I Do Not Have A Gentle Heart: Some Thoughts on Women in Game of Thrones

So, I recently bought this Game of Thrones t-shirt because I really love this phrase. 'I do not have a gentle heart', that is such a great and descriptive phrase. In case you don't know 'I do not have a gentle heart' describes Dany Targaryen and it's sort of her motto for season 4 of the TV show. Anyway, I got to thinking about what exactly this phrase means.

One of the reasons I like Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire so much, is that the characters are so realistic and well rounded, especially the female characters. 

So often in fantasy novels that take place in a medieval world, the female characters take one of three forms: the tough but noble  do-gooder, the evil queen, and the locked in a tower princess. I think this is partly because  medieval writers had an extremely limited vocabulary when describing women, so fantasy writers who look back to that time period think that only two types of women existed in the medieval age: the paragon of virtue and the disgrace to the human race. What's so often ignored is that no one individual embodies any one of these archetypes. Real people aren't just evil queens or damsels in distress; they're a mixture of both.

And no character exemplifies that principle more than Dany Targaryen. Her unofficial motto, on the TV show anyway, has sort of become: I Do Not Have a Gentle Heart. I think that's a really telling statement because it's so contradictory. I mean, she's not only talking about herself as a person, she's describing herself as a leader. And those two personas, I think we all can agree, are very different. 

I mean, as a person, she's extremely empathetic. She feels injustice very keenly. I mean, she spends most of the third and fifth books trying to free slaves and right wrongs, not the most politically expedient path for someone who's trying to win back a kingdom. I think it's very telling that her people identify her as a mother first and a ruler second. In fact, the reader is first introduced to the idea of Dany as a mother in book one; she is the Mother of Dragons. 

It's the 'of Dragons' part that really makes that statement really interesting. Maybe a mother has a gentle heart, but a mother of dragons? Not so much. Dany is a kind, compassionate person, but as a leader, she's tough and even ruthless. She's a dragon. This is what makes Dany so interesting, her mercy is exceeded only by her vengeance. Does that make her a virtuous or evil queen in the medieval  stereotype? Neither; it makes her an individual.

That's what's great about A Song of Ice and Fire, no one is reduced to an stereotype. Even Cersei, who is practically the definition of an evil queen has depth and complexity. I mean, so what if Dany does not have a gentle heart there's nothing wrong with that. She's Stormborn, the blood of dragons, wearing her heart on her sleeve wouldn't suit her anyway.

Valar dohaeris