(Queenship And Power) Zita Rohr, Lisa Benz - Queenship And The Women Of Westeros Female Agency And Advice In Game Of Thrones And A Song Of Ice And Fire-Palgrave Macmillan (2020) - Inglês (2024)

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Edited by Zita Eva Rohr · Lisa BenzQueenship and the Women of WesterosFemale Agency and Advice in Game of Thronesand A Song of Ice and FireQueenship and PowerSeries EditorsCharlesE.BeemUniversity of North CarolinaPembroke,NC,USACaroleLevinUniversity of NebraskaLincoln,NE,USAThis series focuses on works specializing in gender analysis, women’s studies, literary interpretation, and cultural, political, constitutional, and diplomatic history. It aims to broaden our understanding of the strategies that queens—both consorts and regnants, as well as female regents—pursued in order to wield political power within the structures of male- dominant societies. The works describe queenship in Europe as well as many other parts of the world, including East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Islamic civilization.More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14523http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14523Zita Eva Rohr • Lisa BenzEditorsQueenship and the Women of WesterosFemale Agency and Advice in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and FireQueenship and PowerISBN 978-3-030-25040-9 ISBN 978-3-030-25041-6 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, SwitzerlandEditorsZita Eva RohrMacquarie UniversitySydney, NSW, AustraliaLisa BenzSalem, MA, USAhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6For our families and friendsvii“Knowledge is power,” smirks Petyr Baelish, signalling to Cersei that he is aware that the semi-secret of her incestuous liaison with her brother and the paternity of her children is now out in the open. Cersei motions to her men to seize Baelish and a sword is held to his throat. “Power is power,” retorts the queen, and Baelish’s grin vanishes.1 Both antagonists are cor-rect in different ways; in the imagined world of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, knowledge confers enormous advantage in the “game,” while power, in its myriad forms, enables the exercise of agency and choice.This book investigates the interactions between queenship and other forms of female leadership, patriarchy, and sources of power. It thinks about queenship in the medieval and early modern periods, and how women made use of the structures available to them to work to achieve their own particular goals; most often, these goals overlapped with the interests of family, kin-group, social community, or even with those of the kingdom. Women harnessed whatever tools came to hand in pursuit of these goals, both working within and at times subverting the traditional norms to which they were nominally subject.Medieval and early modern monarchs and other women who fulfilled similar leadership roles were enabled to do so by their possession of vary-ing attributes: power, authority, influence, and charisma. As defined by the sociologist Max Weber, “power [Macht] is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests.”2 Power then is an overarching attribute: the capacity to get things done, even if others do not wish those things to be achieved. Authority (Weber’s Forewordviii FOREWORDHerrschaft) has a problematic relationship with legitimacy, for unanimous social agreement about legitimacy is not always present.3 Nevertheless, authority certainly adheres in certain offices and social roles, even if some sectors of the population or interest groups might refuse to recognize it. Women are very often also able to exercise influence: “to bring about a decision on another’s part to act in a certain way because it is felt to be good for the other person … and for positive reasons, not for sanctions that might be imposed.”4 Influence is an unofficial, often covertly exer-cised social practice that women could perform through their intimate connections to kings and emperors. Advisors, bishops, and courtiers were frequently anxious about what the queen might be saying to the king in the privacy of the bedchamber, or privately to her son in cases of minority.5 Such influence was hard to pre-empt or to mitigate because of its unseen nature, though ideological moves to discount and devalue female advice, for example, were undertaken at different times precisely to combat this kind of input into royal decision-making processes. And finally, there is the concept of charisma. “Based on irrational personal attraction to and deifi-cation of a leader, it stands in radical contrast to rationality and tradition. In its primary aspect, charisma is revolutionary, but to survive it must be institutionalized, which eventually undermines its radical character and emotional power,” notes Charles Lindholm.6 These models of different bases for female agency are highly valuable for considering how medieval and early modern women gained and exercised power, and how those ideas about female power transfer across into the Secondary World(s) cre-ated in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and the HBO TV series Game of Thrones.The chapters in the collection consider questions precisely about women and agency across historical eras, proposing comparisons and making con-trasts with the women of Game of Thrones. Whether or not George R.R. Martin drew upon particular individual historical women as inspiration for his literary characters, he has a social historian’s keen sense for the param-eters of female power, and the ways in which patriarchal cultures variously constrain women’s agency in different eras. Anglo-Saxon women were long thought to be better able to wield power, in the sense of holding and bequeathing property, than their later sisters in any period until the mid-nineteenth century when the Married Woman’s Property Act was passed.7 More recent work has suggested that this view needs nuancing; neverthe-less, as Pauline Stafford notes, in the late tenth century, the female relatives of the dowager Empress Adelaide, and the Empress herself, ruled over ix FOREWORD “much of north-west Europe …. as regents for underage males.”8 Stafford qualifies their agency as individuals: “To call them powerful, however, raises problems,” for their effectiveness and influence derive entirely from their relationships to men.9 If those relationships changed, their roles could vanish overnight. Nevertheless, “[this] should not obscure,the fact that these women’s activities show their ability to participate in events, with the opportunities to influence those events and to have a strategy of their own towards them– all of which amounts to power,” Stafford suggests.10In Old English literary texts, queens are depicted as advice-givers and arbiters of social hierarchy. They recognize, and make public, relative sta-tus within the mead-hall by choosing carefully the order in which the ceremonial mead-cup circulates in feasting contexts.11 So one Old English wisdom poem, known as Maxims I, tells us, the king’s wifemust prosper, dear to her people, light in spirit, she must keep counsel, have a generous heart with horses and treasure; on mead-drinking occasions she must always greet the prince first among his kinsmen, pass the first cup to the prince’s hand, and know what advice to give him, he and she together, holding the fortress.12This may seem to be an idealized portrait of shared decision-making, but it is borne out both by descriptions of the king and queen, seated enthroned together in the writings of Bede (c. 730) and by the depictions of two Scandinavian queens who feature in the Old English poem Beowulf, Wealhtheow and Hygd.13 Wealhtheow intervenes in the mead-hall in front of the assembled retinue to advise her royal husband, King Hrothgar, not to adopt the hero Beowulf as his son and heir, but rather to leave the king-dom to her sons by him.14 Wealhtheow indirectly solicits the support of the boys’ cousin, should her elderly husband die in the near future—support which a well-informed Anglo-Saxon audience would know was not in the event forthcoming. Hygd, widow of King Hygelac of the Geats, has the authority after her husband’s death, on a raiding expedition, to offer the throne to his nephew, Beowulf. Beowulf refuses, determining to act rather as guardian to the young heir Heardred, though he does take the throne when Heardred too is killed.15 Stephanie Hollis has argued that the secular authority shared between king and queen in early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was disrupted by the arrival of Christianity; the bishop now becomes a powerful political actor within the court hierarchy, displacing the queen as primary among the king’s circle of advice-givers and operating to restrict her functions within the court, in line with Christian ideology.16x FOREWORDThe society of Westeros’s North, centred on Winterfell, has strong affil-iations with Anglo-Saxon social organization, as I have argued elsewhere.17 The relationship between Ned Stark and his bannermen is an affective one, maintained by oaths sworn in the past and renewed by successive lords, not by the regular payment of wages in order to maintain a standing army, the tactic of the Lannisters.18 Democratic consultation is a hallmark of the politics of the North; on several occasions we see Robb, Jon, and Sansa host the bannermen in the Great Hall of Winterfell, seeking a consensus in support of their authority and their immediate strategies. That Sansa should assume the title of Lady of Winterfell is uncontested, even when Bran returns, just as the very young Lady Lyanna Mormont is able to lead the people of Bear Island. Like Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, daughter of King Alfred, who was highly instrumental in restoring English rule over parts of the Danelaw, these women are credited with authority, strategic insight, and the capacity to rule by the men who serve them.Catelyn Stark too gives wise counsel to her husband both in the bed- chamber and in the weirwood—counsel not to go south, which Ned dis-regards, but which nevertheless turns out to be sage. Catelyn has been long enough in the North to be confident in her authority: when she orders the seizure of Tyrion at the Inn at the Crossroads and the release of Jaime Lannister, she expects to be—and is—obeyed by the bannermen and the soldiers present on each occasion. Catelyn loves and values her daugh-ters as she does her sons, and is horrified to discover that Robb’s realpolitik should regard his sisters, held by the Lannisters in King’s Landing, as expendable. Catelyn’s move causes Robb to exclude her from his decision-making for a while; had he listened more carefully to his mother’s advice, he might have forestalled the catastrophe of the Red Wedding.Early medieval queens likewise wielded a considerable degree of author-ity, just as Catelyn does, and indeed as Cersei proves when she demon-strates that she could, if she wished, bring about the summary execution of the former Master of Coin without fear of retribution. Merovingian queens, for example, had charge of the royal household, a responsibility that extended to holding the keys to the treasury. Within the Merovingian palace, this role sometimes brought conflict with the mayor, the highest- ranking male official in the household.19 Ceding economic author-ity to the queen in this way freed the king to concentrate on his military campaigns, knowing that his wife was taking care of his domestic interests, if we interpret “domestic” in the broadest possible sense. Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (d. 1204) inherited more than a quarter of what is now xi FOREWORD France and kept direct control over it during her two marriages to the French king Louis VII and the English Henry II, going to considerable lengths to make sure that one of her younger sons should inherit the Duchy of Aquitaine, rather than seeing it simply amalgamated with the Crown possessions across the Channel. Again, like Cersei, she endeav-oured to control and direct her sons, working in their interests—at times against those of their father—and she outlived her eldest son, Richard I the Lionheart.Power, along with influence, in varying proportions, is a benefit that could accrue to noble women who were exchanged in marriage with other dynasties. So, like many other women in the series, Catelyn is exchanged in marriage to achieve an alliance that is regarded as politically advanta-geous to the Tullys of the Riverlands.20 Her consent is taken for granted; she is to marry the heir to Winterfell, whomever he might be: first, Brandon, and subsequently Eddard Stark. So too Daenerys is given by her brother to Khal Drogo in a deal brokered by Illyrio Mopatis in exchange for Dothraki support for Viserys’s bid to regain the Iron Throne. Notably, Robb Stark resists being party to such an exchange, to cooperate in the kind of political sacrifice routinely expected from women. Robb’s pro-posed strategic marriage, intended to seal the alliance with the Freys, requires him to subordinate his own ideas of himself as subject. Women generally cannot reject this role as Robb does. In the show, Robb weds Talisa because he loves her and he clings to the notion that he can privilege desire over political expediency—a thoroughly modern view of the pre- eminence of romantic love. In the books, Robb is trapped by his sense of personal honour when he is seduced by the daughter of a minor noble-man.21 Either way, just as Robb undervalues his sisters’ rights to be res-cued from the Lannister clutches, so toohe overvalues his own right to self-determination in the face of the political manoeuvring that his status as King in the North demands.Such alliance-building through marriage is typical of medieval societies, of course, and a fundamental element in Martin’s world. What we do not see in the present of the books and show, I would argue, and perhaps against Kris Swank’s chapter in this volume, is any true reflection of the Anglo-Saxon archetype of the peace-weaver, a woman married into a social group with whom her own people have been in conflict. Although there are strong political rivalries in the Seven Kingdoms, at the start of the series, all the Kingdoms are united under the Baratheon dynasty. Again, to take examples from Beowulf, neither of the two Danish princesses who are xii FOREWORDmarried,off, one into the Frisian royal house, or, in the “now” of the poem, in order to end a feud between the Danes and the Heathobards, are ultimately successful in making the peace between the peoples hold. Trouble flares already at Freawaru’s wedding feast, and soon her husband is attacking her father once again, burning down his great hall, Heorot. Although Hildeburh, queen of Finn of the Frisians, has a son who is old enough to fight in battle, her husband’s family nevertheless treacherously ambush her brother and his men when they come on a friendly visit to Frisia; her brother and son are burned on the same funeral pyre.22Intimate relationships, those between husband and wife, man and mis-tress, mother and son, gave women an unofficial influence that could make the men who surrounded the king or lord uneasy. Alice Perrers, the long-standing mistress of King Edward III, is depicted in William Langland’s fourteenth-century allegorical poem Piers Plowman in the figure of Lady Meed. She is a beautiful, well-dressed woman who gives gifts and offers bribes, disrupting the established systems of power approved by the alle-gorical figure of Reason through her covert moves to advance her own and her family’s interests. So too visible proofs of fertility, witnessing the king’s potency, might be deployed to effect political change. The fourteenth- century chronicler Jean Froissart recounts a story in which the same Edward III is induced by his highly pregnant wife, Queen Philippa, to grant mercy to six hostages selected from among the citizens of Calais who have been defying the king.23 Although, as Paul Strohm has shown, the circ*mstances which Froissart relates are highly improbable—a pregnant queen is extremely unlikely to have sailed across the Channel with her husband—for the chronicler’s purposes, her visible pregnancy explains and enhances the influence that she brings to bear on her husband. The queen’s intercession, her performance of pleading for mercy, allows the king both to demonstrate his just and royal anger with the mutinous citizens and to modulate his vengeance into mercy in a fashion that turns out to be politi-cally advantageous. So too, motherhood, whether actual or projected, grants women in the world of the series special opportunities to achieve what they want. Daenerys’s confident performance in devouring the horse’s heart confirms the prophecy that the child she bears is the “Stallion Who Mounts the World” and Drogo’s pride in her fertile body leads him to swear—at last—that he will lead the Dothraki khalasar across the salt water to attack Westeros. Here his promise is not a fulfilment of the exchange that brought him Daenerys as a bride—an exchange in effect annulled by the death of Viserys, but rather it foregrounds the influence that his wife xiii FOREWORD has on him, an influence grounded in her beauty and fertility, and one which will very shortly be instrumental in bringing about Drogo’s death. Cersei’s last pregnancy by her brother has a powerful effect on Jaime; it postpones his final break with her until he realizes the full extent of her duplicity and disregard for oath-keeping, and it is one element that brings him back to her side for the final Liebestod (“love death”).Finally, we come to charisma—that extraordinary power that inheres only in certain women. The medieval period saw charisma wielded in reli-gious figures, such as Abbess Hild of Whitby, whose double abbey is cred-ited with nurturing the birth of religious poetry composed in the Old English vernacular.24 Hildegard of Bingen, given to a monastery at the age of seven, rose to become the confidante of popes and emperors; a prophet and a healer, she was a powerful cultural mover whose gloriously lyrical poetic compositions are performed to this day.25 Joan of Arc, a young peasant girl from Domrémy in Lorraine, persuaded the Dauphin, the heir to the French throne, to throw his lot in with hers against the English and brought him victory.26 These women sometimes operated within existing power structures—the newly re-established Christian church in seventh- century Northumbria, the Benedictine monastic movement. Or, in Joan’s case, she was able to harness current political movements, well-established belief systems, combined with unexpectedly transgressive behaviour to achieve her ends. Joan died refusing to renounce her identity, signified by her adoption of masculine clothing. Other religious women such as Marguerite Porete, who was burned as a relapsed heretic in 1310, or the Holy Maid of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, who spoke out against Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, attracted large numbers of fol-lowers, who were convinced of their holiness and rightness.27 Both were executed in part for their beliefs and to nullify the challenges that they and their followers posed to the status quo.Melisandre, the Red Woman, has charisma; an irresistibly magnetic quality that is partly granted by her beauty, but which is also buttressed by the authority—often brought into question—with which she claims to mediate the will of the Red God. When we first see her in the series, she has induced Stannis and Selyse to abandon their ancestral gods for the newcomer to the distress of Maester Cressen, who tries in vain to prevent the burning and finally to eliminate the newcomer. Melisandre’s faith in her visions and her prophetic insight is unwavering almost to the end in the show. It is damaged only by the death of Stannis—by which time she has begun to focus her attention on Jon Snow as perhaps embodying “The xiv FOREWORDPrince that was Promised,” once he has returned from the other side. Melisandre’s hold over Stannis is compounded of his fanatical belief and his sexual desire; although she has powders and other devices in her pock-ets to enhance her effects, nevertheless, she has the capacity both to call Jon Snow back from the dead and to give birth to the monstrous Shadow- baby, and in the show at least, she knows where she will die: in Westeros. The prophecy is fulfilled after the Battle of Winterfell, in which her chan-nelling of the power of the Red God is decisive in the battle for humanity’s survival. She prophesies a similar fate for Varys—who stands against every-thing she represents—and she is not wrong: the Master of Whisperers perishes in dragon-fire, undone by his wish to save the realm.28It is only Daenerys who shares the charismatic aura that has taken Melisandre from slave-born outcast in the alleys of Asshai to become the power behind Stannis’s bid for the Iron Throne, and the facilitator of Arya’s miraculous action against the Night King. Daenerys’s charisma draws men such as Jorah Mormont and Ser Barristan Selmy to her side—the good and bad angels who wrangle for her ear when it comes to strat-egy, and between whom she must steer a careful path. In part, it is the Targaryen legacy that makes Daenerys so irresistible: her silver hair and violet eyes. Her charismatic power, accrued through her motherhood, is externalized in her children. Unlike Cersei though, who struggles with her role as Queen Mother in relation both to Joffrey and Tommen, once he has fallen prey to Margaery’s sexual wiles, Daenerys’s is a queer maternity. She gives birth to Rhaego (the prophesied “The Stallion Who Mounts the World”) whose brief life fuels the blood-magic that preserves his father’s existence: that birthing is juxtaposed with the fiery hatching of her dragon progeny. Although Daenerys’s control over her growing “children” is sometimes brought into question—when Drogon burns up a child instead of the goats that he normally consumes, or when she must direct all three dragons at once in battle over Meereen—their existence forms the basis of her power in Essos, and then in Westeros.Medieval and early modern women could thus occupy social positions which endowed them with power and authority.,Lineage, social rank, reli-gious conviction, but also physical presence—beauty, fertility, intelligence, determinations, and that elusive but ineluctable quality, charisma—all these made possible their effective interventions and actions in the cul-tures in which they lived. Sometimes they fulfilled and exploited the gendered roles that their societies assigned to them in order to achieve their aims; at other times, they transgressed, challenged, or ignored xv FOREWORD gender, blurring distinctions and questioning convention. Accepted truths are put aside, exceptionality claimed, rules are broken, challenges faced and overcome. “All men must die”—Valar Morghulis—is the fatalistic refrain of the series, and indeed of Christian medieval European culture, counterposing the next world with the exile from God that humanity endures in this one. All men must indeed die, as Missandei reminds Daenerys as they walk the battlements of Meereen together. But, so retorts the Mother of Dragons: “we are not men.” Whatever that phrase might be in High Valyrian, it serves to embolden alike the former slave, interpreter, and confidante, and Daenerys Targaryen, the First of Her Name. So too, this book aims to embolden and encourage its readers, as it foregrounds and unpacks the many extraordinary ways in which the powerful women who inhabit the world of A Song of Ice and Fire and who lived in medieval and early modern cultures might intersect.St John’s College CarolyneLarringtonThe University of OxfordOxford, UKNotes1. Season 2, episode 1, ‘The North Remembers’.2. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, transl. A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 152.3. Norman Uphoff, ‘Distinguishing Power, Authority and Legitimacy: Taking Max Weber at his Word by Using Resources- Exchange Analysis’, Polity 22 (1989): 295–322. Here 300.4. Louise Lamphere, “Women in Domestic Groups,” in Woman, Culture and Society, ed. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1974), 99–100.5. Peggy McCracken, The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression in Old French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), Chap. 5.6. Charles Lindholm, “Charisma,” in The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology (Wiley Online Library), 2018, https://doi.org/10.1002/ 9781118924396.wbiea12867. See Christine Fell with Cecily Clark, Women in Anglo-Saxon England (London: British Museum Press, 1984), 13–14, citing Doris Stenton, “Women were then more nearly the equal companions of their husbands and brothers than at any other period before the modern age.” This view https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1286https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1286xvi FOREWORDhas now been called into question by the work of Stacy Klein, Ruling Women: Queenship and Gender in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Notre Dame IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2006), and Pauline Stafford’s Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).8. Pauline Stafford, “Powerful Women in the Early Middle Ages: Queens and Abbesses,” in The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan, Janet L.Nelson and Marios Costambeys (Abingdon and NewYork: Routledge, 2001), 378–415 at 398.9. Stafford, “Powerful Women,” 398.10. Stafford, “Powerful Women,” 399.11. Michael J.Enright, Lady with a Mead Cup: Ritual, Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from La Tène to the Viking Age (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996).12. My translation of Maxims IB, ll. 15–22, in T.A. Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English (Woodbridge and Totowa, NJ: D.S. Brewer, Rowman and Littlefield, 1976), 68.13. See Stephanie Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992), 152.14. Beowulf, ll. 1168–87.15. Beowulf, ll. 2369–79.16. Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women, 150–78.17. Carolyne Larrington, Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of ‘Game of Thrones’ (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), 56–8.18. See Mikal Gilmore, “George R.R. Martin, The Rolling Stone Interview,” in Rolling Stone, (23 April 2014), https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/19. Pauline Stafford, Queens, Dowagers and Concubines: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (London: Batsford, 1983), 99.20. For a foundational anthropological discussion of this custom see Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R.Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 157–210.21. Carolyne Larrington, “Mediating Medieval(ized) Emotion in Game of Thrones,” Studies in Medievalism 27 (2018): 35–42.22. See, however, against my strict definition of the role of the peace-weaver, the looser understanding of Carol Parrish Jamison, Chivalry in Westeros: The Knightly Code of ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2018), 160–72.23. See Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth- Century Texts (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 99–105.24. Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women, 243–70.https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/xvii FOREWORD 25. Fiona Maddocks, Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of her Age (London: Faber, 2013).26. Marina Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (London: Penguin, 1983).27. Sean L. Field, The Beguine, the Angel and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012); Alan Neame, The Holy Maid of Kent: Elizabeth Barton 1506–1534 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1971).28. Larrington, Winter is Coming, 184–5.BiBliographyBeowulf, trans. Heaney, Seamus, London: Faber, 1999. Old English text at http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/beowulf-oe.aspEnright, Michael J., Lady with a Mead Cup: Ritual, Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from La Tène to the Viking Age, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996.Fell, Christine with Clark, Cecily, Women in Anglo-Saxon England, London: British Museum Press, 1984.Field, Sean L., The Beguine, the Angel and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012.Gilmore, Mikal, “George R.R. Martin, The Rolling Stone Interview,” in Rolling Stone, (23 April 2014), https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/Hollis, Stephanie, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church, Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992.Jamison, Carol Parrish, Chivalry in Westeros: The Knightly Code of ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’, Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2018.Klein, Stacy S., Ruling Women: Queenship and Gender in Anglo-Saxon Literature, Notre Dame IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2006.Lamphere, Louise, “Women in Domestic Groups”, in Woman, Culture and Society, ed. Rosaldo, Michelle Zimbalist and Lamphere, Louise, Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1974, 97–112.Larrington, Carolyne, Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of ‘Game of Thrones’, London: I.B. Tauris, 2015.Idem, “Mediating Medieval(ized) Emotion in Game of Thrones”, Studies in Medievalism 27 (2018): 35–42.Lindholm, Charles, “Charisma”, in The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology (Wiley Online Library), 2018, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396. wbiea1286Maddocks, Fiona, Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age, London: Faber, 2013.http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/beowulf-oe.asphttp://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/beowulf-oe.asphttps://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/,https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1286https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1286xviii FOREWORDMcCracken, Peggy, The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression in Old French Literature, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.Neame, Alan, The Holy Maid of Kent: Elizabeth Barton 1506–1534, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1971.Rubin, Gayle, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex”, in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Reiter, Rayna R., NewYork: Monthly Review Press, 1975, pp.157–210.Shippey, T.A., Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English, Woodbridge and Totowa, NJ: D.S. Brewer, Rowman and Littlefield, 1976.Stafford, Pauline, Queens, Dowagers and Concubines: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages, London: Batsford, 1983.Idem, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.Idem, ‘Powerful Women in the Early Middle Ages: Queens and Abbesses’, in The Medieval World, ed. Linehan, Peter, Janet L.Nelson and Marios Costambeys, Abingdon and NewYork: Routledge, 2001, pp.378–415.Strohm, Paul, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth- Century Texts, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.Uphoff, Norman “Distinguishing Power, Authority and Legitimacy: Taking Max Weber at his Word by Using Resources- Exchange Analysis”, Polity 22 (1989): 295–322.Warner, Marina, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism, London: Penguin, 1983.Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, transl. Henderson, A.M. and Parsons, Talcott, NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1947.xixThis volume of collected chapters is the result of the incredible popular interest in many things premodern aroused by George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s eight-season spin-off television series Game of Thrones. Harangued by her four sons that she really needed to watch the series and read the novels because “it is all about what you do,” Zita thought it might be worth a look after all. Season 6 of the HBO series hooked her, and she pitched her idea for this collection to Lisa Benz, her brilliant co-editor, who generously agreed to reprise their editorial part-nership one more time. Zita acknowledges and thanks her sons for open-ing up this fresh possibility to consider. Serendipitously, and simultaneously, people had been quizzing Lisa about the phenomenon, forcing her to read the series, while her friends, Kaitlyn Foley, Erin Foley, and Geoffrey Morgan, organized Game of Thrones viewing parties, inspiring her to take on this project. We express our gratitude for the unwavering support and encouragement of the Queenship and Power series editors, Carole Levin and Charles E. Beem. Megan Laddusaw (History Editor at Palgrave Macmillan) has been likewise enthusiastic, kind, and constructive from the moment we first proposed our project to her as well as throughout the process of bringing this collection to press. The thoroughly engaged Christine Pardue (Editorial Assistant at Palgrave Macmillan) has been of invaluable and caring assistance. We wish to express our gratitude for the hard work and scholarly dedication of our twelve wonderful contributors—whom, to a woman and a man—graciously accepted our sometimes exact-ing editorship in good humour, wholeheartedly and generously, embracing our vision for this collection. We thank and express our appreciation for ackNowledgemeNtsxx ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSthe valuable additional collaboration agreed to by our distinguished con-tributors Professor Carolyne Larrington (St John’s College, Oxford) and Dr. Elena Woodacre (TheUniversity of Winchester)—cherished friend, scrupulous sounding board, and long-time, dedicated partner- in-crime in matters monarchy. The very kind words, enduring friendship, and con-structive feedback extended to us by Professor Tracy Adams (TheUniversity of Auckland) deserve recognition and our grateful thanks. We owe a debt of gratitude to our three anonymous external readers, who have enriched our thinking in no small measure. We acknowledge the love and support of our families, in particular Zita’s husband Mark as well as Lisa’s parents for their unwavering love, patience, and support. Zita also recognizes the generosity of her mentors, friends, and colleagues, Theresa Earenfight, Núria Silleras-Fernández, Andrew Fitzmaurice, Susan Broomhall, and Hélène Sirantoine, for their invaluable encouragement, for their advice, and for acting as her oracles in this as in many other things.xxi Foreword vii Acknowledgements xix Notes on Contributors xxiii Introduction: Cherchez les femmes: Queenship and the Women of Westeros xxixPart I Queenship 1 1 A Game of Thrones in China: The Case of Cixi, Empress Dowager of the Qing Dynasty (1835–1908) 3James J. Hudson 2 Queen of Sad Mischance: Medievalism, “Realism,” and the Case of Cersei Lannister 29Kavita Mudan Finn 3 Westerosi Queens: Medievalist Portrayal of Female Power and Authority in A Song of Ice and Fire 53Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun 4 “All I Ever Wanted Was to Fight for a Lord I Believed in. But the Good Lords Are Dead and the Rest Are Monsters”: Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister, and the Chivalric “Other” 77Iain A. MacInnescoNteNtsxxii CONTENTSPart II Female Agency 103 5 The Peaceweavers of Winterfell 105Kris Swank 6 Cersei Lannister, Regal Commissions, and the Alchemists in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire 129Curtis Runstedler 7 ‘All Men Must Die, but We Are Not Men’: Eastern Faith and Feminine Power in A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones 145Mikayla Hunter 8 Daenerys the Unready: Advice and Ruling in Meereen 169Shiloh CarrollPart III The Role of Advice 187 9 The Royal Minorities of Game of Thrones 189Charles E. Beem 10 Wicked Women and the Iron Throne: The Twofold Tragedy of Witches as Advisors in Game of Thrones 205Sheilagh Ilona O’Brien 11 Afterword: Playing, Winning, and Losing the Game of Thrones—Reflections on Female Succession in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones in Comparison to the Premodern Era 231Elena Woodacre Index 253xxiiiCharles E. Beem is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. His publications include The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History (2006), The Royal Minorities of Medieval and Early Modern England (2008), The Foreign Relations of Elizabeth I (2011), The Name of a Queen: William Fleetwood’s Itinerarium ad Windsor (2013), The Man Behind the Queen: Male Consorts in History (2014), and Queenship in Early Modern Europe (forthcoming in 2019). He is also, with Carole Levin, the editor of the book series Queenship and Power for Palgrave Macmillan.LisaBenz holds a PhD in History from the University of York, UK.She had her first monograph published on late English medieval queenship, Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England, with Palgrave Macmillan in 2012. She has also had articles published on Isabella of France and Margaret of France in Fourteenth- Century England VIII and in Queenship, Gender and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060–1600, a collection which she co-edited with Zita Rohr in 2016. Her interests lie in political culture, royal and legal institutions, and women’s and gender history. She has taught at the University of York and Rutgers University, and was the 2011–2012 Medieval Fellow at Fordham University. She is now an independent scholar.SylwiaBorowska-Szerszun is an assistant professorat theUniversity of Białystok, Poland, where she teaches courses in English literature and lit-erary theory. She is the author of Enter the Carnival: Carnivalesque Notes oN coNtriButorsxxiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORSSemiotics in Early Tudor Moral Interludes (2016). She,co-edited a special issue of Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies devoted to Polish specula-tive fiction and had a number of articles published on both medieval drama and fantasy literature. Her research focuses on medievalism and Gothicism in fantasy literature, particularly on tracing the echoes of medieval cultural and ideological constructs in contemporary discourses related to gender, sexuality, and race.ShilohCarroll has a lifelong interest in the portrayal of the Middle Ages in modern fantasy literature accidentally turned into an expertise on George R.R.Martin and A Song of Ice and Fire. Her book on the topic, Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, was published in 2018. When not waiting patiently for the next instalment from Martin, she serves on the editorial boards of Slayage and The Public Medievalist.Kavita Mudan Finn is an independent scholar in medieval and early modern literature. She received her PhD from the University of Oxford in 2010 and published her first book, The Last Plantagenet Consorts: Gender, Genre, and Historiography 1440–1627, in 2012. Her work has appeared in Shakespeare, Viator, Critical Survey, Journal of Fandom Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, and Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and she has edited several collections, including Fan Phenomena: Game of Thrones (2017), The Palgrave Handbook of Shakespeare’s Queens (2018), and Becoming: Genre, Queerness, and Transformation in NBC’s Hannibal (Syracuse, forthcoming 2019). Most recently, she taught at Simmons College. Her chapter in this volume is part of a larger project on representations of and fan responses to premodern women in television drama.James J.Hudson is an historian of modern China. He is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Since completing his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin (2015), he has taught at Knox College (2015–2016), the University of Tennessee-Knoxville (2016–2018), and Pepperdine University (Summer 2016). His research focuses on the modern history of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, where he served as a visiting Fulbright scholar (2012–2013). His research interests include urban his-tory, popular protest and crowd violence in China, and the history of World War II in East Asia.xxv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS MikaylaHunter is finishing her doctorate at St John’s College, University of Oxford, under the supervision of Professor Carolyne Larrington. Her thesis looks at disguise and transformation in Middle English romances and outlaw ballads, and she has recently had her work published on mem-ory, gender, and recognition in Le Morte Darthur.CarolyneLarrington is interested in Old Norse literature, Arthurian lit-erature, the treatment of emotion in medieval European literature, and in the ways in which women are imagined across the literatures of the period. Most recently she has been working in medievalism, the re-mediation of medieval material in the modern period. Her most recent publications have been a monograph on siblings in medieval European literature: Brothers and Sisters in Medieval European Literature (2015); an edited collection of essays on emotion in medieval Arthurian literature, co-edited with Frank Brandsma and Corinne Saunders, Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature (2015); a Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths and Legends of Ancient Scandinavia (Cambridge University Press, 2016), co-edited with Judy Quinn and Brittany Schorn; and two books in the medi-evalism field: Winter Is Coming: The Medieval World of “Game of Thrones” (2015) and The Land of the Green Man: A Journey Through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles (2015). A Folio Society edition of her transla-tion of the Poetic Edda has just been published as has an introduction to Norse myths in a series from Thames and Hudson.Iain A. MacInnes is Senior Lecturer in Scottish History at the UHI Centre for History, University of the Highlands and Islands. His main focus is on medieval warfare and chivalry, and their relation to the period of the fourteenth- century Scottish Wars of Independence. His first mono-graph was on the theme of Scotland’s Second War of Independence (2016). Growing out of this speciality, he has increasingly looked to develop these themes as they relate to modern depictions of medieval warfare. This has been done principally through analysis of graphic novel and comic depic-tions of medieval war and events, such as the Hundred Years’ War. He is looking to further this work through examination of medieval and medi-eval-like conflict as it is represented in comics, film, and television.SheilaghIlonaO’Brien has a PhD in Early Modern History from the University of Southern Queensland. Her thesis focused on witch trials in seventeenth- century England. Academic interests include “othering” and xxvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORSoppression, genocide and communal violence, and history as myth: how we tell and retell narratives about the past, and how those narratives reflect current social concerns. Sheilagh has previously written on Game of Thrones for The Conversation.ZitaEvaRohr holds a PhD in French History. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an honorary fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, in the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations. In 2016, she published a monograph based on her doctoral thesis with Palgrave Macmillan, Yolande of Aragon, Family and Power 1381–1442: The Reverse of the Tapestry, and has had, in collabo-ration with Lisa Benz, an edited collection of scholarly essays, Queenship, Gender and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060–1600, published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. She is collaborating currently on an edited collection with Jonathan Spangler, Aspects ofDeviance and Difference in the Premodern World, and is working on another monograph for Palgrave Macmillan, Anne of France and Her Family, 1325–1522: A Genealogy of Premodern Female Power and Influence. In 2004, Zita was admitted to the Ordre des Palmes Académiques for her contribution to French education and culture.CurtisRunstedler recently completed his PhD in Medieval Literature at the University of Durham. His dissertation examined the use of alchemy and exemplary narrative in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English poetry. He is a teaching and research fellow at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. His research looks at the role of alchemy in Elias Ashmole’s compendium Theatrum chemicum Britannicum (1652). His other research interests include werewolves, medieval and Renaissance sci-ence, and the roles of women in the Middle Ages.Kris Swank is a library director and Honours instructor at Pima Community College, Tucson, Arizona. She holds a BA, summa cum laude, in Humanities and English, and three master’s degrees, including an MA in Language and Literature from Signum University. Her fantasy literature essays have appeared in Tolkien Studies and Mythlore journals and in several edited collections. Her essay on adaptations of Beowulf appears in Monsters of Film, Fiction and Fable: The Cultural Links between the Human and Inhuman (2018), and her essay on celibate societies appears in Game of Thrones Versus History: Written in Blood (2017). She has also written for Library Journal, American Libraries, and other professional publications.xxvii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ElenaWoodacre is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern European History at the University of Winchester. She is a specialist in queenship and royal studies and has written extensively in this area. Her publications include her monograph The Queens Regnant of Navarre; Succession, Politics and Partnership (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and edited collections on queen-ship and monarchy in various contexts and settings.,Elena is the orga-nizer of the “Kings & Queens” conference series, founder of the Royal Studies Network (www.royalstudiesnetwork.org), and Editor-in-Chief of the Royal Studies Journal (www.rsj.winchester.ac.uk). Elena is also the co-editor of the Queens of England series at Routledge and the Gender and Power in the Premodern World series at ARC Humanities Press.http://www.royalstudiesnetwork.org/http://www.rsj.winchester.ac.uk/xxixAs we write, scholars of the medieval and early modern world across a variety of disciplines are living through a significant twenty-first-century cultural “moment.” Many of us are being asked—or told—by non-aca-demic fans and critics how much, and how obviously, Martin’s book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, and the HBO television series spin-off, Game of Thrones, are “medieval”—and that they represent the real (and possibly definitive) Middle Ages. When confronted with such claims and questions, academics tend to launch into discussions about the definitions and theo-ries of “medieval,” “historical,” “medievalism,” “fantasy,” and so forth, understandably leading to the rolling and glazing over of eyes of their interlocutors. Undaunted, and with our scholars’ antennae aquiver, we stepped up and plunged into Martin’s books and the HBO television series because students, family members, and friends kept repeating their claims or asking their questions. The global success and phenomenal uptake of Martin’s inspired creation is not an isolated cultural moment; it has happened before with the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Umberto Eco, and J.K. Rowling to name just four of the better- known medievalist fantasy practitioners of the modern and post-modern eras. Rather than being unique, the times in which we live have provided Martin with the media and social media tools for his cultural phenomenon’s rapid transmission and unsurpassed global reach, both in its original literary and in subsequent televisual incarnations.For feminist scholars, anxieties surrounding the “Unknowable Woman,” women such as Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Melisandre, the “Queen of Thorns” Olenna Tyrell, and her granddaughter Margaery iNtroductioN: CherChez les femmes: Queenship and the Women of Westerosxxx INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…Tyrell in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire, bring into play such analytical lenses as female agency, reputation, self-fashioning, and gender—themes we highlighted in Queenship, Gender, and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060–1600, our first collaboration for Palgrave Macmillan published in 2016. With this second collaboration, we aim to build upon this earlier scaffolding to incorporate the role, place, and efficacy of advice and advisors, significant themes embedded within all eight HBO seasons of Game of Thrones and the epic novels of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. For scholars of history and literature, this is of considerable relevance to the study of women such as Christine de Pizan and Anne of France, who counselled queens and elite women to look to the strategic achievement of a spotless reputation and an enduring legacy. To exercise independent agency, power, and influence in what was almost exclusively a man’s world, Christine and her “daughter” Anne urged the deployment of measured doses of juste ypocrisie, discrete dissimulacion, and prudent cautele (just hypocrisy, discreet dissimulation, and prudent guile)1 combined with conscious acts of self-fashioning and self-representation.2 Not all the female characters in Martin’s world adhere to Christine and Anne’s premodern golden rule, nor indeed did historical elite women of the medieval and early modern periods.Moreover, the evolution and transformation of the character of Tyrion Lannister offers a place to explore the idea of good counsel from not just the perspective of women’s studies, but also across wider socio-cultural and gendered contexts. Like the most effective and durable royal advisors, and the ideal “princely” advisor/courtier envisioned in Machiavelli’s Il Principe (of which Martin is clearly a fan) and Castiglione’s roughly contemporane-ous Il Libro del Cortegiano, Tyrion uses his powerful intellect, combined with his facility for reading the character of others “as easily as he does books,” to overcome the travails and prejudices with which he is confronted to rise to the position of Hand of the Queen on Daenerys Targaryen’s Small Council and, subsequently, Hand of the King on Bran the Broken’s Small Council. The Small Council itself, the body advising the King of the Seven Kingdoms, and its shifting membership are worthy of future scholarly attention in light of the functioning of privy councils and secret councils of both male and female monarchs across multiple geographies, geopolitical contexts, and historical periods that witnessed the emergence of successful territorial monarchies—the precursors of the modern state.With contemporary popular culture stars aligning for scholars of queen-ship, women’s history, political history, and gender studies, this collection xxxi INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… of ten chapters, bookended by a foreword and conclusion contributed by distinguished experts in their fields, offers an innovative platform from which to explore the intersection of academic scholarship on queenship and elite women and popular understanding of the premodern period with G.R. R.Martin’s inspired fantasy world. Historical and literary diver-sity combined with scholarly integrity is anchored to the collection by an expanded and enriched exploration of its unifying themes of queenship, female agency, and the role of advice. Added to these is a third unifying theme: the notion of just rule versus unjust rule and the ethics of power, especially as they intersect with gender, the essential weft woven into the complex tapestry of both Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novel series and HBO’s Game of Thrones television series. The depth and scope of our con-tributors’ chapters demonstrate how the evolution of queenship studies and the popularity of cultural phenomena such as A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones can navigate common ground between the scholarly and the popular, breaching artificial barriers between the academy and the greater public. By drawing specifically upon Martin’s cultural phenome-non, this collection advances queenship studies by opening up new approaches and methodologies and deploying these to lay bare key ques-tions regarding power, queens, and gender that have arisen from the broader public consuming the book and television series and scholars of history and literature—reflecting the vibrancy of the field and its continu-ally evolving and developing nature.medievalism aNdmartiN: are a song ofiCe andfire aNdgame ofthrones actually all that medieval? (aNd, does this matter?)Before Martin, there was Umberto Eco—a gifted academic, novelist, and prolific cultural commentator sometimes accused of “intellectual slumming it” because “he could speak of Donatello’s David in the same breath as, say, plastic garden furniture.”3 In the mid-1980s, hard on the heels of the run-away success of his 1980 medieval-themed whodunit, Il nome della rosa,4 set in an Italian monastery in 1327, polyhistor, semiotician, and medievalist, Eco observed that “it seems that people like the Middle Ages.”5 Nothing much has changed since then except that, with the arrival of the global popularity of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, people seem to like the Middle Ages even more. In the 1980s, Eco reminded us of a xxxii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… “continuous return”6 to the Middle Ages, affirming that “Modern Ages have revisited the Middle Ages from the moment when, according to his-torical handbooks,,they came to an end.”7 While Renaissance humanists might have dismissed the long period from the fifth to the fourteenth cen-turies as a “dark age,”8 there has been a regular return to, and a pervasive nostalgia for, the Middle Ages. According to Eco, this is exemplified in Italian Renaissance poetic revisitings of “Knights saga” themes and their variations, the English Renaissance rediscovery of symbols and emblems of Jewish mysticism, the Counter-Reformation’s reworking of scholastic phi-losophy, Jean Mabillon’s Baroque rediscovery and reassessment of the beau-ties of the medieval illuminated manuscript tradition, and Shakespeare’s “borrowing and re-shaping a lot from medieval narrative.”9 Standing upon Eco’s sturdy shoulders, seeing further and with contemporary relevance, our contributor Shiloh Carroll concedes elsewhere that “recreating the Middle Ages as ‘realistic,’ ‘authentic’ or ‘accurate’ is impossible.” Rather, “what is created is one’s idea of the Middle Ages based on one’s exposure to the past a filtered through historians, whether contemporary or from the era, and medievalist intermediaries.”10Unable to rebuild it “from scratch,”11 in our various attempts to re- create “authentic” Middle Ages, Eco judges that the Middle Ages has been patched up and distorted to reflect contemporary concerns and obsessions—whatever the age of its reinvention, giving us a sense that the Middle Ages is a space “in which we still live.”12 It is here—in the space in which we still live—that Martin’s Middle Ages seem most at home. Eco continues his exploration as to why this might be so, observing that “il Medioeva rappresenta il crogiolo dell’Europa e della civiltà” (the Middle Ages represents the melting pot of Europe and of civilization). Eco fixes upon points of convergence between our contemporary anxieties and obsessions and those of the historic Middle Ages, saying, “The Middle Ages inaugurated and witnessed all the institutions and concerns with which we must still deal—banks; the organization of landed estates; administrative structures and municipal policies; class struggles and pov-erty; haranguing between State and Church; the judicial process; fanatical terrorism; religious jurisdiction; and even the organization of tourism.”13 Eco maintains that “Our quest for the Middle Ages is a quest for our roots and, since we want to come back to the real roots, we are looking for a ‘reliable Middle Ages’.”14 Carroll sums up subsequent scholarly contribu-tions to the debate concerning “real” history and the “real” Middle Ages, asserting that “recreating the Middle Ages (or any other historical period) xxxiii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… in a way that could be called ‘realistic’, ‘authentic’, or ‘accurate’ is impossible.” She cites Michael Oakshott’s claim that “authenticity with regards to the past does not exist” because “there is nothing that may be properly called ‘direct’ evidence of a past that has not survived,”15 remind-ing us that Keith Jenkins points out the evident reality of not being able to reproduce the past in its realistic entirety because it is “inaccessible simply by virtue of no longer existing.”16However, if we are to venture back into the Middle Ages—patching it up but never rebuilding it from scratch in its entirety and its authenticity—which one should it be? Where would we start? Eco suggests that “perhaps every post-medieval dream or vision of the Middle Ages (from 1492 to today) does not represent a vision of the Middle Ages but rather a vision of a Middle Ages. If so, of which vision of the Middle Ages and of what medi-eval period do we speak?”17 In response to his own interrogations, Eco presents us with a user-friendly way into thinking about the many manifes-tations of “medievalism” that have developed since the end of the long and multiform Middle Ages.18 He suggests a typology of ten general categories of the many Middle Ages that we have known from the late fifteenth cen-tury to today: his “Ten Little Middle Ages.” To better understand Martin’s fictional universe, Eco’s self-proclaimed “rough and generic” typology is well worth revisiting because Martin’s Middle Ages falls into more than one, and perhaps quite a few, of Eco’s “Ten Little Middle Ages.”19 In determining where, and subsequently how, George R.R. Martin’s novel series, A Song of Ice and Fire, and the HBO television spin-off, Game of Thrones, align with Eco’s understanding of the Middle Ages and related medievalisms and neo-medievalisms,20 herewith a selection of his “Ten Little Middle Ages” that tallies with Martin’s fantasy universe.21According to Eco’ s Middle Ages as a mode and pretext, there is no particular interest in a specific historical context. This Middle Ages exists purely as a canvas upon which to cast contemporary characters helping us “to enjoy the fictional characters” and to explore contemporary and/or universal concerns. Clearly, Martin’s medieval fantasy epic falls into this category—perhaps peripherally in some respects at the beginning of his literary journey to Westeros in 1996, but now more evidently in its devel-opment and in the context of our current global concerns and geopolitical circ*mstances.The second of Eco’s “Ten Little Middle Ages” chiming with Martin’s work is the Middle Ages as a barbaric age—of elementary and outlaw feel-ings—“a shaggy medievalism, and the shaggier its heroes, the more xxxiv INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… profoundly ideological its superficial naïveté.”22 In speaking about his gritty settings and “realistic” inspiration, Martin judges that “a lot of the fantasy of Tolkien imitators has a quasi-medieval setting, but it’s like the Disneyland Middle Ages. You know, they’ve got tassels and they’ve got lords and stuff like that, but they don’t really seem to grasp what it was like in the Middle Ages. And then you’d read the historical fiction which was much grittier and more realistic and really give you a sense of what it was like to live in castles or to be in a battle with swords and things like that.”23 Shaggy, gritty realist of the Middle Ages or not, Martin provides his readers with a twenty-first-century alternative to the Middle Ages visions of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, or the Pre-Raphaelites—and it is indeed a dirtier, gutsier, and more violent world.24 His is a less fantastical and romantic dream of the Middle Ages than its earlier practitioners, with Martin asserting that the “battle between good and evil is thought [fought?] largely within the human heart, by the decisions we make.25 It’s not like evil dresses up in black clothing and you know, they’re really ugly.”26 Against a backcloth of “medieval” violence, yet nuanced by internalized conflict and complex emotions, Martin’s work has been highly influential both on the public perception of medievalism and of the historical medieval world. Fans of the books have combined their preconceived ideas about the Middle Ages, likely assembled from other neo-medievalist27 and medievalist material such as Tolkien’s and C. S. Lewis’s durable works with Martin’s alternative Middle Ages. Consciously or unconsciously, Martin has become the conduit by which his fans now understand the Middle Ages.28 Indeed, Martin is keen to point out the thoroughness of his medieval universe when compared to Tolkien’s, whom he says he admires but does not seek to imitate.29 The more general pre-modernism, and aspects of modernism that Martin has folded together in envisaging and expressing his constructed “historical” world, and specific gendered premodernism are reflected in Kavita Mudan Finn’s contribution to this collection, “Queen of Sad Mischance: Medievalism, ‘Realism,’ and the Case of Cersei Lannister,” which unravels the perceived realism of Martin’s and his very particular brand of medievalism on perceptions of premodern women. Elsewhere,,Carol Jamison posits that Martin’s work “is distinguished by the comprehensiveness of his medievalism” and that it “is medieval from its opening pages.”30 The debate continues.Eco’s Middle Ages of romanticism is the Middle Ages of sixteenth- century Edmund Spenser,31 and the nineteenth-century conception of the Middle Ages of “stormy castles and their ghosts”; of fair maidens and chivalric ideals; and the Middle Ages aesthetic, if not the decadence, of the xxxv INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.32 Martin categorically rejects this, Eco’s fourth “Little Middle Age,” the utopian or Romantic view of the past, aiming, he says, to show readers what the “real” Middle Ages looked like—gritty medievalism—which in some ways aligns with the shaggy bar-baric medievalism of Eco’s third “Little Middle Age” discussed above. Yet, does Martin really? Despite his strident attempts to break with the Middle Ages of romanticism, Martin wades relatively unhindered through the tra-ditional waters of romanticized medievalism, admittedly reshaping them to suit his purposes. Princesses, good kings, bad kings, evil queens, good queens, chivalric ideals—unmet in most cases, and largely unsustainable in others, once “reality” bites—knights, and castles, these all find their way into his multiform literary universe.33 In rejecting the Middle Ages of romanticism, does Martin protest too much? Perhaps. While helping him-self to them, Martin subverts many romanticist tropes. One striking exam-ple of this is the knight-errant motif—the wandering masculine knight in search of chivalric or courtly adventure. Arya Stark certainly goes a-roving, not only bending her gender, but inverting and subverting the romanti-cized avatar of the traditional knight-errant. For most of her narrative arc, Arya is on a one-woman mission to wreak unchivalric, merciless, and vio-lent personal vengeance to redress the misfortunes of her House. In his chapter for this collection, “‘All I ever wanted was to fight for a lord I believed in. But the good lords are dead and the rest are monsters.’ Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister, and the Chivalric ‘Other’” Iain A.MacInnes deconstructs and undermines the edifice of the medieval chi-valric hero. The chivalric virgin knight is Brienne—yet her position as a knight is compromised by her sex. MacInnes sets her against the character of Jaime Lannister, arguing that, in spending so much time together, they actually end up influencing one another. So intimately associated do they become that, on the eve of the battle against the forces of the Night King, Jaime crashes through the gender boundaries of knighthood, formally dubbing her Ser Brienne of Tarth, knight of the Seven Kingdoms—the first woman in the history of Westeros to be accorded such an investiture. They become lovers, but are separated by their respective duties and alle-giances—duty triumphing over authentic love.34 Jaime perishes protecting his sister-queen-lover Cersei in the battle for King’s Landing with a heart-broken, yet victorious Brienne left to complete Ser Jaime Lannister’s hith-erto scant entry in the Book of Brothers (The White Book).Eco’s Middle Ages of decadentism brings the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood immediately to mind. The sensual decadence of the xxxvi INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… Pre- Raphaelites, and the sumptuous art they produced, contradicted the actual circ*mstances of their models many of whom came from deprived backgrounds and lived in poverty. Both meanings of decadence, the origi-nal meaningof “decline,” and the more contemporary meanings of “self- indulgence,” “self-awareness,” “immorality, yet skilfulness in governing” can be applied to Martin’s “world.” The Lannisters (like the earlier Targaryens) stand out for their incestuous decadence—twincest in their case—Cersei (a courtly Machiavellian,35 practising a less subtle take on Machiavelli than her youngest brother, Tyrion) and Jaime (her devoted, yet conflicted liege-man-of-life-and-limb and knight-lover) for their sib-cestuous relationship, yet demonstrated ability to conquer and govern effectively—at least for a time.36 Their hedonistic, intellectual, morally self-aware, and charming younger brother Tyrion is perhaps Martin’s fin-est (and not particularly “medieval”) characterization. Tyrion is of primor-dial importance to Martin’s narrative for his alterity, his “early modern” grasp of prudential politics, and for his ability to fashion himself simultaneously into a Machiavellian advisor37—as Machiavelli intended—and a Castiglionian courtier38 par excellence with a pinch of Rabelaisian grotesque and humour thrown in for good measure.39The final of Eco’s Middle Ages characterizing Martin’s world is the Middle Ages of the expectation of the millennium—fuel for every apocalyp-tic sect and the source of many past (and present) geopolitical insanities. House Stark’s motto, “Winter is Coming,” is threaded throughout Martin’s storyline, implying the need for eternal vigilance and perhaps pointing to the denouement of his narrative. In Jon Snow’s warning of approaching Winter and the doomsday threat of the existential catastro-phe that lies beyond the Wall—the White Walkers and the Night King, supreme and apparently invincible leader of the Army of the Dead—we witness end of time moments and visions of the forthcoming gelid apoca-lypse should the Seven Kingdoms and their rulers not unite in an offensive against their common icy enemy. Given the well-guarded and fortified defences of the millenia-old Wall, this hitherto largely contained threat materializes in the final scene of the final episode of Season 7 of the HBO series when the Night King slays Daenerys’s dragon-child Viserion with his icy spear. Reanimating it, he rides Viserion like a Targaryen to destroy the Wall with its ice-blue fire.40 Yet, in the end, he too is not invincible—undone by hubris, prophecy, and the hard-won abilities of the diminutive Arya Stark determinedly and skilfully wielding the Valyrian steel blade pre-sciently gifted to her by her brother Bran.xxxvii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… history versus martiN’s coNstructed “historical world”: aesthetics aNdpoliticsAs we elaborate in greater detail in the next section, medieval and early modern queens and powerful elite women were supposed to adhere to the gold standard set by the Virgin Mary. Moreover, queens were expected to act in accordance with the gender expectations of the patriarchal polities wherein they sought to exercise their authority and exert their influence. However, to be recognized as a force with which to be reckoned in medi-eval, early modern, and indeed “modern” polities, powerful elite women and queens had to synthesize masculine qualities to manifest a heart of a man,41 while adhering paradoxically to gendered social norms in project-ing non-threatening, pious, and devoted external feminine personae.42 As is the case with their historical sisters, some might conclude mistakenly that the bulk of female characters in Game of Throne and A Song of Ice and Fire exist and act solely in the service of their male protagonists.43 Yet, elite women such as Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Olenna and Margaery Tyrell, and Sansa and Arya Stark exhibit independent agency, propelling the storylines of both narrative artefacts. This is most obvious in Season 6 of Game of Thrones, about which a commentator concludes: “is suddenly all about powerful women getting their way.”44 While this might well be the case, Season 6 simultaneously taps into long-standing “anxieties about women being something other than they seem.”45One striking example of a queen who manages to “weaponize feminin-ity” and achieve the difficult balancing act between her masculine and feminine qualities is Daenerys Targaryen. Cersei,Lannister, Margaery Tyrell, and Sansa Stark are significant others.46 In pre-constitutionally organized monarchies, queens and elite women carved out careers for themselves in politics and diplomacy by emphasizing their blood ties to their ruling dynasties and/or as guardians and queens-regent for their minor children. It was not just masculine ambition and aggression that created obstacles to their agency, however, because a queen’s potential for power not infrequently pitted ambitious elite females against one another. In the imaginary world of Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire, we witness fierce female competition for political power and influence between Margaery and Cersei, Olenna and Cersei, Sansa and Cersei, Cersei and Arya, and Cersei and Daenerys.47 Cersei seems to be the determined queen to overcome, and her competitors—male and female—drop like flies, dying rather than winning. However, both her refusal to heed pragmatic xxxviii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…counsel and her profound belief in her power and destiny bring about her pitiful demise, the destruction of King’s Landing, and the massacre of her subjects. Cersei’s confidence in the “rightness” of her rule shares much with Daenerys’s belief that in victory she must fulfil her destiny to liberate the world from tyranny. Against the backdrop of a Nuremberg-style rally for her unquestioningly loyal and triumphant forces, resolutely refusing to heed sound counsel and warnings from both Jon and Tyrion, the HBO final episode depicts Daenerys as just the sort of single-minded tyrant she seeks to defeat.While the aesthetics of Martin’s world often reflect popular under-standings and concepts of the medieval period, the politics and geopolitics of his world would seem to take inspiration from the early modern period when the superstructure of the modern state was under construction. There is considerably more to Martin’s agenda in creating his fictionalized “real” Middle Ages than at the superficial, aesthetic level. Writing for Pacific Standard, Benjamin Breen argues that “Game of Thrones isn’t medieval. And it’s the non medieval features of the series that help explain its enormous popularity.”48 Breen, while making some unforced errors in pointing to the medieval versus early modern phenomena contained in Martin’s world,49 observes that “Martin has created a fantasy world that chimes perfectly with the destabilized and increasingly non-western plan-etary order today.” As alluded to earlier, Martin’s series, and its HBO television spin-off, fall into the first of Eco’s “Ten Little Middle Ages”—a Middle Ages that serves as a “maniera e pretesto” (mode and pretext). For Eco, this is a Middle Ages of melodrama—of opera, or of Torquato Tasso’s 1581 epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered).50 A central source of lyrical passion in Gerusalemme liberata is the emotional conun-drum endured by the characters who are frequently torn between their heart and their duty, with love at odds with martial valour or honour. A highly fantasized and mythologized account of the First Crusade, like other works of the sixteenth century portraying conflicts between Christians and Muslims, Tasso’s subject matter had a topical resonance for his readers at a time when the Ottoman Empire was sweeping through Eastern Europe.51 Breen agrees that “fantasy worlds are never just fantasy … they refract our own histories and speak to contemporary interests … Martin’s fantasy has grown to enormous popularity in part because of its modernity, not its ‘medievality.’”52In Eco’s mode and pretext Middle Ages, there is no real commitment to an authentic contextualized Middle Ages. Martin’s settings serve instead xxxix INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… as a hyper-real scenescape—distant, yet familiar—for the exploration of contemporary characters and concerns. Carroll contends Martin leans more heavily towards the “Barbaric” Middle Ages model, deliberately undercutting Tolkien’s “Romantic” Middle Ages.53 She identifies the ways in which Martin’s political motivations have worked to shape his hyper- real Middle Ages, the devices he has chosen to achieve his vision of the Middle Ages, and what his reconstructed Middle Ages might teach us. She argues that Martin “examines contemporary concerns or anxieties while placing them in a far-distant past, allowing the reader to consider them at a distance”54—safely, somewhat disinterestedly, and hypothetically. Rainer Emig maintains that, in spite of its pseudo-medieval reality, A Song of Ice and Fire, a highly politicized fantasy, “responds to the political situation of the world at the start of the twenty-first century, where Cold War powers are a thing of the past and new imperial ones are only gradually making their impact felt.”55 There are no white and black hats in Martin’s dream or vision of a hyper-real medieval world, liberating his narrative’s medieval setting to operate as a pretext for unravelling twenty-first-century political and geopolitical transformations, disruptions, conflicts, and anxieties.56Like the highly successful young people’s author J.K. Rowling, Martin harvests selectively from the disciplines of history, philosophy, and litera-ture across diverse times and spaces to create his own fantasy cultural uni-verse for adults, many of whom grew to maturity consuming Rowling’s Harry Potter novel series, its cinematic (and now theatrical) spin-offs, and its lucrative and pervasive merchandising. Martin rarely names his sources, admitting, however, that he has a preference for “popular” histories and historical fiction rather than scholarly works. When scholars find them-selves bombarded with phrases such as “Game of Thrones shows how the Middle Ages really was,” there is a reflexive tendency to dismiss yet another vehicle for misconceptions or skewed beliefs about “what the Middle Ages was like,” lamenting the easy way it has blazed its trail into the popular imagination. However, rather than denouncing Martin’s fantasy universe as providing the public with yet another inaccurate or filtered perception of the Middle Ages, scholars should seize the opportunity Martin offers us to examine how his “medieval” epic series, which explores our contempo-rary concerns and realities, might also serve as a lightning rod for themes and connections that are of scholarly value in problematizing, and there-fore better understanding our shared and diverse premodern pasts.Galvanized by Martin’s very particular literary characterizations of elite and royal women in his novels and the HBO television series, especially its xl INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…much discussed Season 6,57 we felt that the time was right for a collection that takes account of recent developments in the fertile and flourishing field of queenship studies to explore them in relation to the themes of gendered rulership raised by George R. R. Martin’s world. Moreover, since we conceived of this project,58 the serendipitous appearance in late 2018 of his 80,000-word novel Fire and Blood59 contains Archmaester Abelon’s chronicle pointing to hundreds of women, especially widows, who ruled after the Dance of the Dragons in the period known as the Winter of Widows. Like many premodern and indeed modern elite and royal women, Martin’s “Winter Widows,” who lived three centuries before the “current” Martinesque era, ruled in place of their dead or oth-erwise absent husbands, brothers, fathers—lost or displaced during the Dance of the Dragons war of succession—or their surviving underage sons. In this succession war, Daenerys Targaryen’s distinguished foremother, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, opponent of her younger step- brother, Aegon II Targaryen, bears more than a passing resemblance to Empress Mathilda (d. 1167), daughter of Henry I of England,and mother of Henry II—her lack of dragon fire-power notwithstanding. Not only are their narratives and motivations very similar but so too are their chronolo-gies; Princess Rhaenyra lived three centuries before her dynastic “daugh-ter”, Daenerys Targaryen, just as Empress Maud (as she was also known), countess of Anjou and heiress-presumptive to Henry I’s throne of England, lived about three centuries before Margaret of Anjou (d. 1482), queen- consort of Henry VI of England. In his chapter for our collection, “The Royal Minorities of Game of Thrones,” Charles E.Beem, in examining the relationship between family and power in Game of Thrones, argues that Cersei and her sons reflect a pantheon of characters from medieval European history. While in “Wicked Women and the Iron Throne: The Two-Fold Tragedy of Witches as Advisors in Game of Thrones,” Sheilagh Ilona O’Brien explains how Martin’s universe mirrors historical concerns regarding the nature of queenship, how it manifests itself, as well as how media portrays society’s concerns over female advice and influence. O’Brien identifies anxieties over female/feminine influence and power, which reflect both historical and contemporary realities.Having very briefly accounted for the “medieval matter” buttressing Martin’s narrative creation,60 are there aspects of Martin’s oeuvre that dovetail with the politics, societies,61 and conflicts of the early modern period rather than its preceding Middle Ages? From the terrace atop the pyramid of her newly conquered city-state Meereen, Daenerys Targaryen xli INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… says of her forefather Aegon I Targaryen, the Conqueror (who invaded, conquered, and unified the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros under his rule): “Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros but afterwards he gave them peace and justice.”62 Her supposedly “medieval” reflection sounds very like something the Italian Renaissance humanist advisor and diplomat Machiavelli recounts in The Prince: “Cesare Borgia was accounted cruel; nevertheless, this cruelty of his reformed Romagna, brought it unity, and restored order and obedience.”63 Another of Martin’s women, Queen Alyssa Velaryon, who sought to be loved, consort of Aenys I Targaryen, and therefore another of Daenerys’s dynastic foremothers, is described with words that echo Machiavelli’s instructions on how not to govern successfully:That Queen Alyssa wished to do the right thing, no man should doubt …. She desired above all to be loved, admired, and praised, a yearning she shared with King Aenys, her first husband. A ruler must sometimes do things that are necessary but unpopular, however, though he knows that opprobrium and cen-sure must surely follow.64Machiavelli, in responding to the dilemma of whether it is better to be loved or feared, or the reverse, from Dido’s words, has Vergil deduce:Res dura, et regni novitas me talia coguntMoliri, et late fines custode tueri. [Harsh necessities and the newness of my kingdom force me to do such things, and to guard my frontiers everywhere.]65Machiavelli concluding that, on balance:since some men love as they please but fear when the prince pleases, a wise prince should rely on what he controls, not on what he cannot control. He must only endeavour … to escape being hated.66As highlighted by several chapters in this collection, there are numerous “Machiavellian” and early modern moments, characters, and pronounce-ments in Martin’s “brutal political” world, which Elizabeth Beaton agrees elsewhere is “full of assassins, warring families, and shadowy manipulative advisors” not “so far removed from the intrigue-riddled realm of Renaissance Italy.”67 There is even a readily recognizable Girolamo Savonarola-inspired character in the High Sparrow. According to xlii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…Machiavelli, who witnessed his sudden rise and precipitous fall in Renaissance Florence, Savonarola (d. 1498) is best understood as an unarmed, mediocre, self-righteous, and ultimately ineffectual contempo-rary political and spiritual prophet.68 Jacopo della Quercia asserts that “Savonarola offers an excellent example of how Martin and Machiavelli not only tapped into the same reservoirs of history but wrote about them in comparable ways.”69 Moreover, in the final episode of Season 7, Sansa, Bran, and Arya Stark work together in a very Machiavellian way to “take down” the chirpy, vapid flatterer, and advisor-cum-consort-aspirant, their cunningly counterfeit false-friend, Lord Protector of the Vale, Petyr Baelish (Littlefinger). It is almost as if the Stark siblings had studied three chapters in particular of Machiavelli’s Prince, “Cruelty and Compassion,” “A Prince’s Personal Staff,” and “How Flatterers Must Be Shunned,” absorbing his lessons to great effect.70In 2013, Elizabeth Beaton sat down with Martin when he passed through Melbourne, Australia, raising the question of Machiavelli’s appar-ent influence upon the construction of his political fantasy. Martin responded rather coyly in these terms: “Certainly, I read Machiavelli’s work back in college. I’m aware of his ideas and beliefs … as anyone who writes about politics and power is … I don’t necessarily agree with his ideas, but they have power. His advice in The Prince is one way to approach rule.”71 Beaton casts her gimlet eye over three of Martin’s prominent female characters, whom she defines as pragmatic politicians but of three different Machiavellian types: the military Machiavellian (Asha Greyjoy), the court Machiavellian (Cersei Lannister), and the Machiavellian Prince (Daenerys Targaryen) as well as taking a more general look at “Feminism and Female Machiavellian Moments” in Martin’s creation.72 Machiavellian models of power and rule aside, there is also an early modern transforma-tive political moment portrayed vividly in HBO’s Season 6 of Game of Thrones—the recognition and “institutionalization” of female regency and the rise of female kings.73 Regarding feminism, Martin has had this to say:To me being a feminist is about treating men and women the same, I regard men and women as all human– yes there are differences, but many of those differences are created by the culture that we live in, whether it’s the medi-eval culture of Westeros, or 21st century western culture.74Martin continues, explaining the complexity he tries to build into all of his characters, both male and female, whom he contends he has not rendered in black and white:xliii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… Male or female, I believe in painting in shades of grey. All of the characters should be flawed; they should all have good and bad, because that’s what I see. Yes, it’s fantasy, but the characters still need to be real.75However, not all feminists have embraced Martin’s narratives and charac-ters, with Gina Bellafonte starchily denouncing him in The NewYork Times by writing, “Game of Thrones is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the populations other half.”76 Others, such as Emily Nussbaum in The NewYorker, have defended Martin, pointing out that the strength of the series is “its insight into what it means to be excluded from power: to be a woman, or a bastard, or ‘half a man.’”77 Indeed, if one examines the facts and the contexts carefully, one cannot but conclude that most of the population of the premodern world—male and female—was disenfran-chised by the “patriarchy,” and that the premodern patriarchy, or ruling class, was made up of both high-ranking and high-wealth males and females. Lindy Grant reminds us that “focus on misogyny can lead one to ignore bitter criticism of power and the powerful in general.”78A recently published collection of essays poses a legitimate question: “How many exceptional women in positions of authority does it take before powerful,elite women become the rule” (in the historiography of our premodern past)? For some three decades, scholars have demonstrated that historical elite women in power were not exceptions to the norm, yet many still hold this to be the case.79 Powerful and politically effective elite and royal women of the premodern period—prior to the industrial revolu-tion—were “expected, accepted, and routine.”80 Martin’s universe, and indeed the history of premodern political power, is about family and fami-lies. All monarchies and ruling dynasties are essentially about family, “and the ways in which family and familial connections are used to attain sover-eignty and buttress power and influence.”81Female power, ageNcy, aNdadvice: medieval aNdearly moderN scholarshipIn general, medieval and early modern societies believed that women were subordinate to men. It was assumed that men, as husbands and fathers, should hold authority over their wives and daughters. Aristotle’s views of women’s biological deficiency provided the foundational justification for the so-called medieval misogyny. According to Aristotle, females were deformed or defective males, who could never reach perfection because of xliv INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…menstruation, and therefore were physiologically inferior.82 Aristotle’s concept was combined with biblical exegesis, which concluded that all women were physically and morally inferior because of Eve’s material cre-ation from Adam’s body and the corruption of her character by the devil.83 These two concepts fused to create a society that commonly believed that women were inherently inconstant, foolish, loquacious, insubordinate, and possessed of a perverse inclination towards temptation. These identi-fied feminine traits “proved” that medieval and early modern elite women, both as women and as queens, were unfit to act in areas of masculine authority. The contextualized socio-political reality, however, was very different.The first modern medieval scholars also gave little critical attention to the study of medieval women. For example, nineteenth-century works on medieval women, and on medieval queens, took the form of individual biographies and personal narratives, were generally divorced from main-stream political history, and mainly focused on prominent aristocratic women—The Great White Women of History. Little analytical attention was given to a woman’s place in diverse premodern societies, nor did histo-rians consider that premodern societies might have held different ideas regarding gender roles.84 Rather than thinking about contextualized pre-modern understandings of gender, their studies of premodern women relied upon their own particular societal views regarding gender. Twentieth-century feminist movements changed the ways in which academics viewed a woman’s place in the world, and therefore the way in which women were studied. Scholars of the premodern world began to consider women through the lenses of gender, power, and status. As part of these new approaches to studying premodern women, researchers concerned with medieval and early modern queens moved away from the early biographical approaches that had focused upon the colourful events and myths sur-rounding individual queens, and started to think instead about their pre-modern experiences and what it meant to be a queen in a pre- constitutional monarchy.85 More recently, scholars have widened their exploration to include premodern understandings of what it meant to be a man.86First-wave feminism’s main focus was to bring women out of the pri-vate sphere to gain equal opportunities for them in public institutions so that they were no longer denied access to political activity.87 This concept of the public/private divide was deployed by medievalists giving birth to the study of queenship as an office or an institution.88 These trail-blazing scholars began to articulate a new vocabulary for discussing the queen’s xlv INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… place within the royal spheres of power, authority, and government.89 Medieval and early modern historians began to argue that applying mod-ern concepts of gender without an awareness of cultural and temporal specificity risked the production of ahistorical and distorted conclusions. Their subsequent analyses of queens explored contextualized understand-ings of manhood and womanhood, and kingship and queenship.90 This new framework allowed “medieval misogyny,” stemming from Greco- Roman and Judeo-Christian philosophies and theologies, not to be dismissed outright but rather to be deconstructed, interrogated, and re-articulated. This new method of analysis includes, but is by no means limited to, the investigation of the queen’s motherhood, her intercession, her patronage, and her household. Within this framework, scholars seek to uncover and communicate the level of agency, power, or authority that was afforded to, and indeed manipulated by, the queen, evaluating how and if these areas contributed to her participation in the governance of the realm. The unexceptional—as we now view it—phenomenon of the pow-erful elite premodern woman problematizes received ideas regarding the blanket misogyny of the “ruling” patriarchy in premodern polities, pro-viding a more nuanced reading of how this might be better understood once reinserted into the diverse contexts and concerns of their times.It was just as these advances in the study of gender, power, and agency were happening in academia that Martin conceived of his “world,” pen-ning his novels from the mid-1990s onwards. Knowingly or not, Martin’s world has capitalized and internalized many of the discussions that have preoccupied scholars of premodern women and their subset: queens and elite women. Queens were expected to act in accordance with the comple-mentary gender expectations of patriarchal polities wherein they sought to exercise their authority and exert their influence. Across diverse geopoliti-cal spaces, women of the premodern longue durée emphasized gendered benchmarks for female action by the conscious and careful display of visi-ble and overt femininity combined with an unassailable devotion to dynasty, state, and religion.91 This collection focuses primarily upon the institution of queenship and two of its most essential aspects: female agency and the role of advice.Since queens did not consistently hold positions within government, proffering advice through intercession was one way queens could, and did, make a significant impact upon political undertaking. There were sev-eral ways in which queens could act as intercessors: as peacemakers between the king and other people; by securing a privilege, such as a pardon, grant, xlvi INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…or appointment from the king at the behest of someone else; by interced-ing on their own initiative; or by beseeching the king to grant someone a request. Queenly influence was a “means to create and sustain impressions of power.”92 The ideological emphasis on intercession and influence was a consequence of the idea of complementary gender roles. Both men and women could act as intercessors, but it was a duty especially emphasized for women because it was the most effective primary avenue of power available to them.93 Men could not only intercede with the king, but they also had many more opportunities for active roles in government. Naturally, premodern queens could be, and often were, suspected of improper influence over the king—adultery therefore was one of the first charges brought against a queen when detractors and competitors sought to discredit her.94 Acting in the role of most intimate advisor to the king—implicit in premodern conceptions of the role of the female consort—queens negotiated the shifting sands of the fine line between legitimate,,acceptable power, and dangerous criticism. Moreover, the Virgin Mary was defined generally by her complementary roles of intercessor and mother—the principal duties assigned to a terrestrial queen.95 As such, associating the terrestrial queen with the celestial Mary was the logical way to disseminate expectations of the queen’s duties to the queen herself and her regal authority to her subjects. The queen too therefore had two bodies96: Marian intercessor and holy mother, and her corporeal sexual body. Since a terrestrial queen could not be a virgin mother, as the celestial Virgin Mary was held to be there was always a level of anxiety regarding a queen’s sexual identity. Unlike a king’s, a queen’s role and status was uniquely corporeal and, while her intercessory role might allow the con-ceptualization of the queen’s two bodies, her intercessory and reproduc-tive duties could not be completely separated.97 Kings were seldom, if ever, defined primarily by the fathering of their offspring. Accordingly, queens discussed in chronicles most often fell into general stereotypes of female behaviour: Jezebels, who were over-mighty viragos; adulterous wives; wicked enchantresses; or “Virgin Marys,” who were supportive wives and mothers, and modest intercessors and peacemakers.98Premodern queens could act in governing capacities in several ways: they aided the king and chancellor in the chancery, and they acted as mechanisms of authority, administering the kingdom in the king’s absence or death. The powers afforded to a queen in these functions varied greatly by geography. For example, there were never any queens-regent or “queens-keeper” in England, but they were largely unexceptional in France, in the Mediterranean, and on the Iberian and Italian peninsulas—regardless of whether or not they xlvii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… carried an official designation.99 For England’s part, in many cases, but not all, when the king was absent from the realm, the custos, or keeper, or regent was one of the king’s minor sons who held only titular authority. Most often, there was a council administering the realm under the authority of the keeper’s name, and the queen usually supported this administrative body along with other important members of the royal administration such as the chancellor. Elsewhere, queens who were fortunate enough to have sons—or even grandsons100—in their minorities could aspire to being appointed to the post of regent— either officially or unofficially.101 Through regency, motherhood gave queens the opportunity to exercise political influence and even ultimate authority in some cases.102 Their contemporaries expected the queen to act in these roles because she was the safest choice as administrator of the realm during the king’s absence, having no blood claims to the throne, unlike a royal uncle, for example, and because the queen was thor-oughly and durably incorporated into the premodern concept of the crown.For premodern women of all estates, the emphasis on motherhood stemmed from the necessity to provide heirs for their husbands’ lands or businesses, and to sustain their family lineages.103 For a queen, however, motherhood not only defined her domestic role, but was an important source of her personal power and political influence.104 Many historians have pointed out that a queen’s position became most secure once she had produced a male heir, and she could use her maternal power to her advan-tage. Other scholars have established that, once the queen’s son began to rule in his own right, whether he immediately succeeded upon the death of his father or when a minority period was brought to an end, she had three options regarding her widowhood: she could retire to her dower lands, she could take the veil, or she could remarry.105 There has been little study of the agency of queens who retired quietly from courtly life to their dower lands. If a queen wished to remain politically active she could do so through her unique, maternal influence over her son, much in the same way as she had fulfilled her role as queen-consort, and it is this role that has been the focus of most studies on dowager-queens.106 Moreover, daughters too could be ongoing sources of power—interactions between mothers and daughters perpetuated the roles and powers ascribed to queens- consort. John Carmi Parsons’s studies of Plantagenet queens have been especially important in revealing mother/daughter interactions. Through their mar-ried daughters, queens were able to perpetuate and expand their power-bases, using the practice of female networking with their own daughters, thereby widening their nominally domestic spheres of agency and increas-ing their influence inboth domestic andforeign affairs.107xlviii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…structure oFthecollectioNThis volume is divided into three interconnected thematic sections, reflect-ing the themes and their variations considered by our ten cross- disciplinary contributors, and bookended by an introductory forewordand a conclud-ing afterword. Carolyne Larrington begins our collection, setting up a discussion of Max Weber’s distinctions between power, authority, and cha-risma, connecting these distinctions to the notion of influence. Larrington illustrates her observations by identifying historical paradigms that seem to exemplify the different ways in which women in leadership roles could exercise agency in the premodern period, drawing out comparisons with the women of Martin’s fantasy universe.In Part I, “Queenship,” James J.Hudson’s chapter, “Game of Thrones and Historical Dowagers: The Case of Cixi, Empress Dowager of China (1835–1908)” strays determinedly from the well-trodden path of medi-eval comparison with a glimpse into the nineteenth-century political career of empress-dowager Cixi, which he likens to the “brand” of gendered power exemplified by Cersei Lannister. As an anonymous reviewer has pointed out to us recently, assuming that Martin did not know about Cixi, how and why do such parallels work? Is there an even more compelling question about how models of premodern dowager-queenship might be universal rejections of the strictures of queen-consortship? This is a very interesting question indeed, one made more enticing by the fact that we might never know. While Cixi reigned during what we understand to be the modern period, Hudson argues that the political and social organiza-tion of late Imperial China had far more in common with the emergent states of Western European polities during their late medieval and early modern periods than with “westernized” nineteenth-century empires and kingdoms.From Imperial China, Kavita Mudan Finn’s chapter, “Queen of Sad Mischance: Medievalism, ‘Realism,’ and the Case of Cersei Lannister,” while also focusing upon the ever-mesmerizing Cersei Lannister, diverts our gaze to themes of medievalism and perceived realism to consider the impli-cations of Martin’s particular brand of medievalism for our understanding of premodern political women. In the third and final chapter of Part I, “Westerosi Queens: Medievalist Portrayal of Female Power and Authority in A Song of Ice and Fire,” Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun turns to Martin’s novel series to examine Martin’s creation of three very different yet powerful queens—Cersei Lannister, Margaery Tyrell, and Daenerys Targaryen—to xlix INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… examine his construction of their characters, evaluating them via the lens of “medieval misogyny” on one hand and, on the other, Alcuin Blamires’s premodern “profeminine defences.”108 Borowska- Szerszun’s discussion highlights the challenges and opportunities faced by premodern queens, pointing to possible historical inspirations behind the depiction of Martin’s fantasy queens, enabling her to examine the,influence of power and gender on the perception of power and authority in a contemporary narrative con-strued as a fantasy of the Middle Ages.Part II, “Female Agency,” is introduced by Iain A.MacInnes’s chapter, “‘All I ever wanted was to fight for a lord I believed in. But the good lords are dead and the rest are monsters.’ Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister, and the Chivalric ‘Other.’” MacInnes examines Martin’s depiction of these two knightly figures, focusing in particular upon their shared relationship and “chivalric” journey. He considers the place of chivalry as a belief system linking the two, analysing the extent to which these characters represent the medieval chivalric warrior—or something else entirely. Brienne of Tarth, whose position as a knight is initially undermined by her sex, dem-onstrates her agency not only in fighting for honour, protecting her lord, and those to whom she has sworn her allegiance, but also in the ways in which her contact with Jaime Lannister brings about a gradual, yet durable transformation in him—she does indeed make him a better man. The more time they spend in one another’s company, the more they influence each other—albeit in different ways. Kris Swank’s chapter, “The Peaceweavers of Winterfell,” finds significant points of comparison between the queens in Beowulf, the anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem, and Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novel series. Both sets of queens are thrust frequently into that most gendered of premodern female roles—the “peaceweaver,” or media-trix. Does the possibility exist for successful female agency in brokering peace in heroic warrior societies, worlds—real or imagined—that are domi-nated by conquest and aggression? Can a woman in such an environment do otherwise and win? Swank problematizes and untangles the role of “peaceweaver” by examining the successes and failures of this aspect of premodern female agency in Martin’s series via the analytical lens of Beowulf, illustrating the ephemeral power of female peaceweavers in societ-ies dominated by men, war, and intrigue. Another aspect of agency, com-missioning, is discussed by Curtis Runstedler in the third chapter of this section, “Cersei Lannister, Regal Commissions, and the Alchemists in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire.” Runstedler investigates how Martin subversively frames Cersei’s commissioning of alchemists to produce l INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…wildfire. Rather than a king commissioning alchemists as English history records, it is a strong, powerful queen-regent at the helm of state whom they must satisfy. Runstedler reassesses the connection between alchemical commissions, intention, and royalty in Martin’s novel series, setting it against the fifteenth-century English alchemical commissions of Henry V and Henry VI.Runstedler examines Martin’s inversion and subversion of the part played by the queen-regent’s agency in commissioning this inher-ently unstable weaponized substance. Martin’s portrayal of Cersei’s agency balances the masculine and feminine qualities of the queen-regent, yet simultaneously suggests the potential threat of the volatility of both wild-fire and Cersei herself. This is visualized to great effect in the penultimate episode of Season 8 of the HBO series where we (and indeed Cersei, momentarily secure in her Red Keep) witness residual caches of stored wildfire explode in King’s Landing in response to the fire of Daenerys’s pitiless vengeance as she lays waste to Cersei’s magnificent capital and its innocent inhabitants. In the final chapter of Part II, “‘All Men Must Die, but We Are Not Men’: Eastern Faith and Feminine Power in A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones,” Mikayla Hunter explores the role of religion as one of the very few sources of power and agency for the women of Essos: Melisandre, Quaithe, and the dosh khaleen. She com-pares their limited access to power to that of the most powerful Western women, queens who shared a sometimes troubled relationship with faith, finding that often it constricted or undermined more than it empowered. Hunter compares this source of power and agency with the sources of power and agency for heroines of medieval romance and chansons de geste, drawing attention to the unusual dearth of conventional love stories in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. Hunter reshapes the traditional reliance on love and sexual attraction as female sources of power and agency, drawing conclusions about how the series’ portrayal of women’s relationship with faith interacts with contemporary Western views regard-ing women in the East.In Part III, “The Role of Advice,” Shiloh Carroll opens with her chap-ter, “Daenerys the Unready: Advice and Ruling in Meereen,” drawing some comparisons with the king of the English, Æthelread II Unræd (the “poorly advised,” d. 1016), and examining the various forms of advice, including prophecies, available to Daenerys Targaryen as she attempts to rule her newly conquered city-state of Meereen. Carroll’s chapter untan-gles the threads of advice and intrigue apparent in Daenerys’s storyline, demonstrating how Daenerys moves further and further away from the li INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… kind of leader she wants to be, and how her dragons symbolize her true self. Carroll draws our attention to the ways in which the adaptation in the HBO television series spin-off radically oversimplifies the politics of Slaver’s Bay, losing much of the nuance behind Daenerys’s actions and pushing her character towards the “madness” side of Targaryen heritage. Her hitherto dormant hereditary madness is revealed by the HBO writers as their narra-tive reaches its climactic resolution in Season 8. Such oversimplifications, Carroll argues, work to transform Daenerys into a stereotypical female leader: indecisive, irrational, and governed by her emotions rather than by logic, a characterization that Martin seemed keen to avoid. In his chapter, “The Royal Minorities of Game of Thrones,” Charles E.Beem reveals how royal minorities are the unavoidable by-products of hereditary systems of succession in medieval Europe and in Game of Thrones, making the con-duct of royal minority the acid test of a dynasty’s strength and power. Queen Cersei Lannister’s possession of the Iron Throne has few analogues in medieval western history. However, Cersei’s performance as a queen and a mother during the minority reigns of her sons is complicated, mirroring the experiences of many queens-mother in medieval Western Europe. However, Beem argues that, in the final analysis, Cersei, like her elder son Joffrey, slides into caricature, thirsting for power and revenge, becoming the stereotypical “fairy-tale” epitome of the wicked queen. More than any of the male characters in Game of Thrones, Cersei epitomizes the savage and remorseless quest for dominance in the “win, or die” game of thrones played by her against the backdrop of her sons’ minority reigns. Liberated from the demarcations of regency, Cersei falls victim to her blinkered vision of effective and durable rulership. Both she and Daenerys refuse sound counsel and ignore Machiavelli’s advice to avoid being hated, descending instead into bloody tyranny and quite justifiable oblivion. In the final chap-ter of Part III, “Wicked Women and the Iron Throne: The Problem of Witches and Wise Women as Advisors and Rulers in Game of Thrones,” Sheilagh Ilona O’Brien reveals how anxieties concerning female and femi-nine influence and power as portrayed in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones reflect both historical and contemporary realities. For O’Brien, such anxieties reach their zenith in the figure of the witch who embodies the dangerous and/or monstrous feminine, sexually rapacious and desirous of power. O’Brien demonstrates how Martin’s universe reflects historical concerns,over the nature of queenship, how it occurs, and of “female” or “feminized” advice. By examining how these ideas are discussed in both the novel and spin-off television series, O’Brien lays bare how the media portrays society’s concerns regarding “female” advice and power. Whether lii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…they seek to rule or merely to advise, women are the frequent targets of criticism in the “game of thrones.” Most notable of these gendered motifs is the tragedy and loss that befalls rulers who allow themselves to be influ-enced by the advice of “witches.” The final word on the issues and ques-tions raised by our contributors falls to Elena Woodacre. In her afterword, Woodacre brings our collection full circle, highlighting themes such as female inheritance and succession in response to the ideas advanced by our ten scholarly collaborators.So, how does Martin’s “medieval” fantasy end?109 Martin is yet to release his literary version, but the HBO Game of Thrones storyline’s reso-lution is a nuanced combination of some of the possibilities contained within Eco’s “Ten Little Middle Ages.” It is certainly grittily barbaric and unromanticized, with both Cersei and Daenerys denied their claims, dying rather than winning, and Drogon, the surviving dragon, making his opin-ion very clear regarding the ruthless and apocalyptic quest for an Iron Throne that had cost so many lives and possessions—especially those of his “mother” Daenerys. Jon Snow chooses duty and reason over love, paying heavily for his choice with perpetual exile to the nominally celibate Night’s Watch for his crime of regicide. He is denied the possibility of establishing his own Targaryen-Stark dynasty as a compromise to head off rebellion and conflict with Grey Worm and the Unsullied. In the killing of his queen, Jon embodies what Machiavelli refers to as a nobility of the spirit or soul (grandezza d’animo) that puts him into considerable danger in his decision to act against Daenerys’s nascent tyranny. Yet from this barbaric vision surfaces a king-maker, Tyrion Lannister, the last of his line—a handy and able deus ex machina, a “swiller of wine, frequenter of brothels, and drinker and knower of things”110—“the conscience of Westeros,”111 who counsels the gathering of sixteen great lords and ladies of the Seven Kingdoms to elect their monarch and cast aside dynastic succession, pro-posing instead Bran Stark the Broken as their new king. Having apparently long-foreseen his destiny, Bran agrees to his elevation appointing Tyrion his Hand. Fourteen of the gathering approve, apart from Sansa Stark who, with the support of her sister Arya, asserts the North’s right to its millen-nial-long independence, which she will rule henceforth as the Queen in the North. From the ashy apocalypse emerges hope for the Six Kingdoms and the independent Kingdom of the North. Arya, achieving the narrative transformation from knight-vengeant to knight-errant, takes up the chal-lenge of her ancestor, King Bran the Shipwright,112 sailing west of Westeros to discover what lies beyond the maps. The Small Council is convened by Tyrion Lannister, Hand of the King and enforcer of checks and balances, liii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… to rebuild King’s Landing and see to the prosperity of the Six Kingdoms.113 Sansa Stark, Lady of Winterfell, is crowned Queen in the North. Hopes are high for a new world order in Martin’s fantasy universe, leaving its architect a free hand to tie off loose threads and expand the conclusion of his inspired “medieval” creation in its literary form.Barbaric vision of the Middle Ages though it appears to be, in many ways, the denouement of Martin’s fantasy narrative is actually a blend of Eco’s mode and pretext and expectation of the millennium/apocalyptic visions. At the approach of the second millennium of the common era, just as Martin was sharpening his quills, an Italian newspaper, La Correra de la Serra, invited Eco and the erudite scholar-cardinal, Carlo Maria Martini, to partake in an epistolary exchange of ideas on its pages. It was later pub-lished as In Cosa crede chi non crede? Dialogo epistolare.114 The Eco-Martini correspondence would seem to support our conclusion regarding the mode and pretext and expectation of the millennium/apocalyptic ending of Martin’s fantasy narrative. In their first exchange of letters, dated March 1995, “L’ossessione laica della nuovo apocalisse” (The secular obsession with the new apocalypse), they examine key ideas related to end of time notions, history, and hope, with Eco positing:I’d be willing to bet that the notion of the end of time is more common today in the secular world than in the Christian … Only by having a sense of history’s trajectory (even if one doesn’t believe in Parousia [the second coming]) can one love earthly reality and believe—with charity—that there is still room for Hope.115And Martini responding with:The dominant theme of apocalyptic stories is usually a flight from the pres-ent to a refuge in a future that, upsetting the existing structures of the world, forces upon it a definitive value system that conforms to the hopes and expectations of the person writing the book … In this sense, it must be said that in every apocalypse there is a heavy utopian freight, a massive reserve of hope, but coupled with a woeful resignation in the present.116The narrative defining apocalypse of Game of Thrones did not come from the Seven Kingdoms’ common alien enemy, the Night King and his Army of the Dead, but rather from enemies within—the blind ambition and merciless tyranny of two monarchs competing for ascendancy over the Seven Kingdoms and the Iron Throne. They both cast aside sound coun-sel, unity, and just rule, opting instead for divisive tyranny. Which brings liv1. Christine de Pizan, Charity Cannon Willard and Eric Hicks, (eds.), Le Livre des trois vertus, Paris: Honoré Champion, 1989, 64.2. Anne de France, Les Enseignements d’Anne de France, duch*esse de Bournonnais et d’Auvergne, à sa fille Suzanne de Bourbon, Chazaud, A.-M (ed.), Moulins: Desroziers, 1878; idem, Enseignements à sa fille suivis de l’Histoire du siège de Brest, Tatiana Clavier and Éliane Viennot, (eds), Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 2006; Anne of France, Sharon L. Jansen (trans.), Anne of France: Lessons for my Daughter, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004; Pizan, Willard and Hicks (eds), Le Livre des trois vertus; Zita Rohr, “Rocking the Cradle and Ruling the World: Queens’ Households in Late Medieval and Early Modern Aragon and France,” in Theresa Earenfight, Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2018, 309–337, 312–313, 314–315; and Tracy Adams, “Appearing Virtuous: Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre des trois vertus and Anne of France’s Les Enseigenements d’Anne de France, in Karen Green and Constant J. Mews (eds), Virtue Ethics for Women 1250–1500, NewYork: Springer, 2011, 115–132, 116–131.3. Ian Thomson, “Umberto Eco Obituary,” The Guardian, 20 April, 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/umberto-eco-obituary accessed February 20, 2019.4. The English translation of his first novel appeared in 1983. Umberto Eco, Il nome della rosa, Milan: Bompiani, 1980; Umberto Eco, William Weaver (trans.), The Name of the Rose, San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 1983. The film version, The Name of the Rose, starred Sean Connery and was directed by INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…us full circle to Tyrion’s address to the ad hoc meeting of the sixteen great and good representatives of Westeros assembled in the Dragonpit of King’s Landing to decide his fate (and theirs). He asks rhetorically, “What unites people?” “Armies? Gold? Flags? Stories. There is nothing in the world more powerful,than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it. And, who has a better story than Bran the Broken? The boy who fell from the high tower and lived.” Tyrion’s argument would seem to gel with Eco’s claim that, in literature as in life, after an apocalyptic moment, “there is still room for hope”117 as well as Martini’s contention that in every apocalypse there is a heavy utopian freight, a massive reserve of hope.”118Sydney, NSW, Australia ZitaEvaRohrSalem, MA, USA LisaBenzNoteshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/umberto-eco-obituaryhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/umberto-eco-obituarylv INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… Jean-Jacques Arnnaud. It was released in 1986 around the time Eco started to publish articles such as his lecture “Dieci modi di sognare il medioevo” and his two-article chapter in English, “The Return of the Middle Ages.” According to Ian Thomson’s obituary for Eco, “In pri-vate, Eco judged Annaud’s film a travesty of his novel, and found the monks (apart from the one played by Connery) ‘too grotesque-looking’. Yet, Eco approved of Annaud’s Piranesi-like sets, which he concurred were ‘marvellous.’” Ian Thomson, “Umberto Eco Obituary,” The Guardian, 20 April, 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/umberto-eco-obituary accessed February 20, 2019.5. Umberto Eco, “Dreaming of the Middle Ages” in Travels in Hyper-Reality, London: Pan Books Ltd, 1987, 61–72, 61.6. Ibid., 65–67.7. Ibid., 65. See also Carol Jamison, “Reading Westeros: George R. R. Martin’s Multi-Layered Medievalisms,” in Karl Fugelso (ed.), Studies in Medievalism XXVI: Ecomedievalism, Martlesham, Suffolk and Rochester NY, 2017, 131–142, 131–132; and Riccardo Facchini, “‘I watch it for historic reasons’. Representation and Reception of the Middle Ages in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones”, Práticas da História, n°4 (2017), 43–73, 57–62.8. See Franco Simone, Chap. 2 “La Luce della Rinascita e le Tenebre Medievali”, in La Coscienza della Rinascita negli umanista francesi, [Rome: Edizione di Storia E Letteratura, 1949], ACLS Humanities E-Book, 2008, 27–78.9. Eco, “Dreaming”, 66.10. Shiloh Carroll, Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2018, 14.11. Eco, “Dreaming”, 67.12. Ibid., 67–68.13. “Il Medioevo inventa tutte le cose con cui ancora stiamo facendo i conti, le banche e la cambiale, l’organizzazione del latifondo, la struttura dell’amministrazione e della politica comunale, le lotte di classe e il pau-perismo, la diatriba tra Stato e Chiesa, l’università, il terrorismo mistico, il processo indiziario, l’ospedale e il vescovado, persino l’organizzazione tur-istica, […].” Umberto Eco, “Dieci modi di sognare il medioevo” (Ten ways of Dreaming of the Middle Ages), in Sugli specchi e altri saggi, Milan: Bompiani, 1985, 78–89, 82.14. Eco, “Dreaming”, 65.15. Carroll, Medievalism, 14. Veronica Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail: The Quest for the Middle Ages, London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006, 192; and Michael Oakshott, On History and Other Essays, Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1983. 55.https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/umberto-eco-obituaryhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/umberto-eco-obituarylvi INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…16. Keith Jenkins, On “What is History”: From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White, NewYork: Routledge, 1995, 16. Cited by Carroll, Medievalism, 14. See also Hilary Jane Locke, “Beyond ‘tit* and Dragons’: Medievalism, Medieval History, and Perceptions in Game of Thrones,” in Marina Gerzic and Aidan Norrie (eds), From Medievalism to Early Modernism: Adapting the English Past, Abingdon Oxon and NewYork: Routledge, 2019, 171–187, 172–3, 176–183; and Kavita Mudan Finn, “Game of Thrones is Based in History—Outdated History”, The Public Medievalist, May 16, 2019, https://www.publicmedievalist.com/thrones-outdated-history/ accessed May 25, 2019.17. Eco, “Dieci modi di sognare il medioevo”, 82.18. See Umberto Eco, Scritti sul pensiero medievale, Milan: Bompiani, 2012.19. His “Little Middle Ages” has been revisited most recently by Carroll, Medievalism, 15.20. For a user-friendly, yet detailed definition of these terms, see Carroll who clarifies: “Medievalism is based on the historically medieval, but is not, itself, medieval …,” while “neo-medieval texts use the trappings of the medieval as filtered through a ‘medievalist intermediary.’” Carroll, Medievalism, 9–10.21. Eco, “Dreaming”, 68–72.22. Ibid.23. James Poniewozik, “George R.R. Martin Interview Part 2: Fantasy and History,” Time, April 18, 2011 http://entertainment.time.com/2011/ 04/18/grrm-interview-part-2-fantasy-and-history/ accessed March 5, 2019.24. Carroll, Medievalism, 8–10.25. This might be read as Martin’s acknowledgement of Shakespeare’s leg-acy: his stature as the peerless poet of human nature, his durable work observing, exploring, expressing, and exhibiting all aspects of humanity and the “greyness” of human actions and decision-making set against pseudo-historical and historical contexts. See Jessica Walker, “Historical Discourses in Shakespeare and Martin,” in Jes Battista and Susan Johnston (eds), Mastering the Game of Thrones: Essays on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, Jefferson, NC: McFarlane Publishing, 2015, 71–91.26. Poniewozik, “George R.R. Martin Interview Part 2.”27. See Carole L.Robinson and Pamela Clements (eds), Neomedievalism in the Media: Essays on Film, Television and Electronic Games, Lewiston, NY, Mellen, 2012.28. Carroll, Medievalism, 16.29. Mikal Gilmore, “George R. R. Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview”, Rolling Stone, (April 23, 2014), https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/ accessed February 19, 2019.https://www.publicmedievalist.com/thrones-outdated-history/http://entertainment.time.com/2011/04/18/grrm-interview-part-2-fantasy-and-history/http://entertainment.time.com/2011/04/18/grrm-interview-part-2-fantasy-and-history/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/lvii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… 30. Jamison, “Reading Westeros,” 134, 135.31. Edmund Spenser (d. 1599) is best remembered for his unfinished epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590–1596), striking for its allegorical fantasy setting that celebrates Elizabeth I and the Tudor Dynasty. Edmund Spenser, Albert Charles Hamilton etal (eds), The Faerie Queene, 2nd Ed., Abingdon, Oxon and NewYork: Routledge, 2013.32. More on this below. Read on.33. For a similar appreciation, see Carroll, Medievalism, 15.34. In the final episode of Season 8, “The Iron Throne”, written and directed by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, first aired May 19, 2019, an impris-oned, yet unbroken, Tyrion engages in a pivotal discussion with Jon Snow on the subjects of reason, love, and duty, thereby setting the stage for Jon’s quintessential, self-sacrificing redemption arc.35. Read on. See Elizabeth Beaton, “Female Machiavellians in Westeros,” in Gjelsvik and Schubart, Women of Ice and Fire, 193–218.36. Martin deals with this in considerable detail in his latest tome, a chronicle history of the Targaryen kings from Aegon the Conqueror to Aegon III. George R.R. Martin, Fire and Blood, NewYork: Bantam Books, 2018.37. See Philip J.Kain, “Niccolò Machiavelli: Advisor of Princes”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 25, N°1, (March 1995), 33–55; Harvey C.Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998; Timothy Fuller (ed.), Machiavelli’s Legacy: The Prince After Five Hundred Years, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016;,Patricia Vilches and Gerald Seaman (eds), Seeking Real Truths: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Machiavelli, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007; Niccolò Machiavelli and George Bull (trans. and ed.), The Prince, London: Penguin Books, 2003; and Niccolò Machiavelli, Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter E.Bondanella (trans. and eds.) Discourses on Livy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. These two works by Machiavelli should be read together and considered as complementary and highly contextual.38. See W.R. Albury, Castiglione’s Allegory: Veiled Policy in The Book of the Courtier (1528), Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2014; Baldassare Castiglione, George Bull (trans.), The Book of the Courtier, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976; idem and A.P. Castiglione (trans.) Il Cortegiano or The Courtier, [bilingual edition], London: Bowyer, 1727.39. While Tyrion is a dwarf rather than a giant, his racy, bawdy, and humor-ous utterances bear comparison with Rabelais’s creations, Pantagruel and Gargantua, as does his earthy and lusty approach to life. See François Rabelais, Donald M. Frame, (trans.), The Complete Works of François Rabelais, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1999.lviii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…40. Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 7, “The Dragon and the Wolf,” directed by Jeremy Podeswa, written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, first aired August 27, 2017.41. The expression regina vero sub femineo corpore cor habens virile (a queen concealing a heart of a man beneath a feminine appearance or exterior) first crops up in an eleventh-century text by Bruno Merseburgenis wherein he describes Bertha of Savoy, empress-consort of the Salian Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich IV. Bruno Merseburgensis, Wilhelm Wattenbach (ed.), De bello Saxonico, Hannover: impensis bibliopolii Hahniani, 1880, Chap. 7. Available online at: https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost11/Bruno/bru_sax0.html accessed, February 27, 2019.42. See, for example, Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre des trois vertus and Anne de France’s Enseignements. See also Ann Katherine Isaacs (ed.), Political Systems and Definitions of Gender Roles, Pisa: Edizioni Plus, Università di Pisa, 2001.43. Tanner etal, “Introduction,” Medieval Elite Women, 1–2.44. Catherine LaSota, “‘Game of Thrones’ Is Suddenly All About Powerful Women Getting Their Way,” Vice, 16 May, 2016 https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/wdbqqm/game-of-thrones-is-suddenly-all-about-powerful-women-getting-their-way accessed February 26, 2019.45. Megan Garber, “Game of Thrones and the Paradox of Female Beauty,” The Atlantic, April 25, 2016 https://www.theatlantic.com/entertain-ment/archive/2016/04/game-of-thones-red-woman-old-age-ism/479760/ accessed February 26, 2019.46. “But we are not men: Female Warriors and Weaponised Femininity in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones,” Tower of the Hawk: Scholarly Exploration of the World of George R.R. Martin, April 7, 2015 https://hawkstower.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/but-we-are-not-men-female-warriors-and-weaponized-femininity-in-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-and-game-of-thrones/ accessed February 26, 2019.47. In the first episode of Season 7, Sansa Stark emphasizes that Cersei is an existential threat to the survival of their House, saying, “If you’re her enemy, she’ll never stop until she’s destroyed you. Everyone who’s ever crossed her, she’s found a way to murder.” Jon appears startled by Sansa’s observation. “You almost sound as if you admire her,” he says, and Sansa acknowledges that spending time in Cersei’s company had its teaching moments. “I learned a great deal from her,” she replies. Game of Thrones, “Dragon Stone,” Season 7, Episode 1, directed by Jeremy Podeswa, writ-ten by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, first aired July 16, 2017.48. Benjamin Breen, “Why ‘Game of Thrones’ Isn’t Medieval—and Why that Matters,” Pacific Standard, June 12, 2014 https://psmag.com/social-justice/game-thrones-isnt-medieval-matters-83288 accessed February 24, 2019.https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost11/Bruno/bru_sax0.htmlhttps://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost11/Bruno/bru_sax0.htmlhttps://www.vice.com/en_au/article/wdbqqm/game-of-thrones-is-suddenly-all-about-powerful-women-getting-their-wayhttps://www.vice.com/en_au/article/wdbqqm/game-of-thrones-is-suddenly-all-about-powerful-women-getting-their-wayhttps://www.vice.com/en_au/article/wdbqqm/game-of-thrones-is-suddenly-all-about-powerful-women-getting-their-wayhttps://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/game-of-thones-red-woman-old-ageism/479760/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/game-of-thones-red-woman-old-ageism/479760/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/game-of-thones-red-woman-old-ageism/479760/https://hawkstower.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/but-we-are-not-men-female-warriors-and-weaponized-femininity-in-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-and-game-of-thrones/https://hawkstower.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/but-we-are-not-men-female-warriors-and-weaponized-femininity-in-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-and-game-of-thrones/https://hawkstower.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/but-we-are-not-men-female-warriors-and-weaponized-femininity-in-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-and-game-of-thrones/https://psmag.com/social-justice/game-thrones-isnt-medieval-matters-83288https://psmag.com/social-justice/game-thrones-isnt-medieval-matters-83288lix INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… 49. Spice guilds like the one in Qarth did exist before the early modern period (for example, the Florentine Arte dei medici, speziali e merciai established in the very early fourteenth-century. See Carlo Fiorilli, “I Dipintori a Firenze nelle’ Arte Dei Medici Speziali e Merciai”, Archivio Storico Italiano, Vol. 78, No. 3 (299) (1920), 5–74, 9–11; and Georges Renard, Dorothy Terry (trans.), Guilds in the Middle Ages, [London: George Bell and Sons Ltd., 1918], Kitchener, ONT: Batoche Books, 2000, 22. Not just a post-Columbian phenomenon, the slave trade was well established in the early Middle Ages, Dublin hosting the biggest slave market in Europe during the eleventh century. See Charles Verlinden, L’Esclavage dans l’Europe medieval, 2 vols, Bruges: De Tempel, 1955 and Ghent: Rijksuniversiteit, 1977; and William D.Phillips Jnr., Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014, 10–27. Powerful merchant banks predated the early modern period, inaugurated by Italian grain merchants from 1100–1300; these heralded the beginning of Europe-wide banking. The first big merchant bank was established in Venice in 1157 under state guarantee, harnessing the commercial agency of Venetian traders acting in the interests of Urban II’s crusaders. See James William Gilbart, The History, Principles and Practice of Banking, London: George Bell and Sons, 1919. And, black-gowned early modern Jesuits were not the only order “to create medi-cines, study the secrets of the human body,” the medieval Dominican order established by Domingo de Guzmán in 1216 predated the Society of Jesus (est. 1534) by a considerable distance as most certainly did the Benedictine order established by Benedict of Nursia in 529. Katarzyna Madra Gackowaka etal., “Medications of Medieval Monastery Medicine”, Journal of Education, Health and Sport, 8:9, (2018), 1667–1674. While the telescope was not invented until 1608 by Hans Lippershey (and improved upon by Galileo Galilei in 1610), spectacles—arguably the most useful and durable invention of the premodern era— were an early thirteenth-century invention. See Vincent Ilardi, Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2007, 2–30. Likewise, during the Middle Ages—particularly the high to late Middle Ages—many aristocrats could read, including women, and both genders,patronized authors and accumulated libraries.50. Eco, Travels, 68–9; idem “Dieci modi”, 82.51. Torquato Tasso, Lanfranco Caretti (ed.), Gerusalemme liberata, Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1983, lxv and lxix; and see also Emilio Russo, Guida all lettura della “Gerusalemme liberata” di Tasso, Bari and Rome: Laterza, 2014, 3–25, 111–139.52. Eco, Travels, 68–9; idem “Dieci modi”, 82.53. Carroll, Medievalism, 15.lx INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…54. Ibid., 7.55. Rainer Emig, “Fantasy as Politics: George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire,” in Gerold Sedlmayr and Nicole Waller (eds), Politics in Fantasy Media: Essays on Ideologies and Gender in Fiction, Film, Television, and Games, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014, 85–96, 94.56. Originating in Antiquity, the visio or Dream Vision genre is a very medi-eval allegorical device used in myriad ways by its proponents to explore sometimes dangerous ideas, to make social criticism, and to reveal knowl-edge not available in the wakened state. Reborn with Romanticism, it is perhaps best imagined as both a creative portal to imagined possibilities beyond rational calculation and the rhetoric of authority. John T.Bickley, “Dreams, Visions, and the Rhetoric of Authority,” unpublished doctoral thesis, Florida State University, 2013, 1–6, 54–55, and 149–155; Stephen F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 150–165; and Bernat Metge, Lola Badia (ed.), Lo Somni, Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1999; and Bernat Metge, Antonio Cortijo Ocaña and Elisabeth Laresa (trans), ‘The Dream’ of Bernat Metge/Del Somni d’en Bernat Metge, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013, 13–18, 78–103. Book II focuses upon an explanation of the historical circ*mstances of the death of King Joan I of Aragon (d. 1396)— dangerous territory to explore outside of a dream vision given the political circ*mstances surrounding its context and actuality. Held to have been from his prison cell, Metge sets out to demonstrate his innocence on a dubious matter involving the death of his employer, Joan I.57. Which parts company with Martin’s unfinished A Song of Ice and Fire series, having exhausted his narrative-to-date by the end of Season 5. For various points of view regarding the sixth season of the HBO television series, see, for example, Erica Gonzales, “15 Times the Women of ‘Game of Thrones’ Ruled Season Six: Girl Power Reigned in the Seven Kingdoms,” Harper’s Bazaar, June 23, 2016: https://www.harpersba-zaar.com/culture/film-tv/news/a16251/game-of-thrones-female-char-acters-season-6/ accessed February 21, 2019; Lenny Ann Low, “Game of Thrones Season 6: I Am Woman Hear Me Roar,” The Sydney Morning Herald, June 22, 2016: https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/game-of-thrones-season-6-i-am-woman-hear-me-roar-20160621-gpo8n1.html accessed February 21, 2019; Joanna Robinson, “Game of Thrones: How Women Went From Victims to Conquerors,” Vanity Fair June 26, 2016: https://www.vanityfair.com/holly-wood/2016/06/game-of-thrones-winds-of-winter-recap-finale-women-power accessed February 21, 2019; Alyssa Rosenberg, “The arguments about women and power in ‘Game of Thrones’ have never https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/news/a16251/game-of-thrones-female-characters-season-6/https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/news/a16251/game-of-thrones-female-characters-season-6/https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/news/a16251/game-of-thrones-female-characters-season-6/https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/game-of-thrones-season-6-i-am-woman-hear-me-roar-20160621-gpo8n1.htmlhttps://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/game-of-thrones-season-6-i-am-woman-hear-me-roar-20160621-gpo8n1.htmlhttps://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/game-of-thrones-season-6-i-am-woman-hear-me-roar-20160621-gpo8n1.htmlhttps://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/06/game-of-thrones-winds-of-winter-recap-finale-women-powerhttps://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/06/game-of-thrones-winds-of-winter-recap-finale-women-powerhttps://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/06/game-of-thrones-winds-of-winter-recap-finale-women-powerlxi INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… been more unsettling,” The Washington Post, August 9, 2017: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/08/09/the-argu-ments-about-women-and-power-in-game-of-thrones-have-never-been-more-unsettling/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.afa033ad0204 accessed February 21, 2019; and Natasha Hodgson, “How Game of Thrones reflects historical anxieties about women, motherhood and power,” The Conversation, July 21, 2017: https://theconversation.com/how-game-of-thrones-reflects-historical-anxieties-about-women-motherhood-and-power-81043 accessed February 21, 2019.58. Following on from his backstory novella, “The Princess and the Queen, or The Blacks and The Greens” with The She-Wolves of Winterfell prom-ised, but yet to be announced. George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (eds), Dangerous Women, London: Harper Voyager, [2013] 2015, 703–784. This well-received short story/novella collection “explores the heights that brave women can reach and the depths that depraved ones can plumb.” Publishers Weekly review article, reviewed July 10, 2013: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-7653-3206-6 accessed February 21, 2019.59. George R.R. Martin, Fire and Blood, NewYork: Bantam Books, 2018.60. Carolyne Larrington gives a more detailed exposition of the medieval world of Martin’s fantasy universe. See Carolyne Larrington, Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones, London and NewYork: I.B. Tauris, 2016.61. See Zita Eva Rohr, “No Job for a Man: Fifteenth-Century France and the ‘Institutionalization’ of Female Regency,” in Tracy Adams and Charles-Louis Morand-Métivier (eds), The Waxing of the Middle Ages: Revisiting the Late French and Burgundian Middle Ages, The University of Delaware Press, expected 2020; Aubrée David-Chapy, Anne de France, Louise de Savoie, inventions d’un pouvoir au féminin, Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016; Susan Broomhall (ed.), Gender and Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Destroying Order, Structuring Disorder, Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2015; and William Monter, The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300–1800, New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2012.62. George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords, New York: Bantam Books, 2000, Chap. 71, ‘Daenerys, VI’ 989–990.63. Machiavelli, The Prince, Chap. XVII “Cruelty and Compassion; and whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse,” 53–56, 53.64. George R.R. Martin, Fire and Blood, 150. Our emphasis.65. Aeneid, i, 563. Bull’s translation.66. Machiavelli, The Prince, 54, 56. Our emphasis.67. Beaton, “Female Machiavellians in Westeros,” 193. Interestingly, the architecture and aesthetics of King’s Landing call to mind Machiavelli’s Florence.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/08/09/the-arguments-about-women-and-power-in-game-of-thrones-have-never-been-more-unsettling/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.afa033ad0204https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/08/09/the-arguments-about-women-and-power-in-game-of-thrones-have-never-been-more-unsettling/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.afa033ad0204https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/08/09/the-arguments-about-women-and-power-in-game-of-thrones-have-never-been-more-unsettling/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.afa033ad0204https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/08/09/the-arguments-about-women-and-power-in-game-of-thrones-have-never-been-more-unsettling/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.afa033ad0204https://theconversation.com/how-game-of-thrones-reflects-historical-anxieties-about-women-motherhood-and-power-81043https://theconversation.com/how-game-of-thrones-reflects-historical-anxieties-about-women-motherhood-and-power-81043https://theconversation.com/how-game-of-thrones-reflects-historical-anxieties-about-women-motherhood-and-power-81043,https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-7653-3206-6lxii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…68. “Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus would not have been able to have their institutions respected a long time if they had been unarmed, as was the case in our time with Fra Savonarola who came to grief with his new institutions when the crowd started to lose faith in him, and he had no way of holding fast those who had believed or of forcing the incredulous to believe.” Machiavelli and Bull, The Prince, Chap. VI, “New principali-ties acquired by one’s own arms and prowess”, 19–22, 21.69. Jacopo della Quercia, “A Machiavellian Discourse on Game of Thrones,” in Brian A.Pavlac (ed.), Game of Thrones versus History, 33–46, 34.70. Machiavelli and Bull, The Prince, Chaps. XVII, 53–56, and XXII–XXIII, 74–77.71. Beaton, “Female Machiavellians,” 197.72. Ibid., 193–196, 199–211.73. While we immediately think of early modern female kings such as Isabel I of Castile, Mary I of England, and Elizabeth I of England, female kingship was not unknown in medieval Europe and beyond: mepe (king) Tamari of Georgia (r. 1184–1213); Raziya Sultan of the Delhi Sultanate (r. 1236–1240); and sister-kings St. Jadwiga (Hedvig, r. 1384–1399) of Poland and Mary of Hungary (r. 1382–1385; 1386–1395), daughters of Nagy Lajos, Louis I the Great of Hungary. See Antony Eastmond, “Gender and Orientalism in the Age of Queen Tamar,” in Liz James (ed.), Women, Men, and Eunuchs in Byzantium, London and New York: Routledge, 1997, 100–118; Fatima Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006, 96–97; Gyula Kristó, Az Anjou-kor háborúi [Wars in the Age of the Angevins], Budapest: Zrínyi Kiadó, 1988, 205; Pál Engel, Tamás Pálosfalvi (trans.) and Andrew Ayton (ed.), The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary 895–1526, London and NewYork: I.B. Tauris, 2005, 196, 170, 201. See also Monter, The Rise of Female Kings in Europe; and Armin Wolf, “Reigning Queens in Medieval Europe: When, Where, and Why,”, in John Carmi Parsons (ed.), Medieval Queenship, NewYork: St Martin’s Press, 1993, 169–188.74. Jessica Salter, “Game of Thrones’s George RR Martin: ‘I’m a feminist at heart,’” The Telegraph, April 1, 2013: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9959063/Game-of-Throness-George-RR-Martin-Im-a-feminist.html accessed February 24, 2019.75. Ibid.76. Ibid.77. Ibid.78. Lindy Grant, Blanche of Castile, Queen of France, New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2016, 13.79. Heather J.Tanner, L.L. Gathagan, and L.L. Huneycutt, “Introduction,” in Heather J. Tanner (ed.), Medieval Elite Women and The Exercise of Power, 1–18, 1–2.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9959063/Game-of-Throness-George-RR-Martin-Im-a-feminist.htmlhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9959063/Game-of-Throness-George-RR-Martin-Im-a-feminist.htmlhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9959063/Game-of-Throness-George-RR-Martin-Im-a-feminist.htmllxiii INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… 80. Ibid., 2.81. Zita Eva Rohr, Yolande of Aragon (1381–1442) Family and Power: The Reverse of the Tapestry: Basingstoke and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 4; and idem, “Rocking the Cradle and Ruling the World,” 309–310, 323.82. Alcuin Blamires, Women Defamed and Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, 2.83. Ibid., 3–5.84. For example, Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England from the Norman conquest; compiled from official records and other authentic documents, pri-vate as well as public, Philadelphia: G.Barrie & son, 1902–1903; Mary Anne Everett Green, Lives of the Princesses of England, from the Norman Conquest, 6 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1857.85. Charles Beem, The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, 3–4; Judith Bennett, “Medievalism and Feminism,” Speculum 68 (1993), 309–331, 312, 315–316, 320–3.86. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler (eds), Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, New York: Garland, 1997; Dawn M. Hadley (ed.), Masculinity in Medieval Europe, London: Longman, 1999; Jacqueline Murray, (ed.), Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West, New York and London: Garland, 1999; Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002; Derek G. Neal, The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008.87. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, NewYork: W.W. Norton and Co., 1963, particularly 233–57.88. Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, “Female Sanctity: Public and Private Roles, c.500–1100,” in Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (eds), Women and Power in the Middle Ages, Athens GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988, 105; Caroline Barron, “The ‘Golden Age’ of Women in Medieval London,” Reading Medieval Studies 15 (1990), 35–58, 40. See also, Peter Coss, The Lady in Medieval England, Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2000, 70; Maryanne Kowaleski, “Women’s Work in a Market Town: Exeter in the Late Fourteenth Century,” in Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, B.A Hanawalt (ed.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986, 145–166, 146; Joan Kelly, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” in Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986, 19–50; Judith Bennett, “Medieval Women, Modern Women, Across the Great Divide,” in David Aers (ed.), Culture and History, 1350–1600: Essays on English lxiv INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…Communities, Identities and Writing, Detroit MI: Wayne State University Press, 1992, 147–75.89. John Carmi Parsons, “Introduction: Family, Sex, and Power: The Rhythms of Medieval Queenship,” in John Carmi Parsons (ed.), Medieval Queenship, NewYork: St. Martin’s Press, 1998, 1–2.90. See Theresa Earenfight, “Medieval Queenship,” History Compass, (2017) 15: e12372, 1–9; Beem, The Lioness Roared, 3–4; Katherine Lewis, Kingship and Medieval Masculinity in Late Medieval England, NewYork: Routledge, 2013, 1–17. See also Bennett, “Medievalism and Feminism,” 312, 315–6, 320–3; Hadley, Masculinity in Medieval Europe; Murray (ed.), Conflicted Identities; Karras, From Boys to Men; Neal, The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England.91. See Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus; and Anne de France, Les Enseignements/Lessons.92. Parsons, “The Queen’s Intercession,” 149; John Carmi Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, Queen and Society in Thirteenth-Century England, NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998, 73.93. See the excellent study by Claire Ponsich, “De la parole d’apaisem*nt au reproche. Un glissem*nt rhétorique di conseil ou l’engagement politique d’une reine d’Aragon?”, Cahiers d’études hispaniques médiévales, n° 31, (2008), 81–117.94. Parsons, “The Queen’s Intercession,” 158; idem, “‘Never was a body buried in England with such solemnity and honour’: the burials and post-humous commemorations of English queens to 1500,” in Anne J.Duggan (ed.), Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1997, 317–337, 332–33; Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1983, 19–24; Janet L.Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels: The Careers of Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History,” in Derek Baker (ed.), Medieval Women, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978, 31–77; and idem, “Medieval Queenship,” in Linda E.Mitchell (ed.), Women in Medieval Western European Culture, NewYork: Garland Publishing Inc., 1999, 179–208, 181.95. Elizabeth Danbury, “Images of English Queens in the Later Middle Ages,” Historian 46 (1995), 3–9, 5.96. See the classic,work first published in 1957 on the arcane mysteries of premodern political theology, unravelling the distinctions between the king’s body natural (his physical body) and his body politic (his spiritual and political body): Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Medieval Political Theology, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.97. Peggy McCracken, The Romance of Adultery, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998, 42–43.lxv INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN… 98. Janet L.Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels,” 59; Geoffrey Le Baker, Chronicon Galfredi Le Baker De Swynebroke, E.M. Thompson (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press 1889, 21; James Raine, (ed.), Historiae Dunelmensis Scriptores Tres, Gaufridus Coldingham, Robertus de Graystaynes, et Willielmus de Chambre, Surtees Society 9, London: J.B.Nichols and Son, 1839, 98.99. Parsons, “Family, Sex and Power,” 7; Andre Poulet, “Capetian Women and the Regency: The Genesis of a Vocation,” in Medieval Queenship, ed. John Carmi Parsons (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 93–116; Theresa Earenfight, “Absent Kings: Queens as Political Partners in the Medieval Crown of Aragon”, in Theresa Earenfight (ed.), Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, 33–51; The King’s Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of Aragon, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.100. See the case of Violant de Bar, queen-dowager of Aragon (d. 1431), who campaigned vigorously to have her seven-year-old grandson, Louis III of Anjou, crowned king of Aragon with her, his grandmother, the obvious choice as his regent during his minority. Rohr, Yolande of Aragon, 88–90. See also Francisca Vendrell Gallostra, Violante de Bar y el Compromiso de Caspe, Barcelona: Real Academia de Buenas Letras, 1992.101. Nelson, “Medieval Queenship,” 197; J.L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445–1503, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 179.102. Andre Poulet “Capetian Women and the Regency,” in Parsons (ed.), Medieval Queenship, NewYork: St. Martin’s Press, 1998, 93–116, 105; Miriam Shadis, “Blanche of Castile and Facinger’s ‘Medieval Queenship’: Reassessing the Argument,” in Kathleen Nolan (ed.), Capetian Women, Basingstoke UK, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 137–161, 153; Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers, 191–192, 116; Idem, “Powerful Women in the Early Middle Ages: Queens and Abbesses,” in Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (eds), The Medieval World, London: Routledge, 2001, 398–415, 398; idem, “Emma: The Powers of the Queen in the Eleventh Century,” in Anne J.Duggan (ed.), Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1997, 3–23, 6; Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels,” 38; and Parsons, “The Queen’s Intercession,” 149.103. Jennifer Ward, Women in England in the Middle Ages, London and NewYork: Hambledon Continuum, 2006, 37–58.104. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens, 131, 146, 180; Margaret Howell, Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in Thirteenth-Century England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, 27–9, 99–100, 109; John Carmi Parsons, “Mothers, Daughters, Marriage, Power: Some Plantagenet lxvi INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…Evidence, 1150–1500,” in John Carmi Parsons (ed.), Medieval Queenship, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998, 63–78, 75; Nelson, “Medieval Queenship,” 194; Parsons, “The Burials and Posthumous Commemorations,” 328; idem, “The Pregnant Queen as Counsellor and the Medieval Construction of Motherhood,” in idem and Bonnie Wheeler (eds), Medieval Mothering, New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1996, 39–62, 42; Miriam Shadis, “Berenguela of Castile’s Political Motherhood: The Management of Sexuality, Marriage, and Succession,” in idem, 335–358; Marjorie Chibnall, “The Empress Matilda and Her Sons,” in idem, 279–294.105. Nelson, “Medieval Queens,” 190; Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens, 178.106. Parsons, “Intercessory Patronage,” 149, 153–4; Shadis, “Blanche of Castile and Facinger’s ‘Medieval Queenship’,” 140–146; Nelson, “Medieval Queenship,” 194–8; Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens, 208–215; Rohr, Yolande of Aragon, 3, 10, 16, 20, 33, 41, 90, 101, 118, 134, 136, 140–141, 146, 155, 164–165, 180, 183, 198, 264n.151.107. Shadis, “Blanche of Castile,” 141, 144; Nelson, “Medieval Queenship,” 182, 194.108. Blamires, The Case, 7–9, 50–69, 171–198.109. Jen Chaney, “Tyrion Lannister Was the Real Winner of the Game of Thrones Finale”, https://www.vulture.com/2019/05/game-of-thrones-finale-tyrion-lannister.html accessed May 20, 2019.110. Niccolò Machiavelli, Harvey C.Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (trans.), Discourses on Livy, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998, I.,2, 12; III., 6, 218–235. See also Paul B. Sturtevat, “Who Won Game of Thrones?,” The Public Medievalist, May 23, 2019, https://www.public-medievalist.com/who-won-game-of-thrones/ accessed May 25, 2019.111. Ibid.112. George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones: Book One of A Song of Ice and Fire, NewYork: Bantam Books, [1996] 2017, Chap. 66, “Bran VII,” 613.113. Chaney, “Tyrion Lannister Was the Real Winner”.114. Carlo Maria Martini and Umberto Eco, In cosa crede chi non crede? Dialogo epistolare, [Rome: Liberal (Atlantide Editoriale), 1996], Milan: Bompiani, 2013.115. Umberto Eco and Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, Minna Proctor (trans.), Belief or Unbelief? A Confrontation, NewYork: Arcade Publishing, 2000, 18, 22. Our emphasis.116. Ibid., 29–30. Our emphasis.117. Ibid., 22.118. 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Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview”, Rolling Stone, (April 23, 2014), https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/https://psmag.com/social-justice/game-thrones-isnt-medieval-matters-83288https://psmag.com/social-justice/game-thrones-isnt-medieval-matters-83288https://www.vulture.com/2019/05/game-of-thrones-finale-tyrion-lannister.htmlhttps://www.vulture.com/2019/05/game-of-thrones-finale-tyrion-lannister.htmlhttps://www.publicmedievalist.com/thrones-outdated-history/https://www.publicmedievalist.com/thrones-outdated-history/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/game-of-thones-red-woman-old-ageism/479760/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/game-of-thones-red-woman-old-ageism/479760/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/lxxiv INTRODUCTION: CHERCHEZ LES FEMMES: QUEENSHIP AND THE WOMEN…Erica Gonzales, “15 Times the Women of ‘Game of Thrones’ Ruled Season Six: Girl Power Reigned in the Seven Kingdoms”, Harper’s Bazaar, June 23, 2016: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/news/a16251/game-of-thrones-female-characters-season-6/Natasha Hodgson, “How Game of Thrones reflects historical anxieties about women, motherhood and power”, The Conversation, July 21, 2017: https://theconversation.com/how-game-of-thrones-reflects-historical-anxieties-about-women-motherhood-and-power-81043Jazzfisher, “But we are not men: Female Warriors and Weaponised Femininity in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones”, Tower of the Hawk: Scholarly Exploration of the World of George R.R. Martin, April 7, 2015 https://hawk-stower.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/but-we-are-not-men-female-warriors-and-weaponized-femininity-in-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-and-game-of-thrones/Catherine LaSota, “‘Game of Thrones’ Is Suddenly All About Powerful Women Getting Their Way”, Vice, 16 May, 2016 https://www.vice.com/en_au/arti-cle/wdbqqm/game-of-thrones-is-suddenly-all-about-powerful-women-get-ting-their-wayLenny Ann Low, “Game of Thrones Season 6: I am Woman Hear Me Roar”, The Sydney Morning Herald, June 22, 2016: https://www.smh.com.au/entertain-ment/tv-and-radio/game-of-thrones-season-6-i-am-woman-hear-me-roar-20160621-gpo8n1.htmlJames Poniewozik, “George R.R. Martin Interview Part 2: Fantasy and History”, Time, April 18, 2011 http://entertainment.time.com/2011/04/18/grrm-interview-part-2-fantasy-and-history/Joanna Robinson, “Game of Thrones: How Women Went From Victims to Conquerors”, Vanity Fair June 26, 2016: https://www.vanityfair.com/holly-wood/2016/06/game-of-thrones-winds-of-winter-recap-finale-women-powerAlyssa Rosenberg, “The arguments about women and power in ‘Game of Thrones’ have never been more unsettling”, The Washington Post, August 9, 2017: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/08/09/the-arguments-about-women-and-power-in-game-of-thrones-have-never-been-more-unsettling/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.afa033ad0204Jessica Salter, “Game of Thrones’s George RR Martin: ‘I’m a feminist at heart’”, The Telegraph, April 1, 2013: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9959063/Game-of-Throness-George-RR-Martin-Im-a-feminist.htmlPaul B.Sturtevat, “Who Won Game of Thrones?”, The Public Medievalist, May 23, 2019, https://www.publicmedievalist.com/who-won-game-of-thrones/Ian Thomson, “Umberto Eco Obituary”, The Guardian, 20 April, 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/umberto-eco-obituaryhttps://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/news/a16251/game-of-thrones-female-characters-season-6/https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/news/a16251/game-of-thrones-female-characters-season-6/https://theconversation.com/how-game-of-thrones-reflects-historical-anxieties-about-women-motherhood-and-power-81043https://theconversation.com/how-game-of-thrones-reflects-historical-anxieties-about-women-motherhood-and-power-81043https://theconversation.com/how-game-of-thrones-reflects-historical-anxieties-about-women-motherhood-and-power-81043https://hawkstower.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/but-we-are-not-men-female-warriors-and-weaponized-femininity-in-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-and-game-of-thrones/https://hawkstower.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/but-we-are-not-men-female-warriors-and-weaponized-femininity-in-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-and-game-of-thrones/https://hawkstower.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/but-we-are-not-men-female-warriors-and-weaponized-femininity-in-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-and-game-of-thrones/https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/wdbqqm/game-of-thrones-is-suddenly-all-about-powerful-women-getting-their-wayhttps://www.vice.com/en_au/article/wdbqqm/game-of-thrones-is-suddenly-all-about-powerful-women-getting-their-wayhttps://www.vice.com/en_au/article/wdbqqm/game-of-thrones-is-suddenly-all-about-powerful-women-getting-their-wayhttps://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/game-of-thrones-season-6-i-am-woman-hear-me-roar-20160621-gpo8n1.htmlhttps://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/game-of-thrones-season-6-i-am-woman-hear-me-roar-20160621-gpo8n1.htmlhttps://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/game-of-thrones-season-6-i-am-woman-hear-me-roar-20160621-gpo8n1.htmlhttp://entertainment.time.com/2011/04/18/grrm-interview-part-2-fantasy-and-history/http://entertainment.time.com/2011/04/18/grrm-interview-part-2-fantasy-and-history/https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/06/game-of-thrones-winds-of-winter-recap-finale-women-powerhttps://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/06/game-of-thrones-winds-of-winter-recap-finale-women-powerhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/08/09/the-arguments-about-women-and-power-in-game-of-thrones-have-never-been-more-unsettling/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.afa033ad0204https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/08/09/the-arguments-about-women-and-power-in-game-of-thrones-have-never-been-more-unsettling/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.afa033ad0204https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/08/09/the-arguments-about-women-and-power-in-game-of-thrones-have-never-been-more-unsettling/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.afa033ad0204https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9959063/Game-of-Throness-George-RR-Martin-Im-a-feminist.htmlhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9959063/Game-of-Throness-George-RR-Martin-Im-a-feminist.htmlhttps://www.publicmedievalist.com/who-won-game-of-thrones/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/umberto-eco-obituaryhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/20/umberto-eco-obituaryPART IQueenship3© The Author(s) 2020Z. E. Rohr, L. Benz (eds.), Queenship and the Women of Westeros, Queenship and Power, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6_1CHAPTER 1A Game ofThrones inChina: TheCase ofCixi, Empress Dowager oftheQing Dynasty (1835–1908)JamesJ.HudsonFor viewers of the HBO television series, one of the most intriguing char-acters in Game of Thrones is Lena Headey’s villainous and manipulative Cersei Lannister. From the outset of the series, we come to know Cersei as a scorned woman defined by an abusive marriage, an incestuous love affair with her brother Jaime, and the successive deaths of each of their children. Although her character’s experiences are exploited for dramatic effect, they draw thought-provoking parallels with what many historical dowagers con-fronted during their tenures. In truth, regents and dowagers who coun-selled boy,rulers predate historiography. From ca. 1478 BCE to ca. 1458 BCE, one of several of Egypt’s female pharaohs, Hatshepsut, ruled for some 20 years as regent for the boy pharaoh Thutmose III.1 Another example from antiquity is the influential Roman woman Cornelia Africana (d. ca. 115 BCE), mother of Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus, dur-ing the height of the Roman Empire. In medieval Europe, Eleanor of Aquitaine (d. 1204) and Margaret of Anjou (d. 1482) wielded considerable J. J. Hudson (*) Department of History, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, NC, USAhttp://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6_1&domain=pdf4power and influence, while Catherine II the Great (d. 1796) ruled over one of the most prosperous and dynamic periods in the history of Imperial Russia. In the interests of both fans and scholars, however, this chapter takes a perhaps unexpected turn in exploring points of convergence between the fictional Cersei Lannister and China’s factual Empress Dowager Cixi, who governed China during the final years of the Qing dynasty (1861–1908).2It is striking how events and characters from the fictional world of Westeros in Game of Thrones, with its seven diverse kingdoms, are so fre-quently analogous to historical empires and kingdoms of the past. The most obvious of comparisons and, according to its creator and author George R.R.Martin, the one that served as the initial inspiration for his epic series of books is the Wars of the Roses fought between the ruling houses of York and Lancaster for more than three decades in England dur-ing the fifteenth century.3 It is perhaps in this historical conflict that we find Martin’s inspiration for the character of Cersei in partisan accounts of the lives and influence of Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville.4In addition to his narrative’s exploration of warring political rivals, both in the characters and the ideas they represent, are there any parallels to history outside the experience of premodern Europe? When guiding stu-dents, or possibly even fans, to understanding the role Empress Dowager Cixi played in the making of modern China, it is useful to draw compari-sons to fictional characters such as Cersei in Game of Thrones, so that we might better recognize how dowagers such as Cixi functioned historically. Despite the fact that Martin clearly draws upon European history as the main source of inspiration for his novels, Cixi served as head of state for one of the world’s most populous and dominant civilizations, and as such she became one of the most powerful women in the world. This demands an honest exploration of how the questions of queenship and authority raised by the various contributors to this volume could be applicable beyond merely the western tradition.Dowagers ofImperIal ChInaWith a complex history of women who have ruled as regents or dowagers, the theatre of late Imperial China serves as a unique platform for studying gendered power in global history. Empress Cixi wielded influence at court during a time when China was becoming increasingly visible to the west-ern world and, as the last in a long tradition of regents who had advised and governed for young emperors, she represents a unique case-study for J. J. HUDSON5powerful female dowagers. Moreover, Cersei Lannister’s very particular penchant for cruelty and shrewdness throughout the Game of Thrones tele-vision series offers us a point of comparison with several notorious dowa-gers from China’s imperial history. Empress Lü Zhi (241–180 BCE) consort of the founder of the Han dynasty, Emperor Gaozu of Han, became one of the most powerful—and brutal regents of her day. The Grand Historian Sima Qian noted that Empress Lü became so jealous of her husband’s preference for one of his concubines that she cut off both her hands and feet, gouged out her eyes, had her ears burned off, and gave her poison that rendered her mute. Dead, or dying, she was further humil-iated by being thrown into a latrine.5During the Tang dynasty, the reign of Wu Zetian, or Empress Wu as she is more commonly known, began her political career as the wife of Emperor Gaozong, seizing the reins of government for herself upon his death and ruling as China’s only empress-regnant from 683 to 705 CE.Although very little is known about her reign, analysis of public and other related internal events suggest that she took significant measures to expand her empire and consolidate her power-base. Among these were her decision to relocate the capital from Chang’an to Luoyang, closer to China’s geographical centre of commercial activity and the ways in which she transformed the relationship “between ruler and bureaucracy.”6 Like Cersei Lannister, Empress Wu filled her court with advisors and ministers loyal to her rather than from the ranks of the civil service, and her reign initiated a trend of autocracy that continued to evolve in subsequent centuries.7Throughout China’s imperial history, female regents frequently took advantage of a crisis in male leadership, when emperors were either too young or too weak to rule, or both. By the time of the Ming and Qing dynasties, “female power because of male weakness remained the single formula for the empowerment of women.”8 It was one that “predicted not only the protocol and expectations for female rulership, but also the way such rulership was framed and interpreted.”9 Moreover, having already borne children, these women were no longer required to produce off-spring and, having attained legal personhood often denied to other women, dowager empresses such as Cixi fulfilled unique gender roles for their time and place. In diverse cultures, many elite mature women were endowed with legal and social privileges that differed from those of younger women, or women whose husbands were still alive, assuming gender roles more frequently applied to men. By studying the ways in 1 A GAME OFTHRONES INCHINA: THECASE OFCIXI, EMPRESS… 6which such privileged women conformed to, or transgressed, societal expectations of them we can better understand gender norms and digres-sions in the societies that produced these women. Likewise, in her ascent to power within the fictional world of Westeros in Game of Thrones, Cersei Lannister remains a consistent and dominant presence determined to chal-lenge male rulership. This is apparent in a pivotal moment in the first season of the television series wherein Cersei warns Ned Stark that he should have taken the Iron Throne for himself when he had the chance. Her staged entrance to the scene, presented from Ned’s point of view, with the sun in his eyes and Cersei looking down on him, is meant to imply her dominance and command over Ned.10 In late Imperial China, Cixi similarly exercised political power most often reserved for men.11moDes ofstateCraftIn terms of traditions of governance, statecraft in Imperial China can be traced to the teachings of Confucius, the basis of which, by the Han dynasty, came to constitute a kind of “Imperial Confucianism,” or even an “amalgam” of Legalist-Confucian Statecraft.12 China’s “Golden Age” of philosophy also produced the Legalist political thinker, Han Fei, “China’s Machiavelli,”13 or the “Big L.” Writing during the Axial Age,14 Han Fei criticized Confucius and his disciples for their naïve doctrines of self- cultivation and benevolent rule, arguing instead for a specific body of laws to govern society with severe penalties for disobedience to be “accom-plished by concentrating power in the hands of a single ruler and by adopt-ing governmental institutions that afforded greater centralized control.”15 For the ruler, one central concept of Legalist governance was the concept of shu, or “administrative techniques coupled with the ruler’s artful devi-ousness,” which have been described as “Machiavellian.”16 Han Fei and his disciples,would have admired how Cersei and the Lannisters shrewdly deal with their enemies and eliminate their rivals. Han Fei’s distain for Confucianism, and a telling example of his philosophy, is best understood in his analogy of a wayward son constantly scolded by his parents, teach-ers, or neighbours, but who refuses to change his ways. According to Han Fei, the most effective remedy for such behaviour was not Confucian edu-cation, but rather the summoning of the local magistrate or government soldiers to mete out punishment, forcing the wayward son to conform. For Han Fei therefore, “the love of the parents is not enough to make children learn what is right, but must be backed up by the strict penalties J. J. HUDSON7of the local officials; for people by nature grow proud on love, but they listen to authority.”17 In the centuries that followed Han Fei’s teachings, such thinking exerted an enormous influence on the emerging philosophy of statecraft in Imperial China and, in many respects, complements the Machiavellian-inspired rulership portrayed in Game of Thrones.18By the twelfth century, as the primary founder of the Neo-Confucian school during the Song dynasty (960–1279), another Chinese thinker, Zhu Xi, expanded on Confucian statecraft. Historians have noted how this dynasty developed into the period in which China’s governance shifted to a distinct form of autocracy that became further entrenched when the Mongols conquered China and the rest of Asia. The founders of the sub-sequent dynasty, the Ming, have been credited with establishing a prece-dent that enabled institutions “to preserve [the] power,” of the ruler.19 Consequently, by China’s medieval period, imperial rule had become increasingly authoritarian—a trend not lost on intellectuals of the time.Commenting on this a few centuries later, and in an interesting parallel to Legalist and even Machiavellian thought, the philosopher and political theorist Huang Zongxi (1610–1695), in his “Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince,” observed that the self-interest of China’s rulers had become a serious hindrance to social progress because a ruler’s or prince’s “self-interest took the place of the common good of all-under-Heaven.”20 Huang also argued that, from the time of China’s earliest mythological kings and emperors, laws were meant to serve all subjects under heaven, and had never been “laid down solely for the benefit of the ruler him-self.”21 This demonstrates that, even before the time of Cixi’s reign, it was obvious to many that the emperors had been abusing their power. For thinkers such as Huang Zongxi, China’s entrenched bureaucracy of court ministers and civil servants became gradually displaced by overzealous autocrats fixated on maintaining familial power, which later served as a significant barrier to China’s modernization.Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince brilliantly catalogues and describes the very particular political landscape of Italy during the sixteenth century and it seems to have furnished a key touchstone of inspiration for George R.R.Martin in writing his novel A Song of Ice and Fire and for the spin-off Game of Thrones HBO series.22 Cersei’s warning to Littlefinger that “power is power,” certainly conjures Machiavelli but traces of such thought can also be found in the Chinese Legalist emphasis on strength and its relationship to virtue, where for the sage ruler, “Strength produces force; force produces prestige; prestige produces virtue. Virtue has its 1 A GAME OFTHRONES INCHINA: THECASE OFCIXI, EMPRESS… 8 origin in strength. The sage ruler alone possesses it, and therefore he is able to transmit humaneness and rightness to all-under-Heaven.”23 As this passage suggests, Han Fei envisioned a decidedly masculine form of ruler-ship and would have bridled were any woman to seize power for herself—real or imaginary. Throughout her reign Cixi also never hesitated to apply Legalist or even Machiavellian modes of statecraft to eliminate her rivals and assert her power.Part of the aim of this present chapter is to establish thematic continuity with other contributions to this volume. In addition to placing Game of Thrones within a discourse centred on Machiavellian conceptions of power, agency and advice, set against a backdrop of medieval aesthetics, some discussions in this collection demonstrate how the Game of Thrones uni-verse is actually more reflective of the early modern period, one where “the superstructure of the modern state was under construction.”24 With this in mind, even by the late nineteenth century, China’s pace of industri-alization trailed considerably behind Europe’s or even its Eastern neigh-bour, Japan. Inserting China’s historical place into the developing modern world has been hotly contested, with scholars fuming and at odds over what informed Europe’s rise versus China’s relative decline after 1800.25Accordingly, although the late Qing were chronologically “modern,” in some respects its governing institutions and society remained mired in the conventions of the early modern world. Were one to visit remote parts of China only a century ago, they would have encountered a world not much different fromthat of centuries before in Western Europe. Of all the major global powers during the industrial age, China remained consider-ably behind—part of the reason for its turbulent history. In comparing the European early modern period to the settings and narrative arc of Game of Thrones, some have argued that, in areas of science, technology, and the globalized nature of a fully commercialized economy, rather than the medieval period, the books and series actually reflect a geopolitical setting modelled on the early modern period of Europe of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.26CIxI’s suCCessIons anDtheproblem ofreformIn contrast to Cersei in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire, the woman who came to rule China for more than a quarter of a century, Yehonala, or Empress Cixi as she came to be known, was a middle-ranking consort who did not originate from a privileged background or family.27 J. J. HUDSON9At least from the time of the Ming emperors (1368–1644), it had become common practice for emperors to marry women from lower ranks of soci-ety to check the rise of potentially powerful women from elite families. In this way, both the Ming and Qing dynasties “applied lessons about women learned from the past by creating institutional means of preventing and monitoring powerful women.”28Upon the death of her husband the Xianfeng Emperor in 1861, Empress Cixi (r. 1861–1908) became regent for their five-year-old son, the Tongzhi Emperor. The Xianfeng Emperor’s relatively brief reign (r. 1850–1861) had witnessed one of the most destructive civil wars in human history, the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). In the midst of this conflict, having barely attained 30 years of age, Xianfeng and his court fled the imperial capital in Beijing in the face of an invading British army during the Second Opium War (1856–1860).29 Despite the limitations imposed by her social rank, Cixi had given birth to Xianfeng’s only son and heir, advancing her position in the imperial harem. Before his death, Xianfeng had named Cixi’s son Zaichun his heir and he succeeded Xianfeng as the Tongzhi Emperor. Xianfeng had stipulated that the child-emperor was to be guided during his minority by a council of eight ministers who wit-nessed and recorded Xianfeng’s deathbed decree. However, just days after the emperor’s death, and with the support of her carefully husbanded fam-ily members and allies, Cixi conspired against the eight ministers. One was beheaded and the others forced into either suicide or disgrace. Initially Xianfeng’s primary consort, Empress Ci’an, served as co-regent with Cixi but was later deposed. Just as during the first season of the television series, Cersei mockingly,dismisses her husband King Robert’s written deathbed decree granting rulership to Ned Stark by way of “a piece of paper,” Cixi also dismissed the regents’ claim that, while on his deathbed, Xianfeng had bestowed an imperial seal on each of them certifying their legitimate regency.30 Like Cersei, Cixi took advantage of her allies and her newly minted authority to circumvent her late husband’s wishes and blaze her own trail to regency.Ruling first as co-regent with Empress Dowager Ci’an, in the decades that followed, Cixi sidelined Ci’an and manoeuvred herself further into power by maintaining a close and strategic alliance with her late husband’s brother, Prince Gong. The Xinyou Coup of 1861 became controversial because, on the surface at least, it appeared that the actions of Cixi and the other conspirators had defied the late emperor’s wishes. Subsequently, interpretations of this event have evolved with some historians arguing 1 A GAME OFTHRONES INCHINA: THECASE OFCIXI, EMPRESS… 10that the groundwork for a potential coup had been laid in the years prior to Xianfeng’s death, mainly because some of the policies of his appointed min-isters were not popular with Cixi’s camp.31 By the time Cixi’s son, the Tongzhi Emperor, came of age he hadcontracted syphilis and died in January 1875, leaving behind a wife, the Jiashun Empress, allegedly pregnant at the time. Since Cixi refused to designate her daughter-in-law Empress Dowager—thereby denying Tongzhi’s posthumous offspring the position of heir-appar-ent—another succession crisis inevitably resulted. In a very Cerseiesque political manoeuvre, Cixi nominated the next ruler of China, her son’s cousin, Zaitian, who ruled as the Guangxu Emperor until 1908.Cixi’s persona of a fawning mother driven by jealousy for her son’s affections towards her daughter-in-law, Empress Jiashun, might be com-pared to Cersei’s jealousy of her younger surviving son Tommen’s rela-tionship and marriage with the politically self-aware Lady Margaery Tyrell. Driven by her mother-in-law’s disdain and cruelty towards her, Jiashun is said to have committed suicide just three months after the death of her husband. She was 20 years old and there is no record of any child, born or unborn, resulting from their union. This second succession crisis further solidified Cixi’s regency.32The first season of Game of Thrones depicts a similar crisis of succession, wherein Cersei’s actions prove pivotal in securing the Lannisters’ ascent to power. When Ned Stark uncovers Cersei and Jaimie Lannisters’ incestuous relationship, he threatens Cersei that he will reveal the truth to her hus-band, King Robert. Invoking the name of Martin’s first novel in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Game of Thrones, and the HBO series, Cersei cautions Ned against doing so, stating that “when you play the game of thrones you win or you die, there is no middle ground.”33 Cersei’s threat serves as a defining statement for the trajectory of her character for the entire series, showcasing her ruthless political acumen. Just as Machiavelli counsels in The Prince, Cersei knows that she must at all times remain two steps ahead of her opponents and oftentimes play “dirty” to win. As we have seen, in the wake of the 1861 Xinyou Coup, and in order to secure an influential position over her son, the five-year-old Tongzhi Emperor, Cixi and her allies resorted to similar strategies of violence to achieve their ambitions.By the end of the first Game of Thrones season, and largely owing to Cersei’s influence, Ned has been outmanoeuvred at every turn. After King Robert is mortally wounded in hunting accident—orchestrated by Cersei—and Ned is named regent for Prince Joffrey, the Lannisters con- J. J. HUDSON11spire to overturn Robert’s wishes. In the penultimate episode of Season One, Ned is sentenced to death for treason by Joffrey before a passionate crowd—having ignored both Cersei’s direction that he spare Ned and his fiancée Sansa Stark’s pleas for mercy on behalf of her father.34 How Ned meets his fate in the fictionalized world of Game of Thrones is but one example of many of shrewd and strategic ruthlessness succeeding in the face of nobility and idealism. Ned’s removal enables the Lannisters, and ultimately Cersei, to assume control of the Iron Throne.As portrayed in the television series, the death of a ruler, from natural causes or by other means, opens significant opportunities for a dowager to rise from the status of a mere concubine or wife, sometimes with little to no pre-existing influence, to a position of power. Just as Cersei takes advantage of King Robert’s death to place her son Joffrey on the throne in Game of Thrones, during the late Qing dynasty Cixi used her husband- emperor’s death to achieve a similar result. Cersei’s political move against Ned Stark echoes the initial strategies by which Cixi eliminated most of Xianfeng’s appointed regents.35 First in 1861, and then again in 1875, when her son and his wife died within months of one another, Cixi’s nom-ination of the Guangxu Emperor also broke from established precedent. When her son, the Tongzhi Emperor, died without heirs, the new emperor should have been chosen from the next generation of princely candidates. Instead of maintaining tradition and nominating one of her brother-in-law Prince Gong’s sons as the next emperor, Cixi forced the appointment of her nephew, Zaitian (who was of the same generation as her late son), the Guangxu Emperor (whose name, and official title of office, is translated as “Glorious Succession”).36Familial tensions between the Starks and the Lannisters illustrate how characters such as Cersei and Ned represent divergent political philoso-phies. Ned fits the classic trope of a noble warrior and loyal officer, com-mitted to moral ideals of justice, honesty, and mercy. Though cast as the series’ villains, and unfailingly ruthless, Cersei and her family typify a more pragmatic, and ultimately Machiavellian, form of leadership. At this and other moments in the television series, viewers must try to grapple with how the ideals of Ned and the Stark family, ones that we usually associate with heroes and heroines, are no match for the brutal realities of political intrigue and governance, while the Lannisters show themselves to be mas-ters in the application of Machiavellian realpolitik and possessors of politi-cal virtù.371 A GAME OFTHRONES INCHINA: THECASE OFCIXI, EMPRESS… 12Ned’s embrace of the classic narrative tropes of heroism, idealism, and justice are the very things that lead to his undoing. When Cersei warns Ned that to play the game of thrones, one must “play to win,” she is evok-ing the classic, yet much misunderstood, Machiavellian dictum of “when to do wrong the right way.”38 A similar fate befalls Jon Snow at the end of Season Five, when his comrades in the Night’s Watch betray him. He is subsequently murdered for trying to broker peace with their sworn ene-mies, the Wildlings, who live north of the wall, and with whom the Night’s Watch have been fighting for centuries. Although he is later magically resurrected, Jon is another example of a character in the series undone by his own ideals and virtues.We similarly find examples of the defeat of idealism late in Cixi’s regency. By the summer of 1898, the young Emperor Guangxu, by then of age, initiated the Hundred Days of Reform. Largely inspired by the influence of reform-minded intellectuals courted by Guangxu, these were a series of sweeping measures meant to modernize Chinese society and secure its membership of the global community of industrialized nineteenth- century nation states. However, Cixi famously put an end to the movement by placing Guangxu under house arrest and into exile, and ordering six of the most prominent reformers executed.39 Both at the time and in the decades that followed, historical accounts in,China and the West pointed to this episode as one instance among many of the corrupt and despotic nature of imperial rule. Empress Dowager Cixi, they reasoned, had used her author-ity to rule China from “behind the curtain,” side-lining the young emperor by staging a palace coup. Nevertheless, reassessments of this period have pointed out that the young emperor was equally to blame for the reform’s failures and, that in acting too impulsively, he only “provoked fear, resent-ment, and resistance among officials, anything but conducive to the joint effort he had hoped for.”40 Seen in this light, Guangxu’s inexperience and overzealousness could be viewed as a fusion of the characters of Cersei’s offspring, Princes Joffrey and Tommen, in the television series.Cersei’s ability to outmanoeuvre Ned Stark who, in the best of all pos-sible worlds, ought to have become king, represents the same zealous and autocratic spirit by which Cixi defeated the Hundred Days of Reform. Although later raised from the dead, Jon Snow was murdered for his ideals and, in some ways he is analogous to late Qing dynasty reformers such as Tan Sitong (1865–1898), one of the six intellectuals who were publically executed on Cixi’s orders. The reforms proposed by the young Emperor Guangxu, and the intellectuals who endorsed them, reflected a certain J. J. HUDSON13moral and economic vision for China’s future and for its potential devel-opment into a modern nation state. Yet, their efforts failed, crushed by Cixi’s insistence on maintaining the status quo, aided by her ability to outmanoeuvre the reformist camp.In 1900, only two years following the defeat of the Hundred Days of Reform, the anti-foreigner Boxer Rebellion swept through northern China, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of missionaries and other west-erners. Eager to maintain popular support within the empire, Cixi sided with the Boxers, an indigenous rebel group skilled in martial arts, who believed that through their faith in spirit possession they were literally bul-letproof. Although maligned in the West, they enjoyed enthusiastic sup-port in communities throughout North-Eastern China.41 Understood in this way, Cixi’s support of them is quite understandable, and is in some ways comparable to Cersei’s support of the Faith Militant in Season Five. The insurgent quality of the Boxers also makes them similar to the rebel group, the Sons of the Harpy, with whom Daenerys must contend in the same season. Cersei’s support of the High Sparrow and the Faith Militant ultimately backfires, reflective of how, in supporting the Boxers, Cixi had essentially ignored the advice of all her top ministers, including the young emperor who viewed her judgment in the matter as being “dangerously out of touch with reality.”42 An international, combined European and American force was sent to quell the uprising, and thousands of Chinese were killed in the process. Cixi and the rest of the imperial court fled Beijing in humiliation. In the following decade, during the last years of her life, Cixi eventually supported some of the very initiatives she had opposed just a few years earlier, agreeing to reform the government, as well as efforts to modernize the education system, and strengthen the military. However, these proved essentially futile and came too late to make any lasting impact.As in life, Cixi’s death was not without controversy and her legacy and afterlife remain contentious. Her death on November 15, 1908 followed the sudden death the day before of the 37-year-old Guangxu Emperor. Cixi had appointed Guangxu’s infant nephew Puyi (aged two years and ten months) his heir, and he was to be China’s last emperor.43 At the time, rumours circulated that Cixi might have been responsible for the death of Guangxu. In 2008, an examination of his exhumed remains revealed traces of arsenic more than 2000 times greater than normal levels, evidence per-haps that Guangxu had been poisoned, which some scholars have dis-missed as mere “conjecture.”44 Commenting on King Joffrey’s death by 1 A GAME OFTHRONES INCHINA: THECASE OFCIXI, EMPRESS… 14poison at the beginning of season four of Game of Thrones, Sandor Clegane, known as “The Hound,” remarks that, “poison is a woman’s weapon.”45 This is confirmed when we learn later that Lady Olenna Tyrell orchestrated Joffrey’s poisoning. Were this the case with Cixi in 1908, any reassessments of her legacy should be informed by the knowledge that she might well have been responsible for Guangxu’s death.In Season Seven of Game of Thrones, while gloating over the capture of Ellaria and Tyrene Sand from Dorn, who were responsible for the death of Cersei and Jaime’s daughter Myrcella, Cersei tells them, “I lie in bed and I stare at the canopy, and imagine ways of killing my enemies.”46 Cixi might well have been thinking along the same lines while lying on her deathbed. Whatever the case, casting Cixi as a contemptuous figure, responsible for China’s decline, remains the dominant interpretation of her legacy, even appearing in textbooks, one of which states that Cixi was “selfish and ignorant,” for suppressing the reform movement in 1898, and that she had failed her country at a time when it needed “bold, risk-taking leadership.”47 Her legacy therefore has been and will continue to be debated, perhaps because, in a history as turbulent and controversial as modern China’s, there will always be plenty of blame to go around.In its final years, the Qing dynasty remained mired in entropy grinding inevitably towards collapse, with the court finally abdicating on February 12, 1912. In the months that followed, those who founded China’s first republic also failed to establish a stable regime grounded on the principles of constitutionalism and representative government. Their hopes and ide-als were vanquished by a motley collection of warlords and would-be pres-idents, each playing a “game of thrones” to win, exerting an enormous toll on Chinese society from which it took decades to recover.ChallengIng raCIal anDgenDer normsAs a leader forged in the crucible of early modern statecraft, thrust into a rapidly changing and globalizing modern world, Cixi challenged both gender and political norms, not only due to her status as secondary con-sort, but also because her dynasty was the product of a foreign ruling power in China, the Manchus. Originally a conglomeration of steppe- based nomadic ethnic groups, the Manchus came to power in the mid- seventeenth century following the conquests of Nurachi (r. 1616–1626) who became the founding emperor of the dynasty. In contrast to Han women—the dominant ethnic group of China—Manchu women enjoyed J. J. HUDSON15considerable freedoms. They did not adhere to the dominant social cus-tom of foot binding, they socialized outside the household, they hunted, and, in some cases, served as military leaders. Such freedoms also extended to the imperial harem. In contrast to the practices of the preceding Ming dynasty, the Qing ended the practice of “serial monogamy,” and under the Qing, any one of the emperor’s concurrent consorts could produce a legitimate heir. Throughout its reign, the Qing state also experienced a number of periods of regency—all with women serving as regents, empress dowagers, or both, assuming active roles in each.48 During her adoles-cence, Cixi had been fortunate enough to have found her way into the imperial harem, which ultimately resulted in her giving birth to and pro-viding the dynasty with its only legitimate direct male heir.Unlike the Manchus, Han women were expected to abide by and fol-low traditional Confucian values, which enforced traditional gender roles and confined women to the “inner quarters” of the household. Throughout the course of their life stages they were subject to the “three obediences”: to one’s father as a child; to one’s husband when married; and,,to one’s eldest son during old age.49 Hence, throughout the empire, from the time the Manchus conquered the Han, the lack of adherence to these tradi-tional values, but especially due to their status as alien rulers, the Manchus were resented by the subjugated Han.50 That Cixi became the head of state of a foreign ruling dynasty, one whose customs and practices chal-lenged the gender norms of the majority of China’s population, made her a source of derision for many. Further informing such disdain was the fact that most of the reformers she had purged in 1898 were ethnically Han, and that many Manchus had sided with the rebel Boxers in 1900.51Although in some respects progressive in how it portrays strong female characters, Game of Thrones has been scrutinized for its graphic depictions of nudity, sex, and violence against women. Focusing on issues such as gender stereotypes, feminism, and graphic depictions of rape, some stud-ies in particular have critically discussed the series’ at times controversial and exploitive portrayal of women.52 More troubling perhaps is the way in which, throughout the series, female characters are frequently portrayed as oversexed or sensual. Moreover, many female characters in Game of Thrones are also representative of certain orientalist tropes that portray women in power, vis-à-vis Cersei, conjuring images of the wicked “empress dowager,” a stereotype based at least in part on strong female rulers like Cixi and other controversial dowagers throughout history. Cersei is a fas-cinating character whochallenges normative constructs of male-gendered 1 A GAME OFTHRONES INCHINA: THECASE OFCIXI, EMPRESS… 16power, but she is also representative of certain kinds of inherently flawed medieval representations of women, ones associated with orientalist other-ing, the male gaze, and the patriarchy. Cersei is portrayed as ruthless, oversexed, power hungry, and manipulative. In this volume, Kavita Mudan Finn makes the cogent observation that “the problem with Cersei Lannister is not that she conforms to negative medieval stereotypes; it is that Martin—and the HBO producers—insist on incorporating all of those stereotypes at once.”53 Despite such stereotypes, much of the plot lines of the later seasons served to highlight the experiences of its two main female protagonists—Cersei and Daenerys. But this is also the rea-son why the series finale from the much-anticipated end of Season Eight proved so disappointing; these two characters were never really given a genuine opportunity to confront one another. Both Cersei and Jaime per-ish following Daenerys’s decision to “turn heel” and burn King’s Landing to the ground, leaving Cersei’s fate, as well as fans’ expectations of a satis-fying conclusion to a beloved series, beneath the rubble of the Red Keep.54In the years following her death, some popular orientalist literature published in the West by J.O.Bland and Edmund Backhouse, respectively, China Under the Empress Dowager (1910) and Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking (1914), became bestsellers and helped shape Cixi’s image as a despot within the western imagination. However, history has not been kind to Backhouse for it has been revealed that at least some of his “facts” were entirely fabricated.55 More troubling still is that the recent official publication of Backhouse’s memoir, written towards the end of his life, provides explicit and highly eroticized details of a concocted and com-pletely fanaticized sexual relationship between him and the empress.56 The story of Backhouse is one of many outrageous accounts of western impe-rialism run amok in the colonized world portrayed by fantasist, sexually adventurous men with a perverted vision of life in the “Orient.”Edmund Backhouse’s fantasy of a lurid and even p*rnographic sexual encounter with the empress is also an example of how, at least for some in the West, Cixi became a source for Orientalist “otherings” of both China and the personification of decadent female power. This is especially true when one considers the dominant role of West’s presence in China throughout the nineteenth century. In the schema of such colonial encounters, roles of gender and sex have stood at the forefront of exotic or perverse constructions of the “other,” whereby within “any cross- cultural encounter, gender roles and sexuality supply a medium for clarify-ing and symbolizing the essential cultural differences that separate ‘us’ J. J. HUDSON17from ‘them’.”57 Such encounters were viewed via the male gaze and the patriarchal desire to dominate and sexualize non-western women.Although fictional, Cersei’s situation resembles the plight of Cixi and other dowagers because all were obliged to work within a political frame-work constructed and dominated by men. In this regard, “Most of the female characters in Game of Thrones find themselves either the only woman or one of few women surrounded by men in male-centric situa-tions.”58 In retrospect, it seems that during Cixi’s reign she similarly acted alone and against the interests of powerful men. Originally a concubine of her eventual father-in-law, the Daoguang Emperor, she became empress- regent by virtue of her sexual relationship with his son and heir, the Xianfeng Emperor, producing his only surviving son. Cixi then conspired to eliminate or depose each of the men appointed governing regents by her late husband. By the time her son was oldenough and fit enough to rule, Cixi’s jealousy for his affections might have driven his young wife to suicide. At this point in her career, Cixi again took advantage of the ensu-ing political vacuum to advance her own interests. We can also recognize certain aspects of such proactive female agency in the way in which Cersei claims the Iron Throne in the television series. At the end of Season Six, confronted with the death of all three of her children, Cersei has no nar-rative choice but to scramble to the top of her dynasty’s hierarchy—“to win or die” politically. Similarly, Cixi lost her emperor-husband, then her only son, then her daughter-in-law perhaps pregnant with her son’s heir, thereafter using every means at her disposal to continue her regency and suppressing the reform movement by executing some of its main proponents.ConClusIonBoth within the books and television series, much of the storyline of Game of Thrones concerned itself with the ways in which dynasties come to and maintain power during periods of instability. What serves as a key connect-ing point between the events of actual history and the narrative of a popu-lar television and literary phenomenon is the degree to which reigning dynasties either maintain power or succumb to the pressure of popular resistance. Discussing Cersei Lannister, a character from a popular novel and television series, in the context of the historical Empress Dowager Cixi, offers fans and scholars an opportunity to learn about a prominent non-western female head of state. Especially for scholars, it offers a new 1 A GAME OFTHRONES INCHINA: THECASE OFCIXI, EMPRESS… 18lens for those seeking fresher and more innovative world history pedago-gies. Cixi’s regency contains all the elements of a Game of Thrones story-line: palace coups, poison and, most importantly, a woman driven by unchecked political ambition. This chapter draws from the work of some of the most prominent scholars specializing in the history of late Imperial China as well as recent work by scholars from diverse fields who have con-tributed their own fascinating research on the connection of Game of Thrones to history. This study has sought to create a narrative understand-ing of Cixi’s regency, and its discussion of Cersei can easily be weighed against, and compared to, the agency of other historical dowagers in global histories. Many other aspects of both the book and television series await analysis and,comparison to an impressive catalogue of historical moments and identities.Especially as the series neared its conclusion, Cersei’s creators situated her within the classic literary trope of the villain who must be undone and conquered by the forces of good, divesting her of any possible sympathy we might have had for her when the series began. Cersei’s signature moment of villainy came at the end of Season Six, when she conspired to destroy the Sept of Baelor with explosives. However, the penultimate moment of her cruelty was the decision to behead Missandei in the final season, incurring Daenerys’s wrath, hard on the heels of the death of her dragon Rhaegal, which led to the eventual destruction of King’s Landing. By ordering the execution of the Tongzhi Emperor’s appointed regents in 1861, and members of the reform movement in 1898, Cixi displayed a similar penchant for cruelty. It is possible that her ruthlessness remained with her to the very end of her life, as she may have conspired to have her nephew poisoned in 1908. Even if this were not the case, her agency and ambition transcend anything conceived of in the world of fiction, con-fronting historians and other scholars with a reality that will continue to invite further explanation and interpretation.notes1. On the subject of Hatshepsut (and other female pharaohs), see Aidan Norrie’s recent overview wherein he advises us to consult Kara Cooney, The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt (New York: Crown Publishers, 2014); Joyce Tyldesley, Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt: From Early Dynastic Times to the Death of Cleopatra (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006); idem, Hatchepsut: The Female J. J. HUDSON19Pharaoh (London: Penguin, 1996); Catharine H. Roehrig, (ed.), Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005). Aidan Norrie, “Female Pharaohs in Ancient Egypt,” in Elena Woodacre, Lucinda Dean, Chris Jones, Russell Martin, and Zita Rohr (eds),The Routledge History of Monarchy: New Perspectives on Rulers and Rulership (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2019), 501–517, 514.2. In this chapter, the usage of the terms “dowager,” and “regent,” refer to designations applicable to both Cixi during the Qing dynasty, and Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. Both were dowagers because they were wid-owed and both were regents because they advised young emperors or kings. In Mandarin, Cixi’s name is the pinyin Romanization of the two-character compound “慈禧,” which can be pronounced “Tse—Shee.”3. George R.R.Martin, interviewed by Mikal Gilmore, “George R.R.Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview: the novelist goes deep on the future of his books and the TV series they begat,” Rolling Stone/ https://www.rolling-stone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/, April 23, 2014. For an excellent account and analysis of the Wars of the Roses consult Michael Hicks, The Wars of the Roses (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 2012.4. Kavita Mudan Finn, “Queen of Sad Mischance: Medievalism, ‘Realism,’ and the Case of Cersei Lannister,” in Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz (eds), Queenship and the Women of Westeros: Female Agency and Advice in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 29–52.5. Thomas R.Martin (ed.), “A Woman in Power: Empress Lu,” in Herodotus and Sima Qian, The First Great Historians of Greece and China: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2010), Chapter 10, “A Woman in Power: Empress Lu,” 105–114, 106–107; and, William H. Nienhauser Jnr (ed.), The Grand Scribe’s Records Volume IX: The Memoirs of Han China Part II by Ssu-ma-Ch’ien (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 269.6. Mark Edward Lewis, China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 38. See also Denis Twitchett, “Kao-tsung (reign 649–83) and the Empress Wu: The Inheritor and the Usurper,” in Cambridge History of China, Vol. 3, Sui and T’ang China, Part I, Denis Twitchett and John K.Fairbank (eds), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).7. Lewis, China’s Cosmopolitan Empire, 38.8. Keith McMahon, “Women Rulers in Imperial China,” Nan Nu 15-2 (2013), 179–218, 201–202.9. Ibid.1 A GAME OFTHRONES INCHINA: THECASE OFCIXI, EMPRESS… https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/2010. Game of Thrones, Season 1, Episode 7, “You Win or You Die,” Directed by Daniel Minahan/Written by David Benioff and D.B.Weiss, aired May 29, 2011, on HBO.11. Cf. Sue Fawn Chung, “The Much Maligned Empress Dowager Tz'u- hsi,”Modern Asian Studies, 13:2 (1979), 177–196.12. John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2006), 62.13. Ryan Mitchell, “Is China’s ‘Machiavelli’ Now Its Most Important Political Philosopher?” The Diplomat, January 16, 2015. https://thediplomat.com/2015/01/is-chinas-machiavelli-now-its-most-important-political- philosopher14. A term coined by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers (d. 1969), the Axial or Axis Age represents a “pivotal age” characterized the period of ancient history from about the eighth to the third century BCE. According to Jaspers’s concept, new ways of thinking appeared in Persia, India, China and the Greco-Roman world in religion and philosophy in a striking paral-lel development, without any obvious direct cultural contact between all of the participating Eurasian cultures. See Karl Jaspers, Origin and Goal of History (Abingdon, UK: Routledge Revivals, [1949], 2010), 2–3, 8–21.15. Han Feizi, Chapter 7, “Legalists and Militarists,” in William Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom etal. (eds.), Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed. Vol. I: From Earliest Times to 1600 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 190.16. Zhao Dingxin, The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 186.17. Han Feizi, “Legalists and Militarists,” 201.18. On the subject of Machiavelli, Game of Thrones, and A Song of Ice and Fire see Marcus Schulzke, “Playing the Game of Thrones: Some Lessons from Machiavelli,” 33–48; and David Hahn, “The Death of Lord Stark: The Perils of Idealism,” 75–86, both in Henry Jacoby (ed.), Game of Thrones and Philosophy: Logic Cuts Deeper Than Swords (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2012); Jacopo della Quercia, “A Machiavellian Discourse on Game of Thrones,” in Brian A. Pavlac (ed.), Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 33–46; and Elizabeth Beaton, “Female Machiavellians in Westeros,” in Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart (eds), Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements (New York-London-Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2016), 193–218.19. Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 86–87. See also Edward Farmer, Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The J. J. HUDSONhttps://thediplomat.com/2015/01/is-chinas-machiavelli-now-its-most-important-political-philosopherhttps://thediplomat.com/2015/01/is-chinas-machiavelli-now-its-most-important-political-philosopherhttps://thediplomat.com/2015/01/is-chinas-machiavelli-now-its-most-important-political-philosopher21Reordering of Chinese Society Following the Era of Mongol Rule (Leiden: Brill, 1995).20. Huang Zongxi, “Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince,” compiled by William Theodore de Bary and Richard Lufrano (eds), Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol II, 2nd ed., From 1600 Through the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press,,2000), 6.21. Ibid., 10.22. Quercia, “A Machiavellian Discourse,” 38.23. Han Feizi, ‘The Guanzi’ “Legalists and Militarists,” 197. And, for Cersei’s warning to Littlefinger: Game of Thrones, Season 2, Episode 1, “The North Remembers,” Directed by Alan Taylor/Written by David Benioff and D.B.Weiss, aired April 1, 2012 on HBO.24. Zita Rohr and Lisa Benz (eds), “Introduction,” in Queenship, and the Women of Westeros.25. Scholars, such as Kenneth Pomeranz, have stressed that China lacked the necessary coal reserves that fuelled England’s industrial revolution. Others, such as Philip Huang, have argued that China’s inability to industrialize was just as much attributable to the involuted nature of its agriculture. See Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). For Huang’s rebuttal of this book, see Philip C.C. Huang, “Development or Involution in Eighteenth Century Britain and China? A Review of Kenneth Pomeranz’s, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy,” The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 61, No. 2 (May 2002), 501–538.26. Benjamin Breen, “Why Game of Thrones Isn’t Medieval—And Why That Matters,” June 12, 2014, Pacific Standard (accessed January 26, 2019 at https://psmag.com/social-justice/game-thrones-isnt-medieval-mat-ters-83288). Also cited in Mat Hardy, “The Eastern Question,” in Brian A. Pavlac (ed.), Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 108.27. Evelyn Rawski, The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 133.28. Keith McMahon, “Women Rulers in Imperial China,” Nan Nu 15-2 (2013), 179–218, 212.29. Stephen R.Platt, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 2012), 216–217.30. Luke S.K.Kwong, “Imperial Authority in Crisis: An Interpretation of the Coup D’état of 1861,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1983), 222–223.31. Ibid., 223.1 A GAME OFTHRONES INCHINA: THECASE OFCIXI, EMPRESS… https://psmag.com/social-justice/game-thrones-isnt-medieval-matters-83288https://psmag.com/social-justice/game-thrones-isnt-medieval-matters-832882232. Orville Schell and John Delury, “Western Methods, Chinese Core: Empress Dowager Cixi,” in Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century (New York: Random House, 2013), 67.33. Game of Thrones, Episode 7, “You Win or You Die,” Directed by Daniel Minahan/Written by David Benioff and D.B.Weiss, aired May 29, 2011 on HBO.34. Game of Thrones, Episode 9, “Baelor,” Directed by Alan Taylor/Written by David Benioff and D.B.Weiss, aired June 12, 2011 on HBO.35. Cersei, however, stopped short of calling for Ned’s execution. She and Sansa both plead for mercy on his behalf, which Joffrey, the teenaged polit-ical novice, ignored.36. Li Yuhuang and Harriet T.Zurndorfer, “Rethinking Empress Dowager Cixi through the Production of Art,” in Nan Nu 14 (2012), 3. See also, Liu Kwang-Ching, “The Ch’ing Restoration,” in John K.Fairbank (ed.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 10: The Late Ch’ing, Part 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 409–490.37. See Beaton, “Female Machiavellians in Westeros,” 171–192, esp. the sec-tion, “The Court Machiavellian” (Cersei), 199–204. See also reactions to the political career of Catherine de’ Medici, R.J. Knecht, Catherine de’ Medici (Abingdon, UK: Routlege, 2014), 164, 177; and, for a discussion and analysis of Machiavelli and his theoretical concept of political virtú see Martyn de Bruyn, “Machiavelli and the Politics of Virtù,” unpublished doctoral thesis, Purdue University, West Lafayette IN, USA, 2003.38. Querica, “A Machiavellian Discourse,” 38–41.39. Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, 3rd ed. (New York: W.W.Norton and Company, 2013), 221.40. Luke S.K.Kwong, “Chinese Politics at the Crossroads: Reflections on the Hundred Days Reform of 1898,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3 (July 2000), 670.41. Joseph W.Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 289.42. Pamela Crossley, “In the Hornet’s Nest,” review of Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang, The London Review of Books, April 9, 2014. Crossley’s review contains a brief and infor-mative scholarly treatment of Cixi.43. William A. Joseph, Politics in China: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 47–50.44. Louisa Lim, “Who Murdered China’s Emperor a 100 years ago,” NPR, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96993694. November 14, 2008. Orville Schell and John Delury seem to dismiss the theory that she was behind the poisoning. See Orville Schell and John Delury, “Western Methods, Chinese Core: Empress Dowager Cixi,” in J. J. HUDSONhttps://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9699369423Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century (New York: Random House, 2013), 87. Astonishingly high levels of arsenic and other toxins have been found in exhumed remains once tested by modern technologies (such as the famous case of Agnès Sorel (d. 1450), official favourite of Charles VII of France). See Philippe Charlier, “Qui a tué la Dame de la Beauté? Étude scientifique des restes d’Agnès Sorel (1422–1450),”Histoire des Sciences Médicales,Tome XL, N°3 (2006), 255–263. Charlier’s telling phrase of the inconclusiveness of such investigations: “Ainsi l’empoisonnement d’Agnès a été confirmé […] mais nul ne peut dire si celui-ci est volontaire [surdose de mercure] ou non [meurtre par poison]” (Thus the poisoning of Agnès Sorel has been confirmed … but no one can say if it was unintentional [an overdose of prescribed mercury] or deliberate [murder by poisoning]), 262. http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/sfhm/hsm/HSMx2006x040x003/HSMx2006x040x003x0255.pdf accessed February 10, 2019. Arsenic, lead, and mercury were used rou-tinely in complexion refining and whitening cosmetics as well as in medical therapies such as for the treatment of intestinal parasites like the painful and debilitating condition suffered by Agnès Sorel whose doses of mercury were increased over a number of years to dangerous levels due to acquired immu-nity and the extreme pain she suffered. She also used dangerous compounds containing arsenic, lead, and mercury to whiten her complexion.45. Game of Thrones, Season 4, Episode 8, “The Mountain and the Viper,” Directed by Alex Graves/Written by David Benioff and D.B.Weiss, aired June 1, 2014 on HBO.46. Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 3, “The Queen’s Justice,” Directed by Mark Mylod/Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, aired July 30, 2017 on HBO.47. Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (London: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 254. For revisionist accounts of Cixi’s life and reign, see also Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 2013), and Sterling Seagrave, Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China (New York: Vintage Books, 1993).48. Evelyn Rawski, The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 128–129, 132.49. Patricia Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 50.50. Edward J.M.Rhoads, Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861–1928 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 68.1 A GAME OFTHRONES INCHINA: THECASE OFCIXI, EMPRESS… http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/sfhm/hsm/HSMx2006x040x003/HSMx2006x040x003x0255.pdfhttp://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/sfhm/hsm/HSMx2006x040x003/HSMx2006x040x003x0255.pdf,2451. Ibid., 71.52. See Valerie Estelle Frankel, Women in Game of Thrones: Power, Conformity, Resistance (Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 2014).53. Kavita Mudan Finn, “Queen of Sad Mischance: Medievalism, ‘Realism,’ and the Case of Cersei Lannister,” in Rohr and Benz (eds.) Queenship and the Women of Westeros, 29–52.54. Game of Thrones, Season 8, Episode 5, “The Bells,” Directed by Miguel Sapochnik/Written by David Benioff and D.B.Weiss, aired May 12, 2019 on HBO.On Daenerys’ “heel turn,” see Randall Colburn, “So did Game of Thrones earn that turn or not?,” May 13, 2019, AV Club (accessed May 27, 2019 at https://news.avclub.com/so-did-game-of-thrones-earn- that-or-not-1834723024).55. See Hugh Trevor Roper, The Hermit of Peking: The Hidden Life of Sir Edmond Backhouse (London: Elan Books, 2011).56. Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, Decadence Mandchoue: The China Memoirs of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, ed. Derek Sandhaus (Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2011).57. Susan L. Mann, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 169.58. Kavita Mudan Finn, “High and Mighty Queens of Westeros,” in Brian A. Pavlac (ed.), Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 28.bIblIographyBackhouse, Edmund Trelawny. Decadence Mandchoue: The China Memoirs of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, edited by Derek Sandhaus. Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2011.Bary, William Theodore de, and Bloom, Irene, et al (eds), Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed. Vol. I: From Earliest Times to 1600. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.Beaton, Elizabeth. “Female Machiavellians in Westeros.” In Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements, edited by Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart. New York-London-Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2016.Breen, Benjamin. “Why Game of Thrones Isn’t Medieval—And Why That Matters.” Pacific Standard, June 12, 2014. Accessed January 26, 2019 at https://psmag.com/social-justice/game-thrones-isnt-medieval-matters-83288.Brook, Timothy. The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.Bruyn, Martyn de, “Machiavelli and the Politics of Virtù.” PhD diss., Purdue University, 2003. J. J. HUDSONhttps://news.avclub.com/so-did-game-of-thrones-earn-that-or-not-1834723024https://news.avclub.com/so-did-game-of-thrones-earn-that-or-not-1834723024https://psmag.com/social-justice/game-thrones-isnt-medieval-matters-83288https://psmag.com/social-justice/game-thrones-isnt-medieval-matters-8328825Chang, Jung. Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China. NewYork: Alfred A.Knopf, 2013.Charlier, Phillippe. “Qui a tué la Dame de la Beauté? Étude scientifique des restes d’Agnès Sorel (1422–1450).” Histoire des Sciences Médicales, Tome XL, N°3, (2006), 255–263.Chung, Sue Fawn. “The Much Maligned Empress Dowager Tz’u-Hsi.” Modern Asian Studies, 13:2 (1979), 177–196.Cooney, Kara. The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt. NewYork: Crown Publishers, 2014.Crossley, Pamela. “In the Hornet’s Nest.” Review of Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang. The London Review of Books, April 9, 2014.Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. London: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.Esherick, Joseph W. The Origins of the Boxer Uprising. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.Fairbank, John King, and Merle Goldman. China: A New History. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2006.Farmer, Edward. Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The Reordering of Chinese Society Following the Era of Mongol Rule. Leiden: Brill, 1995.Finn, Kavita Mudan. “Queen of Sad Mischance: Medievalism, ‘Realism,’ and the Case of Cersei Lannister.” In Queenship and the Women of Westeros: Female Agency and Advice in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire, edited by Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.Finn, Kavita Mudan. “High and Mighty Queens of Westeros.” In Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood, edited by Brian A.Pavlac. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2017.Frankel, Valerie Estelle. Women in Game of Thrones: Power, Conformity, Resistance. Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 2014.Gjelsvik, Anne and Rikke Schubart, eds. Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements. New York-London-Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2016.Hahn, David. “The Death of Lord Stark: The Perils of Idealism.” In Game of Thrones and Philosophy: Logic Cuts Deeper Than Swords, edited by Henry Jacoby. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2012.Hardy, Matt. “The Eastern Question.” In Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood. Edited by Brian A.Pavlac. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2017.Hicks, Michael. The Wars of the Roses. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.Huang, Phillip C.C. “Development or Involution in Eighteenth Century Britain and China? A Review of Kenneth Pomeranz’s, The Great Divergence: China, 1 A GAME OFTHRONES INCHINA: THECASE OFCIXI, EMPRESS… 26Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy.” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 61, No. 2 (May 2002), 501–538.Jaspers, Karl. Origin and Goal of History, Abingdon, UK: Routledge Revivals, [1949], 2010.Joseph, William A. Politics in China: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.Knecht, R.J. Catherine de’ Medici. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2014.Kwong, Luke S.K. “Imperial Authority in Crisis: An Interpretation of the Coup D’état of 1861.” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1983): 222–223.Kwong, Luke S.K. “Chinese Politics at the Crossroads: Reflections on the Hundred Days Reform of 1898.” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3 (July 2000): 663–695.Lewis, Mark Edward. China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.Li Yuhuang and Harriet T. Zurndorfer. “Rethinking Empress Dowager Cixi through the Production of Art,” in Nan Nu 14 (2012): 1–20.Lim, Louisa. “Who Murdered China’s Emperor a 100 years ago,” NPR, November 14, 2008. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=96993694.Liu, Kwang-Ching. “The Ch’ing Restoration.” The Cambridge History of China, vol. 10: The Late Ch’ing, Part 1, edited by John K. Fairbank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.Mann, Susan L. Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Martin, George R.R. “George R.R. Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview: the novelist goes deep on the future of his books and the TV series they begat.” Interview by Mikal Gilmore. Rolling Stone, April 23, 2014. https://www.roll-ingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone- interview-242487/.Martin, Thomas R., ed. “A Woman in Power: Empress Lu.” In Herodotus and Sima Qian, The First Great Historians of Greece and China: A Brief History with Documents. NewYork: Bedford/St. Martins, 2010.McMahon, Keith. “Women Rulers in Imperial China.” Nan Nu 15-2 (2013), 179–218.Mitchell, Ryan. “Is China’s ‘Machiavelli’ Now Its Most Important Political Philosopher?” The Diplomat, January 16, 2015. https://thediplomat.com/2015/01/is-chinas-machiavelli-now-its-most-important-political-philosopher.Nienhauser, Jr, William H., ed. The Grand Scribe’s Records Volume IX: The Memoirs of Han China Part II by Ssu-ma-Ch’ien. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2010. J. J. HUDSONhttps://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96993694https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96993694https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/,https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/https://thediplomat.com/2015/01/is-chinas-machiavelli-now-its-most-important-political-philosopherhttps://thediplomat.com/2015/01/is-chinas-machiavelli-now-its-most-important-political-philosopherhttps://thediplomat.com/2015/01/is-chinas-machiavelli-now-its-most-important-political-philosopher27Norrie, Aidan. “Female Pharaohs in Ancient Egypt.” In The Routledge History of Monarchy: New Perspectives on Rulers and Rulership, edited by Elena Woodacre, Lucinda Dean, Chris Jones, Russell Martin, and Zita Rohr. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2019, 501–517.Platt, Stephen R. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. NewYork: Alfred A.Knopf, 2012.Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.Quercia, Jacopo della, “A Machiavellian Discourse on Game of Thrones.” In Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood. Edited by Brian A. Pavlac. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2017.Rawski, Evelyn. The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.Rhoads, Edward J.M. Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861–1928. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.Roehrig, Catharine H., ed. Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. NewYork: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005.Rohr, Zita Eva and Lisa Benz, eds. Queenship and the Women of Westeros: Female Agency and Advice in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.Schell, Orville and John Delury. “Western Methods, Chinese Core: Empress Dowager Cixi.” In Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century. NewYork: Random House, 2013.Schulzke, Marcus. “Playing the Game of Thrones: Some Lessons from Machiavelli.” In Game of Thrones and Philosophy: Logic Cuts Deeper Than Swords. Edited by Henry Jacoby. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2012.Seagrave, Sterling. Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China. NewYork: Vintage Books, 1993.Spence, Jonathan. The Search for Modern China, 3rd ed. NewYork: W.W.Norton and Company, 2013.Trevor-Roper, Hugh. The Hermit of Peking: The Secret Life of Sir Edmond Backhouse. London: Eland Books, 2011.Twitchett, Denis. “Kao-tsung (reign 649–83) and the Empress Wu: The Inheritor and the Usurper.” In The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 3, Sui and T’ang China, Part I, edited by Denis Twitchett and John K.Fairbank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.Tyldesley, Joyce. Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt: From Early Dynastic Times to the Death of Cleopatra. London: Thames and Hudson, 2006.Tyldesley, Joyce. Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh. London: Penguin, 1996.Zhao, Dingxin. The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.1 A GAME OFTHRONES INCHINA: THECASE OFCIXI, EMPRESS… 29© TheAuthor(s) 2020Z. E. Rohr, L. Benz (eds.), Queenship andtheWomen ofWesteros, Queenship andPower, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6_2CHAPTER 2Queen ofSad Mischance: Medievalism, “Realism,” andtheCase ofCersei LannisterKavitaMudanFinnGeorge R.R.Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire and the accompanying HBO television series Game of Thrones have garnered both praise and censure for their treatment of women. On the one hand, Martin’s universe contains many female characters, admirable and other-wise, who take on a variety of roles from the traditional daughters, wives, and mothers of the aristocratic classes to the lady knight Brienne of Tarth, the sorceress Melisandre of Asshai, the assassin Arya Stark, and the pirate Asha (or Yara) Greyjoy. However, Martin and the producers of the HBO series have also been criticized for relying on misogynist tropes that objec-tify women and trivialize sexual assault in the name of realism. Through the character of Queen Cersei Lannister, this chapter will confront and examine some of that perceived realism, especially the implications of Martin’s particular brand of medievalism on perceptions of premodern women, and consider how fans have chosen to reclaim the character. In short, Cersei sometimes seems less a fully formed character than a series of quasi-medieval tropes jumbled together, and much of the depth that can be read into her comes from her fans and from Lena Headey’s nuanced and complex performance in the HBO series.K. M. Finn (*) Manchester, NH, USAhttp://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6_2&domain=pdf30Before focusing on Cersei, however, it is important to elucidate what constitutes “realism” in the context of a series explicitly created and mar-keted as fantasy. This loaded term has come to represent one side of the argument surrounding the treatment of women and other disenfranchised groups in both A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones.1 The “realism” defence asserts that the misogynist, racist, and ableist attitudes of Westeros and Essos merely reflect the culture on which the series are based, namely Western Europe in the medieval and early modern periods. George R.R. Martin has explained in multiple interviews that he, like J.R.R. Tolkien before him, drew on medieval Europe as inspiration for the world of A Song of Ice and Fire.2 He has also fallen back on his medieval inspira-tion when fans have critiqued his treatment of women and characters of colour such as the Dothraki and the inhabitants of Slaver’s Bay. In a 2013 interview with Charlie Jane Anders of The Observation Deck, for instance, Martin responded to criticism of alleged whitewashing with the following assertion:I am drawing from history, even though it’s fantasy. I’ve read a lot of history, The War of the Roses, The Hundred Years War. The World back then was very diverse. Culturally it was perhaps more diverse then [sic] our world, but travel was very difficult back then. So even though there might have been many different races and ethnicities and peoples, they didn’t necessarily mix a great deal. I’m drawing largely on medieval England, medieval Scotland, some extent medieval France. There was an occasional person of colour, but certainly not in any great numbers.3This attitude better reflects the failings of nineteenth- and early twentieth- century medievalism than the actual history, as many contemporary medi-evalists have discussed at length.4 As Shiloh Carroll argues, building on the work of Helen Young, “readers are caught in a ‘feedback loop’ in which Martin’s work helps to create a neomedieval idea of the Middle Ages, which then becomes their idea of what the Middle Ages ‘really’ looked like, which is then used to defend Martin’s work as ‘realistic’ because it matches their idea of the real Middle Ages.”5 This is in sharp contrast to fans of The Lord of the Rings, none of whom have attempted to claim that Tolkien was writing anything other than fantasy. While this speaks to the immersiveness and exhaustive detail of Martin’s universe, it forms part of a troubling trend in modern popular medievalism that deserves closer interrogation. K. M. FINN31What the realism defence fails to take into account are the specific inter-pretive choices Martin makes—that A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones do not reflect premodern Europe, but rather, refract it, providing a distorted, sensationalized impression of the period. Within this context, the women of Westeros prove to be less subversive than on first glance, and their persistent victimization more problematic. Nor has this escaped the notice of many fans who do not identify as male, one of whom remarks that the world of Westeros looks less like medieval Europe and “more like a 21st century,person’s worst nightmares of the medieval period.”6 Academics have attempted to correct these misconceptions, but in light of remarks by the showrunners and Martin himself, they persist.7Cersei Lannister has always been one of the most reviled characters both within Martin’s fantasy universe and in its fandom. In her book- length study Women in Game of Thrones (2014), Valerie Frankel says of Cersei, “it’s unfortunate that she’s almost the only one giving speeches about women’s rights and why women should have the right to rule, as her selfishness and cruelty mar her agenda.”8 While this assessment was made following the show’s fourth season, it is still, in its broadest sense, accurate—Cersei’s arc in the seasons extending beyond the books cements her role as a primary antagonist. In the books, Cersei is the only prominent member of the Lannister family who is never given the ben-efit of the doubt. Her youngest brother Tyrion is a popular point-of-view character from the first book onwards; Jaime and Cersei join him in the third and fourth books respectively, and Jaime’s chapters in particu-lar have made him a fan favourite.9 Cersei’s chapters, on the other hand, do little to reverse our initial impressions of her and indeed show her spiralling into alcoholism and self-destruction before being forced to walk naked through the streets of King’s Landing as a public punish-ment for adultery that, as far as most of the characters and a good por-tion of the fandom are concerned, is entirely warranted. Those who are fans of Cersei, including Lena Headey, the actress who portrayed her, see past the accretion of stereotypes to a woman fighting tooth and nail against a mercilessly patriarchal society that values her only for her beauty and fertility while simultaneously punishing her for using them to gain some semblance of agency.Cersei’s introduction in A Game of Thrones plays out over the course of some 40 pages, from the royal family’s tense arrival in Winterfell, the northern seat of House Stark, to the first of countless shocking scenes that have become synonymous with the series. Seven-year-old Bran Stark is 2 QUEEN OFSAD MISCHANCE: MEDIEVALISM, “REALISM,” ANDTHECASE… 32climbing across rooftops when he hears voices in a normally empty, dis-used section of the castle. The book devotes several pages to building up suspense—Bran has no idea the significance of the conversation he over-hears between two characters the reader can identify from its context as Jaime and Cersei Lannister, but he quickly realizes “it was not meant for his ears.”10 By this point, various conversations and snippets of backstory have made clear that Cersei Lannister is interested in advancing her fami-ly’s interests, that her marriage to the king is an unhappy one, and that at least one character believes her guilty of murder.11 The reader—and Bran—learn shortly afterwards that Cersei is having an affair with her twin brother Jaime, but the narrative leaves little time to process that bomb-shell before Jaime shoves Bran from the window, presumably to his death, uttering a line that defines him as a character: “The things I do for love.”12 This one-two-punch of shock and horror also defines Cersei by extension, though her role in the scene is largely nonverbal—it is for her that Jaime commits this heinous act—and the ramifications of her adultery, and their incest, will reverberate through the rest of the series.These are not tropes unknown to medieval authors and readers. The thirteenth-century French prose romance known as the Vulgate Cycle turns the tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table into a sprawling five-part narrative beginning with the history of the Grail and ending with the destruction of Arthur and his kingdom.13 It draws on a variety of sources, from Latin histories to vernacular romances (Chrétien de Troyes, Marie de France) and Biblical apocrypha, and we can see its popularity in the number of manuscript versions that have survived, although its author(s) remain unknown.14 Much like Game of Thrones, despite its magical trappings, the Vulgate Cycle, and its most famous adap-tation, Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (1469), focus primarily on the flawed human relationships that first create and ultimately destroy the Round Table and all it stands for. At the heart of both conflicts too is a quintessentially medieval problem: the adulterous queen.It has long been traditional to blame Queen Guenevere for the fall of her husband Arthur’s kingdom as well as his death, even though the Vulgate Cycle and all versions based on it make clear that the seeds of Arthur’s destruction were sown well before his marriage when he unwit-tingly slept with his half-sister Morgause and produced an illegitimate son Mordred. In the relevant section of the Histoire de Merlin, the author addresses readers directly before explaining that Arthur and Morgause were unaware of their relationship until after the fact, urging them to K. M. FINN33“understand how Mordred was sired by him, for many people would find King Arthur less worthy because of it if they did not know the truth.”15 It is the later, more conservative Post-Vulgate Cycle, that explicitly connects Mordred’s incestuous parentage to his role in Arthur’s downfall, while Thomas Malory’s version—derived from both French cycles—dances the fine line between foreshadowing Arthur’s destruction and emphasizing his innocence in inadvertently bringing it about.16Guenevere’s sin is that she knowingly carries on a love affair with the greatest of Arthur’s knights, Lancelot of the Lake, and it is the public acknowledgment of that affair that precipitates a civil war between the knights who support Lancelot and those who claim to support Arthur. The adultery itself is not coded as problematic until much later in the nar-rative—indeed, in the Vulgate Cycle’s version of events, Guenevere’s affair with Lancelot is juxtaposed with several instances of Arthur’s adultery.17 While this does not justify Guenevere’s actions, it certainly puts them in context. Just as significantly, however, Guenevere is, by all indications, unable to have children, as is the other legendary medieval queen to whom she is often compared, Iseult the Fair. If, as is often the case in medieval romance, an adulterous queen has no children, one can argue, as Peggy McCracken does, that her adultery has no direct impact on the succes-sion.18 Nor does Arthur seem especially troubled about it, in contrast to many methods medieval and early modern kings used to rid themselves of wives who could not produce the desired heirs, or the emphasis in medi-eval advice literature on the importance of queenly chastity.19 Christine de Pizan, for instance, observes that a wise princess should value her honour “more than her life, for she ought to lose it [her life] sooner than her hon-our,” adding that “whoever dies well is saved, but whoever is dishonoured is reproached dead and alive forever for as long as there is any memory of her.”20 A century later, Anne de France—who, unusually, served as regent to her younger brother King Charles VIII—also emphasizes the impor-tance of maintaining the appearance of perfect chastity in her Enseignements, as a screen behind which a woman could exercise considerable power.21 The queen’s body was very much the property of the state, and to ques-tion a queen’s chastity was to invite “implications of failed kingship and collapsing regimes, as well as the more obvious issue of illegitimate succes-sion.”22 The gravity of Guenevere’s actions—and Cersei’s—therefore, is not to be underestimated.While Cersei carries on an affair with the greatest knight in the king-dom, there are divergences from Guenevere’s situation that make hers 2 QUEEN OFSAD MISCHANCE: MEDIEVALISM, “REALISM,” ANDTHECASE… 34markedly worse—even as Robert’s adultery is more egregious than,Arthur’s, with at least eight illegitimate children confirmed when the books begin.23 First, the knight in question with whom Cersei is having an affair is also her twin brother, thus conflating the crimes of Arthur, who committed inadvertent incest and produced a monstrous son, with those of Guenevere, who knowingly committed adultery without jeopardizing the succession. Secondly, Cersei’s decision to pass off all three of her chil-dren with Jaime as the heirs to the throne is the definition of queenly treason and a medieval king’s worst nightmare; the fact that she then con-spires to kill her husband during a boar hunt seems almost beside the point.24In the books, Cersei is also behind the massacre of Robert’s many bas-tard children whose distinctive colouring would put the paternity of her children in question. Although the obvious analogue is King Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents, there is an Arthurian variant known as the May Day massacre, where King Arthur himself (not Guenevere) sought to avert a prophecy, that the child born of his incestuous union with Morgause would kill him, by ordering that all male children born on or around May Day (the time at which his son would have been born) be put onto a small boat, rowed out to sea, and abandoned to die. Again, we see Martin con-flating Arthur’s crimes with Guenevere’s in the character of Cersei, even if the HBO series displaces that particular crime onto her monstrous son Joffrey.As we learn in A Feast for Crows and in the opening scene of Season Five of Game of Thrones, one of the driving forces behind Cersei’s actions is a prophecy not dissimilar to King Arthur’s, made when she was a girl, that she would become queen only to lose that title to someone “younger and more beautiful”; that she would have three children, all of whom would die—“gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds”; and that she would die at the hands of “the valonqar” (a term she eventually trans-lates to “little brother”).25 This provides some insight into Cersei’s seem-ingly relentless hatred for her brother Tyrion—not only does she see him as the murderer of her mother, who died in childbirth; he is also prophe-sied, she thinks, to kill her. She forgets that, by a matter of minutes, Jaime is also her younger brother. Even though she is technically the eldest of Tywin Lannister’s children and simultaneously the least powerful, this is to some extent the root of her ambition.26 Excising the reference to Cersei’s own death in the show’s version of the prophecy severely under-cuts her motivations for hating Tyrion. After all, even King Arthur’s deci- K. M. FINN35sion to send a boat filled with infants to their death was somewhat mitigated within the text—however we might feel about it—by the fear that one of them would not only kill him but also destroy his kingdom.There are many villainous queens in medieval romance, some of whom also commit adultery. Guenevere is usually not among them, even though her adultery—like Cersei’s—becomes the casus belli for the civil war that destroys Camelot.27 It is made clear in Malory’s Morte Darthur (and implied in earlier versions) that the discovery of Lancelot in Guenevere’s chambers is in fact a deep-rooted conspiracy against both Lancelot and Arthur in which Guenevere is, for all intents and purposes, a pawn. Malory opens the final section of Le Morte Darthur with the statement that two of Sir Gawayne’s brothers, Aggravayne and Mordred, “had ever a prevy hate unto the Quene, Dame Gwenyver, and to Sir Launcelot—and dayly and nyghtly they ever wacched upon Sir Launcelot.”28 As Peggy McCracken argues, in medieval romance, the queen’s “adulterous love figures the king’s affection for his favourite vassal, and accusations of a transgressive relationship between the queen and her knight are a displaced attack on the relationship between the king and the knight which the barons wish to disrupt.”29 This is not the case in A Song of Ice and Fire, where Cersei, for all the opacity of her motives early on, appears to be acting on her own behalf, and her narration in A Feast for Crows confirms it. She therefore comes to embody every bad trait ascribed to medieval women all at once and, even in the chapters written from her point of view in the fourth and fifth books in the series, she rarely rises beyond those negative stereotypes. Guenevere, at least, is given some redeeming qualities, however question-able—the one exception is the Post-Vulgate Cycle, which excises most of the Lancelot romance in favour of the Grail narrative and punishes the entire kingdom for its sins in what is possibly the most dismal ending to a medieval romance one might ever encounter.30 Malory acknowledges of Guenevere that “whyle she lyved she was a trew lover, and therefor she had a good ende.”31 Cersei is unlikely to get such a eulogy, having alien-ated nearly everybody who was on her side for reasons that—if one reads her chapters closely—are not entirely her fault, even if the narrative is manifestly against her.Although Martin has explained in interviews that he draws general, but not specific, inspiration from medieval history, there are two examples from the fifteenth-century English Wars of the Roses that are illustrative of the issues underlying Cersei Lannister’s characterization.32 Both queens during periods of civil war, Margaret of Anjou (1430–83) and Elizabeth 2 QUEEN OFSAD MISCHANCE: MEDIEVALISM, “REALISM,” ANDTHECASE… 36Woodville (c. 1437–92) were routinely at the mercy of hostile writers—chroniclers, diplomats, poets, even official archivists—who manipulated their reputations for political ends.33 Superficially, Elizabeth is a clearer parallel, having come from a large and unusually attractive family who she then brought into the royal household and rewarded generously, much to the chagrin of the ruling nobility. After her husband King Edward IV’s unexpected death in April 1483, she became embroiled in the struggle between those who supported placing her son on the throne as King Edward V and those who supported Edward IV’s brother, who took the throne as King Richard III.Sources hostile to Elizabeth claim that her actions following his death were self-serving; the Titulus Regius, setting out Richard III’s claim to the crown, goes so far as to accuse her of bewitching Edward into marriage.34 Add to this, echoes of Edward IV in Robert Baratheon’s drinking, binge eating, and womanizing and it does not seem far-fetched that Elizabeth, who, until recently, was portrayed in fiction and biography as a cold, self-centred, and ambitious beauty, might have been an inspiration for Cersei.35 What is not in evidence are the sources favourable to Edward IV (and thus by extension to Elizabeth) that portray her as “the benevolent queen” who had exhibited “al mannar pacience” during the resurgence of civil war that interrupted Edward IV’s reign in 1471.36Early on, one of Cersei’s most problematic characteristics is her rela-tionship with her sad*stic eldest son Joffrey, and for its inspiration we should turn perhaps to Margaret of Anjou rather than Elizabeth Woodville. Margaret was eight months pregnant when her husband King Henry VI fell into catatonia in August 1453. Although he recovered after several months, the power vacuum created by his illness was enough to divide the nobility into factions and plunge England into civil war. After Edward IV took the throne for the house of York in 1461, Margaret and Prince Edward spent the next ten years shuttling between Burgundy and France, seeking aid from increasingly indifferent rulers. In 1467, the Milanese Ambassador in France wrote to the duke and duch*ess of Milan that Prince Edward, “though only thirteen years of age, already talks of nothing but of cutting of heads or making war, as if he had everything in his hands or was the god of battle or the peaceful occupant of that,throne.”37 There are accounts in several Yorkist-leaning chronicles of seven-year-old Prince Edward presiding over the executions of two men who had guarded his father during the second battle of St. Albans in February 1461. Both of these accounts also emphasise his mother’s atten- K. M. FINN37tion—although it is worth keeping in mind that both appear in sources actively hostile to Margaret and might well be exaggerations or outright fabrications. There are more sympathetic accounts of Margaret that appear in French and Burgundian sources, where she better resembles Catelyn Stark than Cersei Lannister, but she nonetheless offers a useful example of how a queen’s reputation could be deliberately tarnished, or polished, for political reasons.38After Joffrey’s death, Cersei attempts to mould her second son Tommen into his brother’s double—and in the HBO series she thereafter only wears black, visually isolating herself from the rest of King’s Landing. Margaret of Anjou had only one son, and Prince Edward died either during or shortly after the battle of Tewkesbury in May 1471, leaving his grieving mother to retreat into exile and become an exemplar for why women should not attempt to rule kingdoms.39 This attitude persists in modern depictions of Margaret—for instance, the BBC and Starz collaborated on a ten-episode series called The White Queen in 2013 that featured a borderline- incestuous relationship between Margaret and her son Edward. Although one might make the assumption that the series’ producers were capitalizing on a potential shared audience with Game of Thrones, the nov-els by Philippa Gregory, upon which the series was based, featured dodgy incestuous relationships long before the Lannisters made it fashionable on television.Hanging over Cersei even more than the prophecy that haunts her is the weight of Westeros’s patriarchal society. In a 2016 interview with Mashable, Lena Headey said, “I don’t play her as a villain. I just play a woman who is a survivor and will do exactly what a man would do.”40 Cersei’s defenders within the fandom similarly point to the many instances, within her narration but also in earlier books, where Cersei questions, protests, or otherwise condemns the system that offers her twin brother Jaime everything Cersei has ever wanted while denying it to her for a physical fact over which she has no control:Men had been looking at her that way since her breasts began to bud. Because I was so beautiful, they said, but Jaime was beautiful as well, and they never looked at him that way. When she was small she would sometimes don her brother’s clothing as a lark. She was always startled by how differently men treated her when they thought that she was Jaime.412 QUEEN OFSAD MISCHANCE: MEDIEVALISM, “REALISM,” ANDTHECASE… 38Cersei Lannister’s most devoted fans tend to identify as women, and thus read into her experience a reflection of their own, something that cannot be said of author George R.R.Martin or Game of Thrones’ executive pro-ducers, David Benioff and D.B.Weiss. As such, many fans have pinpointed this passage as endemic of not just the toxicity of Westerosi masculinity, but another in a long string of moments in the books and the HBO series where young girls are sexualized. In Cersei’s case, this convinces her that using her beauty and sexuality to manipulate men is her best route to power—and, to some extent, she is correct, although that power is always circ*mscribed by the men around her, particularly her father.In A Storm of Swords, Tyrion, who has little reason to sympathize with the sister who has been cruel to him since his birth, acknowledges that, when faced with their father’s plans for her to remarry, Cersei “will do as Father bid. She had proved that with Robert.”42 Even after Tywin’s death, however, Cersei’s chapters are filled with instances of men doubting her and refusing to follow her orders. As Headey remarked in a 2017 inter-view with TIME Magazine, “she’s a woman surviving in a really sh*tty world, desperate to be heard, saying something seven times when a man says it once.”43 Cersei’s first attempt to assert her authority as Queen Regent, for instance, ends with her flinging a glass of wine in her uncle Kevan’s face after he calls her “as unfit a mother as you are a ruler.”44 Jaime observes that Cersei “does not lack for wits, but she has no judgement, and no patience,”45 while Petyr Baelish and Tyrion both use Cersei as an object lesson in how not to play the game of thrones:In the game of thrones, even the humblest pieces can have wills of their own. Sometimes they refuse to make the moves you’ve planned for them. […] It’s a lesson that Cersei Lannister has yet to learn.46Cersei is as gentle as King Maegor, as selfless as Aegon the Unworthy, as wise as Mad King Aerys. She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. And she is greedy. Greedy for power, for honour, for love. Tommen’s rule is bolstered by all of the alliances that my lord father built so carefully, but soon enough she will destroy them, every one.47Nor does Cersei’s own narration belie Tyrion’s assessment of her motives, although there is a layer beneath her rage and greed that he never takes into account, perhaps understandably given his own marginalized position in Westerosi society: K. M. FINN39The rule was hers; Cersei did not mean to give it up until Tommen came of age. I waited, so can he. I waited half my life. She had played the dutiful daughter, the blushing bride, the pliant wife. She had suffered Robert’s drunken groping, Jaime’s jealousy, Renly’s mockery, Varys with his titters, Stannis endlessly grinding his teeth. She had contended with Jon Arryn, Ned Stark, and her vile, treacherous, murderous dwarf brother, all the while promising herself that one day it would be her turn.48For any other character, a revelation like this might have been the start of what the fandom commonly refers to as a redemption arc. After all, as early as Ned Stark’s chapters in A Game of Thrones, it is confirmed that Robert and Cersei’s marriage is an abusive one. Ned witnesses Robert deal Cersei “a vicious backhand blow to the side of the head,” and while he later admits that it was not “kingly,” he does not dwell on his actions, focusing instead on how unhappy he is in his marriage and his crown.49 Cersei recalls more abuses in A Feast for Crows, including the detail that afterwards Robert claimed, “It was not me, my lady,” sounding “like a child caught stealing apple cakes from the kitchen,” and blaming the fact that he’d had too much wine50:The rest had all been lies, though. He did remember what he did to her at night, she was convinced of that. She could see it in his eyes. He only pre-tended to forget; it was easier to do that than to face his shame. Deep down Robert Baratheon was a coward. In time the assaults did grow less frequent. During the first year he took her at least once a fortnight; by the end it was not even once a year. He never stopped completely, though. Sooner or later there would always come a night when he would drink too much and want to claim his rights. What shamed him in the light of day gave him pleasure in the darkness.51As blogger and podcaster Emmett Booth explains, “the particular way in which Robert implodes, and the way he insulates himself from it, makes me doubt there was ever much there to begin with even before he went to seed.”52 Readers don’t see much of Robert before his death, but what we do see is a king who spends most of his time drinking and sleeping around, who has an unpredictable and violent temper, and who is willing to coun-tenance the murder of children. By the time the full extent of his abuse of Cersei is revealed, however, Cersei’s own actions have moved so far beyond the pale—including supplying victims to her own pet “mad scientist”,Qyburn and torturing witnesses into lying about Margaery Tyrell—that it 2 QUEEN OFSAD MISCHANCE: MEDIEVALISM, “REALISM,” ANDTHECASE… 40is difficult to sympathize with her, even as a victim of 15 years of abuse. This is especially evident if one uses the chronological reading order for the fourth and fifth books developed by fan and blogger Sean T.Collins, since that order calls attention to the parallels between the situations of Cersei in King’s Landing and Daenerys in Meereen.53 Both find them-selves queens over tottering states, surrounded by men who refuse to take them seriously—but, as Shiloh Carroll explains in Chap. 8 of this collec-tion through her analysis of Daenerys’s relationship with her council and advisors, the reader has taken Daenerys’s entire journey alongside her and understands what motivates her actions.54 She may be “unræd,” but that does not make her unsympathetic … at least not until the very end of her narrative arc in the HBO series.Cersei does make her own poor choices, as opposed to simply mishan-dling bad situations not of her making. Within A Feast for Crows alone, she wastes almost all of her resources pursuing Margaery Tyrell, even allowing herself to be sexually abused by one of the sellswords in her employ in exchange for his agreement to murder Margaery—a plot that never comes to fruition.55 Prior to the introduction of her point-of-view chapters, Cersei consistently shows herself to be selfish and short-sighted, but that alone should not be enough to damn her in a series full of similar characters. Considering Jaime’s opening gambit is to push a seven-year- old boy out of a tower window, a redemptive arc might seem like a tall order, but Jaime nonetheless has a strong following amongst fans of the books.The HBO series, however, included a controversial scene in the fourth season where Jaime raped Cersei next to their son’s dead body. There was a roughly equivalent scene in A Storm of Swords, told from Jaime’s perspec-tive, but the show altered enough of the circ*mstances and character dynamics that many fans were offended by it. Martin weighed in with an explanation that the scene in the books was meant to be viewed as dubiously consensual, but refrained from commenting directly on the showrunners’ choices. Most of the censure focused on the impact of the scene on Jaime as a character (“Is Jaime Lannister a rapist?” was a frequent discussion in the blogosphere), except for a general sense from the episode’s director and others involved in the production that Cersei had deserved it—indeed, before forcing himself on her, Jaime bitterly remarked, “Why have the gods made me love a hateful woman?” a line that does not appear in the books.56 In the subsequent seasons, their relationship remained in the background unless the plot required a confrontation or reconciliation, only to have Jaime race to Cersei’s side in the penultimate episode so he could die with her, albeit after once again describing both himself and her as “hateful.” K. M. FINN41In short, the problem with Cersei Lannister is not that she conforms to negative medieval stereotypes; it is that Martin—and the HBO producers—insist on incorporating all of those stereotypes at once. We see other women in the series who are more effectively drawn, but those characters are notable for their comparative lack of emphasis on sexuality: Brienne of Tarth and Catelyn Stark are the two that immediately come to mind, the lady knight and the mater dolorosa. This latter category of course has a number of medieval precedents including sources sympathetic to Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret of Anjou that call upon the language and symbolism of grieving motherhood to describe them almost as often as their detractors accuse them of scheming for power. Brienne of Tarth, on the other hand, is more often compared to characters like Edmund Spenser’s Britomart, a lady knight defined by virginity and chastity; even in Brienne’s case, engaging in a brief sexual relationship with Jaime Lannister does not preclude her from becom-ing Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. As for the Mother of Dragons, almost certainly the “younger and more beautiful queen” destined to topple Cersei in the books, the hagiographic underpinnings of her story arc recon-textualize the depiction of her sexuality. While both she and Cersei engage in multiple sexual relationships, it is clear from the narration that Daenerys has some emotional investment and closeness with her partners (Khal Drogo, her handmaid Irri, and the mercenary Daario Naharis) that is lacking in Cersei’s case, except for her incestuous relationship with Jaime. Cersei’s choice to use her beauty and sexual allure as tools to gain power she is otherwise denied by her gender is one the narrative emphatically does not support, and this is encapsulated in the Walk of Shame—itself an exaggeration and conflation of several medieval punishments—she endures in A Dance with Dragons and the Season Five finale of Game of Thrones.57 As Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun observes in Chap. 3 of this collection, the Walk of Shame also undermines Cersei’s status by according her the same treatment as lower-class medieval women accused of adultery. Immediately before her penance begins, Cersei recalls her grandfather’s “grasping, lowborn mistress” who her father forced to walk naked through the streets of Lannisport, and observes that it is her uncle Kevan who is likely the driving force, rather than the High Septon.58 In short, the Walk of Shame destroys her credibility as a queen, at least in the traditional sense, and she feels this keenly by the end: “Gowned and crowned, she was a queen. Naked, bloody, limping, she was only a woman.”59This is where Cersei’s story diverges: in the books, we do not know what lies in store for her, while the show merges her storyline with that of several other characters to make her one of the primary antagonists of the final two seasons. If her punishment operates as an exercise in misogyny 2 QUEEN OFSAD MISCHANCE: MEDIEVALISM, “REALISM,” ANDTHECASE… 42that invites the audience to shame Cersei alongside the crowds that jeer at her in King’s Landing, her explosive revenge upon the Faith Militant, by blowing up the Sept of Baelor in the Season Six finale, is a spectacular moment of catharsis a full season in the making. That the shock of seeing hundreds of people killed in seconds prompts her remaining child Tommen to commit suicide is, for her, merely the final fulfilment of the prophecy.60 Lena Headey observes that even as Cersei ascends the Iron Throne late in that episode, “she’s aware of all the sh*t, the pain she’s created for every-body.”61 This awareness, however, does not stop Cersei from barrelling further down the path she’s created for herself, “trapped in a web of her own making,” according to Headey.62 Once she is crowned queen, she turns all of her attention to destroying the newly arrived Daenerys—to the point of refusing to send the Lannister armies north to fight the arguably greater enemy, the Army of the Dead, on the assumption that she can reap the spoils of what is left after that battle.There are characters in the medieval Arthurian canon who behave simi-larly, most notably Morgan le Fay, but Morgan possesses “such powers as confer an extraordinary autonomy upon [her], an untrammelled freedom to act that is denied others,” and, in spite of her questionable morality, wields political power in her own right as King Arthur’s half-sister.63 The seasons of Game of Thrones that have picked up after the end of the fifth book have lacked the strong internal logic of the prior seasons, to the point that Cersei sometimes seems to have magical powers, at least in terms of her ability to move her military forces from one place to another. However, Morgan also appears at the end of the narrative in a more ambiguous role as the guardian of,King Arthur’s body. Queen Guenevere, on the other hand, makes the conscious choice to abandon both worldly goods and carnal love by retiring to a convent and refusing to join Lancelot although she has the freedom by then to do so without consequence. Cersei’s behaviour falls so far outside the bounds of what is considered acceptable that neither of these endpoints makes sense for her character.Cersei’s arc, furthermore, suffers as a result of the uneven writing in the final two seasons of Game of Thrones, as do both of her brothers and her antagonist, Daenerys. All four characters converge in the penultimate epi-sode, “The Bells,” and by the end of the episode, both Cersei and Jaime are dead, killed by the collapsing walls of the Red Keep, with Cersei weep-ing, begging Jaime to “please let me live,” and thus partly fulfilling the witch’s prophecy that she should die “when your tears have drowned K. M. FINN43you.” Jaime does not, in fact, wrap his hands about her throat and choke the life from her, but she does die in his arms, bringing their twisted, co- dependent relationship full circle. Cersei’s limited appearances prior to her death, however, left many viewers unsatisfied with this ending; while the-matically clean, it, like Daenerys’s descent into mass-murderous rage, felt unearned.If the greatest praise that we can offer to a genre normally derided as escapist nonsense is for its realism, should we not be working to emphasize the more positive aspects of that “realism” as well as its darkness? I do not advocate a return to the gold-lamé wonderland of John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981) nor the sanitized world of Pre-Raphaelite paintings and Disney cartoons, but surely we can look beyond these tired stereotypes about women that litter our supposedly realistic depictions of both medi-eval and medievalist worlds to a more expansive idea of female power and potential that is, surprising as it may seem, more historically accurate. The Game of Thrones fans who defend characters like Cersei Lannister certainly can; it remains to be seen if showrunners and media creators can follow suit.Notes1. “Realistic,” “gritty,” and “brutal” are all descriptions that have been applied to Game of Thrones. For example, in his Guardian review of 24 March 2013, Tom Holland observes, “there are sequences where the invented world of Westeros can seem more realistic than the evocations of the past to be found in many a historical novel.”2. Any attempt to explain the lack of boundaries between medieval and Renaissance/early modern culture is beyond the scope of this chapter, but suffice it to say that Martin’s evocation of “the Middle Ages” can apply to anything from the fall of the Roman Empire to the seventeenth century.3. Charlie Jane Anders, “George R.R. Martin: The Complete Unedited Interview,” The Observation Deck (23 July 2013), https://observationdeck.kinja.com/george-r-r-martin-the-complete-unedited-interview-886117845.4. See Jonathan Hsy and Julie Orlemanski, “Race and medieval studies: A partial bibliography,” postmedieval: A journal of medieval cultural studies 8 (2017), 500–31.5. Shiloh Carroll, Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones (Cambridge: D.S.Brewer, 2018), 16–17. Helen Young, “Authenticity and Game of Thrones,” presented at the 48th Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, 10 May 2013.2 QUEEN OFSAD MISCHANCE: MEDIEVALISM, “REALISM,” ANDTHECASE… https://observationdeck.kinja.com/george-r-r-martin-the-complete-unedited-interview-886117845https://observationdeck.kinja.com/george-r-r-martin-the-complete-unedited-interview-886117845446. joannalannister, “I’m curious. It was always told to me,” Joanna Lannister [Tumblr] (4 August 2015), http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/125827358911/im-curious-it-was-always-told-to-me-that-the. For a more detailed discussion of racism and sexism in the series, see bitchfromtheseventhhell and lyannas, “I agree with farty old man GRRM,” the one that leads them is a she-wolf [Tumblr] (9 June 2016), http://bitchfromtheseventhhell.tumblr.com/post/145690854453/ i-agree-with-farty-old-man-grrm-and-id-like-to.7. Dave Itzkoff, “George R.R. Martin on ‘Game of Thrones’ and Sexual Violence,” The New York Times Arts Beat (2 May 2014), https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/george-r-r-martin-on-game-of-thrones-and-sexual-violence/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&.8. Valerie Estelle Frankel, Women in Game of Thrones: Power, Conformity, and Resistance (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013), 88.9. The five volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire are written in tight third-person perspective, and each chapter follows a different character, sometimes jumping across enormous distances.10. George R.R.Martin, A Game of Thrones. Book One of A Song of Ice and Fire (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1996), 73.11. Cersei turns out to have been innocent of that particular murder (Lysa Arryn murdered her husband Jon herself and framed Cersei), but this does little to mitigate her other crimes.12. Martin, A Game of Thrones, 75. The HBO series moves the majority of Jaime and Cersei’s political dialogue from the tower to a separate, earlier scene, but preserves the incest reveal in its original location, ending the first episode “Winter Is Coming” with Jaime’s line and Bran’s fall.13. The most recent English translation of the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles is Norris J.Lacy’s ten-volume edition Lancelot-Grail (Cambridge: D.S.Brewer, 2010). There are several French editions available, although these tend to separate the cycle into its constituent parts: Estoire de Saint Graal (History of the Grail), Estoire de Merlin (The History of Merlin), Lancelot, Queste del Saint Graal (The Quest for the Grail), and Le Mort Le Roi Artu (The Death of Arthur).14. The origins of the Arthurian legend are a contested topic, but for medieval audiences, the earliest text is a chapter in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniœ (History of the Kings of Britain, 1136), which was trans-lated first into Anglo-Norman French by Wace (c. 1155) and then into English by Layamon (c. 1210). In the last two decades of the twelfth cen-tury, Chrétien de Troyes produced a series of stand-alone poems that fea-tured individual knights of the Round Table. All of these sources were brought together in the prose romances now known as the Vulgate Cycle, K. M. FINNhttp://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/125827358911/im-curious-it-was-always-told-to-me-that-thehttp://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/125827358911/im-curious-it-was-always-told-to-me-that-thehttp://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/125827358911/im-curious-it-was-always-told-to-me-that-thehttp://bitchfromtheseventhhell.tumblr.com/post/145690854453/i-agree-with-farty-old-man-grrm-and-id-like-tohttp://bitchfromtheseventhhell.tumblr.com/post/145690854453/i-agree-with-farty-old-man-grrm-and-id-like-tohttps://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/george-r-r-martin-on-game-of-thrones-and-sexual-violence/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/george-r-r-martin-on-game-of-thrones-and-sexual-violence/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/george-r-r-martin-on-game-of-thrones-and-sexual-violence/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/george-r-r-martin-on-game-of-thrones-and-sexual-violence/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&45although the order in which these romances were written or which author or authors were responsible remain unknown. For a discussion of early manuscripts of the Cycle, see Elspeth Kennedy, “The Making of the Lancelot- Grail Cycle,” in A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, ed. Carol Dover (Cambridge: D.S.Brewer, 2003), 13–22.15. Anon., The Story of Merlin, trans. Rupert T.,Pickens, vol. 2 of Lancelot- Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation (Cambridge: D.S.Brewer, 2010), 139.16. According to Malory, Arthur is captivated by Queen Morgause of Orkney and “desired to ly by her.” The two agree, “but all thys tyme, Kynge Arthure knew nat that Kynge Lottis wyf was his sister.” In Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur (New York, 2004), 30.17. Lancelot and Guenevere consummate their love while Arthur is off with a Saxon enchantress named Gamille; he in fact notifies Guenevere “that she would not have him with her that night” (439). In Lancelot Parts 1 & 2, trans. Samuel N.Rosenberg and Carleton W. Carroll, vol. 3 of Lancelot- Grail (Cambridge: D.S.Brewer, 2010). More egregiously, Arthur is later deceived by a “false” Guenevere (the real Guenevere’s illegitimate half- sister) and sends his true queen into exile. She spends two years living as a guest with Galehaut, a neighbouring ruler, who happens to also be hosting Lancelot. Arthur eventually comes to his senses and realizes his mistake. He takes Guenevere back, and the incident is never mentioned again. The Post- Vulgate cycle cuts most of the Lancelot-centric material except for the sections that directly pertain to the quest for the Holy Grail, so Guenevere’s adultery loses its larger context.18. In the earliest Welsh versions of the legend, Guenevere has three sons. For a detailed discussion of the significance of childless queens in the French romance tradition, see Peggy McCracken, The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression in Old French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 119–43.19. Also in contrast to King Mark of the equally popular Tristan romances, who is best known as Iseult the Fair’s cuckolded husband. Mark is fre-quently presented as a contrast to Arthur, particularly in Malory’s telling, the first to explicitly incorporate Tristan.20. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies or the Book of the Three Virtues, ed. and trans. Sarah Lawson (New York: Penguin, 1985), 56. In her discussion of queenly reputation, Christine may well have drawn on the contemporary situation of Queen Isabeau of France, who served as regent for her incapacitated husband Charles VI and who suffered repeated accusations of infidelity and adultery designed to weaken her politically. See Tracy Adams, The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), esp. 113–48.2 QUEEN OFSAD MISCHANCE: MEDIEVALISM, “REALISM,” ANDTHECASE… 4621. Les Enseignements d’Anne de France, duch*esse de Bourbonnois et d’Auvergne à sa fille Susanne de Bourbon, ed. A.-M.Chazaud (Moulins: C.Desrosiers, 1878). For a discussion of Anne’s emphasis on chastity, see ÉlianeViennot, “Rhétorique de la chasteté dans les Enseignements d’Anne de France à sa fille Suzanne de Bourbon,” in Souillure et Pureté: le Corps et son envi-ronnement culturel et politique, ed. Jean-Jacques Vincensini (Paris: Maisonneuve& Larose, 2003), 1–6. See also Zita Eva Rohr, Yolande of Aragon (1381–1442): Family and Power (New York: Palgrave, 2016), 4–6, for Anne’s use of Christine de Pizan’s concept of juste ypocrisie and her parallels with Machiavelli.22. Joanna Laynesmith, “Telling Tales of Adulterous Queens in Medieval England: From Olympias of Macedonia to Elizabeth Woodville,” in Every Inch a King: Comparative Studies on Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, ed. Lynette Mitchell and Charles Melville (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 198.23. George R.R.Martin, A Clash of Kings: Book Two of A Song of Ice and Fire (London: Voyager, 2003), 178.24. She confesses to Tyrion in A Clash of Kings, “he did that himself. All we did was help,” and specifies that she and their cousin Lancel (one of Robert’s squires) served Robert stronger wine than was his custom, and that prompted him to drunkenly charge a wild boar (45).25. George R.R.Martin, A Feast for Crows. Book Four of A Song of Ice and Fire (New York: Bantam Spectra, 2005), 179.26. The most popular fan theory names Jaime as the valonquar who will even-tually kill Cersei, thus fulfilling the prophecy in the books, even if the HBO series chose to kill them both by happenstance.27. The exception is Marie de France’s Lanval, where Guenevere accuses the titular knight Lanval of dishonouring her, after he rejects her advances, and nearly gets him executed.28. Malory, 646. In this, he follows an earlier tradition found in the anony-mous Stanzaic Morte Arthur, where Guenevere’s innocence is emphasized.29. McCracken, Romance of Adultery, 99–100.30. In the post-Vulgate Cycle, Lancelot and Guenevere do not get their final meeting after Arthur dies and, in a stroke of particularly vicious irony, King Mark of Cornwall charges into Arthur’s lands and burns everything to the ground so he can supposedly rebuild it better, except that one of Arthur’s former knights kills him before he can rebuild.31. Malory, 625.32. Martin acknowledged in a 2002 interview with Roz Kaveney that he has “drawn on the Wars of the Roses” but that he uses “historical sources in a mix and match way.” The examples he mentions are that Tywin Lannister K. M. FINN47is not Warwick the Kingmaker and Tyrion Lannister is not Richard of Gloucester.33. For Margaret, see Helen Maurer, Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003). For Elizabeth, see David Baldwin, Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower. (New York: Sutton, 2002). Both are discussed at length in J.L.Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445–1503 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and in Kavita Mudan Finn, The Last Plantagenet Consorts: Gender, Genre, and Historiography, 1440–1627 (New York: Palgrave, 2012).34. See “January 1484. Titulus Regius,” in The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England 1275–1504, XV, ed. Rosemary Horrox (London: The Boydell Press, 2005), pp.15–16. Dominic Mancini, writing in 1483, emphasizes Elizabeth’s perceived low birth and accuses her of having “ennobled many of her family” after “easily persuad[ing] the king” to have his brother George of Clarence executed for treason. In The Usurpation of Richard the Third, trans. C.A.J.Armstrong (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 65, 63. Early Henrician histories such as Polydore Vergil’s Anglica Historia (1534, 1543, 1555) and Edward Hall’s Vnion of the Two Noble & Illustre Houses of Yorke & Lancastre (1548) follow suit, although Thomas More’s unfin-ished History of Richard III (c. 1513) offers an alternate interpretation where Elizabeth is one of very few characters who sees through Richard’s schemes, and his is most likely the version used by William Shakespeare in Richard III (c. 1595).35. Philippe de Commynes, an advisor first to the duke of Burgundy and later to King Louis XI of France, observes in his Mémoires, that while Edward had once been “among the handsomest princes in the world” in his youth, he gave himself up “to his pleasures, especially ladies, parties and banquets, and hunting,” and died suddenly as a result. See Commynes, Mémoires, vol. 1, ed. Joël Blanchard (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 505–06, translation mine. From the Victorian period onwards, Elizabeth was portrayed in both scholarship and fiction as a grasping parvenu, with even the acclaimed biography of Edward IV by Charles Ross referring to her “rather cold beauty” and claiming that she lacked “any warmth or generosity of tem-perament.” Ross, Edward IV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997 [orig. 1974]), 88–89. While recent scholarship (see note 32) has pushed back against this characterization, it was the accepted interpretation at the time at which Martin began writing A Song of Ice and Fire.36. Nicholas Pronay and John Cox, The Crowland Chronicle Continuations: 1459–1486 (London: Alan Sutton, 1986), 15. The Historie of,the Arrivall of King Edward IV. A.D. 1471, ed. John Bruce (London: Camden Society, 1838), 17.2 QUEEN OFSAD MISCHANCE: MEDIEVALISM, “REALISM,” ANDTHECASE… 4837. Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Existing in the Archives and Collections of Milan, ed. Allen B.Hinds (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1912), pp.118.38. See Kavita Mudan Finn, “Tragedy, Transgression, and Women’s Voices: The Cases of Eleanor Cobham and Margaret of Anjou,” Viator 47.2 (2016), 277–303.39. Once again, Shakespeare is the exception. His Margaret returns from the dead in Richard III to haunt the York family and predict the events of the play with the unparalleled accuracy of hindsight.40. Sam Haysom, “‘Game of Thrones’ star Lena Headey hints Cersei is headed to an even darker place,” Mashable (12 December 2016), https://mash-able.com/2016/12/12/lena-headey-cersei-season-7/.41. Martin, A Feast for Crows, 243. This praise of Cersei’s youthful beauty is echoed in the epilogue to A Dance with Dragons, narrated by her uncle Kevan Lannister, who later reflects that he has “pulled [Cersei’s] claws” (Martin, A Dance with Dragons, 953). If her arc in the show is any indica-tion, this is anything but the case.42. George R.R.Martin, A Storm of Swords: Book Three of A Song of Ice and Fire (New York: Bantam Spectra, 2002), 219.43. Daniel d’Addario, “Lena Headey on Playing Cersei on Game of Thrones: ‘I Admire Her’,” TIME Magazine, 10 July 2017, http://time.com/4773785/lena-headey-cersei-game-of-thrones/.44. Martin, A Feast for Crows, 114.45. Ibid., 234.46. Ibid., 335.47. George R.R.Martin, A Dance with Dragons. Book Five of A Song of Ice and Fire (New York: Bantam Spectra, 2011), 281.48. Martin, A Feast for Crows, 345.49. Martin, A Game of Thrones, 377.50. Martin, A Feast for Crows, 481.51. Ibid., 481.52. Emmett Booth, “Do you think that under different circum-stances Robert might have been a good king?” Poor Quentyn [Tumblr] (27 September 2017), http://poorquentyn.tumblr.com/post/165804293848/do-you-think-that-under-dif ferent-circum-stances. The podcast is NotACastASOIAF and Booth is one of two hosts.53. Sean T.Collins, “A proposed A Feast for Crows/A Dance with Dragons merged reading order,” All Leather Must Be Boiled (6 June 2012), http://boiledleather.com/post/24543217702/a-proposed-a-feast-for- crowsa-dance-with-dragons. K. M. FINNhttps://mashable.com/2016/12/12/lena-headey-cersei-season-7/https://mashable.com/2016/12/12/lena-headey-cersei-season-7/http://time.com/4773785/lena-headey-cersei-game-of-thrones/http://time.com/4773785/lena-headey-cersei-game-of-thrones/http://poorquentyn.tumblr.com/post/165804293848/do-you-think-that-under-different-circ*mstanceshttp://poorquentyn.tumblr.com/post/165804293848/do-you-think-that-under-different-circ*mstanceshttp://poorquentyn.tumblr.com/post/165804293848/do-you-think-that-under-different-circ*mstanceshttp://boiledleather.com/post/24543217702/a-proposed-a-feast-for-crowsa-dance-with-dragonshttp://boiledleather.com/post/24543217702/a-proposed-a-feast-for-crowsa-dance-with-dragons4954. This is not without its own issues; Daenerys’ Meereen arc has come under attack for both implicit and explicit racism that, for better or worse, is largely absent from Cersei’s plotline (Taena Merryweather being a notable exception). See Emmett Booth, “So … racism in ASOIAF,” Poor Quentyn [Tumblr] (27 August 2017), http://poorquentyn.tumblr.com/post/ 164680125528/soracism-in-asoif-pretty-blatant-no-his.55. Martin, A Feast for Crows, 586.56. Game of Thrones, “Breaker of Chains,” Season 4, Episode 3, dir. Alex Graves, written by David Benioff and D.B.Weiss (HBO, 20 April 2014).57. I discuss this in “High and Mighty Queens of Westeros,” Game of Thrones vs. History: Written in Blood, ed. Brian A. Pawlac and Elizabeth Lott (Oxford: Wiley, 2017), 26–28.58. Martin, A Dance with Dragons, 853. This incident is first mentioned early in A Feast for Crows (50), when Cersei encounters the body of Shae, a sex worker, in her father’s bed, and it comes up again in the epilogue, where Kevan confirms his role in choosing Cersei’s punishment (953). Nor has it gone unnoticed amongst fans that Tywin Lannister’s punishments hinge on sexual degradation, not just in the case of his father’s mistress, but also the rape and murder of Princess Elia Martell, and forcing Tyrion to partici-pate in the gang rape of his wife Tysha when the two of them are teenagers.59. Martin, A Dance with Dragons, 858.60. In the books, only Joffrey has died, murdered at his wedding by Olenna Tyrell. In the HBO series, Myrcella died in the final episode of Season Five after being poisoned by Ellaria Sand in Dorne.61. Headey, in d’Addario.62. Headey in James Hibberd, “Game of Thrones: Lena Headey reacts to that King’s Landing battle ending,” Entertainment Weekly (12 May 2019), https://ew.com/tv/2019/05/12/game-thrones-cersei-kings-landing-battle-interview/.63. Geraldine Heng, “Enchanted Ground: The Feminine Subtext in Malory,” Courtly Literature: Culture and Context. Selected Papers from the 5th Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Dalfsen, the Netherlands, 9–16 August, 1986, vol. 25, ed. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1990), 290.BiBliographyAdams, Tracy. The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.Anders, Charlie Jane. “George R.R.Martin: The Complete Unedited Interview.” The Observation Deck [Kinja]. 23 July 2013. https://observationdeck.kinja.com/george-r-r-martin-the-complete-unedited-interview-886117845.2 QUEEN OFSAD MISCHANCE: MEDIEVALISM, “REALISM,” ANDTHECASE… http://poorquentyn.tumblr.com/post/164680125528/soracism-in-asoif-pretty-blatant-no-hishttp://poorquentyn.tumblr.com/post/164680125528/soracism-in-asoif-pretty-blatant-no-hishttps://ew.com/tv/2019/05/12/game-thrones-cersei-kings-landing-battle-interview/https://ew.com/tv/2019/05/12/game-thrones-cersei-kings-landing-battle-interview/https://observationdeck.kinja.com/george-r-r-martin-the-complete-unedited-interview-886117845https://observationdeck.kinja.com/george-r-r-martin-the-complete-unedited-interview-88611784550Anne de France [Anne de Beaujeu]. Les Enseignements d’Anne de France, duch*esse de Bourbonnois et d’Auvergne à sa fille Susanne de Bourbon. Ed. A.-M.Chazaud. Moulins: C.Desrosiers, 1878.Baldwin, David. Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower. NewYork: Sutton, 2002.Benioff, David, and D.B.Weiss. Game of Thrones. “Breaker of Chains.” Season 4, Episode 3. Directed by Alex Graves. Los Angeles: HBO, 2014.———. Game of Thrones. “The Wars to Come.” Season Five, Episode 1. Directed by Michael Slovis. Los Angeles: HBO, 2015.———. Game of Thrones. “The Winds of Winter.” Season 6, Episode 10. Directed by Miguel Sapochnik. Los Angeles: HBO, 2016.———. Game of Thrones. “The Bells.” Season 8, Episode 5. Directed by Miguel Sapochnik. Los Angeles: HBO, 2019.bitchfromtheseventhhell and lyannas. “I agree with farty old man GRRM.” the one that leads them is a she-wolf. Tumblr. 9 June 2016. http://bitchfromtheseven-thhel l . tumblr.com/post/145690854453/i-agree-with-far ty-old- man-grrm-and-id-like-to.Booth, Emmett. “So … racism in ASOIAF.” PoorQuentyn. Tumblr. 27 Aug 2017, http://poorquentyn.tumblr.com/post/164680125528/soracism-in-asoif- pretty-blatant-no-his.———. “Do you think that under different circ*mstances Robert might have been a good king?” PoorQuentyn. Tumblr. 27 Sep 2017. http://poorquentyn.tumb l r. com/pos t/165804293848/do-you - th ink - tha t -unde r- different-circ*mstances.Carroll, Shiloh. “Race in A Song of Ice and Fire: Medievalism Posing as Authenticity.” The Public Medievalist: Race, Racism, and the Middle Ages. 28 November 2017. https://www.publicmedievalist.com/race-in-asoif/.Collins, Sean T. “A proposed A Feast for Crows/A Dance with Dragons merged reading,order.” All Leather Must Be Boiled. 6 June 2012. http://boiledleather.com/post/24543217702/a-proposed-a-feast-for-crowsa-dance-with-dragons.Commynes, Philippe de. Mémoires. Ed. Joël Blanchard. 2vol. Geneva: Droz, 2007.Finn, Kavita Mudan. The Last Plantagenet Consorts: Gender, Genre, and Historiography, 1440–1627. NewYork: Palgrave, 2012.———. “Tragedy, Transgression, and Women’s Voices: The Cases of Eleanor Cobham and Margaret of Anjou.” Viator 47.2 (2016): 277–303.———. “High and Mighty Queens of Westeros.” Game of Thrones vs. History: Written in Blood. Ed. Brian A. Pawlac and Elizabeth Lott. Oxford: Wiley, 2017. 19–31.Frankel, Valerie Estelle. Women in Game of Thrones: Power, Conformity, and Resistance. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013.Heng, Geraldine. “Enchanted Ground: The Feminine Subtext in Malory.” Courtly Literature: Culture and Context. Selected Papers from the 5th Triennial Congress K. M. FINNhttp://bitchfromtheseventhhell.tumblr.com/post/145690854453/i-agree-with-farty-old-man-grrm-and-id-like-tohttp://bitchfromtheseventhhell.tumblr.com/post/145690854453/i-agree-with-farty-old-man-grrm-and-id-like-tohttp://bitchfromtheseventhhell.tumblr.com/post/145690854453/i-agree-with-farty-old-man-grrm-and-id-like-tohttp://poorquentyn.tumblr.com/post/164680125528/soracism-in-asoif-pretty-blatant-no-hishttp://poorquentyn.tumblr.com/post/164680125528/soracism-in-asoif-pretty-blatant-no-hishttps://www.publicmedievalist.com/race-in-asoif/http://boiledleather.com/post/24543217702/a-proposed-a-feast-for-crowsa-dance-with-dragonshttp://boiledleather.com/post/24543217702/a-proposed-a-feast-for-crowsa-dance-with-dragons51of the International Courtly Literature Society, Dalfsen, the Netherlands, 9–16 August, 1986. vol. 25. Ed. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1990. 283–300.Hinds, Allen B. Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Existing in the Archives and Collections of Milan. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1912.Holland, Tom. “Game of Thrones is more brutally realistic than most historical novels.” The Guardian. Posted 24 March 2013. Accessed 23 February 2014. Hsy, Jonathan and Julie Orlemanski. “Race and medieval studies: a partial bibliog-raphy.” postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 8 (2017): 500–31.Itzkoff, Dave. “George R.R.Martin on ‘Game of Thrones’ and Sexual Violence.” The NewYork Times ArtsBeat. 2 May 2014. https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/george-r-r-martin-on-game-of-thrones-and-sexual- violence/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&.joannalannister. “I’m curious. It was always told to me.” JoannaLannister. Tumblr. 4 August 2015. http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/125827358911/im-curious-it-was-always-told-to-me-that-the.Kaveney, Roz, with George R.R.Martin. “A Storm Coming: Interview with George R.R. Martin.” Amazon.co.uk. 2002. https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/49161/026-1281322-7450821?tag=westeros-21.Kennedy, Elspeth. “The Making of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle.” In A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. Ed. Carol Dover. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003. 13–22.Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate In Translation. 10vol. Ed. Norris J.Lacy. Cambridge: D.S.Brewer, 2010.Laynesmith, J.L. The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445–1503. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004.———. “Telling Tales of Adulterous Queens in Medieval England: From Olympias of Macedonia to Elizabeth Woodville,” in Every Inch a King: Comparative Studies on Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds. Ed. Lynette Mitchell and Charles Melville. Leiden: Brill, 2012. 195–214.Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte Darthur. Ed. Stephen H.A.Shepherd. NewYork: W.W.Norton, 2004.Mancini, Dominic. The Usurpation of Richard the Third. Trans. C.A.J.Armstrong. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.Martin, George R.R. A Game of Thrones. Book One of A Song of Ice and Fire. NewYork: Bantam Spectra, 1996.———. A Clash of Kings. Book Two of A Song of Ice and Fire. London: Voyager, 2003.———. A Storm of Swords. Book Three of A Song of Ice and Fire. NewYork: Bantam Spectra, 2002.2 QUEEN OFSAD MISCHANCE: MEDIEVALISM, “REALISM,” ANDTHECASE… http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/mar/24/game-of-thrones-realistic-history>http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/mar/24/game-of-thrones-realistic-history>https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/george-r-r-martin-on-game-of-thrones-and-sexual-violence/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/george-r-r-martin-on-game-of-thrones-and-sexual-violence/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/george-r-r-martin-on-game-of-thrones-and-sexual-violence/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1&http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/125827358911/im-curious-it-was-always-told-to-me-that-thehttp://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/125827358911/im-curious-it-was-always-told-to-me-that-thehttps://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/49161/026-1281322-7450821?tag=westeros-21https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/49161/026-1281322-7450821?tag=westeros-2152———. A Feast for Crows. Book Four of A Song of Ice and Fire. NewYork: Bantam Spectra, 2005.———. A Dance with Dragons. Book Five of A Song of Ice and Fire. NewYork: Bantam Spectra, 2011.Maurer, Helen. Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003.McCracken, Peggy. The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression in Old French Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.Pronay, Nicholas, and John Cox. The Crowland Chronicle Continuations: 1459–1486. London: Alan Sutton, 1986.The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England 1275–1504. London: The Boydell Press, 2005.The Historie of the Arrivall of King Edward IV. A.D. 1471. Ed. John Bruce. London: Camden Society, 1838.Pizan, Christine de. The Treasure of the City of Ladies, or the Book of the Three Virtues. Ed. and trans. Sarah Lawson. NewYork: Penguin, 1985.Ross, Charles. Edward IV. Yale English Monarchs Series. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. [orig. 1974].Viennot, Éliane. “Rhétorique de la chasteté dans les Enseignements d’Anne de France à sa fille Suzanne de Bourbon.” In Souillure et Pureté: le Corps et son environnement culturel et politique. Ed. Jean-Jacques Vincensini. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2003. 1–6. K. M. FINN53© TheAuthor(s) 2020Z. E. Rohr, L. Benz (eds.), Queenship andtheWomen ofWesteros, Queenship andPower, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6_3CHAPTER 3Westerosi Queens: Medievalist Portrayal ofFemale Power andAuthority inA Song ofIce andFireSylwiaBorowska-SzerszunWhen asked about female characters, plotlines, and the level of violence against women in A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin once remarked that “the books reflect a patriarchal society based on the Middle Ages,” which “were not a time of sexual egalitarianism” and “had strong ideas about the roles of women.”1 As a result, his narrative, “chiselled out of the historical and imaginary medieval past,”2 features a brutal world of violence, torture, and sexual abuse, standing in vivid contrast to the more nostalgic Tolkienian vision of the period that has by now become a some-what clichéd attribute of much fantasy fiction. Martin’s narrative cycle and the HBO television series based on his novels have also inspired a heated debate among both fans and critics about the ambiguous portrayal of women, who on the one hand actively participate in “the game of thrones,” but on the other hand remain objectified, victimised, and sexually abused. Consequently, as a recent collection of essays edited by Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart demonstrates,,women of the transmedial Game of Thrones universe can be interpreted as either feminist or antifeminist, subversive or S. Borowska-Szerszun (*) University of Białystok, Białystok, Polandhttp://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6_3&domain=pdf54subdued, empowered or disenfranchised.3 This chapter aims to participate in this discussion and examine the issues of female power and authority through the lens of a medievalist, who perceives Martin’s construction of the Middle Ages as a contemporary cultural fantasy that selectively appro-priates various medieval motifs and topoi and recasts them for the needs of modern readers and viewers. The chapter’s analysis of medieval inspira-tions behind A Song of Ice and Fire is, therefore, grounded in the convic-tion that “the past is the present, for the past never dies but is continually reborn in the present moment of consideration and consumption.”4In a recent article, Martin’s cycle has been examined by Bartłomiej Błaszkiewicz against theories defining the nature of kingship during the High Middle Ages.5 His analysis focuses on the depiction of male rulers and leaders (e.g., Aerys Targaryen, Robert Baratheon, Eddar Stark, and Tywin and Tyrion Lannister) and their understanding of power and mon-archy, practically excluding from consideration the issue of Westerosi queens. The focus of his discussion, quite unintentionally perhaps, draws attention to an observation made by Robert Bucholz and Carole Levin that in medieval and early modern period queens who ruled by themselves tended to be seen as “anomalous” and “luminal,” whereas their reigns were perceived “like festivals or riots, albeit of a more sustained dura-tion—extended moments of suspension in the normal working of politi-cal, social, cultural, and gender history.”6 This is not to say that the Middle Ages failed to recognise leadership by women when the need arose, and indeed politically influential queens appeared and governed on their own, or as co-rulers whose authority pertained to a more private, though insep-arably political, sphere of the monarchy (marriage, family, patronage). While some of these queens were subordinate to their husbands, fathers, or brothers, others exercised power alongside the kings, which implies that traditional categories of kingship and queenship are unsatisfactory if the complicated structure of power relationships is to be fully explained.Instead of focusing on kings and queens separately, Theresa Earenfight proposes the category of “rulership,” metaphorically depicted as “a flexi-ble sack” that is capacious enough to incorporate both kings and queens and see their power jointly, as complementary rather than exclusive, with-out privileging the public over the domestic.7 In her study of Yolande of Aragon, Zita Eva Rohr takes a similar stance, observing:Monarchy is a gendered institution but no successful king or queen has ruled in a vacuum—all needed supporting institutions to succeed and pros-per. We should consider queenship and kingship therefore as complemen- S. BOROWSKA-SZERSZUN55tary, sometimes symbiotic, institutions and this demands that we drop the creaky tendency to study powerful and successful kings and queens in isolation. It is better to study kingdoms and dynasties and kings and queens together, examining them in terms of cooperative rulerships (and sometimes uncooperative, antagonistic ones).8However, even when the notion of pre-modern queenship is approached in this way, it is still, as Earenfight further notes, “bounded by a patriarchal political environment that privileged rule by a king that could either per-mit or prohibit women from the political sphere.” Because queens are not “born” but “become,” the office of queenship is less fixed, and can, con-sequently, be seen as a “discursive” and “generative” one, becoming “an incessant project” and “a daily act of reconstruction,” dependent to a greater extent (than in the case of kingship) on the individual personality, temperament, and family connections of the queen, who under certain circ*mstances (especially when the need to continue a dynastic line was stronger than prejudice) could overcome institutional obstacles.9This context seems crucial when examining the figures of Cersei Lannister, Margaery Tyrell, and Daenerys Targaryen—three powerful female charac-ters of Martin’s narrative who aspire to gain and exercise royal power in a fictional society that is unused to and distrustful of female leadership. Taking into account Martin’s patchwork approach to medieval history, it is obvi-ously possible to draw parallels between these fictional women and historical figures of queens.10 However, this chapter predominantly focuses on the images and tactics employed by Cersei, Margaery, and Daenerys against the background of medieval misogynistic tradition on the one hand, and pre-modern “profeminine” defences11 of women on the other. Furthermore, it discusses the ways in which they exercise their power in order to determine to what extent their actions conform to or challenge the stereotypes associ-ated with female leadership.Cersei Lannister: MisogynistiC stereotypes offeMaLeruLeThe depiction of Cersei Lannister seems to correspond to a huge extent to the anti-woman rhetoric of the Middle Ages, which can be seen as “a cul-tural constant”12 that not only informed theological and scientific tracts, but also seized the popular imagination. The construction of women as inferior to men stemmed from the interpretation of the Biblical story of 3 WESTEROSI QUEENS: MEDIEVALIST PORTRAYAL OFFEMALE POWER… 56creation (Genesis 2: 18–22), which framed woman as a “help meet” cre-ated in the image of man, not God. This narrative has twofold implications. Firstly, it depicts Adam as fully partaking in God’s divinity, and thus hier-archically higher than a woman, who must remain in a position subordi-nate to him. Secondly, the fact that Eve is created of human flesh makes her further removed from God and, consequently, more prone to sin. Such views were augmented through Aristotelian physiology, which dis-tinguished between the male principle (soul, form) and the female one (body, matter) and construed woman as a “deformed” or “defective” man,13 and Galenic medicine, which ascribed female “softness” and “weak-ness” to an imbalance of humours and a tendency towards “coldness” and “humidity” that were responsible for blocking the exteriorisation of her genitals.14 Becoming, in Tertullian’s famous words, “the gateway of the devil,”15 a woman is often depicted as more lecherous than man by her very nature. In Jehan le Fevre’s The Lamentations of the Matheolus (c. 1371–2), for instance, women are portrayed as sexual manipulators, who also torment their spouses with nagging and disobedience, which inevita-bly leads to their husbands’ downfall. It is argued that a woman is the reason behind the failure of men, both great and small—“if the greatest men are deceived, then the lesser naturally fall.”16 In satirical and farcical tradition, female sexuality is usually excessive, uncontrollable, and fre-quently coupled with rebelliousness, which poses a threat not only to indi-viduals who blame women for tempting them into sin, but also to the established hierarchy and social order (e.g., the institution of marriage, the legitimacy of children, succession, inheritance, and clerical celibacy).17Such misogynistic beliefs and fears materialise in Martin’s narrative in the figure of Cersei, whose extramarital incestuous relationship with her twin brother and her unquenchable desire for power lead to the murder of the lawful king, usurpation of the succession line, and civil war. Elsewhere in this volume, Kavita Mudan Finn contrasts the figures of Cersei and Guenevere, noticing that the childless love affair of the latter has not really endangered succession. This is probably,why the adulterous queen of the Arthurian lore might evoke empathy, while Cersei’s actions, epitomising queenly treason, are never redeemed. Paradoxically, Cersei is most danger-ous as Queen Consort when Robert Baratheon—not a model ruler him-self—is still alive, and immediately after his death when she acts promptly and effectively to secure the throne for her son. Her moves towards the end of the first novel demonstrate a flair for courtly games, considerable political aptitude, and cold pragmatism that overshadow Ned Stark’s naïve S. BOROWSKA-SZERSZUN57belief that proving the truth of Robert’s son’s illegitimacy is enough to win the throne.18 As Queen Regent, however, reigning on behalf of the underaged Tommen, Cersei commits mistake after mistake, becoming in fact a short-sighted tyrant in skirts, whose fall is inevitable. Having boldly stepped into the realm of men, she grows paranoid, surrounds herself with half-wits, mistakes blandishment for good council, and, consequently, fails as a leader.Although she gains an unprecedented share of power in patriarchal Westeros, Cersei inspires little, if any, sympathy from Martin’s readers. She negates any qualities traditionally associated with femininity, despises other women, labelling them a “flock of frightened hens,”19 and often repeats that she should have been born a man, emphasising at the same time the uneven distribution of power in the society:We were so much alike, I could never understand why they treated us so differently. Jaime learned to fight with sword and lance and mace, while I was taught to smile and sing and please. He was heir to Casterly Rock, while I was to be sold to some stranger like a horse, to be ridden whenever my new owner liked, beaten whenever he liked, and cast aside in time for a younger filly. Jaime’s lot was to be glory and power, while mine was birth and moon blood.20Thus, Cersei’s fury may be partly explained by her justified objections to the limited number of choices for women in the society, which valued its royal women mainly for their child-bearing capabilities. Similarly, her machinations leading to the murder of King Robert and putting an ille-gitimate successor on the throne might be seen as a conscious act of ven-geance for years of living in a loveless and abusive relationship. In fact, Cersei derives considerable satisfaction from the fact she has never given birth to a child conceived with the king: “‘Robert got me with child once,’ she said, her voice thick with contempt. ‘My brother found a woman to cleanse me.’”21 Unlike HBO’s Game of Thrones, where she is, as Marta Eidsvåg argues, more motherly and capable of loving any child irrespective of who the father is, the novels break the taboo of abortion and highlight the fact that in truth Cersei wants to secure power for herself, not her children.22The Cersei of the novels is highly sexualised and consciously uses her body to achieve the ends she desires, which conforms with misogynistic beliefs expressed in the Middle Ages and well beyond the period. Later, when she acts as queen, she rejects any virtues archetypically ascribed to 3 WESTEROSI QUEENS: MEDIEVALIST PORTRAYAL OFFEMALE POWER… 58women, such as nurturance, caring, compassion, empathy and collabora-tion, and fashions herself as a self-centred, aggressive, and violent tyrant. Her attempts to “act like a man” seem grotesque even in the chapters focalised from her perspective, in which she increasingly resembles glutton-ous, sottish, abusive, and foolish Robert Baratheon. Cersei’s female rule is, in fact, depicted in a manner once more reminiscent of medieval tradition, which featured numerous representations of carnivalesque reversals of gen-der roles, one of the most widespread being the image of a man beaten by a woman. Invading the margins of the manuscripts23 and the space of the church,24 such motifs are also present in theatre and highlight the absurdity of female empowerment, which is seen as a transgression against the natural order of things that should be ridiculed and punished. This is, for instance, the case of Mrs. Noah, who refuses to enter the ark, challenges her hus-band’s authority and abuses him verbally, which in the Noah Play from the Towneley Cycle leads to a physical confrontation between the spouses and accounts for much of the comedy in the scene. However, irrespective of her temporal rebelliousness, Noah’s wife is finally chastised and forced to enter the ark—a symbol of male-governed space—and saved against her will, the hierarchy thus being restored and reinforced.25Cersei’s ritual punishment, her walk of shame towards the end of A Dance with Dragons, serves a similar corrective function. Paraded naked through a jeering crowd, she is deprived of any attributes of royal power and devalued in the eyes of her subjects:Cersei was soiled goods now, her power at an end. Every baker’s boy and beggar in the city had seen her shame and every tart and tanner from Flea Bottom to Pisswater Bend had gazed upon her nakedness, their eager eyes crawling over her breasts and belly and woman’s parts. No queen could expect to rule after that again. In gold and silk and emeralds Cersei had been a queen, the next thing to a goddess; naked, she was only human, an aging woman with stretch marks on her belly and teats that had begun to sag.26While her misdeeds are undeniable, the punishment, framed as a spectacle for the masses, is not meant as penance but has the political purpose of destroying her reputation by making a spectacle of her body. Kavita Mudan Finn has pointed out elsewhere certain inspirations behind Martin’s walk of atonement, mentioning the cases of Eleanor Cobham, convicted of witchcraft in 1441, and Jane Shore, an infamous mistress of Edward IV, accused of treason in 1483.27 However, as Liber Albus, a fifteenth-century S. BOROWSKA-SZERSZUN59compilation of customary laws for London demonstrates, similar measures were much more often taken to punish individuals of much lower social status—bawds, whor*s, or simply adulterous women. The punishments ranged from cutting or shaving a woman’s hair and her being paraded to the pillory, with a visual emblem of a sexual offence (striped hood, white rod in her hand), to banishment from the town. Such public shame was primarily understood as a deterrent, whose power derived from a conse-quent loss of personal reputation.28The striking point in Martin’s narrative is that although Cersei has indeed made grave mistakes as a political leader, she is disciplined as a harlot, not a monarch. Her reign is clearly depicted as a carnivalesque suspension of the normal workings of the dynasty, which brings nothing but chaos and social unrest. Yet, her punishment relies mainly on degrading the queen by expos-ing her naked body to public gaze—an unthinkable measure, if the tyranni-cal ruler was male. Although Cersei’s road to power was bumpy, and that following it required Machiavellian skills, steely determination and personal sacrifice, all this is to be forgotten. In her final appearance in the novels, she is presented as a promiscuous woman, whose unrestrained and uncontrol-lable sexuality is dangerous, as it has led to the decline of the kingdom. A powerful message emerging from Cersei’s narrative is that the power she exercised was never her own, but “stolen” from men who rightfully deserved it. Her attempts to act like a man are similarly discredited, which under-mines the tactics of adopting a masculine leadership style by women. In her attempts to emulate hyper- masculine behaviour, Cersei has gained nothing but has instead exposed all the vices attributed to women by misogynists—shallowness, lust, irrationality, instability, jealousy, and petty vengefulness. Such a depiction of one of the most prominent female characters in the novels clearly conforms to the most unfortunate stereotypes that perpetuate,misogynistic ideas about women’s ability to rule.Margaery tyreLL: traditionaLLy feMinine QueenshipCersei Lannister is not the only woman in King’s Landing who aspires to gain power and wield political influence. Her younger rival, Margaery Tyrell, takes a completely different approach to fashioning herself as queen. Instead of challenging traditionally feminine behaviours and objecting to her role of a marriageable political asset, she tries to take full advantage of these to establish the image of a co-ruler, rather than an independent mon-arch. Yet another woman in A Song of Ice and Fire who derives her power 3 WESTEROSI QUEENS: MEDIEVALIST PORTRAYAL OFFEMALE POWER… 60from adhering to rather than subverting the model of conventional femi-ninity is Catelyn Stark. In her contribution to this volume, Kris Swank interprets the figure of Catelyn as an Anglo-Saxon peace- weaving queen, reminiscent of Wealhtheow from Beowulf, whose responsibilities include bringing peace through marriage, providing legitimate heirs, exercising influence on social hierarchies, and offering advice to the king. Such a strat-egy was obviously much more widespread in later Middle Ages, which did not conceptualise queenship directly and exhaustively in political theory yet established the Virgin Mary, the Queen of Heaven, as a primary role model. Thus, as Lisa Benz St. John observes, the primary responsibilities of an ideal queen, highlighted in the iconic depictions of royal women, included motherhood, seen as a necessary measure to secure succession, and media-tion between the king and his people, parallel to the role of the Virgin Mary as an intercessor between heaven and earth.29One more model of intercession can be seen in the Old Testament nar-rative of Esther, a beautiful yet eloquent queen, risking her life to mediate on behalf of the Israelites with King Ahasuerus, who had issued an edict to kill all Jews. Esther’s persuasive appeal pleases the king so much that the law is reversed, and her people are actually allowed to take revenge upon their enemies. The biblical narrative frames the queen’s authority as being complementary, though less direct, to the king’s—he stands for intelli-gence and law; she for the heart and mercy. Clearly, under certain circum-stance such a division of roles could be successfully applied in politics as “a device to enable a king to change his mind or become reconciled with his subjects”30 without actually losing face. It was also promoted by Christine de Pizan, the leading pro-feminine defender of her own sex at the begin-ning of the fifteenth century. In The Treasure of the City of Ladies, a manual for noble women, she establishes peace-making as a crucial female task, resulting from their “sweeter disposition”:[M]en are by nature more courageous and more hot-headed, and the great desire they have to avenge themselves prevents their considering either the perils or the evils that can result from war. But women are by nature more timid and also of a sweeter disposition, and for this reason, if they are wise and if they wish to, they can be the best means of pacifying men.31In her Book of the City of Ladies, Christine de Pizan undertakes the chal-lenging task of dismissing misogynistic attacks and establishing Reason, Rectitude and Justice as key female virtues. City of Ladies derives its power not so much from the multitude of examples of virtuous and coura- S. BOROWSKA-SZERSZUN61geous women, but from offering an alternative vision of history, in which female contribution to the development of civilisation is fully acknowl-edged and celebrated.32 These examples imply that, despite medieval misogynistic tradition, medieval aristocratic women were provided with models of exemplary behaviour that would allow them to exercise power in a way approved by their patriarchal society.Margaery appears on the political stage as a girl who is barely 14, “very pretty, with a doe’s soft eyes and a mane of curling brown hair that fell about her shoulders in lazy ringlets,” whose “smile was shy and sweet.”33 Yet this large-eyed, pale, and lovable teenager is a much more skilful court-ier than she initially appears to be, pragmatically using the gendered means available to her in her struggle for power. More cunning than she looks, she quickly adapts to the fast-changing circ*mstances and seems not to be bothered by the fact that her family would do practically anything to put her on the throne. Although she is absent in A Game of Thrones, there is a plan to bring her to the court in the hope that Robert Baratheon would fall in love with her and dismiss Cersei. In A Clash of Kings, after Robert’s death, she is quickly married off to his younger brother, Renly, who is planning to seize the throne. Their marriage is brief and allegedly uncon-summated, which makes it possible for Margaery to remain on the mar-riage market after his death and be wedded to Joffrey Baratheon in order to consolidate a political and military alliance. Finally, with Joffrey poi-soned on their wedding day, she is remarried to the child-king, Tommen Baratheon, who would have been easy for her to manipulate if not for Cersei. Like most medieval queens at their coronations, Margaery fashions herself as a virgin during her wedding:The bride was lovely in ivory silk and Myrish lace, her skirts decorated with floral patterns picked out in seed pearls. As Renly’s widow, she might have worn the Baratheon colors, gold and black, yet she came to them a Tyrell, in a maiden’s cloak made of a hundred cloth-of-gold roses sewn to green velvet.34Although the young queen is adept at projecting the right image, her vir-ginity is questioned throughout the narrative, with Cersei obsessively scheming to uncover her carnal involvement with other men, in which she eventually succeeds in A Dance with Dragons. Martin’s inspirations behind the depiction of Margaery Tyrell might have included the case of Katherine of Aragon, who maintained to the end of her life that her marriage with the 15-year-old Prince Arthur was never consummated and wore virginal white at her coronation as Henry VIII’s newly wed queen.35 Paradoxically, 3 WESTEROSI QUEENS: MEDIEVALIST PORTRAYAL OFFEMALE POWER… 62however, it is also possible to associate Margaery, accused of adultery and treason, with Anne Boleyn, who faced similar charges that included a love affair with a Flemish musician, Mark Smeaton, a couple of other courtiers, and her own brother, George Boleyn.36Still, before her fall, Margaery Tyrell successfully accommodates herself within the category of a “help meet” who does not threaten patriarchal authority yet establishes her own sphere of influence. Not only does she manage to set up her own household consisting of loyal guards, courtiers, servants, and entertainers, but she also grasps the importance of actively building her image through frequent public appearances:She seldom let more than three days pass without going off for a ride … The little queen was fond of going out on boats as well, sailing up and down the Blackwater Rush to no particular purpose. When she was feeling pious she would leave the castle to pray at Baelor’s Sept. She gave her custom to a dozen different seamstresses, was well-known amongst the city’s goldsmiths, and had even been known to visit the fish market by the Mud Gate for a look at the day’s catch. Wherever she went, the smallfolk fawned on her, and Lady Margaery did all she could to fan their ardor. She was forever giving alms to beggars, buying hot pies off bakers’ carts, and reining up to speak to common tradesmen.37The passage clearly indicates that her activities not only encompass courtly entertainments appropriate to a noble woman, but also expose traditional feminine values of kindness, piety, patronage, compassion, and charity. Although actions such as visiting seamstresses, goldsmiths,,and the fish market belong to the domestic sphere, and seem to have little political impact, they do have a considerable symbolic potential and effectively gen-erate interest in the crown, consequently increasing the popularity of the ruling monarch. It is important to point out here that in the medieval period the court, like any other noble household, was not so much an architectural but a social and political structure. Built around the basic social unit of the family, it was not just a place of residence but an essential centre for business, trade, and political activity.38 As a combination of the public and the private with no clearly defined border between the two spheres, it also became an arena where every action had a significant per-formative quality and was potentially laden with symbolic value.Thus, Margaery’s youthful and gay court, standing in vivid contrast to Cersei’s environment dominated by terror and fear, is not only a stage S. BOROWSKA-SZERSZUN63upon which the younger queen might play the lead, but also an alternative centre of domestic power gradually gaining in importance and influence. Aware of the significance of decorum, Margaery Tyrell always acts out a role that projects the right image, and is flexible enough to adapt her behaviour to the changing circ*mstances. This becomes particularly evi-dent in her treatment of two totally different royal spouses—Joffrey and Tommen. During the wedding feast with the first of them, when her newly wed spouse offends Tyrion by spilling wine on him, Margaery is shown as a positive influence on Joffrey, unobtrusively yet effectively placating his violent and aggressive behaviour.39 With the much younger Tommen, she acts in a more motherly or sisterly manner, exerting a subtle emotional influence on the boy-king and providing him with the cordiality and encouragement he is denied by his mother.Margaery Tyrell is a useful foil for Cersei, and their rivalry over Tommen occupies much of their narrative. Both women come from mighty and afflu-ent families and have been groomed to become successful queens, yet their paths to power are depicted very differently. While Cersei strives to remain in the spotlight, and rebels against the established hierarchy, Margaery skil-fully seizes opportunities available to women who realise that they can gain more by wielding discreet influence over men than by challenging their authority. Unlike Cersei, who openly despises other women, Margaery believes in female solidarity, relying on her ladies-in-waiting and treating them as her chief allies: “Her women are her castle walls. They sleep with her, dress her, pray with her, read with her, sew with her.”40 On the whole, her tactics, though far from naïve and idealistic, have won her considerable sympathy from Martin’s readers, perhaps implying that a less aggressive and more subtle leadership style is still considered more appropriate for a woman. However, there is a twist to this apparently more positive portrayal. When compared with Cersei, especially in the novels, Margaery lacks substance, being more of a function of the narrative than a full-fledged character with a developed personality. Her story of rise and fall is narrated only from the perspective of others, and the young Queen Consort never becomes a char-acter-focaliser in A Song of Ice and Fire, emphasising her marginality over the course of events. To some extent, this mirrors the position of queens in traditional historical narratives, which recount the events from the perspec-tive of male chroniclers and at best allow a glimpse into queens’ outward actions without insight into their private motivations.3 WESTEROSI QUEENS: MEDIEVALIST PORTRAYAL OFFEMALE POWER… 64daenerys targaryen: exCeptionaL she-kingWhile Cersei openly challenges patriarchal authority, and Margaery does her best to play by the rules established by men, Daenerys Targaryen, perhaps the most loved female character in Martin’s narrative, is construed as a figure who defies conceptualisation in terms of clearly delineated gen-der categories. Like Cersei and Margaery, she is initially objectified and virtually sold to a Dothraki leader by her brother Viserys in exchange for a promise of military support:“We go home with an army, sweet sister. With Khal Drogo’s army, that is how we go home. And if you must wed him and bed him for that, you will.” He smiled at her. “I’d let his whole khalasar f*ck you if need be, sweet sister, all forty thousand men, and their horses too if that was what it took to get my army. Be grateful it is only Drogo.”41Yet, already in the first novel of the series, a 13-year-old child bride under-goes a gradual transformation, matures, and gains significant influence, which is construed nonetheless in strikingly sexual terms. Initially forced to have sex with her domineering and powerful husband on his terms, Daenerys slowly learns to change his sexual habits and derive her own pleasure, which is reflected in the couple’s growing emotional attachment to one another and her increasing social status. In narrative terms, when we look at the structure of a fairy-tale, Daenerys’s story starts where fairy tales usually end for female characters—with marriage and loss of freedom. Yet, this turns out to be just the beginning of a long journey for her, which will consist of a few important stages and tests that she needs to pass to achieve psychological and political maturity.42Already in the course of A Game of Thrones, Daenerys has emotionally detached herself from her brother Viserys, who tries to manipulate her, and learned that soft-heartedness and compassion sometimes need to give way to cold-hearted justice, which is an important lesson for a future ruler. She has also gained respect as khal’s wife, adapted to the customs of her new people, and has fallen pregnant, which significantly increases her sta-tus. Furthermore, her future son is prophesised to unite the Dothraki into a single khalasar and conquer the world, which associates Daenerys with the Virgin Mary as the mother of a future saviour. All these elements make khaleesi the epitome of an ideal queen, who fulfils her traditional duties and wields profound, though indirect, influence on the leader’s politics. S. BOROWSKA-SZERSZUN65These idyllic circ*mstances do not last long, however, and her narrative powerfully highlights the illusoriness of female power if it relies solely upon male authority. When Drogo is seriously wounded, it turns out that his warriors will not accept orders from a woman because it is against Dothraki custom. An attempt to save her husband in a bloody ritual of magic, in which Daenerys unintentionally sacrifices her unborn child, proves useless and leaves Drogo alive yet catatonic.The most important transformation of the khaleesi happens at the end of the first novel, when she euthanises her half-dead spouse and steps into his funeral pyre to be reborn as the Mother of Dragons, determined to become a leader on her own rather than masculine terms. The symbolism of this scene is significant. When Daenerys emerges from the pyre naked, yet unharmed, with her hair—a stereotypical attribute of feminine beauty—burnt off and with the dragons suckling at her lactating breasts, she is presented for the first time as a character who transcends tradition-ally defined gender categories. Like her dragons, which in Westeros are believed to be “neither male nor female … but now one and now the other, as changeable as a flame,”43 Daenerys does not really discard her femininity, but instead fully embraces more masculine aspects of her per-sonality when they are needed, self-fashioning herself in a way that desta-bilises the oppositional structure of gender difference, in which masculinity is defined as strong, active, public, and outdoor, and femininity as weak, passive, private, and domestic.Such blurring,of masculine and feminine images in the depiction of Daenerys reminds one of the tactics adopted by Elizabeth I, who “con-structed a vocabulary of rule that was largely male while her most popular mythological analogues tended to be female divinities.”44 While Elizabeth frequently referred to herself as the King and placed emphasis on the mas-culine qualities of intellect, eloquence, and courage as prerequisites for the office of monarch, such an image was counterbalanced with references to her beauty and femininity. Employing the imagery related to mythological Astraea and Diana, Edmund Spenser’s Belphoebe of The Faerie Queene, and the Marian cult, Elizabeth fashioned herself primarily as a virgin, mar-ried to no man but her people, transposing her maternal instincts onto them.45 However, as Marjorie Swann argues in her discussion of the image of the Tudor queen in Stuart writing, Elizabeth’s virginity was often regarded as ambiguous. On the one hand, the queen’s virginal self- renunciation could serve to highlight her commitment to the greater good of her subjects. On the other hand, because in pre-modern times 3 WESTEROSI QUEENS: MEDIEVALIST PORTRAYAL OFFEMALE POWER… 66virginity was construed as a temporary and pre-marital state, a woman who permanently embraced it and refused to produce legitimate succes-sors opposed the social norms that framed begetting children as the point of female sexuality. Finally, as some writers questioned Elizabeth’s chastity, her body could be read as “the site of an extramarital, nonprocreative female eroticism,”46 the queen becoming a disturbingly transgressive woman engaging in sexual activity with men for pleasure, which was clearly not meant to lead to pregnancy.In Martin’s narrative, Daenerys’s image is not grounded in virginity, but her sexuality is rendered in similar terms. Firstly, the portrayal of Daenerys is indebted to the motif of the unattainable lady of chivalric romance, exalted above the men who love her, serve her, and pledge their oaths of loyalty to her.47 This is particularly striking in her relationship with Ser Jorah Mormont, who is attracted to her sexually yet remains in a subservient position with no possibility of satisfying his desire. Secondly, as in the case of the Tudor queen, Daenerys’s sexuality is construed as unrelated to reproduction. Although she cannot conceive and bear chil-dren, she does not renounce sexual pleasure, choosing freely her male (Daario Naharis) and female (Irri) erotic partners from amongst people who neither advance nor threaten her political position. While such free-dom was considered unnatural and threatening in Elizabethan era, Martin reveals it to be a sign of empowerment, powerfully discrediting the nega-tive stereotypes of female rule through sexual manipulation, which were used in the depiction of Cersei. Finally, Elizabeth’s symbolic virginity is substituted with the metaphor of exceptional motherhood, which has equal potential for emphasising Daenerys’s uniqueness in comparison with ordinary women.Her exceptionalism is expressed particularly well through her symbolic and affective connection to her dragons: “I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons.”48 This link can be interpreted as a certain popular fantasy transformation of the medi-eval perception of a ruler as one bearing a likeness to God and deriving his wisdom and authority from him, expressed for instance by St. Thomas.49 The dragons do not stand for divinity here, but they do symbolically strengthen Daenerys’s claim to the throne as not only inborn but some-how mystical and originating in the mythical times. They also emphasise the extraordinary nature of her motherhood. Apparently henceforth unable to have children of her own, which would undermine her as a queen if the nature of her rule were rendered in traditional terms, she S. BOROWSKA-SZERSZUN67becomes the mother of monsters and slaves. The former element of this construction highlights the violent, masculine aspect of her personality, whereas the latter refers to her more feminine compassionate and merciful side. Furthermore, the metaphor of motherhood makes it possible for Martin to depict Daenerys’s maternal instincts of nurturing and caring as inherent to the well-being of her people and embracing all her subjects, especially the weak, the poor, and the powerless.The concept of mother being central to the depiction of Daenerys, it is also intertwined with the images traditionally associated with masculinity. Throughout the cycle, she is portrayed as a warrior queen in possession of the most destructive weapons (dragons), leading the army of the Unsullied and conquering the lands, yet always trying to avoid unnecessary combat. Shortly after her transformation into the Mother of Dragons, she starts to perceive her long hair not as an attribute of femininity but as “a function of Dothraki masculinity”50 and an important symbol of her strength and lead-ership. As Daenerys conquers new territories and frees slaves in the cities of Essos, her portrayal is enriched by the image of “the breaker of chains,”51 who offers freedom and hope to anyone, irrespective of their position:I see the faces of slaves. I free you. Take off your collars. Go if you wish, no one shall harm you. If you stay, it will be as brothers and sisters, husbands and wives … I see the children, women, the wrinkled faces of the aged … To each of you I say, give me your hands and your hearts, and there will always be a place for you.52However, as Daenerys progresses with her quest in Slaver’s Bay, she eventually learns that it is easier to conquer than to keep power. Her attempts to free the enslaved from the hands of their masters prove uto-pian as the liberated cities fall into disorder and back to slavery once she moves on with her conquest, which finally motivates her to stay in Meereen and exercise her power there. Her sense of justice and the ethical impera-tive to free the slaves stand in conflict with her personal and political ambi-tion to reclaim the Iron Throne, which illustrates a typical dilemma in medieval moral theory—a situation when “an agent discovers equally compelling moral reasons to perform and to desist from an action, and these compelling reasons cannot be voided.”53 Trying to find a degree of balance, Daenerys not only learns to sacrifice her personal desires for the greater good (e.g., her decision to marry the powerful merchant, Hizdahr, to secure peace in Meereen), but also realises that her ethical ideals, when 3 WESTEROSI QUEENS: MEDIEVALIST PORTRAYAL OFFEMALE POWER… 68confronted with economic reality, might be insufficient to preserve the well-being of her people (e.g., when she learns that the liberated slaves are selling themselves back to their masters as their situation has deteriorated under her rule). As a consequence, she begins to grasp the pragmatic aspects of successful leadership, requiring swift action and harsh decisions, which makes it possible for readers to see her in terms of a Machiavellian prince, stereotypically connected with male leaders.54Throughout her narrative, Daenerys Targaryen constantly develops and learns to hold back her emotions when justice is required. Unlike Cersei, who sees her gender as a major weakness, Daenerys derives her power from it. Unlike Margaery, whose ascent to power is achieved through family connections and a carefully devised public relations cam-paign, the Mother of Dragons is truly concerned with the welfare of her subjects. Combining archetypal attributes of masculinity (courage, inde-pendence, intellect, assertiveness) and femininity (caring, compassion, mercy), she manages to remain free of the negative stereotypes ascribed to both sexes. She does not hesitate when bold steps are needed, yet again, in contrast to Cersei, she understands the worth of good,counsel: “A queen must listen to all. … The highborn and the low, the strong and the weak, the noble and the venal. One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.”55 The problem is, however, that Daenerys’s advisors frequently have their own agendas, which might, but do not nec-essarily, meet her own interests. As Shiloh Carroll demonstrates in this volume, the decision whom to trust becomes crucial to successful rule. Even if Daenerys fails sometimes, her errors of judgment in Meereen might serve as further lessons preparing her to become an effective leader. While not flawless, the character of Daenerys could be interpreted not so much as an exemplary queen, who is traditionally defined by her repro-ductive and intercessory capabilities, but as an exceptional she-king—a leader, who sometimes errs as all humans do, but knows the costs of per-sonal sacrifice and chooses to work for the common good, not her per-sonal interest.ConCLusionThe narratives of Cersei, Margaery, and Daenerys allow us to explore dif-ferent layers of meanings inherent to the category of medieval and early modern queenship, as well as to uncover various attitudes towards female leadership and authority in a more general sense. Although the stories of S. BOROWSKA-SZERSZUN69these three queens are built from similar foundations, and touch upon similar problems (sexualisation, objectification, marriage, adaptation to the patriarchal system), particular elements have been given a varying amount of emphasis, resulting in strikingly different portrayals of women in power. Firstly, the depiction of Cersei Lannister is grounded in negative stereotypes of femininity and exposes the continuity of misogynistic pre-conceptions in Western cultural memory. Secondly, the construction of Margaery Tyrell relies heavily on traditional understandings of the role of the queen, one who is supposed to demonstrate feminine values and exer-cise influence from behind the scenes. Yet, unlike the other two queens, Margaery lacks both substance and voice in Martin’s tale, which power-fully undermines the effectiveness of her strategies. Finally, Daenerys Targaryen, one of the most prominent and successful characters in the cycle, is construed in a manner that challenges stereotypical perception of gender roles by combining the metaphors of mother, warrior, and saviour in her depiction.Despite a touch of magic, A Song of Ice and Fire is substantially a medi-evalist narrative structured as a quest for power, which features several female competitors. For women, this quest is also inseparably connected with their sexuality, and the attention given to their varying attitudes to sex finds no equivalent in the depiction of male characters, whose sexual exploits have no particular influence on their success as rulers. The depic-tion of Cersei’s dangerous and transgressive sexuality draws on a long tradition of linking female power with sexual manipulation and expresses misogynistic stereotypes that have not been securely sealed off in the past but lurk beneath the surface of contemporaneity. On the other hand, the apparent celebration of the traditionally feminine values in the portrayal of Margaery ends up in a spectacular disaster, when she faces accusations of infidelity and treason. In both cases, a woman’s suitability as a ruler is measured in terms of her sexual reputation, which again makes one won-der whether the double standards, which applaud men for their sex life yet ostracise women for promiscuity, are really the thing of the past. Only Daenerys, significantly operating on the outskirts of civilisation, liberates herself from conventional morality and enjoys her sexuality, which does not, however, influence her political choices, thus finally projecting a more positive vision of female rule.While the figures of Cersei and Margaery belong to a long tradition of depicting women as either shrews or “help meets,” Daenerys is more ambiguous. Although she is objectified at the outset and sexualised 3 WESTEROSI QUEENS: MEDIEVALIST PORTRAYAL OFFEMALE POWER… 70throughout the tale, she becomes an “agent of considerable power who strives to be just, moral, and fair to those who pledge her loyalty.”56 It is debatable whether Daenerys’s exceptionalism can be seen as a sign of female empowerment or as an “enduring cultural fantasy of the strong woman who rises above a general condition of female disenfranchise-ment.”57 However, the presence of such a hybrid and troubling female avatar questions the binary oppositions of much fantasy fiction, as well as revisions certain archetypes that have been appropriated by the genre.notes1. John Hibberd, “George R.R.Martin explains why there’s violence against women on ‘Game of Thrones,’” Entertainment Weekly, 3 June 2015, http://ew.com/article/2015/06/03/george-rr-martin-thrones-violence-women2. Carolyne Larrington, Winter Is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones (London, NewYork: I.B.Tauris, 2016), 1.3. Rikke Schubart and Anne Gjelsvik, “Introduction,” in Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagement, eds. Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 1–10.4. Tison Pugh and Angela Jane Weisl, Medievalism: Making the Past in the Present (New York: Routledge, 2013), 10.5. Bartłomiej Błaszkiewicz, “On the Theories of Kingship in George R.R.Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire,” in Basic Categories of Fantastic Literature Revisited, eds. Andrzej Wicher, Piotr Spyra, and Joanna Matyjaszczyk (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 115–126.6. Robert Bucholz and Carole Levin, “Introduction,” in Queens & Power in Medieval and Early Modern England, eds. Carole Levin and Robert Bucholz (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), xiv.7. Theresa Earenfight, “Without the Persona of the Prince: Kings, Queens and the Idea of Monarchy in Late Medieval Europe,” Gender and History 19, no.1 (April 2007): 10.8. Zita Eva Rohr, Yolande of Aragon (1381–1442) Family and Power: The Reverse of the Tapestry (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 4.9. Earenfight, “Without the Persona of the Prince,” 14.10. See, for instance, James J.Hudson’s contribution to the present volume and Kavita Mudan Finn’s “High and Mighty Queens of Westeros,” in Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood, ed. Brian A. Pavlac (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 19–31.11. I use Alcuin Blamires’s terminology to refer to texts that construe a more positive view of femininity according to the cultural ideology of the Middle S. BOROWSKA-SZERSZUNhttp://ew.com/article/2015/06/03/george-rr-martin-thrones-violence-womenhttp://ew.com/article/2015/06/03/george-rr-martin-thrones-violence-women71Ages rather than later feminist understanding. See Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 10–13.12. Howard R. Bloch, “Medieval Misogyny,” in Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy, eds. Howard R. Bloch and Frances Ferguson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 1.13. Alcuin Blamires, ed., Woman Defamed and Women Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 2.14. For the relevant passages of Galen’s De UsuPartium, see Blamires, Woman Defamed, 41–42.15. Tertullian, De Cultu Feminarum, section I.I, part 2, in Blamires, Woman Defamed, 51.16. Jehan le Févre, The Lamentations of Matheolus, in Blamires, Woman Defamed, 194.17. Ruth MazoKarras, Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 108.18. For a discussion of Cersei’s machinations at this point of the narrative in the context of Machiavelli’s Prince, see Elizabeth Beaton, “Female Machiavellians in Westeros,” in Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements, eds. Anne,Gjelsvik and RikkeSchubart (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 199–204.19. George R.R.Martin, A Clash of Kings (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 846.20. Martin, A Clash of Kings, 849.21. George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 486.22. Marta Eidsvåg, “‘Maiden, Mother, and Crone’: Motherhood in the World of Ice and Fire,” in Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements, eds. Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 153–155.23. For a discussion of the Luttrell Psalter illumination of a wife beating her husband with a distaff, see Michael Camille, Mirror in Parchment: The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England (London: Reaktion Books, 1998), 301–303; Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun, Enter the Carnival: Carnivalesque Semiotics in Early Tudor Moral Interludes (Białystok: University of Białystok Press, 2016), 27–31.24. See Betsy L.Chunko, “The Iconography of ‘Husband-Beating’ on Late Medieval English Misericords,” The Medieval Journal 3, no. 2 (2013): 39–68.25. The scenario, in which Noah’s wife initially refuses to enter the Ark, is pres-ent in York and Chester plays, but the character is particularly rebellious in the Towneley play, where she also wishes for her husband’s death. See 3 WESTEROSI QUEENS: MEDIEVALIST PORTRAYAL OFFEMALE POWER… 72“Play 3: Noah,” in The Towneley Plays, eds. Martin Stevens and A.C.Cawley, Early English Text Society SS13 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), ll. 487–606. For a more detailed discussion on the representation of domestic violence in the English Plays of the Flood, see Jane Tolmie, “Mrs Noah and Didactic Abuses,” Early Theatre 5, no. 1 (2002): 11–35.26. George R.R.Martin, A Dance with Dragons (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 1040.27. Finn, “High and Mighty,” 27.28. Karras, Common Women, 15–17.29. Lisa Benz St. John, Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 20–21.30. J.L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445–1503 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 7.31. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies; or, The Book of the Three Virtues, trans. S.Lawson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985), 51.32. For an exhaustive discussion of Christine de Pizan’s tactics of discrediting misogyny, providing a defence of women, and establishing her own author-ity as a writer in The Book of the City of Ladies, see Rosalind Brown-Grant, Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women: Reading Beyond Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 128–174.33. Martin, A Clash of Kings, 341.34. George R.R.Martin, A Storm of Swords (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 807.35. Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (New York: Groove Press, 1991), 34.36. Retha M.Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 191–233.37. George R.R.Martin, A Feast for Crows (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 605.38. David Starkey, “The Age of the Household: Politics, Society and the Arts c. 1350–c. 1550,” in The Later Middle Ages, ed. Stephen Medcalf (London: Methuen, 1981), 225–230.39. Martin, A Storm of Swords, 826.40. Martin, A Feast for Crows, 824.41. Martin, A Game of Thrones, 38.42. For a detailed discussion of these stages in relation to fairy-tale tests and Joseph Campbell’s pattern of the hero’s journey, see RikkeShubart, “Woman with Dragons: Daenerys, Pride, and Postfeminist Possibilities,” in Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements, eds. Anne Gjelsvik and RikkeSchubart (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 108–122.43. Martin, A Feast for Crows, 742. S. BOROWSKA-SZERSZUN7344. Bucholz and Levin, “Introduction,” xxx.45. See, for instance, Peter McClures and Robin Headlam Wells, “Elizabeth I as a Second Virgin Mary,” Renaissance Studies 4, no. 1 (1990): 38–70.46. Marjorie Swann, “Sex and the Single Queen: The Erotic Lives of Elizabeth Tudorin Seventeenth-Century England,” in Queens & Power in Medieval and Early Modern England, eds. Carole Levin and Robert Bucholz (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 229.47. It is worth noting, however, that their acceptance of her elevated status is motivated by their recognition of her personal qualities and leadership skills rather than by adherence to abstract ideals of chivalry and amour courtois, which, as the fates of Ned and Sansa Stark demonstrate, are con-tinuously and powerfully discredited throughout the narrative.48. Martin, A Game of Thrones, 806.49. Błaszkiewicz, “Theories of Kingship,” 116.50. Karin Gresham, “Cursed Womb, Bulging Thighs and Bald Scalp: George R.R.Martin’s Grotesque Queen,” in Mastering the Game of Thrones: Essays on George R.R.Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, eds. Jes Battis and Susan Johnston (Jefferson: McFarland, 2015), 160.51. Martin, A Storm of Swords, 994.52. Martin, A Game of Thrones, 800.53. M.V. Dougherty, Moral Dilemmas in Medieval Thought: From Gratias to Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 4.54. For a discussion of Daenerys’s engagement in Machiavellian politics, see Elizabeth Beaton, “Female Machiavellians,” 204–208.55. Martin, A Storm of Swords, 112.56. Yvonne Tasker and Lindsay Steenberg, “Women Warriors from Chivalry to Vengeance,” in Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements, eds. Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 188.57. Jane Tolmie, “Medievalism and the Fantasy Heroine,” Journal of Gender Studies 15, no. 2 (2006): 1.BiBLiographyBeaton, Elizabeth. “Female Machiavellians in Westeros.” In Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements, edited by Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart, 193–218. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.Benz St. John, Lisa. Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth- Century England. NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.Blamires, Alcuin, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.3 WESTEROSI QUEENS: MEDIEVALIST PORTRAYAL OFFEMALE POWER… 74———. ed. Woman Defamed and Women Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.Borowska-Szerszun, Sylwia. Enter the Carnival: Carnivalesque Semiotics in Early Tudor Moral Interludes. Białystok: University of Białystok Press, 2016.Bloch, Howard R. “Medieval Misogyny.” In Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy, edited by R.Howard Bloch and Frances Ferguson, 1–24. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.Błaszkiewicz, Bartłomiej. “On the Theories of Kingship in George R.R.Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.” In Basic Categories of Fantastic Literature Revisited, edited by Andrzej Wicher, Piotr Spyra, and Joanna Matyjaszczyk, 115–126. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.Brown-Grant, Rosalind. Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women: Reading Beyond Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.Bucholz, Robert, and Carole Levin. “Introduction.” In Queens & Power in Medieval and Early Modern England, edited by Carole Levin and Robert Bucholz, xiii–xxxiii. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.Camille, Michael. Mirror in Parchment: The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England. London: Reaktion Books, 1998.Chunko, Betsy L. “The Iconography of ‘Husband-Beating’ on Late Medieval English Misericords.” The Medieval Journal 3, no. 2 (2013): 39–68.Dougherty, M.V. Moral Dilemmas in Medieval Thought: from Gratias to Aquinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Earenfight, Theresa. “Without the Persona of the Prince: Kings, Queens and the Idea of Monarchy in Late Medieval Europe.” Gender and History 19, no. 1 (April 2007): 1–21.Eidsvåg, Marta. “‘Maiden,,Mother, and Crone’: Motherhood in the World of Ice and Fire.” In Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements, edited by Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart, 151–170. NewYork: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.Finn, Kavita Mudan. “High and Mighty Queens of Westeros.” In Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood, edited by Brian A.Pavlac, 19–31. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell.Gresham, Karin. “Cursed Womb, Bulging Thighs and Bald Scalp: George R.R.Martin’s Grotesque Queen.” In Mastering the Game of Thrones: Essays on George R.R.Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, edited by Jes Battis and Susan Johnston, 151–169. Jefferson: McFarland, 2015.Hibberd, John. “George R.R.Martin explains why there’s violence against women on ‘Game of Thrones’.” Entertainment Weekly. 3 June 2015. http://ew.com/article/2015/06/03/george-rr-martin-thrones-violence-women.Karras, Ruth Mazo. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1998.Larrington, Carolyne. Winter Is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones. London: NewYork: I.B.Tauris, 2016. S. BOROWSKA-SZERSZUNhttp://ew.com/article/2015/06/03/george-rr-martin-thrones-violence-womenhttp://ew.com/article/2015/06/03/george-rr-martin-thrones-violence-women75Laynesmith, J.L. The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445–1503. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.Martin, George R.R. A Clash of Kings. NewYork: Bantam Books, 2011.———. A Dance with Dragons. NewYork: Bantam Books, 2011.———. A Feast for Crows. NewYork: Bantam Books, 2011.———. A Game of Thrones. NewYork: Bantam Books, 2011.———. A Storm of Swords. NewYork: Bantam Books, 2011.McClure, Peter, and Robin Headlam Wells. “Elizabeth I as a Second Virgin Mary.” Renaissance Studies 4, no. 1 (March 1990): 38–70.Pisan, Christine de. The Treasure of the City of Ladies; or, The Book of the Three Virtues. Translated by Sarah Lawson. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985.Pugh, Tison, and Angela Jane Weisl. Medievalism: Making the Past in the Present. NewYork: Routledge, 2013.Rohr, Zita Eva. Yolande of Aragon (1381–1442) Family and Power: The Reverse of the Tapestry. NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.Shubart, Rikke. “Woman with Dragons: Daenerys, Pride, and Postfeminist Possibilities.” In Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements, edited by Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart, 105–130. NewYork: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.Schubart, Rikke and Anne Gjelsvik. “Introduction.” In Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements, edited by Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart, 1–16. NewYork: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.Starkey, David. “The Age of the Household: Politics, Society and the Arts c.1350–c.1550.” In The Later Middle Ages, edited by Stephen Medcalf, 225–290.London: Methuen, 1981.Stevens, Martin, and A.C. Cawley, eds. The Towneley Plays. Early English Text Society SS13. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.Swann, Marjorie. “Sex and the Single Queen: The Erotic Lives of Elizabeth Tudor in Seventeenth-Century England.” In Queens & Power in Medieval and Early Modern England, edited by Carole Levin and Robert Bucholz, 224–241. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.Tasker, Yvonne, and Lindsay Steenberg. “Women Warriors from Chivalry to Vengeance.” In Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements, edited by Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart, 171–192. NewYork: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.Tolmie, Jane. “Medievalism and the Fantasy Heroine.” Journal of Gender Studies 15, no. 2 (2006): 145–158.———. “Mrs Noah and Didactic Abuses.” Early Theatre 5, no. 1 (2002): 11–35.Warnicke, Retha M. The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Weir, Alison. The Six Wives of Henry VIII. NewYork: Groove Press, 1991.3 WESTEROSI QUEENS: MEDIEVALIST PORTRAYAL OFFEMALE POWER… 77© The Author(s) 2020Z. E. Rohr, L. Benz (eds.), Queenship and the Women of Westeros, Queenship and Power, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6_4CHAPTER 4“All IEver Wanted WastoFight foraLord IBelieved in. But theGood Lords Are Dead andtheRest Are Monsters”: Brienne ofTarth, Jaime Lannister, andtheChivalric “Other”IainA.MacInnesThe character of Brienne of Tarth is one of the most interesting in George R.R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire and its subsequent HBO televi-sion adaptation, A Game of Thrones. Brienne is a woman who occupies a classically male medieval and fantasy position as a warrior knight: armed, mounted, and capable of defeating the elite of the Westerosi chivalric community. As such, she stands apart from many of the other women depicted in the series.1 Brienne has been a focus for a good deal of aca-demic consideration, but definition of her position and status in the series is difficult.2 Analyses of the character have focused largely on her physical appearance and on what she represents within a gender or feminist con-text. She is, for example, “masculine-identified,” a “genderqueer knight,” an “Amazon … virgin warrior,” a “lesbian-like” character, “a lady knight defined by virginity and chastity,” and “a freak,” as well as “tall, muscular, flat-chested, unattractive, [and] basically mannish.”3 I would argue, I. A. MacInnes (*) UHI Centre for History, University of theHighlands and Islands, Dornoch, UKhttp://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6_4&domain=pdf78however, that Brienne is above all things a knight. She denies this status quite often, brushing off Jaime Lannister’s sarcastic barbs when he sug-gests addressing her as “Ser Brienne.”4 But, it is clearly what she aspires to be. Perhaps, most importantly, it is what she demonstrates herself to be through her own agency, her actions, her beliefs, and her ideals. Indeed, it is arguable that Brienne influences the behaviour and ideals of another of Westeros’s knightly fraternity—Jaime Lannister. Although a knight since he was a teenager, Lannister appears the epitome of all things wrong with Westerosi chivalry. He is outwardly a classic fantasy/medieval hero—handsome, well-armoured, skilled with a sword, a seasoned tourneyer—but Jaime is also revealed as an incestuous would-be child-murderer and ‘Kingslayer.’5 Brienne and Jaime are thrown together after his capture at the battle of the Whispering Wood. After a year’s captivity, Catelyn Stark illicitly releases Jaime to try and save her two daughters, themselves cap-tives of the Lannisters. The task of escorting the valuable prisoner through a warzone is given to Brienne of Tarth.6 The events that follow over the course of this long journey are violent and often harrowing, but they are also arguably transformative for both characters and form the main focus of this analysis.While Martin’s work and its television adaptation are set in the fantasy land of Westeros, there is little doubt of their correlation with the histori-cal medieval world. The imagery of the books, with their depiction of knights, heraldry, castles and jousts, is evidently rooted in the medieval past.7 As a result, chivalry is an important part of Westerosi knightly and popular culture. It was equally important in medieval sources and dis-course around warfare in the Middle Ages.8 This reinforces the link between Martin’s fantasy and the medieval reality, and emphasises the importance of chivalry as both a medieval and a modern concern. At first sight it would appear that, rather than privileging the chivalric ideal, Martin deconstructs and ultimately undermines the concept of the medi-eval chivalric hero in creating what Kavita Mudan Finn describes as a “dis-torted, sensationalized impression of the [medieval] period.”9 Examples such as SerJaime Lannister and SerLoras Tyrell are considered to be chival-ric paragons by those,who do not know them intimately, but both men are revealed to act in numerous ways that are opposed to the chivalric ideal. It is possible that Martin deliberately subverts these characters and their behaviour as a reflection of modern cynical reflections on the past, where even the word ‘medieval’ is used as a pejorative for all things violent and inhumane. But chivalry is not a concept that is easy to define, and the same I. A. MACINNES79is as true of chivalry in the Middle Ages as it is for chivalry today. Chivalry was not codified until the later Middle Ages, and practitioners of chivalry did not always agree on what it meant. It was adapted over a prolonged period of time to suit the social and cultural mores of the period in which it was relevant.10 Chivalry today, and our understanding of it, is a world away from what it epitomised in the medieval period. A Song of Ice and Fire exists, however, in a medieval-like setting and Martin has stated that he drew on medieval events and tropes in creating this world. Audiences therefore make an obvious association, consciously or otherwise, between this medieval-like fantasy and a medieval reality. As such it is appropriate that analysis of this world should be considered through a medieval lens.11Despite the increasing volume of scholarship on these works, this medi-eval perspective has not often been attempted. Stacey Goguen, for exam-ple, writes of chivalry in Westeros: “there are no true knights because a knight adhering to chivalry is inherently being unjust.”12 This is a not incomprehensible view to take, considering the events described in Martin’s texts. It is, however, a view formed by examining the world of Westeros through the lens of modern societal norms and by basing judge-ments on twenty-first century sensibilities, as well as a present-day concep-tion of what medieval chivalry actually was. Charles Hackney attempts to consider Westerosi chivalry by comparing it to medieval examples. He notes that “chivalry is presented in the novels as a clash between high ide-als and grim reality,” recognising the inherent contradictions in medieval chivalry as well as in its Westerosi equivalent.13 In defining the medieval chivalric ideal, Hackney identifies a number of “core chivalric values” with which to assess the behaviour of Westerosi knights. These include: prow-ess, courage, justice, temperance, wisdom, benevolence, and courtesy, as well as devotion to the Church.14 Such characteristics are certainly not out of place in the study of medieval chivalry and have formed the behavioural ideals in studies by various historians.15 Still, such approaches to the code of chivalry are arguably too complex and bound up in the literature of chivalric romance. There is little doubt that medieval romance literature was enjoyed by the knightly class and that the behaviour of those involved in such tales acted as a mirror for that of the audience/reader.16 As a result, however, these tales deliberately presented polar opposites of behaviour. The best examples were an aspiration; the worst examples were to be avoided. The reality of the contemporary knightly warrior undoubtedly lay somewhere in between.4 “ALL IEVER WANTED WASTOFIGHT FORALORD IBELIEVED… 80It is perhaps more relevant therefore to focus on what may be termed “practical chivalry” and the extent to which it manifested itself in the behaviour of contemporary knights.17 To do this, it is important to gain the perspective of the warrior himself. A notable example is provided by Sir Thomas Gray of Heaton. Author of the Scalacronica, Gray was a knightly warrior of the fourteenth-century Anglo-Scottish frontier. He fought in various skirmishes and sieges, and wrote part of his history while in Scottish captivity in Edinburgh Castle.18 Gray’s views on chivalry, and on warfare more generally, are those of a practical warrior. He had little time for the more romanticised elements of chivalry and focused instead on the fundamentals that made for a successful military career. Gray emphasised the behavioural traits of honour, bravery and honesty as key knightly virtues.19 When he did refer to the ideals of knighthood, he argued that the chivalric order should be “a support for the old, for maid-ens and for Holy Church.”20 Interestingly, these protected groups align closely to the Westerosi knightly ideal described by Martin. In “The Hedge Knight,” Martin describes the ceremonial dubbing of Ser Raymun Fossoway by Ser Lyonel Baratheon. The words accompanying the ritual are as follows:In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave …In the name of the Father I charge you to be just …In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent …In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women.21There is an obvious resonance then, between the ideals of chivalry in the fictional world of A Song of Ice and Fire and the medieval equivalent defined by Gray. This ideal provides a simpler view to Hackney, a defini-tion that is more representative of the reality of medieval knighthood, and one that avoids the romanticised expressions of chivalry found in contem-porary literature. Using this ideological framework, it is possible to con-sider the alignment of Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister with the ideals and realities of chivalry as it was practised in the medieval period.The possession of honour was a key element in the medieval knight’s vision of himself, and honour could be won as well as lost. It was not suf-ficient, however, simply to possess honour. It also had to be recognised by contemporaries. It had to be remembered, committed to posterity through song or chronicle, so that the knight’s honour lived on after their death. In order to gain honour, as Matthew Strickland writes, knights had to I. A. MACINNES81display a number of qualities: loyalty to one’s lord and kin, sagacity of coun-sel in war and diplomacy, largesse, particularly to one’s vassals or compan-ions in arms, franchise or a greatness of spirit, piety and, increasingly … courtoisie, the ability to conduct oneself correctly before ladies and in courtly circles. Yet above all, a knight’s reputation, honour and pride rested on his prouesse– prowess in combat and on the performance of feats of arms.22Honourable behaviour was a complicated business and the judgement of others was key to its recognition. There was, for example, little honour in committing to an act solely for the purpose of its acquisition, and which ultimately produced a negative result. Thomas Gray relates such an exam-ple when he describes the story of Sir William Marmion. Sent by his lady to make a name for himself in the most dangerous part of the kingdom, Marmion rode to the Scottish border and to Gray’s father’s castle at Norham (Northumberland), then under siege by Scottish troops. Determined to gain honour for himself, Marmion ignored the advice of Gray senior who told him that he should fight with the garrison on foot, and instead rode into the throng of Scottish troops alone and on horse-back. Unsurprisingly Marmion’s horse was killed underneath him and the knight captured, albeit briefly.23 While Marmion gained no honour from his conduct, honour was won by Thomas Gray senior who marched out from his castle with his troops to defeat the Scots and rescue the captured knight.24 Of course, the author Thomas Gray was writing about the deeds of his father and so likely presented him in a favourable light. But the example of Marmion as a preposterous hero is paralleled in some of the events depicted in A Song of Ice and Fire. Ser Loras Tyrell rushes into the fray at the siege of Dragonstone, and is seriously wounded as a result of impetuous and unnecessary conduct in the pursuit of acclaim and hon-our.25 Ned Stark arguably prioritises his personal honour above the needs of the king and the kingdom, and it ultimately,costs him his life.26 Brienne of Tarth’s view of honour is opposite to these examples. It is visible in her determination to deliver Jaime Lannister to King’s Landing, in spite of all they go through along the way. It is similarly visible in her resolve to carry on with her search for the Stark daughters, even though she is ignorant of their survival. Brienne possesses honour, and is aware of its importance, but she more often seeks to protect that of others and gains worth by honourably keeping the oaths she swears. Hers is not a self-serving form of honour, and it is through her own agency that she accumulates that which she possesses.4 “ALL IEVER WANTED WASTOFIGHT FORALORD IBELIEVED… 82Brienne’s sense of honour is also conveyed in the television series when she executes Stannis Baratheon for his involvement in the murder of her lord, Renly Baratheon.27 There is much in this example that may appear self-serving. Seeking revenge for her murdered lord may appear justified, but in medieval Europe such behaviour was often seen as a negative, espe-cially by religious writers.28 Still, it has also been argued that “anger, wrath, and a thirst for vengeance … actually constituted sturdy pillars upholding structural elements of [medieval] chivalric ideology.”29 The practice of the feud, for example, was a recognised and legitimate framework in which violence was employed as just recompense for violence suffered.30 Moreover, Brienne’s killing of Stannis is the ultimate demonstration of loyalty to her lord, as well as the final act of resolution of a feud that she pursued against those responsible for his death. As such, her actions align with medieval chivalric convention. Continuing with the theme of revenge, Brienne also exacts ultimate vengeance on Vargo Hoat, her captor and tormenter at Harrenhal. When he tries to rape her she bites his ear in self- defence. Although unintended, revenge is ultimately Brienne’s as the bite becomes infected and the erstwhile leader of the Brave Companions is left raving and alone when Gregor Clegane recaptures the castle. Hoat’s lin-gering and painful death at the hands of the Mountain appears to the reader as suitable recompense for his treatment of Brienne.31 Although Brienne does not directly kill him herself, she ultimately sows the seeds of his demise.Moreover, Brienne’s determination to avenge her lord, and the action of defending herself when attacked, clearly demonstrates the bravery that she possesses in impressive quantities. This is an attribute that Brienne repeatedly demonstrates. She disables the ship of Ser Robyn Riger and ensures the escape of both herself and her prisoner when they are in dan-ger of being captured.32 She fights a huge bear at Harrenhal armed with nothing but a wooden sword with which to defend herself.33 Bravery is also demonstrated in her reaction to and treatment of her prisoner. Throughout the journey, Jaime Lannister goads Brienne in an attempt to provoke her into fighting with him. He is confident that, even though he is manacled, he can defeat his captor. Brienne thinks otherwise, but does not rise to the challenge, knowing that any such skirmish will provide Lannister the opportunity to escape. When they do inevitably come to blows, ahead of their capture by the Bloody Mummers, Brienne demon-strates her bravery and prouesse in fighting and defeating the greatest swordsman in Westeros.34 While Jaime may be manacled and his fighting I. A. MACINNES83ability blunted by captivity, he remains a dangerous opponent. Brienne’s bravery in facing him is matched by her demonstrative skills with the sword and ability in real combat, all qualities that reinforce her chivalric reputation.35Brienne’s standing as a chivalric warrior is demonstrated further by other behaviour during her journey. Honour, probity, and franchise are exhibited when she cuts down the hanged tavern women, killed for sleep-ing with enemy soldiers, to provide them with a proper burial.36 Brienne displays sagacity when she accurately deduces that the innkeeper at the Inn of the Kneeling Man is attempting to lure them into a trap through his suggested directions. Even Jaime grudgingly concedes that “it was the same choice he would have made” and that “she may be ugly but she’s not entirely stupid.”37 Honesty is also to the fore in Brienne’s dealings with Jaime. Despite the deleterious attitude he displays towards her at various points during their journey, Brienne protects her prisoner, as she is honour- bound to do. More than this, she displays probity towards Jaime in the aftermath of his mutilation by the Bloody Mummers. Brienne consoles him and convinces Jaime of his need to go on: “Live,” she said, “live, and fight, and take revenge.”38 The return of the revenge refrain is an interest-ing one, but this example is arguably different to Brienne’s previously discussed vengeance. In this instance, Brienne directs revenge at those she considers unchivalric and in doing so she displays her own beliefs regard-ing honourable behaviour. For example, both Brienne and Jaime are pris-oners of the Bloody Mummers. According to chivalric convention they should be treated with at least some modicum of respect, but their mis-treatment reveals the dishonour of the Brave Companions. The Bloody Mummers are themselves warrior “others.” They are not knights and therefore not bound by the confines of chivalric behaviour. Vengeance against them is therefore legitimate as a result of their status, as well as their behaviour. Roose Bolton is similarly positioned outwith chivalric convention and thus a target for Brienne’s revenge. While visibly angered by Vargo Hoat’s mistreatment of his prisoners, Bolton also recognises the usefulness of such forces in the war being fought and ultimately condones their behaviour.39 Although a lord and knight, he plans to betray Robb Stark out of self-interest and plans to use Jaime as a means to negotiate his advancement.40 Bolton also mistreats Brienne, a woman in his care, aban-doning her at Harrenhal to be Vargo Hoat’s plaything. Brienne envisaging revenge against Bolton is therefore legitimised as a result of his own lack of honour and probity. The definition of what is and what is not honourable 4 “ALL IEVER WANTED WASTOFIGHT FORALORD IBELIEVED… 84behaviour in these examples is presented from Brienne’s perspective. As a result, it is her agency that influences the reader when judging such epi-sodes. Although the misbehaviour of these characters may seem self- evident, it remains that Brienne’s reaction to these dishonourable and unchivalric actions has arguably the greatest influence on the audience. And in a world where violent misconduct is often seen as “the norm,” such a perspective is important.As indicated already, Sir Thomas Gray’s chivalric outlook was a very practical one. He was an old soldier himself. He experienced war in various forms, tasted victory and defeat and fought in Scotland, England, and France. His view of war, and chivalry’s place within it, was based on that experience. Even he, however, saw fit to include the statement that knights should protect “the old … maidens and … Holy Church.”41 Although he had likely witnessed behaviour opposite to this model of behaviour, per-haps even committing such acts himself, he still emphasised the ideal of knighthood in relation to non-combatants.42 Those deemed unable to defend themselves should not be targeted with violence, and indeed should be protected by those who prosecuted war. Of course this rarely happened in reality. And, as the war in Westeros develops, it is clear that the old certainties—the accepted norms of behaviour represented in peacetime in old stories and romances—are largely abandoned. The war being fought deliberately targets those least able to defend themselves, and it is they who invariably suffer as a result. The reasons