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Game of Thrones' accurate depiction of feminism during the Medieval Period.

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The roles of women during the Middle Ages or Medieval Period were wives, mothers and nuns.

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The representation of female characters during the Medieval Period in Game of Thrones.

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There is not a female figure on Game of Thrones who does not have a medieval counterpart. © Home Box Office, Inc.

With Games of Thrones back on our screens, the question of the gender roles it depicts and promotes continues to be hotly debated.

Some commentators excuse what they see as the blatant misogyny of the series by noting that author George RR Martin could hardly have written female characters otherwise while being true to the historical context of the "Middle Ages" (at least as it is popularly envisioned).

Others are happy to compile lists of powerful female figures on the series and applaud the way they "destabilise" traditional gender roles.

Yet there is not a female figure on Game of Thrones who does not have a medieval counterpart, whether an actual historical person or a character from a literary text that enthralled audiences for centuries. So let's look at these:

Strong female leaders?

Game of Thrones has Daenerys Targaryen, the only surviving child of King Aerys II Targaryen; the Middle Ages also had female rulers, some hugely successful ( Elizabeth I of England), others less so ( Mary Queen of Scots, who was executed at the behest of Elizabeth, her first cousin once removed).

At one point, the power structures of Western European countries were perceived as so female-centric that it led Calvinist Scotsman John Knox to pen the virulent anti-feminist pamphlet The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women (1558).

Power-hungry incestuous sisters?

Game of Thrones gives us Cersei Lannister, the widow of King Robert Baratheon and Queen Regent of the Seven Kingdoms. The Arthurian legends gives us Morgan Le Fay, who sleeps with her brother King Arthur and bears from the union Mordred who will eventually be Arthur's doom.

Women who dress as knights and fight men in battle?

Arya Stark and Brienne of Tarth are two of the most popular female characters on Game of Thrones, but they have a long way to go before they can rival the enduring fame and admiration excited by the historical Joan of Arc (1412-1431) who led French armies against the English towards the end of the Hundred Years' War and was executed by the English in 1431.

Records show that the Inquisitors who interrogated Joan were as much concerned with her transvestitism as with her claims to hear angelic voices and devoted a great deal of effort into convincing Joan to give up her masculine attire, a step with which she never complied.

Yet Game of Thrones never even approaches the slippery and surprising world of gender manipulation and redefinition that are a feature of medieval spirituality.

Indeed, Game of Thrones, for all its quasi-medievalism, is completely lacking in a major segment of the medieval world:

The monastic

Game of Thrones notes the existence of religion, and of religious leaders - some even female (Melisandre, a priestess of the Lord of Light) - but it does not represent the massive proportion of the medieval population that devoted their lives to religious service.

Medieval Western Christianity proved adept at multiplying gender positions, rendering them fluid, and refiguring gendered embodiment in ways that made an identification with one sex and its "properly" aligned gender difficult, if not redundant.

Although monasticism was a strictly sex-segregated undertaking, it was, paradoxically enough, also productive of some extraordinarily complex and fluid gender formulations. Nuns were exhorted by the men tasked with their pastoral care to be "virile" in their faith, and to surpass even men in the strength of their devotion.

Meanwhile, male monastics cultivated "female" virtues such as humility, aware that in the topsy-turvy economy of New Testament Christianity, based as it was on the willing sacrifice of Christ, being humble, gentle, and patient of suffering was also particularly manly.

We know from manuscript evidence ( British Library, Cotton Julius E.vii) that nuns enjoyed stories of women who showed their devotion by undertaking male disguise and living undetected as monks for their whole lives.

The bearded female saint Wilgefortis proved popular in late medieval iconography: this young woman was martyred for her refusal to marry and her joyful acceptance from God of a full beard in order to avoid this fate.

While monastics deployed gender identities in innovative ways in regard to themselves, even the gender of the Christian Trinitarian God came under consideration with both male and female mystics contemplating the motherliness of Christ.

Male mystics such as Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) saw themselves suckling at the breast of the Virgin, and feminist critics such as Karma Lochrie have commented on the vaginal imagery of the wound in Christ's side to which male clerics were so devoted and to which they would envision themselves pressing their mouths.

The 14th-century female mystic Agnes Blannbekin claimed to have received the foreskin of Christ in her mouth in her celebration of the Eucharist and described its taste as sweet as honey.

The world of medieval spiritual gender was powerfully fluid and productive, with performativity the key. Game of Thrones might offer some interesting, and even compelling, female role models in its medievalist worldview, but perhaps contemporary viewers would be more shocked by the gender permutations at play in the "real" Middle Ages.

This article is part of The Conversation's Religion + Mythology series.

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Game of Thrones and the fluid world of medieval gender

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With Games of Thrones back on our screens, the question of the gender roles it depicts and promotes continues to be hotly debated. Some commentators excuse what they see as the blatant misogyny of the series by noting that author George RR Martin could hardly have written female characters otherwise while being true to the historical context of the "Middle Ages" (at least as it is popularly envisioned).

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Female characters in Game of Thrones are represented in a realistic sense, not just good and bad.

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So how does he get inside the head of, say, his teenage characters? 'Yes, you're right I've never been an eight year old girl,' he says, 'but I've also never been an exiled princess, or a dwarf or bastard. What I have been is human. I just write human characters.'

The sexy high priestess Melisandre, played by actress Carice van Houten PHOTO: HBO

He gets plenty of feedback from his fans. 'Some women hate the female characters,' he says. 'But importantly they hate them as people, because of things that they've done, not because the character is underdeveloped.' The pitfalls of lots of other fantasy texts, he says is when writers stray into writing in sterotypes. But because Martin has a sprawling world with thousands of characters (and five books to do it in), he has the luxury of developing each one fully. 'Male or female, I believe in painting in shades of grey,' he says. '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.'

Martin should be used to female adoration by now. Although he has only hit mainstream consciousness in the last few years (his books have sold more than 20m worldwide), he has been a minor celebrity on the science fiction circuit for years. His wife's first words to him, when she met him at a science fiction conference in 1975 were that his first novel, A Song for Lya, 'made her cry'. Now he is mobbed wherever he goes - his trademark fisherman's cap an instant giveaway that he is the man behind the globally successful franchise.

Arya Stark, a nine-year-old tomboy played by Maisie Williams PHOTO: HBO

His books feature sex pretty heavily (to say the least) but it is something that has been ramped up even further for the television show, which is back on Sky Atlantic tonight. Often crucial conversations between characters happen while one of them is having sex (not always mentioned in the book) - something that has the American academic Myles McNutt to term them 'sexposition'.

'Is it simply because we couldn't be trusted to pay attention otherwise?' McNutt asked on his blog. 'It's as though they think having a prostitute appear and only talking, without actually having sex, would be some sort of cop-out. In my view, at least, it's the other way around: it just feels lazy.'

Daenerys Targaryen, the would-be queen, played by actress, Emilia Clarke PHOTO: HBO

Gina Bellafonte in The New York Times went further. Last year she wrote: 'all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise.' The truth was, she sniffed, 'Game of Thrones is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population's other half.' Female GOT fans lept to Martin's defence, including Emily Nussbaum from the New Yorker who wrote that the strength of the series was 'its insight into what it means to be excluded from power: to be a woman, or a bastard, or a 'half man'.'

But Bellafonte's comments still rankle with Martin a year later because he is, at heart, a feminist, despite being cautious about admitting it.

'There was a period in my life when I would have called myself a feminist, back in the seventies, when the feminist movement was really getting going and growing out of the counter culture of the sixties,' he says. 'But the feminist movement has changed. Sometime in the 80s and 90s I read some pieces by women saying that no man can ever be a feminist and you shouldn't call yourself that because it's hypocritical, so I backed off. I thought if the current crop of feminists believes that no man can be a feminist, then I guess I'm not one.'

Cersei Lannister, mother of King Joffrey Baratheon, played by Lena Headey PHOTO: HBO

I tell him men are allowed to be feminists again - that he can have Ryan Gosling, the 21st century's thinking woman's crumpet, as his mentor. He chuckles behind his candyfloss beard. 'To me being a feminist is about treating men and women the same,' he said. '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 medieval culture of Westeros, or 21st century western culture.'

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Game of Thrones's George RR Martin: 'I'm a feminist at heart'

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So how does he get inside the head of, say, his teenage characters? 'Yes, you're right I've never been an eight year old girl,' he says, 'but I've also never been an exiled princess, or a dwarf or bastard. What I have been is human. I just write human characters.'

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Emphasizing the struggles noble women went through and how they made it out alive.

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Valar Morghulis

Game of Thrones is famous for its boobs, battles, and baby dragons. But fans of the original Ice and Fire series would argue that the F-word actually lies at the heart of George R.R. Martin's fantastical tale. No, the other F-word: feminism.

George R.R. Martin, the beloved scribe behind the A Song of Ice and Fire series, seems fairly convinced that he is a feminist. For Martin, "Being a feminist is about treating men and women the same... I regard men and women as all human." While Martin's textbook take on gender equality reads like it's copy and pasted from an Intro to Gender Studies syllabus, it's still refreshing to hear from a fantasy writer, whose work has consistently introduced three-dimensional female characters within the framework of a historically misogynistic genre. Initially, HBO's Game of Thrones seemed to tune into the feminist-friendly vibe of its source material, relaying the vivid lives and quiet injustices endured by both the ruling class and the oppressed other. Game of Thrones' mission to reveal the inner fortitude of those whom society renders weak or disposable, the unloved bastards and abused wives of Westeros, is about as explicit as its sex scenes. Yet a myriad of questionably misogynistic and inarguably disturbing scenes have, of late, led viewers to question the effectiveness of GoT 's "feminist" mission.

And while no character on the series is perfect, it does seem that the show's women are more oppressed, weak, and petty than their male counterparts-nor does it escape critics' notice that the strongest females on the show appear to be those who have suppressed their femininity and gender identities altogether. Of course, one could rebut that Game of Thrones is merely fantasy; however, with their complex relationships to power, self-autonomy, and liberation, these problematic medieval women seem to have something vital to tell us about our modern world.

The conversation about Game of Thrones and feminismhas catapulted to the top of Twitter feeds and Google alerts because of a particularly upsetting rape scene. In the Season 3 episode "Breaker of Chains," Jaime Lannister approaches his sister as she mourns beside the corpse of her recently murdered son. The situation is, naturally, a little more complicated than it initially appears: Jaime and Cersei have been lovers for decades, and the deceased Joeffrey was the product of their incestuous relations. Jaime, stumbling upon this tableau of maternal grief, proceeds to rape his sister, all the while cursing the gods for making him love a "hateful" woman. As an isolated televised incident, this scene is extremely disturbing in its own right. It features rape, emotional abuse, and incest, all enacted over a child's corpse: it's like the producers behind GoT were playing a game of sexual assault trigger bingo. A scene that's so cruelly arresting should, by the implied rules of television drama, advance the plot in some unique way, or serve to illuminate the complexities of its character. However, viewers immediately questioned the necessity of this incident.

The harrowing television interaction was a huge departure from the parallel scene in the novel. In George R.R Martin's version, the intercourse is a good deal more consensual (although, one could argue that the violent power dynamics that pervade GoT all but eliminate the possibility of its female characters granting true, enthusiastic consent). In A Storm of Swords, Cersei does attempt to stop her brother at first, warning him that they might be walked in on, or cursed by the gods. But eventually, she gets swept into the spirit of the reunion, telling Jaime, "Quickly, quickly, now, do it now." Conversely, Cersei never consents on the show, and cries and objects throughout the scene. So why did HBO go in such a different direction? In an online counter to the pervasive Internet backlash (this is GoT, after all,) Martin hypothesized that, "The whole dynamic is different in the show, where Jaime has been back for weeks at the least, maybe longer, and he and Cersei have been in each other's company on numerous occasions, often quarreling. The setting is the same, but neither character is in the same place as in the books, which may be why Dan & David played the [scene] out differently." While replacing a love scene with a rape scene might be more justifiable in terms of the plot context of the television series, this shift has larger, disturbing implications when read in tandem with the unending vilification of Cersei, both on the HBO show and in the original series. The message that comes across here is loud and clear: while ambitious men reap lovers, wealth, and countless kingdoms, ambitious women are scorned as unfeminine, cold, and cruel-and punished accordingly.

***

Cersei Lannister, the conniving, beautiful former queen of the Seven Kingdoms, is a highly visible figure in King's Landing; she can often be spotted plotting, scheming, and feuding with powerful men. But despite her façade of influence and autonomy, Cersei is actually one of the most tragic characters on Game of Thrones. Married off to a man, Robert Baratheon, who is in love with another, she finds herself scorned and alone. Robert belittles and abuses Cersei, both physically and emotionally. In Season 1 he slaps her full across the face and threatens to keep hitting her if she speaks out of turn again. While Cersei finds love and comfort in the arms of her twin brother, Jaime, he similarly casts her in a position of inferiority and powerlessness.

Cersei is not unaware of how her gender predestines her to watch from the sidelines as countless men assume the political power she so wantonly craves. In one particularly poignant Season 2 speech to Sansa Stark, Cersei bitterly explains, "When we were young, Jaime and I, we looked so much alike even our father couldn't tell us apart. I could never understand why they treated us differently. Jaime was taught to fight with sword and lance and mace, and I was taught to smile and sing and please. He was heir to Casterly Rock, and I was sold to some stranger like a horse to be ridden whenever he liked."

In this way, with all her talk of gendered frustration and societal repression, Cersei is the living, breathing poster child for The Feminine Mystique. Like any stereotypical, frustrated, 1950s homemaker, Cersei faces "the problem that has no name"-a unique, manic depression stemming from the fact that she, unlike her father, siblings, and sons, was not born a man. The idea of a woman propelled toward ugly behavior by her myriad gendered frustrations is not foreign-after all, we all watched Betty Draper raise the bar of homebound misbehavior throughout the first few seasons of Mad Men, seemingly motivated by nothing more than her own boredom and desire to piss off her inattentive, philandering husband. And yet, there's something strange about just how evil and petty Cersei becomes.

Cersei is portrayed not just as a villain, but also as a harpy-a woman whose particular brand of badness is intrinsically tied up in her roles as mother, daughter, lover, and wife. Cersei is cunning, focused, and power-hungry-not unlike her father and brothers. Why, then, are we led to believe that her conniving ways are so ineffectual and misdirected? Cersei's brother Tyrion is a dwarf, and as such is derided and dismissed just as Cersei is due to her gender. However, Tyrion is portrayed as even-tempered and intelligent, an underrated force of his own. Tyrion evades societal prescriptions and emerges triumphant, whereas Cersei is rendered powerless time and time again, and often portrayed as a victim of her own feminine passions and weak maternal instincts.

Cersei is apparently so malformed by her own lack of agency that she descends into pettiness and paranoia, to the point that she appears insurmountably distrustful of Margaery Tyrell, simply for being hotter and younger than she is. In A Feast for Crows, Cersei jealously hypothesizes that Margaery is her rival for Joffrey's heart and mind: "Every day in every way she tries to steal him from me." This sheer, feminized pettiness diminishes Cersei's innate power as a woman smart enough to question the patriarchal system under which she resides, and bold enough to challenge the men who seek to diminish her. Instead of portraying this power-hungry female character as a ruthless pioneer, Game of Thrones paints her as an irrational, heartless bitch. The coldest dimension of the Jaime Cersei rape scene is not the fact of their twinship or the corpse in the background; it's the implication that a woman who does not sacrifice her body willingly, who does not behave as a woman ought, is a hateful woman-and she will be forced, through a violent and unforgettable lesson, to remember that her body, mind, and life are not in fact her own.

***

The natural rebuttal to any sort of critique of Cersei's systematic denigration and vilification is that she is only one of the many female characters in this series. Cersei undoubtedly harkens back to a stage of feminism that can be classified as pre-sexual revolution: she is unhappy and enraged, but almost entirely de-clawed-she lacks the means and the tools to dismantle the patriarchy that oppresses her, and therefore must simply survive within a system that pre-supposes her inherent weakness and inferiority. However, fans might argue, other female GoT characters like Margaery Tyrell and Daenerys Targaryen are prime examples of medieval Sheryl Sandbergs: women who appear to have mastered their own destinies, in spite of losing the genetic gender jackpot.Margaery Tyrell is an expert courtier-even when she is married off to the sadistic and cruel Joffrey, she manages to earn the affection and respect of the little boy king. In this way, Margaery uses her feminine wiles to cement her own power as Westeros' queen-to-be. Yet, she is still very much a pawn in the system-her body is actively sold to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, Daenerys Targaryen resides on the next highest rung of relative female liberation. Like Margaery, she is young, cunning, and powerful. However, unlike Maergary, she appears to hold a "man's" power as a warrior, politician, and seeker of the iron throne-roles that are widely considered to be beyond the meager abilities of the fairer sex.

However, Daenerys's story is not the feminist fairy tale it initially appears to be. Daenerys was married off at the age of 13. In A Game of Thrones, the sale of the underage Daenerys is described in brutal detail, with her brother Viserys inspecting her pubescent body and asking, "Are you sure that Khal Drogo likes his women this young?" A fair question, since Khal is estimated to be in his thirties. Despite these horrifying circumstances, Game of Thrones outlines the unfolding love story between Daenerys and her warrior husband, who she eventually recognizes as her rightful husband and true equal. This is not love. This is rape. Pedophilic sex is nonconsensual, period.

Furthermore, Daenerys's story rests on a racial narrative that is questionable at best. Yes, Daenerys is a brave, just, ruler. She builds her political campaign on the tenet of freedom as she marches through the East liberating slaves and building her conquering army. But even as we laud the image of this strong, female warrior, we must take a step back to examine the implications of the kind white lady and her strange civilizing mission. Daenerys's feminine goodness, her urge to mother a nation of former slaves, is painted in contrast to the savage cities and cultures she encounters. She must whitewash these brown men and women, rid them of their savage, slavish ways, and repaint them in her own image. Surely, Daenerys is strong, powerful, and liberated; but her larger narrative is anything but progressive, and problematizes even as it empowers.

With Daenerys, Margaery, and Cersei out of the way, there are still two other female characters to consider for the title of most liberated lady. Brienne of Tarth and young Arya Stark are two women who fashion themselves as brave knights. This tomboy status affords them freedom and strength; the liberty to fashion their own futures, secure in the knowledge that they can defend themselves (well, most of the time-loyal fans will remember that both Brienne and Arya have at various points owed their lives to the valiant efforts of male saviors). However, this less traveled path of female warriorhood isn't all triumphant sword fights and liberation from traditional gender binaries.

It's important to note that both the books and the series describe these two female characters as ugly, or at the very least, plain. We learn in the first book that Arya's nickname is "Arya Horseface." Similarly, Wikipedia's amalgamated description of Brienne reads, "She has large, very blue eyes that appear trusting and guileless, but they are her only attractive feature. She is extremely broad-shouldered, but has virtually no bust. Her face is broad and coarse, with a nose that has been broken several times. Her mouth is too wide, with prominent and crooked teeth and lips so plump they seem swollen." Both Brienne and Arya are found wanting in the traditional, essential feminine arts: domesticity and beauty. The implication here is that they adopt the dress and mannerisms of men because they have failed as women. In this way, butch battle strength is offered as an appealing, but nonetheless secondary, option when "being a good lady" doesn't work out.

Throughout the Seven Kingdoms, a woman's power is always restrained, differentiated, and compromised-unless she chooses to trade it in and approximate a man's instead. Brienne and Arya are free in ways that their traditional, ladylike counterparts can only dream of-but this freedom is wrought from the negation of their femininity, a phenomenon that is illustrated in Brienne's fearless defense of King Renly, a physical protection that she, as an "ugly" woman, offers him in lieu of her romantic love. Brienne and Arya eschew their femininity and their gendered emotions in order to pick up their swords, thus perpetuating the myth that womanhood equals weakness. This need to deny their nuanced gender identities in order to approximate masculine strength is a far cry from the ability to celebrate femininity in all its different forms. Brienne and Arya are strong and independent, but they're hardly liberated.

While Game of Thrones presents its viewers with a spectrum of three-dimensional female characters (which is a godsend in and of itself), none of these characters offer us a truly triumphant feminist narrative. Meanwhile, the plotlines surrounding Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister intimate that bastardom and dwarfism, while difficult conditions, can often be surmounted. The implied assertion that gender cannot be entirely escaped is simply realism, both in Martin's medieval world and our own. However, the constant belittlement and abuse of these female characters, and the un-silenceable voice in the background of every episode of Game of Thrones, the one that whispers of woman's ultimate futility, her interminable imprisonment, the pettiness of her feminine agency if she is granted any at all? That might be overkill.

George R.R. Martin, the beloved scribe behind the A Song of Ice and Fire series, seems fairly convinced that he is a feminist. For Martin, "Being a feminist is about treating men and women the same... I regard men and women as all human." While Martin's textbook take on gender equality reads like it's copy and pasted from an Intro to Gender Studies syllabus, it's still refreshing to hear from a fantasy writer, whose work has consistently introduced three-dimensional female characters within the framework of a historically misogynistic genre. Initially, HBO's Game of Thrones seemed to tune into the feminist-friendly vibe of its source material, relaying the vivid lives and quiet injustices endured by both the ruling class and the oppressed other. Game of Thrones' mission to reveal the inner fortitude of those whom society renders weak or disposable, the unloved bastards and abused wives of Westeros, is about as explicit as its sex scenes. Yet a myriad of questionably misogynistic and inarguably disturbing scenes have, of late, led viewers to question the effectiveness of GoT 's "feminist" mission.

And while no character on the series is perfect, it does seem that the show's women are more oppressed, weak, and petty than their male counterparts-nor does it escape critics' notice that the strongest females on the show appear to be those who have suppressed their femininity and gender identities altogether. Of course, one could rebut that Game of Thrones is merely fantasy; however, with their complex relationships to power, self-autonomy, and liberation, these problematic medieval women seem to have something vital to tell us about our modern world.

The conversation about Game of Thrones and feminismhas catapulted to the top of Twitter feeds and Google alerts because of a particularly upsetting rape scene. In the Season 3 episode "Breaker of Chains," Jaime Lannister approaches his sister as she mourns beside the corpse of her recently murdered son. The situation is, naturally, a little more complicated than it initially appears: Jaime and Cersei have been lovers for decades, and the deceased Joeffrey was the product of their incestuous relations. Jaime, stumbling upon this tableau of maternal grief, proceeds to rape his sister, all the while cursing the gods for making him love a "hateful" woman. As an isolated televised incident, this scene is extremely disturbing in its own right. It features rape, emotional abuse, and incest, all enacted over a child's corpse: it's like the producers behind GoT were playing a game of sexual assault trigger bingo. A scene that's so cruelly arresting should, by the implied rules of television drama, advance the plot in some unique way, or serve to illuminate the complexities of its character. However, viewers immediately questioned the necessity of this incident.

The harrowing television interaction was a huge departure from the parallel scene in the novel. In George R.R Martin's version, the intercourse is a good deal more consensual (although, one could argue that the violent power dynamics that pervade GoT all but eliminate the possibility of its female characters granting true, enthusiastic consent). In A Storm of Swords, Cersei does attempt to stop her brother at first, warning him that they might be walked in on, or cursed by the gods. But eventually, she gets swept into the spirit of the reunion, telling Jaime, "Quickly, quickly, now, do it now." Conversely, Cersei never consents on the show, and cries and objects throughout the scene. So why did HBO go in such a different direction? In an online counter to the pervasive Internet backlash (this is GoT, after all,) Martin hypothesized that, "The whole dynamic is different in the show, where Jaime has been back for weeks at the least, maybe longer, and he and Cersei have been in each other's company on numerous occasions, often quarreling. The setting is the same, but neither character is in the same place as in the books, which may be why Dan & David played the [scene] out differently." While replacing a love scene with a rape scene might be more justifiable in terms of the plot context of the television series, this shift has larger, disturbing implications when read in tandem with the unending vilification of Cersei, both on the HBO show and in the original series. The message that comes across here is loud and clear: while ambitious men reap lovers, wealth, and countless kingdoms, ambitious women are scorned as unfeminine, cold, and cruel-and punished accordingly.

***

Cersei Lannister, the conniving, beautiful former queen of the Seven Kingdoms, is a highly visible figure in King's Landing; she can often be spotted plotting, scheming, and feuding with powerful men. But despite her façade of influence and autonomy, Cersei is actually one of the most tragic characters on Game of Thrones. Married off to a man, Robert Baratheon, who is in love with another, she finds herself scorned and alone. Robert belittles and abuses Cersei, both physically and emotionally. In Season 1 he slaps her full across the face and threatens to keep hitting her if she speaks out of turn again. While Cersei finds love and comfort in the arms of her twin brother, Jaime, he similarly casts her in a position of inferiority and powerlessness.

Cersei is not unaware of how her gender predestines her to watch from the sidelines as countless men assume the political power she so wantonly craves. In one particularly poignant Season 2 speech to Sansa Stark, Cersei bitterly explains, "When we were young, Jaime and I, we looked so much alike even our father couldn't tell us apart. I could never understand why they treated us differently. Jaime was taught to fight with sword and lance and mace, and I was taught to smile and sing and please. He was heir to Casterly Rock, and I was sold to some stranger like a horse to be ridden whenever he liked."

In this way, with all her talk of gendered frustration and societal repression, Cersei is the living, breathing poster child for The Feminine Mystique. Like any stereotypical, frustrated, 1950s homemaker, Cersei faces "the problem that has no name"-a unique, manic depression stemming from the fact that she, unlike her father, siblings, and sons, was not born a man. The idea of a woman propelled toward ugly behavior by her myriad gendered frustrations is not foreign-after all, we all watched Betty Draper raise the bar of homebound misbehavior throughout the first few seasons of Mad Men, seemingly motivated by nothing more than her own boredom and desire to piss off her inattentive, philandering husband. And yet, there's something strange about just how evil and petty Cersei becomes.

Cersei is portrayed not just as a villain, but also as a harpy-a woman whose particular brand of badness is intrinsically tied up in her roles as mother, daughter, lover, and wife. Cersei is cunning, focused, and power-hungry-not unlike her father and brothers. Why, then, are we led to believe that her conniving ways are so ineffectual and misdirected? Cersei's brother Tyrion is a dwarf, and as such is derided and dismissed just as Cersei is due to her gender. However, Tyrion is portrayed as even-tempered and intelligent, an underrated force of his own. Tyrion evades societal prescriptions and emerges triumphant, whereas Cersei is rendered powerless time and time again, and often portrayed as a victim of her own feminine passions and weak maternal instincts.

Cersei is apparently so malformed by her own lack of agency that she descends into pettiness and paranoia, to the point that she appears insurmountably distrustful of Margaery Tyrell, simply for being hotter and younger than she is. In A Feast for Crows, Cersei jealously hypothesizes that Margaery is her rival for Joffrey's heart and mind: "Every day in every way she tries to steal him from me." This sheer, feminized pettiness diminishes Cersei's innate power as a woman smart enough to question the patriarchal system under which she resides, and bold enough to challenge the men who seek to diminish her. Instead of portraying this power-hungry female character as a ruthless pioneer, Game of Thrones paints her as an irrational, heartless bitch. The coldest dimension of the Jaime Cersei rape scene is not the fact of their twinship or the corpse in the background; it's the implication that a woman who does not sacrifice her body willingly, who does not behave as a woman ought, is a hateful woman-and she will be forced, through a violent and unforgettable lesson, to remember that her body, mind, and life are not in fact her own.

***

The natural rebuttal to any sort of critique of Cersei's systematic denigration and vilification is that she is only one of the many female characters in this series. Cersei undoubtedly harkens back to a stage of feminism that can be classified as pre-sexual revolution: she is unhappy and enraged, but almost entirely de-clawed-she lacks the means and the tools to dismantle the patriarchy that oppresses her, and therefore must simply survive within a system that pre-supposes her inherent weakness and inferiority. However, fans might argue, other female GoT characters like Margaery Tyrell and Daenerys Targaryen are prime examples of medieval Sheryl Sandbergs: women who appear to have mastered their own destinies, in spite of losing the genetic gender jackpot.Margaery Tyrell is an expert courtier-even when she is married off to the sadistic and cruel Joffrey, she manages to earn the affection and respect of the little boy king. In this way, Margaery uses her feminine wiles to cement her own power as Westeros' queen-to-be. Yet, she is still very much a pawn in the system-her body is actively sold to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, Daenerys Targaryen resides on the next highest rung of relative female liberation. Like Margaery, she is young, cunning, and powerful. However, unlike Maergary, she appears to hold a "man's" power as a warrior, politician, and seeker of the iron throne-roles that are widely considered to be beyond the meager abilities of the fairer sex.

However, Daenerys's story is not the feminist fairy tale it initially appears to be. Daenerys was married off at the age of 13. In A Game of Thrones, the sale of the underage Daenerys is described in brutal detail, with her brother Viserys inspecting her pubescent body and asking, "Are you sure that Khal Drogo likes his women this young?" A fair question, since Khal is estimated to be in his thirties. Despite these horrifying circumstances, Game of Thrones outlines the unfolding love story between Daenerys and her warrior husband, who she eventually recognizes as her rightful husband and true equal. This is not love. This is rape. Pedophilic sex is nonconsensual, period.

Furthermore, Daenerys's story rests on a racial narrative that is questionable at best. Yes, Daenerys is a brave, just, ruler. She builds her political campaign on the tenet of freedom as she marches through the East liberating slaves and building her conquering army. But even as we laud the image of this strong, female warrior, we must take a step back to examine the implications of the kind white lady and her strange civilizing mission. Daenerys's feminine goodness, her urge to mother a nation of former slaves, is painted in contrast to the savage cities and cultures she encounters. She must whitewash these brown men and women, rid them of their savage, slavish ways, and repaint them in her own image. Surely, Daenerys is strong, powerful, and liberated; but her larger narrative is anything but progressive, and problematizes even as it empowers.

With Daenerys, Margaery, and Cersei out of the way, there are still two other female characters to consider for the title of most liberated lady. Brienne of Tarth and young Arya Stark are two women who fashion themselves as brave knights. This tomboy status affords them freedom and strength; the liberty to fashion their own futures, secure in the knowledge that they can defend themselves (well, most of the time-loyal fans will remember that both Brienne and Arya have at various points owed their lives to the valiant efforts of male saviors). However, this less traveled path of female warriorhood isn't all triumphant sword fights and liberation from traditional gender binaries.

It's important to note that both the books and the series describe these two female characters as ugly, or at the very least, plain. We learn in the first book that Arya's nickname is "Arya Horseface." Similarly, Wikipedia's amalgamated description of Brienne reads, "She has large, very blue eyes that appear trusting and guileless, but they are her only attractive feature. She is extremely broad-shouldered, but has virtually no bust. Her face is broad and coarse, with a nose that has been broken several times. Her mouth is too wide, with prominent and crooked teeth and lips so plump they seem swollen." Both Brienne and Arya are found wanting in the traditional, essential feminine arts: domesticity and beauty. The implication here is that they adopt the dress and mannerisms of men because they have failed as women. In this way, butch battle strength is offered as an appealing, but nonetheless secondary, option when "being a good lady" doesn't work out.

Throughout the Seven Kingdoms, a woman's power is always restrained, differentiated, and compromised-unless she chooses to trade it in and approximate a man's instead. Brienne and Arya are free in ways that their traditional, ladylike counterparts can only dream of-but this freedom is wrought from the negation of their femininity, a phenomenon that is illustrated in Brienne's fearless defense of King Renly, a physical protection that she, as an "ugly" woman, offers him in lieu of her romantic love. Brienne and Arya eschew their femininity and their gendered emotions in order to pick up their swords, thus perpetuating the myth that womanhood equals weakness. This need to deny their nuanced gender identities in order to approximate masculine strength is a far cry from the ability to celebrate femininity in all its different forms. Brienne and Arya are strong and independent, but they're hardly liberated.

While Game of Thrones presents its viewers with a spectrum of three-dimensional female characters (which is a godsend in and of itself), none of these characters offer us a truly triumphant feminist narrative. Meanwhile, the plotlines surrounding Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister intimate that bastardom and dwarfism, while difficult conditions, can often be surmounted. The implied assertion that gender cannot be entirely escaped is simply realism, both in Martin's medieval world and our own. However, the constant belittlement and abuse of these female characters, and the un-silenceable voice in the background of every episode of Game of Thrones, the one that whispers of woman's ultimate futility, her interminable imprisonment, the pettiness of her feminine agency if she is granted any at all? That might be overkill.

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The Abused Wives of Westeros: A Song of Feminism in 'Game of Thrones'

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Game of Thrones is famous for its boobs, battles, and baby dragons. But fans of the original Ice and Fire series would argue that the F-word actually lies at the heart of George R.R. Martin's fantastical tale. No, the other F-word: feminism.

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This article shines light on feminism throughout Game of Thrones.

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"All my life men like you have sneered at me, and all my life I've been knocking men like you into the dust."
- Brienne of Tarth

(Content/trigger warning: Discussion of rape and abuse)

Prior to his appearance in season 6, actor Ian McShane described Game of Thrones as " only tits and dragons," and he's not necessarily wrong. Ask anyone who doesn't follow the series and they'll say much the same thing. Even fans get in on this - sex and death are two of the show's vital drinking game rules. It's something of a running joke, and who doesn't need a few running jokes in a tale so wrought with dread?

Sometimes the series really is as simple as tits in one scene and dragons in the next. At other times, it's incredibly nuanced. But no matter the context, Game of Thrones is, at its core, real. Its authenticity isn't rooted in the ornamentation - the giants, resurrections, or the fact that these medieval women appear to have regular bikini waxes. Rather, it's based on its portrayal of human beings, their relationships with one another, and the social and political structures that help or hinder them, depending on who they are. It is these portrayals of personal and political struggles that give Game of Thrones such a modern feminist tone.

Loathe as I am to pull the definition card, feminism continues to be so taboo and misidentified that some groundwork must be laid. To put it efficiently, feminism is "the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes." There are a myriad of issues involved in the movement - sexuality, race, rape culture, transgender rights, the list goes on - but "equality" is the gist of it. While Game of Thrones is not at all perfect in its examination of female empowerment, it provides plenty of rich material to mine.

The first step to winning any battle is acknowledging that there is a battle to be fought. A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin recognizes this. In a 2013 interview with The Telegraph, he said of his work:

Some women hate the female characters. But importantly they hate them as people, because of things that they've done, not because the character is underdeveloped.... 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. [...]

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 medieval culture of Westeros, or 21st century western culture.

While Martin is not directly affected by the issues that women - from cis to transgender, and all of the non-binary points in between - face, he is mindful of them, and incorporates the consequences of sexism and misogyny into his work.

Consider the kinds of deaths suffered by some of the series' villains: Joffrey Baratheon, Ramsay Bolton, Meryn Trant, and Walder Frey. While Martin (and, by extension, Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss) paints his characters in shades of grey, these characters are, by and large, unquestionably foul. Much of their hideousness is rooted in their misogyny, which is defined as the "dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women."

It is important to note that while these men gain sexual gratification from women, by no means does that suggest a respect or love for women as a whole. They demonstrate misogynistic behavior, and their punishments fit their crimes.

Joffrey Baratheon

Joffrey took pains to mock the feminine at every turn. If he wasn't scoffing at his little brother's tears ("The Old Gods and the New"), he was refusing to wear flowers on his doublet. And all the while, he was tormenting Sansa Stark - by having her beaten in the Red Keep throne room, for example - and engaging in other grotesque behavior, such as forcing Ros to beat Daisy the prostitute for his entertainment in "Garden of Bones." Joffrey delighted in humiliating his uncle Tyrion as well, but there was an especial sexual sadism involved in his torture of Sansa, Ros and Daisy that relied heavily on stripping them, whether bare or partially so.

In the end, Lady Olenna Tyrell kills Joffrey through the discreet use of poison - a "woman's weapon," as Pycelle and Ned Stark call it. That moniker implies that women aren't as direct or honest as men when committing murder, or treason. But consider the results. Olenna commits high treason and gets away with it (for now). When Ned defied the royal family by openly declaring that Joffrey Baratheon was a bastard, he was beheaded. By not stabbing Joffrey straight in the heart where everyone could see her, Olenna came out ahead.

Meryn Trant and Walder Frey

These characters never meet, but they exhibit similar behaviors. Both men enjoy the sexual abuse of underage girls, and are in turn killed by one: Arya Stark. Both were included on Arya's personal vengeance list, but in killing them, she still gets justice for all the young women who suffered at their hands.

In the case of Meryn Trant, that includes Arya's sister Sansa, whom Trant stripped and beat on Joffrey's orders. In light of what we learn about him in season 5, it's likely that Trant gained some sexual pleasure from Sansa's public humiliation. He basically recreates the Sansa scene in the brothel in Braavos, beating a lineup of young girls that, unknown to him, includes Sansa's sister. Disturbing as the scene is, it underlines a connection between the Stark sisters that speaks volumes for their devotion to one another, differences and past squabbles aside. Had Arya known of Trant's crimes against her sister, I for one am inclined to bet my entire bank account that she wouldn't have stopped at slicing his throat, but would have continued until he was nothing but strips of questionable gas station beef jerky.

Walder Frey's death plays out somewhat similarly. His penchant for prepubescent brides may be the "norm" for medieval times, but it does not make the practice any less despicable. The same goes for the careless way he sacrifices his young bride at the Red Wedding. ("I'll find another," he says when Catelyn threatens to kill his wife.) Under the guise of a serving maid, Arya is subjected to his mistreatment before she ends him with one clean strike, getting retribution for her family's massacre.

Moral of the story? One: don't underestimate women. Two: big things come in small packages. And three: Arya Stark's eyebrows aren't the only thing about her that's killer, so check yourself before she slits your throat.

Ramsay Bolton

On the surface, Ramsay's cruelty does not discriminate between the sexes. After all, he castrates Theon just to send a message, so it would seem that he's all about equal opportunity when it comes to torture.

Yet Ramsay reserves particular disdain for women. Over the course of the show, Ramsay sics his dogs on women for multiple reasons. In season 4, he releases them on Tansy for making his lover Myranda jealous. In season 6, he has his hounds kill Walda Bolton (née Frey) for giving birth to Roose Bolton's trueborn son, who challenged the bastard Ramsay's claim to the North. This practice is worse in the books, as Vulture details:

We got a sanitized version of Ramsay's hunting trips on the show, and we were spared some of the reasons why he does this. As Ramsay alluded to during his conversations with Myranda, he doesn't need much of a reason-being bored is reason enough. Or making his lover jealous. Or getting pregnant. Do any of these things, and he would strip you naked, release you into the forest, and hunt you with his pack of feral dogs. If his victims gave 'good sport,' he would rape them and then wait to flay them once dead. If they did not give 'good sport,' he would rape them and then flay them alive. Another bonus if you gave good sport-he'll name a dog after you. 'The ones who weep and beg and won't run don't get to come back as bitches.'

Excuse me, I've just returned from vomiting.

Ramsay's crimes against his abused wife and women in general come back around when Sansa pulls a Mr. Burns and releases his hungry hounds on him in season 6. Once again, the punishment for misogyny fits the crime.

Bonus: Viserys Targaryen

While Viserys Targaryen's death suits his arc - he wanted a golden crown and got one - it speaks little to his misogynistic tendencies, as he demonstrated with his treatment of his sister Daenerys ("I would let [Khal Drogo's] whole tribe fuck you - all forty thousand men - and their horses too if that's what it took [to get an army]") and in his scene with the slave Doreah in season 1. "What did I buy you for?" he asks Doreah when she expresses some melancholy. "To make me sad?"

Since then, we have seen Daenerys adopt some of her brother's old mentality, at least where her ambition is concerned. Like Viserys, Daenerys feels entitled to the Iron Throne on account of her position as the "last dragon." And like her brother, she is mistaken on that front, as we now know that Jon Snow is half-Targaryen himself. However, Daenerys' quest for the crown thus far has empowered her where it crushed Viserys. We have two seasons left to see where this path takes her, but no matter what happens to her in the end, Daenerys will have at least survived her unworthy brother.

And so the curtain falls on these villains. I'd say I'm sad to see them go, but I'm not a liar and they're not worth the niceties.

But the male villains aren't the only characters to have died during this journey. Seemingly natural-born heroes such as Ned and Robb Stark have fallen, as well. Others to go include the steadfast Maester Luwin, the fierce Khal Drogo, fan favorite Oberyn Martell, and the Blackfish (or "Silverfox," as I prefer to call him) Brynden Tully. We've also lost female characters like Catelyn Stark, Shireen Baratheon, Margaery Tyrell, Ygritte, and Osha, but even so, many of the major players who have survived to reach season 6 are women. What's more, these characters have often succeeded where their male counterparts failed.

Take, for instance, Robb and Sansa Stark's diverging approaches to arranged marriages. As King in the North, heir to Winterfell, and a man, Robb had more choice in his partners than Sansa. However, the War of the Five Kings imposes obligations on him, as Catelyn explained to him in season 2's "The Old Gods and the New":

I wish that you were free to follow your heart, but you have inherited your father's responsibilities. They come at a cost.

But Robb shirks those responsibilities for the sake of true love. He rescinds his engagement to one of Walder Frey's daughters and instead weds Talisa Maegyr, which enrages Walder Frey and leads to the Red Wedding. That event allows Roose Bolton to become the new Warden of the North and to legitimize his son Ramsay, which leads to Littlefinger striking a deal with Roose to marry Ramsay to Sansa. Following that chain of events back, Sansa endures the trauma and grief of marrying Ramsay Bolton, the son of a man who betrayed her family and a monster in his own right, as a direct result of Robb's decision.

When Sansa learns that Littlefinger plans to marry her to Ramsay, he assures her he won't force her to concede to the match ("High Sparrow"). We suspect this choice is illusory, but Sansa chooses to go through with the marriage all the same. Robb had an alliance with the Freys. He abandoned it and died. Sansa shouldered the aftermath of her brother's choice in order to avenge him, their mother, and the Stark bannermen slaughtered at the Red Wedding. She lives.

If Game of Thrones played by the traditional rules of epic fantasy, Robb Stark should have made it through alive. The dashing, brave son who commands an army to avenge his father's death, the prince who follows his heart before his duty...these elements of Robb's character align with what we've come to expect from our medieval fantasy heroes, from King Arthur to Aragorn. But Robb acted foolishly, and more times than not on Game of Thrones, such flights of fancy - however genuine - get you killed. (The good news is that Richard Madden gets to pull some of these antics in Disney's 2015 revamp of Cinderella, and I'm pleased to report that for once Robb Stark makes it out of a party alive and well.)

Robb, a traditional hero, is survived by his sisters, a brother, and a half-brother/secret cousin, none of whom quite fit his mold. Sansa and Arya are impeded by their womanhood, and Bran by his disability. That's not to say they're unworthy of power, but in the eyes of Westeros, they are not the stuff of heroes. Thankfully, Martin tends to turn such tropes on their head, and Benioff and Weiss, who learned how the series will end directly from Martin, should follow suit.

As it stands now, the Starks - separately and as a unit - are a formidable bunch, but the skills they possess have little to do with traditional masculinity. Jon Snow is perhaps the closest we have to a classic hero at this point: handsome, troubled, and good with a sword. But Thrones encourages the audience to dig a little deeper. Like Bran, Jon isn't practiced at playing the "great game." Both he and Bran have been concerned mainly with the threat of the White Walkers since the series began - Jon because he joined the Night's Watch and Bran through his visions from the Three-Eyed Raven. Both operate at a bit of a remove from the wider world, and will have to turn to the Stark women - who have more experience with the goings-on down south - for guidance post-war. Should the remainder of this family live through the winter, and I am of the very strong opinion that they will, Jon and Bran are surely going to wear out their tape of "Wind Beneath My Wings" whenever they look to Sansa and Arya for advice.

Likewise, neither of the Lannister brothers are models of a male power fantasy. Jaime, for his part, continues to toe the line as an antihero; even this late in the game, there's no definitive way to tell where his allegiance lies. His moral code may say one thing, but Cersei has a powerful hold on him, and may demand another. I can't imagine this will last beyond season 7, but for now, it makes Jaime more compelling than your average Disney prince.

As for Tyrion, he, like Bran, doesn't fit the hero bill physically, and must rely on his brain rather than his brawn. (The women of Game of Thrones use this tactic, as well.) Tyrion's experience with this method is likely what leads to his understanding of and respect for both Sansa and Daenerys. (Recall his line about Sansa when she keeps up appearances after Joffrey has her beaten in season 2: "Lady Stark, you may survive us yet.") He has seen them for who they are, and not the airs they put on for their enemies, because he knows where they're coming from.

Varys and Petyr Baelish, both of whom have been around since season 1, also employ this strategy. Rather than fight with sword and spear, they use gossip ("whispers") and manipulation to achieve their goals. Like poison, these methods could be dismissed as women's weapons, an attitude rooted in the notion that women talk and men act, that women lie and men own up to what they've done. But thinking along those lines can lead to warped conclusions. Maybe Viserys was right to sell his sister to get vengeance against the usurper Robert Baratheon. Maybe Balon Greyjoy was correct, and his daughter should have closed herself off emotionally and given up on Theon for good.

But those trains of thought never reached the station. Daenerys is headed for the throne that her brother once coveted. Yara and her brother command Ironborn soldiers that were once their father's. The Stark girls live while their father perished. The Lannister patriarch is dead, and Cersei wears the crown as the first standalone Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Ellaria and the Sand Snakes, regardless of how absurd their storyline is, are running the show in Dorne. So perhaps their male counterparts acted with honor and ambition, with blade and brawn, with integrity and self-righteousness, but they're long dead, while the women are raising armies.

None of this is to say that these women don't suffer beneath the burdens of Westeros' patriarchal society. The female characters who have made it this far have had to claw their way over obstacles both personal and political. Take Brienne of Tarth, a woman who - in yet another twist on the traditional fantasy formula - may embody the ideals of the prototypical male fantasy hero better than any other character on the show, whether they be male, female, living, or dead. Brienne demonstrates unimpeachable honor, loyalty, and swordsmanship. Yet because she lives in Westeros' sexist society, she is mocked for her refusal to conform to gender norms rather than celebrated for her accomplishments. More's the pity, especially when it comes to her unwitting victims.

Perhaps the most damnable of the obstacles these women face is the threat of sexual violence, represented by the rapes of Daenerys (by Khal Drogo in season 1), Cersei (by Jaime in season 4), and Sansa (by Ramsay in season 5).

As someone who has not read the A Song of Ice and Fire books in their entirety, I cannot fully speak for the show's adaptation of these events. While Daenerys consents to Drogo's sexual attentions in the first book, her consent as a child bride is dubious at best, and in any case, it doesn't carry over to the show. As for Cersei and Jaime in the sept, three of the people most closely involved with the scene - Lena Headey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and director Alex Graves - are all of the opinion that Cersei's consent is to some extent implied. However, the implication of consent is not the thing itself, and the end product depicts a struggling Cersei who, during the act, says "stop it," "no," and "it's not right" while Jaime says "I don't care." Regardless of intentions, the scene presents an unambiguous sexual assault.

Neither Daenerys' nor Cersei's experiences seem to affect them following the rape itself. Sexual assault does not define its victims, but it's wrong and oftentimes dangerous to suggest that it doesn't leave a mark. In contrast, Sansa's abuse at Ramsay's hands - while not justifiable - plays a significant role in her ultimate victory against him. Sansa's situation is empowering because of the way she overcomes that torment and defeats her abuser. This triumph is not one that Daenerys and Cersei can claim for themselves, despite their many victories unrelated to their assaults.

I could never unquestioningly accept what these women endure as a narrative inevitability, and will always be uneasy about defending the showrunners' depiction of rape and abuse. If the topic is going to be broached, it needs follow-through, which only Sansa's arc receives.

Game of Thrones does, however, shed light on rape culture in the modern world. For example, let's examine Lyanna Mormont's introduction in season 6's "The Broken Man." After Lyanna receives Jon Snow and Sansa in her audience chamber, Jon assures her that House Stark is not gone. "As far as I understand you're a Snow," she replies. "And Lady Sansa is a Bolton. Or is she a Lannister? I've heard conflicting reports." By extension, she implies that Sansa - who was a hostage under the Lannisters and the Boltons, and a pawn of Littlefinger's in between - is not a true Stark and has no allegiance to her own family.

In the world of Game of Thrones, names carry weight, but if Lyanna is savvy enough to rule her own land, she should recognize the power structures at work throughout the greater Seven Kingdoms. That is to say, women do as they're bid to survive, most especially in times of war.

Lyanna's assessment of Sansa's position is perhaps the most overt example of victim-blaming within the show's narrative. However, notice that Lyanna's maester whispers into her ear directly before she says these lines. It may have been he who questioned Sansa's allegiance, and as a young ruler, Lyanna is bound to put some trust in her older advisor.

Lyanna's introductory scene brings up some solid talking points regarding modern society's treatment of women who have been raped and abused. Men continue to call the shots, women turn against one another, and when it's all said and done, survivors of such crimes are compelled to either keep quiet or speak loudly and clearly on behalf of themselves and all those who have shared their experiences. They are required to offer proof and justification for their situations while the assailants themselves are not held as accountable.

Sansa herself offers up such a justification, and it rings true. "I did what I had to do to survive, my lady, but I am a Stark. I will always be a Stark." This could be Benioff and Weiss' way of throwing their support behind Sansa, their way of saying, 'Sansa did her thing and now she's Lady of Winterfell instead of dead, so who's laughing now?'

I haven't touched on everything the show has to offer us, either in favor of or against my thesis that Game of Thrones is, at the end of the day, feminist media. The show may be "tits and dragons," but there's a lot of weighty - and often controversial - material in between, and it's rendered well enough to demand consideration of how it impacts our lives beyond its entertainment value.

As of now, we stand at the precipice of season 7. Sansa, shrewd and tactical after burning through the last of her naivete, is Lady of Winterfell. Arya is a trained assassin on her way home, where the source of her strength lies. Cersei is Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Both Yara and Daenerys have armies at their ramrod-straight backs. Ellaria has a realm at her command, and Olenna Tyrell has nothing left to lose.

The War of the Five Kings is over, but the queens are reigning strong. So while the Night King may be marching south, hell hath no fury like a woman totally pissed off - and I for one think the women of Westeros have just about lost their patience.

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Fight Like a Lady: The Promotion of Feminism in Game of Thrones

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"All my life men like you have sneered at me, and all my life I've been knocking men like you into the dust." - Brienne of Tarth (Content/trigger warning: Discussion of rape and abuse) Prior to his appearance in season 6, actor Ian McShane described Game of Thrones as " only tits and dragons," and he's not necessarily wrong.

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Lyanna will not allow the objectification of herself or other women in the Bear Islands.

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The show has had a complicated relationship with the women in its world. As it looks toward its conclusion, it is trying to simplify things.

HBO

Light spoilers through Season 7, Episode 2 of Game of Thrones.

Jon Snow, newly appointed King of the North, is sharing his strategy-to fight Cersei, to fight the White Walkers, to win the many battles to come-with the assemblage of fighters who have agreed to join him in the effort. "Everyone age 10 to 16 we'll drill daily with spears, pikes, bow, and arrow," Jon informs the group. The warriors cheer. They like this plan: Everyone's in this together, after all. If there's to be any hope of victory, it's going to require wide-scale cooperation. And, anyway, "it's about time we taught these boys of summer how to fight!" Lord Glover bellows.

But Jon corrects him; Glover has misunderstood. "Not just the boys," Jon says. Women will be part of the effort, too. "We can't defend the North," Jon points out, "if only half the population is fighting."

It's in one sense yet another moment of realpolitik in Game of Thrones, a show that has become increasingly fascinated with the minutiae of political decision-making as it winds down, and gears up, to its conclusion. But Jon's decree also nods to the broader world Game of Thrones occupies, a world that is fighting different kinds of wars and negotiating different kinds of politics. If only half the population is fighting is a line that easily doubles as a slogan. It's the stuff of hashtags, and memes, and Zazzle-friendly T-shirts.

But it's also the stuff of Lyanna Mormont, the spunky young woman who manages to steal the scene from Jon in the most straightforward of ways: by passionately agreeing with him. "I don't plan on knitting by the fire while men fight for me," Lyanna glowers. "I might be small, Lord Glover," she continues, "and I might be a girl, but I am every bit as much a Northerner as you. And I don't need your permission to defend the North."

Which is ... exactly the right thing to say. It's on the one hand a perfectly fitting follow-up to Jon's half the population concession, but it's also the kind of line, outside of the show's universe, that gives fans something to cheer for. It calls to mind the literary ( Helena, of Hermia: "Though she be but little, she is fierce"). And yet it is not subtle; it is not complicated; and this is the point. "Lyanna Mormont gives an empowering speech about why women should fight," a bullet-pointed write-up from Business Insider went. It added: " Game of Thrones fans were loving it."

But the duo of messages from Jon and Lyanna- desperate times call for desperate egalitarianism-reflect another kind of political reality: The messages hint at how keenly aware Game of Thrones's writers and producers are of the environments beyond Westeros. As they adapt George R.R. Martin's books, they are also adapting to the people who have loved and hated and criticized their TV show. They are arguing for the real-world relevance of a series whose plots revolve around ice-zombies and dragons. And, in that, they're creating a series that exists not just for entertainment value, but also to be discussed, and slogan-ed, and memed. Here, in the person of Lyanna Mormont, a girl who above all doesn't need your permission, is tagline-friendly feminism, on display in a show that lives as much on the internet as it does within the walled gardens of HBO.

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In one way, it's awesome, all this overt celebration of lady-ness in a universe that hasn't always been so overtly celebratory of its women. It makes the other stuff in the show-the violence, in particular-easier to take. And it brings the world of Game of Thrones into the moral universe of our own, giving it a particular relevance and urgency. Lyanna is a bold young woman who embodies the innocence of those who have not yet understood the arbitrary ways of the world. She functions as a vehicle of defiance in a world that prefers to defy her. Young and brave and not taking your nonsense-she is, essentially, an animate incarnation of the Fearless Girl statue.

The tension, though, comes from the context: Game of Thrones is a world, of course, in which "fearless" and "girl" are decidedly not redundant. Lyanna, after all, exists in the same story that found Sansa Stark brutally raped, multiple times-and that found Game of Thrones depicting her experience of that violence in intimate, graphic detail. Lyanna exists in the same story that washed Melisandre's big reveal in regressive assumptions about feminine age and feminine beauty. And that found Talisa Stark stabbed in her pregnant abdomen. And that found Shireen Baratheon, a girl not unlike Lyanna, burned, brutally, at the stake. And that found Arya Stark transformed, through tragedy and trauma, from a Lyanna-esque tomboy into a wide-eyed revenge-monster.

There is, of course, an equalizing element to Game of Thrones's violence: Women, here, are not spared, and this is its own embrace of Jon Snow's if only half the population is fighting philosophy. But Game of Thrones, it must be said, also gave unto the world the Sand Snakes, three of the most insipid characters not just in Game of Thrones's universe, but on television, in general. Stubbornly one-dimensional and "exotic" in the most boring of ways, these daughters of Dorne are the stuff of Edward Said's nightmares -and also of Gloria Steinem's. They seem to enjoy teasing men, just for the power of it. They seem to enjoy displaying their breasts, for the same reason. "You want a good girl," Tyene-but it barely matters, as the main thing about these three women is that they operate as a dull unit-whispers to Bronn. She adds: "But you need the bad pussy." Yes.

So Lyanna Mormont lives in the same universe that finds Tyene demanding that Bronn acknowledge her as "the most beautiful woman in the world" (lest, if he does not, she let him die from the poison she has administered). She operates in a narrative environment, overall, that belies the fearless-girl feminism her character is meant to advertise. In its context, I might be a girl, but I am every bit as much a Northerner as you rings true; it also, however, rings hollow.

And so, in some ways, does that other moment of lady-power sloganeering in Season 7. "The Long Night is coming," Melisandre tells Daenerys, when the two women finally encounter each other in person. "Only the prince who was promised can bring the dawn."

"I'm afraid I'm not a prince," Daenerys replies.

Missandei actuallys the situation. "That noun has no gender in High Valyrian," she notes. "So the proper translation for that prophecy would be, 'the prince or princess who was promised will bring the dawn.'"

Daenerys's adviser-and occasional translator-is providing yet another moment of triumphant feminism for fans to cheer: in this case, of gendered expectations, thwarted. Of egalitarianism, against all odds, winning. The moment is subtle-it's a matter of grammar, after all-but the show plays it for drama. "The prince or princess." BOOM.

But that moment, too, has its context: the same context that Lyanna's moment does. What results in the juxtaposition is the kind of dramatic tension that Game of Thrones is so good at producing: Story versus slogan. Character versus caricature. Treatments of feminine power that are relatively complicated and nuanced (Daenerys's not-always-successful attempts to be a just ruler, Cersei's not-always-successful attempts to balance motherhood with power-hunger, Yara Greyjoy's military ambitions, and Sansa's struggle to survive, and Arya's quest both to forget herself and to find herself again) chafing against treatments of feminine power that are the opposite ( bad pussy).

The delight of Game of Thrones-the thing that has made it compelling not just as entertainment, but as art-has long been that kind of tension. This is a show that productively tangles the epic and the everyday, the small moments of wry humor with the fire-breath of dragons, that which is human with that which is magic. And that tension applied to its women gives the show another level of resonance: In its own juxtaposition of "empowerment" and power, the shiny message versus the messy reality, Game of Thrones reflects a truth of the other world it is operating in: the real one. The world that also claims to celebrate women who rise to power, but that also remains extremely conflicted-wage gaps, makeup taxes, "grab 'em by the pussy"-about what such empowerment should actually entail. A world in which the Fearless Girl statue, it turns out, was installed by an investment firm with only three women sitting on its 11-person board of directors.

There's a similar irony at play with Lyanna Mormont, the Fearless Girl of the North. In declaring her own independence, she is also, in a way, being used. She is helping to serve the needs of Game of Thrones 's showrunners, and HBO's executives, and a show that has been criticized for giving girls a reason to be fearful in the first place. Lyanna, after all, is a character who is also an argument. She insists that things are better than they are. She glowers at the men surrounding her and, all defiance and strength, raises her voice to argue that women should fight, too. And the men cheer. They're in this together, now. If only it were that simple.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Megan Garber is a staff writer at The Atlantic, covering culture.

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Lyanna Mormont and the Slogan Feminism of 'Game of Thrones'

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The show has had a complicated relationship with the women in its world. As it looks toward its conclusion, it is trying to simplify things. Light spoilers through Season 7, Episode 2 of Game of Thrones .

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More information about the cast and summary of "The Winds of Winter".

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"Game of Thrones" The Winds of Winter (TV Episode 2016)

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Directed by Miguel Sapochnik. With Peter Dinklage, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lena Headey, Kit Harington. Cersei and Loras Tyrell stand trial by the gods. Daenerys prepares to set sail for Westeros. Davos confronts Melisandre. Sam and Gilly arrive in the Citadel. Bran discovers a long-kept secret. Lord Frey has an uninvited guest.

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Significant difference in the gender of the audience based on a survey.

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Not long ago, a survey went up on the Time Capsule of Ice and Fire blog. It collected information about respondents' age, gender, whether they read the books first or watched the show first, whether they're bothered by the show overtaking the books, and more. Now, the results of the survey have been posted. Let's take a look at some of them.

So according to this, the ordinary Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones fan is a male aged 18-29. Keep in mind that the results of this survey don't represent the entire fandom, just those who took the survey, possibly via a link on Reddit. That may well skew what kind of people are represented here. For example, it's clear that the vast majority of people who answered the survey both watch Game of Thrones and read George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels, so there aren't a lot of show-only people represented.

Still, it's interesting to consider the data. For example, while the vast majority of participants have read or are reading the books, most of them only started to do so after seeing the show first. A Song of Ice and Fire was always successful, but it took Game of Thrones to make it a monster hit.

Also noteworthy is that while most of the respondents prefer the books to the show...

...they still think Game of Thrones did a good job adapting Martin's work.

Speaking as people who are way too invested in this stuff, we can be critical of the show from time to time, but at the end of the day, we get a lot more joy out of it than frustration. This graph backs us up.

Here's another fascinating one: does it bother people that the show has overtaken the books.

Split right down the middle! Personally, I've never cared that the show overtook the books-it's not that makes A Clash of Kings or A Storm of Swords any less worth reading-but that's far from the only view on the subject.

What do you think of the results? For more of them, head to A Time Capsule of Ice and Fire.

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What are Game of Thrones fans like? Check out the results of this demographic survey

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Not long ago, a survey went up on the Time Capsule of Ice and Fire blog. It collected information about respondents' age, gender, whether they read the books first or watched the show first, whether they're bothered by the show overtaking the books, and more. Now, the results of the survey have been posted.

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Important moments of female leads taking initiative.

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What a finale! It looks like Season 8 of Game of Thrones will bring an even bigger a showdown between the Mean Queen and the Mother of Dragons. While this show has had many, many troubled plotlines involving women (I'm looking at you Sansa Stark), there have been some truly inspiring moments of female power.

SPOILER WARNING: Don't read if you haven't seen all 7 seasons, including the finale of Game of Thrones.
1) Arya tells her dad she doesn't want to be a great lady in a big castle.
Arya has been so consistent in her dreams, thoughts and ideas about herself. She always wanted to be a warrior. That desire took her across the Narrow Sea to Braavos, where she trained as an assassin.
2) Dany stands up to her big brother.
I've always loved the silver-haired firecracker with 99 names. It's easy to forget that Daenerys was once shy, insecure and under the thumb of her older brother. She actually took her first step toward the Iron Throne when she told him she would no longer tolerate his physical and emotional abuse.

3) Yara Greyjoy flirts with Dany and forms an alliance.
Yara has so many moments of badassery. She's a fearsome ship captain. She leads throngs of hard men to free her brother Theon. My personal favorite moment is when Dany asks if Yara's proposal for an alliance comes with a marriage offer, and Yara says, "I'm up for anything." Still holding out hope for a love scene between these two.
4) Yara states her case at the Kingsmoot.
"I claim the Salt Throne," Yara yells.

"We've never had a queen before - not once," says an onlooker.

"There are many things we've never done," Yara replies, before giving a speech about how the Iron Islands must make their mark on the world.

She nearly convinces this dirty-looking crew of pirates to take her on as queen (with brother Theon's endorsement), but rude Uncle Euron stomps in and steals her thunder.
5) Shireen teaches Gilly how to read.
Poor Princess Shireen. She really was a tender soul and a smart little lady. Her life was cut short too soon. Before being burned at the stake, she gave the gift of knowledge to two lucky Westerosi: Gilly and Ser Davos. Shireen's legacy lives large; Gilly seems to be finding all kinds of goodies hidden in the pages of the Citadel's ancient texts.

6) Cersei challenges her father.
"Did it ever occur to you that I might be the one who deserves your confidence and your trust... and not your sons?" Cersei asks her father, Tywin in Season 3.

Later her father replies, "I don't distrust you because you're a woman. I distrust you because you're not as smart as you think you are."

Tywin dictating to Cersei who she should marry is the very definition of patriarchal, and while I don't like Cersei's methods for taking power nor her oppressive rule, I do respect her for going up against Tywin. He was scary!

Ultimately, Cersei did prove herself right. The representative from the Iron Bank said just this season that the apple didn't fall far from the tree when in came to Cersei's ability to rule mercilessly and with chilling practicality.
7) Brienne's entire existence.
When we think of the virtues of a knight, what come to mind are things like courage, loyalty, kindness, tenacity and honor. No one in the Game of Thrones universe lives up to this picture of purity like Brienne of Tarth. In that male dominated world, Brienne has given her life to service. She defies the patriarchal structure not only in her actions, but also in how she presents herself. She's masculine. She refuses to wear dresses and give into the pressure to be a lady. She's amazing, and I, for one, hope that she hooks up with Tormund (if he's alive!). I'd love to see her drag him around by his ginger beard.
8) Sansa being a BOSS.
Sansa has had a shitty, shitty path in this gruesome adventure. She's endured horrible cruelties, but she survived. I don't think any character outcome for her can justify the writers' choices to put her through such abuse. However, she is making me so happy with how settled in she seems at Winterfell. I loved the scene in Season 7, Episode 3 when she walked through the grounds at Winterfell pointing out everyone's mistakes and doling out advice on how to prepare for winter. She's right where she belongs.

9) Ygritte's confusion over ladies in the South.
I miss Ygritte. I loved how she constantly called out Jon "You Know Nothing" Snow. Harsh conditions Beyond the Wall led to egalitarian society, and Ygritte has a difficult time understanding how different a few hundred miles away. To Ygritte, it's unfathomable that women would behave any differently than she does.
10) Kinvara, the Red Pope, giving Varys the verbal smackdown.
I don't know why this Rachel Weisz lookalike had such a tiny part on the show, but she sure did wow me. Kinvara heads up all the priests and priestesses of the Red God over in Essos. Tyrion calls her in to help them put out the good word for Dany in Meereen while she's gone (she flew off with Drogon and later was captured by the Dothraki). When Varys questions why he should trust Kinvara, she shuts him down with both a reminder of his first encounter with the Red God, and later with a mystical threat. "We serve the same queen. If you are her true friend, you have nothing to fear from me." Her blue eyes are menacing, and you know she means business.
11) When Lady Olenna tells Dany, "Be a Dragon."
"I've known a great many clever men. I've outlived them all. Do you know why? I ignored them."

Oh, Olenna, how I mourn thee. Lady Olenna is old school. She works within the confines of the patriarchy and uses cunning and manipulation to assert her will.
12) Lyanna Mormont convinces Jon Snow that women and girls need to be trained to fight against the Night King.
Lyanna "Little Bear" Mormont is named after Lyanna Stark, Ned Stark's sister. Lyanna was a lot like Arya is. She was a rebel, and she liked fighting. Little Bear has fire in her chest and wisdom beyond her years. When she speaks, she makes sure the Lords of the North listen. She's intelligent and fair, and when she makes a logical argument that it's a total waste to have half of the population sit around untrained in combat, Jon Snow gets it.
13) Margaery Tyrell declaring her high aspirations.
Margaery was one of my favorite characters on the show. The granddaughter of Lady Olenna, Margaery was a master manipulator. Her grandma taught her well. She was excellent at getting what she wanted when she wanted it, because she was able to play the part of a lady and use people's low expectations of women to her advantage. Even the actress who played her agreed that Margaery was a feminist to the core.
14) When Dany levels the playing field.
When Dany was held captive by the Khals in Vaes Dothraki, she knew there was no way she was going to let a group of men decide her fate. She burns them all and takes control of the entire Dothraki nation.
15) Ros departs Winterfell, seeking a new life in King's Landing.
Ros was always a clever and sassy woman. Granted, she got caught up in Littlefinger's machinations, but who in Westeros hasn't? When she left Winterfell in Season 1, she was determined to take her spunky brand of sex positivity and make a name for herself in the capitol. She was creating quite a future for herself - until Joffrey got in her way.

16) Missandei revealing to Dany that her relationship status is complicated.
Missandei is a genius, speaks a zillion languages, and keeps a calm head despite the high stress of the circumstances she faces. She's a powerful woman in Daenerys's world, but their relationship extends beyond professional. The women have a real friendship. When they share a laugh over Missandei's night with Grey Worm, I couldn't help but smile while watching these two women making their own choices, free of judgment.
17) Quaithe calling out Jorah.
Creepy-face-mask lady in Qarth has a name, and it's Quaithe! Quaithe of Qarth (Well, Quaith of the Shadow, actually). In addition to painting some guy's back with the blood of a ram, Quaith lets Jorah know that she knows that he's in love with Dany. "Will you betray her again, Jorah the Andal?"
18) Catelyn Stark bargaining with Jamie.
Is this a feminist moment? I want it to be. I never knew how to feel about Catelyn. She was fierce for sure, but also naive. She made so many mistakes. Letting Jamie go was a huge one.
19) Lady Crane flips the script.
When Arya is sent to kill an actress in a traveling troupe visiting Braavos, she is surprised to find that her mark is incredibly charismatic and kind. Arya can't go through with the hit. But she does give Lady Crane a bit of advice. She tells Lady Crane that if she doesn't like her lines, she should rewrite them. And rewrite them she does.

20) Karsi fighting to the death and beyond at Hardhome.
Hardhome is my #1 most favorite episode of the series. The tension is insane. The best character there was an elder warrior, Karsi. When Jon Snow asks that the Wildlings join his fight against the Night King and the White Walkers, she challenges him and pumps him for information on how exactly they might win such a battle. When the Walkers come, she sacrifices herself for her young daughters and fights to protect her people. It hurts big time when the Night King resurrects her, and her wide eyes shine deadly blue.
21) Dany discussing strategy with her female-centric war council.
After years and years of watching women beaten and raped and made pawns in the wars of men, it was a thrill to see Dany lead a council filled with women. Yara, Ellaria Sand, Lady Olenna, Missandei. Slate said it well: "You don't need a penis to run Westeros."
22) Arya and Sansa finally see eye to eye.
A big reveal (well, an attempted big reveal... it reality it was a little anticlimactic) during the finale was that Arya and Sansa were plotting together to take Littlefinger down. I wasn't crazy about his speedy trial. What I loved was the moment after, when both women stand side by side a top of the walls at Winterfell. Arya repeats what her sister told her once before, "I wouldn't have survived what you survived."

"Yes, you would have," Sansa says. "You're the strongest person I know."

They're both strong, and they're both weak. And that's alright. They're both survivors, each with her own set of coping skills. One thing's for sure; they're much stronger together.
23) Diplomacy, queen-style.
It was deeply satisfying to see Dany and Cersei deal face-to-face. After a lengthy War of Five Kings and many seasons of struggle, only two queens remain. The last king, Jon Snow, bends the knee and throws his support behind his lover/Aunt, Dany. To see all of Westeros (and parts of Essos) on its knees for two women was awe-inspiring. Even Cersei couldn't ruin that moment.

I'm dying for Season 8. Will we ever meet the Night Queen?

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23 Incredible Feminist Moments in Game of Thrones

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What a finale! It looks like Season 8 of Game of Thrones will bring an even bigger a showdown between the Mean Queen and the Mother of Dragons. While this show has had many, many troubled plotlines involving women (I'm looking at you Sansa Stark), there have been some truly inspiring moments of female power.

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A more detailed explanation of how Cersei became Queen once again.

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It's been a long time, Game of Thrones fans. Since Season 6 finished airing over a year ago, details both big and small have likely disappeared from fans' memory of Westeros and its perpetually bloody goings-on. So, how did Cersei end up on the Iron Throne in GoT? It's been a long road for her, to say the least - so, let's recap.

When we first met her back in Season 1, Cersei's husband Robert Baratheon was king. It wasn't far into the series before she colluded with the Lannister cousin she was sleeping with at the time to spike Robert's wine during a hunting trip - leading to the "accident" that ultimately killed him. From there, her eldest (and most terrible) son, Joffrey, ascended the throne and was generally an awful ruler. Impulsive, dishonorable, and abusive, he quickly made enemies - and said enemies hatched a complex plan to poison the guy during his wedding reception. It's worth noting that one of the chief proponents of his murder plan was his bride Margaery Tyrell's own grandmother, Olenna Tyrell - because in addition to being a keen political player, she did not want her granddaughter to marry a monster.

After Joffrey's death, Cersei's younger son Tommen became king - and since he was much younger/not nearly as much of a dick, Cersei thought she would have more power acting as his Queen Regent - until Tommen fell hard for the aforementioned Margaery Tyrell. In quite the power move, Margaery slowly turned Tommen against his mother - so Cersei decided to exorcise her hate of the Margaery and the rest of the Tyrell clan by giving power to the High Sparrow. We all remember what happened after that, right? She granted the Sparrow too much power, ultimately leading to her literal walk of shame through King's Landing.

With revenge sorely needed for both the Tyrells and the High Sparrow and the army she gave him, Cersei began to hatch a new plan. A new plan, which you'll remember, hinged on the fact that Robert's predecessor (and Daenerys' dad) Mad King Aerys had stashed cachets of wildfire all over King's Landing. You'll also remember that, back in the day, it was to stop this very plan that Jaime Lannister earned his Kingslayer moniker (but more on that later). On the morning of the day she was actually supposed to be on trial by the High Sparrow, she lit up the entire castle and surrounding areas like a Roman candle, killing everyone at her trial and thousands of innocent civilians in the process.

After his mother murdered his beloved wife (and all their friends), young Tommen removed his crown, and stepped out of his window, falling to his death. And not long after, in full mourning black, Cersei ascended the Iron Throne, as Jaime looked on in disbelief, leading many to believe that the show's paving the way for the "valonqar" portion of Cersei's prophecy to finally come true. That's where we left her at the end of Season 6 - on the throne, enemies and all three children dead, with Qyburn and the zombified Mountain as her only remaining allies.

Cersei's methods for at last becoming queen of the Seven Kingdoms have been far from orthodox. If we track it, she's gone from Queen Consort, to Queen Regent, to just plain Queen - it's not your standard line of succession, that's for sure. No, Cersei seems to be playing from the Richard III playbook - aka kill all your enemies and grab the throne before anyone can say boo. And as with Richard, her method for grabbing power is sure to come back and haunt her (perhaps even literally, as in Shakespeare's telling of Richard's reign). As it stands now, we've already seen her many enemies joining forces against her, perhaps most notably the bereaved and rightfully furious Olenna Tyrell, who went Team Targaryen along with the Dornish Sand Snakes, Tyrion Lannister, and Theon and Yara Greyjoy, to name a few.

Though Game of Thrones was inspired by the very same War of the Roses that inspired Shakespeare's Richard III, George R. R. Martin's never been one to play by the book. While it may finally be coming time for that famous prophecy about Cersei to come true, lord knows he loves subverting our expectations - so who knows what will happen next for our newly minted Lannister queen?

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Cersei's Road To The Throne Was Far From Easy On 'GoT'

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It's been a long time, Game of Thrones fans. Since Season 6 finished airing over a year ago, details both big and small have likely disappeared from fans' memory of Westeros and its perpetually bloody goings-on. So, how did Cersei end up on the Iron...

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Arya taking revenge on Walder Frey for killing her mother, brother, and sister-in-law.

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Cersei accepts the title of Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

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Daenerys' powerful stance exemplifies her accomplishments of gathering an army to take back what was stolen from her.

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Lyanna Mormont brings up how the Lords refused to help the Starks in their time of need.

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Lyanna Mormont - Straight Outta Bear Island