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Afterword: Playing, Winning, and Losing the Game of Thrones—Reflections on Female Succession in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones in Comparison to the Premodern Era

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Queenship and the Women of Westeros

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Abstract

This chapter draws connections between the chapters in this collection, the female characters of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, and historical examples from the premodern era. It looks specifically at female succession and examines the development of frameworks for accession which favoured male claimants in both the premodern era and Westeros. It notes the ways in which Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, Yara (Asha) Greyjoy, and Sansa Stark both reflect and transgress historical examples of female succession as unique blends of inspiration from the past rather than a duplication of the experience of any specific premodern queen.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Sheilagh Ilona O’Brien, “Wicked Women and the Iron Throne: The Two-Fold Tragedy of Witches as Advisors in Game of Thrones”, Chap. 10.

  2. 2.

    See Armin Wolf, “Reigning Queens in Medieval Europe: When, Where and Why”, in Medieval Queenship, edited by John Carmi Parsons, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998, 169–188.

  3. 3.

    Elena Woodacre, The Queens Regnant of Navarre: Succession, Politics and Partnership, 1274–1512, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 21–25.

  4. 4.

    George R.R. Martin, Elio Garcia and Linda Antonssen, The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones, New York: Random House, 2014, 21.

  5. 5.

    See Sheila L. Ager, “The Power of Excess: Royal Incest and the Ptolemaic Dynasty”, Anthropologica 48.2 (2006): 165–186.

  6. 6.

    George R.R. Martin, Fire and Blood: A History of the Targaryen Kings from Aegon the Conqueror to Aegon III, New York: Harper Voyager, 2018, 341.

  7. 7.

    Martin, Fire and Blood, 341.

  8. 8.

    Martin, Fire and Blood, 350–351.

  9. 9.

    See Sarah Hanley, “The Politics of Identity and Monarchic Government in France: The Debate over Female Exclusion” in Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition, edited by Hilda L. Smith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 289–304; Craig Taylor, “Salic Law, French Queenship and the Defence of Women in the Late Middle Ages”, French Historical Studies 29.4 (2006): 543–564 and Philippe Contamine, “ ‘Le royaume de France ne peut tomber en fille’; Fondement, Formulation et implication d’une théorie politique à la fin du Moyen Age”, Perspectives Medievales 13 (1987): 67–81.

  10. 10.

    Woodacre, Queens Regnant, 51–61.

  11. 11.

    See also Derek Whaley, “From a Salic Law to the Salic Law: The Creation and Re-creation of the Royal Succession System of France” in The Routledge History of Monarchy, edited by Elena Woodacre, Lucinda H.S. Dean, Russell E. Martin and Zita Eva Rohr, London: Routledge, 2019.

  12. 12.

    See Karl Leyser, “The Anglo-Norman Succession 1120–1125”, in Anglo-Norman Studies XII; The Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1990, edited by Marjorie Chibnall, Woodbridge: Boydell, 1991, 225–242 and Martin, Fire and Blood, 360.

  13. 13.

    George R.R. Martin, “The Princess and the Queen, or The Blacks and the Greens: Being a History of the Causes, Origins, Battles and Betrayals of That Most Tragic Bloodletting Known as the Dance of Dragons, as Set Down by Archmaester Gyldayn”, in Dangerous Women, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, New York: Harper Voyager, 2013, 703.

  14. 14.

    See Marjorie Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother, and Lady of the English, Oxford: Blackwell, 1991 and Catherine Hanley, Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019.

  15. 15.

    “Stormborn”, Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 2. Dir. Mark Mylod. 2017, HBO.

  16. 16.

    Jyoti Phulera, “Queenship and Female Authority in the Sultanate of Delhi (1206–1526)”, in A Companion to Global Queenship, edited by Elena Woodacre, Bradford: ARC Humanities Press, 2018, 53–66, 58.

  17. 17.

    “The Door”, Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 5. Dir. Jack Bender. 2016, HBO.

  18. 18.

    Valerie Estelle Frankel, Women in Game of Thrones: Power, Conformity and Resistance, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014, 96–97.

  19. 19.

    Mikal Gilmore, “George R.R. Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview”, Rolling Stone, Culture News, April 23, 2014, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/george-r-r-martin-the-rolling-stone-interview-242487/

  20. 20.

    Carolyne Larrington, Winter Is Coming, 3.

  21. 21.

    Nicole M. Mares, “Writing the Rules of Their Own Game: Medieval Female Agency”, in Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood, edited by Brian A. Pavlac, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017, 149.

  22. 22.

    Charles Beem, “The Royal Minorities of Game of Thrones”, Chap. 9.

  23. 23.

    Kavita Mudan Finn, “Queen of Sad Mischance: Medievalism, ‘Realism,’ and the Case of Cersei Lannister”, Chap. 2 in this volume.

  24. 24.

    Larrington, Winter Is Coming, 114.

  25. 25.

    Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun, “Westerosi Queens: Medievalist Portrayal of Female Power and Authority in A Song of Ice and Fire”, Chap. 3 in this volume.

  26. 26.

    Mikalya Hunter, “‘All Men Must Die, But We Are Not Men’: Eastern Faith and Feminine Power in A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones”, Chap. 7 in this volume.

  27. 27.

    Beem, “Royal Minorities”, Chap. 9.

  28. 28.

    James J. Hudson, “A Game of Thrones in China: The Case of Cixi, Empress Dowager of the Qing Dynasty (1835–1908)”, Chap. 1 in this volume.

  29. 29.

    Jonathan Clements, Wu: The Chinese Empress Who Schemed, Seduced and Murdered Her Way to Become a Living God, London: Albert Bridge Books, 2014, 6–7.

  30. 30.

    Elisabetta Colla, “When the Emperor Is a Woman: The Case of Wu Zetian (624–705), The ‘Emulator of Heaven’ ”, in A Companion to Global Queenship, edited by Elena Woodacre, Bradford: ARC Humanities Press, 2018, 13–26, 14.

  31. 31.

    Lynda Garland, Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium 527–1204, London: Routledge, 1999, 86.

  32. 32.

    See Alexandra Karagianni, “Female Monarchs in the Medieval Byzantine Court: Prejudice, Disbelief and Calumnies”, in Queenship in the Mediterranean: Negotiating the Role of the Queen in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras, edited by Elena Woodacre, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 9–25.

  33. 33.

    Curtis Runstedler, “Cersei Lannister, Regal Commissions, and the Alchemists in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire”, Chap. 6 in this volume.

  34. 34.

    Shiloh Carroll, “Daenerys the Unready: Advice and Ruling in Meereen”, Chap. 8 in this volume.

  35. 35.

    See Orel Belinson, “Female Rule in Imperial Russia: Is Gender a Useful Category of Historical Analysis?”, in A Companion to Global Queenship, edited by Elena Woodacre, Bradford: ARC Humanities Press, 2018, 79–93.

  36. 36.

    Sher Banu A.L. Khan, Sovereign Women in a Muslim Kingdom: The Sultanahs of Aceh, 1641–1699, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017, 253.

  37. 37.

    See Jack Weatherford, The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.

  38. 38.

    Elizabeth Beaton, “Female Machiavellians in Westeros”, in Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones and Multiple Media Engagements, edited by Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart, London: Bloomsbury, 2016, 193–218, 204.

  39. 39.

    Linda M. Heywood, Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017, 119.

  40. 40.

    Heywood, Njinga, 124.

  41. 41.

    Frankel, Women in Game of Thrones, 159. Estelle Paranque, “Daenerys Targaryen as Elizabeth I of England’s Spiritual Daughter”, in Remembering Queens and Kings in Early Modern England and France: Reputation, Reinterpretation, and Reincarnation, edited by Estelle Paranque, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

  42. 42.

    See Jonathan Keates, William III and Mary II: Partners in Revolution, London: Penguin, 2015.

  43. 43.

    See Alexander Samson, “Power Sharing: The Co-monarchy of Philip and Mary”, in Tudor Queenship, edited by Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 159–172.

  44. 44.

    See Theresa Earenfight, “Two Bodies, One Spirit: Isabel and Fernando’s Construction of Monarchical Partnership”, in Queen Isabel I of Castile; Power, Personage, Persona, edited by Barbara F. Weissberger, Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2008, 3–18 and Barbara F. Weissberger, “Tanto Monta: The Catholic Monarch’s Nuptial Fiction and the Power of Isabel I of Castile,” in The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe, edited by Anne J. Cruz and Mihoko Suzuki, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009, 43–63.

  45. 45.

    Elena Woodacre, “Questionable Authority: Female Sovereigns and Their Consorts in Medieval and Renaissance Chronicles”, in Authority and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Chronicles, edited by Juliana Dresvina and Nicholas Sparks, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012, 383–384.

  46. 46.

    “The Last of the Starks”, Game of Thrones, Season 8, Episode 4. Dir. David Nutter. 2019, HBO.

  47. 47.

    “The Last of the Starks”.

  48. 48.

    “The Last of the Starks”.

  49. 49.

    “The Iron Throne”, Game of Thrones, Season 8, Episode 6. Dirs. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. 2019, HBO.

  50. 50.

    Kris Swank, “The Peaceweavers of Winterfell”, Chap. 5 in this volume.

  51. 51.

    Danielle Alesi, “The Power of Sansa Stark: Female Agency in Late Medieval England”, in in Game of Thrones versus History: Written in Blood, edited by Brian A. Pavlac, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017, 161–170.

  52. 52.

    See Woodacre, Queens Regnant, passim.

  53. 53.

    “The Winds of Winter”, Game of Thrones, Series 6, Episode 10. Dir. Miguel Sapochnik. 2016, HBO.

  54. 54.

    Swank, “Peaceweavers”, Chap. 5.

  55. 55.

    Rachel Andrews, “Sansa Stark’s Final Game of Thrones Costume Is Full of Hidden Meanings”, Pretty 52, http://www.pretty52.com/entertaining/tv-and-film-sansa-starks-final-game-of-thrones-outfit-is-full-of-hidden-meaning-20190521?source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2l9SDDr_mPwOnOo0Zs-APuw0OxSksvzOhuFGCaIL9itc2pPyenaqQx9B8, accessed May 21, 2019.

  56. 56.

    Shiloh Carroll, Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2018, 67.

  57. 57.

    “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”, Game of Thrones, Season 8, Episode 2. Dir. David Nutter. 2019, HBO.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Department of History, University of Winchester, Winchester, Hampshire, UK

    Elena Woodacre

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  1. Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Zita Eva Rohr

  2. Salem, MA, USA

    Lisa Benz

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Woodacre, E. (2020). Afterword: Playing, Winning, and Losing the Game of Thrones—Reflections on Female Succession in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones in Comparison to the Premodern Era. In: Rohr, Z., Benz, L. (eds) Queenship and the Women of Westeros. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25041-6_11

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