#it’s an essay of when eyrie was small kind of essay

[impossible-rat-babies]

eyrie really out here embodying this is what is it like to beloved by god. what a blessing. what a curse.

even worse: what is it like to be one of the only people left to feel love like a god feels

[jackoshadows]

what i don’t understand is sansa stans who insist that she learnt from the best (cersei ans littlefinger) and so she’ll be an amazing ruler and player. first of all, when did she learn about the game from cersei? she was a hostage in kings landing, she wasn’t sitting in on small council meetings or anything and cersei definitely wasn’t telling her about all the moves she was making. the only time cersei really gives her ‘advice’ is during blackwater when she says that ‘tears/sex is a woman’s weapon’. regardless, cersei isn’t someone you want to be taught from, she makes terrible decision after terrible decision in affc. (since we’re on this topic, dany is the younger and more beautiful queen who foils cersei).

as for littlefinger, he’s definitely not a leader or ruler. he subtly manipulates things here and there and gets away with a lot of it because he stays under the radar. he’s not someone who inspires devotion for sure. nothing about the vale arc in affc puts sansa in an actual leadership position.

I agree it's best that no one learns how to be a ruler from Cersei Lannister, considering how much she messes up in AFfC.

And yes, it’s my opinion that Sansa's arc is leading towards outwitting Littlefinger and understanding how to play the game rather than ruling. And with two books left to go, she still has a lot of learning to do and being able to process the information available to her, analyze it and connect the dots and use the data to her advantage.

I just finished my ADwD and TWoW sample chapter re-reads so a rather long essay under the cut.

Sansa did acknowledge early on that unlike Cersei, if she were to become queen, she would prioritize getting the people's love over their fear - like the Tyrells did. But unlike the majority opinion of fandom, I think that this points to Sansa giving more importance to PR than to actual ruling. That it was better to be a loved monarch than a feared one.

It’s funny that Sansa stans often point the finger at Dany as being narcissistic, entitled and arrogant, when the few comments that Sansa makes about being queen revolve around her.

“Go ahead, call me all the names you want,” Sansa said airily. “You won’t dare when I’m married to Joffrey. You’ll have to bow to me and call me Your Grace. ” - Sansa, AGoT

“ If I am ever a queen, I'll make them love me.”  - Sansa, ACoK

Compare her quotes to those of current leaders/rulers in the books:

A good lord protects his people, he reminded himself. - Bran, ACoK

“Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?“ - Daenerys, ASoS

“And I know that a king protects his people, or he is no king at all.” Davos, ASoS

I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne."  - Stannis, ASoS

“I am the shield that guards the realms of men. Those are the words. So tell me, my lord— what are these wildlings, if not men?”  - Jon Snow, ADwD

The other leaders in the quotes are putting the people first, prioritizing the people’s needs first no matter how much it affects the rulers themselves. Jon’s decision to let the Wildlings through the wall is necessary, but highly unpopular among his men. And ruling is more than just being beloved by the people -

"Allow me to give my lord one last piece of counsel,” the old man had said, “the same council that I one gave my brother when we parted for the last time. He was three-and-thirty when the Great Council chose him to mount the Iron Throne. A man grown with sons of his own, yet in some ways still a boy. Egg had an innocence to him, a sweetness we all loved. Kill the boy within you, I told him the day I took the ship for the Wall. It takes a man to rule. An Aegon, not an Egg. Kill boy and let the man be born.” The old man felt Jon’s face. “You are half the age that Egg was, and your own burden is a crueler one, I fear. You will have little joy of your command, but I think you have the strength in you to do the things that must be done. Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born.” - Jon Snow, ADwD

This is the hard part of ruling be it in the middle ages or now. It’s not enough to be a good man to be an effective ruler. It’s complicated and it’s hard.  How do I resolve this thing? Do I do the moral thing? But what about  the political consequences of the moral thing? Do I do the pragmatic, cynical thing and kind of screw the people who are screwed by it? I mean, it is HARD. - GRRM

In this context, Sansa’s quote about being queen comes off as naive, ignorant, fairy taleish, like the queens in her stories - where everyone loves the queens and that’s all that’s necessary to be one.

It’s easy for Sansa stans to nitpick and criticize each and every one of Dany’s decisions and then praise future best queen Sansa - who has done absolutely nothing as a leader and has instead thus far served as an uncritical narrator to events around her. We don’t know what kind of leader Sansa would be because she has never been put in those situations or even shown an aptitude for strategic thinking.

Let me use an example I came across while recently re-reading ADwD and TWoW sample chapters. TWoW spoilers - if you don’t want to be spoiled on TWoW, please read no further.

-------------------------------------------------------

In ADwD, Jon is confronted with food shortage if they let the Wildlings through the wall:

“If we had sufficient coin, we could buy food from the south and bring it in by ship,” the Lord Steward said. We could, thought Jon, if we had the gold, and someone willing to sell us food. Both of those were lacking. Our best hope may be the Eyrie. The Vale of Arryn was famously fertile and had gone untouched during the fighting. - Jon Snow, ADwD

I have already written extensively on Jon’s political know-how of the North and using it in his strategizing and planning of Stannis’ campaign. But here we see that his knowledge extends to the south, where, knowing that the Vale stayed neutral during the WOT5K and it’s geography of being fertile, he sees it as a possible source to buy food for the Wall.

Now let’s go to the Vale in book 6, TWoW, Alayne’s sample chapter. After being called a bastard by Harry the Heir, a hurt Sansa goes looking for Littlefinger and chances upon a scheme of price gouging:

Near the bottom, she heard Lord  Grafton’s booming voice, and followed.

“The  merchants are clamoring to buy and the lords are clamoring to sell,”  the Gulltowner was saying when she found them. Though not a tall man, Grafton was wide, with thick arms and shoulders.  His hair was a dirty blond mop.  ���How am I to stop that, my lord?”

“Post guardsmen on the docks. If need be, seize the ships. How does not matter, so long as no food leaves the Vale”

“These prices, though,” protested fat Lord Belmore,” 

“These prices are more than fair. Wait. If need be, buy the food yourself and keep it stored. Winter is coming. Prices must go higher.”

“Perhaps,”  said Belmore, doubtfully. “Bronze Yohn will not wait, ” Grafton complained. “He need not ship through Gulltown, he has his own ports. Whilst we are hoarding our harvest, Royce and the other Lords Declarant will turn theirs into silver, you may be sure of that.”

“Let  us hope so,”  said Petyr. “When their granaries are empty, they will  need every scrap of that silver to buy sustenance from us. And now if  you will excuse me, my lord, it would seem my daughter has need of me.”

“Lady Alayne,” Lord Grafton said. “You look bright-eyed this morning.” ” You  are kind to say so, my lord. Father, I am sorry to disturb you, but I  thought you would want to know that the Waynwoods have arrived.”

We are now in book 6 territory, this would be the point where a future queen/leader Sansa reflects on what she just saw - Littlefinger is hoarding grain and letting Royce and others sell theirs so that he can later increase the prices for demand from a starving populace and have the rest of the Vale Lords be dependent on him and with winter coming, there is currently much demand for the grain.

This would be where, if GRRM is writing for the future leader of the North, Sansa would wonder what is happening in the North with respect to the food situation since she just heard that merchants are clamoring for grain and winter is coming. Or she would think on LF’s scheme - is it a good plan or a bad plan? Does she think that Yohn Royce is right to sell his grain? What is her view on hoarding all the food for price gouging while people possibly starve elsewhere? What does she think of starving the populace for profit? Does she approve? Or does she think it’s ethically wrong?

We get no answers to these questions to give us a hint of what kind of ruler future best queen Sansa will be. It’s a blank slate because while Sansa acts as a narrator here and describes one of LF’s little schemes, she herself as no opinion on it. Instead Sansa’s immediate concern when speaking to Littlefinger is that Harry the Heir called her a bastard in front of everyone. Meanwhile Dany in ADwD:

Skahaz had been named Warden of the River, with charge of all the ferries, dredges, and irrigation ditches along the Skahazadhan for fifty leagues, but the Shavepate had refused that ancient and honorable office, as Hizdahr called it, preferring to retire to the modest pyramid of Kandaq.

Mounted men were of more use in open fields and hills than in the narrow streets and alleys of the city. Beyond Meereen's walls of many-colored brick, Dany's rule was tenuous at best. Thousands of slaves still toiled on vast estates in the hills, growing wheat and olives, herding sheep and goats, and mining salt and copper. Meereen's storehouses held ample supplies of grain, oil, olives, dried fruit, and salted meat, but the stores were dwindling. So Dany had dispatched her tiny khalasar to subdue the hinterlands, under the command of her three bloodriders, whilst Brown Ben Plumm took his Second Sons south to guard against Yunkish incursions.

The most crucial task of all she had entrusted to Daario Naharis, glib-tongued Daario with his gold tooth and trident beard, smiling his wicked smile through purple whiskers. Beyond the eastern hills was a range of rounded sandstone mountains, the Khyzai Pass, and Lhazar. If Daario could convince the Lhazarene to reopen the overland trade routes, grains could be brought down the river or over the hills at need …

The sea provides all the salt that Qarth requires, but I would gladly take as many olives as you cared to sell me. Olive oil as well."

"I have none to offer. The slavers burned the trees." Olives had been grown along the shores of Slaver's Bay for centuries; but the Meereenese had put their ancient groves to the torch as Dany's host advanced on them, leaving her to cross a blackened wasteland. "We are replanting, but it takes seven years before an olive tree begins to bear, and thirty years before it can truly be called productive. What of copper?"

Sansa does not come anywhere close to Dany and Jon in terms of leadership and that she’s so often pushed as this future queen in fandom, including by bnfs and so called asoiaf experts, is baffling, frustrating and hilarious.

What, if any, attributes does Sansa have to even be a peacetime ruler? After the war means rebuilding from scratch, making deals, hard bargaining, strategizing, using political tools, rebuilding the economy for war torn lands, get in the food, grow the food - precisely the kind of thing Dany is doing in Meereen. Or Jon thinking of building green houses in the Gift to grow food.

But Sansa building a snow model of Winterfell means that she’s the best qualified peace time ruler? Reddit dudebros and so called tumblr feminists united in wanting female characters who wield soft power and uphold the patriarchy as future rulers.

Even when it comes to personal growth, while Sansa has come a long way from her AGoT days, she still has some catching up to do with her peers. After getting hold of LF, Sansa complains that Harry is a horrible person for calling her a bastard.

Come,” Petyr said, “walk with me.” He took her by the arm and led her deeper into the vaults, past an empty dungeon. “And how was your first meeting with Harry the Heir?”

“He’s horrible.”

“The world is full of horrors, sweet. By now you ought to know that. You’ve seen enough of them.”

“Yes,” she said, “but why must he be so cruel? He called me your bastard. Right in the yard, in front of everyone.”

Now, personally, this is the point where I would like some introspection from Sansa. Remember when Sansa called out Jon as a jealous bastard in front of her friends in AGoT and Arya defended him?

Sansa sighed as she stitched.  “Poor Jon,” she said.  “He gets jealous because he's a bastard.”

“He’s our brother,” Arya said, much too loudly. Her voice cut through the afternoon quiet of the tower room.

“Our half brother,” Sansa corrected, soft and precise. - Arya, AGoT

Considering the way Sansa ignored Joffrey’s attack on Arya, it’s a good bet that if Harry the Heir had called out Jon Snow as a bastard in front of everyone in AGoT, Sansa would not have an issue with it. Now that she is being insulted as one, she gets to experience the hurt that Jon felt everyday growing up in Winterfell as a real bastard.

But even here, she refuses to scrutinize the situation more than simply getting angry at being called a bastard. Sansa is often held up as this compassionate, kindest person, ‘beacon of hope for the future’, a queen who cares for the masses etc. But where is her questioning why the classist prejudice against bastards is in itself wrong?

She is angry that she is being called a bastard, she is not angry that bastards are treated as less than. She doesn’t question the societal prejudice against bastards, only angry that she has to pretend to be one and be insulted as one. She doesn’t spare a second reflecting on her bastard brother Jon Snow or question her low opinion of bastards:

Sansa could never understand how two sisters, born only two years apart, could be so different. It would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard, like their half brother Jon. She even looked like Jon, with the long face and brown hair of the Starks, and nothing of their lady mother in her face or her coloring. And Jon’s mother had been common, or so people whispered. Once, when she was littler, Sansa had even asked Mother if perhaps there hadn’t been some mistake. - Sansa, AGoT

And that’s the difference I see between Sansa and characters like Dany, Arya, Jon, Brienne and even with Tyrion and Penny. While GRRM interrogates Westerosi society prejudices, feudalism, classism, sexism, slavery, ableism, bigotry, the effects of war on the small folk etc with these other characters, Sansa rarely reflects on these issues. That’s why it makes no sense when epithets like ‘embodiment of hope for the future’ is used to describe the character. Hope for whom? The small folk? The patriarchy? The feudal lords?

Sansa being nice to people like the stuttering Ser Wallace is held up as her being the kindest ever. But Jon is nice to Shireen, Arya is kind to Weasel, Jaime is kind to Tyrion. Why is kindness and compassion only highlighted for Sansa, like some unique feature of hers when many characters, even the villains, exhibit kindness?

This is Jon Snow in ADwD

“I see what you are, Snow. Half a wolf and half a wildling, baseborn get of a traitor and a whore. You would deliver a highborn maid to the bed of some stinking savage. Did you sample her yourself first?” He laughed. “If you mean to kill me, do it and be damned for a kinslayer. Stark and Karstark are one blood.”

“My name is Snow.”

“Bastard.”

“Guilty. Of that, at least.”  - Jon Snow, ADwD

This is Sansa Stark in TWoW:

Ser Harrold looked down at her coldly. “Why should it please me to be escorted anywhere by Littlefinger’s bastard?”  

“Yes,” she said, “but why must he be so cruel? He called me your bastard. Right in the yard, in front of everyone.”  - Alayne, TWoW

Sansa in TWoW is as hurt by the bastard moniker as Jon Snow was in AGoT when addressed as such by Tyrion. She’s emotionally where Jon Snow was in AGoT, while Jon has matured enough to not care for such insults anymore. And this is book 6! I guess it makes sense considering Jon is 16 -17 and Sansa would be 13 - 14 years old, making her younger than him in AGoT. But this is why the whole ‘Jon should take Sansa’s advice to rule because she’s the smartest ever!’ trash the show pushed to hype up Sansa is complete nonsense.

I don’t know how many chapters GRRM will be devoting to Sansa in the Vale in TWoW, but there’s still a lot of growth and character development pending for book Sansa. As I have always said, Sansa has a lot of information but she rarely if ever introspects on what she has heard and seen. She knows that LF last had Jeyne Poole but at one point wonders where Jeyne Poole is... Just ask LF dammit! She knows that Lysa had Jon Arryn poisoned on LF’s say so and knows that SweetRobin is being dosed with dangerous levels of Sweetsleep and that LF is banking on his death and yet thinks that SweetRobin will be okay. She needs to start putting two and two together to come up with four and I suspect that in itself will take up the whole of TWoW.

So will Sansa become any kind of queen or ruler? No. If she survives the books, I can see her being Lady of the Vale and be moving the chess pieces around. I can see her gaining agency and maybe even be the real power in the Vale aka Littefinger. Just like Jon, Arya, Bran and Dany I think Sansa will be a darker character in TWoW. The game of thrones cannot be played honorably and she will need to get her hands dirty to outwit LF and take him down at his own game.

The point where Sansa simply stops narrating what she sees and actually starts analyzing what she sees in her POV chapters is when the student will become the master and I am excited to see that happening.

[julianlapostat]

Mortality and Mercy in King’s Landing: ASOIAF/Shakespeare Meta

I have talked myself into talking about ASOIAF and Measure for Measure. So here it is. Measure for Measure is a fairly obscure play of Shakespeare’s, at least among the general public. Yet many Shakespeare critics and scholars especially in the late-20th Century, consider this a masterpiece...Bertolt Brecht even called it “Shakespeare’s most progressive play”. One reason why Measure for Measure isn’t culturally famous is that it lacks the distinct qualities you usually look for in Shakespeare. It’s a play without any single main character. More than that, it’s also a play that’s hard to summarize, because more than any Shakespeare play, it is a dynamic work, one which feels less structured and more freely-moving than his other works. How Measure for Measure starts gives no hint for the direction it would go in the next scene, or the scene after that, and each new scene drives and flows from the actions of the previous. If ASOIAF is Shakespearean, then it is the Shakespeare of Measure for Measure.  For the purposes of this meta-essay, I am going to only compare parts of this complex play to ASOIAF, and limit my focus on select comparisons: Tywin and Acting Hand Tyrion/Duke and Angelo. 

The plot of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure begins when the Duke of Vienna, Vincentio transfers power to Angelo, over the latter’s reluctance:

ANGELO: Always obedient to your grace's will, I come to know your pleasure. DUKE VINCENTIO:Angelo, There is a kind of character in thy life, That to the observer doth thy history Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings Are not thine own so proper as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. ... Hold therefore, Angelo:-- In our remove be thou at full ourself; Mortality and mercy in Vienna Live in thy tongue and heart:... Take thy commission. ANGELO:Now, good my lord, Let there be some more test made of my metal, Before so noble and so great a figure Be stamp'd upon it. DUKE VINCENTIO No more evasion: We have with a leaven'd and prepared choice Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours (ACT 1, SCENE 1)

The first scene of the play establishes that Angelo is reluctant to take his roll, but Duke Vincentio insists. Angelo will become the Acting Duke of Vienna where he expects that the authority and position will reflect his character and views. Angelo is reluctant to do so, his responsibility is great, “Mortality and Mercy” etcetera, but Vincentio insists and Duke Angelo complies.  In ASOIAF, the Hand of the King is a position that transfers hands and offices multiple times across all five books. But there is a difference in kind and degree. The Duke is making Angelo his substitute and replacement. He is going to be Acting-Duke, whereas in no-real-way does the Hand of the King entirely substitute the King. The only true analogue for this in ASOIAF is when Tywin at the end of AGOT makes Tyrion the Acting-Hand. 

“Joff’s only a boy,” Tyrion pointed out. “At his age, I committed a few follies of my own.” His father gave him a sharp look. “I suppose we ought to be grateful that he has not yet married a whore.” ... ... “The city?” Tyrion was lost. “What city would that be?” “King’s Landing. I am sending you to court.”It was the last thing Tyrion Lannister would ever have anticipated. He reached for his wine, and considered for a moment as he sipped. “And what am I to do there?” “Rule,” his father said curtly. Tyrion hooted with laughter. “My sweet sister might have a word or two to say about that!” “Let her say what she likes. Her son needs to be taken in hand before he ruins us all. I blame those jackanapes on the council—our friend Petyr, the venerable Grand Maester, and that cockless wonder Lord Varys. What sort of counsel are they giving Joffrey when he lurches from one folly to the next?...” 

----    He pointed a finger at Tyrion’s face. “If Cersei cannot curb the boy, you must. And if these councillors are playing us false …” Tyrion knew. “Spikes,” he sighed. “Heads. Walls.” “I see you have taken a few lessons from me.” “More than you know, Father,” Tyrion answered quietly. He finished his wine and set the cup aside, thoughtful. A part of him was more pleased than he cared to admit. Another part was remembering the battle upriver, and wondering if he was being sent to hold the left again. “Why me?” he asked, cocking his head to one side. “Why not my uncle? Why not Ser Addam or Ser Flement or Lord Serrett? Why not a … bigger man?” Lord Tywin rose abruptly. “You are my son.” ... --- “One last thing,” he said at the door. “You will not take the whore to court.” Tyrion sat alone in the common room for a long while after his father was gone. Finally he climbed the steps to his cozy garret beneath the bell tower. The ceiling was low, but that was scarcely a drawback for a dwarf. From the window, he could see the gibbet his father had erected in the yard. The innkeep’s body turned slowly on its rope whenever the night wind gusted. Her flesh had grown as thin and ragged as Lannister hopes.Shae murmured sleepily and rolled toward him when he sat on the edge of the featherbed. He slid his hand under the blanket and cupped a soft breast, and her eyes opened. “M’lord,” she said with a drowsy smile.When he felt her nipple stiffen, Tyrion kissed her. “I have a mind to take you to King’s Landing, sweetling,” he whispered. A GAME OF THRONES, TYRION IX

When Vincentio is transferring power to Angelo in the opening of Measure for Measure, there’s no specifications on how to use power. There is an acknowledgement of solemn responsibility, there is an acknowledgement of duty, and there’s an acknowledgement of tasks, but Duke Vincentio insists that Angelo take it all and use his power as he sees fit. Tywin makes Tyrion his Acting-Hand, and likewise directs him to hold mortality and mercy (i.e. Heads, Spikes and Walls and the lack of that) but he is specific in regulating on whom that power must be used, and more importantly he insists that said authority limit and operate on him too. He insists that Tyrion abandon his well known profligacy but Tyrion chooses to defy his father despite having visible proof of how Tywin treats the smallfolk in front of him, as the body of Masha Heddle the Innkeeper sways in sight of Tyrion’s love-nest.  When Angelo becomes Duke in Measure for Measure, we see the effects of his position immediately. As soon as he comes to power, he mounts a crackdown and makes prostitution illegal in Vienna:

POMPEY:You have not heard of the proclamation, have you? MISTRESS OVERDONE:What proclamation, man? POMPEY:All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be plucked down. MISTRESS OVERDONE:And what shall become of those in the city? POMPEY:They shall stand for seed: they had gone down too, but that a wise burgher put in for them. MISTRESS OVERDONE:But shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs be pulled down? POMPEY:To the ground, mistress. MISTRESS OVERDONE:Why, here's a change indeed in the commonwealth! What shall become of me? (ACT 1, SCENE 2)

And presented in juxtaposition, when we consider the excerpt from AGOT we can see Tyrion’s actions to take Shae to King’s Landing to be an incredibly callous gesture, because the end result of discovery will not damage and hurt Tyrion, but Shae instead, and all out of a selfish rebellion against Daddy’s conservatism. In Measure for Measure, the liberal Duke enables the reign of the far more conservative, and insecure Angelo, who doubtful about his own virtue asserts his probity by taking it out on the people. Tyrion as Acting-Hand alternatively proceeds to both obey his father, and serve his family dutifully, but also privately subvert his father’s norms out of rebellion and pique. To return to MEASURE FOR MEASURE and its proclamation...One of the things about ASOIAF that is perplexing, or one of its problems, is that on one hand GRRM intends the work to draw from the “real history” of the Middle Ages but on the other hand, many parts of his books don’t really have anything to do with the actual middle ages (let’s say 1066CE-1500CE at a rough number). A good example is the series particular interest in puritanism and sexual propriety and how characters and society is defined by attitudes that is either open or closed about sex. Baelor the Blessed for instance is a pious monk king who cloistered his sister-wives, and actually tried to end prostitution in King’s Landing by closing the brothels and sending prostitutes out of the city. 

Their path took them past the statue of Baelor the Blessed, standing tall and serene upon his plinth, his face a study in benevolence. To look at him, you would never guess what a fool he'd been. The Targaryen dynasty had produced kings both bad and good, but none as beloved as Baelor, that pious gentle septon-king who loved the smallfolk and the gods in equal parts, yet imprisoned his own sisters. It was a wonder that his statue did not crumble at the sight of her bare breasts. Tyrion used to say that King Baelor was terrified of his own cock. Once, she recalled, he had expelled all the whores from King's Landing. He prayed for them as they were driven from the city gates, the histories said, but would not look at them.

A Dance with Dragons - Cersei II

Before we meet Stannis Baratheon, we are related to the fact that in his time on the Small Council, an attempt to get rid of prostitution in the city. 

Lord Renly laughed. "We're fortunate my brother Stannis is not with us. Remember the time he proposed to outlaw brothels? The king asked him if perhaps he'd like to outlaw eating, shitting, and breathing while he was at it..." .........

"The boy says that they visited a brothel."

"A brothel?" Ned said. "The Lord of the Eyrie and Hand of the King visited a brothel with Stannis Baratheon?" He shook his head, incredulous, wondering what Lord Renly would make of this tidbit. Robert's lusts were the subject of ribald drinking songs throughout the realm, but Stannis was a different sort of man; a bare year younger than the king, yet utterly unlike him, stern, humorless, unforgiving, grim in his sense of duty. A Game of Thrones - Eddard VI

@racefortheironthrone informs me in response to a question I asked that this didn’t really happen in the middle ages, because he says, and I quote: “If anything, it was usually the reverse - brothels were seen as a necessary evil to prevent adultery (the church was worried about horny men sleeping with married women, not married men sleeping with sex workers), sodomy, and masturbation, so in some places there were state-sponsored brothels, in other places particular streets or districts were designated for the purpose, etc.” 

There have been many scholars and historians interested in the social discourse of sex work, and how to tackle it. I cannot claim to be an expert in the sociology of it or any such thing, but I think you can sort of get at a general attitude and thesis. In general, prostitution and social attitudes to it revolves around concerns and fears of a public externalization of the private life. Brothels exist publicly, and are known, even in ASOIAF, but there is a distinction between those who openly visit it, and those who practise it privately. This divide between the private and the public is part of how brothels are seen and appreciated throughout the books.  And in Measure for Measure, the division between public and private is a major part of the plot. Especially when we consider Claudio, the nobleman who is arrested, shamed, and sentenced to death for the crime of impregnating a woman out of marriage:

CLAUDIO Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to the world?

Bear me to prison, where I am committed.

Provost

I do it not in evil disposition, But from Lord Angelo by special charge.

ACT 1, SCENE 2

Claudio is not ashamed so much for being caught, but for being paraded by his crime, which is part of the punishment decreed by Acting Duke Angelo. As Hand of the King, Tyrion deprecates the Public in favor of the Private.  In his time as Hand of the King, Tyrion imprisons Grand Maester Pycelle for his lack of celibacy but he does it privately rather than publicly. Angelo is his Opposite. Tyrion resents the Public of King’s Landing for seeing him as a twisted little monkey demon and does nothing to win them over. The Public Shaming is very much Tywin’s thing, who in A STORM OF SWORDS, takes over as real-Hand, while Tyrion is made into Master of Coin. Tywin, Westeros’ fiercest misogynist, erects his actions on public order by ordering the whipping of Alayaya, the prostitute Cersei arrested, mistaking her for Shae. He takes this further:

Whilst Tyrion lay drugged and dreaming, his own blood had pulled his claws out, one by one. "I want you to go to my sister. Her precious son made it through the battle unscathed, so Cersei has no more need of a hostage. She swore to free Alayaya once—""She did. Eight, nine days ago, after the whipping."Tyrion shoved himself up higher, ignoring the sudden stab of pain through his shoulder. "Whipping?"

Tyrion shoved himself up higher, ignoring the sudden stab of pain through his shoulder. "Whipping?"

"They tied her to a post in the yard and scourged her, then shoved her out the gate naked and bloody."

She was learning to read, Tyrion thought, absurdly...Alayaya was a whore, true enough, but a sweeter, braver, more innocent girl he had seldom met. Tyrion had never touched her; she had been no more than a veil, to hide Shae. In his carelessness, he had never thought what the role might cost her.

A STORM OF SWORDS, TYRION I

It’s not enough however for Tywin to punish Tyrion by proxy, by bringing force on those beneath him, violating his sense of power and ability. Tywin takes this further by humiliating him with his most bizarre joke:

"It is a tax on whoring," said Tyrion, irritated all over again. And it was my bloody father's notion. "Only a penny for each, ah . . . act. The King's Hand felt it might help improve the morals of the city." And pay for Joffrey's wedding besides. Needless to say, as master of coin, Tyrion had gotten all the blame for it. Bronn said they were calling it the dwarf's penny in the streets. "Spread your legs for the Halfman, now," they were shouting in the brothels and wine sinks, if the sellsword could be believed. A Storm of Swords - Tyrion V

Tywin and Tyrion is a more intricate look at the same concept we see in Measure for Measure. The substitution of the authority, the assertion of force from authority to people below, the attempts to regulate society by regulating public morality, the focus and attention on sexual matters where the looming threat is to make private all that is public. Tywin is shrewd and cruel in the way that he arranges actions so that Tyrion is seen as the authoritarian monkey-demon while Tywin is seen as the man of probity. Privately of course, Tywin is a creep whereas in the course of ASOS, Tyrion is revealed as the monkey demon. The result of this complex gaslighting eventually leads to tragedy in ASOS, whereas Shakespeare in Measure for Measure can merely make it comedy, satire, not able to extend beyond the norms and problems he faced. 

Of course one can’t blame the bard, he lived in the era before the Civil War, before the Puritan regime banned the playhouses, the brothels, the sporting houses and other places. George RR Martin writing in the late 20th Century, remembers the McCarthy era, the puritanism of the 50s, the counter-revolution of the ‘80s in America. To Shakespeare and his audiences, the situtation he was describing did not seem likely yet, seemed to exist on the level of satire rather than the real.