Game of Thrones’ destruction of the capital of the Seven Kingdoms revealed a city of mean living conditions and rampant inequality.

The geography of the city scattered through the episodes has (as has been noted elsewhere) changed over the series.

King’s Landing has metamorphosed from a tightly-packed peninsular citadel, resembling Dubrovnik, to a sprawling metropolis bounded on one side by a plain, which seems more based on Pre-Ottoman Constantinople
King’s Landing has metamorphosed from a tightly-packed peninsular citadel, resembling Dubrovnik, to a sprawling metropolis bounded on one side by a plain, which seems more based on Pre-Ottoman Constantinople - Despite this discontinuity, the place remains effective as a backdrop. Even as its greatest buildings mushroom to fantastical proportions, it isn’t a world away from many still-inhabited places fringing the Mediterranean. © HBO

This is a world that raised the Red Keep to skyscraper height and built a northern anti-Wildling barrier taller than any cliff, but which has scarcely bothered plastering a single internal wall or invented any heating better than an open fire. And while the Starks and their allies’ last-minute race to turn volcanic dragonglass into weapons is understandable, it does make you wonder why they couldn’t have been kinder to themselves and turned some regular glass into window panes to keep out the cold.

This, of course, fits with the series’ real-life templates. Europe’s medieval cities were notorious plague pits, and stayed that way for a long time. Until quite recently, residents of the dank, lightless back alleys of Dubrovnik’s old city were poor and rather looked down on by officialdom, something that apparently persists today just up the Adriatic coast in the (scarcely less striking) old city of Split ...