Just moved on to Book 4 A Feast for Crows and found this word sticking out at me in a few chapters: Groat. It pops up twice in one chapter with Cersei saying something like "so-and-so is not worth half a groat" or "She would have given half a groat for such-and-the-other." And then it popped up again in the next chapter with a similar context. The standard English definition makes reasonable sense:
noun historical
noun: groat; plural noun: groats
- any of various medieval European coins, in particular an English silver coin worth four old pence, issued between 1351 and 1662.
The Game of Thrones Wikia seems to confirm this, but does not supply a source.
But it still strikes me as odd, mainly because the rest of the currency that I remember reading in the book is referred to very precisely. I remember copper pennies (also called stars), silver stags (House Baratheon's mint I presume) and golden dragons. Groat is the only denomination to turn up first in a figure of speech, rather than a form of payment. The only other denomination to take on such a figure (at this point in the books) is the dwarf's penny which
Tyrion Lannister enacts as a tax on every brothel 'transaction' during his short stint as the master of coin, after being replaced as the King's Hand and before being imprisoned.
And this expression is introduced and very clearly defined through dialog.
So my question is if a groat has a more proper introduction and definition in the Game of Thrones books or if it just slips into existence (in a typical High-Fantasy fashion) as an anachronism of olde/middle English? A book & page reference with quote would be fantastic.
currency
tag? I would have thought it would be a common enough theme across SciFi and Fantasy to be worth tracking. – Dacio Dec 17 '13 at 20:19