Show developer David Benioff said he was inspired to explore this concept by "the famous story of when Robert E. Lee was invading the North. Not the Gettysburg invasion, but an earlier one. And the set of orders got misplaced and were found by a Northern soldier. And it ended up ruining Lee's invasion. A lot of people think if the orders hadn't been lost, things might have been different: the Confederates might've sacked Washington, D.C., it's possible the South could've won the war". Co-creator D. B. Weiss added "it goes without saying slavery is the worst thing that ever happened in American history. It's our original sin as a nation. And history doesn't disappear. That sin is still with us in many ways. "Confederate", in all of our minds, will be an alternative-history show."