Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Why is "Ser" used in Game of Thrones rather than "Sir"? [closed]

+0
−0

Closed by System‭ on Apr 24, 2019 at 14:27

This question was closed; new answers can no longer be added. Users with the reopen privilege may vote to reopen this question if it has been improved or closed incorrectly.

I'll admit I haven't read the books, but I've seen in subtitles and other things that knights in Game of Thrones are addressed as "Ser".
It seems to me that fantasy works like this have similarities to medieval Europe and have aristocracies, knights, kings, queens, lords, ladies and so on.

The Kings, Queens and Lords in Game of Thrones use the usual real-life counterparts, so why is "Ser" an outlier when knights in England are addressed as "Sir"?

History
Why does this post require attention from curators or moderators?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/44760. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

2 answers

You are accessing this answer with a direct link, so it's being shown above all other answers regardless of its score. You can return to the normal view.

+0
−0

To look at this from a more general writing perspective it enables the author to convey the "strangeness" of their world without compromising the readers ability to understand what they are conveying.

You know that in English the same title is "Sir" so when you see "Ser" it clearly tells you that you aren't in the world you know but the similarity means that you don't need any exposition from the author to tell you what the title means.

When there's a large amount of worldbuilding going on (Dragons, wights, etc) you're going to have to do a certain amount of exposition but where you can do something that's self-evident all the better. Especially given the books are written in third-person limited and there's no audience surrogate it helps you avoid situations where characters have to think about something that they wouldn't naturally do in order to explain it to the reader.

History
Why does this post require attention from curators or moderators?
You might want to add some details to your flag.

0 comment threads

+1
−0

The answer given on the Movies and TV site could be useful to you.

Basically, George RR Martin invented "Ser" to add some difference between his novels and the real world.

History
Why does this post require attention from curators or moderators?
You might want to add some details to your flag.

This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44761. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads