but she stepped out all the same

"Their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut her fathers head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them."

Sansa Stark.

People say they want “realistic medieval women,” but the second a female character actually behaves like someone raised in a brutal patriarchal feudal society valuing marriage, children, family duty, reputation, religion, social survival, they start calling her weak, annoying, regressive, or evil.

A lot of audiences only like “historical” female characters when they secretly think like modern people with modern freedoms and modern feminist language. The second a woman feels too authentically shaped by her world, people get uncomfortable because she stops functioning as easy wish fulfillment.

That’s why characters like Alicent, Catelyn, or Sansa get more hatred than dragonriding fantasy characters. They feel closer to the actual emotional and political realities of aristocratic women in medieval-inspired societies: constrained agency, strategic marriages, motherhood as political survival, soft power instead of brute force, emotional repression, power through diplomacy and social intelligence.

Meanwhile people are more forgiving toward characters wrapped in spectacle (dragons, prophecy, magic, warfare, chosen-one narratives) because fantasy aesthetics soften or distract from the harsher social realities underneath.

While ordinary, non-magical, vulnerable, often powerless women and girls are treated far too often like the real villains of the story - when they're anything but.

Catelyn being annoying and giving Jon the cold shoulder will never be enough to make her a bigger monster than Tywin. Sansa being painfully naive and bickering with her sister will not make her a bigger monster than Ramsey Bolton. Nor, will Alicent having the audacity to defend her children ever make her as monstrous as Blood and Cheese.

Even without dragons (which, obviously, real medieval women didn't have), women had real power and agency.

Widows were entitled to 1/3 of their husband's lands/incomes—even if they remarried.

Men couldn't enter business, sell property, or get a loan without their wives' permission. A deal could be voided if she didn't sign.

(Shoutout to @aegor-bamfsteel post about the Law of Six and how in Westeros, only women get punished for adultery.)

And medieval queens?

Matilda of Boulogne (King Stephen's wife) was a countess in her own right. She ran the administration for their lands and was the reason Stephen lasted as long as he did during the Anarchy. She actively led troops and managed military campaigns. That's the woman Alicent or Helaena should be based on. Neither actively participate in the war, worse, in the show, they are sitting around waiting for things to happen, like Rhaenyra. (And no, I don't mean literally picking up a sword. A person can lead a war without fighting. Like Tywin)

Isabella of France, the woman people compare to Cersei, successfully led a coup against her husband and put her son on the throne. You can debate how she did as regent, but she did it.

And she was far from the only queen to go to war against her own husband. Constanza Manuel's family went to war twice after her husband cast her aside and imprisoned her.

On child marriage: Margaret Beaufort is NOT the example.

She was used as a cautionary example of why you shouldn't consummate marriages that early.

Eleanor of England married at 9 to the child king of Castile. First child at 19. (The marriage was about a border dispute, that was why it was done so early)

Warwick the Kingmaker married at 10. His wife was 8 and a very rich heiress with no brothers. Their first child, Isabel, was born when she was 25.

Mary de Bohun married at 12 but lived with her mother for 4 years. She moved in with Henry IV at 16, first child at 17.

Isabella of Valois (the youngest English queen consort ever) was 6 when she married, widowed at 11. She lived her entire time as queen apart from her husband.

Eleanor of Provence married at 12-13, first child at 16.

Isabel of Aragon married King Denis of Portugal at 11, but the marriage wasn't consummated until she was 17.

Denis’ father, Afonso III, married his second wife when she was around 9 (Afonso desperately needed legitimacy and alliances since he usurped his brother). Their first child was born when she was 17. (Important to note that he had no successor at the time, yet he didn't sleep with a 13-year-old like Viserys)

And on and on and on. Worse, Asoiaf confirms the maesters and lords know you shouldn't consummate a marriage so young.

This is why a lot of what feels like “medieval gender roles” in ASOIAF is actually closer to modern reinterpretations of the Middle Ages rather than the historical reality itself. That includes things like exaggerated ideas of courtly femininity and simplified contrasts between “soft women” and “hard men.”

At some point, a lot of old houses had main branches die out and only in the last 20 years did people start to look at those last women of old lines and realize they were the Kings mistresses. That those bastard sons inherited those old honors.

And we see, specially in lower classes, couples who didn't marry in the Church. It didn't matter, the law considering them married. And most of the Kings chancellery is him giving out lands and legitimizing bastards, like, dozen of them.

The fact that Robert abandons bastards and the women should be commented on and frowned upon. It is political and economic stupid too.

And its not like Westeros lacks land. I got into a argument about how stupid it is second sons (like Otto) don't have lands on their own right considering the size of Westeros. The land Oldtown controls is bigger than most european countries.

Same for the small council... don't Kings give out lands to their servants? What's the point of wanting to serve the King if you are not a lord? Land owening should be more important than coin.

Westeros, by contrast, presents a much more rigid and centralized model where “the heir gets everything” and younger trueborn sons remain dependent on royal or familial goodwill. That works for narrative clarity to trigger conflict quickly, but this is also missing the whole point of how medieval aristocratic power was so messy.

As I said from HERE:

Henry I treated many of his bastards children very well giving them power, lands, and political marriages. While Viserys had legitimate male heirs three sons who could have been positioned to secure their futures. Yet he did nothing to strengthen them. No strategic marriages, no lands, no titles beyond the bare minimum. He rejected Alicent’s proposal to marry Aegon to Rhaenyra, shut it down, saying it is “her blood” denying her role as queen and mother of the king’s heir. He treated her worse than a mistress, undermining both her authority and her children’s security.

Robert, one of Henry’s most famous illegitimate sons, was made Earl of Gloucester. Henry arranged a marriage for Robert to Mabel FitzHamon, a wealthy heiress.

Aegon, Viserys’s eldest son and legitimate heir, got… a forced marriage to his sister Helaena that gave him ZERO power. No new lands, no independent power, no alliances with other powerful houses. He got nothing to secure his position beyond his birthright, while Henry’s bastard thrived bc his father actively built him up.

Why not build new castles for Aegon, Aemond and Daeron? Grants, rebuilt holdings, new seats, restored castles, governorships, something that gives aegon, aemond, and daeron recognized futures inside the system rather than leaving them in permanent proximity to the succession crisis. Establishing cadet branches could’ve at least created clearer institutional roles and long-term security for viserys’ younger children instead of leaving multiple dragonriding princes politically compressed at the mercy of their sister and uncle.

Because “my half-sister gets the throne and i’m expected to just rely on goodwill forever” is… not exactly a recipe for stability.

And don’t get me started with the whole “he gave them dragon” giving dragons to multiple heirs doesn’t function like distributing land or titles in a medieval system, it functions like multiplying independent claimants to the ultimate weapon and instead of stabilising succession, it actually makes it worse, because it turns every “spare” into a potential threat by default.

I genuinely think the Targaryens would’ve seemed terrifying to a lot of smallfolk, especially during the Conquest or the Dance.

Without their pov, it’s easy just to see them as cool fantasy dragon riders. But from the perspective of a deeply religious medieval society? They must have seemed genuinely uncanny.

Imagine how that looks to them (and probably even some nobles):

An uncanny appearance (being pretty or not, doesn't matter)

riding giant fire-breathing beasts

marrying brother to sister

claiming they are closer to gods than men

Wiping out entire bloodlines

Burning and wrecking places in minutes

arriving from the ruins of a civilization destroyed in an apocalypse

From inside the dynasty, dragons are heritage, pride, identity. From outside, they are weapons controlled by a family that openly violates religious taboos.

Incest is taboo in basically every culture in Westeros. I mean, even the freefolk think sleeping with close kin is a big no-no. It is an offense to the gods.

The dynasty stops looking romantic and starts looking invasive and eldritch.

Like, I would not be surprised if some smallfolk viewed the Targaryens almost like an antichrist figure. In the sense of “these people have offended the natural and divine order, and now the realm is being punished for it.”

So… could the Dance have felt more like some kind of religious horror rather than just a civil war to the smallfolk? Who knows.

Which is why I agree, more povs (or even a short novella) of random peasants during the Dance or the Conquest would’ve been fascinating and kind of funny in a dark way lol. Because the contrast would be insane.

ASOIAF is a series that prides itself on “realistic” medieval politics but GRRM still centers almost entirely on nobles. Peasants barely exist as actual characters they’re mostly an abstract backdrop to highlight war, famine, or plague, not people with agency or stories of their own. We only get two POV lowborn characters. Davos is one, but even he becomes noble-adjacent very quickly through his service to Stannis. And Dunk comes closer to a ground-level perspective, but he’s still tied to knights & courts rather than fully “peasant” life.