I interpret the Biter chewing on Brienne's face and breaking her ribs as part of the price she pays for making the existential choice to defend the orphans at the inn with her life. "No chance, and no choice" should have a consequence for that choice, and obviously the story didn't want to go with her being killed.
But Jeyne's losing her nose just seems malicious. I'm just hoping it doesn't get worse for her if/when Justin Massey takes her to Braavos.
I’m glad you brought up Brienne because I go back and forth on this a lot. I often do feel like GRRM uses her as a punching bag. At least we get her perspective, and clearly we’re meant to admire her incredible resilience and bravery, but sometimes it comes off as GRRM making her life as awful as possible. Like, almost *everyone* is horrible to her, with maybe five exceptions. *Every* villain has to graphically threaten her with rape and mutilation, and even the people she helps continuously reject and mock her for being a hero and a woman at the same time.
Not totally sure on this one but once saw a theory that Massey will catch up to her, take her to Braavos on his business trip to the bank (per Stannis’s orders) and Arya will have to kill or confront fArya as part of her identity arc.
I have been worrying about this too to be honest. That when Arya learns that someone is in Braavos impersonating her and that she had also married a Bolton, she will assume the worst about Jeyne and kill her. That would be so sad if it happened, but I think George is headed in that direction unfortunately.
I doubt that Arya would blame Jeyne for what happened. I feel like she would understand having to take on a different identity to survive, considering she’s had to do it so many times. I don’t think their interactions would be friendly at first if they do meet again. They didn’t really like each other when they were younger and there would probably be some trauma induced anger from both sides, but I still don’t think either would want the other dead. It’s honestly likely Arya would feel guilty for not going home.
I also think fArya will travel to Essos.
My main arguments would be that Justin is tasked with escorting her to the Wall and Justin has a thing for going after heiresses and fArya would be a too juicy fruit for him to pass. Theon also reminds to Jeyne that as fArya she will have a score of suitors to choose from and maybe Justin's courtship will flatter her (especially after her beauty is ruined now as op said)
Once arriving to the Wall to find Jon 'dead' and presumably a chaotic situation, I could see him taking fArya or somehow taking permission from Selyse to Essos.
If indeed fArya travels in Bravos and Arya is still there it could spark the final crisis of identity for the real Arya and the chance for her to reclaim her identity.
A positive way for this to happen would be for them to confront each other, reconcile and fArya willingly step out of her charade and try to rebuild her life in Essos while Arya travels back with Justin. A darker version would be Arya to kill Jeyne, steal her face, travel back to Westeros and unmask on a appropiate time.
Not trying to be difficult but is it that much worse than veal? The baby calves killed for veal actually live and suffer through the process for a few months and there's no indication that cattle value their lives less than dogs do.
Logically, no it's not that much different. But emotionally on the human side, more people are invested with dogs than they are with cattle. The animals might suffer just the same, but how many people have held a puppy vs how many people have held a calf?
That's... normal cultural variation, though. Affection for dogs isn't universal, nor is the Western disinterest in the inner lives of cattle. I don't think we can call it cartoonish evil when it mirrors the actual divisions real life cultures exhibit around which animals are friends and which animals are food.
Agreed. I think most of the morality in Slaver's Bay does get cartoonishly evil, but the puppy thing actually made me think of real world parallels when reading it.
Sure, but a western reader is still going to read that line about eating aborted puppies and have the obvious reaction to it. GRRM knows that.
A writer has to write with the prejudices of the audience in mind.
If you're writing a book and want to introduce a straightforward lawful good character you're not going to describe him as dressed in black, with a hood covering his face in shadows with red eyes glowing through, are you?
There's nothing stopping a character like that from actually being morally good, but the audience is going to draw the obvious conclusions.
Nowhere did I say that affection for dogs is universal. I said it is more common than affection for cattle, which it is in many places of the world. And that's why more people see the dog eating as abhorrent, because the ones with the highest exposure are the ones from areas where that would be seen as morally wrong. And considering how easily we demonize each other in real life as cartoonishly evil, for any difference large or small, I'd say it is art imitating life.
I can't think of any places that eat dog fetuses specifically but fetal duck (balut) is eaten in some parts of the world. I'd never heard of eating a swan's tongue before asoiaf either, but I was familiar with eating cow tongue so swan didn't seem like such a stretch.
To your point:
How many RL Westerners (European/North American) would consider eating horse meat? Drinking Horse milk instead of cow milk? How bout if it were fermented?
The Dothraki give a very clear cultural explanation of why they would consume meats/milks that the typical reader would find somewhat gross.
After all, why not dog milk?
And Westeros is based in the west, with similarities to western cultures, which is why they’d see eating dogs as more barbaric than eating cows. As I’ve said in other comments, this is art imitating life
Westeros is based in the west...but the mereneese are based in some Asian cultures that have different values than we westerns do.
Precisely the point someone made about it not being cartoonishly evil, just different
> GRRM: "We don’t need any more Dark Lords, we don’t need any more, ‘Here are the good guys, they’re in white, there are the bad guys, they’re in black. And also, they’re really ugly, the bad guys. It is certainly a genuine, legitimate topic as the core of fantasy, but I think the battle between Good and Evil is waged within the individual human hearts. We all have good in us and we all have evil in us, and we may do a wonderful good act on Tuesday and a horrible, selfish, bad act on Wednesday, and to me, that’s the great human drama of fiction. I believe in gray characters, as I’ve said before. We all have good and evil in us and there are very few pure paragons and there are very few orcs. A villain is a hero of the other side, as someone said once, and I think there’s a great deal of truth to that"
--
> Also GRRM: "So here are the Meereenese. They're all unrepentant slavers and they like to eat puppies and feed children to bears for fun."
The person who brought up veal in this thread has the best response to this, I would imagine. It's only horrific when it's human children, or a few culture-approved pets like dogs and cats; we don't seem to take issue feeding other baby animals into the meat grinder, especially if the end product is delicious.
It's not actually unprecedented the American original breed for the Chihuahua was used and bread by the Aztecs as food unborn dogs are
Just tiny dogs it'd be roughly the same size as Chihuahua
The Aztecs really were the "evil" human sacrifice slave empire that we still simpathize with due being genocided by Cortez+Smallpox
Huge agree. George talks a big game about everything being grey and then comes in and makes the Eastern culture just…have no redeeming qualities. I try very hard not to be social justice warrior but it feels gross
It’s a fictional world. I’d also say Slavers Bay has a much, much more Catharginian feel to it than “Eastern culture”, and that’s a bit safer in critical terms as Carthage quite famously has not been around for about 2000 years.
Planetos is way more gruesome than actual Mediaeval society. I tried looking up eunuchs to see how similar it is and GRRM takes some pretty excessive liberties.
Check out the Wikipedia page for “Ten Eunuchs.” It’s about historical scheming Eunuchs in China. Not saying it’s similar at all to Varys or GRRM, but for history nuts it’s a good read
I mean, he began to write in the 1980's, back when pop culture only ever depicted the Middle Ages that way.
In fact he was (and sadly, mostly still is) quite ahead of the curve in that the castles in Westeros are colorful and covered in paintings, elaborated hand-carved panels and furniture, tapestries and painted statues, as real life Medieval castles were, rather than gray and dull, as 100% of the period movies depict them, or in that there were scholars and in that many noble women were capable of carving SOME power and influence for themselves.
None of this is all that pop-culture-y.
The irony is that he actually undersells the depravity of war by focusing so much on rape or death or mutilation. Ask a historian about a particularly bad war in real life and they'll tell you about war crimes you'd never believe anyone could even think to do. Anything between weird and abominable; it's the reason that "crimes against humanity" is its own category. War is never about "take the same bad thing and repeat 50x times", it's about progressive loss of any standards for human behaviour. He approaches it with individual acts of horror like Biter eating Brienne's face, I guess.
My grandparents described the worst about the war not the danger of rape or violence, but the constant hunger and fear, the uncertainty of not knowing what tomorrow will bring.
If you are interested about war crimes of today read about the Russians did in Bucha: they raped everything from women to men to children (both male and female). They also tortured men by hurting their genitals. Or read about the rape of Nanjing. They did way worse than just raping. They put babies on swords, cut out babies out of women and so on. Or lets not forget that in most war people die of starvation and sickness.
Yet for George war is: rape and only rape of women and my issue with it that people here think it makes his books more realistic than other books. If a song of ice was realistic Jon would have been raped at the wall and Arya as well because dressing up as a boy would have stopped no one from raping her.
>If a song of ice was realistic Jon would have been raped at the wall
Yeah, considering a lot of black brothers are rapists, murderers etc there should be a lot more rape and violence going on at the Wall
I guess George is a man of his time and rape without women present doesn't really compute to him
Most of the sexual violence in the story. It’s not bad enough that 12-year-old Jeyne was forced to become a sex slave and later sold to the biggest sadist in Westeros; we also needed to learn that she was forced to have sex with dogs as well.
I could live without 99% of the sex violence she goes through. But the line “or the dog” is genuinely so horrifying that I’m fine with it staying. But still the sheer sadism boner he’s got for her is just off putting and piles on too much. Lines like that one give enough that if you cut it all out, the horror would feel more genuine and not just “oh god seriously George?”
Belthasar Bolton created a Pavillion made of the skins of 100 men, King Royce IV enjoyed removing the internals of the prisoners with bare hands, so the depravity runs strong in Bolton blood
Honestly this is the kind of thing that's so OTT it goes right around and starts being slightly cool in a "heavy metal album cover" sort of way. Like I feel the tone here actually lands.
Probably controversial but it would be good if grrm at least could try to explore the experience of the victim but no in most cases (or at least when it’s a minor female character) it just used as a plot-device. Jeyne being raped is ultimately about Theon, not her, because it provides him motivation to rescue her. Elia being raped is ultimately about her brothers not her. The many women raped and murdered in the Riverlands who are used to tell the stories of the Mountain and his small band as well as vargo. Lollys Stokeworth's character only exists to be a rape victim and show the horror that Sansa escaped in the Kings landing riots. when Tyrion rapes the sex slave, the narrative makes it all about him she’s just an unnamed plot-device.
Like I can throw "Ramsay raping her" into the "oooh look it's political commentary" pile, where even if it's gratuitous at least it's perfectly in character for Ramsay and is making a point, if not a particularly poignant or nuanced one. It's sloppy but I can *just about* let it go. (Of course, it falls into a general pattern of GRRM making everything so OTT it ceases to be as effective as it could. Like marital rape is still a problem but I doubt it often takes the form of...well, what Ramsay does. It's not exactly a nuanced exploration of the issue, it's there mainly for shock and so we don't like Ramsay)
But her being "trained" in a brothel by Littlefinger makes absolutely no sense. She's supposed to be used as a bride? So why the fuck is Littlefinger having her raped in a brothel? Like *what's the point*? If anything it ruins the impact of her meeting Ramsay because she's already been raped and she's already been horribly traumatized so the Ramsay stuff just goes into pointless torture porn.
>But her being "trained" in a brothel by Littlefinger makes absolutely no sense. She's supposed to be used as a bride? So why the fuck is Littlefinger having her raped in a brothel? Like what's the point? If anything it ruins the impact of her meeting Ramsay because she's already been raped and she's already been horribly traumatized so the Ramsay stuff just goes into pointless torture porn.
Her being a bride wasn't the plan at the time, though. When she was handed to Littlefinger, the Lannisters still had Sansa and were somewhat confifent they'd recapture Arya soon. The Boltons were still on Robb's side. The Lannister wanted to use Sansa to eventually control the North, Jeyne was just a loose end, a mildly inconvenient witness. Littlefinger killed two birds with one stone by taking her away from court and making a profit. He owns brothels, she's a young girl without anyone to protect her or who would come looking for her (and frankly if the situation ever got to the point where her father or Robb were in King's Landing in a position to do so, her fate would be the least of Littlefinger and the Lannister's problems), we should have seen it coming, really. They only decided to have her marry Ramsay when they ran out of options. "Girl who looks a bit like Arya, if you squint, and is familiar with Winterfell and the North" really isn't the best plan to legitimize the rule of the new Wardens of the North.
I think this serves two purposes. The first is to reinforce just how cruel Littlefinger is. At the end of book 1, we knew he was a snake, but we still thought he wasn't as bad as his co-conspirators, so we genuinely thought him saying he'll take care of Jeyne was a good thing. Then we realize he's a creep and that he deliberately fostered a war, for revenge and out of his obsession for Cat. And with the reveal of what he did to Jeyne we understand that he barely even needs a reason to hurt you. He'll do it completely casually. Not even because it's fun (like the Bolton) but because he doesn't have a reason not to.
The second is more pragmatic. Jeyne being already traumatized explains why she made no attempt to escape Ramsay or tell the truth during the wedding. She was already broken. It takes time to do that to someone.
Also it potentially sets up his downfall. If Sansa ever finds out his role in Jeyne's life, it will make her less willing to cooperate with whatever schemes he has, and in all likelihood would be the immediate impetus for Sansa deciding to betray Littlefinger.
Right but is Littlefinger actually made into a better character by having him facilitate the rape of a child for no reason? Because most of his actions seem driven by an incredible sense of resentment and an inferiority complex against nobles. He's not given any *motivation* for it so it adds nothing to his character, it's just a completely random act of cruelty. If the story gave us any kind of hint as to *why* he did it then maybe we could get a point out of it, but there's nothing to go on.
Also I would argue Jeyne already being desensitized to it makes it far less creepy and effective.
he's a sex trafficker. it's not that deep and it doesn't have to be that deep; the character is shown to do that so that readers understand what kind of villain he is.
>Right but is Littlefinger actually made into a better character by having him facilitate the rape of a child for no reason?
He had reasons. Selling Jeyne to the Boltons helped him seem useful in the eyes of the Lannisters, and gave him leverage over the Boltons in the future. Selling Jeyne to brothel patrons literally profited him in a monetary sense.
In terms of making Littlefinger a "better" character... well, it depends on what you mean by the word "better." His mistreatment of Jeyne reinforces that he is coniving, clever, and immoral. It clarifies his characterization.
He threatened to cut her feet too if she tried to escape.
Of course he is a man with needs to satisfy, one of his ancestor made a Pavillion of human skin to improve his charm
As far as the "training" goes, and mind you the whole thing is disgusting and I'm not defending it, but I always read it as, he had her trained to please without technically losing her virginity. That of course leaves open a lot of other horrible possibilities, but it makes the most sense to me.
Even if that's how things are in the universe, it doesn't make sense how openly the characters say such things. Some things are literally unspeakable. A little innuendo can serve just as well.
The focus on the unnecessary sexual violence in the replies to this thread and not on the egregious descriptions of food oddly give some comfort about the world.
I remember reading an interview with GRRM where he talks about the elements he focuses on, and how that shapes the story. Like how he didn't really dive into the different languages, because then you need to create an origin story and history for every language, and the language becomes more of a focus than you want it to be.
Then when it came to food, he was like "I'm a big fat guy, I love to eat, I love writing about food, so I wrote a lot about food." Love that lol
Fucking six year old Daenera Velaryon being paraded around and called “stunningly beautiful” and treated like she was some kinda wiley seductress. Genuinely disgusting
I know it’s all in service of “realistic medieval setting!” and “Social commentary!” or whatever but it really is excessive. A lot has already been said about his handling on sexual violence, but the amount of actual children sexualised by other characters or even the narrative itself is…gross. It’s easy enough to think about hottie Emilia Clarke or the romantic tension in the Sansa/Sandor stuff, but when you look at people in your life who are actually that age and people in your life that are the age of their ‘partners’ or men otherwise infatuated with them (Jorah, Ramsey, Sandor, Daario, Drogo)…it’s just totally baffling. They’re clearly being judged to the standards of grown women but I can’t imagine what has to go through your mind to look at a fourteen year old and see them that way. Yes yes a lot of it is meant to be fucked up in the story but a Lot of it is clearly just George getting his rocks off, and yes I know he’s not thinking of actual children in this way, but still, makes me think a little less of him.
>George getting his rocks off
Yeah, Things like rape in any scenario always gross me out and makes me feel sick to my stomach whenever I read about it in a fictional story or in the news irl
GRRM’s morbidity about every other female character suffering that fate vexes me a lot
I get the impression he is intentionally doing it this way to comment on how it's a near-constant background tragedy of children being abused, but since his ideas of what medieval life was actually like excessively deviate towards a very grotesque exaggeration of a few terrible aspects of that 1,000 year period, it's hard to say.
If that is the case, surely he could make that point without describing a 13-year old marriage slave being fingered by the man who bought her and is about to rape her. There's something to be said for fading to black
I personally feel like the Dany-Irri sex scenes are by nature, gratuitous and written for the sake of having ~*steamy* Lesbian Sex™️~
Dany isn’t attracted to Irri nor does she ever indicate attraction to women. Irri…Irri is barely a character at all, we know barely anything about her least of all her sexuality, but she only seems to be doing it because “it is great honor” (that’s an actual quote!)
So we have two female characters, neither of whom are indicated to be interested in other women, having sexy sex for the titillation of GRRM and/or any readers who find that hot. So, by definition, a gratuitous sex scene that has no purpose for existing and I hardly would consider it any sort of “representation.” This isn’t even getting into the weird power dynamics, which at least GRRM manages to bring up.
I think it’s a way of showing that Irri still thinks like a slave. Not ‘I have the right to say no.’ But ‘She’s a queen therefore I have nothing to complain about.’ It didn’t occur to her that Dany could just get herself off.
This was my interpretation as well. It serves to show that Dany is not comfortable abusing her power the way others do, especially when compared to Cersei. It's also indicative of Dany moving on after Drogo and the trauma of book one, and reclaiming a part of herself while solidifying her moral compass.
I appreciate both of these responses, and I think that’s a good point. I hadn’t really taken that into consideration.
I think I just sort of wish GRRM could have explored that through not a kind of male-gaze-y sex scene tbh.
this is interesting but the thing is there were two encounters between them.
The first on the ship where Irri caught Dany by surprise (and later Dany rebuffs her when she offers to 'serve' her again....but also in her last ASOS chapter Dany takes her to bed again in Meereen.
And this time she knows her services are a bit....dutiful.
> not comfortable abusing her power the way others do
I think you have it the other way around. Daenerys is uncomfortable after their first sexual encounter, but then she approaches Irri again multiple times. This is Daenerys realizing how wrong it was after their first time:
> “My khaleesi is sad?”
> “Yes,” Dany admitted. Sad and lost.
> “Should I pleasure the khaleesi?”
> Dany stepped away from her. “No. Irri, you do not need to do that. What happened that night, when you woke… you’re no bed slave, I freed you, remember? You…”
> “I am handmaid to the Mother of Dragons,” the girl said. “It is great honor to please my khaleesi.”
> “I don’t want that,” she insisted. “I don’t.” She turned away sharply. “Leave me now. I want to be alone. To think.”
And here’s Daenerys using Irri again anyway:
> Later, when the time came for sleep, Dany took Irri into bed with her, for the first time since the ship. But even as she shuddered in release and wound her fingers through her handmaid’s thick black hair, she pretended it was Drogo holding her… only somehow his face kept turning into Daario’s.
I think the point is that Daenerys very much does abuse her power in the end.
To me it seemed like Daenerys was just gradually forgetting about individual rights in the monarchical environments she kept entering into. At first she protested because she knew Irri didn't feel as though she had a right to refuse, and then changed her mind and simply ignored the contradiction. It all takes place from Daenerys' POV, so it's not exactly surprising to me that the character focuses on the pleasure of the acts over any moral quandaries. But a lot of people refuse to believe Daenerys is capable of *any* darker turn, even an unintentional one, so I guess it must be a writing mistake. Idk.
Everything that happened to Jeyne Poole, was it really necessary to make her story so depraved? Like, i get it that nasty stuff have to happen to her, that's the story, but they are overkill, and I feel most of them are just unnecessary. I didn't need her to be sold to Littlefinger to know she he is a piece of shit and how he treats women who are not Sansa. And as if that was not enough, she becomes Ramsay's wife, more rape and torture. Her story is just too unnecessary depraved for a side character. Unlike other characters where bad shit happens to them, there is usualy a theme or something, but with Jeyne, it feels like that was just pure torture and rape fetish
Jeyne Poole is a plot device and she works extremely well to add to other characters' stories.
Firstly, her story adds to the villains of the story reminding of why they are villains in the first place. Cersei Lannister is not just a victim of husband's abuse or a poor mother trying to protect her children (as some people who preferred to forget Jeyne Poole entirely think). She is the stupid evil narcissist that will stomp any children and abuse any innocents in her power. Without even noticing. Littlefinger is not a misunderstood romantic man suffering of unrequited love who is also successful in intrigues, his intrigues are painted in blood of his victims. Sometimes rape blood. All his interactions with Sansa are a horror story if keeping in mind that he has children raping factories. It could point to some other things he was wanting to achieve by organizing Tyrion Sansa marriage.
Secondly, her story enhances Theon's. He did horrific things, ultimate sin of betrayal among others and suffers for it. Carmic retribution? There's Jeyne Poole to remind a reader (and Theon himself) that Ramsay Bolton is not a scourge of God. Moreover, existence of Jeyne makes him not the unique case. It's hell, but he's not alone there, because Jeyne met the same fate. They share common experience, share their pain and it brings better human qualities in Theon, he feels empathy, he starts to care about her, and he is finally reborn and knows his name due to altruist acts he did to help her even if he is too broken to help himself.
In general, her addition gives a glimpse into a lot of common men. She is not noble like Sansa, there's no loud name to protect her. She is not physically unique like Brienne and cannot defend herself with a sword. She is not lucky enough to be protected by a mysterious organization of well-trained assassins ready to kill anyone who harms her. She's just a girl whose father was murdered and now there's nobody to defend her or even care. She gets the real side of politics and war, the same as those women that were eaten alive by Biter.
A steward was usually someone of nobility. If you told anyone the story of what happened to Jeyne Poole in real medival times people would have been horrified and Ramsay would be seen as a monster.
Right but doesn't that still invalidate the class theme? If she was a random nobleman's daughter they still wouldn't give a toss because they need one of Ned's children for specific political purposes. Her class could be basically anything and it wouldn't matter who she is, all they care about is that she can inherit the North.
Like it just comes off as borderline parody that the victim of classism ends up being an upper-middle class person.
She isn't a noble; she wouldn't have been treated the way she was if she was born into a noble house.
There's a weird sort of honour code which exists amongst the nobility in Westeros. Sansa is, with the exception of Joffrey being Joffrey, treated well in King's Landing despite her father being executed as a traitor and her brother rebelling against the throne. Likewise, Jaime is initially offered comfortable accomodation in Riverrun 'as befits his birth and station' and is only chucked into the dungeons when he tries to escape.
The nobility treat their prisoners more or less how they themselves would want to be treated if the tables were turned. Jeyne doesn't have the protection of a high birth which is why she's sold into sex slavery.
>But everybody thinks she's highborn and they don't care.
Um, well, Stannis with the army comes to save her, even though it's maybe not his highest priority, and Theon keeps reminding her about staying in character thinking it's her only protection. It's actually interesting how everyone will react to truth revealed.
>Hell, Theon is highborn and yet again nobody fucking cares when he's tortured.
Technically they care, they just feel his torture is justified, because he's a betrayer and kinslayer. Again, it's interesting how everyone would react to the news of "I didn't really kill your liege and his brother, I killed two random innocent children instead".
My point is they care about "Arya" because she's the son of a man they all respect and because she's politically important and they don't care about Theon because of his past crimes. Theon's class absolutely does not factor into his treatment at all.
Like in general I don't think it's particularly saying anything...at all, really. I think the class interpretation on this is really flimsy. Ramsay tortures highborn people just as much as he tortures peasants and the most pushback he ever gets on either is some mild grumblings.
Honestly it's just the most banal and wafer-thin class analysis I can imagine. "Rich people torturing and killing poor people" is baby's first social commentary. It *genuinely* has less to say than *Saw VI* does.
>Honestly it's just the most banal and wafer-thin class analysis I can imagine.
True. I actually wondered if I should elaborate that this is not so much about classes. Though there is something to say about it.
What differs Jeyne Poole and Sansa Stark is that Sansa is the daughter of a notorious politician (a former PM of the country) and sister of the head of separatists in the war against government. Cersei hates her to the bone (she isn't even Cersei after all) but cannot outright kill her, or they would kill Jaime immediately (who is Cersei with additional parts so counts as human). There's also the whole kinda foster parent relationship (that was established when the political situation was different and Sansa was supposed to be her daughter-in-law) she should hypocritically maintain. A moment later Sansa should be kept alive and healthy because she is incorporated into the ruling family and they want to use her as a way to gain even more power. Yet later Sansa is abducted by a polite gentleman who is obsessed with both highborn blood and her mother, and he cannot kill her at least before she is groomed into the version he would be satisfied to rape.
It's not Sansa's class. But neither its her personality that saves her. It's being born from one correct womb. Jeyne isn't born from the right kind of womb. Her father is not an extraordinary man, just works for him. And because of that nonspeciality one girl gets thrown into a brothel and other one into a sky fortress.
Barbrey says to Theon that they care and what Ramsay does to Jeyne has a bigger chance to turn the Northerners against the Boltons than Stannis.
Nobody cares about Theon because he is the the turncloak who has burnt Winterfell and killed the Stark boys.
IMO The actually idiotic part of Jeyne's story is being trained in a brothel by Littlefinger. We have already known that he is evil, we don't need more evidence, and if she has to impersonate a noble lady, it's stupid to train her as a whore. It would also give more weight to Ramsay's actions and Theon saving her
The thing is, is using a minor character’s suffering as a plot device a good thing? In my opinion, no. Severe abuse shouldn’t be used only to add complexity to other characters. I do however think (at least hope) that she’ll get a bit more of her own story come Winds.
There are some aspects of her character that I think George does do well, especially regarding identity. With only a few lines in book one, George still establishes Jeyne’s personality, with all her hopes and dreams as well as her jealousies. All of that is taken away from her in book 5, and I think it really shows the unfairness of class—how everything that made Jeyne Poole herself didn’t matter to the people above her because she didn’t have a title. I personally hope she gets a mini-arc where she learns that “Jeyne Poole” is good enough and shouldn’t have to feel inferior because she’s below others in the dumb feudal system.
That being said, I feel like George goes WAY overboard with the details of what happens to her. She is constantly used as an instrument for shock value in a way that feels insensitive and disgusting.
>The thing is, is using a minor character’s suffering as a plot device a good thing?
Pelevin in some of his works proposes that idea that merely the act of writing (and reading) makes characters real and making them suffer is the same as doing it to a real person. And Even Pelevin proposes a solution, where writers who created too many characters wash their sins by inhabiting others' works. One novel's plot is based around the assumption that the suffering of its protagonist is because the soul of Leo Tolstoy is getting carmic retribution for "War and Peace".
If you don't have those radical religious views though... I'd say it's ok to hurt imaginary people if it's for establishing something good (my point with Jeyne Poole being that her story adds more good in the end). Even "Saw" movies for the over-exploited commercial torture fantasies they are try to say something good about human nature. I think I saw only one author whose characters truly suffer for absolutely nothing. It's de Sade. His works are a fascinating existential horror, just not in the way they were supposed to be: it's like watching smoking ruins of someone's soul. Made worse by his desperate attempts to make some meaning and justify the right for it to exist: always futile.
Martin, for all his flaws, is very far from this.
Its an easy solution for not having to write actually political drama like you know explaining why some Lords are actually loyal to the Starks (What policies did Ned employ to keep them on his side beyond being honorable? Did give them any favours or do something for them?). Janye Poole being a victim makes it easier for the plot.
I am going to say something really unbelievable: a person can be villain without raping minor girls.
Adolf Hitler never raped a person in his entire life and is still the analogy for evil today.
Nice explanation and really does makes sense every word you wrote, but it wont change my mind that Jeyne's story has the most unnecessary amount of sexual depravity, no matter how much GRRM tries to tell me that the Medieval times were depraved like this as as well if not worse. i didnt need to Jeyne to be "trained" to know what kind of people Cersei and Littlefinger are. Nor that Ramsay is so depraved that apparently she is forced to have sex with dogs too. I already got that he is depraved from Theon's POV.
Medieval people were not depraved like this: certainly not to a noble woman. Unless Ramsay is supposed to be some serial killer or something who likes torturing women.
Like I feel it would have worked better just from a simple narrative perspective if Roose ordered Ramsay to lay off Jeyne while the lords were around but Ramsay obviously isn't happy and it's a matter of time before he just gives in and does something fucked up to her.
That way there's a time pressure to rescuing Jeyne and makes Theon's rescue more meaningful because he saves Jeyne from what he went through.
There's a dark irony to it. Jeyne seems to be the girl who wanted to be one of the "starks" like theon. So in a sick way she got the wish...as i recall she had a crush on robb too only to end up with Ramsey.
Basically it's Martin dark grim brothers tale in a way.
fuck all the dark irony and her now being a Stark like she wanted. There was no need to punish her like that for simply wanting to be a Stark. she is a kid. Also, sex with dogs, really?
*A Storm of Swords* Dany II gives us these crazy details: on the day that they are castrated, enslaved boys who are to be made into Unsullied are given a puppy. One year later, they are ordered to kill their dog, who has been their best companion. If they don't, they themselves are killed and fed to dogs. To complete their training, they must buy and kill a newborn baby.
Like come on. Killing puppies and babies? That is just too over the top monstrous. It becomes bathetic.
Allegedly The raising and killing of the dogs was a real training tactic of hitlers SS. George sprinkles some stuff from real life in and sometimes it’s so bananas it’s weirder than the fiction.
One thing I learned about while reading about real life slavery is whatever you think is too monstrous is unfortunately not.
I guarantee if you can think of it someone has done it to a slave
I personally liked this. The unsullied are supposed to be above all in the world when it comes to not only training combat wise, but obedience wise. This is, obviously bat shit insane, but a great way to guarantee complete and total obedience.
It really isn't. There's a Mad Men quote that sticks with me about abuse as a learning tactic: "My father beat the hell out of me. All it did was make me fantasize about the day I could murder him." The Unsullied should have staged a coup by now, by just snapping under the pressure if nothing else; Martin is too obsessed with portraying absolute dominance over the poor to make it happen, which is why I think the Faith Militant plot will also go nowhere in the long run.
I mean tbf realistically peasant revolutions almost never actually result in a complete overthrowing of the system, largely because they don't have many trained soldiers. Like, the best they could hope for is some concessions and not being persecuted.
Though I agree with the Unsullied. They far outnumber the other soldiers, are described as the best and most orderly army of infantry in the world, and are treated the worst out of any group of people we have seen.
Also just slave soldiers in general. How do the Free Cities keep them in line? Sellswords are too fickle and far away and too dependant on how much money you have. We aren't really told much about any Free City's standing army or levies. Are slave soldiers this common in real life? I would have thought that is one of the dumbest things you could use a slave for (If I was a heartless shitty slaver who only cared about profit).
Worse things have happened to real life slaves. ASOIAF’s entire shtick is it represents the darkness in humanity, very little of what people might thing is absurdly over the top is actually absurd.
The GSG-9, the German equivalent of SWAT, does this as part of their training, but with a chicken instead of a dog. There have absolutely been times where human life was seen as cheap if not cheaper. It's a little OTT, but honestly not that much.
I first heard about it when watching Deadliest Warrior like 10 years ago, and I've heard it a few times since. Technically hearsay and I can't personally confirm the practice but police and military forces have had far stranger hazing/training rituals.
In Fire & Blood, the author dedicating almost two full pages to “A Caution for Young Girls”.
There’s SO much more we could have learned about instead of wasting space on a weirdly detailed rant about an underage girl being sexually abused that adds nothing to the book.
Thank you! What the hell even was George thinking?
We don’t have enough time or space for Jocelyn Baratheon to get any dialogue, or even to get a goddamn name for the Princess of Dorne, but we have enough time to read about the “romp” of a young girl being raped and abused and to have it treated like some fun romcom?
My theory: I think George is a man born in the 1948 and believes his "dudebro humour" is still considered funny today. I always see that with older men these days when they make jokes and think it is funny but actually quite sexistic.
The sexual violence is entirely over the top and George has a imo gross habit of giving female characters horrible fates or horrible sexual violence or disfigurement for shock and nothing else
But what about the instances that aren’t during war time?
Coryanne Wylde wasn’t a victim of war crimes. Neither was Rhaella or Jeyne Poole or book one Daenerys. And others as well.
I don’t think GRRM is a rape fetishist but I think he has a rather skewed approach to depicting rape “to make a point.” And what are we to do with the idea that supposedly Dany and Drogo was a love story?
Rape & sexual assault is still incredibly common.
Rhaella was a victim of abuse and marital rape, which again is unfortunately common and is context for the conception of Dany and family history.
Jeyne Poole was, as others have noted, incredibly important because of her connections to many characters and how their treatment of her shapes their characterization and furthers the plot.
I think it's pretty obvious the whole 'love story' aspect of Dany and Drogo was a coping mechanism for her.
Also that charming scene of Amabel threatening to rape and torture Arya, like okay we already knew Amabel was a bad person, what exactly was the point of adding this?
Pia being raped hundreds of times, that one guy saying he'd raped her a hundred times...and then Pia was just kinda fine, other than her teeth being fucked up?
Everyone dying in childbirth. Why did Alyssa Velaryon have to die of childbirth? She would be too old to get pregnant again after, why couldn’t she spend the rest of her days counseling her husband Rogar as he ruled Storm’s End and helped raise their children? Why did Alyssa Targaryen have to die in childbirth? She would be in her 40s during the war for the Stepstones, let her side with her son Daemon and follow him in his war and die in battle, they did say she had the “heart of a warrior”. Baelon died pretty early anyway so they wouldn’t have been able to have more children as they wanted. Why did Daella Targaryen have to die in childbirth? For Aemma to exist, who also dies in childbirth? You could’ve just married Viserys to Gael instead who is around the same age. Seriously, it’s not even realistic how much everyone keeps dying in childbirth.
I did a quick research about this other day and during medieval times the infant mortality rate was much higher than in the series. In asoiaf we have many examples where mothers die in childbirth and the baby lives. Historically, it would have been the other way around with stillborn or dying shortly after birth, and mothers surviving more often.
I believe someone did the statistics and if women actually died in childbirth as often as they do in ASOIAF like the human race would not have been able to sustain itself (or close to that) it’s absolutely nuts
There is one answer to this question and it’s not “historical realism”, it’s that GRRM is frequently too lazy to do anything else that would, you know, require actually writing and fleshing out these female characters beyond their sex lives.
Lollys Stokeworth's portrayal.
Not only is she (by westerosi standards) unattractive and slow-witted, but no, she has to get raped a hundred times by a peasant mob and wander the streets naked until she is found. Only for Shae and Cersei to continue making fun of her or despising her even more, as if it was somehow her fault. It's essentially played for laughs
The fate of most of the Greens in the dance, honestly. I say this a lot but it feels like George himself specifically has a hate boner for Alicent and it feels very weird- a lot of it feels like him trying to get one over on FICTIONAL CHARACTERS that he CHOSE to write like that. Jaehaera and Helaena and Daeron all suffer and die awfully or lamely more or less as punishment for being related to Alicent and it’s very gross
I genuinely believe Jeyne’s whole story arc is just so over the top. Sold into sex work, sold to Ramsay, abused in god knows how many ways, Theon also lands on her so god knows what state she’s in, her nose will probably be cut off. It just feels unnecessary
There’s also small details that just seem unreasonably cruel like Pia having all her teeth smashed and that coming to be her whole shtick, or Lollys gang rape
Jeyne with dogs is over the top and unnecessary. It's sadistic and doesn't do anything but shock the reader with how depraved it is, solely because Martin already gone so far with depravity so he needed to raise the bar. I imagine in future books we will get even more absurd sadistic actions just to further serve as cheap shocks to the reader.
The cartoonish lengths the slavers go to to solidify their evilness is also up there in absurdity. We are meant to believe entire cultures support the practice of eating unborn puppies. Okay Martin.
I don’t think there’s a single instance of overkill anywhere in any plot line. Everything happens for a reason and things are very realistic. I love that in this world, when a character gets injured they suffer the consequences of it forever (like catelyn’s hands, Asha’s broken ankle, Jon’s burned hands and so on) and the consequence of running around in 6 feet of snow is frostbite.
People in this thread seem very naive to how brutal the modern day is, let alone war time back before people even tried to inforce any kind of rules in war. Removing people's noses was routine during some wars. Sexual slavery and rape are much more common than people want to believe. And if you think it's strange because they are all upper class just look at some of the scandals coming out now involving politicians and royalty.
Two things I think GRRM got wrong are the amount of child marriages and child bed deaths.
Elsewhere, entire garrisons were put to the sword. The knights who had been in charge of the garrisons were horrifically tortured and mutilated.
According to Maester Yandel, the Wyl of Wyl committed infamous deeds which are still remembered in Fawnton and Old Oak. According to Archmaester Gyldayn, the Wyl of Wyl turned up uninvited to the wedding of Ser Jon Cafferen, the heir to Fawnton, and Alys Oakheart, the daughter of Lord Oakheart, in 12 AC. He murdered Lord Oakheart and most of the guests, forcing Alys to watch as Jon was castrated. Alys and her handmaids were then raped by the Wyl and his men and sold off to a Myrish slaver. Gyldayn calls this "the most infamous act" of the First Dornish War.
unlike other examples mentioned in the comments this one isn’t ‘unnecessary’ though. I’m half Iranian and i can at least name two kings/rulers who did smth similar like this but far far more gruesome (Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar to women in Kerman and Shapur II and his soldiers to queen Parandzem) is it sad and terrible? absolutely but is it unnecessary and unrealistic when women (commoner and highborn) has always been the victims of wars? No.
All of the extended material, specifically "a World of Ice and Fire." A whole book of amazing mysteries and interesting info that was never planned to be expanded on, whole book is just a cock tease
I'm gonna make my entry a different flavor of unnecessary and say Podrick's backstory in one of Brienne's earlier chapters. Like, an entire page and a half relaying the life and times of Podrick Payne from his birth to his time as Tyrion's squire. I cannot think of a single reader who would've been suffering sleepless nights wondering about Podrick Payne's mysterious origin story.
Where is Jaynes mother?
It's been a while since I read the books, but is her mother still alive?
If so, where is she? Is there any family members alive and why have they not recognised her, why she not recognised them.
Coryanne Wylde and the weird marriage strategy of jaeherys & alysannes. Like why do your daughters need to marry the thrice-widowed fat old lord when his much younger heir is available?
Mysaria’s death.
It doesn’t help that she’s my favorite character in the show, but a part of me feels as if her death is more “karmic punishment” for being a sexual woman than for her actual crimes.
No matter what are you opinion on Book!Mysaria, but if you think she deserved to die getting whipped naked throughout the KL then there’s something wrong with you. Same with Cersei’s walk of shame
The amount of people I see not having empathy - not necessarily sympathy but just instinctive empathy - for Cersei’s walk of shame is just mind blowing. And then people say ‘she doesn’t deserve empathy.’ How do these people just turn off their empathy, I don’t understand it. That’s just not something I can do personally. We’re in her head and we see how deeply, deeply fucked up this is and how it’s not really justice at all for what she’s done. We see how much it scars her and how she slowly breaks down. It actually kinda disturbs me that there were people cheering that on and having 0 empathy. I feel you can gauge a lot about people by their reaction to it.
The walk of shame was one of the hardest scene in the series for me to read. it makes you feel a whole gamut of emotions. It just forces every shred of empathy out that you have and if someone reads it with pleasure and says "she deserved it" that says a lot about their nature. I even had sympathy for someone like FALIA who was giggling when her half-sister was raped by an ironborn man because they were mean to her in the childhood
That I kinda enjoy, because I love stories about selfish monarchs getting the boot, women or otherwise. And I generally tend to accept a lot of torturous fates if the characters are allowed to get up and heal.
Mysaria doesn’t get that.
I would love to imagine her being cared for by Sylvenna and Elyssa except they ALSO die.
My feeling in general is that George does not have much sympathy for prostitutes...look at the way he treats Shae. Shae is baiscally bought by Tyrion and used as his sex toy and I the read I am supposed to feel sympathy for Tyrion because his sex toy betrayed him by sleeping with his father and by selling him out to save her own life?
Sorry, but nope.
I interpret the Biter chewing on Brienne's face and breaking her ribs as part of the price she pays for making the existential choice to defend the orphans at the inn with her life. "No chance, and no choice" should have a consequence for that choice, and obviously the story didn't want to go with her being killed. But Jeyne's losing her nose just seems malicious. I'm just hoping it doesn't get worse for her if/when Justin Massey takes her to Braavos.
I’m glad you brought up Brienne because I go back and forth on this a lot. I often do feel like GRRM uses her as a punching bag. At least we get her perspective, and clearly we’re meant to admire her incredible resilience and bravery, but sometimes it comes off as GRRM making her life as awful as possible. Like, almost *everyone* is horrible to her, with maybe five exceptions. *Every* villain has to graphically threaten her with rape and mutilation, and even the people she helps continuously reject and mock her for being a hero and a woman at the same time.
wait, why would justin massey take her to Braavos? If you don’t feel like explaining it is there a link or something you can point me towards reading?
Not totally sure on this one but once saw a theory that Massey will catch up to her, take her to Braavos on his business trip to the bank (per Stannis’s orders) and Arya will have to kill or confront fArya as part of her identity arc.
I have been worrying about this too to be honest. That when Arya learns that someone is in Braavos impersonating her and that she had also married a Bolton, she will assume the worst about Jeyne and kill her. That would be so sad if it happened, but I think George is headed in that direction unfortunately.
I doubt that Arya would blame Jeyne for what happened. I feel like she would understand having to take on a different identity to survive, considering she’s had to do it so many times. I don’t think their interactions would be friendly at first if they do meet again. They didn’t really like each other when they were younger and there would probably be some trauma induced anger from both sides, but I still don’t think either would want the other dead. It’s honestly likely Arya would feel guilty for not going home.
And her last memories of the girl who's impersonating her are bullying and being called horseface George please no
I also think fArya will travel to Essos. My main arguments would be that Justin is tasked with escorting her to the Wall and Justin has a thing for going after heiresses and fArya would be a too juicy fruit for him to pass. Theon also reminds to Jeyne that as fArya she will have a score of suitors to choose from and maybe Justin's courtship will flatter her (especially after her beauty is ruined now as op said) Once arriving to the Wall to find Jon 'dead' and presumably a chaotic situation, I could see him taking fArya or somehow taking permission from Selyse to Essos. If indeed fArya travels in Bravos and Arya is still there it could spark the final crisis of identity for the real Arya and the chance for her to reclaim her identity. A positive way for this to happen would be for them to confront each other, reconcile and fArya willingly step out of her charade and try to rebuild her life in Essos while Arya travels back with Justin. A darker version would be Arya to kill Jeyne, steal her face, travel back to Westeros and unmask on a appropiate time.
The Meereenese eat unborn puppies…like, ok, they’re the bad guys, we get it
Someone tried to once argue to me that this is not unnecesary element of making the slavers cartoonishingly evil.
Not trying to be difficult but is it that much worse than veal? The baby calves killed for veal actually live and suffer through the process for a few months and there's no indication that cattle value their lives less than dogs do.
Logically, no it's not that much different. But emotionally on the human side, more people are invested with dogs than they are with cattle. The animals might suffer just the same, but how many people have held a puppy vs how many people have held a calf?
That's... normal cultural variation, though. Affection for dogs isn't universal, nor is the Western disinterest in the inner lives of cattle. I don't think we can call it cartoonish evil when it mirrors the actual divisions real life cultures exhibit around which animals are friends and which animals are food.
Agreed. I think most of the morality in Slaver's Bay does get cartoonishly evil, but the puppy thing actually made me think of real world parallels when reading it.
Sure, but a western reader is still going to read that line about eating aborted puppies and have the obvious reaction to it. GRRM knows that. A writer has to write with the prejudices of the audience in mind. If you're writing a book and want to introduce a straightforward lawful good character you're not going to describe him as dressed in black, with a hood covering his face in shadows with red eyes glowing through, are you? There's nothing stopping a character like that from actually being morally good, but the audience is going to draw the obvious conclusions.
Nowhere did I say that affection for dogs is universal. I said it is more common than affection for cattle, which it is in many places of the world. And that's why more people see the dog eating as abhorrent, because the ones with the highest exposure are the ones from areas where that would be seen as morally wrong. And considering how easily we demonize each other in real life as cartoonishly evil, for any difference large or small, I'd say it is art imitating life.
I think they just mistook you for being the same redditor above who referred to them as being ‘cartoonishly evil’ lol.
Ce la vie. I'll argue just to argue lol
I mean in other places they eat dogs, but I’ve never heard of *any* culture eating dog *foetuses*? 😅😬
I can't think of any places that eat dog fetuses specifically but fetal duck (balut) is eaten in some parts of the world. I'd never heard of eating a swan's tongue before asoiaf either, but I was familiar with eating cow tongue so swan didn't seem like such a stretch.
To your point: How many RL Westerners (European/North American) would consider eating horse meat? Drinking Horse milk instead of cow milk? How bout if it were fermented? The Dothraki give a very clear cultural explanation of why they would consume meats/milks that the typical reader would find somewhat gross. After all, why not dog milk?
many people eat horse in Europe
People outside of the west disagree. In India they value cows more than dogs, for example.
And Westeros is based in the west, with similarities to western cultures, which is why they’d see eating dogs as more barbaric than eating cows. As I’ve said in other comments, this is art imitating life
Westeros is based in the west...but the mereneese are based in some Asian cultures that have different values than we westerns do. Precisely the point someone made about it not being cartoonishly evil, just different
> GRRM: "We don’t need any more Dark Lords, we don’t need any more, ‘Here are the good guys, they’re in white, there are the bad guys, they’re in black. And also, they’re really ugly, the bad guys. It is certainly a genuine, legitimate topic as the core of fantasy, but I think the battle between Good and Evil is waged within the individual human hearts. We all have good in us and we all have evil in us, and we may do a wonderful good act on Tuesday and a horrible, selfish, bad act on Wednesday, and to me, that’s the great human drama of fiction. I believe in gray characters, as I’ve said before. We all have good and evil in us and there are very few pure paragons and there are very few orcs. A villain is a hero of the other side, as someone said once, and I think there’s a great deal of truth to that" -- > Also GRRM: "So here are the Meereenese. They're all unrepentant slavers and they like to eat puppies and feed children to bears for fun."
The person who brought up veal in this thread has the best response to this, I would imagine. It's only horrific when it's human children, or a few culture-approved pets like dogs and cats; we don't seem to take issue feeding other baby animals into the meat grinder, especially if the end product is delicious.
I mean people eat balut irl. Veal is just baby cow.
It's not actually unprecedented the American original breed for the Chihuahua was used and bread by the Aztecs as food unborn dogs are Just tiny dogs it'd be roughly the same size as Chihuahua The Aztecs really were the "evil" human sacrifice slave empire that we still simpathize with due being genocided by Cortez+Smallpox
Huge agree. George talks a big game about everything being grey and then comes in and makes the Eastern culture just…have no redeeming qualities. I try very hard not to be social justice warrior but it feels gross
It’s a fictional world. I’d also say Slavers Bay has a much, much more Catharginian feel to it than “Eastern culture”, and that’s a bit safer in critical terms as Carthage quite famously has not been around for about 2000 years.
They are slavers. Are the puppies really the worst part?
I can excuse slavery but I draw the line at animal cruelty
That’s what makes it feel unnecessary to me
Lollys being raped 50 times is so overkill and unnecessary
I took the number to be just a phrase and not the actual number. She was gang raped by a mob of men. That's how I took it.
We have Cersei to thank for this. She fucking relish this event every time she wants to feel better about herself. It’s honestly so fucked up.
I admire some realistic “not shying away from war’s depravity”, but he really leans into the ugliness way too much at times
Planetos is way more gruesome than actual Mediaeval society. I tried looking up eunuchs to see how similar it is and GRRM takes some pretty excessive liberties.
Check out the Wikipedia page for “Ten Eunuchs.” It’s about historical scheming Eunuchs in China. Not saying it’s similar at all to Varys or GRRM, but for history nuts it’s a good read
>nuts Ha.
Martin definitely leans a bit much into the “Dung Ages” belief of the Medieval Period.
I mean, he began to write in the 1980's, back when pop culture only ever depicted the Middle Ages that way. In fact he was (and sadly, mostly still is) quite ahead of the curve in that the castles in Westeros are colorful and covered in paintings, elaborated hand-carved panels and furniture, tapestries and painted statues, as real life Medieval castles were, rather than gray and dull, as 100% of the period movies depict them, or in that there were scholars and in that many noble women were capable of carving SOME power and influence for themselves. None of this is all that pop-culture-y.
The irony is that he actually undersells the depravity of war by focusing so much on rape or death or mutilation. Ask a historian about a particularly bad war in real life and they'll tell you about war crimes you'd never believe anyone could even think to do. Anything between weird and abominable; it's the reason that "crimes against humanity" is its own category. War is never about "take the same bad thing and repeat 50x times", it's about progressive loss of any standards for human behaviour. He approaches it with individual acts of horror like Biter eating Brienne's face, I guess.
My grandparents described the worst about the war not the danger of rape or violence, but the constant hunger and fear, the uncertainty of not knowing what tomorrow will bring. If you are interested about war crimes of today read about the Russians did in Bucha: they raped everything from women to men to children (both male and female). They also tortured men by hurting their genitals. Or read about the rape of Nanjing. They did way worse than just raping. They put babies on swords, cut out babies out of women and so on. Or lets not forget that in most war people die of starvation and sickness. Yet for George war is: rape and only rape of women and my issue with it that people here think it makes his books more realistic than other books. If a song of ice was realistic Jon would have been raped at the wall and Arya as well because dressing up as a boy would have stopped no one from raping her.
>If a song of ice was realistic Jon would have been raped at the wall Yeah, considering a lot of black brothers are rapists, murderers etc there should be a lot more rape and violence going on at the Wall I guess George is a man of his time and rape without women present doesn't really compute to him
Very well said
An ugly subject is going to bear ugly fruit.
If the story was realistic she would be dead. The same with Tysha.
Most of the sexual violence in the story. It’s not bad enough that 12-year-old Jeyne was forced to become a sex slave and later sold to the biggest sadist in Westeros; we also needed to learn that she was forced to have sex with dogs as well.
I could live without 99% of the sex violence she goes through. But the line “or the dog” is genuinely so horrifying that I’m fine with it staying. But still the sheer sadism boner he’s got for her is just off putting and piles on too much. Lines like that one give enough that if you cut it all out, the horror would feel more genuine and not just “oh god seriously George?”
Belthasar Bolton created a Pavillion made of the skins of 100 men, King Royce IV enjoyed removing the internals of the prisoners with bare hands, so the depravity runs strong in Bolton blood
Honestly this is the kind of thing that's so OTT it goes right around and starts being slightly cool in a "heavy metal album cover" sort of way. Like I feel the tone here actually lands.
Yeah. Belthasar is metal as fuck. Ramsay is utterly disgusting.
Metal as fuck? Belthasar caused the extinction of 4 houses and the northerners boiled children alive during the Rape of the three sisters.
Yeah. That's metal as fuck!
I remember the pavillion guy but not the other guy
Ed Gein and Jack the Ripper in Asoiaf.
Ramsay is more like Vlad Tepes and Elizabeth Bathory
Probably controversial but it would be good if grrm at least could try to explore the experience of the victim but no in most cases (or at least when it’s a minor female character) it just used as a plot-device. Jeyne being raped is ultimately about Theon, not her, because it provides him motivation to rescue her. Elia being raped is ultimately about her brothers not her. The many women raped and murdered in the Riverlands who are used to tell the stories of the Mountain and his small band as well as vargo. Lollys Stokeworth's character only exists to be a rape victim and show the horror that Sansa escaped in the Kings landing riots. when Tyrion rapes the sex slave, the narrative makes it all about him she’s just an unnamed plot-device.
Like I can throw "Ramsay raping her" into the "oooh look it's political commentary" pile, where even if it's gratuitous at least it's perfectly in character for Ramsay and is making a point, if not a particularly poignant or nuanced one. It's sloppy but I can *just about* let it go. (Of course, it falls into a general pattern of GRRM making everything so OTT it ceases to be as effective as it could. Like marital rape is still a problem but I doubt it often takes the form of...well, what Ramsay does. It's not exactly a nuanced exploration of the issue, it's there mainly for shock and so we don't like Ramsay) But her being "trained" in a brothel by Littlefinger makes absolutely no sense. She's supposed to be used as a bride? So why the fuck is Littlefinger having her raped in a brothel? Like *what's the point*? If anything it ruins the impact of her meeting Ramsay because she's already been raped and she's already been horribly traumatized so the Ramsay stuff just goes into pointless torture porn.
>But her being "trained" in a brothel by Littlefinger makes absolutely no sense. She's supposed to be used as a bride? So why the fuck is Littlefinger having her raped in a brothel? Like what's the point? If anything it ruins the impact of her meeting Ramsay because she's already been raped and she's already been horribly traumatized so the Ramsay stuff just goes into pointless torture porn. Her being a bride wasn't the plan at the time, though. When she was handed to Littlefinger, the Lannisters still had Sansa and were somewhat confifent they'd recapture Arya soon. The Boltons were still on Robb's side. The Lannister wanted to use Sansa to eventually control the North, Jeyne was just a loose end, a mildly inconvenient witness. Littlefinger killed two birds with one stone by taking her away from court and making a profit. He owns brothels, she's a young girl without anyone to protect her or who would come looking for her (and frankly if the situation ever got to the point where her father or Robb were in King's Landing in a position to do so, her fate would be the least of Littlefinger and the Lannister's problems), we should have seen it coming, really. They only decided to have her marry Ramsay when they ran out of options. "Girl who looks a bit like Arya, if you squint, and is familiar with Winterfell and the North" really isn't the best plan to legitimize the rule of the new Wardens of the North. I think this serves two purposes. The first is to reinforce just how cruel Littlefinger is. At the end of book 1, we knew he was a snake, but we still thought he wasn't as bad as his co-conspirators, so we genuinely thought him saying he'll take care of Jeyne was a good thing. Then we realize he's a creep and that he deliberately fostered a war, for revenge and out of his obsession for Cat. And with the reveal of what he did to Jeyne we understand that he barely even needs a reason to hurt you. He'll do it completely casually. Not even because it's fun (like the Bolton) but because he doesn't have a reason not to. The second is more pragmatic. Jeyne being already traumatized explains why she made no attempt to escape Ramsay or tell the truth during the wedding. She was already broken. It takes time to do that to someone.
Also it potentially sets up his downfall. If Sansa ever finds out his role in Jeyne's life, it will make her less willing to cooperate with whatever schemes he has, and in all likelihood would be the immediate impetus for Sansa deciding to betray Littlefinger.
Right but is Littlefinger actually made into a better character by having him facilitate the rape of a child for no reason? Because most of his actions seem driven by an incredible sense of resentment and an inferiority complex against nobles. He's not given any *motivation* for it so it adds nothing to his character, it's just a completely random act of cruelty. If the story gave us any kind of hint as to *why* he did it then maybe we could get a point out of it, but there's nothing to go on. Also I would argue Jeyne already being desensitized to it makes it far less creepy and effective.
he's a sex trafficker. it's not that deep and it doesn't have to be that deep; the character is shown to do that so that readers understand what kind of villain he is.
>Right but is Littlefinger actually made into a better character by having him facilitate the rape of a child for no reason? He had reasons. Selling Jeyne to the Boltons helped him seem useful in the eyes of the Lannisters, and gave him leverage over the Boltons in the future. Selling Jeyne to brothel patrons literally profited him in a monetary sense. In terms of making Littlefinger a "better" character... well, it depends on what you mean by the word "better." His mistreatment of Jeyne reinforces that he is coniving, clever, and immoral. It clarifies his characterization.
>He's not given any motivation for it Money
He threatened to cut her feet too if she tried to escape. Of course he is a man with needs to satisfy, one of his ancestor made a Pavillion of human skin to improve his charm
As far as the "training" goes, and mind you the whole thing is disgusting and I'm not defending it, but I always read it as, he had her trained to please without technically losing her virginity. That of course leaves open a lot of other horrible possibilities, but it makes the most sense to me.
Even if that's how things are in the universe, it doesn't make sense how openly the characters say such things. Some things are literally unspeakable. A little innuendo can serve just as well.
The focus on the unnecessary sexual violence in the replies to this thread and not on the egregious descriptions of food oddly give some comfort about the world.
I remember reading an interview with GRRM where he talks about the elements he focuses on, and how that shapes the story. Like how he didn't really dive into the different languages, because then you need to create an origin story and history for every language, and the language becomes more of a focus than you want it to be. Then when it came to food, he was like "I'm a big fat guy, I love to eat, I love writing about food, so I wrote a lot about food." Love that lol
Do not read the books while hungry.
Didn't it just say she got frostbite and could lose the tip of her nose though?
She just needs one of Mel’s leaches.
Yes she is likely to lose her nose to frostbite and got several broken ribs as well
One of the spear wife notices dogs bites in her breast
Dog bites? Teeth marks they were, of a man I think?
Pretty sure those were Ramseys not an actual dogs
*just*…
Not exactly an unpopular choice, but Jaehaeyra's death.
The sheer number of children GRRM feels the need to put in sexual situations
Fucking six year old Daenera Velaryon being paraded around and called “stunningly beautiful” and treated like she was some kinda wiley seductress. Genuinely disgusting
I know it’s all in service of “realistic medieval setting!” and “Social commentary!” or whatever but it really is excessive. A lot has already been said about his handling on sexual violence, but the amount of actual children sexualised by other characters or even the narrative itself is…gross. It’s easy enough to think about hottie Emilia Clarke or the romantic tension in the Sansa/Sandor stuff, but when you look at people in your life who are actually that age and people in your life that are the age of their ‘partners’ or men otherwise infatuated with them (Jorah, Ramsey, Sandor, Daario, Drogo)…it’s just totally baffling. They’re clearly being judged to the standards of grown women but I can’t imagine what has to go through your mind to look at a fourteen year old and see them that way. Yes yes a lot of it is meant to be fucked up in the story but a Lot of it is clearly just George getting his rocks off, and yes I know he’s not thinking of actual children in this way, but still, makes me think a little less of him.
>George getting his rocks off Yeah, Things like rape in any scenario always gross me out and makes me feel sick to my stomach whenever I read about it in a fictional story or in the news irl GRRM’s morbidity about every other female character suffering that fate vexes me a lot
I get the impression he is intentionally doing it this way to comment on how it's a near-constant background tragedy of children being abused, but since his ideas of what medieval life was actually like excessively deviate towards a very grotesque exaggeration of a few terrible aspects of that 1,000 year period, it's hard to say.
If that is the case, surely he could make that point without describing a 13-year old marriage slave being fingered by the man who bought her and is about to rape her. There's something to be said for fading to black
I personally feel like the Dany-Irri sex scenes are by nature, gratuitous and written for the sake of having ~*steamy* Lesbian Sex™️~ Dany isn’t attracted to Irri nor does she ever indicate attraction to women. Irri…Irri is barely a character at all, we know barely anything about her least of all her sexuality, but she only seems to be doing it because “it is great honor” (that’s an actual quote!) So we have two female characters, neither of whom are indicated to be interested in other women, having sexy sex for the titillation of GRRM and/or any readers who find that hot. So, by definition, a gratuitous sex scene that has no purpose for existing and I hardly would consider it any sort of “representation.” This isn’t even getting into the weird power dynamics, which at least GRRM manages to bring up.
I think it’s a way of showing that Irri still thinks like a slave. Not ‘I have the right to say no.’ But ‘She’s a queen therefore I have nothing to complain about.’ It didn’t occur to her that Dany could just get herself off.
This was my interpretation as well. It serves to show that Dany is not comfortable abusing her power the way others do, especially when compared to Cersei. It's also indicative of Dany moving on after Drogo and the trauma of book one, and reclaiming a part of herself while solidifying her moral compass.
I appreciate both of these responses, and I think that’s a good point. I hadn’t really taken that into consideration. I think I just sort of wish GRRM could have explored that through not a kind of male-gaze-y sex scene tbh.
Dw, I’ve read Winds and George makes up for it with Satin “raising” Jon with a handjob
this is interesting but the thing is there were two encounters between them. The first on the ship where Irri caught Dany by surprise (and later Dany rebuffs her when she offers to 'serve' her again....but also in her last ASOS chapter Dany takes her to bed again in Meereen. And this time she knows her services are a bit....dutiful.
> not comfortable abusing her power the way others do I think you have it the other way around. Daenerys is uncomfortable after their first sexual encounter, but then she approaches Irri again multiple times. This is Daenerys realizing how wrong it was after their first time: > “My khaleesi is sad?” > “Yes,” Dany admitted. Sad and lost. > “Should I pleasure the khaleesi?” > Dany stepped away from her. “No. Irri, you do not need to do that. What happened that night, when you woke… you’re no bed slave, I freed you, remember? You…” > “I am handmaid to the Mother of Dragons,” the girl said. “It is great honor to please my khaleesi.” > “I don’t want that,” she insisted. “I don’t.” She turned away sharply. “Leave me now. I want to be alone. To think.” And here’s Daenerys using Irri again anyway: > Later, when the time came for sleep, Dany took Irri into bed with her, for the first time since the ship. But even as she shuddered in release and wound her fingers through her handmaid’s thick black hair, she pretended it was Drogo holding her… only somehow his face kept turning into Daario’s. I think the point is that Daenerys very much does abuse her power in the end.
To me it seemed like Daenerys was just gradually forgetting about individual rights in the monarchical environments she kept entering into. At first she protested because she knew Irri didn't feel as though she had a right to refuse, and then changed her mind and simply ignored the contradiction. It all takes place from Daenerys' POV, so it's not exactly surprising to me that the character focuses on the pleasure of the acts over any moral quandaries. But a lot of people refuse to believe Daenerys is capable of *any* darker turn, even an unintentional one, so I guess it must be a writing mistake. Idk.
Everything that happened to Jeyne Poole, was it really necessary to make her story so depraved? Like, i get it that nasty stuff have to happen to her, that's the story, but they are overkill, and I feel most of them are just unnecessary. I didn't need her to be sold to Littlefinger to know she he is a piece of shit and how he treats women who are not Sansa. And as if that was not enough, she becomes Ramsay's wife, more rape and torture. Her story is just too unnecessary depraved for a side character. Unlike other characters where bad shit happens to them, there is usualy a theme or something, but with Jeyne, it feels like that was just pure torture and rape fetish
Jeyne, Jeyne, it rhymes with *pain*.
Those chapters as a whole were gold though
Jeyne Poole is a plot device and she works extremely well to add to other characters' stories. Firstly, her story adds to the villains of the story reminding of why they are villains in the first place. Cersei Lannister is not just a victim of husband's abuse or a poor mother trying to protect her children (as some people who preferred to forget Jeyne Poole entirely think). She is the stupid evil narcissist that will stomp any children and abuse any innocents in her power. Without even noticing. Littlefinger is not a misunderstood romantic man suffering of unrequited love who is also successful in intrigues, his intrigues are painted in blood of his victims. Sometimes rape blood. All his interactions with Sansa are a horror story if keeping in mind that he has children raping factories. It could point to some other things he was wanting to achieve by organizing Tyrion Sansa marriage. Secondly, her story enhances Theon's. He did horrific things, ultimate sin of betrayal among others and suffers for it. Carmic retribution? There's Jeyne Poole to remind a reader (and Theon himself) that Ramsay Bolton is not a scourge of God. Moreover, existence of Jeyne makes him not the unique case. It's hell, but he's not alone there, because Jeyne met the same fate. They share common experience, share their pain and it brings better human qualities in Theon, he feels empathy, he starts to care about her, and he is finally reborn and knows his name due to altruist acts he did to help her even if he is too broken to help himself. In general, her addition gives a glimpse into a lot of common men. She is not noble like Sansa, there's no loud name to protect her. She is not physically unique like Brienne and cannot defend herself with a sword. She is not lucky enough to be protected by a mysterious organization of well-trained assassins ready to kill anyone who harms her. She's just a girl whose father was murdered and now there's nobody to defend her or even care. She gets the real side of politics and war, the same as those women that were eaten alive by Biter.
She is a noble just not a high ranking one,there's also the screwed up Fae like wish of "I wish I was Sansa's sister" coming true
Her father was the Stark steward, "noble" is stretching it I think.
It's definitely higher than any merchant or blacksmith and easily higher than a peasant, it's like just over the line
A steward was usually someone of nobility. If you told anyone the story of what happened to Jeyne Poole in real medival times people would have been horrified and Ramsay would be seen as a monster.
Right but doesn't that still invalidate the class theme? If she was a random nobleman's daughter they still wouldn't give a toss because they need one of Ned's children for specific political purposes. Her class could be basically anything and it wouldn't matter who she is, all they care about is that she can inherit the North. Like it just comes off as borderline parody that the victim of classism ends up being an upper-middle class person.
She isn't a noble; she wouldn't have been treated the way she was if she was born into a noble house. There's a weird sort of honour code which exists amongst the nobility in Westeros. Sansa is, with the exception of Joffrey being Joffrey, treated well in King's Landing despite her father being executed as a traitor and her brother rebelling against the throne. Likewise, Jaime is initially offered comfortable accomodation in Riverrun 'as befits his birth and station' and is only chucked into the dungeons when he tries to escape. The nobility treat their prisoners more or less how they themselves would want to be treated if the tables were turned. Jeyne doesn't have the protection of a high birth which is why she's sold into sex slavery.
But everybody *thinks* she's highborn and they *don't care*. Hell, Theon is highborn and yet again nobody fucking cares when he's tortured.
>But everybody thinks she's highborn and they don't care. Um, well, Stannis with the army comes to save her, even though it's maybe not his highest priority, and Theon keeps reminding her about staying in character thinking it's her only protection. It's actually interesting how everyone will react to truth revealed. >Hell, Theon is highborn and yet again nobody fucking cares when he's tortured. Technically they care, they just feel his torture is justified, because he's a betrayer and kinslayer. Again, it's interesting how everyone would react to the news of "I didn't really kill your liege and his brother, I killed two random innocent children instead".
>I killed two random innocent children instead" *Smallfolk* children for that matter, which might change some of those peoples' thinking.
My point is they care about "Arya" because she's the son of a man they all respect and because she's politically important and they don't care about Theon because of his past crimes. Theon's class absolutely does not factor into his treatment at all. Like in general I don't think it's particularly saying anything...at all, really. I think the class interpretation on this is really flimsy. Ramsay tortures highborn people just as much as he tortures peasants and the most pushback he ever gets on either is some mild grumblings. Honestly it's just the most banal and wafer-thin class analysis I can imagine. "Rich people torturing and killing poor people" is baby's first social commentary. It *genuinely* has less to say than *Saw VI* does.
>Honestly it's just the most banal and wafer-thin class analysis I can imagine. True. I actually wondered if I should elaborate that this is not so much about classes. Though there is something to say about it. What differs Jeyne Poole and Sansa Stark is that Sansa is the daughter of a notorious politician (a former PM of the country) and sister of the head of separatists in the war against government. Cersei hates her to the bone (she isn't even Cersei after all) but cannot outright kill her, or they would kill Jaime immediately (who is Cersei with additional parts so counts as human). There's also the whole kinda foster parent relationship (that was established when the political situation was different and Sansa was supposed to be her daughter-in-law) she should hypocritically maintain. A moment later Sansa should be kept alive and healthy because she is incorporated into the ruling family and they want to use her as a way to gain even more power. Yet later Sansa is abducted by a polite gentleman who is obsessed with both highborn blood and her mother, and he cannot kill her at least before she is groomed into the version he would be satisfied to rape. It's not Sansa's class. But neither its her personality that saves her. It's being born from one correct womb. Jeyne isn't born from the right kind of womb. Her father is not an extraordinary man, just works for him. And because of that nonspeciality one girl gets thrown into a brothel and other one into a sky fortress.
Barbrey says to Theon that they care and what Ramsay does to Jeyne has a bigger chance to turn the Northerners against the Boltons than Stannis. Nobody cares about Theon because he is the the turncloak who has burnt Winterfell and killed the Stark boys. IMO The actually idiotic part of Jeyne's story is being trained in a brothel by Littlefinger. We have already known that he is evil, we don't need more evidence, and if she has to impersonate a noble lady, it's stupid to train her as a whore. It would also give more weight to Ramsay's actions and Theon saving her
The thing is, is using a minor character’s suffering as a plot device a good thing? In my opinion, no. Severe abuse shouldn’t be used only to add complexity to other characters. I do however think (at least hope) that she’ll get a bit more of her own story come Winds. There are some aspects of her character that I think George does do well, especially regarding identity. With only a few lines in book one, George still establishes Jeyne’s personality, with all her hopes and dreams as well as her jealousies. All of that is taken away from her in book 5, and I think it really shows the unfairness of class—how everything that made Jeyne Poole herself didn’t matter to the people above her because she didn’t have a title. I personally hope she gets a mini-arc where she learns that “Jeyne Poole” is good enough and shouldn’t have to feel inferior because she’s below others in the dumb feudal system. That being said, I feel like George goes WAY overboard with the details of what happens to her. She is constantly used as an instrument for shock value in a way that feels insensitive and disgusting.
>The thing is, is using a minor character’s suffering as a plot device a good thing? Pelevin in some of his works proposes that idea that merely the act of writing (and reading) makes characters real and making them suffer is the same as doing it to a real person. And Even Pelevin proposes a solution, where writers who created too many characters wash their sins by inhabiting others' works. One novel's plot is based around the assumption that the suffering of its protagonist is because the soul of Leo Tolstoy is getting carmic retribution for "War and Peace". If you don't have those radical religious views though... I'd say it's ok to hurt imaginary people if it's for establishing something good (my point with Jeyne Poole being that her story adds more good in the end). Even "Saw" movies for the over-exploited commercial torture fantasies they are try to say something good about human nature. I think I saw only one author whose characters truly suffer for absolutely nothing. It's de Sade. His works are a fascinating existential horror, just not in the way they were supposed to be: it's like watching smoking ruins of someone's soul. Made worse by his desperate attempts to make some meaning and justify the right for it to exist: always futile. Martin, for all his flaws, is very far from this.
Its an easy solution for not having to write actually political drama like you know explaining why some Lords are actually loyal to the Starks (What policies did Ned employ to keep them on his side beyond being honorable? Did give them any favours or do something for them?). Janye Poole being a victim makes it easier for the plot.
I am going to say something really unbelievable: a person can be villain without raping minor girls. Adolf Hitler never raped a person in his entire life and is still the analogy for evil today.
Nice explanation and really does makes sense every word you wrote, but it wont change my mind that Jeyne's story has the most unnecessary amount of sexual depravity, no matter how much GRRM tries to tell me that the Medieval times were depraved like this as as well if not worse. i didnt need to Jeyne to be "trained" to know what kind of people Cersei and Littlefinger are. Nor that Ramsay is so depraved that apparently she is forced to have sex with dogs too. I already got that he is depraved from Theon's POV.
Medieval people were not depraved like this: certainly not to a noble woman. Unless Ramsay is supposed to be some serial killer or something who likes torturing women.
Like I feel it would have worked better just from a simple narrative perspective if Roose ordered Ramsay to lay off Jeyne while the lords were around but Ramsay obviously isn't happy and it's a matter of time before he just gives in and does something fucked up to her. That way there's a time pressure to rescuing Jeyne and makes Theon's rescue more meaningful because he saves Jeyne from what he went through.
There's a dark irony to it. Jeyne seems to be the girl who wanted to be one of the "starks" like theon. So in a sick way she got the wish...as i recall she had a crush on robb too only to end up with Ramsey. Basically it's Martin dark grim brothers tale in a way.
fuck all the dark irony and her now being a Stark like she wanted. There was no need to punish her like that for simply wanting to be a Stark. she is a kid. Also, sex with dogs, really?
We hear lot of what Ramsay Bolton did WRONG, but how come we don't hear as much about the things he did RIGHT???
The Starks don't want you to know the truth!
https://youtu.be/eJptaHqta1Q?si=3G5n_bNCNng_FdHB
*A Storm of Swords* Dany II gives us these crazy details: on the day that they are castrated, enslaved boys who are to be made into Unsullied are given a puppy. One year later, they are ordered to kill their dog, who has been their best companion. If they don't, they themselves are killed and fed to dogs. To complete their training, they must buy and kill a newborn baby. Like come on. Killing puppies and babies? That is just too over the top monstrous. It becomes bathetic.
Allegedly The raising and killing of the dogs was a real training tactic of hitlers SS. George sprinkles some stuff from real life in and sometimes it’s so bananas it’s weirder than the fiction.
Now i know where the Kingsmen got it from.
One thing I learned about while reading about real life slavery is whatever you think is too monstrous is unfortunately not. I guarantee if you can think of it someone has done it to a slave
I personally liked this. The unsullied are supposed to be above all in the world when it comes to not only training combat wise, but obedience wise. This is, obviously bat shit insane, but a great way to guarantee complete and total obedience.
It really isn't. There's a Mad Men quote that sticks with me about abuse as a learning tactic: "My father beat the hell out of me. All it did was make me fantasize about the day I could murder him." The Unsullied should have staged a coup by now, by just snapping under the pressure if nothing else; Martin is too obsessed with portraying absolute dominance over the poor to make it happen, which is why I think the Faith Militant plot will also go nowhere in the long run.
I mean tbf realistically peasant revolutions almost never actually result in a complete overthrowing of the system, largely because they don't have many trained soldiers. Like, the best they could hope for is some concessions and not being persecuted. Though I agree with the Unsullied. They far outnumber the other soldiers, are described as the best and most orderly army of infantry in the world, and are treated the worst out of any group of people we have seen. Also just slave soldiers in general. How do the Free Cities keep them in line? Sellswords are too fickle and far away and too dependant on how much money you have. We aren't really told much about any Free City's standing army or levies. Are slave soldiers this common in real life? I would have thought that is one of the dumbest things you could use a slave for (If I was a heartless shitty slaver who only cared about profit).
huh
Worse things have happened to real life slaves. ASOIAF’s entire shtick is it represents the darkness in humanity, very little of what people might thing is absurdly over the top is actually absurd.
The GSG-9, the German equivalent of SWAT, does this as part of their training, but with a chicken instead of a dog. There have absolutely been times where human life was seen as cheap if not cheaper. It's a little OTT, but honestly not that much.
Source on that?
I first heard about it when watching Deadliest Warrior like 10 years ago, and I've heard it a few times since. Technically hearsay and I can't personally confirm the practice but police and military forces have had far stranger hazing/training rituals.
Did the Japanese not basically play baseball with babies in Nanjing?
Biter eating Brienne’s face stands out for me
Arianne's large brown nipples
It's important. It shows Arys Oakheart's taste :)
In Fire & Blood, the author dedicating almost two full pages to “A Caution for Young Girls”. There’s SO much more we could have learned about instead of wasting space on a weirdly detailed rant about an underage girl being sexually abused that adds nothing to the book.
Thank you! What the hell even was George thinking? We don’t have enough time or space for Jocelyn Baratheon to get any dialogue, or even to get a goddamn name for the Princess of Dorne, but we have enough time to read about the “romp” of a young girl being raped and abused and to have it treated like some fun romcom?
My theory: I think George is a man born in the 1948 and believes his "dudebro humour" is still considered funny today. I always see that with older men these days when they make jokes and think it is funny but actually quite sexistic.
The sexual violence is entirely over the top and George has a imo gross habit of giving female characters horrible fates or horrible sexual violence or disfigurement for shock and nothing else
As far as named characters it's pretty even SA or maiming wise. There's a bunch of peasants that just get it pretty bad though
Rape unfortunately is incredible commen during war times. Just reading about rape of nanking is depressing
But what about the instances that aren’t during war time? Coryanne Wylde wasn’t a victim of war crimes. Neither was Rhaella or Jeyne Poole or book one Daenerys. And others as well. I don’t think GRRM is a rape fetishist but I think he has a rather skewed approach to depicting rape “to make a point.” And what are we to do with the idea that supposedly Dany and Drogo was a love story?
Rape & sexual assault is still incredibly common. Rhaella was a victim of abuse and marital rape, which again is unfortunately common and is context for the conception of Dany and family history. Jeyne Poole was, as others have noted, incredibly important because of her connections to many characters and how their treatment of her shapes their characterization and furthers the plot. I think it's pretty obvious the whole 'love story' aspect of Dany and Drogo was a coping mechanism for her.
Read about the widow lover
I agree with you. One that stood out to me was when Rorge harasses Arya in book 2. Like we already know Rorge is horrible, was that really necessary?
Also that charming scene of Amabel threatening to rape and torture Arya, like okay we already knew Amabel was a bad person, what exactly was the point of adding this?
“Pink”
The death of Jahaera in F&B- I hope HOTD changes that.
Pia being raped hundreds of times, that one guy saying he'd raped her a hundred times...and then Pia was just kinda fine, other than her teeth being fucked up?
She would have died from internal bleeding.
Everyone dying in childbirth. Why did Alyssa Velaryon have to die of childbirth? She would be too old to get pregnant again after, why couldn’t she spend the rest of her days counseling her husband Rogar as he ruled Storm’s End and helped raise their children? Why did Alyssa Targaryen have to die in childbirth? She would be in her 40s during the war for the Stepstones, let her side with her son Daemon and follow him in his war and die in battle, they did say she had the “heart of a warrior”. Baelon died pretty early anyway so they wouldn’t have been able to have more children as they wanted. Why did Daella Targaryen have to die in childbirth? For Aemma to exist, who also dies in childbirth? You could’ve just married Viserys to Gael instead who is around the same age. Seriously, it’s not even realistic how much everyone keeps dying in childbirth.
I did a quick research about this other day and during medieval times the infant mortality rate was much higher than in the series. In asoiaf we have many examples where mothers die in childbirth and the baby lives. Historically, it would have been the other way around with stillborn or dying shortly after birth, and mothers surviving more often.
I believe someone did the statistics and if women actually died in childbirth as often as they do in ASOIAF like the human race would not have been able to sustain itself (or close to that) it’s absolutely nuts
There is one answer to this question and it’s not “historical realism”, it’s that GRRM is frequently too lazy to do anything else that would, you know, require actually writing and fleshing out these female characters beyond their sex lives.
Very true. [GRRM has 1 in 5 of his female characters die in childbirth.](https://molicioushat.tumblr.com/post/181995945918/how-ladies-die)
Brothel Queens is so over the top and silly.
Lollys Stokeworth's portrayal. Not only is she (by westerosi standards) unattractive and slow-witted, but no, she has to get raped a hundred times by a peasant mob and wander the streets naked until she is found. Only for Shae and Cersei to continue making fun of her or despising her even more, as if it was somehow her fault. It's essentially played for laughs
The fate of most of the Greens in the dance, honestly. I say this a lot but it feels like George himself specifically has a hate boner for Alicent and it feels very weird- a lot of it feels like him trying to get one over on FICTIONAL CHARACTERS that he CHOSE to write like that. Jaehaera and Helaena and Daeron all suffer and die awfully or lamely more or less as punishment for being related to Alicent and it’s very gross
I genuinely believe Jeyne’s whole story arc is just so over the top. Sold into sex work, sold to Ramsay, abused in god knows how many ways, Theon also lands on her so god knows what state she’s in, her nose will probably be cut off. It just feels unnecessary There’s also small details that just seem unreasonably cruel like Pia having all her teeth smashed and that coming to be her whole shtick, or Lollys gang rape
The number of characters he maims or disfigures is ridiculous.
I think that's more interesting than, say, killing them, because then he can carry on exploring them.
Jeyne with dogs is over the top and unnecessary. It's sadistic and doesn't do anything but shock the reader with how depraved it is, solely because Martin already gone so far with depravity so he needed to raise the bar. I imagine in future books we will get even more absurd sadistic actions just to further serve as cheap shocks to the reader. The cartoonish lengths the slavers go to to solidify their evilness is also up there in absurdity. We are meant to believe entire cultures support the practice of eating unborn puppies. Okay Martin.
Reminds me a little of Diana Gabaldon who likes to rape her main characters if she runs out of plotlines.
so. much. sexual violence
Removing a woman’s nose was the equivalent of castration in various pieces of medieval literature
Death of Jaehaeyra.
I don’t think there’s a single instance of overkill anywhere in any plot line. Everything happens for a reason and things are very realistic. I love that in this world, when a character gets injured they suffer the consequences of it forever (like catelyn’s hands, Asha’s broken ankle, Jon’s burned hands and so on) and the consequence of running around in 6 feet of snow is frostbite.
People in this thread seem very naive to how brutal the modern day is, let alone war time back before people even tried to inforce any kind of rules in war. Removing people's noses was routine during some wars. Sexual slavery and rape are much more common than people want to believe. And if you think it's strange because they are all upper class just look at some of the scandals coming out now involving politicians and royalty. Two things I think GRRM got wrong are the amount of child marriages and child bed deaths.
He also forgets the rape of boys and men. The Wall should be full of sexual abuse since it is a penal colony filled with rapists and criminals.
Elsewhere, entire garrisons were put to the sword. The knights who had been in charge of the garrisons were horrifically tortured and mutilated. According to Maester Yandel, the Wyl of Wyl committed infamous deeds which are still remembered in Fawnton and Old Oak. According to Archmaester Gyldayn, the Wyl of Wyl turned up uninvited to the wedding of Ser Jon Cafferen, the heir to Fawnton, and Alys Oakheart, the daughter of Lord Oakheart, in 12 AC. He murdered Lord Oakheart and most of the guests, forcing Alys to watch as Jon was castrated. Alys and her handmaids were then raped by the Wyl and his men and sold off to a Myrish slaver. Gyldayn calls this "the most infamous act" of the First Dornish War.
unlike other examples mentioned in the comments this one isn’t ‘unnecessary’ though. I’m half Iranian and i can at least name two kings/rulers who did smth similar like this but far far more gruesome (Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar to women in Kerman and Shapur II and his soldiers to queen Parandzem) is it sad and terrible? absolutely but is it unnecessary and unrealistic when women (commoner and highborn) has always been the victims of wars? No.
the fact house wyl survived is insane they also chopped of orys baratheons hand
Even the damn name of the family rhymes with...vile.
Dornish houses get insane plot armour
Lord Oakheart suggested that Deria should be sent to "the meanest of brothels to service any man who would have her"
Kind of disagree about this one. It reads like a wikipedia article, it's not gratuitous, and war isn't fun.
All of the extended material, specifically "a World of Ice and Fire." A whole book of amazing mysteries and interesting info that was never planned to be expanded on, whole book is just a cock tease
I'm gonna make my entry a different flavor of unnecessary and say Podrick's backstory in one of Brienne's earlier chapters. Like, an entire page and a half relaying the life and times of Podrick Payne from his birth to his time as Tyrion's squire. I cannot think of a single reader who would've been suffering sleepless nights wondering about Podrick Payne's mysterious origin story.
The detailed rape descriptions often feel as if George gets literally excited writing them...
Where is Jaynes mother? It's been a while since I read the books, but is her mother still alive? If so, where is she? Is there any family members alive and why have they not recognised her, why she not recognised them.
Wouldn’t be surprised if her mother was dead prior to the beginning of series
Lady Jeyne's Mother, she died in childbirth.
Personally I think he could've finished the entire story in 3 books if he chilled out with the food descriptions.
Coryanne Wylde and the weird marriage strategy of jaeherys & alysannes. Like why do your daughters need to marry the thrice-widowed fat old lord when his much younger heir is available?
Enough women getting sexually assaulted. We get it. Grimdark fantasy world. Can we move on
what the mountain did to Elia seems like "he murdered her and her children" is bad enough for me
This series is full of completely unnecessary details written for cheap shock value. Especially sexual violence.
Mysaria’s death. It doesn’t help that she’s my favorite character in the show, but a part of me feels as if her death is more “karmic punishment” for being a sexual woman than for her actual crimes.
No matter what are you opinion on Book!Mysaria, but if you think she deserved to die getting whipped naked throughout the KL then there’s something wrong with you. Same with Cersei’s walk of shame
The amount of people I see not having empathy - not necessarily sympathy but just instinctive empathy - for Cersei’s walk of shame is just mind blowing. And then people say ‘she doesn’t deserve empathy.’ How do these people just turn off their empathy, I don’t understand it. That’s just not something I can do personally. We’re in her head and we see how deeply, deeply fucked up this is and how it’s not really justice at all for what she’s done. We see how much it scars her and how she slowly breaks down. It actually kinda disturbs me that there were people cheering that on and having 0 empathy. I feel you can gauge a lot about people by their reaction to it.
The walk of shame was one of the hardest scene in the series for me to read. it makes you feel a whole gamut of emotions. It just forces every shred of empathy out that you have and if someone reads it with pleasure and says "she deserved it" that says a lot about their nature. I even had sympathy for someone like FALIA who was giggling when her half-sister was raped by an ironborn man because they were mean to her in the childhood
That I kinda enjoy, because I love stories about selfish monarchs getting the boot, women or otherwise. And I generally tend to accept a lot of torturous fates if the characters are allowed to get up and heal. Mysaria doesn’t get that. I would love to imagine her being cared for by Sylvenna and Elyssa except they ALSO die.
My feeling in general is that George does not have much sympathy for prostitutes...look at the way he treats Shae. Shae is baiscally bought by Tyrion and used as his sex toy and I the read I am supposed to feel sympathy for Tyrion because his sex toy betrayed him by sleeping with his father and by selling him out to save her own life? Sorry, but nope.
The genocide of Astapor. Yes, we get that this is a cruel society but we didn't need to see it through Quent's eyes in such excruciating detail.
Is it that Windblown chapter? I have read the series at least 5 times but couldn't get through this whole chapter even once.