And whenever someone tries to discredit the Arya and Daenerys's characters by calling them 'typical badass fantasy protagonists', remember that Daenerys was created to invert gender roles in a literary genre largely dominated by men.
- why is Daenerys not a prince?
- I made this choice a long time ago, but I think I wanted to play a little with gender roles and reverse things a little... And, of course, "Mother of Dragons", to my mind, is much better than "Father of Dragons". There is the connection between the woman who brings forth life carrying a huge power of death, fire and destruction. There are very powerful metaphors in there.
and Arya was literally born from feminism.
Asked whether any specific people in his life had helped him create Arya’s character traits, Martin replied: “I can’t say there’s any one specific model, but a lot of the women I’ve known over the years have had aspects of Arya with them.”
He added: “Especially some of the women I knew when I was a young man back in the sixties and seventies, you know — the decade of the sexual revolution and the feminist movement. I knew a lot of young women who weren’t buying into the, ‘Oh, I have to find a husband and be a housewife.’”
They are much more revolutionary than just 'typical female protagonists'
