When Season 6 of Game of Thrones kicked off, — with Daenerys Targaryen uncowed by her Dothraki captors, Melisandre revealing herself to be even more formidable than we knew, and Brienne pledging loyalty to Sansa after saving her from capture by her monstrous husband’s minions — many said that the show, often criticized for misogyny, had entered a Year of the Woman. (There was also the quick and bloody female-led coup in Dorne, if you could remember that misbegotten storyline long enough to care.) And, when it came to female empowerment, the rest of the season didn’t disappoint.
Dany, who briefly faced the bleak choice of either sexual slavery or lifelong confinement as a Dothraki khal’s widow, wasted no time getting the upper hand and smashing the patriarchy — or rather, burning it to ashes along with the warlords who made the mistake of underestimating girl power. When she was done, the khaleesi had a vast new army of loyal men more than ready to fight for a woman. By the season finale, she had routed the slavers who had tried to take Meereen, acquired a navy, fully harnessed her air force of three living, flying, fire-breathing war machines, and won over the cynical Tyrion. And now she’s headed to Westeros.
Part of that navy, by the way, comes from another tough woman — Yara Greyjoy, rightful queen of the Iron Islands, whose Viking-like people could give the Dothraki a few pointers on machismo. A born warrior and leader, Yara got cheated out of her throne by a half-psychotic uncle who played on the islanders’ male chauvinism — but her brother Theon knows she should rule. When last seen in the season’s penultimate episode, Yara was offering Dany an alliance to conquer King’s Landing, bonding over their shared history as daughters of mad and bad dads, and trading banter about lesbian marriage. (Not that Yara’s proposing, but she’s “up for anything” — no idle boast, judging by an earlier scene with a prostitute in a port.)
Speaking of King’s Landing, there’s a new monarch in town, and her name is Cersei Lannister. Cersei, who plumbed the depths of humiliation at the end of the last season as she was forced to walk the streets naked in penance for her sins, has made a spectacular if horrific comeback. In the finale, she used wildfire to blow up the Sept of Baelor with most of her enemies inside (the Faith Militant and the Tyrrells). She paid a high price for her victory, as her distraught son Tommen committed suicide by jumping from a window in the Red Keep. But Cersei’s grief seems to take a distant second place to her obvious pleasure in power and revenge.
So is the game of thrones now a clash of queens? Not entirely. Sansa Stark could have completed the quartet as Queen in the North and Ned Stark’s trueborn heir and the person mostly responsible for retaking Winterfell from the Boltons. Yet she stands aside for her putative half-brother Jon Snow. But that enigmatic look and smile she exchanges with master schemer Petyr Baelish, her mentor and suitor in a creepy “If I couldn’t have the mother…” way, suggests she may have long-range plans of her own. And besides, Jon’s ascension to kingship succeeds mainly thanks to the backing of a new character who represents literal girl power: Lyanna Mormont, the small but fierce child ruler of Bear Island who stingingly rebukes the other northern lords for their failure of loyalty to the Starks.
And speaking of Starks, the other Stark sister, Arya, has her own impressive arc, ditching her budding career as a professional assassin, reclaiming her name, and embracing her role as family avenger with gusto.
The women of Game of Thrones are impressive not just because they are allowed to be as good as the men, but because they are allowed to be as bad. (Granted, Ramsay Bolton holds the undisputed title in the badness department, but sadistic one-dimensional villainy is pretty boring no matter what package it comes in.) At times, the show softened Cersei’s character compared to the books, giving her moments of emotional openness with Tyrion, absolving her of responsibility for the massacre of her late royal husband’s illegitimate children, and making her more of a victim of abuse in her loveless marriage. Now, Cersei has solidified her status as a full-fledged villain, though far from a one-dimensional one. Using wildfire to burn her enemies makes her kin to the series’ Ur-Villain: “Mad King” Aerys Targaryen, whose atrocious plans turned Jamie into the the Kingslayer.
The heroines, too, have their dark side. Sansa, now a shrewd political player, holds things back from Jon, and her gruesome revenge on Ramsay is well-merited but nonetheless disturbing. (What’s more, the show suggests a parallel between Sansa and Cersei. Sansa walks away while Ramsay is torn apart by his own dogs, his final screams ringing behind her back; when Cersei walks away while her erstwhile tormentor Septa Unella, screams and whimpers in the hands of zombie Gregor Clegane, the shot is uncannily similar.) Ditto for Arya’s revenge against Walder Frey. Daenerys, who sends away her now-inconvenient lover with cold detachment and relishes the havoc she unleashes on those who would wrong her, may yet turn from hero to villain.
Game of Thrones has earned plaudits for its season of the feminist: more women taking the lead, less sexual violence. But maybe now it’s time for “meninists” to start complaining. Leading male characters, notably Tyrion and Jon, spent much of this season being ineffective and waiting for a woman to take charge; Jamie, too, was largely reduced to trailing Cersei and doing her bidding like a lovesick puppy, though at least he showed himself a capable commander at Riverrun. (Of course, now that Cersei has killed half the capital and indirectly brought about the death of their sons, that has changed.) And while abuse toward women has been toned down, some of the graphic brutality meted out to males borders on violence porn. Consider the Sand Snakes’ grisly dispatch of Dorne’s Prince Trystan, a phallic-looking pike rammed into the back of his head and through his face. Or the carnage at the Battle of the Bastards, where throats were ripped out and bodies torn in half.
Whether or not the showrunners made an intentional effort to do better by the show’s women (they have denied it), the female-driven storylines this season deserve the praise. But what will happen in the show’s remaining time? Will there be cries of misogyny when Cersei gets her inevitable comeuppance as any male villain would? Will some critics see an insidious attempt to malign strong and independent women if some of its morally ambiguous heroines evolve in a darker direction? Or have the women of Game of Thrones proven themselves enough that their stories, like the men’s, can be judged on merit and not gender?
