ABSTRACT
In a scene from ‘Two Swords’, the first episode in the fourth season of the TV series Game of Thrones, Prince Oberyn Martell asks the sellsword (i.e. the mercenary) Bronn whether he is a hired killer. Replying that he started out that way, Bronn points out that he is now a knight. When asked how that came to pass, he replies: ‘Killed the right people, I suppose.’ Much like the system of the European Middle Ages, on which it is based, the TV series depicts a system of various polities where different forms of private force are prevalent, where different forms of force shade into one another and where private force matters greatly for the trajectory of the system. As is often the case, fiction highlights phenomena that are overlooked in other accounts, in this instance the overall systemic importance of private force.
