Justice could also be grisly, Pyrdum told Live Science.

'It's true that most people would have encountered some sort of violent spectacle in their daily life. 'It's certainly true that homicide rates per capita were very high,' said Carl Pyrdum III, a doctoral candidate in medieval history at Yale University. Martin also gets historians' applause for his accurate portrayal of the Middle Ages as more violent than the world inhabited by today's audience. No one knows exactly what the substance was, but it probably included some combination of pine resin, sulfur or other incendiary chemicals. Wildfire - a volatile, flammable liquid used in the Season 2 episode 'Blackwater' - echoes an incendiary called Greek fire used by people in the Byzantine Empire. Some of the show's flashier battle sequences are rooted in truth, too. 'The weapons would very rarely hit something vital enough to kill on impact.' 'Bleeding out was the way that people died in battle,' DeVries said. Longbows and distance weapons were also less accurate than typically portrayed, so the impressive through-the-helmet hits to the eye often seen on television were rare, to say the least. Someone 'wearing his wealth' on the battlefield was much more likely to be captured and ransomed than killed. In actuality, medieval armor did a good job of protecting against the weapons of the time. Typically, modern filmmakers go for flashy beheadings and limb-amputation-by-sword in battle, he said.

'The arms and armor are very well-respected,' DeVries told Live Science. Arya Stark and 'The Hound' modeling an armored tunic in 'Game of Thrones.' (Image credit: HBO)

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