Gregory S. Drobny
Characters drive stories. From The Iliad to The Lord of the Rings, classic tales resonate most deeply with us when we can relate to the individuals portrayed in them.
It is for this reason that good novelists are often considered better psychologists than those who have doctorates and professionally operate in that field. To build characters from tabula rasa and turn them into something that thousands—maybe even millions—of people can relate to, love, or despise requires an insight into the human condition that transcends the norm.
Interestingly, many of the great military leaders throughout history possessed a similar trait. They understood, at a deeper level than most, what made their soldiers tick—what motivated them, how they related to one another, and what it took to get them to do extraordinary things in the worst circumstances.
Popular, fictional stories offer a tremendous platform for gaining that needed insight, if for no other reason than the fact that they are popular—meaning, they resonate with a great number of people and therefore depict something many of us can relate to. Getting hung up on the fictional aspect of these tales would lose sight of the potential therein.
Consider the introduction of the dragons onto the battlefield in Game of Thrones. What happened to those on the opposing side? Confusion. Panic. Terror.
It is easy for those of us who spend a great deal of time in a pragmatic, utilitarian mode of thought to miss the lesson here. The dragon is not just a mythical, fire-breathing beast—it is the introduction of a chaos monster. It represents the unknown, the unfamiliar; “Aegon Targaryen changed the rules,” as Tywin Lannister succinctly put it. “That’s why every child alive still knows his name—three hundred years after his death.”1
This is, of course, exactly what commanders search for to use against the enemy—a weapon of war of which the opposing forces are completely unaware that can provide an unbalanced advantage. But it is also what must be guarded against in case the enemy introduces their own chaos monster. The best way to begin to do that is to build an army that can psychologically handle such a thing. Physical fortifications and equipment are crucial, to be sure; but they are all for naught if the actors utilizing them are frozen or too afraid to function in response to the unknown.
How would your warriors respond to chaos? How would they react if they encountered a previously unforeseen and unknown threat on the field of battle?
In short, how well do you know your army? The more intimately a commander understands the fighters, the easier it is to answer the questions regarding the mysteries of the unknown.2
In season 3 of Game of Thrones, Daenerys acquires an army referred to as the Unsullied. These warriors are considered some of the fiercest in the world, because they are trained from birth to fight and because, as eunuchs, they have been robbed of all sexual desires and thus their energies are solely devoted to martial prowess. Without girlfriends, wives, or children, their loyalties rest solely with each other and their leader.
The temptation for many kings, presidents, and commanders throughout the centuries was to take this concept literally and to the extreme. From ancient Sparta to Nazi Germany, leaders were convinced that if they could develop a fighting force full of men who were devoted fully and completely, from birth, to the army itself, then they would essentially be unstoppable. They would, in essence, be a military of robots whose singular purpose consisted of crushing the leader’s enemies—or dying gloriously while trying.
That approach, however, misses the bigger lesson, while being simultaneously ignorant of history. Both the Spartans of old and the Nazi ubermensch soldiers of the twentieth century were effectively kicked into the dustbin of history by citizen soldiers—Theban farmers against the former and young men from Allied countries against the latter, most of whom had grown up working in factories, on ranches, and on farms and would return to doing the same at the close of the war.3 Men who had been handcrafted from young ages to be nothing but warriors and then assembled with the greatest of care to be cold, efficient killers were all undone on the field of battle by nonprofessional soldiers pulled from the ranks of the common worker.
Why, then, does the archetype of the Unsullied hold such appeal? Well over two thousand years separate the Spartans and the Wehrmacht, after all; clearly, this is an ideal sought after across numerous times and cultures, despite its notable failures.
It resonates because it ultimately speaks to our timeless connection to war and, at an even deeper level, internal conflict. These concepts, despite sounding esoteric in nature, are crucially important to understand, lest the aforementioned mistakes are repeated.
The Unsullied are special for two primary reasons that go well beyond their emasculated physical structure or their training from birth. They are unique first because of their loyalty and second because of their being set apart from the rest.
Loyalty is, at first glance, one of those terms that seems obvious, yet it is more elusive than most of us would allow. We can define it with a dictionary, but experiences in the real world show us how quickly that becomes less black and white. Were the American colonists of the eighteenth century technically supposed to be loyal to the King of England—and if so, when did that obligation stop? Should Jaime Lannister be loyal to his sister, or should it be the other way around? Who is obligated to whom is a decidedly muddy topic with a long history in philosophical inquiry.4
Do you know whom your people are loyal to? Do you know the answer to that question beyond a shadow of a doubt?
This is the first quality that makes the Unsullied truly special—there is no uncertainty regarding their loyalty. We know without question to whom they are beholden, and that is a trait that speaks to our deepest perceptions of humanity. We seek loyalty even when we do not realize it, and that is reflected in our music, literature, and movies.5
Military commanders know how important loyalty is, to be sure; this is a desired quality expressed by everyone dating from Sun Tzu to the present day. But how, exactly, it is fostered is not nearly as simple as we would like to think. Is it bred into someone? Do they have it by nature of where they were born? The legions of men throughout time who have either deserted or been forced into battle at the point of a sword or barrel of a gun would suggest that one is not necessarily loyal to Country X simply because it is his or her natural homeland.
We know intuitively that people will be more loyal to the country of their birth, no doubt. But we also know that it only goes so far. The story line of Game of Thrones offers numerous examples of what we know to be true in this regard. If treated poorly enough, even one’s own family does not command loyalty, let alone a particular house they live under. Tyrion, after numerous attempts by his sister to take his life, eventually pledges himself to the very individual who poses the biggest threat to his family. Samwell Tarly abandons his mother and father when he refuses to meet the latter’s demands. The Hound walks away from his sworn position if for no other reason than being tired of putting up with a pretentious leader who doesn’t deserve being protected.
And therein lies the lesson. While loyalty is a tricky thing to foster, perhaps, we have very solid ideas about what erodes it, and that is why these character developments in Game of Thrones resonate with us. We see good people leaving bad ones because they are loyal to what is right rather than to a specific person, house, land, or family. This makes sense to us because it is what we want to see ourselves as doing.
We latch on to characters when we witness them acting out what we know we should do in a given situation if we were in it. As individuals, we see ourselves beholden to a code that exists a priori to any particular entity, so when we see those in stories who follow a similar code in an extreme manner, we vicariously follow.
This ever-changing dynamic of loyalty is a continuing theme in Game of Thrones and undergirds a great deal of both the individual stories and the overarching narrative. How does the plot change if loyalties do not shift prior to the Red Wedding? Where does House Lannister go if Tyrion chooses not to kill his father? How would Theon Greyjoy’s story have altered the bigger events if he had stayed with House Stark?
The lessons here for a military commander are plentiful. If one chooses to assume the loyalty of subordinates without actually knowing them, there is a risk of losing that faithfulness to completely unforeseen factors—unforeseen because of ignorance stemming from arrogance. Remember, chaos monsters are not just dragons.
Loyalty ultimately stems from an individual’s heart and where its passions lie. Money, sex, power, a noble cause, a code, brotherhood—some motivations are bad and some are good, but they greatly impact how warriors choose to spend their energies. The archetype portrayed by the Unsullied in Game of Thrones, then, is one who’s loyalties are focused—the ideal warrior mindset.
The second quality making them special is, in fact, their specialness—their otherness. When a unit or group sees themselves as being set apart from the rest, it enables a certain style of groupthink—something that is normally looked down on but has its upsides in the martial setting.6
For a unit to do extraordinary things on the field of battle, they need to be cohesive. In order to be cohesive, the group must, as obvious as it seems, see itself as a group, one that is different from others. The in-group and out-group concepts of social psychology are nowhere more prescient than on the field of battle, and any commander who wants to be successful should understand this at a deep level.7
How to grasp this psychological advantage with any particular group is, of course, the art of leadership and an ever-changing dynamic that has a great deal to do with social norms of any given society at any given time in history. The best way to motivate a group of warriors and enable them to see their otherness is, after all, somewhat different for a General David Petraeus than it was for Charles Martel stopping Islamic forces from taking over Western Europe in the eighth century or Genghis Khan commanding a lightning-quick cavalry to conquer most of Eurasia in the twelfth.
This is exactly where our relationship to stories becomes so invaluable. We watch or read something like Game of Thrones and are able to see the fundamental aspects of human nature that transcend particular times and cultures.
The lesson we take from the otherness of the Unsullied is not to literally gather a group of babies, castrate them, and train them from birth in order to separate them from everyone else and enable their unique nature as ruthless fighters. As described above, that has not had the best results in the past. Rather, the example set forth shows our innate desire to be different while remaining part of an in-group—an inherent need within ourselves to fight alongside those of like mind without sacrificing the individuality that sets us apart from out-groups.
We see this in the Night’s Watch, as well. A brotherhood dedicated to a centuries-old cause, set apart from the whole of society, is completely unique and yet bound by a code into a cohesive unit. The leader who can best exploit this balance with a particular group will succeed, whereas the one who cannot . . . won’t.8 John Snow understood it, whereas Alliser Thorne got sidetracked with petty obsessions about his power over the power of the group.
It is here, then, that we return with full force to the central question and even expand it: How well do you know your army, and how much does it matter?
Gathering intelligence on enemy forces has always been an integral component of waging war. Commanders often fail, however, to recognize how important this very same concept is with their own men. Understanding the culture of their army—to include cultures within cultures, subgroups of already-existing in-groups—is often passed over in favor of grand strategies developed at war colleges and the latest and greatest technologically advanced weapon systems. Stannis Baratheon siding with a witch rather than a trusted advisor who understood his military comes immediately to mind.
Grand, epic tales that resonate with millions of people help us do exactly this—understand the underlying themes of culture and human nature and how they play out in infinitely complex scenarios. We cannot sit down and war-game every possible situation involving cultural and ideological shifts in a group that led to an alteration of loyalties, but we can take part in stories that do so, especially when they do it well.
Game of Thrones offers us that very opportunity. Through absorbing story lines and character developments that attract the masses, we gain insights into the human condition. For military commanders to ignore this opportunity is to turn their backs on one of the most important aspects of leadership—knowing their army. The Unsullied and the Night’s Watch enable a viewer to vicariously experience what loyalty means at a deeper level than just “support” or “allegiance,” if we understand the underlying theme; we can gain insight into otherness by looking past the superficial into transcending, archetypal models. Our modern special operations forces are certainly not castrated from birth, but they are individuals who are willing to put their bodies through torturous processes—multiple times—in order to be the best. The U.S. Army’s Rangers and Special Forces, the U.S. Navy’s SEALs, the Marine Corp’s MARSOC, and the U.S. Air Force’s Pararescue Jumpers and Combat Controllers are decidedly neither eunuchs nor celibate, but they embody the archetypal models of the Unsullied and the Night’s Watch, voluntarily punishing their physical nature in order to be stronger and setting themselves apart from the remainder of the military in a distinct otherness.
Similarly, the shifting of individuals in this story, in relation to these very same concepts, grants us insights into how certain personality types behave in different situations. If we pay careful enough attention to those around us, we can see where these traits manifest in those under our care and thereby learn valuable lessons before issues spin out of control.
Commanders who truly know their army have a distinct advantage over those who do not. The methodology for gaining that understanding is, of course, somewhat dependent on numerous factors that can only be ascertained within a situational context, but there are fundamental aspects to human behavior that exist beyond societal changes. Popular stories are a magnificent way of understanding these foundational principles—they are popular because they resonate so deeply with our innermost desires, fears, and ambitions.
An army is drawn from a particular population, and it is in a commander’s best interest to understand that population as much as possible.9 In Game of Thrones we see the dichotomous nature of our own society—at once wanting desperately to be involved with the in-group in something with a purpose and yet revolting against anything that steals our personal identity.
Commanders who learn from these insights and balance that tightrope of discipline, loyalty, and individual creativity become true leaders, for they are in a superior position to meet the chaos monsters that come their way. As great as it is to have solid strategy, that strategy is still enacted by human beings, along with all their complexity. And at its core, Game of Thrones is an epic story about that very thing—the intricacies of individual-to-group dynamics and how they play out in the most horrendous circumstances.
How well do you know your army? This is just another way of asking how well you understand the human condition—a journey that has, most often throughout history, been conveyed through storytelling. So to know the stories of humanity is to know ourselves, the first step in knowing the face of interpersonal conflict, which is to say human interaction in all walks of life, from the battlefield to the business meeting.
1. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, “A Man without Honor,” season 2, episode 7, dir. David Nutter, Game of Thrones, aired May 13, 2012, on HBO.
2. See Victor Davis Hanson, The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny (New York: Free Press, 1999).
3. See Hanson, Soul of the Battle; Stephen E. Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers: From the Beaches of Normandy to the Surrender of Germany (Premier Digital Publishing, 1997).
4. For a great place to begin further inquiry into this subject, see Richard Dagger and David Lefkowitz, “Political Obligation,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2014 ed., ed. Edward N. Zalta, article published April 17, 2007, last updated August 7, 2014, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/political-obligation/.
5. The Odyssey, by Homer, and the 2001 movie Black Hawk Down, written by Ken Nolan and directed by Ridley Scott, offer prescient examples of loyalty.
6. The phalanx of ancient Greece and Rome, contra popular movie descriptions, relied on the cohesiveness of a unit; if they broke ranks or tried to fight individually, they lost.
7. See Feng Fu et al., “The Evolution of In-Group Favoritism,” Scientific Reports 2, no. 460 (2012), https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00460.
8. See Pete Blaber, The Mission, The Men, and Me: Lessons From A Former Delta Commander (New York: Penguin, 2008).
9. See again The Soul of Battle by Victor Davis Hanson for tremendous insights into how leaders like Generals Sherman and Patton understood—and exploited—this concept better than most. They believed that armies have souls and that in order to enable them to succeed, a leader needs to understand that soul—what makes it tick and what makes it special.