Warning: This post contains minor spoilers for Game of Thrones These days on Game of Thrones, Bronn of the Blackwater isn’t the only one thinking about gold in the midst of war: the cost of doing battle has become a major theme this season, as Cersei contemplates hiring the Golden Company to assist the Lannisters in the wars to come. As is so often the case in the fantasy realm of Westeros, the soldiers of fortune known in the show’s universe as “sellswords” have parallels in real history — this time in the long story of mercenaries, professional fighters who are employed for personal profit on behalf of an army that is not their own.