In asoiaf, Tyrion Lannister is far from a perfect character, he is a rapist and misogynist (though who isn’t a misogynist in Westeros, unfortunately) and given that he is one of very few characters that actually acknowledges that pubescent children are, in fact, children, it is more glaring than others when reading that he is what we would now consider a pedophile (or rather, hebephile, but I feel using those terms are often used in apologia for such things rather than what we use as the umbrella term, to the point that it derails the conversation, so I stick with pedophile). When I sought to commission art of him, I was really more so interested in his relationship with Tywin than anything else regarding his character. I’ll talk about this relationship later, but I wanted to touch on something else first. When I first had the idea for this commission, I searched for artists that had drawn Tyrion before. What I noticed was for a recurrent POV character, there was a lack of art for him in comparison to other characters. I then got told by some people that a lot of asoiaf artists refuse to draw Tyrion which alarmed me but that’s their right to do as an artist. But then I started looking at the art that was available, and it made me deeply uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good pieces out there of him, but a lot of artwork for him makes him look like a monster or beast, inhuman. Tyrion is not described as attractive, but he also is not a goblin or ghoul. He is a person and he looks like a person, even if he’s lost his nose or is generally unattractive. Tyrion is not a fantasy creature, he is a human being and depicting as physically being a monster bothers me because his disability is not of the fantasy variety. He has dwarfism, which many other people throughout history and today also have. His presence as a person rather than a separate species (as dwarves often are in fantasy series) is really good representation. What I’ve found is that people use his really horrible and disgusting decisions as a human to justify being ableist to him and being able to talk about him in a way that is downright disgusting. Other characters that commit the same crimes are not treated in that way. Tyrion does not live in a vacuum and the rampant discussion of him as a creature does reflect only on him, but onto real people with dwarfism. Something in particular I’ve heard a lot is a recurrent “joke”, I guess, about Elia being a saint because only a saint could find baby Tyrion cute, that he had a face only a mother could love. Tyrion hadn’t done anything yet, he was a baby. He was not some monster or abomination, there is not justification for how Cersei or Tywin treated him as a baby. They aren’t treating him that way because he’s later a rapist, they don’t care about that, in fact, they both participate in some sort of sexual assault happening to Tyrion (Cersei to Tyrion as a baby and Tywin to Tyrion in his pubescence). They’re treating him that way out of misplaced anger and ableism. That is unacceptable. What we hear about the rumors of Tyrion’s birth that spread to Oldtown are meant to show how ableist Westeros is, as we know all the things said about his physical appearance aren’t true. Yet fans play right into it. People are frothing at the mouth to be ableist and use Tyrion as some “moral” way to do so. I would like to encourage people to think about who could be reading, such as a person with dwarfism or any kind of physical deformity, comments made about Tyrion’s appearance, especially as a young child. All that to say, hearing how people talk about Tyrion and how a lot of people draw Tyrion, definitely made me want to do this commission more to show that he was just a child once, children are not generally born evil. He was just a kid who happened to have dwarfism and people treated him unfairly for it.

Now on to my actual commission idea: lately I’ve been wanting to talk about and depict more serious/complex topics in my commissions, more or less so we as a fandom can have a discussion about them. With this commission and my Viserys and Daenerys commission, I wanted to talk about and show what it means to be abused by someone that is supposed to care about and protect you, someone you’re stuck with/tethered to. This is hard enough on anyone’s mind, but even more so on a child. These sorts of relationships are confusing for children, partially because they’re trying to figure out what they can do to change it or what they’ve done wrong (nothing) but also partially because it’s almost impossible for a relationship this consistent to be all bad all the time. Let’s take this artwork as an example: Tyrion canonically loved dragons as a child. He dreamed of being a Targaryen prince and having his own dragon. He wanted a small one, like himself, for his name day. His uncle let him know that dragons had gone extinct. In this artwork, Tywin knows that Tyrion loves dragons but of course, he can’t receive one, so he has a cloth one made for him for his fifth name day. In my mind, he has left it in Tyrion’s chambers for when he wakes up, because he doesn’t want to give it to him directly, he has too much disdain for him for that. But Tyrion figures that the present is from his wealthy father, so excitedly goes and thanks him, as well as shows him the dragon. This sets Tywin off, he’s angry that Tyrion assumed he would give him something, so he tries to cover it up by saying that the dragon is stupid and Tyrion isn’t even a Targaryen, so he could never ride a dragon and it was foolish to pretend. I’m sure this sounds familiar to many people that have been abused by a family member. People are complex and make many decisions that we don’t understand or seem nonsensical. An abusive person can do something nice for you, and for a child, this might spark hope that they do care and things will get better. But things don’t get better for Tyrion, and they don’t get better for a lot of child abuse victims. It’s a cycle of being let down and confused. Tywin shows some form of concern for Tyrion’s safety throughout his life: one example is forbidding him from going with Tyrion’s uncle Gerion to Valyria, as he correctly viewed it as foolish and dangerous. Tywin easily could have gotten rid of Tyrion, who he obviously views as a problem, without kinslaying. But he doesn’t; this is mainly chalked up to a sense of duty and portraying his House as untouchable. I agree that this is the main reason why he keeps Tyrion “safe” (at least physically) and provided for. But Tywin also commits acts against Tyrion that have nothing to do with duty and are downright cruel. Keeping Tyrion alive is Tywin’s duty, but having Tysha and Tyrion raped when he could easily get the marriage annulled instead is not duty, and I don’t think Tywin was under the delusion that it was. All in all, Tywin is an abuser. He verbally abuses Tyrion and had Tyrion sexually abused. He’s also a human and does things that contradict each other and I’m sure were confusing to a young Tyrion. Most people, including even Tywin probably, don’t wake up and say “how can I be the most evil today?”. They do things that may seem good or kind, but that doesn’t make them redeemable or keep them from being abusers. Abusers usually aren’t the boogeyman committing evil all day every day. So that was what I was trying to show: a hope in a child, but also that Tyrion was a child once being unjustifiably abused, and that’s not funny.

Tumblr is a much more reasonable place than Twitter these days, so I’m hoping this goes over well. People were really nice on here about my Daenerys and Viserys commission. People weren’t so kind on Twitter about that. I was accused of being a Viserys apologist because I relayed the events of his life and dared to suggest that he once cared about Daenerys, which was probably confusing for her as she ended up being abused by him. I hope this commission isn’t taken the same way. I don’t think calling out ableism makes me a Tyrion apologist and I don’t think saying Tywin probably didn’t portray himself as a monster 24/7 makes me a Tywin apologist (please Lord shoot me if I ever become an apologist for a sexual abuser/child abuser). I probably will crash out if I have to deal with braindead “apologia” takes again. I don’t think there’s much hope for us if we can’t even talk about a character or hard topics without it becoming apologia, because that results in ignoring large swaths of canon and not understanding characters.!I fear for media literacy if that becomes the case.