idt we talk enough about how a song of ice and fire is also the song of incest and cannibalism. i mean, sure, obviously both of those subjects are noted as present, but the saga feels much more known for its incest, which idt is fair or accurate to the later materiel. iirc, jaime fucking cersei next to their dead firstborn is the last instance of onpage incest happening in present tl, and after that it's all about the cannibals, baby.
(disclaimer: cw/tw sa, cw/tw rape, and i'm not counting cousincest as that's normal in-world even for non-targaryens and also still legal in many places in our world today, nor counting the faux-incestuous freudian mess that is littlefinger/alayne(sansa)/sweetrobin, nor any dark humor jokes and/or unfulfilled threats wrt forced cannibalism)
in fact pretty much all the active incest during the present tl happens in those first 3 books:
the twincest as a major plot point ofc, kicking action off when bran saw them fucking in a tower
and viserys creeping on dany and twisting her nipple
tyrion relating his backstory to bronn wherein he and tysha were both raped by proxy by his father, tywin (tho tyrion does not use that terminology)
craster still being alive to rape and impregnate his own daughters (resulting in dozens of forced incestuous relationships)
and theon unknowingly groping his own sister while she (knowingly) groped him in return
jaime's early pov recalled how he shut up cersei with kissing when they fought after bran refused to die
bella of stoney sept trying and failing to seduce gendry who is (unbeknownst to them both) her half-brother as both were sired by robert baratheon (only example in these 3 books where incest was averted before any sexual activity or incestuous contact occurred)
the aforementioned sept twincest next to joffrey's corpse
tyrion learning from oberyn about cersei twisting his penis when he was a baby
cersei's failed attempt to seduce jaime in wst, pulling out his dick for either a bj or hj until her talk of tyrion's death made him lose his boner
while incest is not exactly absent from the text after that, it seems to exist in the feastdance only in hypotheticals or past memories:
aeron's trauma flashbacks of his (implied only in published text) csa by euron
jaime still feeling lust when seeing cersei nude
and her fond reminiscing about them fucking behind robert's back/brief dream of them as a married couple before her walk of shame
victarion misinterpreting asha's offer of partnership as a marriage proposal and suddenly looking at his niece in a new way with "his manhood beginning to stiffen"
jaime's recollection of fucking cersei at darry next to robert as he was passed out drunk before cersei sent him to hunt arya (which would have happened back in agot and the point of this scene is more his failed hunt for a child just to make cersei happy)
arianne's "uneasy" memory of a past fantasy about being seduced by a man whose description is suspiciously similar to her late uncle oberyn
the aborted marital match of aegon/young griff to his purported aunt dany
illyrio saying (the now dead) viserys tried to rape dany the night before her wedding to drogo (another event from agot concerning a guy we already knew was into incest)
and tyrion once saying he wanted to rape as well as murder cersei
conversely, the cannibalism in the earlier books is most often only unproven hypotheticals alluded to as possible cannibalism:
old nan saying the others fed their dead servants the flesh of human children (which we have not yet seen with any wights so far, whether or not one counts walking undead eating human flesh as straight-up cannibalism)
the mystery meat in flea bottom's bowls o' brown which may or may not contain symon silver tongue after tyrion had him killed
renly's recollection that cressen kept stannis from catapulting their old master-at-arms by saying they may need to eat him later (which did not come to pass thanks to davos)
joffrey telling his people to eat their own dead (with no way of knowing if any actually did)
lady hornwood eating her own fingers
the mentions of the ice river clans being the cannibals beyond the wall (who are def not among the free folk jon snow gets to know onpage, making it just background detail)
bran's (possibly mythical) story of the rat cook
and biter chewing on people he attacked and other corpses (which seems to be just a side hobby connected to his killing method moreso constituting a snack than a full meal from a person butchered for meat. this tendancy of his is just background detail in acok, with biter chewing a corpse in the background after the weasel soup operation, and the hindsight implication that it could well have been him rather than dogs or wolves who had "been at" the corpses after the skirmish where yoren was killed)
while the feastdance feels much more in your face with cannibalism, having not only more total mentions of the practice but also more confirmed, actual cannibalism (as opposed to the ambiguity of each and every bowl o' brown), for those who know how to look at the evidence:
jaime learned that his father's mad dog aka the mountain fed parts of vargo hoat to all his prisoners (including vargo himself) after recapturing harrenhal
jaime then recalled tales of danelle lothston presiding over feasts of human flesh in harrenhal
and euron bragged about pulling a similar trick with the warlocks he captured (the only twist being that the warlocks knew what they were being forced to eat, which vargo hoat and wylis manderly etc at harrenhal likely didn't)
the elder brother of the quiet isle told of biter eating all of a woman's breasts at saltpans after she'd been raped and killed (prob the largest amount of flesh biter's confirmed to have eaten from one corpse)
bran and co. ate "pig" supplied by coldhands which had to be long pig aka human meat
brienne felt her face being eaten by biter in her own pov (which is so much worse than him chewing others in the background of the weasel soup scene)
theon was told that two ironmen at moat cailin were found eating their dead comrades
the astapori were said to eat their own dead while under siege by the yunkishmen
and then were said to do so again in refugee camps outside meereen
sam and davos sailed past skagos and each remembered stories of skagosi cannibalism
khrazz the pit fighter cut the hearts from his defeated foes to eat them
cotter pyke's last letter to jon snow said the wildlings were eating their own dead at hardhome
4 of stannis's men were executed by burning for butchering and eating dead men (with asha wondering how many others had done so without being caught)
and ofc the frey pies with wyman manderly having his 3 former guests killed and serving their meat to their own kin and the other guests at ramsay's wedding while eating some himself too
two of these examples (involving gregor clegane and euron greyjoy) must have actually happened during the course of asos, but grrm chose to give us the gruesome details in affc, which was brand new information about men we already knew were villains but did not know were into that fucked-up shit specifically, unlike being reminded that agot-era jaime and viserys wanted to fuck their sisters. it's as if after craster was killed and jc effectively broke up grrm decided cannibalism was the taboo subject matter he would fill the later books with, so we'd really feel the increasing danger of starvation-induced cannibalism with winter's arrival (and have no trouble believing rickon's new home of skagos really is a cannibal island). however, in-universe it feels like there's some sort of environmental balance connection so that the decrease in one formerly common behaviorial abomination just allows another such abomination to fill in the gap with a sharp increase in activity, like deer overpopulation resulting from lack of predators as if all the active incest somehow stopped more people from eating themselves or other people.
