[ SECRET POST #5232 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5232 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 34 secrets from Secret Submission Post #749.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[sparklywalls]

Perhaps I've never spoken to the "right" history nerd people, but I've never seen Margaret Beaufort (as a child bride/mother) used as something positive to emulate in fiction considering what happened to her very nearly killed her and meant she was unable to have any other children. I'd definitely side-eye any ASOIAF/GOT fans who used that example in front of me.

I mean, I'm saying all this knowing very well that medieval rich people values in particular were very different to our own. Though generally it wasn't consummated with one so young. But I'll accept it if it's historical fiction based on an actual thing. But one of my major issues with historical fantasy fiction is the amount of horrific shit that gets justified as "ah just the way it is" when I'm like, ok I'm pretty sure I never studied a period of history where there were actual wizards and mythological creatures running around. I'm probably fighting a losing battle here but I feel that if you have a history-inspired world that isn't our own (real Earth with actual Earth history) you don't HAVE to have 12 year olds being raped on their wedding night and having to give birth to the point of being rendered infertile at 13.

[(Anonymous)]

+1
I especially hate how gross people say that the marrying of young girls was because of their "fertility" when injury, death, and infertility are often the effects of being forced to give birth at such a young age.

[(Anonymous)]

+2

Mte.

[bookblather]

I'd like to add that it was really only the aristocracy getting married that early (most other people, the average age for marriage was somewhere in the mid- to late twenties), and having sex with the child bride in question was almost unheard of. People weren't dumb back then, they knew getting pregnant that early would probably severely injure the girl. There are a couple of young brides who got pregnant (Eleanor of Castile, Henry IV's first wife Mary de Bohun), but they were almost always married to boys their own age (Eleanor's husband was fifteen to her thirteen, Henry and Mary were fourteen and twelve), and in both cases their guardians separated the couple and gave them a stern lecture about getting pregnant too early.

Edmund Tudor impregnating Margaret Beaufort at twelve was absolutely gross and horrible in 1456 and he did get a lot of flak for it. His cleaned-up modern reputation is largely the responsibility of Henry VII and Margaret herself trying to make their family line look good.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, and this is something that very commonly happens today in areas of the world where (mostly due to poverty) young girls are married off very early, and end up dying in childbirth or living with severe birth injuries. There's a reason why fistula hospitals aren't a thing in most countries anymore.

[sparklywalls]

+1 to all this as well.

It infuriates me that in their quest to justify fantasy about fucking underage girls, people (especially gross men) forget young brides were a wealthy people thing to secure alliances etc and generally it was a case of keep them away from the marital bed for a while.

And everyone always conveniently forgets peasants/lower orders, who the vast majority of us would’ve been, who married at ages more similar to now e.g. 20s+

[(Anonymous)]

Considering the parallel in this case is to Daenerys, who also nearly died giving birth (to a stillborn child, no less) and was rendered infertile as a result, I don't really think it was meant to be positive in ASoIaF either, no matter what some fanboys' hardons would like people to think.

Generally when people defend things like child brides in fantasy literature, though, they're defending the author's choice to include that part of history or popular perception of history. They aren't defending the practice.

[(Anonymous)]

I think Game of Thrones is a case where the author tries to have their cake and eat it too. There is some amount of Male Gaze with how things relating to sex, even if it's supposed to be bad, are written. Even in the show adaptation, there were interviews with the showrunners about how much effort was made to get the "sex scenes" right. The rape scenes had porn actors hired to get it "just right".

I don't think that trying to have your cake and eat it too is a matter that's unique to GRRM or the showrunners. I think they come from the same social framework that chooses to have negative things that are written with titillation and plot progression together.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, the problem for me in ASOIAF is that they have very young girls being married off (and occasionally young boys) which is fair enough but then it's very male gazey about the young girl's boobs in particular. Even from her own POV. The TV show aged Dany up and she was still very young.