{"id":58173,"date":"2019-05-27T09:07:01","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T13:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=58173"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:55:47","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:55:47","slug":"dolgert-game-of-thrones-finale-the-sexist-treatment-of-the-mother-of-dragons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2019\/05\/dolgert-game-of-thrones-finale-the-sexist-treatment-of-the-mother-of-dragons\/","title":{"rendered":"DOLGERT: Game of Thrones finale: The sexist treatment of the Mother of Dragons"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stefan Dolgert, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, wrote a piece recently published in\u00a0the\u00a0National Post<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>about the sexist tones found in the Game of Thrones finale.<\/p>\n

Dolgert writes:<\/p>\n

This story contains spoilers for Season 8 of HBO\u2019s Game of Thrones.<\/em><\/p>\n

Game of Thrones has ended, and all is well \u2014 especially with the long-suffering Starks of Winterfell.<\/em><\/p>\n

Arya has forsaken revenge and is off to explore new lands, Jon Snow is back in the true north with his faithful direwolf, Ghost, Sansa is the Queen in the North for a newly independent realm and Bran the Broken is the near-omniscient ruler of the Six Kingdoms. Westeros is truly the land where dreams come true.<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, there is the small matter of why Jon is back with the Night\u2019s Watch \u2014 he murdered his lover, queen and aunt, Daenerys \u201cDany\u201d Targaryen, the self-proclaimed Mother of Dragons who had finally just reconquered her family\u2019s ancestral throne.<\/em><\/p>\n

This incident (so traumatic to Dany\u2019s fans) was justified in the show when Tyrion convinced Jon that Dany was now a crazed dragon-riding tyrant (apparently inheriting this touch of insanity from her father, the Mad King), who needed to be assassinated after she burned much of King\u2019s Landing to ashes in the penultimate episode.<\/em><\/p>\n

And really, the writers didn\u2019t need Tyrion\u2019s speech to make this point, given they\u2019d just depicted Dany as a Disney villain (Maleficent) by framing her in front of her dragon\u2019s outstretched wings while giving a Triumph of the Will-style pep talk to her troops.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to go along with this notion of Dany as Mad Queen, and accept the good feelings that accompany the triumph of the righteous Starks. But what if, instead, Dany is the real heroine of the series, and Jon is the real heel?<\/em><\/p>\n

Much of the case against Dany depends on the supposed insanity that fuelled her destruction of a city, but I offer another perspective \u2014 drawn from Renaissance political thinker Niccolo Machiavelli \u2014 to explain why Dany is not \u201cmad\u201d at all, but rather an avatar of cold-blooded realpolitik.<\/em><\/p>\n

Continue reading the full article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stefan Dolgert, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, wrote a piece recently published in\u00a0the\u00a0National Post\u00a0about the sexist tones found in the Game of Thrones finale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,6,38],"tags":[7943,5513,42,3427],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58175,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58173\/revisions\/58175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}