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moonlitgleek · 6 years ago

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On Account of Her Womanhood

I started this post over two months ago with the hope that it would help me work through my iffy feelings on Fire and Blood, namely how much I dislike the way many of the female characters are written in this book and how it repeats and expands on some unsavory elements of GRRM’s narrative that have been broadly noted in fandom across multiple books. But a closer look only increased my frustration with this book for how it underlined several of Martin’s problematic patterns when it comes to writing women but in a more condensed form this time, perhaps due to the nature of the medium. The history book form of F&B focuses these recurring problems and offers little to offset or challenge them that the authorial issue of casual and uncritical misogynistic writing feels more pervasive. It may be that Martin tried to address at least one aspect that’s been criticized before, but I remain disquieted with how he largely traded one issue for another.

Whatever the case, I think that a writer of Martin’s caliber and with his affinity for interrogating and examining traditional genre tropes can and should do better than this uncritical use of misogynistic writing that he not only leaves to stand unchallenged, but actively leans into. In this depressingly long post, I’ll address some of the problems that jumped out at me while reading. Feel free to add any I may have overlooked.

Objectification and the categorical sexualization of female bodies:

One of the most noticeable trends I found in F&B is how distinctly different it treats male and female bodies. While there may be plenty of overlapping, there is a decidedly heavier focus on sex in women’s stories. Too many stories witnesses a woman’s ultimate fate incorporate a sexual component, often violent and/or fatal, that is if the story isn’t completely built on sexual appetites or escapades. Fire and Blood dives into the personal lives of its characters far more than its cousin The World of Ice and Fire, and that has translated to a lot of sex. That is not inherently a bad thing, but F&B is also notably heavier on female characters so it’s really conspicuous that the number of women goes up in direct proportion to the increase in cases of sexualization and sex stories.

To put it mildly, women’s stories are drenched in sex, to the point where I’ve compiled a list in my initial notes under the title “Gyladyn is a Pervert” due to the sheer amount of unsolicited, unnecessary and disturbingly detailed accounts of women’s sexual experiences. You’d be hard pressed to go one chapter without focus being given to minute details of women’s sex lives which sometimes spans whole pages of the text. It’s primarily the women who get framed through a sexual lens in this book, especially in instances where the female characters don’t even get a story that is not based on their sexual history. Sexuality is not just one aspect of a woman’s personality like it is for the men, it is the core of her entire characterization. Far too many Targaryen ladies get that treatment, along with a myriad of other women. I chose some examples to discuss, but they are but a drop in the total number of characters receiving that treatment.

Coryanne Wylde

Lady Coryanne’s story is the most infamous examples of a gratuitous sex tale that doesn’t serve any real purpose in the narrative, but not only does it occupy way too much space in Gyldayn’s writing, he goes on to describe in excruciating detail the violation and abuse of a young girl while consistently blaming her for it. For all that Gyldayn keeps saying that we need not concern ourselves with the sordid details of A Caution For Young Girls, we get to hear quite a lot about Coryanne’s sexual history.

Coryanne’s entire narrative derives from sex. She gets no other story and no other characterization. Her voice and actions are filtered through the opinions and assumptions of various maesters. Her body is presented as an object for more powerful and/or older men to use and abuse, and the one spin of her story that affords her some figment of agency (i.e, the take that Coryanne taught Jaehaerys how to have sex because she became fond of him and Alysanne) deliberately minimizes how dysfunctional her entire situation is and neglects to reflect her real age and experiences by casting her as someone with more carnal knowledge and the ability to teach Jaehaerys about sex. Keep in mind that Coryanne’s so-called sexual "knowledge” has been exclusively through rape.

I read to what amounts to one quarter of a chapter about Coryanne Wylde but I still have no idea who this girl was. What I do know is way too much information about her sexual history and the men who took advantage of her.

Rhaena Targaryen

Rhaena is luckier than Coryanne in the sense that her characterization doesn’t derive solely from her sexuality and her story is more nuanced and layered. However, not only does Rhaena’s sexuality remain the underlying factor in her narrative, it’s kinda absurd how the narrative ties itself into knots trying to justify the inclusion of rumors about how Rhaena lost her virginity to a lowborn lover whose identity is debated, even though the information presented thus far by the in-universe author contradicts the very premise of those rumors or even the reasoning presented as the cause for discussing those rumors. The whispers of Rhaena’s so-called affair is preceded by rather strong hints of Rhaena’s preference of women; though that does not necessarily preclude the possibility of her liking men too as her reported affection for her brother Aegon suggests, it’s that affection and the note about how Rhaena and Aegon grew up expecting and welcoming their eventual nuptials that makes Rhaena’s supposed loss of virginity to a random guy all the more weird. Too, it’s been noted previously that Rhaena neither encouraged nor entertained any of her many suitors and instead preferred the company of her siblings, dragon and her latest favorite Alayne Royce. So for rumors to exist about her having a raunchy affair with some lowborn guy she met while dragonriding is not only random but baseless. Where did these rumors come from if there is nothing in Rhaena’s history to either trigger or support them?

The reasoning the narrative gives us for those rumors is to explain Rhaena and Aegon’s marriage, since Aenys was supposedly driven to marry Rhaena off as soon as possible in light of these rumors. However, reports of Rhaena and Aegon’s closeness and their expectation to wed, as well as the Targaryen incestuous tradition more than explains the match and Aenys’ decision, especially since Rhaena and Aegon were well-within the normal age for marriage in Westeros. There is nothing weird about this match that warrants an obscure affair to explain. Which only serves to illustrate the oddity of this unsolicited commentary on Rhaena’s virginity. Those rumors stand as a random tangent about a subject that no one should care about in the context of the story. Who cares whether Rhaena was a virgin or not when she married Aegon? What possible effect did her virginity or possible lack thereof have on the narrative for it to be included? The way this story is handled, Rhaena’s sexual agency is there to serve as a matter of intrigue, speculation and scandal when there is no fathomable reason for that to happen, not to mention that it makes Rhaena’s dynastic role as the expected future queen dependent on the expression of her sexuality.

Alyssa Targaryen

Full disclosure: I hate how Jaehaerys and Alysanne’s daughters are written and how sex is the make of their stories. That’s the case for five of the seven daughters they had, and it is infuriating. Is this the best you could come up with for the daughters of the best Targaryen queen Westeros has seen, GRRM? Sex, dead (Daenerys), septa (Maegelle who is clever and reconciled her parents, that’s mostly it) and barely mentioned (if you count Jocelyn Baratheon) are the only options?

The characterization of Princess Alyssa starts off promising enough with information about her personality, her unladylike interests and her closeness to her brother Baelon, but quickly devolves to be solely about sex. We literally do not hear one word from Alyssa’s mouth that is not about sex. Her story is a tale about how she loved sex, had sex, joked about sex and shrieked during sex. For all the narrative says that Alyssa was brave and irrepressible, it reduces her to someone whose sole purpose and sole story focus is sex. Alyssa Targaryen exists to have sex with Baelon and give birth to Viserys and Daemon before conveniently dying of complications after birthing her third son.

Alyssa’s story is not only symptomatic of the incessant sexualization in this book but of the recurring misogynistic problem of reducing women to their sexuality and fertility. Alyssa’s function in the story becomes intrinsically tied to both since the narrative never bothers to give her anything outside of her sex life. What non-sexual tidbits we get are either dismissed or glossed over. This is a princess who reportedly delighted in dragonriding, followed her brothers to the training yard and eschewed ladylike activities but for some reason, she responds to Baelon’s statement about how his bravery in battles does not measure to her own in giving birth by telling him that he was made for battles and she was made for childbirth. What even is that?

Alyssa Targaryen is a woman of whom Septon Barth said: “Alyssa may be all her mother is and more”, but we never get any elaboration on that. Instead we get to know about how Alyssa’s sounds of pleasure echoed through the Red Keep on a regular basis and how she constantly wanted to have sex.

Saera Targaryen

Dear god, is this an optimal example of how this book centers women’s characterization on their sexuality. Saera’s story is that she had sex with her companions and Jaehaerys punished her for having sex with her companions, which filters all aspects of her personality through a sexual lens by the narrative. It’s rather pointed that everything we know of Saera’s childhood is almost exclusively negative with a clear vibe of presenting her behavior as an escalating problem that reaches its peak when she has sex. It felt like Saera’s entire characterization up to when her sexual relations are discovered is one long build-up to that point of discovery. Saera’s “appetites” are remarked upon since she is literally a baby in a rather clear attempt to underscore her later actions when those appetites turned sexual. This is not simply a matter of hindsight coloring perception of Saera too, given how Maetser Elysar’s comments about how Saera “wants what she wants and she wants it now” are dated to 69 AC, when Saera was all of two. That gives the feel that Saera’s sexuality was the fulcrum that the rest of her characterization was build on, which certainly explains why her sexual affairs are framed as an extension of her previous bad behavior.

Daella Targaryen

Oh but this is a lesson in frustration. Daella's story doesn’t drip of sex like her sister Saera, but even when she is not unbearably sexualized, sex is still a primary filter that Gyldayn uses to shape our perception of her as this childlike frightened figure who apparently had no interests and no purpose in life other than needing comfort, and who wouldn’t talk to boys because she was frightened.

The text infantilizes Daella to such an extent that her disinterest in men who had no interest in her (Corlys Velaryon), who tried to force her into drinking (Simon Staunton) and who sexually assaulted her (Ellard Crane) is treated as a fault in Daella. Her entire story is about her parents’ ardent efforts to find a husband for her, a pursuit so irksome to Jaehaerys that he mandates that Daella must marry within the year when she approaches 16, in a conversation that introduces a rather needless sexual component in how Jaehaerys talks about Daella when he suggests lining a hundred naked men before his not-yet-16 year old daughter so she could pick one to marry. The story also seems to treat Daella’s later refusal of a bedding ceremony as a childish quirk that Rodrik Arryn indulged “his precious princess” in.

It might be a different facet of how a woman’s sexuality is used to define her than the previous cases, but it remains that Daella is treated as a sexual object by both the characters and the narrative in their dismay of how she doesn’t fit the traditional mold of womanly behavior and sexual mores in Westeros. It’s as if Daella is looked down upon for not having a sexual history.

Baela Targaryen

Wild, willful and wanton are the three words used to describe Baela Targaryen. It honestly boggles the mind that a character that has so much going for her gets introduced through a sexual situation. One of our first glimpses of Baela’s agency comes through the mention of her playing kissing games with squires followed by that one time she was found with a kitchen scullion who had his hand inside her jerkin. It’s especially notable to see how Baela’s willfulness (and unladylike behavior) is tied time and again to her sexuality and her interest in boys, which is very clear when Gyldayn talks about her unsuitable pets that she brought back to the Red Keep, a mention that is immediately followed by how her septa - who was in charge of Baela’s “moral instructions” - despaired of her and how Septon Eustace spoke of the need for her to wed immediately.

(Side note: I found the language of that paragraph so weird. It carries a heavy suggestion that Baela may have been involved sexually with her so-called pets, makes fun of her intelligence and suggests that she may or may have not been involved with the twin female prostitutes that the text then links to her own sister because they were twins “like us, Rhae” in Baela’s own words. There is a lot going on in that paragraph that I don’t know what to do with. Is Gyldayn trying to imply that Baela had sex with all of these people, including an entire trope of mummers and two girls that she explicitly connected to herself and her sister? Because he is certainly insinuating so, and I have been burned by this book enough already to assume good intentions).

Nettles

Instead of basing her characterization on it, how about we use a woman’s sexuality to undermine her accomplishments just to shake things up? Here’s a girl who relied on her intelligence instead of a pedigree to tame a dragon and succeeded in becoming a dragonrider, but her taming of Sheepstealer gets prefaced by a statement about how “worse was yet to come with dire consequences for the Seven Kingdoms” to preemptively blame Nettles for Rhaenyra’s own brutality and Daemon’s subsequent abandonment of her cause (a statement not made any better by talking about how “the power young maidens exert over older men is well-known” when discussing Daemon’s affair with Nettles as if to cast her as a seductress), and that’s when her dragontaming is not getting framed as something she traded sex for as suggested by Gyldayn’s speculation about how she traded sex for the sheep she fed Sheepstealer. He makes sure to treat us to his thoughts on the state of Nettles’ virginity when she began her affair with Daemon while he is at it as well.

Helaena Targaryen & Alicent Hightower

Straining logic to add a sexual rumor is a personal favorite of mine. Look, Gyldayn may be less zealous and less outrageous than Septon Eustace in his bias towards Aegon II, but he is still clearly biased towards him. He writes about him with a degree of sympathy not present in his writing of Rhaenyra and he goes out of his way to undermine events that may paint Rhaenyra in a better light while arguing against rumors that paint the greens as (more) monstrous. How convenient it is, then, for that bias to fail when it comes to discussing the rumor about how the teenage Alicent may have slept with both Viserys I before Aemma’s death and the elderly Jaehaerys I when she was his caretaker, a rumor that Gyldayn seems disinclined to believe (or so he claims) but more than willing to wink at its possible accuracy through a comment about how Alicent strangely spoke often of the Old King in her final hours but not of her late husband.

To add insult to injury, we’re also treated to a rumor about how Rhaenyra, on the behest of Mysaria, may have forcibly prostituted Alicent and Helaena in what comes to be referred to as the Brothel Queens. Spending time on a rumor that casts Rhaenyra in a bad light at least falls in line with Gyldayn’s biases, but it strains logic to have Mushroom be the source of that rumor. Why would a guy who loved Rhaenyra well as Gyldayn says perpetuate a rumor that casts Rhaenyra in such a monstrous light? It seems like the logic of this amounts to “Mushroom delights in sex tales and perverse rumors so he was the obvious choice” which doesn’t account for Mushroom’s feelings or biases (and which is problematic in its own way - do you think I missed that the two vulgar books that are widely quoted in this work were written by a woman and a dwarf, GRRM? Do you think I missed that the implication here is that Mushroom’s sexual perversions are prioritized over his depiction as a person who liked Rhaenyra?)

The Brothel Queens rumor adds nothing to the narrative but another case of unnecessary sexualization. Gyldayn ultimately rejects that rumor as false but I question the need to include it in the first place. Is it there to perhaps inform us that the public view of Rhaenyra was so bad at this point that people were inclined to not only believe in but also manufacture rumors about her monstrosity? Having one of Rhaenyra’s supporters as the accredited source of that rumor flies in the face of that, and narratively speaking, this doesn’t accomplish anything that the latter rumor about how Rhaenyra sent Maelor’s head to Helaena in a chamber pot - which is clearly framed as evidence of how much the public opinion on Rhaenyra has soured - doesn’t. So why is this pesky rumor there and what purpose does it have beyond showing us that Gyldayn is all too willing to spend his time discussing every sexual rumor under the sun?

As I’ve said, these examples are but a few of the number of women needlessly and excessively sexualized in this book. I have more on my list but talking about every story separately is going to make this post longer than it already is, not to mention be unbearably repetitive because many of them bear the same elements of having our knowledge of these women centered almost exclusively on their sex lives and their presence in the text reduced to their sexuality. Gael Targaryen was seduced, gave birth and died. Sara Snow's is a contrived and downright illogical story that only exists so she could have sex with Jace either as his wife or a fling. All Viserra Targaryen gets to do is pit boys against each other for her favor and try unsuccessfully to seduce her brother Baelon. Aliandra Martell is there to entertain men and possibly sleep with Alyn Velaryon to the displeasure of her siblings (psst, GRRM, your depiction of the Dornish, especially Dornish women, continues to be atrocious and this book does nothing to deconstruct the stereotype of them as violent hypersexual people). The questions Gyldayn ponders while discussing Tess killing Dalton Greyjoy include ones about her virginity and her physical beauty. Rue - one of two female writers in the book, the other supposedly being Coryanne Wylde - is there to write a vulgar account about Alyn Velaryon who she may or may not have slept with. The list goes on and on.

Sexualizing the mundane:

The hypersexualized treatment of women bodies is so overwhelming in this book that it extends to ordinary stuff like nursing and pregnancy, both of which get weirdly graphic and gross descriptions in Alys Rivers’ story when she puts her pregnancy with Aemond’s child as “I can feel his fire licking at my womb” while her wetnursing is described as “the milk that flowed abundantly from the breasts of Alys Rivers”. Not even death or description of women’s death throes is spared that sexual aspect. While Princess Aerea is getting cooked from within in a horrifying portrait of suffering and agony, the fact that smoke is emanating from her vagina gets described as obscene, even though smoke is coming from every other body orifice. Meria Martell gets the rumor that she was coupling with a stallion at the time of her death. Rhaenyra’s breast is prickled to rouse Sunfyre.

Even in death, women’s bodies are treated as sexual objects. Mysaria’s horrific death via scourging has a sexualized dimension in how her body is put on display in her agony as she gets whipped while being paraded naked despite her crimes not being sexual in nature. To be fair, both Septon Bernard and Lysaro Rogare also get sexual punishments for non-sexual crimes, but the notable difference between them and Mysaria is that Lady Misery gets narrative focus on her “pale white body” while dying. (Mysaria’s fate is also too contrived in a way that Bernard’s and Lysaro’s aren’t but that’s only relevant here for how it appears like the narrative conspired to have her caught by that specific mob so she could get such a punishment). Even immolation gets a gendered and sexualized tint because when it’s women burning, they obviously get to “dance in gowns of fire, naked and lewd underneath the flames”. The thrashing of someone burning is apparently “lewd” if it’s a woman. Women’s suffering get inexplicably beautified (dance in gowns of fire) and sexualized, and somehow they are blamed for it because they are being lewd by thrashing in agony.

Child brides

Let’s start with their number, shall we?

Alyssa Velaryon, 15

Larissa Velaryon, between 12 and 14

Alysanne Targaryen, 13

Alyssa Targaryen, 15

Aemma Arryn, 11

Helaena Targaryen, 13

Elinor Costayne, exact age unclear but younger than 16

Floris Baratheon, 14\15

Unwin Peake’s unnamed daughter, 11\12

The Northern blacksmith’s daughter whose story Alysanne cited to ban the first night, 14.

Daenaera Velaryon, 6

Jaehaera Targaryen, 8

This list doesn’t account for those who were meant to be child brides but ultimately weren’t because of external circumstances. Cassandra Baratheon hadn’t yet flowered in 129 but she was going to marry Aegon II immediately in 131 when she was between 13 and 15. Viserra Targaryen was being shipped off to wed at 15. Myrielle Peake (14) was touted as a suitable queen for Aegon III because she could get pregnant immediately. Prudence and Prunella Celtigar were offered by their father for Maegor to immediately wed at 12 and 13 (at a time when Maegor had just murdered two wives, btw), Jaehaerys Targaryen made ardent effort to marry off Daella as young as 13 and mandated she marry by 16. And those are only the marital relationships that involve young girls, but the inherent issues of child brides exist in cases of non-marital sexual relationships like Marlida of Hull’s with Corlys Velaryon when Marlida was 15 if not younger, or Rhaenyra Targaryen’s “training” by her uncle Daemon at 14.

So what’s the problem?

This has been a subject of debate for a long, long time, whether in terms of its actual historical inaccuracy despite GRRM’s claim to the contrary, or of its defiance of Martin’s own Word of God. Margaret Beaufort is an example that has been brought up repeatedly to justify the broad inclusion of child brides in ASOIAF but while Margaret did give birth aged 13, the severe physical toll that took on her not only rendered her sterile but was a main reason she argued vehemently against her granddaughter being wed young too. But Martin only reflects the first part of the story while steadfastly ignoring the second part. Oh, it’s true that F&B acknowledges that the in-universe characters know that bedding young girls has severe and often fatal health risks, but that knowledge is either dismissed or categorically ignored.

The most outrageous example of that comes from the story of Daella Targaryen. In what could have worked as a way for the narrative to call out the problems entrenched in the concept of child brides, Gyldayn notes that Queen Alysanne blamed herself and King Jaehaerys for marrying Princess Daella too young when her physical constitution made pregnancy dangerous and indeed ultimately fatal for her. But rather than working as a resounding rebuff, the way this plot is handled makes it stick out instead as an oblique attempt for the author to say “see, I said it was bad!” rather than a serious condemnation of that constant trend. It’s a throwaway line without the commitment to showing that this information changed anything in-universe or was even allowed to stand as a clear, if a late and woefully limited, condemnation of the narrative’s over-reliance on child brides. Rather, Alysanne’s justifiable condemnation is promptly undermined by how it is immediately tied to her grief over Daella’s death with the clear aim to paint Alysanne’s deduction as an emotional - and thusly not rational - response which in turn dismisses her completely justified assessment.

Still, I might have only ascribed this to Gyldayn’s own misogyny if only that statement hadn’t been soundly forgotten by everyone in-universe, apparently including Alysanne herself. This incident appears to have come and gone with no visible effect on the main participants’ actions - it sure doesn’t look like either Rodrik Arryn nor Jaehaerys Targaryen learned one damn thing considering they go on to sign off on Aemma Arryn’s marriage at age 11, at a time when Queen Alysanne goes mysteriously silent on the subject. That is further compounded by how Alysanne herself comes to arrange for the 15-year-old Viserra to wed only four years after Daella’s death.

Be sure to give it up for the maesters’ (painfully casual) assessment that Aemma’s childbearing issues were because she was bedded too young though, it sure had as much impact on the narrative as Alysanne’s own statement years earlier, considering the numerous girls who would go on to be child brides, including Viserys I’s own daughter Helaena. Despite strong evidence of the risk of forcing girls into sex and pregnancy at an early age and despite the narrative’s own admission to it, it remains a regular occurrence to see teen girls married off (often with no pressing reason) and giving birth way too young without any kind of explanation as to why their guardians would think it a splendid idea.

Also a story where the text came close to properly addressing the core issue of child brides is that of Alysanne Targaryen. The narrative initially touches upon the issue of the inherent sexualization of child brides with Alysanne’s story, but somehow still ends up reaffirming how young girls tend to be regarded through a sexual gaze in Westeros. Gyldayn goes to great lengths in trying to differentiate between Jaehaerys and Alysanne’s nuptials and consummation, and that of your average Westerosi child bride where girls get no agency in the matches made for them, often to much older men who have no qualms about having sex with actual children. By contrast, Alysanne is shown as an architect of her marriage to Jaehaerys, actively going to him to curtail her betrothal to Orryn Baratheon and pushing for their marriage to be consummated so that no one could set it aside. Alysanne’s ability to consent in a match that she pursued to a similarly-aged boy is starkly different from what we typically see in matches with child brides, which is then affirmed by Jaehaerys’ recognition that Alysanne is too young for the marriage to be consummated after their first wedding, and her own advocacy for consummation later despite Jaehaerys’ lingering hesitance. So far, so good. It is another instance of a child bride but it’s used to add commentary about the inherent problematic elements of it rather than being presented in an abstract manner and left to stand unchallenged.

But not only is the commentary we can glean from this story undermined by Jaehaerys’ own actions with his daughters and granddaughter later, it is further diminished by the constant insistence to sexualize Alysanne. Gyldayn deems it necessary to tell us of how Jaehaerys and Alysanne slept naked, gives us servant gossip about the long lingering kisses they shared and inserts an offhand rumor about how Jaehaerys might have invited Alysanne to the bed he supposedly shared with Coryanne Wylde to “frolic with them in episodes most often associated with the infamous pleasure houses of Lys”, persisting in referring to Alysanne as “the little queen” throughout. That insistent sexualization of Alysanne contextualizes the mention of Jaehaerys’ refusal to consummate the marriage to be an attempt from the author-character to make Jaehaerys look good, rather than an attempt to offer any kind of critique to the custom of deflowering too-young maidens. It does, however, fall right in line with Gyldayn’s tendency to dedicate an ordinate amount of space to comment on the sex lives of teen girls. Which brings me to:

The hypersexualization of young girls

One can not go through this book without taking notice of how absolutely obsessed Gyldayn is with the sex lives and sex appeal of teen girls. Too much of this book is spent discussing, speculating on and pondering rumors about the sex lives of young girls, minor and major characters alike. It’s really telling that he, and the narrative by association, is so cavalier about inserting commentary about a girl’s body, sexuality or sexual desirability, even for characters who were only mentioned once or twice in the text. It’s all so disturbingly casual that it might not register on first read but there is an unholy pattern of slipping in a sexualizing comment about barely seen teenagers and pubescent girls. They may have no personality, no voice, no agency and sometimes no names but for some reason their sexual history (read: abuse), desirability or physicality is brought up. Among them:

Prudence and Prunella Celtigar. For the longest time, our knowledge of both is restricted to their age, and Rogar Baratheon’s charming comment about them being chinless, breastless and witless which Gyldayn keeps bringing up as their defining factor.

The Archon of Tyrosh’s daughter (15) is noted for her wit, hair and flirtatious manner (she is later rumored to have cuckolded her eventual husband, Orryn Baratheon, and birthed a daughter that wasn’t his, since she is a woman of the Free Citites and all that)

There may have been a nameless faceless 12-year-old girl that was being raped by Aegon II at the time of Viserys’ death. But fear not, we know exactly what kind of sexual act she was performing on him.

Jocelyn Baratheon (16) barely exists in the text, but we needed her physical description to include that she was full-breasted just so we can understand that she was desirable.

According to Mushroom, Aemond kissed all four of Borros Baratheon’s prepubescent daughters to “taste the nectar of their lips” before picking one as a bride. The second-eldest, Maris, makes a sexually-charged comment to challenge Aemond’s manhood at like, 11.

Floris Baratheon’s characterization is limited to pretty, sweet, somewhat frivolous and dead.

The only mention of the 15-year-old Johanna Swann’s is that she was sold into sexual slavery and became a famous courtesan in “a fascinating” tale according to Gyldayn.

No less than 8 girls involved in the so-called Maiden’s Day Cattle Show are defined by sexual comments and sexual deeds. (There is a comment from Mushroom about how everything couldn’t have been more beautiful, unless if the girls had all arrived naked. This is a ball that had girls as young as six and seven.)

Coryanne Wylde’s first sexual “encounter” rape happens at 13 and she is assaulted repeatedly by the time she is 15.

“Aegon III had never shown any carnal interest in either of his queens (understandably in the case of Queen Daenaera, who was yet a child)” - Uh, Gyldayn? Jaehaera was ten when she died. So why is the extent of Aegon’s maturity judged as lacking because he didn’t desire a literal child and measured negatively against that of his brother Viserys because Viserys, who was a child himself, consummated his own marriage?

As for the regular-flavor hypersexualizion of major characters by the narrative, you can find Rhaenyra Targaryen whose sexual training assault at Daemon’s hand at 14 is described in painful detail, Rhaena Targaryen who is strongly implied to have had somewhat of a sexual awakening at the age of 12, Nettles whose virginity is speculated upon with the conclusion that she must have had sex before she flowered taken as a basic fact and Baela Targaryen who gets a majority story focus on her sexual adventures.

The worst part is that there is no point to most of the above. I can maybe find a logical narrative motive for one of those stories and the only point I can find to several others is to frame the character of the men involved, including Gyldayn. But mostly, these characters exist to serve as as a set dressing, to be exploited and paraded to sensationalize a story.

Sexual violence as a punishment, a plot device, and a sacrifice for male characters’ story

GRRM has frequently claimed that the various acts of sexual violence in his books, against both men and women, is historically accurate. He takes it as a dishonest approach for him not to show that rape and sexual assault were historically a part of war. The existence of sexual violence in wars can not be denied, but it’s rather remarkable that Martin took only the negative parts of women’s lives from real life history, then made it worse for the women in his narrative. Despite his claim that Westeros is no darker nor more depraved than our RL history, Westerosi patriarchy is actually worse than the real Middle Ages and it is lacking a lot of the roles women occupied throughout history, which gives the effect of furthering the women’s suffering without giving them the benefit of having proper well-rounded narratives.

Furthermore, if, as Martin claims, sexual violence is a part of war narrative, what are we to do with the numerous examples of assault and sexual violence that occur in peacetime, both in the main narrative and in F&B? Westeros wasn’t at war when seven Lyseni slaves were used and abused by the Baratheon brothers prior to the Golden Wedding, nor did Coryanne Wylde’s repeated assaults occur during war. Alyssa Velaryon and Alysanne Targaryen were not impregnated, to the former’s grave and against the latter’s expressed wishes, by wartime enemies but by their own husbands. Saera Targaryen had her own father condone her humiliation and abuse in the name of punishing her. And what about the countless child brides who had no choice in their marriages, many of whom went on to either die in childbed or suffer health problems due to premature consummation of their marriages?

Sexual violence is a frequently used window dressing across the series. That Westeros is a terrible place for women is often the singular take of such stories that consistently build on the victimization of women, either as a decoration for the setting to inform us over and over and over that Westeros is a misogynistic society, or as a tool to characterize male characters and further their stories. This is an overarching problem in Martin’s narrative that sees the use of women’s very bodies on the sacrificial altar of the narrative’s requirements, to the extent that even in their suffering, the story belongs less to these women and more to the men whose stories they are sacrificed for. Too often does that happen in this book.

Argella Durrandon is one such case, a women whose violation at the hand of her own men is mostly there to tell us about the gentleness of Orys Baratheon. Several women are used in various ways to inform us about Rogar Baratheon in what is frankly a perplexing waste of narrative space because we didn’t really need these women’s suffering to tell us that Rogar is a grade A asshole when we had plenty of damning evidence of his villainy and misogyny. But we still get such casual mentions of Rogar and his brothers “deflowering” slaves who were probably too young, mainly to juxtapose the actions of Rogar and young Jaehaerys during the proceedings of the Golden Wedding and paint the former in a bad light while holding up the latter. Coryanne Wylde has her narrative of abuse that tells us nothing about her and more about the men taking advantage of her, and Alyssa Velaryon is severely sidelined by the narrative during the regency and has her body used to her death to further Rogar’s characterization. And while this upcoming example is a part of a war narrative, it remains that the function of the rape and sexual slavery of Lady Alys Oakheart and her ladies is largely about informing our perception of Wyl of Wyl and being used to threaten Princess Deria with a similar fate.

Sexual violence also gets used as a tool of punishment against women for various “offenses”. Argella Durrandon is stripped of her clothes and her voice alike for her defiance. Coryanne Wylde’s assault is treated as some sort of karmic punishment for her so-called promiscuity and bearing a child out of wedlock. Princess Saera gets silenced, shaved and beaten essentially for liking sex. Her punishment is designed to shame her for having had sex before she is pressed to the Faith in an attempt to force her into chastity and moral righteousness. The Silent Sisters continue to be routinely used as a threat and a punishment for sexual promiscuity.

Rape culture and normalising sexual violence

I’m having a bit of a case of stating the obvious when I say that Westeros has a flourishing rape culture. But it’s still a fact. Westerosi patriarchy perpetuates and enables sexual violence on an institutional level to the extent that rape has become so normalised that no one so much as blinks at it. The custom of the first night is a clear example of that. And although we have Alysanne and Septon Barth’s impassioned arguments against it that ultimately succeed in having it banned, Gyldayn does his level-best to downplay and beatify the sentiment towards the first night on Dragonstone and exclude the Targaryens from pushback against it. According to Gyldayn, not only was the resentment of the first night muted on Dragonstone, but “brides thus blessed upon their wedding nights were envied, and the children born of such unions were esteemed above all others". Normalise and glamorize rape, why don’t you, Gyldayn?

Also a fixed feature of Westerosi mores is the bedding ceremony, something that involves the stripping of both the bride and the groom by the wedding guests and that often include liberities taken with the bride. In F&B, Daella’s rejection of a bedding is treated disparagingly by the narrative as a facet of her childishness and immaturity, while Rhaenyra, at the age of 9, is included in the party that disrobed her father for his bedding ceremony. For the boys, the bedding ceremony is treated as a sign of virility, strength and character maturity as seen by the reactions of those who attended the bedding ceremony of the 13-year-old Maegor, and the description of how mature the 12-year-old Viserys was because he bedded his wife.

Those are facets of a problem that, for me, largely starts and ends with the authorial attitude towards some forms of sexual violence in the text. In a discussion about F&B on westeros.org, Martin’s collaborator Elio Garcia, echoing previous comments made by Martin, insisted that bedding young girls is understood to be gross and inappropriate in Westeros and that an example such as Unwin Peake’s young daughter is simply an indication of Peake’s (and his onetime goodson’s) awfulness and cruelty. However, the argument that it’s socially, if not legally, frowned upon to bed young girls in Westeros does not hold in the face of the sheer amount of young girls being wed and bedded at young age, to the extent that the matter became so normalised that neither father nor husband of any such unfortunate girl attracts any kind of censure, not even socially. I certainly saw no such sentiment when Viserys I was marrying the 11-year-old Aemma Arryn and bedding her at 13 to the tune of zero opposition. Nor when no one blinked at the fact that the-nearly-60 year old Thaddeus Rowan was searching for a suitable young maid to wed after the death of his first two wives, or when he later wed the 14/15-year-old Floris Baratheon. What about when Jaehaerys and Alysanne Targaryen arranged for their daughter Viserra to wed their contemporary Theomore Manderly at age 15? Or when the 60-year-old Corlys Velaryon started sleeping with Marlida of Hull at 15, if not younger, which earned zero condemnation and zero focus? The perversion and predatory behavior of these old men is treated as a non-issue within the text, even though Martin and Garcia keep telling us that it should. They just fail to have the narrative actually show that. But you can’t keep insisting that it’s considered perverse in-universe to bed young girls when everyone is doing it.

As for the argument that young Lady Peake’s example was meant as a deliberate point about her father’s character, that’s a fig leaf that doesn’t even hold up in the face of the text. It’s easy to say that this was an added commentary on Unwin Peake’s character when Peake is an awful human being that we’re meant to hate, but what about Thaddeus Rowan who is clearly presented to us by the narrative as a decent and moral man that we’re supposed to sympathize with? Was there a point to be made about what an awful man he was in his marriage to Floris Baratheon too? Did I miss any part of the narrative that treated Rowan as a figure worthy of denunciation for his culpability in Floris’ death, or even acknowledged that culpability? Because from where I’m standing, that young girl’s death was treated as something that we’re supposed to sympathize with Rowan over. What about Rodrik Arryn, a two-time offender who impregnated the delicate Daella and witnessed her death only to repeat the tragedy by marrying off his daughter as a child? Rodrik is also presented as a decent person who loved Daella and who is barely criticized for his part in her death, which is ironically an improvement on the lack of acknowledgment of what he did to Aemma.

You want to present child brides as some sort of commentary about the terrible character of their guardians and husbands? Don’t have your best king - who previously refused to consummate his marriage to his own sister-wife on account of her age - and his good queen arrange a marriage for their minor daughter. Don’t have the fact that Rodrik Arryn had loved Daella for years before marrying her at 16 count as something in his favor when that means he was in love with a literal child. Don’t have numerous kindly-written characters do the exact same thing that you claim indicates awfulness and cruelty. Also, also, don’t have your characters treat the rape of a 13-year-old girl as her fault. F&B is utterly unsympathetic to Coryanne Wylde despite acknowledging that the man who slept with her was in his thirties, but Coryanne is blamed by everyone for “her shame” and her subsequent assaults are treated as something she brought on herself. Don’t tell me that a boy kissed Daella against her will in those exact words, then not only act like she was unreasonable for disliking him, but make no mention of any kind of rebuke made to a kid who forced himself on a royal princess. Don’t normalise child brides and build a society that enables, encourages and accepts the rape of pubescent and prepubescent kids as par for the course.

Depiction of female sexuality and queerness:

Let me preface this section by saying that I’m not a medievalist or a historian so my knowledge of the medieval era comes from what research I did on the subject, all of which makes me scratch my head over the fascination with female sexuality present in Gyldayn’s writing. This goes beyond cases where a woman’s sexuality was a part of events that would typically be noted by a historian to include random tangents about a lady’s sexuality for pretty much no reason. That strikes me as really weird because that information is relayed to us in the form of a history book, and female sexuality wasn’t typically that widely scrutinized, recorded and commented on. Moreover, the way their sexuality is used in the narrative leaves a bad taste in my mouth, especially when it comes to talk of their queerness - the narrative gives us very little in means of a relationship between two queer women, but uses their sexual orientation to either undermine or negatively frame these women.

Queen Rhaena Targaryen is a prime example of how a woman’s queerness gets used to depict her negatively in the text. It doesn’t get any clearer than her sexuality being referred to as a beast through Frankly Farman’s Four-Headed Beast epithet that just so happens to describe four queer women. It might be argued that Franklyn is not necessarily the voice of the text and so his view is only reflective of him and not of a textual problem, but the problem is that the text never really bothers to challenge Franklyn’s misogynistic and queerphobic view. In fact, it appears as if the text is at best excusing and at worst exonerating Franklyn, first by repeatedly talking about how condescending and dismissive Rhaena’s companions were towards Androw as if to suggest that Franklyn was correct to dislike them and label them as beasts, then by having Rhaena’s confrontation with Franklyn after Elissa’s escape condemned unanimously by Jaehaerys and his court as Rhaena’s fault. Jaehaerys might have taken issue with how Myles Smallwood talked about Rhaena but he certainly did not contradict his assessment of her or Franklyn’s own misogynistic response to her. It’s Rhaena who gets the explicit censure while also being painted as wrong and borderline hysterical.

Too, I dislike the way that Rhaena’s performance of her formal dynastic role seems to have been tied to her sexuality by the text, an implication which exists in the pointed reporting of Rhaena’s rudeness and emotional absence during a royal progress until her current favorite was summoned to her side, and in how Jaehaerys seems to blame Rhaena for bringing Elissa to Dragonstone in a segment that carries a suggestion that Rhaena’s sexuality and her love for Elissa undermined her governance of Dragontone. More damning is the sense of vagueness with which Gyldayn talks about Rhaena’s companions that were killed by Androw. While the term “favorite” is consistently used when the text wants to indicate a lover rather than a friend, Gyldayn has used the term “companion” to indicate a relationship too - more clearly in the case of Jeyne Arryn and her dear companion Jessamyn Redfort - so for him to call those killed by Androw Rhaena’s companions and including two of her acknowledged favorites among them, Gyldayn (and Androw himself in his final conversation with Rhaena) seem to be implying that Rhaena was involved with all of them. Even the 14-year-old Cassella Staunton and Lianne Velaryon? It’s unclear but that vagueness introduces a problematic dimension to Rhaena’s sexuality that certainly did not need to be there and that does nothing for the story.

The story of the Maiden of the Vale carries similar elements to Rhaena, only clearer. While the story provides us with an entirely legitimate concern of how men try to leech power from powerful women as a possible motive for Lady Jeyne’s refusal of marriage, she is still the subject of rumors about being a lesbian, or alternatively, someone trading sexual favors from the 15-year-old Jace for her political and military support which links her political action to her sexuality, of which we only get a last-minute confirmation on her deathbed. The rumors about Lady Jeyne can certainly stand as an example of in-universe misogyny, but it’s undeniable that the story both builds on and asserts a prevalent misogynistic assumption that a women who doesn’t want a husband must be a lesbian (which strikes me as a modern stereotype), while linking refusal of marriage to a man to exploitative behavior.

Also a modern stereotype is the assumption that two gender non-conforming women who share quarters and appear to be close must be lovers which is present in the thinly-veiled suggestion that Sabitha Frey and Alysanne Blackwood were involved. It’s immensely strange to base such a deduction on the fact that the two ladies shared a tent and were always in each other’s company when they were the only two women in an army of men, especially in a society where a highborn lady sharing her quarters with friends, companions and ladies-in-waiting is a common occurrence. I can see where people would think Lady Sabitha or Black Aly unnatural or even grotesque in the way Brienne is treated in the main novels for being gender non-conforming and/or ugly/not traditionally beautiful, but making the jump to “well, they must be queer” for keeping company with each other and sharing a tent when surrounded by men is not a typical sentiment of the medieval era as far as I know.

This, however, is a symptom of how Sabitha Frey in particular is portrayed in the narrative. She is a fairly prominent figure throughout the Dance and yet we don’t really get much in the way of a characterization for her. She gets called merciless and grasping in passing with no elaboration as to why she is thought to be so and when she gets a moment of close examination, Gyldayn uses it to tell us of how she “would sooner ride than dance, wore mail instead of silk, and was fond of killing men and kissing women”. I don’t know if Martin was trying to lean into or affirm our negative perception of House Frey, but Sabitha’s sexuality and gender performance seem to be the focal point of her characterization so assigning uncorroborated negative attributes to her does not come across in the best light.

Another aspect of how badly this books deal with queerness comes from a certain parallel I noticed between the stories of Saera Targaryen, Baela Targaryen and three girls from the Maiden’s Day Ball, the three Jeynes as Gyldayn calls them - Jeyne Smallwood, Jeyne Mooton and Jeyne Merryweather. In all three stories, there is an offhand mention (or an obscure insinuation in Baela’s case) of how each of them had sex or at least experimented sexually with other women that is simply there to frame the scandalous wanton behavior of each of them. Saera’s relationship with Perianne Moore and Alys Turnberry, Baela’s possible involvement with the twin brothel workers, and the three Jeynes’ supposed visits to the Street of Silk are mentioned casually and aren’t treated like any kind of a meaningful connection but as a sensationalized scandal that adds color to the story through its eroticism. That treats wlw relationships as an embellishment that solely exist to decorate the narrative. It’s fetishizing and dehumanizing in the way it treats these women and their relationships as merely objects of scandal.

Portrayal of women’s relationships:

This is one part where I think Martin made an attempt to in try to fix the solitary woman issue that’s been pointed out repeatedly in the main novels – how we keep hearing about male friendships and male relationships that frame and sometimes drive the narrative whereas women are either mysteriously solitary figures or have their friendships go unexplored/framed negatively. Queen Alysanne and her companions are where Martin succeeds in fixing this problem to some extent; everywhere else..... Eh.

I’ve argued before that the problem in Martin’s writing of female friendships isn’t just that he gives precious few of them, especially compared to the male friendships that drive the narrative; it’s in the overwhelmingly negative representation of female friendships. The majority of female friendships (and that includes familial relationships) are mired in conflict and negative associations across the series, and this book is no difference. Women’s relationships are often defined by jealousy, competitiveness over a man or rooted dislike. Maris Baratheon is so jealous that Aemond Targaryen chose one of her sisters over her that she challenges his manhood and, in Gyldayn’s eyes, provokes Aemond into attacking Lucaerys Velaryon in a plot that is both unnecessary and contrived so as to blame a woman girl for a man’s actions. Cassandra Baratheon spreads a false rumor that her sister Ellyn asked Aegon III if he liked her breasts during the Maiden’s Day Ball, and that’s when we’re not spending time on rumors about how she may have been involved in young Jaehaera’s death because she blamed the little queen for her woes, which are that she didn’t get to marry Aegon II and become queen, and that she lost her place as the heir to Storm’s End due to her little brother’s birth. Oh yeah, I can certainly see how that is a natural line of thought. Cassandra then goes on to be involved in the plotting against Daenaera Velaryon and the Rogares.

Saera Targaryen is disliked by every single one of her sisters (but it should be noted that both Aemon and Baelon were amused by her). The question of the possible motive of Jaehaera Targayen’s suicide includes her being jealous of Baela’s pregnancy (Jaehaera was ten). Rhaenys and Visenya’s relationship is largely defined by a rivalry over Aegon. Rhaena and Alysanne’s relationship is afflicted by tension, resentment and blame. Lucinda Penrose’s jealousy of Daenaera Velaryon having the queenship she coveted not only led her to participate in the plot against her, but made her quite randomly blame Daenaera for no man wanting her, implying she was attacked because of Daenaera which is not true. Priscella Hogg wanted Larra Rogare dead so that Prince Viserys could marry her.

Why do female relationships need to be defined by the presence of a guy, GRRM? What’s up with the downright illogical motivations of some of them? Why is it that the only positive relationship a queen has with her ladies on-page is that of Queen Alysanne?

GRRM also has a frustrating tendency to link female friendships to their sexuality or introduce a sexual component to those friendships. In the main novels, we have Cersei’s rape of Taena Merryweather and Arianne’s youthful sexual experimentation with Tyene Sand as notable examples; in F&B, Rhaena Targaryen is the first woman who gets meaningful relationships with named women and it’s suggested that many of them were her lovers (Rhaenys, Visenya and Alyssa Velaryon are said to have had lady companions as well but we barely get anything in the way of an actual relationship with any of them, or, you know, names for them). Sabitha Frey and Aly Blackwood gravitate to each other and share a tent during the Dance and we immediately get a reference to a potential sexual involvement. Coryanne Wylde, in one of the many versions of A Caution For Young Girls, is said to have thought of Alysanne as her own sister, with the reported rumors being either that she “taught” Alysanne’s husband how to pleasure Alysanne or that she taught Alysanne herself alongside Jaehaerys how to have sex. Saera had sexual intercourse with her two female companions. It is as if two women can not be friends without sex being a part of it.

So basically, men get to have friends and meaningful positive relationships in asoiaf while women get sexually-tinged friendships or have their relationships revolve around squabbling over a man. With the exception of Queen Alysanne and her companions, the vast majority of female relationships are either negative or framed negatively by the text.

Broken mothers, broken women:

Grief is a woman’s kryptonite in this book, especially if she is a mother. Gender is used as a default explanation for why several women break and freeze after a child’s death, often as a prelude to their stories tapering off till their death. While certainly understandable in the context of the tragedies they face, I question why it’s always the women who break down, rend their garments and retreat from public life, whereas men react to similar tragedies with anger, pursuit of vengeance and singular political focus. I also question why Martin uses a mother’s grief so often as a convenient plot device to force passivity, silence and absence on his female characters to fit the requirements of the plot, even when their previous (and sometimes even later) characterization and actions fly against that abstract frozen moment of time they experience due to their grief. Why do you keep having women freeze in their grief, Martin?

The tale of the Dance of the Dragons is not new to F&B but in the stories of Rhaenyra and Helaena appears a clear gendered approach to the depiction of women’s grief over their children that is echoed in several other places. This is somewhat more apparent during the Dance for how Rhaenyra and Helaena’s reactions can be contrasted against that of Daemon and Aegon II, both of whom reacted to the death of Lucerys and young Jaehaerys respectively by swearing vengeance, exacting a bloody toll in revenge and pushing their political and military campaigns. But while their husbands reacted, Rhaenyra and Helaena suffered from crippling depression that forced them out of the war narrative entirely, even to the detriment of their respective factions as underlined by the repetitive remarks about how additional draconic power might have affected the course of the war. That Dreamfyre was rendered useless to the greens because of Helaena’s inability to ride due to her depression is pointed out repeatedly, whereas Rhaenyra’s seclusion and grief over Luke’s death and her absence from her own war council is blamed for Princess Rhaenys flying to Rook’s Nest alone and getting killed. The narrative even accentuates how detrimental Rhaenyra’s absence might have been to her own war efforts in having Corlys Velaryon blame her for Rhaenys’ death, and again in having Jace recruit dragonseeds to increase the black’s draconic power at a time when one of their dragonriders is indisposed.

In the case of both sisters, a mother’s grief is largely used as a way to get a dragonrider out of the picture, at least for a period of time in Rhaenyra’s case - a gendered approach that adds to how Rhaenyra’s pregnancy and childbirth, both clearly gendered, were also used as a convenient plot device to sideline her in the early days of the Dance. In the words of Gyldayn, “[t]he death of her son Lucerys had been a crushing blow to a woman already broken by pregnancy, labor, and stillbirth”

Mother’s grief is also used to explain how sisters Rhaena and Alysanne retreated from public life after the loss of their daughters. Rhaena leaves Dragonstone for Tarth then Harrenhal, turning into a ghost herself as she settles in the haunted castle after refusing to return to her seat on Dragonstone or have anything to do with court for years till her death (Rhaena had previously stopped governing Dragonstone and retreated to her chambers to mourn her companions as well), while Alysanne takes herself from court to Dragonstone after Gael’s death, a more acute echo of her self-imposed isolation following Princess Daenerys’ death, and the offhand mention of how her four youngest children’s marital plans brought her so much pain and grief that she considered joining the silent sisters. It just so happens that two of the four (i.e, Daella and Viserra) had died at the time and Jaehaerys persisted in pushing Alysanne to consider Saera dead as well. Alysanne even tells Jaehaerys point-blank that she is going to Dragonstone to grieve for her dead daughters.

But two exceptions exist to this trend: Alyssa Velaryon and Alicent Hightower. Alyssa is a character that defies the broken mother trope by being a main architect of Jaerhaerys I’ accession and the survival of the Targaryen dynasty after her two eldest sons died horrifically. She survived the loss of three children and estrangement from her surviving three. She could have been a sound critique to the broken woman trope, if only the narrative allowed her to stay that active dynamic figure she was instead of trying to minimize her. Despite her defiance of the trend of how a mother’s grief leads to depressed seclusion, the narrative still managed to sideline Alyssa by having her inexplicably choose a self-imposed confinement for the remainder of Jaehaerys’ regency after her confrontation with Rogar Baratheon in the small council. Not only is this undeniably minimizing to Alyssa’s character, it flies in the face of all her prior characterization. This is the woman who survived the loss of two sons by horrifying means but soldiered on and showed tremendous political ability, who dealt with estrangement from her surviving children but continued to rule the realm throughout it, who stood up bravely in the face of her husband’s dehumanizing attack. But I’m supposed to buy that Rogar Baratheon broke her? Come on now. To make things worse, this act of isolation is the last thing we get of Alyssa’s own agency.

Alicent Hightower is another case of someone who defied the broken mother trope by being a steady political presence throughout the Dance, even after only Aegon II remained to her. Even after Aegon’s death, Alicent still tried to influence the court by trying to get her granddaughter Jaehaera to kill Aegon III. But when the time came for Alicent to depart the narrative, GRRM chose to fall on his tried trope of the broken depressed woman. For the last year of her life, Alicent's time in confinement was spent weeping, ripping her clothes to pieces and talking to herself. Alicent’s deteriorating mental state might not seem unreasonable in the context of her circumstances, but it certainly boggles the mind that she is presented to us as slowly losing her wits while imprisoned in her own apartments at the same time that the horrifically tortured and maimed Tyland Lannister is said to have kept his sharp wit through his harsh imprisonment in the black cells, so Alicent’s gentle imprisonment in a familiar place with servants and septas attending her somehow took a worse toll than Tyland’s residence in inhumane conditions where he was tortured regularly. Too, Alicent's final image in the text is wretched and undignified which is striking compared to how Grand Maester Orwyle is presented as a hero during the course of the Winter Fever and a vital source of information on the Dance through the confessions he wrote while imprisoned.

So even in the cases that the broken mother trope is challenged, GRRM still uses the same element of seclusion and depression to define a woman’s fate. It has not escaped me that our final look at both Alyssa and Alicent depicts them in ghastly conditions.

Treatment of women’s voices:

Fire and Blood’s handling of women’s voices is hit-and-miss, with the misses outpacing the hits by miles. It goes without saying that not everyone in the narrative can or should have a voice so it’s not that I expect every single woman that ever appears to have one, but some of the omissions are really glaring. Take Jocelyn Baratheon for example. She was a sister/surrogate daughter to Jaehaerys and Alysanne, wife to Aemon and mother to the fiery Princess Rhaenys.... and we know almost nothing about her, leaving her function to the story to be about her motherhood and her fertility. Pages upon page of this book is dedicated to discussing women’s sexual lives but I guess the life and experiences of a court-raised onetime crown princess was unimportant to warrant a mention. Jocelyn existed to birth Rhaenys then promptly disappeared from the narrative after her angered reaction to Baelon being named heir over Rhaenys and her unborn child.

More acutely, the narrative has a bad tendency to have notable women suddenly fall silent or completely disappear at times when they should be present and outspoken, if it’s not actively punishing them for having a voice altogether, while their male counterparts get pages detailing their opinions and their reactions. The broken mother/woman trope discussed above contributes heavily to this problem in presenting a distinct sense of narrative-enforced quietness that befalls these characters once the narrative decides that their voices are no longer necessary for plot development. Princess Rhaena Targaryne is pretty much turned into a ghost on the outskirts of the story from Aerea’s death till her own. Her mother Alyssa gets turned into a nonentity not long after her fight with Rogar Baratheon in the small council. Alyssa’s retreat from public court is the last time she is given a voice of her own. The report that both the former Hand and the Queen Regent were “wounded and silent” in the aftermath of that showdown really struck me, because for all that Rogar and Alyssa fell silent, it’s Rogar that the narrative chose to restore voice to, despite the fact that, unlike Alyssa, Rogar’s silence was a result of his own hubris and thirst for power. For him and Alyssa to be treated as if on equal foot by the narrative in the first place and for their silence and “wounds” to be framed as similar is preposterous, but what’s even more preposterous is the fact that Rogar gets afforded pages to detail his reconciliation with Jaehaerys and even a transcript of their meeting, whereas Alyssa gets one paragraph in which the focus is on Jaehaerys’ own thoughts and we hear nothing from her; instead her thoughts and feelings are posited by Grand Maester Benifer.

From there on out, we don’t hear from Alyssa Velaryon, only of her. The narrative deliberately silences Alyssa and substitutes her voice with the suppositions and opinions of the men around her. It’s Jaehaerys and Rogar who get voices in Alyssa’s own marital reconciliation but we don’t hear about what she thought about it. We don’t know what Alyssa thought about either of her pregnancies or the health risk they posed. We do hear about Rogar and Benifer’s happiness and Barth’s concerns though. Even when she lay dying and arguments were made about her and her child’s chances of survival, Alyssa is denied a voice. The one statement we get from her is immediately dismissed by Gyldayn as likely not happening and we’re left with the reactions of those around her, Jaehaerys and Rogar, Alysanne and Rhaena. But we never find out what Alyssa thought or wanted. Instead, her narrative purpose lies in her fertility.

At least Rhaena voices a condemnation for the way women’s bodies are callously used by men in Westeros in a statement that is contextually very powerful but that is, once again, undermined by the narrative not too long after. It is both outrageous and unnecessary to have Jaehaerys himself ignore such a powerful statement years later in a plot that also dismisses Alysanne’s clearly expressed wishes and borderline silences her since Jaehaerys’ objection to her reasoning is voiced to Grand Maester Elysar rather than Alysanne herself, and she isn’t even given the chance to give the counter-argument that, you know, the mother that Jaehaerys is citing died because her husband only cared about having a child. Queen Alysanne may be the most prominent, most well-rounded female voice in F&B, but that does not stop the narrative from robbing her of her voice when it wants to. I certainly have not forgotten how she falls silent on the matter of her granddaughter Aemma’s marriage, or how there is so much discussion about the tragic fates of Alysanne’s children all around that conspicuous quietness. Neither have I forgotten how there is a random comment about how Alysanne contempled joining the silent sisters due to the pain and grief she suffered in the matter of her youngest four’s marital prospects.

Then there is Maris Baratheon and the convoluted needless story that does nothing but attempt to shift blame off Aemond for Lucerys Velaryon’s murder and lay it on Maris, then have her literally silenced as a punishment, whether that’s through being consigned to the silent sisters or the rumor that she had her tongue removed beforehand. Maris exists to be scapegoated and silenced, her forced silence a penalty for a man’s violent tendencies.

Going back a little in history to Aegon’s conquest gets us a few more queens who got silenced by the narrative. I’ve talked before about how Argella Durrandon’s fate stands as a unique abnormality in the history of the rebellion and how her forceful loss of voice was the last we hear of her in the narrative as the focus thereafter shifts to Orys and his own actions and behavior. Similarly, the circumstances of Marla Sunderland’s deposing bears uncomfortable parallels to Argella’s own: while not sexually humiliating like Argella’s, Marla had her voice violently stripped away when her tongue was pulled out before she was sequestered to an order that takes women’s voices away in the name of piety. That Argella and Marla were the only ones to suffer that literal loss of voice in the history of the rebellion (while Rhaenys and Visenya get their voices take away by the narrative itself since both inexplicably vanish from the story despite being physically in the area right before Argella and Marla were deposed) makes it very much about their gender.

Of course there is always the argument that it’s not only women who had their tongues ripped out or got silenced throughout the narrative, and while that is true, they were the only ones during the rebellion to receive that pointed stripping of voice by men, including Marla’s own brother. Moreover, it’s really glaring that this violation was specifically a punishment for defiance and daring to claim power. The violence visited on Argella and Marla was unnecessary for plot development, weirdly personal in a clearly gendered way, and done exclusively by men for the benefit of men as a punishment to these women for having the audacity to have agency and power in their own right.

Death by childbed

In times of peace especially, it was not uncommon for a man to outlive the wife of his youth, for young men most oft perish upon the battlefield, young women in the birthing bed.

Well, perhaps women wouldn’t die that often in the birthing bed if they weren’t getting pregnant as young as 12. Just saying.

This is another recurring problem in Martin’s writing that’s been broadly criticized for being too present in the narrative. It intersects with the problem of child brides, and the Dead Ladies Club, though it’s not only limited to them.

Death in childbirth is an inherently gendered death that is used as a rather convenient way to kill off female characters across the series. Often these women’s relevance in the text amounts to their fertility and the children they bore, and they are used as either a vessel to deliver the true important characters, or a part of the setting around a male character. By my count, F&B has 12 women dead by childbirth.

The unnamed wife of Edmyn Tully. Exists to explain why her husband resigned his seat on the Small Council

Queen Jeyne Westerling. Exists as a part of framing Maegor’s political decline and her function in the story is explicitly solely about her fertility.

Queen Alyssa Velaryon.

Princess Alyssa Targaryen.

Princess Daella Targaryen.

Queen Aemma Arryn. No characterization. Narrative function lies in having Rhaenyra.

Lady Laena Velaryon. Afforded scant characterization. Dies for the convenience of the plot. Main function is having Baela and Rhaena Targrayen.

The unnamed fourth wife of Jasper Wylde. The first three may or may not have died of “exhaustion” as well, since the man sired twenty nine children on four wives.

Lady Arra Norrey. Childhood companion and wife to Cregan Stark. Dead giving birth to his son Rickon. That’s it. That’s all we know of her.

The unnamed daughter of Unwin Peake. She died in childbed aged 12. That’s the extent of her relevance.

Lady Floris Baratheon. Pretty, sweet, frivolous, dead.

Ormund Hightower’s unnamed wife. Only mentioned in the introduction of her successor, Samantha Hightower.

The main point of criticism here is that these women didn’t need to die in childbirth or complications from childbirth of all things. They didn’t need to be reduced to walking wombs or plot devices or set decorations. They didn’t need to be a side note tacked on to explain a quirky nickname. And they didn’t need to die for the male character’s angst or characterization.

“But the above is only reflective of Gyldayn’s misogyny, not an authorial problem”

I chose to address this argument at the conclusion of this post because I know that inevitably, the argument that the problem lies in the in-universe narrator’s bias rather than an authorial failure will come up. I’ve already seen it argued, by fans as well as Elio Garcia, that Gyldayn’s own misogyny and personal views account for the problems that many fans have criticized in the text. But that’s a paper shield. Ascribing every problematic element in the narrative to the in-universe characters is not good enough at this point. This argument is neither productive nor satisfactory, and it strikes me as a rather transparent and convenient way to shut down any critique leveled at Martin’s writing, or at the very least deviate it from its intended objective to tangle us in a debate about sexist narratives vs sexist societies.

But I will have that conversation because this distinction causes a lot of confusion over what’s an authorial problem and what’s not. Westeros is a misogynistic patriarchal society that systematically minimizes, marginalizes and dehumanizes women, but just because your society is sexist doesn’t mean that your narrative has to be. We see that in the main novels when characters like Catelyn, Asha, Brienne, Arya and many others have to contend with the limitations their society places on them and the prejudices leveled at them because of their gender, but the narrative does not validate that misogyny. It doesn’t discredit these women or treat them as an afterthought. Westeros may be biased against these women but the narrative isn’t. That is not the case with F&B because Martin chose to make our sole source of information on these women a deeply misogynistic man, which made his narrative deeply misogynistic as well by virtue of the narrative adopting Gyldayn’s biases and making them a defining aspect of the characters’ stories. That is a choice on Martin’s part, just like exaggerating Gyldayn’s misogyny to the point of minimizing the few instances of challenge the narrative attempts to offer is also a choice.

It wouldn’t have cost Martin anything to leave Alysanne’s condemnation of Jaehaerys and Rodrik Arryn’s role in Daella’s death to stand without undermining it. It wouldn’t have cost Martin anything to let Alyssa Velaryon and Alicent Hightower remain as a deconstruction of the broken mother trope, instead of falling back on tired ideas that build on breaking women’s spirits down to their graves. It wouldn’t have cost Martin anything to have Rhaena’s powerful statement about how men use women’s bodies to their graves to stand without undercutting it via Jaehaerys (who once refused to consummate his marriage out of concern for Alysanne but apparently have grown to not care that much about her health in later years). Those rare cases of pushback are right there; they allow for both the characterization of the author-character and the worldbuilding of the society to stand but offer a critique of the misogyny shown instead of just leaving it present and unchallenged as a set decoration. Even allowing for Gyldayn’s misogyny, Martin could have found a way to elevate some of the problematic aspects of this book. He didn’t. He chose to undermine his challenges instead.

I find that the idea that Gyldayn is the one who should be blamed for what this book is rather than GRRM such a weird argument to make. Gyldayn is Martin’s creation; he does not exist independently from Martin. If Gyldayn is a sex-obsessed pervert, it’s because Martin chose to write him that way. If Gyldayn is a misogynistic victim-blaming abuse apologist, it’s because Martin chose to write him that way. It goes without saying that it’s not inherently problematic to write a character with these characteristics, but the problem emerges when that character is an author whose lens our knowledge of every single woman is filtered through. We’re not likely to have any information about these historical characters from any other source. The best we can hope for is a throwaway line in the main novels that wouldn’t give us much in the way of personhood for these characters. In writing Gyldayn as he did, Martin crippled our knowledge of a large number of women in Westeros history and denied them any chance of ever becoming realized characters in our eyes. So why did Martin choose to write Gyldayn as the avatar of every patriarchal bias in existence? What is the narrative gain in having your narrator be so interested in the sex lives of teenage girls? What did GRRM do to push back against Gyldayn’s misogyny? Why is Gyldayn’s characterization prioritized over the personhood of so many women? Because Gyldayn’s characterization is only relevant insofar as his function as a vehicle for authorial exposition. The narrative and the readers gain nothing by him being so painfully misogynistic. In fact, this is what is used to cut any attempts by the narrative to challenge the rampant misogyny in the text at the knees.

Furthermore, the argument that that Gyldayn’s prejudices shouldn’t be taken for the narrative’s own and thus as an authorial problem falls apart when you consider how many of the issues I discussed above exists in the main novels too, when there is no Gyldayn to blame for the narrative’s misogyny. Also, it should be noted that Gyldayn in-universe misogyny doesn’t even account for all the problems of the text. Gyldayn isn’t the one who made Jaehaerys ignore Alysanne’s wishes not to have more children. Gyldayn isn’t the one who made Septon Barth denigrate Alyssa Velaryon as someone whose main objective was to be liked. Gyldayn certainly isn’t the one who decided to kill off 12 women in childbirth, or cover F&B with child brides. Gyldayn isn’t the one who decided that multiple women needed to isolate themselves to grieve. And Gyldayn might have been the one who reported on Coryanne Wylde, but he sure as hell wasn’t the one who created her story. Those are authorial choices made by GRRM.

I’ve seen it argued that F&B is supposed to be some kind of critique of how misogyny colors history but I disagree vehemently with that notion. You can’t lean into old sexist tropes and call it a critique. You can’t put an inordinate focus on women’s sexual lives to the exclusion of their own personhood and call it a critique. I know that that depiction is not endorsement, but it is not a critique either. Depiction is not inherently a condemnation. There is no inherent challenge in events just being there - the narrative needs to make some effort to push back against them to make it clear that something is being called out. F&B rarely challenges the misogyny permeating it, and when it does, the challenge is promptly undermined, dismissed or ignored.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #fire and blood volume 1 #asoiaf criticism #misogyny in asoiaf #gender in asoiaf #the dead ladies club #warning for a lot of awfulness #gyldayn #is a warning on his own #also I'm a ranter so be aware #long post

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