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 Page B

across the narrow sea from Westeros in Pentos, a continent populated by scattered city-states and nomadic tribes. She attempts to define her rule and distinguish herself from the other petty tyrants she encounters by outlawing rape. Her first attempt to establish these new cultural mores comes when she is still married to Khal Drogo, a powerful warlord among the Dothraki. Daenerys intervenes to restrain Drogo’s bodyguards in the aftermath of a successful raid they undertake, in part, to fund her plans to mount an invasion of Westeros and restore the Targaryen dynasty. That intervention earns Daenerys no favors—the woman she saves from assault views her actions as naive paternalism, and it convinces many of Drogo’s followers that Daenerys is alienating him from their common values.
    After Drogo’s death, when Daenerys emerges as a military leader in her own right, her proscriptions against rape may be principled, but they don’t eradicate sexual assault in the territories, known as Slaver’s Bay, that she conquers. In fact, her efforts to rule compassionately, of which her focus on sexual assault is one aspect, mark Daenerys as a vulnerable ruler, someone who is unable to practice the kind of total war favored by other successful warlords on the continent. It’s a tragic testament to the limited power of good intentions in the face of deeply ingrained and intractable cultural practices.
    While Daenerys’s attempts to reform the sexual culture of Slaver’s Bay show her as a civilizing force, one of the clearest signs that Baratheon rule in Westeros is breaking down is the erosion of sexual norms, particularly those that protect noblewomen from assault beyond the court. The Lannisters begin to recognize that their position with the common people in King’s Landing may truly be untenable after the riot in which Lollys Stokeworth, a minor and not particularly popular member of the court, is gang raped by more than fifty men. Her assault is a sign of how deep the public contempt for the regime runs.
    Sexual violence also plays a role in court politics and is often used in the narrative to show just how deeply the nobility is separated from its ideals. King Robert dies, poisoned by his queen, Cersei Lannister, who is seeking retaliation for the marital rape and domestic violence to which Robert regularly subjected her in violation of chivalric ideals. His son Joffrey succeeds him, and promptly intensifies that dynamic of abuse and makes it public. Sansa Stark, Ned’s daughter, who is engaged to Joffrey, was once excited by the prospects of the match. But after Ned’s death, Joffrey reveals himself to be a sexual sadist. Sansa is stripped and beaten by Joffrey’s bodyguards. Having his men perpetrate the abuse technically absolves him from direct blame for hitting her, but it also makes the knights complicit in the assault and forces them to choose between obeying his orders and beating a woman. Though he never makes good on his promise, Joffrey repeatedly threatens to rape Sansa, even after he marries her off to his uncle Tyrion.
    Tyrion himself is a victim and perpetrator of sexual abuse: his own father orders his commoner wife gang raped to punish Tyrion, even forcing Tyrion to participate. It’s not the first time rape is utilized as a weapon in the poisonous Lannister family dynamic. After Cersei believes she’s discovered Tyrion’s mistress and taken her captive, Tyrion threatens to hold her son hostage against Cersei’s promise of the woman’s safety. “Whatever happens to her happens to Tommen as well, and that includes the beatings and rapes,” he tells his sister, thinking, “If she thinks me such a monster, I’ll play the part for her” (A Clash of Kings ).
    Sexual violence is also the hallmark of, perhaps, the two greatest monsters to appear in the series to date: the freakishly large Gregor Clegane, the Mountain That Rides, and Ramsay Bolton, the legitimated son of Roose Bolton, Lord of the