the support of the Catholic Church. Incidentally, Stephen was supposed to be on the White Ship but had been immobilized with dysentery and never boarded.

“The nobility forgets its oaths [to Matilda] because there’s inherent misogyny in English society,” Routt says. Furthermore, Matilda and her husband were seen as foreigners. Parties loyal to Stephen spread rumors that Matilda’s father disavowed her on his deathbed.

Empress Matilda was not one to sit idle. After gathering her forces, she returned to England in 1139, supported by her illegitimate half-brother, Robert of Gloucester, and her uncle, King David I of Scotland. Robert raised a rebellion in the southwest of England while David attacked from the north and her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, fought from Normandy.

Sieges and bloody battles swept across England as Stephen’s government lost control over powerful local barons. At the Battle of Lincoln in 1141, Robert of Gloucester’s forces captured Stephen and took him prisoner. For a brief period, Empress Matilda seemed set to ascend the throne.

But upon arriving in London, she was rejected by her subjects, partly because she wanted to charge new taxes. “Some sources describe her as haughty,” says Routt, “that she was arrogant and made no effort to be English.”

With Stephen imprisoned, Empress Matilda met a formidable new foe, the coincidentally named Queen Matilda, Stephen of Blois’ wife. As the queen rallied forces in support of her husband, Empress Matilda’s position began to weaken. At the Battle of Winchester, Stephen’s forces captured Robert of Gloucester, leading to a prisoner exchange: Robert for Stephen. Freed from captivity, Stephen reclaimed the throne.

Another setback came in 1142, when Stephen’s forces trapped Empress Matilda inside the besieged Oxford Castle. She reportedly escaped enemy lines wearing a white cloak that camouflaged her against the snow.

In 1147, Robert of Gloucester, the empress’s strongest ally, died. Empress Matilda retreated to Normandy the following year and focused her attention on securing the crown for her eldest son, Henry II. When Henry II married Eleanor of Aquitaine, he added huge swaths of France to his dominion. With powerful new forces, he crossed the English Channel to stake his claim to the throne in 1153. By then, nearly two decades of conflict had left both sides exhausted.

Stephen had hoped his eldest son, Eustace, would succeed him, but efforts to secure his son’s succession faltered amid opposition from the Catholic Church and the continuing civil war. Eustace died suddenly in 1153.

Under the Treaty of Winchester, King Stephen agreed to recognize Henry II as his heir. Stephen died a year later from natural causes.

Although Empress Matilda never wore the English crown for herself, she became an ardent adviser to her son until her own death in 1167 at the age of 65.