hi! I just went on to Elinor Tyrell’s asoiaf page and it describes her as being Margaery’s ‘pillow friend’, do you know if it literally means just friends? or if it means something else bc I know that Cersei seems to think that Margaery keeps handmaidens so she can sleep with them. Margaery doesn’t seem to be straight but I’m not sure if she keeps handmaidens around to sleep with them
oh, that’s an odd phrasing on the wiki… strange that it’s managed to stick through multiple edits… will have to fix that… but anyway! Elinor Tyrell is more than just her cousin Margaery’s friend, but that term “pillow friend” is wrong, possibly from a weird translation of ASOIAF. The actual term is “bedmaid”, or “lady-in-waiting”. And yeah, Margaery sleeps with her bedmaids, but not sexually.*
The cousins took Sansa into their company as if they had known her all their lives. They spent long afternoons doing needlework and talking over lemon cakes and honeyed wine, played at tiles of an evening, sang together in the castle sept… and often one or two of them would be chosen to share Margaery’s bed, where they would whisper half the night away. –ASOS, Sansa II
“Margaery oft shares her blankets with her cousins. They sing and play games and whisper secrets to each other when the candles are snuffed out.” –AFFC, Cersei III
“Two of her ladies share her bed, different ones every night. Two others bring her breakfast and help her dress. She prays with her septa, reads with her cousin Elinor, sings with her cousin Alla, sews with her cousin Megga. When she’s not off hawking with Janna Fossoway and Merry Crane, she’s playing come-into-my-castle with that little Bulwer girl.” –AFFC, Cersei V
The thing about the term “bedmaid” though, is that pre-AFFC, GRRM almost always used it to mean merely a low-born servant, a handmaid, someone whose job it is to serve a noblewoman personally – dress her, make her bed, and such. But somewhere between writing ASOS and AFFC, the term got mixed up with the medieval job of a lady-in-waiting, a nobleborn woman who was a companion to a higher-ranking noblewoman, and whose job also often included services like dressing their lady, though not menial tasks. (See @joannalannister’s lovely meta for more.) The term also got blended with the “companionably sleep in the bed of their lady” jobs of Margaery’s cousins, which is also something ladies-in-waiting in our world did, though the position was called a “bedfellow”. I suspect this may be due to historical research GRRM did for AFFC (note his tendency to use archaic words such as “nuncle” also greatly increases for that book), though we can first see the concept in the Dunk and Egg story published between ASOS and AFFC:
“I was asleep in my bed last night, with my ladies all around me.” –The Sworn Sword
Anyway, by AFFC, “bedmaid” definitely means a nobleborn woman who sleeps in the bed of an unmarried or widowed noblewoman, and it’s used often in that book and thereafter:
Though Cersei often slept alone, she had never liked it. Her oldest memories were of sharing a bed with Jaime, when they had still been so young that no one could tell the two of them apart. Later, after they were separated, she’d had a string of bedmaids and companions, most of them girls of an age with her, the daughters of her father’s household knights and bannermen. None had pleased her, and few lasted very long. Little sneaks, the lot of them. Vapid, weepy creatures, always telling tales and trying to worm their way between me and Jaime. Still, there had been nights deep within the black bowels of the Rock when she had welcomed their warmth beside her. An empty bed was a cold bed.Here most of all. There were chills in this room, and her wretched royal husband had died beneath this canopy. Robert Baratheon, the First of His Name, may there never be a second. A dim, drunken brute of a man. Let him weep in hell. Taena warmed the bed as well as Robert ever had, and never tried to force Cersei’s legs apart. Of late she had shared the queen’s bed more often than Lord Merryweather’s. Orton did not seem to mind… or if he did, he knew better than to say so.
–AFFC, Cersei VII
“We have apartments prepared for all of you,” she told Alayne, “but if you like you may share my bed tonight. It’s large enough for four.”“I should be honored, my lady.”“Randa. Count yourself fortunate that I’m so tired. All I want to do is curl up and go to sleep. Usually when ladies share my bed they have to pay a pillow tax and tell me all about the wicked things they’ve done.”“What if they haven’t done any wicked things?”“Why, then they must confess all the wicked things they want to do. Not you, of course. I can see how virtuous you are just by looking at those rosy cheeks and big blue eyes of yours.” She yawned again. “I hope your feet are warm. I do hate bedmaids with cold feet.”
–AFFC, Alayne II
“In place of her former ladies-in-waiting, [Cersei] will henceforth be attended by a septa and three novices selected by the High Septon.”[…]The meal was served by three novices, well-scrubbed girls of good birth between the ages of twelve and sixteen. In their soft white woolens, each seemed more innocent and unworldly than the last, yet the High Septon had insisted that no girl spend more than seven days in the queen’s service, lest Cersei corrupt her. They tended the queen’s wardrobe, drew her bath, poured her wine, changed her bedclothes of a morning. One shared the queen’s bed every night, to ascertain she had no other company; the other two slept in an adjoining chamber with the septa who looked over them.
–ADWD, Epilogue
Regarding the question of Margaery’s sexuality, that’s… almost nonexistent in the books (compared with the show). There is one point where Cersei wonders if Margaery likes ladies the way Loras likes men, but that’s literally it. I personally wouldn’t use Cersei’s idle homophobia and desire for poisonous gossip as any kind of source, but I’m sure people have other reasons for their headcanons.
*Noblewomen that we know have sexually slept with their ladies: Cersei, with her companion Taena, working out her post-Robert sexual trauma and other sex/gender issues. Dany, with her handmaid Irri, initially when Irri caught her masturbating and finished the job; and few times thereafter when needing sexual relief, though she finds it uncomfortable the way Irri’s kisses “taste of duty” despite her being very willing to please her khaleesi. [edit to add post-F&B: And historically, there was Rhaena Targaryen, and her many female “favorites” (of which some were definitely sexual partners, but others may just have been friends.) There was also Saera Targaryen, who had a sexual relationship with her favorites Alys Turnberry and Perianne Moore (and her male favorites as well).]
But re Margaery and her ladies, please recall Elinor and Megga and Alla are only about 13 or younger, Sansa’s age. Which wouldn’t always stop GRRM considering his age weirdness (though the fact that the girls’ hymens were found to be broken is almost certainly because of their frequent horse rides), but the logistics of two companions always sharing a bed with Margaery, plus the general busyness of the Tyrell party (that frustrated the Kettleblacks), plus the treatment of them as innocent girls playing girlish games… well anyway, yeah. Hope that helps!
edit: a little more about the source of “pillow friend”, sigh.
@sixth-light replied to your post “hi! I just went on to Elinor Tyrell’s asoiaf page and it describes her as being Margaery’s ‘pillow friend’...”
IIRC, sharing beds with same-gender companions was very common and unexceptionable back when beds were very expensive items of furniture, at all levels of society.
That is true, for both men and women, not just because of expensive beds and housing, but also prior to the guaranteed warmth of central heating. (Which isn’t to say that some of these bed-sharers didn’t have same-sex relationships, but nevertheless most were platonic.)
@lizzierh replied:
Here, I am influenced by my studying of Much Ado about Nothing where Beatrice and Hero (cousins) are referred to as “bedfellows”. (4.1). Here, Hero is the lord’s daughter and Beatrice the more minor cousin whose prominence as her uncle’s ward is increased through her relationship and closeness to her cousin.
Elinor, by being close in age with Margaery, can use this closeness to make a match at court in exchange for providing evidence of her lady’s chastity in the event of scandal, something both Elinor and Beatrice cannot do in the end.
Ah yes, and GRRM is often inspired by Shakespeare’s depictions of history more than by history itself, so this is very probably a deliberate parallel. “Bedfellow” is frequently used in Shakespeare (notably “strange bedfellows”, from The Tempest)... does it predate him? Yes, my OED dates it to 1478.
But did ladies-in-waiting ever serve as bedfellows? I was under the impression that they often shared a room with their mistress, but not a bed... but a quick google check tells me that Mary, Queen of Scots, had a cousin and lady-in-waiting, Mary Fleming, who she took as her bedfellow when she was too nervous to sleep alone. Queen Elizabeth I also had several bedfellows:
In her Bedchamber, Elizabeth could de-robe, take off her make-up and withdraw from the hustle-bustle of the court. Here she was waited upon by her ladies who had the most intimate access to the Queen, attending on her as she dressed, ate, bathed, toileted and slept. Elizabeth was never alone and in or adjacent to her bed she also had a sleeping companion – a trusted bedfellow – with whom she might gossip, share dreams and nightmares, and seek counsel. [...] Sharing a bed with a sleeping companion of the same sex was a common practice at the time, providing warmth, comfort and security; but being the Queen of England's bedfellow was a position of the greatest trust, bringing close and intimate access to Elizabeth.
--Elizabeth's Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen's Court
So yes, GRRM is definitely basing Margaery’s, Cersei’s, and other Westeros noblewomen’s “bedmaids” on an established role for ladies-in-waiting from our world. Glad that’s settled. :)
