Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, From A Game of Thrones to A Dance with Drago Read Online Free PDF

it’s a fairy tale for the generations to come—they will transmit this tale of sexual violence and revenge to their own children as a way of explaining why Westeros is what, and how, it is. As Bran Stark, Ned’s son, tells the other children: “Robert was betrothed to marry her, but Prince Rhaegar carried her off and raped her [. . .]. Robert fought a war to win her back. He killed Rhaegar on the Trident with his hammer, but Lyanna died and he never got her back at all” ( A Game of Thrones ). It’s telling that, in this fairy tale, Robert hasn’t actually won the world he wanted by staving the prince’s chest in. As long as men can carry off the women that other men love, there will be wars of honor—not to mention generation upon generation of women raging under the burden of thwarted sexual and romantic desires. But that sexual violence will be cast as the actions of the monsters, such as Rhaegar.
    As the characters fan out from Winterfell, attitudes toward sexual assault become one of the key markers they use to evaluate the new societies they encounter—and to define themselves in relation to those societies. When Jon Snow, Ned Stark’s bastard son, joins the Night’s Watch—the force of celibate warriors who devote their lives to guarding the massive wall that divides the area of Westeros under the king’s control from the wild territories in the land beyond—he’s disappointed to learn that his comrades are more criminal than they are willing and noble volunteers. In a vicious cycle, Westeros has come to rely on criminals to populate the Night’s Watch, particularly on “rapers,” but then discourages young men of merit from joining the force by pointing out who they’d be serving alongside. Rapers, because they can’t restrain their sexual impulses, must promise not to be sexually active again, even as they are physically removed from greater Westeros as means of holding them to that promise.
    Even if the Night’s Watch has become a prison colony, a means of protecting Westeros as much from its own worst citizens as from its external enemies, when the men of the Watch venture out, rape again becomes a way that they distinguish themselves from some of the Free Folk—even their allies. Their first contact with the Free Folk and last point of refuge is a man called Craster who has built himself a little holdfast in the woods. When they first visit his hall, Jon Snow reflects that “Dywen said Craster was a kinslayer, liar, raper, and craven, and hinted that he trafficked with slavers and demons” ( A Clash of Kings ). To preserve their relationship with him, and to distinguish themselves from Craster, Lord Mormont orders the Night’s Watch not to touch his wives (who also happen to be his daughters). On their return trip, when the order’s discipline breaks down, one of the first things the chaos spawns is the rape of those women, who previously had been considered sacrosanct. These actions mark the men as traitors and apt targets for the mysterious Coldhands.
    Similarly, when Theon Greyjoy, Ned Stark’s ward, returns to his father’s court on the Iron Islands, he’s ensconced in a society where rape is a weapon of war. Theon’s relatives consider that which is claimed in battle the only legitimate wealth, so much so that Theon’s father chides him for wearing gold that was given to him rather than taken forcibly in battle. They regularly separate their female captives into two classes: women who are appealing enough to serve as long-term sex slaves, or salt wives, and those unattractive enough to be fit only for physical labor. That attitude toward women—the fact that women are property in the Iron Islands in a way that makes Westeros look like a feminist paradise—is one of the markers set for the reader to show that Theon is in a corrupt and dangerous country.
    By contrast, Daenerys Targaryen, a surviving member of the dynasty whose throne Robert Baratheon usurped, lives in exile