Feminism, Fire & Blood, and Fucking Memes

I just want to complain about something real quick.

I've seen memes about King Jaehaerys the Conciliator, a prominent character in George R. R. Martin’s novel Fire & Blood, being a chad and an unsettling amount of takes on how his kids were troublemakers and the girls were sluts and how cool Jaehaerys was to call Saera a whore, and I just want to address a few things about that. Firstly, the method and purpose of these stories and the key theme of feminism across Fire & Blood, and secondly the public cultural perception of these stories and how it seems many are misreading the satire.

I love that the book is written by a clearly biased source (despite a lot of people somehow reading him as unbiased and shit) but it does kinda suck how his biases cannot be confronted in the text and therefore a lot of people do take everything as they are, so when he goes on about how much of a slut Saera was, the audience believes him.

But even with that, it should be very obvious to the reader that the whole point of these girls stories are to show how shit this society is for them, a sort of prelude to Rheanyra's whole story later on in Fire & Blood.

Seara is considered a whore by Jaehaerys long before she actually became one, not because she was paid for sex, but just because she had sex at all. She slept with three men, yet later Jaehaerys would say that it was half the court.

Also, Jaeherys and Gyldayn go on to say how she abandoned the king (when he imprisoned her and she escaped) and how she threw and old women down the steps (one of her gaolers) and "tried to steal a dragon" (when really all she did was try to claim one, you know, like Targaryens do), it's all written to be clearly misrepresented by these characters. The duel between the Stinger and her father is darkly comedic when you think about how two men who supposedly love Saera might fight to the death over ownership over her while she is forced to watch and has no say in the matter, this is not a good thing, as George R. R. Martin is trying to make this obvious but go to any forum about these things and there are people who think Jaehaerys was in the right and Saera was in the wrong.

What she was punished for was not immoral in any way. Hell, her cruel jape towards the fool was far worse because it actually hurt someone and yet she isn't punished for that at all, the greater crime in the eyes of these characters was that she had sex.

Compare that with Viserys and Daemon's comments in episode 4 of the show House of the Dragon (which takes place decades after Saerra’s story), they fucked their way through the street of silk and faced no consequences, because they were men. Saera slept with three men, who were pretty much just her friends. George R. R. Martin is basically giving Saera the experience of a normal popular girl of today's world and today's sensibilities but putting her in a horribly sexist world to focus on how sexist and controlling this patriarchal society is.

And yet some people seem to hate Saera for apparently being such a bitch, for being a slut, for becoming a whore, and think Jaehaerys was cool for hating his daughter, for killing her lover, for imprisoning her.

Fire & Blood is absolutely a feminist story critiquing a patriarchal society and it's wild that so many people don't seem to even notice that, and many others outright disagree.

This whole chapter pretty clearly explores that. Daella is one of the most obvious examples, a young girl forced to marry and have children when she clearly doesn't want to and clearly is not healthy enough to do so, and it costs her her life. Alyssa is the other side of this coin, she enjoyed having sex and wanted to birth many babies but still died due to complications of childbirth, again showing how women's battlefield in this world is in the birthing bed and it doesn't matter how willing you are, you can still die all the same. One could argue Maegelle is treated best and that's literally because she is extremely submissive and pretty much devotes herself to hiding away from drama, and even she ends up dead from the act of nurturing too (all these "womanly" duties that men seem to dismiss as not that serious are pretty damn serious apparently).

Viserra's story is also clearly a critique of this sexist society too. She was to be married off to a Northern lord, but because she is the woman she had to move up there instead of him coming down here, and she would be trapped there while men are oft allowed to go off and do as they please. More importantly, while no one would have balked at someone like Aemon or Baelon or Daemon of Viserys going out drinking and racing and whoring on their last night of freedom, Viserra is simply not allowed the same luxury, and that means when she does reach for that kind of experience she must go without any support, so no real guards of kingsguard, leaving her unprotected, unsafe, and leading to her death.

We've already touched on Saera but Gael is basically the same story to a lesser extent, she was seduced by *one* man and got pregnant, and then the babe was stillborn and Gael walked into the sea due to her depression. Not only is it also the consequences of childbirth, but the man gets off scot free and the woman suffers, and most importantly, we're probably not getting the whole story here. Sure, lack of sources on Gyldayn's part, but it seems like GRRM is trying to get us to think about this; we know how Jaehaerys treated Saera, so imagine after all that how mad he would have been towards Gael, perhaps he may have even been more mad, thinking he was too lenient on Saera. We are told it was the stillbirth that gave Gael her depression and made her commit suicide, but it seems just as likely that it could have been Jaehaerys's abuse towards her that caused it. After all, we get absolutely zero reactions from Jaehaerys during Gael's whole death scene.

Additionally, Vaegon’s storyline in this section of the book could also be read as a critique on a bigoted ableist society’s treatment of asexual and/or neurodivergent people, as he both has no interest in women (or men) and he seems to have difficulties interacting with people “normally” or warmly, but that is a discussion for another time.

And it continues through the book, from Rheanys's bid for the throne and the Second Quarrel to everything we're seeing in House of the Dragon.

I don't know if it's because it's not a typical feminist story that has women overcoming these odds or becoming strong "because" of their suffering (instead showing some of them being strong "despite" their suffering as well as the realistic portrayal of most people simply not being strong enough to deal with such repression, oppression, and suffering) or if it's because assholes have turned people against feminism and have made people think poorly of things like feminist readings or feminist theory, but for one reason or the other a lot of people either simply don't notice Fire & Blood is a feminist book, with others outright arguing against it.

So, it's painful and shit to see so many memes going on about Jaehaerys being a cool guy and his daughters being sluts. It kind of just feels like repackaged sexism. Like, George R. R. Martin is a feminist who has clearly written a feminist story, but because of how it is written, a lot of sexist chuds will take this at face value, will agree that Saera was a slut and that Jaehaerys should have done what he had done, and they will simply be willfully and maliciously blind towards the fact it's supposed to be critiquing those behaviors. When satire is adopted by those it's satirizing, it can be bastardised into ruining the work itself, which is what I'm afraid of.

Anyways, I'm loving Fire & Blood a lot so far, fucking loved the scene about the roads, and I can't wait to read on.

(Art by nicaminoru)