Warning: potential pretension, meta and the like.
In which I attempt simply to place Stannis in full well-rounded view, the same as any other ASoIaF character given his prominence in the series, without either claiming he is the Best King to Ever King or that he is Fundamentally Morally Empty and Does Not Care At All About the Realm and its People Overall in a Way That No Other Ruler Does and is thus Objectively the Worst Candidate for the Throne.
The need for this is based on the following observation I have: other rulers who get equal or less screentime and have similar stated ambitions at one point or another to Serve the Realm and/or Their People have similar contradictions between stated values and actuality and yet do not have their base humanity and morals written off so frequently or basely or automatically as Stannis does. Robb can execute his own bannermen or send a force of 2,000 men out to die as a diversion and generally bungle the crap out of a war for a throne with disasterous effects for the smallfolk of the Riverlands without his basic sense of Having a Morality and Caring For His People impugned. Dany can blatantly break established custom/law/what have you through magic (DRAGONS), be naive about the effects of war on smallfolk, and run a city into the ground through incompetence without having her basic sense of Somewhere Having a Morality and Caring for Her People impugned. Renly can play at war without seeing the full picture and thus endanger the smallfolk caught in the war without having his basic sense of Morality and Caring For His People totally impugned. And this doesn’t take into account the extremely effective but at heart apparently uncaring for the smallfolk Tywin or the truly Objectively the Worst Ruler (to the extent that’s possible in ASoIaF) Joffrey.
It’s long, but before the cut my “thesis” so to speak: Stannis’s ultimate Narrative Role is Man Versus Kingship, Nature Versus Institution, and the like. In this conception he cannot be All Ruler and No Man and thus morally bankrupt in a way that no other kingship figure is; the focus on this dynamic and tension simply brings to the forefront his contradictions and potential hypocrisies in a way that does not happen for any other ruler, as no other rulers have this hyper focus on the law/duty/institutions and the problems that trying to strictly follow it raise for Being a Good Human Being. Narrative lenses like that through which we see Stannis or any other character are extremely important, and one of the main tools of literature is how they shape a reader’s perception of things just as how camera angles direct how viewers see things in TV or film, but they are not the be-all-end-all of a reader’s engagement with a work or the be-all-end-all of an author’s Overarching Point. (Part of the reason why we like to and are fundamentally able to play around with fanfiction and imagine what could be or could have been is that the strict lenses and story focuses a story gives do not fully limit or define a character’s possibilities.)
But really, the details of my argument, after the cut.
I warned you this was coming: The way that Tumblr’s ASOIAF fandom handles male victims of abuse is fucking atrocious.
It’s interesting because it seems very opposite to other online discussion groups, where abuse in general is treated in a poor fashion (particularly of women). In any case, it rubs me the wrong way and makes me want to scream.
Actually, have some meta. So Sansa is scared shitless in the middle of a battle and she picks up the doll that Ned gave her, which she initially scorned because of petty, childish concerns. Even as she tells him that she hasn’t played with dolls in years, she is being childish. She’s not grown up for not playing with dolls, but she is a child for being so immaturely rude to him about it.
But she picks it up. SHE PICKS IT UP. No matter that she hasn’t played with dolls, because this doll is no longer a doll. It’s a memory of her father, and, like a child, she needs a source of comfort. Not to say that adults don’t but she looks to a doll for comfort and for safety and for a feeling of warmth and security so let’s say it’s at least childish on an innocent level. We see the killing of Lady, the killing of Ned, and the beatings all as destructions of her innocence.
And here, the final straw, as she realizes that she does not have anything to fear in Sandor, because in this instant he, who is at least strong, is very much afraid. And the feelings of pity and sympathy are liberating for her. She is a queen, and she understands that she is a queen, that she is strong in her own right, and you can see in her eyes and revelation and the freedom that is offered to her in that moment, not from Sandor but to continue to be strong in her own ways, to use courtesy as a weapon but also to see the cracks in other people’s armor.
And she drops the doll to her side.
Taking her own life would be the ultimate act of control in the ultimate heat of chaos on Cersei’s part—hers and Tommen’s. The episode begins with all of her children out of her reach, Myrcella in Dorne and Joffrey off to the battlefield, both next to death, as far as she’s concerned. She fears because she’s their mother, the loss of Myrcella cuts deep because she’s a girl sold as chattel and the loss of Joffrey threatens like the loss of power, but every threat to her children is also a direct threat to her.
An enemy army is battering down the walls, and she is told (as she cannot see for herself) that the war is lost. And she takes her last child, goes to the Iron Throne, and sits, with her little king on her lap, ready to kill the pair of them. This is an act of mercy, but it’s also aclaim. This is Cersei telling a story where they win, when she’s been told all her life that she has no control over the shape of her life, told by the prophecy that her children would die no matter how hard she tried to save them and her life would be taken from her no matter what measures of self-preservation she took. If this is the end of the line—the lineshe made, her children with her brother, like little pieces of herself, little claims on power and little pieces of her destiny—she is going to take it as her own: Cersei doesn’t pray, and her father raised her to fight the gods. She doesn’t flinch. This is the only possible victory in an unwinnable war, and it’s hers, and it’s her way of making the war hers, and she takes it on the Iron Throne, wearing armor.
(But the war is over; she drops the vial; she never needed to fight at all.)
Targaryens and why incest makes sense to them
In other words…unorganised thoughts on the economical advantages of incest in the world of ASoIaF.
Okay so during a gender studies lecture I kind of had an epiphany. I think I get now why the Targaryens wedded brother to sister. I feel so stupid for taking so long to realise this. it’s not about keeping the Blood of the Dragon pure, it’s all about (economic) power.
The Targaryens were the ruling house of Westeros so whenever the king had a daughter, she would have to give up her status and power upon marriage to become part of a lesser house without all the wealth and power. She would give birth to children who had practically no right to the throne as the westerosi culture is patrilineal. And don’t even let me get started on things like dowries and bridewealth.
On the other hand, when a Targaryen king had a son, he would raise the status of a woman of one of the lesser houses, thus giving this house more influence. Their son would be of both houses and could decide to raise his mother’s house even more in power, causing some kind of an imbalance.Since the Targaryens had dragons, they had little need for alliances with the other houses of Westeros. There was no need to bind another family to them through marriage, and so they thought up a way to produce heirs without having to give up parts of their power and influence or let their daughters marry below their social status….and the answer was incest.
It keeps the bloodline pure, it keeps the power and wealth in the family, it protects the Targaryen daughters from losing their status and it keeps other houses from having even the tiniest bit of a claim to the Iron Throne.
The only reason they stopped is because the dragons died which meant they required other means of maintaining power than fire and blood.
Uh…does this make sense to anyone?Yep, this is a very good analysis. (Except they didn’t stop when the dragons died.) The only times we know they married out is when they needed an alliance (like finally bringing Dorne under Targaryen rule) or if there weren’t enough Targs to go ‘round. Though I’m not sure why Rhaelle Targaryen married that Baratheon (except maybe because her brother, Duncan the Small, married a commoner for love), but note that the Baratheons were already tied to the Targaryens as descendants of Aegon the Conqueror’s probable half-brother.
The Dornish double marriage — the Targ king marrying a Dornish princess, and his sister marrying the ruling prince of Dorne — was extremely interesting, btw. Not just for the fact that the Targs married out, or that they married into another royal family, but also the extremely divisive reaction this alliance produced in the people of Westeros. A lot of nobles hated the Dornish influence on the Targaryen court, and it was one of the causes of the Blackfyre Rebellion.
Oh, there was also one major exception: Maegor the Cruel, who had multiple wives from multiple houses. But he had no heirs (and executed his wives for not producing any), and his nephew inherited.
When people say Ned would never have executed Theon had Balon broken his good behavior…
Yes, Ned would have.
Ned’s whole character was a stickler for the rules. Remember the very start when Ned beheaded poor Wil from the Night’s Watch because he broke oath? (Gared in the books) It was in a time of peace and Wil was terrified, confused and desperate, but rules are rules and Ned was bound by code. This scene’s purpose was to show that Ned was a rules man, to his detriment later on. So he would indeed have executed Theon had Balon misbehaved, because “doing his duty” was a big part of his character.
Ignoring this not only ignores a big fault in Ned’s character, but also ignores a big part of why the hostage system is fucked up and how it damages children, which lies at the very core of Theon’s story. It’s not about vilifying Ned because this reader/watcher need to vilify goes against everything GRRM is doing with this series. Rather it’s about the psychological damage done to hostage children in a world that punishes kids for the father’s sins. A child growing up without any love in a foreign place that doesn’t trust him because of who fathered him, knowing that this man (who cannot show him affection because of what he might have to do) will execute him if daddy does wrong…
That child is going to need a lot of therapy.
And this a world without even the first inkling of psychology, a world that blames the victims. Ned didn’t set out to contribute to mentally damaging a child (emphasis on contribute, because Theon was already damaged goods), he doesn’t live in a world that takes that into account. But he’s a stickler for the rules and despite doing his best to make Theon’s imprisonment as kind as possible, it was never going to work because you can’t apply a bandaid to a gaping wound.
It’s not even about feeling sorry for Theon - it’s about GRRM examining this system through Theon and how complicated and utterly fascinating it is. Refusing to believe that Ned would have “done his duty” is completely discounting an important facet of GRRM’s incredibly intimate examination of a practice that is just shrugged off and accepted, with children labeled as ‘bad’ when they understandably don’t grow up functioning like a normal person.
And finally, why do people want to make Ned (and Robb) so bloody faultless? IT’S BORING! Blameless, lily-white, never-do-wrong characters are unchallenging and fucking TEDIOUS. Why would you want that???.
lalalalala, so the latest episode was terrible and I don’t want to engage with 98% of it but still, can we talk about the blocking of that bottom shot because damn. Obsessed with the way they frame Cersei and Tyrion around the corners of tables, literally turning them into the sharp opposing points of a triangle and the fact there’s always a body’s gap in between the two. Because correct, yes, this is precisely what they are - capable of functioning alongside one another but only as part of a wider triumvirate not along the binary dynamic they’re forced into in their brother’s absence. Particularly fixated with the shadowy presence of the member of the Kingsguard in the second cap as though Jaime’s courtly skeleton has literally been propped up between them - the Knight, the missing third in their soldier/sovereign/statesman triptych whom they both spend the season scrambling to try to find a substitute for (and failing). Cersei attempts it with Lancel, errant boy-child who can’t begin to fill the blood-stained greaves his cousin leaves behind and Tyrion with Bronn, self-serving, self-preserving sellsword extraordinaire who puts Jaime’s lack of loyalty into harsh perspective. Just, urgh, kids, kids dancing around the ragged edges their brother leaves in his wake and trying to operate within the negative spaces of their triangular relationship and not being able to because there’s no centre to hold them together, hits me in way too many soft spots. And hats off to HBO for getting that, if nothing else, and manifesting it beautifully in these two visuals.
click the link to enlarge!
Listen.
I’ll disclaim this as such: I never had feelings about Robb, or Jeyne, or Robb/Jeyne—meaning, no antipathy, and came into the show with nothing but endless curiosity as to how it’d be treated, because the show shedding light on underdeveloped characters can lead to some pretty interesting business.
Interesting business: not yet to be found. I’m unstintingly annoyed with what the show chose to make Jeyne, now moonlighting as Talisa. The only way I’ll be appeased is that if she is a Jeyne who’s never had a brother, by the way, because this is begging deconstruction, andfast. Because at the moment it’s the only thing on the show that simply is a trope, rather than working (with whatever success) to take a trope apart, and it’s ridiculously conspicuous.
Here’s the thing. ASOIAF/GoT as Feminist Text™ is, uh, debatable—it’s a mixed bag of just about everything, quality-wise—but it’s definitely, deliberately a deconstructive one. Tropes are set up to be taken apart: honor, chivalry, and all kinds of rebellion. Essentially, the things that are so often easy in fantasy stories are shown to be difficult to the point of untenability here: the more palatable the morality to the readers, the bigger gap between the ideals and the reality. Nobility in heroes, Feminist Fire in heroines—it all comes at a significant cost. (Ned Stark dies for his nobility. Arya Stark learns how very difficult it is to buck the rules and throw off the constraints of nobility and become a saucy lady knight!! And if you didn’t get that from her showing, Cersei Lannister will happily catch you all the way up on the pervasive fuckery of the patriarchy.)
So to have a character—any character—swan in and seduce the noble young king (played straightforwardly so) with the purity of her ideals, and to have that played fully straight, rings false and leaves a sour taste in my mouth. It feels like a model or an appeasement and it’s badly written. Like, we can’t watch the mistreatment of the underclasses (e.g. Ros), we have to have Talisa in Robb’s (thus our) ear reminding us how bad the class dichotomy is? We can’t watch Sansa choke on the costs of courtly femininity, we need Talisa telling us that she ran away to do something better than that, telling us how easy it was to give everything up and indicting the world she left behind as unstintingly shallow?
Mm. Nope. Everything here is too pat: the plucky lady nurse, the noble lady who Threw Off The Constraints Of Class-Based Femininity To Go Do Good!, the clumsy functionality of her as his conscience, the way their sex played out like a reward, not just for him for being an A-OK model young king (this plot is doing neither of them any favours) but for her superior brand of femininity as opposed to the nameless Frey girl’s lackluster model of faceless female obeisance to society. It’s an easy rebellion in a series that’s about making those rebellions hard; it’s not borne of cost, and it’s spoon-fed to the audience in a way that nothing else there is.
Coulda done anything. Did this. It’s a waste of potential and also time, it’s not well-written in big, obnoxious, dissonant ways, and I need the other shoe to drop, because the wait and the bluff is not just dull, it’s dull and lazy in narratively caustic ways. This needs to be false fast, because if it’s true, it doesn’t say anything good about what the show thinks the audience expects from its female characters—or should I say, its Strong Female Characters™.
Talisa’s political commentary on Robb and his behavior should be provided by Catelyn, who was made to look weak and severely lacking in strategy this episode.
The subversion of Talisa’s current function would undermine her characterization—if she is still indeed Jeyne Westerling, albeit she remains as Robb’s romantic interest—and the relationship of trust and innocent love that Robb ultimately dies for. There would be distrust in their relationship and Jeyne/Talisa would not be an innocent casualty of the wickedest politics, but the instrument of her own husband’s demise.
Why did they not receive the news of Bran and Rickon’s deaths? Why did Robb treat his mother thus, why did the storyline humiliate her? There are so many thematic elements that are completely lost in what the writers are doing and aspects necessary to Cat, Robb, and Jeyne/Talisa’s characters as well.
Female Relationships in ASOIAF
YES! I absolutely DO have thoughts on this. THIS IS GOING TO BE LONG. BUT I REGRET ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I love you for asking me about this, nonny! I’m making this rebloggable because idk. Maybe people will want to reblog this? I want to talk to people about this, so I hope they do!
Firstly, I want to say that I DO agree that the series fails when it comes to women interacting on the page, especially women interacting POSITIVELY on the page. Cat and Brienne have one of the few positive female relationships in the series. Cat and Brienne clearly respect each other and there is some affection there. Brienne is super loyal to Cat because she is one of the few people who take her and her ambition to be a knight seriously. I seriously love their relationship, but their relationship is ruined. All that positive female interaction turns to dust when Cat dies and becomes Lady Stoneheart, a twisted shadow of the person she was in life. Lady Stoneheart takes Brienne’s loyalty and uses it against Brienne and even hangs Brienne when Brienne doesn’t do what Stoneheart wants.
I think another positive female relationship is the one between Dany and her hand maidens (and Missandei). But even then, they are not relationships that are actually explored very well or given much nuance. I suppose there is also Arienne and the Sand Snakes, but we don’t spend much time with them actually interacting on the page.
This also bleeds into the familial relationships in the series. We don’t get much of mothers and daughters interacting. Mother and sons? Check. (Robb and Catelyn. Joffrey and Cersei.) Fathers and daughters? Check. (Asha and Balon. Doran and Arienne. Arya and Ned.) Fathers and sons? Check. (Tyrion and Tywin. Theon and Balon.) But mothers and daughters? Not much time is spent exploring their relationships and I think that is a pretty big oversight on GRRM’s part. Also a LOT more time is devoted to exploring the relationships of brothers (Greyjoy brothers. Tyrion and Jaime.) or brothers and sisters (Jaime and Cersei. Asha and Theon) than is given to sisters (Cat and Lysa, for example. Or Arya and Sansa.)
The lack of these female interactions and the fact that the female relationships seem to have less significance than relationships where at least one man is involved is troubling. I don’t think it was intentional on the part of GRRM, but I don’t think he made female relationships a priority either. I suppose there is also possibly something to be said about the way that a patriarchal society can cause women to need to fend for themselves and be isolated? And maybe that is something that the lack of female relationships is saying?
However, I DO think that the female characters interact in conversation with each other in terms of their narratives, even if they don’t meet on the page. There are so many parallels between the various women in the series that I feel like I could deconstruct it forever. But I’ll try to be brief.
I think that there is really interesting set up of the younger generation vs the older generation and how the women of the different generations reflect who the older women used to be and who the younger women might become. Let’s take Arya, Sansa, and Cersei, for instance. In the show, Tywin tells Arya that she reminds him of his daughter, and I think that is very true. Cersei and Arya both have that same boldness and that same desire to be free of the constraints that society puts on them because they are women. Cersei was much more like Arya as a child (running off and having adventures) than she was like Sansa. But in the same episode, Cersei and Sansa have a conversation about marriage. Cersei was trapped in an unhappy marriage with Robert and there is a parallel being drawn between her marriage with Robert and Sansa’s future marriage with Joffrey.
There are also parallel journeys for these women. For example, Catelyn and Cersei were both married off to strange men for purely political purposes and their two marriages show both possible outcomes of an arranged marriage. Catelyn ends up married to a good man and is happy in her marriage while Cersei is stuck with an abusive lout for a husband. So both women function as a “what might have been” for the other.
There are a ton of other examples of this. I mean, you could look at Asha and Dany as stories about women who want to rule or Asha and Arienne. Asha lacks the support of the men in her family, but Arienne has that support. You could look at Lyanna and Elia- not as rivals for Rhaegar’s affections, but as how they only really exist for us as readers in the memories of their men. Lynna in Robert and Ned’s and Elia in Doran and Oberyn’s. And both sides are determined to avenge them- Ned and Robert go to war for Lyanna while the Martells play the long game in getting justice for Elia. Like there is a LOT of fascinating stuff in there and I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface.
So you see, I think there’s this really interesting thing where the women DO interact with each other as contrasting and comparative characters and engage with each other’s stories even though they don’t meet on the page. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want more women actually having relationships in the series itself. I do! I really hope that we get some positive female relationships in the last two books, but tbh, I’m not holding my breath.
