GRRM is writing about sexism in Rhaenyra’s story. The book makes it undeniable that her sex matters she is passed over, doubted, resisted, and judged more harshly bc she is a woman. The Dance shows how weak a woman’s authority is in a patriarchal feudal system, and how quickly that system turns violent when precedent is challenged. In that sense, the sexism is real and unfair and Martin absolutely wants the reader to see that.
But recognizing sexism is not the same thing as endorsing Rhaenyra’s claim. This is where many Team Black readings collapse the argument. GRRM is not writing a story about a woman heroically fighting for a human right to rule. He is writing a tragedy about absolute monarchy & inherited power he consistently treats as corrupt and destructive across ASOIAF.
Martin has never treated monarchy as a moral good. On the contrary, he repeatedly shows that “Rightful claim” is a social fiction enforced by violence, Inherited power does not equal moral legitimacy and Wars of succession are catastrophes driven by elite pride not justice. Rhaenyra’s sex explains why she is opposed. It does not morally justify the war she wages. And Martin makes that clear by the way he writes her rule.
Once Rhaenyra takes King’s Landing the book does not pivot into vindication. It becomes harsher, colder, and more critical. Her paranoia, executions, taxation, and repression are not written as tragic necessities in a just struggle they are written as the predictable consequences of a ruler who believes the throne is owed to her. The story does not say, “Look what sexism forced her to become.” It says, “This is what absolute power does, regardless of who holds it.”
That’s the crucial point many stans refuse to engage with GRRM can believe sexism is wrong while also believing no one has a right to rule by blood. Those two positions are not in conflict. In fact, they reinforce each other. The Dance is not a story about how the realm failed Rhaenyra. It is a story about how the realm is doomed by systems that make people like Rhaenyra and Aegon believe that power is something they are entitled to inherit, defend with dragons, and reclaim through mass death.
So when ppl argue there is a “rightful” inherited claim to absolute power. Being monarch is a human right. Waging war for that right is morally justified if the claimant is oppressed. They are importing modern moral language into a book that is explicitly anti-that logic. Its insane!!
GRRM’s position, as shown by the book, is much closer to Sexism is unjust. Monarchy is unjust. Succession wars are unjust. Being wronged does not make mass violence righteous. Rhaenyra is not condemned because she is a woman. She is condemned because she fully believes in the system that destroyed her and was willing to burn the world to sit atop it.
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