#grrm criticism

[aegor-bamfsteel]

I agree with you. I think people call George a feminist because the main series if full with very well written women. But that doesn't make him a feminist.

I have been studying medieval queenship in my masters degree and even before one has to just read a Wikipedia page to see the power medieval queens and highborn women had. There doesn't even seen to be a dower in the form of lands/money given to women despite the fact Westeros is the side of South America and has very few noble houses so it doesn't lack space.

But I think we have hints that George isn't particular feminist. Starting with the glaring lack of honest female friendship. Every time we see women be "friends" is manipulative or gossipy, or worse in the case of Saera. Only new material is fixing it (Sansa at the Vale, Rhaena's friends/lovers) and even then everyone writes how Sansa can't trust Myranda, and never once thinks of her childhood friends (nor does Arya). And even Arianne who had a friend that wasn't her blood related forgets about her as soon as she is married off. Like Arianne could write her a letter?

The fact that House Martell is the only family tree lacking details when we have almost all the lords since the conquest for other great houses. Or that for a supposed land where women inherit same way as man, we barely get information on said ladies. Not counting the Martells there are 4 and only 1 speaks.

There is also a lack of nuances in any female character that is not a main one, to the outright terrible way he writes the Sand Snakes (it is not just a show problem). Even those who were Queens, we have little information besides Visenya, Rhaenys, Rhaena (which I think is George best female character in F&B), and Alysanne. I won't touch Alicent and Rhaenrya because the fandom has complete destroy any nuance talk about them. But the way Alysanne was writting was very problematic (Jaehaerys even worse) for all the glorification George has made of her. Queens like Daenaera, Myriah, Betha and even Rhaella are barely a line of text despite being Queen consort for over two decades and their husbands have pages.

You have spoken very well about the Bracken women and Daena problem. But there is also the Daenora and Aegon V sisters.

If George doesn't kill her in childbirth (his favorite way of not having to be concern about women), Daenora was 36-16 at the time of the council that elected Aegon. And like Rhaenys, she legally the strongest claim and her son the strongest. Yet, no mentioned of this half-Arryn woman? Her own sister was heir to Aerys. And it is pretty clear to me her own marriage to Aerion was used to secure Aerion's line.

We don't even know if she remarries/had children. Which would make sense for her to get even more support for her/her sons claim. And her son vanishes in the air too.

Then Aegon V sisters, they both married according to Aemon. We have strong hints that one married the Lord of Tarth and in 2-3 generations had Brienne. How, in a world like Westeros, aren't nobles making comments about Brienne's bloodline?

Why isn't Robert/Jon/Tywin/etc worried about a possible house with Targaryen blood from Aegon V rebelling? Why isn't Cersei imprisoned those people? Or Tywin using the war to arrest them for treason? We have comments of Aerys looking for a Valyrian bride. That could very well be followed by a quote about Aegon V sisters.

And the truth is... Because George didn't bothered to care about the female lines. We see this in how he seems always perplexed when people ask about Calla and Aegor or Lyarra Stark, or the name of the ruling princess of Dorne.

Sorry for the long comment. But I'll just add. Is it too much to ask for a line like "Sansa sat down reading the poetry left by Lady..." Or "Margaery and her ladies were reading the book by Septa...."??

Hello there, historiclover! It’s amazing you are studying medieval queenship for a master’s degree; that sounds like a lot of hard work and writing. Best of luck on your degree.

It sounds like there is a dower mentioned at least in some instances—Walder Frey giving a dower “weight in silver” to whichever of his female descendants marries Roose Bolton, and Lyonel Corbray being “even more pleased” with the dower of the daughter of a wealthy Gulltown merchant—but these seem limited to cash rather than lands, plus the bride’s family seems to have a massive gap in status from the groom’s; plus, the dower system in Westeros doesn’t seem to be the same as in medieval Europe, where the dowry is settled on the bride/her children rather than being given directly to the groom. The GFM have stated that actual land dowers would make things “too complicated”, but GRRM makes random houses to homage his favorite comic book characters (ie Green Arrow and Blue Beetle for Sarsfield and Bettley), so he’s not really interested in dower politics.

I think that the constant rape/rape threats, failure to depict the trauma of female rape victims in a plausible/sensitive manner (I say female victims because you could argue that the after effects of Tyrion and Theon’s sexualized torture was depicted thoughtfully) mockery of feminist icons, and double standard sexual degradation of female characters (particularly from houses the author doesn’t like for some reason) would be enough of an indication that the author isn’t a feminist (he doesn’t even think he’s a feminist), but you’re correct that he doesn’t really depict female friendships or the powers of queens very well. It’s never going to not bother me that blogs devoted to analyzing fantasy/sci-fi from a “feminist lens” will trash the writing of a female author’s depiction of female characters (thinking of Stephenie Meyer, Cassandra Clare, the Casts; I’m not saying their writing is great, but that the heaps of mockery they receive is disproportionate) but will give a male writers a pass or even praise them for doing the same thing (if Alysanne Blackwood was in a YA book written by a woman she’d be rightly torn to shreds as a “cool girl” Suetiful All Along whose war crimes are ignored). The fact that GRRM has the Targ kings go for literal generations without queens—Daeron I, Baelor, Viserys II, Maekar all unmarried—and most of the others nonentities who we only know have had children and could’ve possibly pre deceased their husbands seems to indicate he doesn’t actually understand the queen’s role in shaping policy, the court, patronizing artists, religious devotion etc. For Seven’s sake, we know who the acting First Ladies of the US were when the president was widowed/unmarried (usually a sister, daughter, or niece), but not the acting “Queen” of a whole continent? Just say you don’t care about women’s culture unless it relates tangentially to the plot and go, GRRM.

Cersei/Robert/Tywin isn’t worried about the Aegonsisters rebelling because not only are they probably married to lower ranking houses, Robert has a better blood claim than they do even without right of conquest (borne out of rebelling against tyranny; this isn’t like Renly’s statement in ACOK), but principally because GRRM didn’t know Egg had any sisters by AGOT, and Brienne didn’t exist until ACOK, and her possible Targ heritage not hinted at until TWOIAF. GRRM’s gardening gave us some awesome characters like Stannis, Theon, better depictions of Sansa and Arya etc but unfortunately it also led him to create scenarios without thinking about the implications it meant for earlier parts of the work. But that he seemed to have never thought of these female lines unless it’s about an important male character (like Dunk) is telling. Same with Rhaenys Targ-Velaryon’s line apparently dying out, or Rhaena’s children dying childless, Daenora not being named in-text and somehow married to her animal torturer/sexual assaulted of a cousin and her son disappearing, and of course Daena’s descendants have apparently died horribly.

I think it’s pretty telling as well that until F&B (not counting Daenys’ alleged book about her prophecies, which is lost/rare) there weren’t any female authors, no female playwrights (we have a few actresses, why can’t they make their own plays?) and only a few female singers (not known if they wrote their own songs)…and both of those books are seen as “unserious” or “scandalous” because they’re focused on sex (the tales on Coryanne’s sex life apparently not all written by her, and Septa Rue’s biography of Alyn Velaryon, who was probably her lover). Obviously none of this is true to real life, where 10% of all troubadours were women, abbesses/nuns did invaluable work in writing/transcribing/illustrating manuscripts, and noblewomen commissioned or wrote their own works on history/hagiography/medicine. I think GRRM’s antipathy toward Catholicism has made a lot of his depiction of religion as sexually repressed to a cartoonish level rather than a complicated history of providing some women a chance to create art/music/literature uninhibited while still positing them as inferior to men.

[nyxqueen97]

ik we talk a lot about orientalism with dorne and george mostly attaches them in terms of tackling fantasy tropes and not much else but just like the faith in terms of world building i'd actually wish he'd had read up some history for references like talking about dorne being more gender equal is cool and all but you don't see much of it except with primogeniture and vague sexual exotic writings like imagine if he actually wrote female scholars/warriors(other than nymeria) being prominent in the lore like it was in history

Edit: Ik it would break the lore a bit but it’s just insane to me the only prominent figure for a female knight we got is jonquil darke and it’s not to say the citadel can’t stay as the citadel but them not having like scriptures of their own history in motherhouses/buildings or separate sects for knowledge is just weird.

[meanderingstar]

the way Daenerys treats Irri in the books is incredibly disturbing and I hate how it's overlooked by both the narrative and the majority of the fandom.

Daenerys uses Irri for sex at least twice over the course of the story, once in Storm and once in Dance. I really, truly cannot overstate how horrific the power imbalance between them is: Daenerys was her khaleesi, her queen and her employer; Irri was formerly a slave in her service and is now her maid with absolutely nowhere else to go. She had evidently been conditioned to believe that displaying absolute obedience to her higher-ups, including sexual services, was her "duty", which Daenerys recognized and still actively exploited for her own pleasure. This is also why consent between them is utterly impossible – contrary to some asoiaf blogs who claim that consent was not a major issue in this situation (lol) or that Irri freely consented, Irri’s conditioning means that she would never be able to freely consent to someone like Daenerys, who was her employer and held absolute power over her. Daenerys herself acknowledged this and felt guilty (damning in itself), but ended up using her in such a manner anyway, despite explicitly recognizing that Irri's kisses "tasted of duty" and nothing more.

What makes this even worse is that despite using her in this way in Storm, Daenerys has no issue claiming that Irri and Jhiqui (who were literally her age and had the same, if not worse, experiences than she has) were "only girls" in comparison to her. She also dismissed their (pretty sensible, imo?) concern about her touching sick and dead people by calling them "utter fools" and saying the Dothraki were only wise when it came to horses. She said all this AFTER sleeping with Irri, which made it twice as bad - Daenerys considered her a little girl and a fool when it comes to advising her, but still found it perfectly fine to use her for sex? This condescension extended to their sexual relationship as well, where Daenerys referred to Irri as "the maid", "her handmaid" and "the Dothraki girl" as she had sex with her. It's patronizing, disrespectful and exploitative at best, outright dehumanizing at worst.

While I highly doubt this was Grrm's intention, Daenerys's dynamic with Irri is clearly reminiscent of the way Cersei rapes Taena Merryweather. Dany was obviously not as vicious with Irri as Cersei was with Taena but that really doesn't change the fact that she was still a queen exploiting her employee's obedience and conditioned sense of "duty" for her own pleasure, made even worse by the fact that Irri, as a servant and former slave with no family, no connections and nowhere else to go, was 10x more vulnerable than Taena was and certainly more dependent on Dany. It's bizarre how Cersei's treatment of Taena is recognized as fucked-up by most of the fandom but Daenerys's treatment of Irri is not, even though the power imbalance between them was infinitely worse. Moreover, Grrm writing about two white queens using their brown maids/ladies-in-waiting for sex is flat-out racist. I'm also extremely uncomfortable with how both wlw interactions are dubiously consensual at best and arguably revolve around Cersei/Dany's relationships with men to some extent: Cersei uses Taena to reenact her trauma by Robert, and Dany not only "pretended it was Drogo holding her...only somehow his face kept turning into Daario's" when she was having sex with Irri, but also explicitly states that "it was Daario she wanted, or perhaps Drogo, not Irri".

Certainly, Daenerys and Irri's dynamic is part and parcel of Grrm's fucked notion of consent and piss-poor writing of wlw relationships (both of which he should be called out for far more than he is, btw), but it doesn't change the fact that in-universe, these are Daenerys's textual actions. Grrm seems to believe that Drogo didn't rape Daenerys (a 13 year old who was forced into marriage) on their wedding night because she said "yes", just like he seems to believe that Jaime didn't coerce Cersei to have sex with him over their own son's dead body because she eventually responded to Jaime's advances, but I clearly recognize them as rape and coercion. The same logic and same standards apply to Daenerys and the way she uses and exploits Irri and she should be judged accordingly.

[katshuya]

Around two years ago, my great aunt talked about her friend, who is from a country that practices polygyny. Her friend is now in England with my great aunt living on money from her husband, who took a young girl as his second wife and stayed there while his wife (my great aunt's friend) left for England.

She talked about how the wife didn't have love for her husband nor she showed hurt by what he did, but she would talk about what he did frequently. How she was abandoned and their contract was mere phones every now and then.

The thing is, she also told the story to some men, too. She was talking with pain about her friend but these men immediately raised their voices in protest telling her how that is "their tradition in that certain part of that certain country and that women are used to it" that they are nonchalant about it. That they are used to it. They silenced my aunt, but I wish I was there.

It's not being fine with it. It's weaponizing cruel tradition and the forced silence of women who have no choice but to be silent about it.

How do you know she wants that tradition practiced on her? On her expanse? What does the woman gain from this?

There is racism and misogyny if it's what GRRM has planned for Elia.

Dorne isn't liked by these idiots unless it serves their awful and cruel love story through misogyny and racism.

Say what you want and so can GRRM, but sometimes, in some situations, love is not the most important feeling.

[tweedstoat]

im sorry, but reading ur last couple posts it kinda sounds like you think Ned should have been more overtly racist and bc he wasn’t grrm is racist, but on the flip side giving arya prejudice thoughts also makes grrm a racist and a bad writer? like grrm for sure has dodgy bits but you’re giving him a bit of a no win scenario here. if he had made the targs black like originally planned do you think that would have been better or worse? (1/2)

ok im going to address this point by point because there is a lot of reaching and misunderstanding here

1. I am not here to present a ‘win’ scenario for GRRMs writing. I am discussing the shortcomings of the way he writes racism and yet uses racist tropes. A lot of these are as you state ‘no win’ scenarios because he decided to craft a world where racism exists while having extremely few characters of colour in important positions, AND while using racist tropes. There are many no win scenarios simply because of this tension.

2. I dont want Ned to be a more vocally racist character? And please point out where I said that Grrm was racist because Ned wasnt portrayed as having overt anti-dornish sentiment? I stated that because GRRM created a world where racism exists everything now has to be analysed bearing that in mind. It’s the same as stating that because misogyny exists in universe male characters are possibly (and likely) somewhat misogynistic and their interactions with with women and the way they treat female characters must be analysed in such a way.

Me stating that anti-dornish racism could have been a possible reason why Ned reacted less vehemently to the deaths of Elia and her children is me analysing it within the frame-work that GRRM set up. I’m using this to point out that when white authors add fantasy racism into a story they dont see the raicst implications of what they are writing because they dont understand the way racism impacts almost everything in real life.

For example in our world when non-white children or women go missing or are murdered their deaths are much less publicized than when white women or children get murdered or go missing. So yes racism affects the way that people are treated in such scenarios and when you decide to include fantasy racism in your story you have now included all of this extra stuff and need to do work to make sure that what you are writing does not perpetuate or enforce racism.

3. I literally never said arya having racist thoughts made GRRM a racist and bad writer. I have no clue where you got that. I used Aryas remark to highlight how anti-dornish sentiment clearly exists in the North because 9 year old children dont develop racist ideas in a vaccuum.

4. Where did I ever state that everything that happens to the martells was a micro aggression? I’m also confused as to where you got the word “micro” from??? Because idk about you but things like characters not really caring about the rape and death of a non-white woman and the deaths of her biracial children, a child being shunned because they “smelled dornish” and dornish women being hypersexualised in the narrative are some pretty macro aggressions.

5. Finally you deciding to ‘not discuss the essoss stuff’ is missing one of the main points of what I am trying to say. GRRM’s writing isnt racist because sometimes bad things happen to the Martells. The combination of his writing of the dothraki as savages with no introspection when compared to the free folk, the brutal killing of many martells for shock value, the contrast between the way he portrays Lyanna and the way he portrays Elia, the exotic/erotic trope he uses when writing dornish women, the fact that he hasnt named the princess of dorne while all her male counterparts have recieved names AND backstories and the fact that he made a white character the centre of the essoss plotline and a whole host of other decisions combine to make his writing....kinda racist. If it happened one time it may be a coincidence. If it happens about 10 times its a pattern.

Would it be racist if the Starks were written as inuit and then split up? Probably - given the history of murder and brutal seperation indigenous families have faced! Would making the more visibly indigenous stark children plainer while making the more white passing stark children better looking be racist? Probably - considering the way that eurocentric beauty standards are still upheld! With GRRM his issue is that he doesn't use 1 or 2 racist tropes in isolation. That could be a mistake. He uses several in succession.

Regarding the Targaryens being Black I think that if he wrote them in exactly the same manner (unlikely given how he treats other characters of colour) it likely wouldnt be racist but that the fandom probably would take it as an excuse to be racist.

So now that weve gotten through all of that straw-man criticism about my “take” I’m actually going to suggest some ways that he could have still written about fantasy racism without accidentally perpetuating it

1. If he is going to brutally kill off Elia he needs to AT LEAST have more discussions surrounding her death. Who Elia was as a person (dont just make her a sad cardboard cut out - I want to see some background on who she was outside of being an abandoned wife and mother). One story about Elia by Oberyn isnt enough. I also want to see more societal shock about Elias death because theres a weirdly small amount. The rape and murder of the crown princess shouldve been an extremely huge scandal and should have horrified many more people.

2. Theres no real way to kill off two non white children and have their white sibling be a prophetic hero without dicey implications so Aegon needs to survive and be the actual Aegon and not a secret blackfyre. We dont know if he is a secret blackfyre or not so this may just be a case of the fandom taking an excuse to be racist and running with it

3. Have more Dornish characters that dont die brutally for shock value (Elia, Oberyn, Quentyn). Furthermore when you only have 2 povs of dornish characters,,,,and you kill one of them off, yes that is not a great look

4. Dont introduce the only WoC pov in the whole damn book nipple first and as a blatant play on the brown seductress when she has legitimate political concerns and greivances

And thats only the dornish characters! With the dothraki and most of essoss just.....anything aside from what he’s done would be better. But of course im sure none of this is actually racist writing decisions. No its simply complex characterisation of course!!1!

[thinking-about-hotd-a-lot]

Thinking about the queer characters in ASOIAF. There's a few in the main series, like Loras, Renly, Taena, Nymeria, Lyn, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. I sort of wish there were more queer women in the story. Dany and Cersei have same gender relations but it's ambiguous as to if they are bi or not (I like to headcanon them as bi but that's just me). We have mention of Nymeria being "abed with the Fowler twins".

Fire & Blood had a lot of queer women; Rhaena, Elissa, Tyanna, Jeyne Arryn, Black Aly, Sabitha Vypren. It was pretty refreshing to see more visibility of queer women there, and I hope, even if my hopes for House of the Dragon aren't high, that they do a better job than Game of Thrones in that regard. I especially loved Rhaena and Elissa, they were both incredibly compelling and fascinating characters.

One area I think ASOIAF & GRRM could possibly improve on is trans representation. Of course Brienne, Cersei, and Arya come up as examples of gender non-comformity that could be seen as transgender identity, but they don't reject the concept of womanhood so much as gender roles. When we hear about MtF crossdressers in this universe, it's often not very flattering, and usually some sort of fetish or kink.

We have a Lannister monarch who was mocked as "Queen Lorea" and dressed in his wifes clothes when visiting the sex workers in the docks of Lannisport. Racallio Ryndoon was also said to have dressed in women's clothing, pretending to be a female prostitute, and was sometimes called "Queen Racallio", but given everything else we know about him (having fetishes with pregnant women and having his wives beat him), it seems like it's just another fetish of his.

We also have a sex worker in Braavos Arya reports on in ADWD called Canker Jeyne, who (at least in my mind) probably is trans, but again, it keeps on with this rather unflattering image that MtF people are all doing this as part of some fetish or satisfy other peoples fetishes. And in the case of Racallio, it's made to make them seem more "exotic" and "wild". Meanwhile for FtM crossdressers, it's mostly used as a disguise of sorts or a rejection of traditional femininity, rather than any sort of solid core identity.

We do, however, have the Jogos Nhai, who allow AMAB people to live as women, or AFAB people to live as men, to the point that they will shave their bodies and perform the tasks expected of the gender they are now living as. This is reminiscent to some historical societies, such as the galli priests of Rome, who worshipped Cybele and Attis, who were castrated, whore feminine clothing, and referred to themselves as women.

There are many other societies and cultures that, may not have had the concept of transgender identity, but definitely a less binary view of gender identity that could be seen as transgender. For instance, there is the concept of a third gender role in some Native American peoples, like the Navajo nadleehi and the Zuni lhamana. Regardless of culture, there were some historical figures who were transgender regardless of cultural traditions. The Roman Emperor Elagabalus was said to have delighted in being called a lady, dressed in women's clothing, and apparently went around asking people to perform sex reassignment surgery for a large sum of money. There is also Chevalier d'Eon, an intersex transgender woman who fought in the Seven years War, and lived as a woman for 33 years until her death.

The point of this being; there is a sorry lack of trans representation in ASOIAF, and it is mostly relegated to fetishes or kinks, which, as a trans woman, doesn't leave the best taste in my mouth. It doesn't make me hate the series at all, but it's a little disappointing as someone who would like to see themselves represented in a story they very much like.

This is why I have taken matters into my hands and decided to write an epic fantasy story with the main character being a trans woman partially inspired by Elagabalus.

[rainhadaenerys]

I’ll step back from macroeconomics to talk about something a little more generally accessible: A Song of Ice and Fire. Specifically, why…

[daenerys-targaryen-moved]

So, the original script isn’t quite as bad as they specifically state that Daenerys didn’t burn down KL on purpose and that she accidentally started the wild fire barrels but they still had Jon kill her in the script too. I guess they changed it because they realized that civilians accidentally dying in war doesn’t justify conspiring and murdering someone? They needed a reason to justify that? I mean, do they not remember when they wrote Ser Barristan telling Daenerys that war comes with the blood of civilians? Does this mean Robb should have been conspired against and murdered for the innocent civilians that died during the North’s rebellion? What about Roberts rebellion where many many innocent civilians died? What about those who actively and willingly committed war crimes like Tywin? The OG script isn’t as bad as the one we all know as Daenerys didn’t go mad but it’s still shit considering Jon kills her for something she didn’t do intentionally or knowingly. If this is still GRRMS ending then he can keep it, luv