Hegemonic Masculinity and Game of Thrones

Abstract

Born the product of rape to Lord Roose Bolton and an unnamed married woman, Ramsay Snow serves as one of the most memorable villains in the Game of Thrones television series. Despite being the only living child of Lord Bolton, Ramsay retains his status as a bastard, denied the Bolton family name for most of his young life. Living in a patriarchal system structured around nomenclature and lineage, Ramsay is unable to attain the status and means typically afforded to a family’s eldest male child. He is deprived of the time’s conventional avenues of demonstrating masculinity; proudly representing his house, procuring a well-regarded woman to marry and bear his children, and passing down the family name to future generations. Instead, Ramsay accomplishes his masculinity through a series of violent actions, one more vicious than the next. Targeting his battlefield foes and wartime captives, village females, vassals with outstanding debts, his newlywed bride, and even members of his immediate family, Ramsay employs physical violence, sexual brutality, and psychological abuse to present himself as a hegemonic male according to the dominant culture script.