George R.R. Martin explains why there's violence against women on Game of Thrones 

 has recently reached a fever pitch. Seemingly not a day passes without a major outlet posting a new, often critical analysis on the subject (though there are exceptions).

EW spoke to author George R.R. Martin to get his perspective on the female characters’ storylines in his bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire novels. Keep in mind the HBO series is sometimes slammed for including scenes that Martin did not write (such as the recent rape of Sansa Stark, which happened to a minor character in Martin’s

), but likewise there are ways in which the show has made its female characters arguably more likeable (such as Sansa’s character in general), or gave them empowering new sequences (such as Brienne fighting The Hound). In general, the show and books operate from a similar creative perspective in terms of how they portray life in Westeros and Essos. 

Martin begins with a familiar explanation—that his saga is based on his longtime fascination with medieval Europe—but he also includes a response to those who say that since Westeros isn’t a real place, that our own history should not be used as a basis for his story. 

“The books reflect a patriarchal society based on the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages were not a time of sexual egalitarianism. It was very classist, dividing people into three classes. And they had strong ideas about the roles of women. One of the charges against Joan of Ark that got her burned at the stake was that she wore men’s clothing—that was not a small thing. There were, of course, some strong and competent women. It still doesn’t change the nature of the society. And if you look at the books, my heroes and viewpoint characters are all misfits. They’re outliers. They don’t fit the roles society has for them. They’re ‘cripples, bastards, and broken things‘—a dwarf, a fat guy who can’t fight, a bastard, and women who don’t fit comfortably into the roles society has for them (though there are also those who do—like Sansa and Catelyn). 

“Now there are people who will say to that, ‘Well, he’s not writing history, he’s writing fantasy—he put in dragons, he should have made an egalitarian society.’ Just because you put in dragons doesn’t mean you can put in anything you want. If pigs could fly, then that’s your book. But that doesn’t mean you also want people walking on their hands instead of their feet. If you’re going to do [a fantasy element], it’s best to only do one of them, or a few. I wanted my books to be strongly grounded in history and to show what medieval society was like, and I was also reacting to a lot of fantasy fiction. Most stories depict what I call the ‘Disneyland Middle Ages’—there are princes and princesses and knights in shining armor, but they didn’t want to show what those societies meant and how they functioned. 

“I have millions of women readers who love the books, who come up to me and tell me they love the female characters. Some love Arya, some love Dany, some love Sansa, some love Brienne, some love Cersei—there’s thousands of women who love Cersei despite her obvious flaws. It’s a complicated argument. To be non-sexist, does that mean you need to portray an egalitarian society? That’s not in our history; it’s something for science fiction. And 21st century America isn’t egalitarian, either. There are still barriers against women. It’s better than what it was. It’s not 

“And then there’s the whole issue of sexual violence, which I’ve been criticized for as well. I’m writing about war, which what almost all epic fantasy is about. But if you’re going to write about war, and you just want to include all the cool battles and heroes killing a lot of orcs and things like that and you 

portray [sexual violence], then there’s something fundamentally dishonest about that. Rape, unfortunately, is still a part of war today. It’s not a strong testament to the human race, but I don’t think we should pretend it doesn’t exist. 

“I want to portray struggle. Drama comes out of conflict. If you portray a utopia, then you probably wrote a pretty boring book.” 

– 5 characters George R.R. Martin wishes were on 

– George R.R. Martin reveals the real-life basis for The Red Wedding 

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