#anti grrm
I don’t think grrm treated any character as badly as he treated Jeyne Poole. She bullied Arya because she was Jealous of her and wanted what Arya would get easily - a good marriage to a lord and he gives that to her in the worst way and it feels kind of like some kind of twisted punishment. After being kept in a brothel and being “trained” for two years from the age of eleven she gets to have Arya’s life, return to her home and marry a lord but that lord is Ramsay Bolton, the biggest sadist in westeros who puts her through unimaginable torture and she’s forced to keep being Arya even after her escape because as Jeyne she’s worthless to the northern lords who aided in her rescue and she can’t get her identity back without suffering severe consequences, a reminder that Jeyne Poole has no value unlike Arya Stark. Not only that, but she becomes disfigured and her body is permanently scarred which again feels like punishment for making fun of Arya’s looks so she essentially loses her own looks. Her abuse is described in horrible detail but we never get her POV not even one small chapter to give her some agency in the story where she has none. It all really rubs me up the wrong way especially when I see people say that she deserves it or that they don’t care about what happens to her because she was a bully as a child (did jon deserve to die by the hands of the men of the nights watch for bullying them? No? But Jeyne’s suffering is deserved apparently) or because she’s simply an unimportant character. GRRM has written a lot of disturbing shit and it is what we readers expect but he really went too far and crossed the line with his cruelty towards Jeyne Poole.
Grrm calling his fans Internet assholes for wanting him to freaking finish his books he started 25+ years ago is honestly so funny to me. Him saying he never made such promises when in fact he actually did is pretty much a slap in the face to his fans. We can all just agree to headcanon whatever we want for the characters because the series will never be finished. Grrm should just admit it tbh.
let’s talk about age in asoiaf
grrm claims to have based a song of ice and fire off the war of the roses. which is true, i’m not trying to say that it’s not true because you can see that he did take inspiration from the people and events of that era in his works.
the obvious one being House Stark’s name coming from the House of York, and the name House Lannister being based off the House of Lancaster. However, unlike in the show, both the Houses of York and Lancaster are cadet branches of the House of Plantagenet, which is why the war of the roses is also called the cousins war. But none of the five kings are cousins or slightly related, except for Stannis and Renly, obviously.
there are many, many other things i could point out but that would be besides the point. this isn’t an analysis on the inspirations of history within a song of ice and fire. i really am only bringing up the fact that this era, specifically the fifteenth century and some early sixteenth century elements from the tudor era, because of what grrm choses to change about actual history.
which is the fact that most of the characters in asoiaf are too young to be historically accurate. half of the main cast are literal children. daenerys is thirteen in the first book, while robb and jon are fourteen. sansa is eleven, arya is nine, and bran is seven! this is actually insane and i don’t think people talk about how unnecessary and unrealistic it is for them all too be that young!
robb stark (like robert baratheon) has some parallels to king edward iv. he goes to war against the family that wrongfully beheads his father, much like how edward and his cousin, the earl of warwick or “the kingmaker”, went to war after edward’s father was beheaded by king henry vi and his wife, Margaret of Anjou, who manipulated the duke of york’s downfall much like how Cersei did. but in real life, edward iv was nineteen when he was coronated king. robb was barely fifteen years old! why couldn’t he be nineteen too? why does he have to be a minor when his youth and inexperienced would still be believable at nineteen?
personally, it has just always bothered me how young this entire cast is. why couldn’t jon and robb be nineteen at the beginning of the story, with daenerys being seventeen going on eighteen.and age up the younger stark kids too, take inspiration for their ages from the real siblings of edward iv.
but this really became a problem for me with how normalized child brides are in this universe, when in reality, marriages occurred at older ages, or at least waited until their mid to late teens to consummate the marriage.
let’s compare some historical women of this time period and when they got married with some of grrm’s ladies:
elizabeth of york was twenty years old when she married the twenty-eight year old henry tudor. this is older than any of the women of robert’s rebellion (except for elia, who probably got married when she was 22-23). catelyn was eighteen, lysa was sixteen, and cersei was seventeen. lyanna stark was fifteen when she and rhaegar got together. none of these ages care completely historically inaccurate but the question is… why couldn’t they be in their twenties during this period and in their forties in the main timeline?
her mother, elizabeth woodsville, was fifteen when she married the twenty year old sir john grey, and she was thirty-two years old when she married the twenty year old edward iv. in a song of ice and fire, Cersei Lannister is ridiculed as an old bride for the like twenty-five year old Willas Tyrell, despite being the same age as woodsville, who gave her second husband like ten children. the sexism and ageism wasn’t needed.
cecily neville (the duchess of york and mother of edward iv and richard iii) was married when she was fourteen years old and richard of york was righteen, but their first child was only born when she was twenty-four years old. this causes me to believe that they married while she was young to secure the alliance, but their marriage was probably only consummated later, considering they only had a child ten years after their wedding.
rhaella targaryen was married off when she was probably thirteen and is fourteen or thirteen when she gives birth to rhaegar, and is unable to have another living children for sixteen years! why did they have to get married so young! at the time of their marriage, there were plenty of targaryen heirs and there wasn’t a ton of pressure to secure the line of succession.
anne neville was fourteen years old when she married the sixteen year old Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales. however, it remains unknown if this marriage was ever consummated. personally, i think margaret of anjou was smart and she didn’t let them consummate the marriage, so she could have it annulled if their plotting didn’t work out. anne later married richard, duke of gloucester, the future richard iii, king of england, when she was sixteen years old and he was twenty years old.
sansa stark is twelve when she married tyrion! and in the books he actually tries to consummate the marriage with the literal twelve year old! people expect the twenty-six year old to consummate his marriage with the twelve year old! in reality, they probably would have waited until sansa could successfully carry a child to term or else she would be useless to them. while the lannisters don’t care about her, she was also the key to the north, and without a son from her womb, they were fucked. and they would probably need a spare. a twelve year old cannot do that! and they knew that back then!
case in point, margaret beaufort, the mother of henry vii and the matriarch of the tudor dynasty. she was married four times. the first time when she was a small child, and it was never consummated. it was a political marriage, to give her child husband’s family control over her wealth and lands. but the marriage was annulled. she married edmund tudor, when she was twelve years old and he was twenty-three. and the marriage was consummated. and this was uncommon! edmund consummated the marriage so that it couldn’t be annulled, so he could have access to her wealth. but as a result, margaret had a difficult birth of her only child, henry, and she never got pregnant again, despite being married twice more, and potentially one of those marriages might have been consummated. consummating the marriage when she was that young, and having a baby when she was thirteen caused her to be infertile for the rest of her life.
just like daenerys. except without the implication of witchcraft and dragons. daenerys is inspired both parts by margaret beaufort and her son henry vii, who lived in banishment for a significant period of his life and who took a red dragon for his sigil much like the targaryen banner having a red dragon.
also, with the exception of katherine howard, all of Henry VIII’s wives were adults when he married them. catherine of aragon was twenty-four years old. anne boleyn was around the age of twenty-six to thirty-two years old. jane seymour was twenty-nine years old. anne of eleves was twenty-five years old. katherine howard was seventeen years old. and aatherine parr was thirty-one years old. so, why do people treat women older than sixteen as old maids in asoiaf when many women back then got married around similar ages as they do now (except for howard)?
MY POINT, which i may have lost with all this history bull crap, is that grrm didn’t have to make his characters- especially his female characters, so young for the story to function. it would have worked just as well if they had been aged up a few several years to fit more with their historical counterparts of this era.
Ned Stark: he has the personality of a man in his late forties or fifties, but is thirty-five years old for some reason. I would have made his age closer to his historical counterpart Richard, Duke of York, and be like forty-nine years old.
Catelyn Stark: as the wife of Ned Stark, her age would be closer to Cecily Neville, the Duchess of York, so around forty-five years old.
Cersei Lannister:she’s actually pretty accurate. as the queen much despised and known for her desire for power, and the dubious nature of her children’s parentage, and the role she played in a certain beheading causing a massive civil war, she’s clearly meant to be like Margaret of Anjou, who was about thirty when the war of the roses began.
Robb Stark & Jon Snow:as stated previously, i would have just made them like eighteen or nineteen, like edward iv. this still makes them young, but not literal children.
The Stark Children:just age them up in accordance with their age differences in the books. Sansa would now be fifteen, instead of eleven. Arya would now be like thirteen, instead of nine. Bran would be like eleven, instead of seven (which is actually closer to the age of the Princes in The Towers that he is based off). Rickon would be about seven instead of three, so maybe he could have done something significant in the book, or at least have a personality.
Daenerys Targaryen:while it may still work as a parallel for margaret beaufort, she’s much more like a henry vii than a margaret. so, age her up in accordance with what I said about robb and jon, since she’s only a year younger. now she’s more like seventeen or eighteen, instead of thirteen.
i hope my rant was able to make some sense. writers make choices. grrm chose to make his characters significantly young, when their historical counterparts were much older and he was aware that women didn’t get married off the moment they had their first period. child brides weren’t that common, and neither were huge age gaps. not every woman was margaret beaufort. many were elizabeth of york, marrying in her twenties. and some married in their teens with other teens. or they married as children and waited to consummate when they were older.
the show, despite the criticism it gets for it’s casting, was so much closer to reality with some of it’s choices than the book ever was to presenting the reality of the ages of brides during the war of the roses era.
