Thank You For Your Answer!! I Sent This Ask Before Creating This Blog.

Thank you for your answer!! I sent this ask before creating this blog.

On the consummation of their marriage: I do still believe that was rape; by saying he was gentle I only meant that he did not physically harm her and seemed upset by her tears, in contrast to subsequent couplings where she was in pain and he didn’t care when she cried.

I really wish Irri or Jhiqui had been a perspective character. I’d really like to know what other Dothraki thought of Drogo and his relationship to Dany. Or even Doreah, although she’s not Dothraki, she is a grown adult unlike Dany, Jhiqui, and Irri, and would have more wisdom.

Her marriage to Drogo is so sad. I really think her love for him is a coping mechanism. Many victims come to love their abusers and will excuse their actions endlessly, which is a really difficult mindset to escape. It was also likely a product of the way Viserys abused her. Viserys was overtly violent and threatened her routinely, and she loved him anyway. Drogo, who offered her protection, must have seemed much better. When someone has been abused by someone so close to them for so many years, they may fail to recognize what it really means to be treated with love.

What do you think of Khal Drogo? As someone who relates to and projects onto Daenerys more than any other fictional character, I have really complex feelings about him. I relate to Dany so much that I feel what she feels as I read. I felt her fear of him at first, then her love, and her grief. But as a 24 year old woman now, I cannot help but feel revulsion in my gut about a man older than I am bedding a girl of her age. I know that we can assume taking wives that young was acceptable for the Dothraki but it still twists my gut that he felt attracted to her. I also question the nature of their love. She certainly loved him, but was it a love born out of Stockholm syndrome? Of survival? Did she come to love him because if she didn’t, she would’ve gone mad? And did he truly love her? He was gentle when they consummated their marriage but then continued to bed her even when she cried. Did he simply love her as the mother of his unborn child? Would he have loved her had she not conceived? There’s also the matter that he declared that he wanted to rape the wives of Westerosi knights and enslave their children, which are things that are obviously condemnable, things that Dany herself is not okay with. What do you think?

Hi nonnie! I totally understand relating to Dany, so first of all there's nothing wrong with feeling her love and grief for Drogo. It just means Dany's chapters are very well-written, and Dany is herself a very-well written character. You can feel what she's feeling when you're reading and still know that Drogo raped her. If some people come at you for this, ignore them.

He did rape her even the first time. Some will argue that she said yes in the end, but she said no before. She was sold to him, she spent the whole chapter fearing what would happen, and she didn't have a choice. What would have happened if she hadn't finally said yes, one time? He would have let it go? Of course not. I also have to talk about the reactions someone’s body can have, as it’s used to say Drogo didn’t rape Dany as much as her finally saying “yes”. It happens more often than people think it does. A man can be raped by a woman, for example, and his body will react to make it possible. I’m trying to not be too graphic here, but it’s important. Well, a woman’s body can also have a reaction that people will consider as consent, when it’s not. This belongs in the list of the very long reasons why a victim of rape or sexual assault will not consider themselves as a victim, or will not dare to go to the police nowadays.

Another thing: when I say Dany was sold to Drogo, I'm not just talking about an arranged marriage which benefits both parties, like it happens in Westeros. First, the Dothraki culture is very different (for example, Drogo could have shared her), and Illyrio made profit of this wedding, which means she was traded. She was a slave, not just a woman in an arranged marriage. She knows what it's like, and that's why she's fighting slavery afterwards.

Basically, Dany didn't have a choice during her marriage to Drogo. Never. Yes, she cried. Yes, she was afraid. Yes, he raped her more than once, because she didn't consent. And saying yes once (although I’ve talked about how this “yes” doesn’t mean it wasn’t rape) doesn’t mean you consent for the next times. While the concept of marital rape didn't exist in those times, we know what it was:

“Yet every night, some time before the dawn, Drogo would come to her tent and wake her in the dark, to ride her as relentlessly as he rode his stallion. He always took her from behind, Dothraki fashion, for which Dany was grateful; that way her lord husband could not see the tears that wet her face, and she could use her pillow to muffle her cries of pain.”

Daenerys III, A Game of Thrones

She thinks about suicide as the only way out:

“Day followed day, and night followed night, until Dany knew she could not endure a moment longer. She would kill herself rather than go on, she decided one night.”

Daenerys III, A Game of Thrones

She made the best of her situation though, to survive. What's interesting in Dany's chapters is that she blames her brother Viserys. I'm not saying she's wrong, but she's not blaming Drogo. Why? Because after adapting to the Dothraki culture, Dany felt safe with Drogo, loved even. It's called being an unreliable narrator, and as we read Dany's chapters in the first book, we can start thinking she's with a man she loves and who loves her. It's not the case: she's his slave. It’s only when Dany stops showing weakness that he seems to care about her. But Drogo also had a powerful impact on her. Dany starts to make decisions and come into power after her marriage to Drogo. She starts to stand up to her abusive brother after her marriage to Drogo. So her own feelings towards Drogo are still very confused:

“Do you know what it is like to be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though not as he had wished, and I... my sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have forgotten how it felt to be afraid?”

Daenerys II, A Storm of Swords

This is just one example, but while Dany is against slavery and does realize she was Drogo’s possession, in her mind Drogo was good to her.

No, I don't believe Drogo ever loved Dany. The nicest things he says about her is when she's carrying his son. But it's very hard to guess what Drogo is thinking, as we don't have his POV. In fact, a huge issue with GRRM is that he doesn’t give any backstory to Drogo or any Dothraki. We do have a backstory or a POV for characters who are abusers and/or rapists, but they’re white. Without knowing anything about Drogo besides Dany’s thoughts, it’s easy to either romantize him or villainize him more than the others.

In the Dothraki culture, for Drogo, there’s literally nothing wrong with what he said he would do to get the throne for his son (again, it’s not for Dany). She’s not okay with it, because as much as she adapted to the Dothraki culture to survive, she’s against rape and slavery. She put a stop to the rape and enslaving of the Lhazareen women because she believes it to be wrong, despite having come to value aspects of the Dothraki culture.

“Princess”, he said, “you have a gentle heart, but you do not understand. This is how it has always been. Those men have shed blood for the khal. Now they claim their reward.”

Daenerys VII, A Game of Thrones

When Jorah tells her this, he’s stating a fact. Is there even a word for rape in Dothraki? They don’t understand why Dany says she wants no rape, she’s even being told that those riders do honor to those women. Why am I going there, after explaining that Drogo didn’t love Dany, that she was raped many times, that she was a slave? Because you asked me what I thought of Drogo, not just his relationship with Daenerys. And the answer is: I don’t know, because I don’t know him, only what he did to Daenerys.

After finishing reading AGoT, I have a brand new hope for a way the books may differ from the show. I want to see Sansa snap. I want Sansa to be violent. I want her to get her hands dirty!!

In the show, yes, she’s responsible for the deaths of Ramsey and Littlefinger, but they’re detached kills carried out by someone else. I’d much less likely she’ll kill Ramsey in the books since I know that her marriage to him was a show exclusive, but I wouldn’t mind a bit if she did it on behalf of Jeyne. And I can only hope she kills Littlefinger with her own two hands.

To me, Sansa seems like a character who has believed her whole life that that beauty, politeness, and grace are the keys to her safety. If she can be ladylike, she will be safe. I interpret her desires for Arya to be more of a lady as, at the heart, a desire for her sister to be safe. The songs tell of lovely, happy things, so if she can keep things the way they are in the songs, it will bring safety and happiness and the heroes will win. This is a reasonable conclusion a kid might draw. Kids often fail to recognize what they actually want and misidentify the true sources of their anxiety because they simply lack the self awareness. It wouldn’t be a stretch for a child’s internal, subconsciously narrative to take “the gentle and graceful ladies of the stories are happy and safe” and conclude that “beauty and manners will make a girl happy and safe.” Combine that with a desire for her family to be safe, and it all gets expressed as a desire for Arya to be ladylike. I could imagine that at her core, it’s not politeness that Sansa truly values. She has no reason to care if Arya likes dresses. It’s safety she wants, but she’s a child who doesn’t know how to voice that.

But it seems to me like the books are setting her up to learn that these things, these “feminine” qualities, will not save anyone. To be a lady means nothing. Lady was murdered. And I want her to be ANGRY about it. Angry that she wasted so much time and energy trying to be the perfect image of a noblewoman. And I want her to lash out. I think she definitely has it in her, based on her last chapter in AGoT. She thinks multiple times about wanting to hurt others. She is FURIOUS.

He did not hate her, Sansa realized; neither did he love her. He felt nothing for her at all. She was only a … a thing to him. “No,” she said, rising. She wanted to rage, to hurt him as he’d hurt her,

Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him,

A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, “Maybe my brother will give me your head.”

And my favorite:

All it would take was a shove, she told herself. He was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with those fat wormlips. You could do it, she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn’t even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn’t matter at all.

I can only hope that’s foreshadowing. I hope that, in an impulsive act of violence and rage, she pushes Littlefinger off the Eyrie. Nothing proper or calculated. A simple moment where that madness overtakes her and all the rage she’s had comes out in final shove.

touched up my old portrait of jon a little 🖤

“All in black, he was a shadow among shadows, dark of hair, long of face, grey of eye.” 

I have never stopped believing that there’s a better ending for these two.

Are you tired of being nice?

Don’t you just want to go ape shit?

Hi! You may have noticed tag games on my tumblr. I enjoy it, it’s fun and it reminds me of when everyone used to do it years ago. But while I had no problem knowing who I could tag 10 years ago, it’s a bit more complicated know because I don’t know most people here well enough anymore. So if it doesn’t bother you to be tagged, like this post to let me know for future tag games :)