Out for Blood: Reactions to Women Bleeding

In the show and books, Game of Thrones treats blood as a symbol of a women’s ability to have children, and therefore ability to be married. In the show, Sansa Stark is horrified to wake up to find that she has started her period. She wakes from a nightmare where she is being harassed to find blood all over her sheets. In this scene the focus is on her blood that has stained her sheets instead of the blood on her. She rushes to get a knife to cut out the stain and Shae walks in and immediately starts helping her hide the blood, which they are eventually unsuccessful in doing. Sansa’s blood was the focus of this scene. After, Sansa confesses to Cersei that she did not expect it so messy and Cersei tells her that childbirth is worse. The obsession with Sansa’s “flowering” is connected to her ability now to have children, specifically Joffery’s children, so they can now marry. In this example, a medieval woman bleeds to show her ability to have children. She is scared of her own blood while everyone else was anticipating it. As Sansa is now scared of the king, the thought of having his children is something is desperately avoiding. The same acceptance and usefulness of women’s blood is seen with Dany as she prepares to marry Khal Drogo. She is described as being ready for marriage because “she has had her blood” (34). Again women’s blood is connected to their ability to have children and therefore, in this scenario, their individual worth.

Another example of blood from the show is in the scene between Ygritte and Jon Snow in which Ygritte assures Jon that “girls see more blood than boys.” Here is another reverse to women’s menstruation and childbirth but this time it is in a superior tone. Ygritte portrays women’s almost indifference to blood as a strength they have over men.

From the book A Feast for Crows, Cersei does not talk of blood in menstruation; instead it is something that is showing her weakness. Curse has a dream that she is sitting on the Iron Throne but it is almost attacking her as the sharp edges cut into her skin. The description of the dream is vivid: “blood ran red down her legs, as still teeth gnawed at her buttocks…The more she struggled the more the throne engulfed her, tearing chunks of flesh from her breasts and belly, slicing at her arms and legs until they were slick and red, glistening” (Martin 65-66). Here blood seems to be Cersei’s punishment for wanting to hold a man’s position and gain power. Cersei imitating a man has caused her to bleed and her blood is not praised for what it brings or a sign of strength but rather a sign of her weakness and shortcoming.

For these female characters, the presence of blood takes on several different meanings and can either be an unwelcome sentence or a symbol of their power.

Who runs the world?; Female Empowerment

Gaining power as a woman in the medieval, and neo-medieval, times was difficult and often required being married to the right person. Unlike today where feminism is circulating through society and a woman being in charge is not so far-out, in the past women struggled to gain power. 

However, they did not fail to gain power. Through stealth and strategic political manipulation females were able to reach points of power. In the case of Emma in the tale of Encomium Emmae Regina she was able to briefly gain power through marriage and being the mother of the king. In Game of Thrones Daenerys is able to gain power through a strategic arranged marriage. 

Though the arranged marriage was made by her brother and with the intention to bring him power, it ultimately empowered Dany. It made her the queen of a powerful group of people and it also empowered her to stand up against the abuses of her brother. This empowerment happened when she was allowed to feel like she had self-worth. When she was just with her brother, she was abused and not respected or given any sort of power over decisions regarding her future. Once she was allowed to be placed in a position of authority, Dany was empowered. In the third chapter focusing on Dany, this empowerment starts to show through her resistance of her brother’s abuse and her increased comfort with giving orders, her title, and her husband. 

In Encomium Emmae Regina, Emma was able to find empowerment by being the mother of the king. This was possibly one of the most powerful positions in the kingdom, even above being Queen, which was a position that she also held. The most influential kind of power that she could have obtained was indirect power. This indirect power would have been exercised by influencing her son and exerting her power over him as her mother to have him influence the kingdom in the way that she wanted. It is because of this power that leads Emma to back up one of her sons to be king over the rest. While she has been criticized for this, her motives for empowerment and influence justified her selective support. 

Now, do not read this and assume that the females in these stories did not have this inside of them before they gained power. This empowerment was merely suppressed for survival reasons. If Dany were to have defied her brother before she had become a queen, she would have been severely beaten for it. Their empowerment was waiting to come out at a time when it was safe for them to exercise their power. 

Sibling Rivalry: Power Play in "A Game of Thrones"

In George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, the progression of the relationship between Daenerys Targaryen and her brother Viserys shows Darnerys development as a woman of power. In the beginning, Daenerys is subjected to Viserys power over her, as she has no choice but to endure his cruelties in fear of “waking the dragon” (29). He thinks of her as his property that he can sell to Khal Drogo for his own personal gain in getting his crown back. When she marries Khal Drogo, she is no longer, in this sense, her brother’s property. While she clearly does not have freedom in the way she belongs to Khal Drogo, she becomes more in control. This agency begins when she takes away her bother’s horse so he has to walk back to the khalasar, which “among the Dothraki” is “the lowest of the low” a man can be to have his horse taken away (231). Viserys threatened her for giving him a simple command but he cannot fathom the idea of her being more powerful than him. This is seen before at Daenerys and Khal Drogo’s wedding when Viserys is made to sit in a place below the Khaleesi causing “his mood” to grow “blacker by the hour at each insult to his person” (101). In her marriage and new position though, Daenerys has the power to not submit to her brother’s will. She, backed by the Dothraki, has the ability to control her brother. Ironically, it was Viserys’s own actions that caused him to loose his power over his sister. He used his sister as a means to get back power without taking into account her wishes and in doing so he lost his control over his sister and is still no closer to his crown, giving him even less power than he had before. While she does not have power over her husband, she is no longer under the power of her brother. The Dothraki people honor her and in this way she holds Viserys fate in her hands.

Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen

Daenerys new sense of self-empowerment is seen, after she stands up to her brother, in her sexual affairs with Khal Drogo. She leads him outside and does not pay attention to the rest of the Dothraki watching them, as “it was nothing to her” being justified in her position: “was she not the khaleesi?” (236). Her sex life was still not under her control but she was starting to use her situation to her advantage.

Khal Drogo and Daenerys

The moment that Daenerys stands up to her brother is a turning point in her evolution of becoming more in control of her own actions and decisions.