The Boltons have Winterfell, so there’s that to deal with. I’m not sure it would be smart for a king to get involved with a noble house that way, but it depends on how a lot of other things shake out.
I didn’t think it was foolish. As TV and movie viewers we recognize the “I’m nobly hurting your feelings to protect you” thing, but if you really experienced it it would hurt like hell. So when Tywin finds Shae, she goes along with the revenge scheme.
Yes, that makes sense to me. In a pinch, being under the protection of the Faceless Men is about as good as being a member.
I think it’d be shockingly lazy of Tywin to use the same trick twice.
I misused “Capital”. When they said they were going to Essos, I just assumed Baarvos since it seems the be the most important city there as far as Westeros is concerned but I guess Pentos is just as valid.
A possibly-necessary preface: I’m watching this show; I’m not saying this to be trollish.
But…is there any female character who is not either foolish/stupid/unobservant/stolid, or manipulative/cold, or both?
Arya was possibly shaping up as a positive character–but then for no real reason (vengeance for his plan to get money in return for carting her around the country? really?) she denied the Hound a quick death. She is ice-cold.
Brienne is on the positive end of the spectrum, but is not the sharpest tool in the box: kind of a stolid servant-character. Sansa has been dim and passive. Catelyn was no genius, and was needlessly cold to Hero Jon, besides. Ygritte was thugishly unable to think past her tribal upbringing. Margaery is both slow on the uptake and manipulative (as is Cersei, who adds sadism to the mix). Granny Tyrell is a cold murderess. Melisandre is the same (plus magically manipulative). Shae was obviously dimwitted (and vengeful). Lysa was insane. Talisa was a dull one-note character, as are Shireen Baratheon and Meera Reed and Missandei (so far; those last three, I suppose, might later turn out to be more well-rounded. But I wouldn’t like to bet on it).
And Daenerys, who is supposedly good and wise, is time and again shown to be an idiot. I don’t think this can be accidental.
The only female characters who, so far, don’t seem to be idiots or manipulators on the one hand, or one-note “good women” on the other, are Osha (who got to be un-passive), Gilly (who’s been allowed to complain without being portrayed as a Nag), and Yara Greyjoy (who hasn’t yet been punished for being an action-oriented character. Perhaps that is to come).
In a cast of named characters that’s hundreds-strong, this is not much of a showing. The males who are admirable and attractive (or who are consistently presented as such) are much more numerous: Tyrion, arguably Jaime, arguably The Hound, Jon, Gendry, Sam, arguably Varys, Ned Stark, Robb, Bran, Davos, Pod, Ser Jorah, Khal Drogo, arguably Bronn, and more. Even the “treacherous” male characters like Oberyn are allowed to be active, courageous and intrepid, which is rarely true for the “treacherous” female characters (Shae, et al).
Is this the secret of the show’s success?..that we are given lots of reasons to dislike and resent females, without having to really focus in on the fact that this is going on? We can just sort of relax and despise them, in a popcorn-munching sort of way.
I think she still is a positive character. The Hound, after all, really did brutally murder a child, and beat up and rob a farmer. And I think this is part of Arya’s maturation – she had been holding on to that kill list for so long, on which the Hound fit prominently, and now when she has the chance she realizes she has no desire to kill him, even to end his suffering.
I strongly disagree with this one. Brienne is perhaps the most noble character in the show (far more than just at the “positive end of the spectrum”) – her motives are completely pure, and while she shows a bit of naivete at times, she’s also shown intelligence and resourcefulness. She’s the essence of knightly chivalry without actually being a knight.
Lately she’s been much smarter and more active.
Margaery strikes me as very intelligent, even if she didn’t pick up on who murdered Joffrey immediately. But remember her feeding the poor? She strikes me as a young but very able player in the titular game. And Olenna Tyrell killed Joffrey. That’s a pretty positive act, if you ask me! Framing Tyrion and Sansa (by lucky coincidence, perhaps) was not the nicest thing to do, but alls well that ends well, right?
What, she can’t make mistakes? She’s obviously a very capable and charismatic ruler, even if her inexperience sometimes leads her down the wrong path. I don’t understand this criticism at all.
Arya, Dany, Margaery, Catelyn, Brienne, Olenna, Shae (in earlier seasons), and Sansa are also presented to be attractive and admirable (sometimes extremely so), even if they sometimes screw up and sometimes show flaws. Dany’s done lots of attractive and admirable things, including huge things like freeing slaves and overturning tyranny. Why can’t they also make mistakes, or sometimes show flaws?
I think much of this criticism is very strange and off base. Do you want female characters without flaws? That don’t make mistakes? GoT certainly isn’t perfect, but I think most of your criticism here doesn’t hold water.
I think people here tend to be unfair in describing the characters on TV shows, so I’d argue you’re wrong about a couple of the characters. But without arguing about the terms, it describes the men just as well as the women.
The way they arrange the corpses may have something to do with it, but we really don’t know. But it seems like the Walkers have to be around for it to happen.
All Jaime said was that there was a galley waiting to take him to the Free Cities, of which Pentos and Braavos are each a part. If you look on the HBO map for the series there’s a bunch of cities along the western coast of Essos, presumably they’re what makes up the Free Cities.
First of all, Westeros is a man’s world. Women are treated almost like property in most cases and they have to struggle to make something of themselves. So there are going to be more male characters with agency. Second, one could argue that there are only two real options in the Game of Thrones: You’re either the one doing the cold manipulating or the one being stupidly manipulated. So by saying “Hm, there ain’t no women who aren’t one of those!” you’re very conveniently cutting out most of everything. Third, you might think Dany’s an idiot but that’s certainly not how she’s intended to be portrayed. She’s clearly a very grrrrl power! character - a young woman who’s managed to gain control of several cities and an army of worshipful followers. She’s a messiah figure who likes to go around freeing slaves and she’s a woman. I don’t think she behaves particularly foolishly compared to the people who aren’t geniuses like Tywin, the Queen of Thrones, and Varys. She’s gone from being the property of her brother (who was both cold, manipulative, stupid AND not a woman) to being the head honcho. She’s young and inexperienced, so she’s going to make mistakes. You should likely look forward to her making a lot more. It’s part of growth. So one of the most positive (whatever that means in a show like this) characters on the program is a woman.
The Queen of Thrones, Brienne, Dany, Catelyn, Osha, Arya, Sansa, Marg, Cersei, and others are all cool female characters that I enjoy quite a bit. I don’t think you’d find that they’re any dumber/colder/whatever on average than the men are. There’s just fewer of them in the spotlight, for reasons I’ve already gone over.
Well, it’s subjective. But I’d say that up until now, when she’s committed aggression, it’s been for self-defense and/or in the heat of the moment. So she’s remained almost wholly a sympathetic character to most viewers.
Cold-blooded cruelty (as in denying T.H. a quick death) can change that dynamic. I’d guess that some viewers who formerly found Arya sympathetic and admirable–a girl who’d been subjected to terrible things yet found a way to survive–no longer feel that way about her. Others, of course, enjoy depictions of cold-blooded cruelty, and will admire Arya even more after what she did in the finale.
How did get extended from idiots to manipulators? To the extent that more women than men have resorted to manipulation seems to merely be a natural consequence of women having so little power in this story.
And as far as being “cold,” I don’t see that they are any colder than the men around them. Men like the Mountain and Tywin and Walder Frey have absolutely no qualms about being physically intimate with a woman one minute and then having them raped or killed the next.
Olenna Tyrell is a cold murderess? Really? In the context of this world? She poisoned a guy who it was evident to everyone around him was an uncontrollable, cruel, sadist. It would have been cold for her to tell Margaery that she would have to put up with his cruelty for the good of the family.
As for the others, I reject the notion that being wrong, even multiple times, is necessarily indicative of idiocy. Ye there are some fools in the story, but I don’t accept that those who have made choices that didn’t work out in the end are necessarily suffering from idiocy.
This characterization of Shae, however, that she was simply unable to grasp the level of peril she was in by openly being Tyrion’s lover and that she could not imagine why he was trying to avoid being alone with her, that makes her stupid.
Many of the other women have been losers in the game, and they might have list because they were outplayed or for other reasons, but they all understood that they were in a nest of snakes.
Catelyn was not a stupid woman – after all, she knew it had been a grievous mistake to betray Frey – but many if her decisions had been flawed because she had been blinded by the desire to protect her children.
Cersei is herself in some sense a tragic character. She loves Jamie and Joffrey with a blinding passion. And she is oppressed – even in her privileged state, her father whores her out to men like Robert and Loras Tyrell.
Sansa was a naïve child raised on tales of chivalry, and she has learned harsh lessons. She’s not stupid. And she’s no more passive than the circumstances of her life have made her.
Daenerys is another child, manipulated and exploited her whole life. She struggles to do what she thinks is right. She often is wrong, but she’s not stupid.
I don’t want to come off harsh or trolling, but, really, this whole line of thinking is a classic example of how society has discriminated against and oppressed women and minorities – strip them of as much agency as you can then condemn them as manipulative or shifty or wily etc. for trying to use whatever levers are left for them to pull.
Fair enough. Opinions on this are bound to differ. As I’m sure you know, the viewers of the show are not monolithic; among the various groups watching each episode are people who adore the show and therefore would argue that everything about it is ideal in every way (narratively and otherwise). Also among the various groups: people who regard the show as an important cultural phenomenon that is worthy of analysis. Posts from the latter group are bound to offend readers from the former group.
But it is what it is. I’ve had the experience of defending writing and characterizations found in a cultural phenomenon that I happened to love and that others happened to dislike. Those who disliked it thought that all the characters were rubbish and the writing was crap, while I thought the characters were very well-drawn, plausible and genuinely representative of the human condition. So it is possible to see these things from more than one point of view.
Some of us reading this thread think that GRRM is one of the greatest writers ever born, whose characters are perfectly realized, and not in any way cardboard stand-ins for his own personal resentments and insecurities. Others of us reading this thread tend to suspect that maybe his writing will not be seen as Great Literature by future generations.
Honestly, I think the women on the show - on average - come out ahead of the men when placed on the spectra of “mean to nice” and “stupid to manipulative”.
I’ve actually heard people say that “Game of Thrones” is a sexist show, which completely blew my mind. I’m hard pressed to think of a show on TV that has as many interesting, well-developed female characters. The show also addresses gender roles and how they influence people. Cersei had an entire monologue in an earlier season about how she felt she should have been born a man so she could do “manly” things. Arya, of course, has been a violator of Westerosi expectations for a young girl since early in the very first episode of the series. I think some people confuse “takes place in a sexist setting” with “is itself sexist”.
And Sherrerd, your latest post contains more than one ridiculous false dichotomy.
Makes sense, since that is where the one ally of Varys that we have seen is from. (Illiyan?)
In fact, he specifically told Tyrion this earlier, during there conversation on Tyrion’s way to the Wedding Breakfast. He would do what he could in the best interest of the Kingdom, but was not about to stick his neck out personally for Tyrion.
This. The coin just signifies that she is connected to the Faceless Men. I am sure to a Braavosi, this would be like telling a '20’s Sicilian that you we’re friendly with the Godfather. Doesn’t matter if you are made or not, if the Don feels he owes you a favor.
No reason? He was the FIRST name on her list for killing the butcher boy. Kidnapping her and trying to ransom her did not clear that up. She even tried to kill him herself, but Needle was not the tool for the task.
I really don’t care what you think about Martin personally or as a writer. I’m not arguing the characters are perfect; I’m arguing that you’ve misread and oversimplified them and made a poorly-thought out criticism as a result. The posters who say everyone in the cast is either a manipulator or manipulated are pretty much correct. If what you’ve said about the women is just as true of the men - and it is - then it’s not a criticism of the female characters.
It was an act of vengeance, and that’s all. He asked her to kill him, and she refused because she wanted him to suffer as much as possible. She didn’t spare him because she’d lost the desire to kill him. She wouldn’t kill him because he wanted to die.
You might be right, but while I was watching, it made me think of how, a few episodes ago, she mentioned how the deaths of a few of her kill-list folks did not actually make her feel better. I thought this was a sort of logical extension of that scene. But I could be wrong.