Gender and Sexuality

Work in Progress -- The Dragon Demands (talk) 17:33, July 10, 2015 (UTC)

Like the Heraldry page, this article is written from an out-of-universe perspective, first providing context for what the topic was like in the real-life Middle Ages, and then explaining how Game of Thrones handles it.


 * The Wikia organization has staunch guidelines against posting images which feature nudity - Game of Thrones Wiki was contacted by Wikia Staff officers to enforce this policy, and thus this article does not contain such images. An image of a male buttocks is not permissible, though an image of two clothed men kissing is permissible.

=Gender and Sexuality in the real-life Middle-Ages=

Overview
"Sexuality" is a social construct, variable across time and space. While animals engage in sex acts, they attribute no meaning to their behaviors, as they are not capable of intelligent thought - only humans are. "Sexuality" is therefore not the sex act but the meaning and mental framework through which it and and patterns of gender behavior are contextualized and understood. In Victorian England, it would be scandalous for a woman to show her ankles; in the 21st century, women in bikinis appear on the covers of major fashion magazines. In 1950's Hollywood it would be scandalous for a male actor to reveal that he had sex with another man, while in Ancient Greece, sex between men was considered not only acceptable but normal. In the United States or England in the 21st century, polygamy is scandalous - yet in many other contemporary parts of the world it is not, and in the past, many Judeo-Christian biblical figures had polygamous marriages. In certain cultures at different times and places, it was seen as shockingly effeminate for a man to wear his hair long down to his shoulders, while in others, long hair was seen as a sign of virility and masculinity.

In short, patterns of sexuality are not universal and objective constants, but changed over time, and varied from one location and culture to another. Michel Foucault famously argued about the subjective, not objective, nature of social conventions, particularly with regard to sexuality. As Prof. Ruth Mazo Karras, one of the major contemporary scholars on sexuality in the Middle Ages, said:


 * "To suggest that sexual identities, attitudes, and practices in the culture that gave us our legal systems and religious traditions were different teaches us that the way things are, or the way we imagine them to be, is not the 'natural' way but historically contingent."

Medieval people did not conceptualize the world the way that contemporary people do. They did not have an abstract concept of "the nation-state" or of a divide between "Public" and "Private" cultural spheres. This does not mean that modern society is some sort of culmination that previous social models were evolving towards. Modern social values and behavior patterns are not more "advanced", but simply different. Fundamentally, it is wrong to assume that medieval concepts of gender and sexuality were exactly the same as contemporary models.

Thus while there were certainly "men who had sex with men" in the Middle Ages, it would be inaccurate to even call them "homosexual", because "homosexuality" is a specific and subjective social concept. For that matter, "men who had sex with women" in the Middle Ages cannot accurately be called "heterosexual". The homosexual/heterosexual categorization scheme of contemporary cultures did not exist in their culture. They did have categorization schemes, but they had a different basis. Men who had sex with other men in the Middle Ages did not conceptualize what they were doing the same way that contemporary men who have sex with other men do.


 * "...'Homosexuality' [as a concept] is not a thing that one can find in all cultures...to label anyone in the past who had sex with someone of the same sex as 'a homosexual' would be to impose a modern category. The same argument also applies to other categories of sexual behavior:  heterosexuality, bisexuality, prostitution, or any other; the acts may be the same, but each society will determine what the meaning of those acts is and whether they create identities."

Patterns of Sexuality in Medieval Western Europe
It is difficult to talk about "Sexuality in the Middle Ages", because Sexuality is a subjective social construct variable across time and space: concepts of Sexuality in the thirteenth century were different in northern France compared to southern Italy, and concepts of Sexuality in England alone changed between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Several generalizations, however, can be made about broad sub-regions of Medieval Europe:

Factors contributing to patterns of sexuality in Medieval Western Europe:


 * 1 - Religion was a very important social force and institution, and the Catholic Church in Western Europe had a celibate clergy, of male monks and female nuns.
 * 2 - The medieval Catholic Church was dominated by an all-male priesthood.

Resulting major patterns of sexual behavior and conceptualization:


 * 1 - Sex behavior and identity was not seen as divided between heterosexuality and homosexuality, but between celibacy and non-celibacy. In turn, because celibacy was the ideal, the non-celibate were only supposed to have sex purely to produce children, not for pleasure.  Thus for the non-celibate as a whole sexuality was instead centered on a dichotomy between procreative versus non-procreative sex.
 * 2 - "Sex" was strictly conceived of as something a man did to someone else, by penetrating them with a penis. Men and women were not thought of as performing the same act when they had sex with each other.
 * 3 - Therefore, "sexual orientation" was not based on object choice - being attracted to a man or woman - but on the role a person preferred to play in the sex act. Instead of a man thinking "I prefer having sex with women", he thought "I prefer being the penetrator in the sex act", and did not make a distinction between whether he was penetrating a woman or another man.
 * 4 - Because women could join the celibate clergy and become nuns (though not priests), women tended to marry at relatively late ages in Medieval Europe, which in turn fostered a larger degree of social independence and personhood for women than in neighboring societies in which women married at young ages.

1 - Sex as a dichotomy between procreative versus non-procreative sex
Due to having a celibate clergy (unlike neighboring Muslim or Jewish communities), medieval Western Europe did not conceptualize sexuality as a dichotomy between "heterosexual" and "homosexual", but between "celibate" and "non-celibate". Homosexuality or heterosexuality did not conceptually exist as a "sexual identity" - they did have two categories of "sexual identity", but it was based on a divide between celibate and non-celibate. Choosing to join the celibate clergy was a lifestyle choice, and seen as a "sexual identity" in itself.

This is not to say that "Christianity" inherently had a celibate priesthood. Rather, about a thousand years after Jesus's crucifixion, "marriage" was redefined to be something that priests could not do - and then five hundred years after that, the Protestant Reformation redefined "marriage" yet again to be something priests could do. After the year 1000, in the eleventh century, the Gregorian Reform movement gradually spread within the Catholic Church, seeking to remove the corruption caused by secular powers dominating Church affairs. One major principle embraced at this time was that priests had to be celibate, to remove themselves from corruptible worldly attachments (i.e. so a bishop couldn't try to pass down his title to his son). The Gregorian Reform movement embraced celibacy, it let to a major shift in attitudes towards sexuality among the non-clergy as well.

Because society was dominated by this celibate clergy, their writings praised celibacy, and proliferated the view that the only time people were supposed to have sex was specifically to produce children within marriage, as a necessary evil. Therefore, for the non-celibate in Medieval Europe, sex was not defined as a dichotomy between "heterosexual" and "homosexual", but as a dichotomy between "procreative" and "non-procreative" sex. A wife performing oral sex on her husband, or a man performing oral sex on another man, were both seen as more or less equally bad, because to the celibate clergy, neither act would result in children, which was the only permissible form of sex.

The real "sexual identity" dichotomy was between the celibate clergy and non-celibate lay people, and in turn, for the non-celibate the only "acceptable" sex was vaginal penetration explicitly for procreation. Indeed, even woman on top sex positions were also described as "sodomy" and condemned as abnormal: it was widely believed that due to gravity, it was more difficult for a man to impregnate a woman in woman-on-top position, so it was common for couples who wanted to have vaginal sex purely for pleasure to have woman-on-top sex (cowgirl position). Rear-entry (doggy-style) positions between a man and woman were also thought to be less conducive to conception, and were similarly viewed as abnormal. This was condemned by the church, because they ruled that sex was purely for procreation.

2 - Sex as dichotomy between penetrator versus penetrated
Due to being dominated by an all-male priesthood, all social writing and circulated knowledge about sexuality was written from a male perspective (as it had largely been extending back into Greco-Roman times). As a result, "sex" was strictly conceptualized as "a man penetrating someone else with a penis". Men and women were not thought of as performing the same act when they had sex with each other. Men "screwed", women "got screwed", but to say "a woman screwed a man" would seem a contradiction in terms to them. Sex wasn't something two people do together but something one person does to another.

That is not to say that women were thought of as not enjoying sex, they were simply not seen as performing the same action. Because writings on sex were dominated by a celibate all-male priesthood worried about women "tempting" them with lustful thoughts, women were actually broadly depicted as desiring sex more than men did, in keeping with the view that women had little control over their emotions and urges. Even so, it was believed that women had an uncontrollable desire to be penetrated by a penis, not other sex acts. In this medieval conceptualization, if a man penetrated a woman vaginally, they were having sex. If a man penetrated another man anally, they were having sex. If a man performed cunnilingus on a woman, however, because no penis was directly involved they were not conceptualized as having "sex". It was universally believed in all medieval medical writing (all written by men, many of them celibate priests) that the sole source of female sexual pleasure was penetration of the vagina by a penis (and that ejaculation of semen into a vagina was the sole cause of female orgasm, due to a physical/chemical reaction). Therefore, they thought women solely craved penetration and ejaculation. Their entire conception of sex was male-dominated and thus very phallo-centric.

In turn, because sex was conceptualized of as "a man penetrating someone else with a penis", they actually had little conception of homosexual relationships between women. It was not condoned but it was not stigmatized either - celibate male priests who did all of the writing about sexual morals couldn't really understand how two women could physically have sex with each other without a penis ("I don't even understand how two women can make love - unless they just kind of scissor, or something." -- South Park). While on some vague level there were general prohibitions against "a woman laying with a woman as with a man", there are only a handful of court records that show women prosecuted for same-sex relationships: there are only surviving court records for twelve women convicted of same-sex behavior in the entire one thousand year long medieval period, compared to hundreds of court records for same-sex male behavior.

3 - Sexual orientation defined not by object choice but on role in the sex act
Medieval people did not define their sexual "orientation" based on object choice the way modern Western society does, i.e. with a man being a "heterosexual" if he is attracted to women. Medieval sexual "orientation" (for lack of a better word), was based on the role you play in the sex act. Men who preferred to be the penetrator were seen as "normal", women who enjoyed being penetrated were "normal". The practical difference is that if a man penetrated another man anally, it wasn't seen as that much more out of the ordinary than if he chose to penetrate a woman anally - what mattered was that he was the one doing the penetrating. In contrast, a man who enjoyed and preferred to play the passive role in sex, and to be anally penetrated by another man's penis, was seen as abnormal.

This links back to the first point: sex was conceptually divided between procreative and non-procreative sex, not heterosexual/homosexual. A man penetrating a woman anally or penetrating another man anally were both equally "non-procreative", neither particularly better or worse morally/socially for the penetrator. In turn this object choice/role played distinction also stems from the second point: the person doing the penetrating in the sex act and the person being penetrated were conceptualized as performing two entirely separate actions, not just "sex" as a mutualistic experience. Because the roles that men and women performed in the sex act were already seen as two distinct and separate actions, it therefore followed that their definition of "having sex" was based on which of these two different actions they liked to perform, with less emphasis on the biological sex of who they were doing it with.

4 - Women and the European Marriage Pattern
While having an all-male priesthood like Islam or Judaism, Christianity was unlike these neighboring religions in that it had a celibate clergy - not the priesthood, but male monks and female nuns. Judaism and Islam had no equivalent to nuns. The existence of a celibate female clergy encouraged families to wait for better prospective suitors for one of their daughters, because if they ended up waiting too long and she became too old to bear children, they could send their daughter to a convent to become a nun. In contrast, the neighboring Islamic world did not have celibate clergy, and thus once a woman became too old to bear children, and was unable to marry, there were no viable social options for her. Therefore, families in the Islamic world had greater motivation to marry off their daughters sooner instead of later.

This actually had far-reaching effects on the entire social model, because it meant Christian women tended to marry much later in life, to husbands who were closer to their own age. This phenomenon is known as the "European Marriage Pattern": unlike any other region in the world, in medieval Western Europe women tended to marry (on average) at between 20 and 30 years of age, while in most other parts of the world a girl over 20 years of age was often considered to be past marriageable age.

Women who married as soon as they could reproduce (when they first began menstruating, or "Flowering") moved immediately from being a child living under their father as head of the household, to living under their husband as head of the household, socially dominated like a child. If women were married off in their mid-teens, the best suitors were often more financially stable men a decade or more older than them, reinforcing this age and power dichotomy. In contrast, women who married in their late 20's spent far more years living independently, and gaining their own sense of personhood distinct from their husbands. This also meant that they were closer to the same age as economically established men who made good marriage prospects (it was not even uncommon for a woman in her late 20's to marry a man a year or two younger than her). Thus while sex was still seen as something a man did to a woman, the pattern of sexual relationships was actually much more mutualistic.

"Sexuality": Biological Sex, Gender, and Orientation
In the context of academic Gender Studies, the term "Sexuality" encompasses "Sexual Identity" but is an even broader term, referring to the entire realm of human erotic experience and behaviors. This can be further subdivided into three aspects: Sex, Gender, and Orientation:


 * Sex - means physical/biological sex at birth, male or female.
 * Gender - refers to patterns of behavior or identity, such as "masculine" or "feminine" (not necessarily involved with the sex act at all, but day-to-day personality and identity).
 * Orientation - refers to what type of people a person is attracted to sexually: male bodies, female bodies, both, etc.

If a physically male person prefers to have sex with other physically male persons, this is not his "Sexuality" (or "Sexual Identity") - this is his "Orientation", one specific aspect of Sexual Identity. His "Sexuality" encompasses all three aspects, the third one being gender behavior, i.e. masculine or feminine. In early 21st century parlance, one might be a "cis-gendered homosexual male" – meaning biological male who is only sexually attracted to male bodies, yet whose gender behavior pattern is masculine, not effeminate ("Cis" means exhibiting gender behavior typically associated with your biological sex – masculine males, feminine females – while "Trans" means gender behavior commonly associated with the opposite sex, i.e. a male who behaves effeminately). Moreover, the exact definition of what constitutes "masculine" or "feminine" gender behavior is highly subjective and culture-specific. While in the mid-20th century United States it would be seen as effeminate for a male to wear a skirt, a medieval Scottish Highlands warrior would not consider wearing a "skirt" (kilt) to be effeminate.

In contemporary usage, biological sex and gender are considered distinct and separate things. The three aspects are variable, and can mix and match in a dozen combinations. In recent decades there have also been broad social movements away from a strict gender binary to treat sexual identity and gender behavior as fluid, on a sliding scale.

In contrast, in the Middle Ages, because the very definition of sex was so inherently linked to biology - who had the penis and did the penetrating did one action, the one being penetrated did another - sexuality was conceptualized of as a very strict gender binary, with "sex, gender, and orientation" not variable but inherently linked. A person of biologically male sex was believed to automatically express active masculine gender behavior - not just in the sex act but in all aspects of their everyday life - and to have an innate orientation/attraction to women. A person of biologically female sex was believed to automatically express passive female gender behavior in everyday life, and to have an innate desire to be penetrated by a man.

As a result, they had no concept of a "cis-gendered homosexual male", a homosexual male who behaved very masculinely. This is not to say that they would be "offended" by such a man, but rather that they would find it conceptually difficult to understand. If a knight was highly skilled at masculine behavior such as warfare and martial prowess (i.e. Loras Tyrell), many would dismiss the suggestion that he privately enjoyed having sex with men – following the familiar stereotype that "he is too butch to be interested in other men", etc. Indeed, research by medieval historians has generally agreed that King Richard the Lionheart of England (1157-1199) was quite probably a homosexual - or rather, that he had sex with both men and women at different points in his life. Richard I was one of the greatest military leaders and warriors of his age, commanding forces in the Third Crusade, and in many ways was seen as a paragon of "active" masculine behavior - so few in his lifetime seem to have suspected that he would enjoy "passive" sexual behavior with other men in private (however, the point from the famous play The Lion in Winter which alleges that Richard was in fact a lover of King Philip II of France himself is almost certainly apocryphal).

Not every real-life society has a conceptual model of only two genders: some have more than two, and particularly in the developed world in the early 21st century, many now espouse that gender behavior is a fluid spectrum, not rigid categories. Some societies recognize a third gender of biological males whose gender behavior is commonly associated with females. Some societies have not only a third but also a fourth gender, recognizing biological females whose behavior is commonly associated with males (not every society that recognizes a third gender also recognizes a fourth gender). These societies "recognize" more than two genders, in that they consider them to be co-legitimate with the more common "masculine biological male" and "feminine biological female" (though what constitutes "masculine" or "feminine" behavior is culture-specific). Contemporary examples would be the Hijra third gender in the Indian sub-continent, or the "Two-Spirit" individuals in Native North American culture.

In contrast, Medieval Europe did not recognize more than two genders: a biological male who behaved femininely was not seen as a legitimate, separate category of gender - he was simply seen as a defective kind of "male". Similarly, a female who behaved in traditionally "masculine" ways such as participating in warfare (even if she was not sexually interested in other women and exclusively had sex with men) was not seen as a distinct fourth gender - rather she would be seen as a defective kind of "female", a bizarre aberration from the traditional passive gender behavior expected of women.

Eunuchs
The strong belief in the Middle Ages about a direct link between physical sexual characteristics and gender behavior is exemplified by attitudes about eunuchs.

Their definition of the sex act was so phallo-centric that they thought that the possession or lack of a penis directly defined whether someone was "active" and masculine (actively trying to penetrate someone) or "passive" and feminine (passively allowing someone else to penetrate them). Because they saw Biological Sex, Gender, and Orientation as inherently linked, a biological male had a penis and therefore would behave "actively"/aggressively/masculinely - and because their concept of "Orientation" was based on "the role you play in the sex act" instead of object choice, males therefore had an innate drive to be the penetrator. Conversely, biological females didn't have a penis, therefore had an innate drive to be the penetrated one in the sex act, and their gender behavior in everyday life would be passive and effeminate.

According to widespread belief, if a male had his penis removed and was turned into a eunuch (or even if just his testicles were removed), he would therefore automatically exhibit effeminate gender behavior as a result. It was impossible to be "masculine", in their view, without a penis. They also believed that eunuchs would then inherently want to be the one penetrated (anally) in the sex act. Thus there was a widespread stereotype across Medieval Europe of effeminate eunuchs. In truth, if an adult male has his testicles cut off he can still achieve an erection with his penis, but if his testicles are cut off before puberty he cannot achieve an erection as an adult, due to the absence of several hormones supplied to the body by the testicles during maturation. Even so, this stereotype of effeminate eunuchs persisted, even for those who lost their testicles but retained the penis shaft.

These stereotypes about linked gender traits, exemplified by eunuchs, were seen in the neighboring Islamic world as well. A prominent example is in the writings of the ninth century Arabic author Al-Jahiz, observing the Islamic court in Baghdad. The court eunuchs did enjoy passive anal sex (as one of the only remaining body parts they could receive sexual stimulation from), but al-Jahiz was astonished at how masculinely they behaved and their martial prowess:


 * "What is astonishing is that, despite their transferral from the realm of male characteristics to that of females, they are not susceptible to effeminacy...and what is yet more astonishing about them in this connection is how common passive homosexuality is among them, despite the rarity of effeminacy."

Al-Jahiz had assumed that lack of male genitals, effeminacy, and sexual passivity were all linked (though he was open-minded enough to observe that in this case he encountered they clearly were not linked).

Similar stereotypes seem to exist in the world of Westeros and Essos: there is a widespread assumption that eunuchs behave effeminately. Varys self-consciously plays into this stereotype to lull others into thinking he is non-threatening: an effeminate, foppish eunuch used to the soft pleasures of court life. Yet this is all just an act Varys puts on to play into other people's stereotypes.

In the narrative (and the TV adaptation to a somewhat more frequent extent), several characters frequently mock eunuchs for their lack of male genitals. While this may sound very phallo-centric...the society Martin chose to depict is itself very phallo-centric, and such mocking comments were actually quite common in the medieval period (i.e. the go-to insult people repeatedly make to Varys is to point out that he is a eunuch, a point which never seems to get old to them). As a reaction against the idealized and "polite" societies depicted in High Fantasy literature, Martin's more gritty and realistic Low Fantasy setting does have husbands who beat their wives, women forced into prostitution, etc., so it is actually fitting that they would also exhibit stereotypes about eunuchs that contemporary culture would find "politically incorrect".

People from Westeros, with these biases about eunuchs and a phallo-centric definition of gender behavior, would have difficulty comprehending how the Unsullied such as Grey Worm can be elite warriors. "Warrior-eunuch" itself would seem a contradiction in terms to them. They also seem confused that the Unsullied can experience intimate emotions despite having their penises and testicles removed (though another factor making people assume this specifically about the Unsullied - not just eunuchs in general - is that their brutal training is supposed to strip them of all emotion, so they will robotically follow orders). When an Unsullied named Stalwart Shield (called "White Rat" in the TV version) is ambushed and killed while cuddling with a prostitute, Daenerys is confused, and Grey Worm explains that "Even those who lack a man's parts may still have a man's heart".

The mysterious status of oral sex in the Middle Ages
A curious aspect of medieval sexuality is that while there are hundreds of religious or court records describing "sodomy", there are hardly any at all which mention fellatio, perhaps only a dozen or so. Oral sex was rarely if at all mentioned in medieval texts, even to be condemned. Again, this "oral sex" refers specifically to fellatio (stimulation of a man's penis with a mouth), not cunnilingus (stimulation of a woman's genitals with a mouth), because they did not conceptualize "sex" as being able to occur without a penis. There are two theories to explain this mysterious absence of oral sex in the records: the first is that celibate priests with no sexual experience were not imaginative enough to understand fellatio (which doesn't make much sense because they did understand anal sex), while the second (more probable) explanation is that "sodomy" had come to be used as a broad umbrella term for any non-vaginal sexual contact. From what can be gleaned from the few records that seem to refer to oral sex specifically, oral sex seemed to confuse their strict dichotomy of "active penetrator" and "passive one who gets penetrated". The physical mechanics of two men having anal sex were similar enough to the mechanics of vaginal sex not to confuse this dichotomy.

The ancient Romans seem to have considered the man whose penis was inserted into a mouth as the active partner, given that he was "penetrating". In the Middle Ages, however, in some circles at least, there seems to have been some debate in the other direction: in this view, the person performing the fellatio with their mouth is the "active" partner because "they're doing all the work", while the man's penis passively receives the fellatio. In effect, if a wife was performing fellatio on her husband, the entire active/passive roleset was suddenly reversed. This was not, however, a stable definition: the few records that discuss fellatio in the Middle Ages seem deeply confused about who was the active partner and who was the passive one, perhaps explaining why they rarely wrote about it at all. The definition of roles in fellatio remained largely a mystery.

For example, in Season 1 of the Game of Thrones TV series, when Loras performs fellatio on Renly, who can be said to be the "active" partner, and which of them the "passive" partner? Loras because his mouth is being penetrated by Renly, or Loras because this is something he is actively performing and that Renly is passively allowing? ("A question for the philosophers" - Olenna Tyrell).

Patterns of "masculine" and "feminine" behavior
The actual definitions of what constitutes "masculinity" or "femininity" have varied across time and different places. While medieval people did have a concept of a gender binary, confusingly, certain behaviors were seen as masculine virtues and others feminine virtues, but both men and women could exhibit them. This makes more sense in languages which have gendered nouns: "courage" is a masculine-gendered concept (in French: "le courage"), but both men and women can exhibit courage; "mercy" is a feminine-gendered concept (in French: "la miséricorde"), but both men and women can exhibit mercy. They thought that men and women had different mixtures of these virtues and qualities to different degrees, but both men and women still contained a mixture of both. Thus it was possible for a female monarch to be "manful" in her tenacious leadership during war, even if she didn't take to the battlefield.

Women who transcended the weakness of their femininity to exhibit positive masculine traits were called "viragos"- this did not, however, meant that they were suddenly non-women. The nuance is that they thought women were potentially capable of rising to such modes of behavior. Tt was not insulting to call a woman "virago" or "manful", in many contexts, but meant as a compliment. The difference was very subtle and there is intense ongoing academic scrutiny about the nuances of everyday gender behavior. Basically a woman could give orders with firm and quiet determination, but she couldn't shout out orders assertively the way a man could - in short, if a woman's behavior became "bossy", she was no longer behaving in proper ladylike fashion.

One of the more interesting examples of this phenomenon was the Empress Matilda, who fought against King Stephen during the Anarchy in England. Matilda was daughter of Henry I but was usurped by her cousin, Stephen. Accounts say that because Matilda expected to be her father's successor for many years, she grew arrogant, and in many ways was perceived to act like a man, in unladylike fashion, because she openly yelled commands at followers and wasn't demure about it. In Game of Thrones, Catelyn Tully and Olenna Tyrell have a sense of quite but firm determination to protect their families through political action. In contrast, Cersei Lannister frequently gives blunt orders which seem unladylike - even though her father Tywin behaves the same way, and is not similarly criticized for it. The clear analogue of Matilda in the history of Westeros is Rhaenyra Targaryen, who lived about 170 years before the War of the Five Kings. Rhaenyra was the only woman who ever came close to becoming a Ruling Queen in her own right, inheriting the Iron Throne from her father instead of simply being a Queen Consort married to the current king. Rhaenyra was the heir apparent for many years, and it gave her a sense of confidence bordering on arrogance to her enemies, but after her father died the throne was usurped by her younger half-brother Aegon II. The stated reason many had for siding against her and declaring for her brother was that, on a personal level, they felt she was too domineering - even though Aegon II was an even more domineering hot-head prone to petty outbursts of anger. Rhaenyra had hit the medieval "glass ceiling", as many lords were offended at the idea of being commanded by a Ruling Queen, and had no intention of letter Rhaenyra become the first one to sit the Iron Throne. The gender politics of their conflict play out in the recent series of prequel novellas that Martin wrote about the Dance of the Dragons (which may eventually be adapted into a live-action TV project in the distant future).

In aristocratic families during the Middle Ages, a boy's education included martial training, though a girl's did not. Aristocratic boys and girls were usually instructed by tutors in the seven core subjects of a Classical education, divided into the Trivium and Quadrivium. First came the Trivium, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric (i.e. literacy in general), followed by the Quadrivium, consisting of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. For boys and girls, this was often supplemented with study of literature and poetry, theology and Scriptural studies, as well as law - women came to rule or regency often enough that they needed to understand law so they could sign contracts and manage affairs. There was also the possibility that younger daughters would join the clergy and (due to generous donations from their parents) become abbesses managing their own convents, ruling and administering the convent's lands, so they also benefited from training in mathematics and law. Most aristocratic boys and girls were also given instruction in languages, particularly Latin, which all of the major discourse was written in.

Education for aristocratic boys and girls in Westeros generally matches real-life patterns from the Middle Ages (though they don't call it "Trivium" and "Quadrivium" because these are specific Latin terms). Maesters serve as tutors to children of the lord they serve, boys and girls, in core topics such as literacy or arithmetic. When boys are old enough they also train with their castle's Master-at-Arms in the martial arts. Using a sword is a developed skill, like Olympic-level fencing - you can't just pick up a sword and hack at your opponent like children with wooden sticks. This is displayed in Season 1 when Jon Snow easily overpowers all of the other Night's Watch recruits during fighting practice, and Tyrion explicitly points out that Jon has received formal training from the Stark master-at-arms Rodrik Cassel, while the poor commoners he was facing had not. In the TV series, Maester Luwin is seen in Season 1 quizzing Bran on the geographic location and identifies of the Great Houses of Westeros, including their heraldry and mottoes.

Girls, meanwhile, are taught in the "womanly arts" such as sewing, by septas who serve their family as governesses (assuming that Septa Mordane's service to the Stark-Tully family is apparently typical). This is not to say that girls' education was shaping them to remain trapped in a castle all day, sewing, and breeding as necessary. In Arya's first chapter in A Game of Thrones, she mentions that the education she and Sansa are receiving consists of learning to sew, dance, sing, pray, write poetry, how to dress (fashion), and instruments (specifically, Sansa can play the harp and bells). However, Arya also specifically mentions that while she is bad at all of these other traditional "womanly" skills compared to Sansa, she is better at her with numbers - she outright says that girls receive instruction in arithmetic, because they are expected to co-manage their lord-husband's household. The Lady of a noble House rules over the domestic sphere; the Lord's Steward is expected to work with her, but this varies on a personal level: if a Lady is good at math she may want to oversee the management personally, but Arya notes that Sansa isn't very good with numbers and will probably have to rely on her husband having a good steward. Girls are also taught basic horseriding, because it is the primary means of transport (Arya, at nine years old, says she knows how to ride a horse better than the eleven year old Sansa - women are expected to be able to ride for long distances).

Maesters also give boys and girls lessons in foreign languages: High Valyrian is the analogue of Latin in Westeros, a dead language of a fallen empire used by scholars and intellectuals. The novels mention that Arya Stark received lessons in High Valyrian from Maester Luwin, as did presumably all of the other Stark children - but due to her young age she apparently didn't know it well enough to speak yet (when Arya arrives in Braavos she has to spend time learning Braavosi Valyrian). It also depends on how intellectually inclined the student is - Robert Baratheon was probably more interested in martial training than higher education. Tyrion Lannister learned near-fluent High Valyrian from his maester and was a voracious reader on all topics. The bookish Samwell Tarly humbly says that he isn't very skilled at High Valyrian, though he actually knows it reasonably well, but not as well as Tyrion.

Both boys and girls receiving religious training, reading the The Seven-Pointed Star, the holy text of the Faith of the Seven. Boys's education tends to provide more focus on politics, history, and rulership. A point not made clear in the TV series is that it is actually very unusual that Princess Shireen Baratheon has been instructed to read major historical texts about the Targaryen Conquest and Dance of the Dragons. After her father Stannis Baratheon realized that his wife would probably never provide him with a living son, and that Shireen was going to be his only heir, he instructed her teachers to shift to giving her the type of education normally reserved for boys - because he wanted her to be a capable Ruling Queen some day. This is in contrast with Cersei, who didn't care at all about her son Joffrey's education, resulting in him being a barely-educated buffoon who when presented with the Lives of Four Kings, a classic book on the art of good rulership, his only action was to hack it apart with a sword. Shireen is actually better read in texts about the art of rulership than Catelyn Stark or Margaery Tyrell.

Many young girls in Westeros, such as Sansa, look forward to a life of sewing circles, sitting around drinking tea, gossiping, and eating lemon cakes. Others such as Cersei Lannister, Arya Stark, and Brienne of Tarth are not satisfied with this. Cersei notes that she and Jaime were twins and even looked so similar when they were small children that the servants couldn't tell them apart. In the novels, she says a game she used to play was dressing in Jaime's clothes and walking around their castle, fascinated with how differently people treated her when they thought she was her brother. As she bitterly recounts in her drunken rant in Season 2's "Blackwater", when they grew older, Jaime was taken away to be trained in fighting with sword and lance, while she was just taught social manners, how to smile, curtsy, sing, and pray - ultimately to be shipped off in a marriage-alliance. Brienne of Tarth also didn't want to spend her life trying to be "ladylike" and learning how to dress and act (she was naturally very tall and muscular, making her the subject of ridicule), but she managed to convince her father to provide her with formal combat training. In contrast, the women of House Tyrell such as Olenna and Margaery try to use their skills within the framework of traditional femininity to manipulate political power - which is quite important in a political system which is heavily reliant upon marriage-alliances between different noble-families.

Marriage, children, and inheritance
Marriage is a socially recognized union between people that establishes rights and obligations between them and their children. While in a broad sense "marriage" of some kind is a cultural universal found in all human societies throughout history, the exact definitions of "marriage", like conceptions about sexuality as a whole, have varied considerably across different cultures and within the same cultures across time (i.e. some cultures practice polygamous marriages, others do not). Even in Christian Western Europe, strictly speaking, from the fourth to twenty-first centuries there has never been one "traditional" definition of marriage, the definition changed every three or four centuries.

In the pre-Christian Roman era, marriage was a contractual arrangement made by two families to link them together, for political alliance and transfer of property. A son from one family married the daughter from another: ostensibly, the wife would only have procreative sex with her husband and thus marriage confirmed that all of her children were fathered by her husband - which made them "legitimate", confirmed heirs, capable of inheriting his family's property. Men, however, often kept several long-term concubines alongside their wives, who often had official status and certain legal rights. A social/emotional or spiritual union between the husband and wife was not expected, and religious overtones were minimal.

In Late Antiquity, from the time of Constantine around 300 to the Gregorian Reform around 1000, "marriage" remained largely an exclusive breeding contract: primarily focused on the transfer of property, ensuring that any children of this union could lawfully inherit from their parents. "Lawful" simply meant "confirmed parentage" - if a family promised their daughter in marriage to a man, it was a promise that she would only have procreative sex with him and no one else. Many of the recently converted Germanic invaders of Western Europe such as the Franks in the 500's and 600's had polygamous marriages and numerous official concubines. They also frequently had what would later be called incestuous relationships, as many nobles married close-degree cousins to consolidate family wealth (a few Merovingian kings also engaged in polygamous marrages to women who were themselves sisters, to ensure that they would inherit their family's wealth).

The definition of "marriage", and standards about sexuality in general, were drastically changed by the Gregorian Reform movement after the year 1000. “Marriage” was defined as “monogamous, indissoluble..a relationship in which sexual intercourse could give rise to children who could inherit property” in a long, drawn out process over the course of the Middle Ages. It was only at this time that church reformers began to stress clerical celibacy, which soon became a defining feature of western Christianity setting it apart from neighboring religions. This practice of celibacy was not an inherent part of Christianity, though it was argued that Christ never married and thus this was imitating his life and part of an overall rejection of worldly possessions and ties. The newly celibate clergly propogated the concept that sex was a necessary evil that was only acceptable for the specific purpose of procreation, production of "legitimate" children which could only be done between one man and one woman.

At the same time, the western church started attempting to infuse spiritual values into marriage, redefining it as not simply a social contract but a profound religious/spiritual union. They correspondingly propagated for the first time the view that marriage was a holy vow that had to be actively consented to by both persons: to be sure, many families still forced their daughters to "consent" to political marriages, but they never would have bothered to pay this token lip-service to the idea of consent during the pre-Christian Roman era.

In Game of Thrones Season 3 episode 6 "The Climb", Edmure Tully complains that he can't be forced to enter into a marriage-alliance with a Frey girl, because a man cannot be forced to take holy vows without his consent - which is a reference to this concept. In the TV version his uncle Brynden simply threatens to punch him if he refuses, but in the book version, Brynden more politely urges that while he's one of the last men who should be giving such a command (given that he refused his own brother Hoster's command to enter into an arranged marriage), Edmure must go through with it because they desperately need to repair their alliance with the Freys. Sansa Stark and Tyrion Lannister are also forced to marry each other against their wills (particularly, Sansa, a captive of the Lannisters), but they still make her go through the token gesture of saying "yes" during the marriage ceremony.

The Gregorian Reforms of the eleventh century not only resulted in a celibate priesthood, but succeeded in making a politically stronger clergy not dominated by the nobility, who could in time pressure the aristocracy to accept their moral dictates. The Catholic Church began to redefine marriage by placing limits on incestuous marriage between cousins of a certain degree (see the main section on "Incest" below). Where once a man could marry his first cousin, he now could not marry his third cousin or any closer relation. Exactly why the Church wanted to limit consanguinous cousin-marriage is the subject of debate - some scholars have accused that the church was trying to exert political control over the nobility by claiming authority over their ability to produce political marriage-alliances; others counter that the Catholic Church at the time didn't really have the power or scope to enact such control over all of Europe even if it wanted to (the new marriage laws were enforced in piecemeal fashion across several centuries). An alternate view is that the Church wanted to limit cousin-marriage because it led to civil wars much more frequently: if a king married his first cousin by one uncle, then made a polygamous marriage to another first cousin by another uncle,  it was inherently unclear what the line of succession would be for his children by his different cousin-wives, ultimately leading to confused rival claims and civil wars. Thus the Church wanted lords to marry one woman, distinctly not too closely related to their husbands, simply to ensure a stable succession and public order. By the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, however, the Church's views about marriage softened somewhat, treating it as a viable social option instead of joining the clergy - this may have been due to a mix of waning fervor from the Gregorian Reform generation, that the Church thought it more pragmatic to praise but control marriage (by dictating who nobles could or could not marry), and perhaps most of all, because different heretical groups such as the Cathars arose which believed that all human sexuality was sinful, even by married persons.

Thus, in the 700's in western Europe "marriage" could include a male bishop wedding his own first cousin, while at the same time openly keeping several concubines, whom he had non-procreative sex with. By the 1100's, "marriage" had been redefined to be something the clergy could not do at all, that could not be contracted between cousins of a certain degree, and which was ideally meant to be a union between just one man and one woman, in which sex only occurred specifically to produce legitimate children. Even then, however, while there was a spiritual union of the husband and wife it was really more of an allegorical union of their two families - this "spiritual bond" was not promoted as a bond of love:


 * "Marriage in the Middle Ages was not an affirmation and official recognition of love between two people as much as it was the establishment of a legal unit which legitimized children and facilitated the transfer of property from one family to another and one generation to another."

Attitudes about marriage changed somewhat after the Black Death devastated Europe starting in 1346, which killed over a third of the population. For the first time there was a massive labor shortage, with not enough peasants to work the fields and feed the towns and cities. After the Gregorian Reform in the 1100's which established clerical celibacy, that same clergy propagated the view to all of society that clerical celibacy was the ideal mode of living, while non-celibate laypersons could not really be considered to have a worthy lifestyle. After the depopulation caused by the Black Death, however, sermons began praising and valorizing marriage, to encourage the commoners to produce more children. While marriage had previously been preached to be a distant second best compared to the perfection of clerical celibacy, the Catholic Church now praised marriage as a worthy state of living for the majority of people who did not join the clergy. The Protestant Reformation which began in the early 1500's (signaling the end of the Medieval era) is often entirely credited with valorizing marriage and reproduction as part of a condemnation of clerical celibacy; while it did play a significant role in drastically changing the definition of "marriage" once again, it did not originate ex nihilo. Late medieval writers for the past century and a half, following the Black Death, had already begun a shift in attitudes about the value of marriage and reproduction. The definition of marriage gradually changed further across the next several centuries: after the Reformation, ideas from the Enlightenment, and then the rise of independent capitalism, by roughly the end of the eighteenth century resulted in the rise of individualism and decline of communitarianism, a focus on the small nuclear family unit instead of wider kin groups (one factory worker does one job in a factory, he doesn't need to work in tandem with his entire extended family like on a farm), and the creation of a division between "public" and "private" spheres of activity which did not exist in the Middle Ages. In short, the "traditional" standards of marriage (and sexuality in general) which were largely challenged in the Sexual Revolution of the 1960's were not so much "traditional", as simply what happened to be the currently mainstream attitudes at that time - and in fact, this definition of marriage (and patterns of gender behavior) was itself only about two centuries old, established with the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

Westeros's analogue of the Black Death was the Great Spring Sickness, a major plague that broke out about 90 years before the events of the main novels: the plague strikes right after the first of the Tales of Dunk and Egg prequel novellas, and thus the bulk of their stories take place in the plague's aftermath. The massive depopulation caused by the plague may have had a similar effect on attitudes about marriage in Westeros.

The TV series released a behind-the-scenes video featurette about marriage in Westeros (click this link to view), in which George R.R. Martin stressed that as in the real-life Middle Ages, it is by far the norm for the nobility in Westeros to enter into arranged marriages, not for love but to secure political alliances: "Marriage was a way to bind two families together, it was a form of political alliance, and royal marriages are one of the ultimate examples of this." Most members of the Great Houses of Westeros in the TV series entered into arranged marriages: Catelyn Tully and Eddard Stark, Lysa Tully and Jon Arryn, Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister, Stannis Baratheon and Selyse Florent, and during the narrative Margaery Tyrell and her successive husbands (Renly Baratheon, Joffrey Baratheon, and Tommen Baratheon). Sometimes with great work and effort over many years, arranged marriages turn into strong relationships - Catelyn herself championed this aspect of her marriage to Ned when trying to urge her son Robb to enter into an arranged marriage. While they may not grow to love each other, couples in arranged marriages are often able to maintain at least a functional public partnership. Many dread being trapped in miserable arranged marriages, such as Robert and Cersei, or Lysa's loveless marriage to Jon, a good man but old enough to be her father. Only two major political leaders in Westeros in the current generation married for love: Tywin Lannister and Doran Martell. Tywin married his own first cousin Joanna Lannister out of love, even though she brought him no new lands. He actually loved Joanna dearly and it was said she brought out the best in him, and her death giving birth to Tyrion left him heartbroken and embittered. Later in life, Tywin hypocritically tried to force all three of his children into loveless arranged marriages (succeeding with Cersei and Tyrion). Doran Martell is an example of lord who married for love, but as happens in real life, he and his wife eventually fell out of love. In the novels, he wed the noblewoman Mellario of Norvos, but after several years she found the customs of Dorne to be so foreign that she became estranged from Doran and moved back to Norvos (divorce does not exist in Westeros), leaving Doran with a heavy heart.

While divorce did exist in Judaism, it did not exist in medieval Christianity: following the Gregorian Reform, the Catholic Church stressed the view that marriage was an indisoluble bond made for life (possibly, in part, because as with cousin-marriage, the Church wanted to limit the civil wars frequently caused when lords divorced wives when the political alliance their marriage was supposed to seal soured). Annulment did still exist within medieval Christianity: a marriage could be dissolved only if it were shown never to have been a valid marriage in the first place. Conditions which could invalidate a marriage and lead to annulment by the Church included if the spouses were actually related as cousins within a certain degree (i.e. if you married your third cousin), if the marriage vows had been made under duress, or if the marriage had never been consummated - if the two spouses never had sex; though if a marriage produced no children after many years it was not uncommon to claim that it was unconsummated, as there was no proof (recall the famous exchange from The Lion in Winter when King Henry II of England cannot divorce his estranged and imprisoned wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, but threatens to march to Rome and simply bribe/force the Pope to annul his marriage, despite the fact that Eleanor has publicly borne Henry II no less than eight children - or as Henry II puts it, "I'm having Eleanor annulled - the nation will be shocked to learn our marriage wasn't consummated!").

Divorce does not exist in Westeros, but annulment does exist: annulment has to be requested from and then granted by the leaders of the Faith of the Seven. Marriages are considered invalid and can be annulled if they were made under duress,if it was never consummated, or if one of the spouses was already married (the Faith of the Seven abhors polygamy). Marriage to a first cousin is not considered unusual so a marriage probably cannot be granted on the grounds of being too closely related (the Faith abhors brother-sister marriage and this would be much easier to discern; such a marriage would not be granted in the first place, except how the Targaryens were able to get away with it due to their royal status). In the novels, Littlefinger implies that Sansa Stark's forced marriage to Tyrion Lannister can be easily annulled - obviously neither Sansa nor the head of her family (Robb, Catelyn, their heirs) agreed to it, and it was never even consummated (Tyrion refused to have sex with her). Therefore the Appendices at the end of each novel continue to list her as "Sansa Stark", not "Sansa Lannister". On the other hand, Sansa is still technically married to Tyrion: while it was obviously a forced marriage and never consummated, she still has to go through the motions of asking the High Septon to grant the annulment. Season 5 of the TV series drastically condensed Sansa's storyline, forcing her into marrying Ramsay Bolton, and even consummating the marriage. In the novels, Sansa never even meets the Boltons, but instead remains with Littlefinger in the Vale consolidating political power, and planning to marry her cousin Sweetrobin Arryn's last living heir, Sweetrobin's paternal cousin Harrold Hardyng. While Sansa agreed to the marriage as part of a political plot by Littlefinger, and Ramsay even consummated it with her, Sansa is still technically married to Tyrion because she didn't obtain an annulment yet, meaning that her marriage to Ramsay is actually bigamous and it could easily be annulled upon request.

Divorce was easier for both men and women to achieve in medieval Jewish or Muslim communities. Muslim men had the right to divorce a wife at any time, though some Muslim women had clauses written into their formal marriage contracts stating they could compel their husband to divorce them if they so wished (an artful rewording functionally giving the woman the right to divorce). Similarly, a Jewish husband could divorce his wife at any time, but the ketubah (marriage contract) of the couple often specified that the wife had the right to demand a divorce if she so chose. Polygamy was practiced in the Islamic world at the same time as in Merovingian France (where it was a holdover of pre-Christian practice), but as with the Merovingian Franks, polygamy in the Islamic world really wasn't very common (only the very rich could afford it) and it was already in a similar decline. There are only a few rare examples of Jews living in Muslim lands who practiced bigamy, while Jews living in medieval Christian lands (Ashkenazic Jews) never had polygamous marriages at all (in both cases, this was apparently due to general cultural influences from the surrounding Muslim or Christian culture.

Moreover, while "marriage" was focused on producing "legitimate" (confirmed) children, that is not to say that it had a focus on raising children. The rich nobles could afford to hire servants to actually care for and instruct their children on a day-to-day level. The poor commoners, meanwhile, usually had very large families to assist with manual labor: if a couple had nine children they didn't have time to individually care for each of them, but instead the older siblings would help raise the younger siblings, essentially as assistant parents. The entire extended family of uncles or cousins also helped raise children. The model of a "nuclear family" consisting of one man and one woman, who directly care for and raise two or three children, did not really exist before the 1600's - in which case it would be difficult to call it a "traditional" family structure given that it has only existed for the past four hundred years or so. The medieval marriage model of one man and one woman was not concerned with raising children: it was a confirmation that the woman wasn't having sex with any man and thus any children she produced were fathered by her husband, and therefore could inherit his property.

Children growing up in the Middle Ages actually had a much better level of sex education than children in twentieth century industrial nations. Children growing up in modern cities and suburbs aren't as exposed to the physical mechanics of sex - which correspondingly makes sexualized mass media much more "forbidden" and exciting. In contrast, most people in the Middle Ages grew up on farms and dealt with livestock, or in towns dealing with the products of farms in the countryside. Therefore, from a young age, most children could observe the breeding of animal livestock as part of daily farm life. Children could see and understood that bulls mated with cows to produce calves. Even the nobility, when not directly dealing with livestock, still rode horses as the main means of transportation and had to breed them as well. The result is that medieval people probably grew up with greater knowledge about sex, and therefore had a more matter-of-fact attitude about it (instead of treating it by Victorian standards, that it was something forbidden and exciting).

The association between a marriage ceremony and sex on the wedding night was also quite openly and frankly acknowledged. Because the main point of marriage was to have procreative sex to produce confirmed heirs (to unite the families of the bride and groom through their future children), "weddings typically included the couple being placed in bed together, naked, in front of witnesses" (who then left before they actually engaged in the sex act). Therefore, the "Bedding" ceremony seen in Game of Thrones is actually based on a real-life custom from the Middle Ages (though maybe not exactly like this - a "bedding" in the nobility is exciting and filled with ribald joking, while allegedly the records say that this real-life bedding ceremony was supposed to be more solemn - at least in theory).

In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, Sansa Stark recalls that she has been to weddings back in the North and secretly thought it was exciting when the bride and groom were carried away in the bedding ceremony - Sansa left the North when she was eleven years old in the novels, so by that age if not earlier she apparently understood what sex is (and also the link between "Flowering" (menstruating) and a female's ability to get pregnant). On the other than the seven year old Bran Stark in the first novel might not know exactly what sex is yet - when he stumbles upon Jaime and Cersei having sex, his inner thought monologue describes it as seeing them "wrestling".

Marriage in the Middle Ages was primarily focused on producing "legitimate" children - confirmed to be produced by only the married man and woman together, during their marriage. Yet the status of children produced outside of marriage was variable. Before the Gregorian Reform in the eleventh century, concubines often had semi-official or even official status and rights, as did their children. It was only starting in the eleventh century that the Church began to stress that only children produced in the marriage of one man to one woman were "legitimate", and any produced outside of it were "illegitimate". Before that, not nearly as much stigma was applied to Bastardy.

Nonetheless it took time for this new definition of marriage, and that children born outside of it were shameful "bastards", to take full effect. William the Conqueror himself, who became king of England in 1066, was a bastard son of Robert of Normandy - by some definitions. The Normans, who originated in Scandinavia, had practiced polygamous marriages not that long in the past, and some continued to keep concubines - while these concubines were no longer considered fully married, their children were usually considered just as legitimate as children produced within marriage. Robert recognized William as his heir, and by Norman standards of the time William was not considered somehow "illegitimate". William I's son King Henry I of England (1069-1135) had six publicly known concubines and at least twenty acknowledged children by them. At at that point in time, the Church had yet to fully impress upon the general populace the new value that "bastardy" was shameful, to the point that a king of England openly had many bastard children, and even gave them lands and titles. Gradually, however, towards the end of the 1100's this new definition of "bastardy" as shameful was becoming generally accepted.

In subsequent centuries, under ecclesiastical law in most of Western Europe a bastard child who had been born to two unmarried parents was automatically legitimized if the parents subsequently married. Under English Common Law, however, a bastard could only receive Legitimization by being issued letters patent requested from the king. For example, John of Gaunt asked and received a legitimization decree from King Richard II for his children by Katharine Swynford - his sons had been born out of wedlock but he later married Katharine as his third wife. His originally bastard son was the ancestor of Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty.

In Westeros, standards about bastardy are more similar to late Medieval Europe: bastards are considered "illegitimate", a shameful reminder of sins of the flesh, and they cannot inherit lands and title from their parent. A system of special bastard surnames are used in Westeros, depending on the region a bastard is from - "Snow" for bastards from the North like Jon or Ramsay, "Sand" for bastards from Dorne, etc. The special bastard surnames are a fictional invention of George R.R. Martin for his fantasy world, but do not reflect real-life practices.

It is unclear how the system of special bastard surnames developed in Westeros. Since the unification of the Seven Kingdoms during the Targaryen Conquest, at least (three centuries before the narrative begins), the use and implementation of the bastard surnames has been quite uniform: there is one bastard surname used for each of the nine regions in the realm (the original "Seven Kingdoms", plus the borderlands that became the Riverlands, and the new region of the Crownlands that the Targaryens carved out around their new capital city, King's Landing). Before that, it is unclear if they were introduced by the First Men who migrated to Westeros 12,000 years ago, or by the Andals who migrated to Westeros 6,000 years ago, or if they simply originated on their own in Westeros itself at a later date. The bastard surnames are used by nobles belonging to every religious or cultural group, from Oldtown to the North, and the Iron Islands to Dorne. Dorne itself does not considered bastardy to be shameful, and its cultural also has paramours - official mistresses/concubines, such as Ellaria Sand. Still, Dorne also uses the bastard surnames. The ironborn also practice a limited form of polygamy - they can have only one "rock wife", but can take multiple "salt wives" - captives taken as formal concubines. The children of salt wives are not considered to be bastards, though they rank behind the children of a lord's rock wife in the line of succession.

Westeros was not always divided into these "Seven Kingdoms" however, and after the Andal invasion the continent was still divided into dozens of petty kingdoms, which only unified into seven larger kingdoms within the past two thousand years or so. Dorne was the last of the kingdoms to be unified, only about one thousand years ago. When Highgarden and Oldtown were both at the center of rival and independent kingdoms, before they were united in the "Kingdom of the Reach", it isn't clear if they even used the same bastard surnames. For that matter, the Riverlands were a border zone always contested between its powerful neighbors - when the Riverlands were conquered and held by the Stormlands for three full centuries, did bastards born there use the special surname "Rivers" or "Storm"? When the ironborn conquered the Riverlands from the Stormlands and held it for three generations, did Riverlands bastards start using the surname "Pyke"? For that matter, House Greyjoy of Pyke only became the ruling family of the Iron Islands after the Targaryen Conquest exterminated House Hoare, whose seat was on Orkmont island - what surname did ironborn bastards use before that? While the other kingdoms gradually coalesced over centuries, the Targaryens created the Crownlands all at once, implying that at some point they had to make a formal decree creating the new surname "Waters" for bastards from the region. The answers to these questions are unknown.

As for the results of marriage, inheritance laws varied widely across Medieval Europe. In some regions and times women could not inherit at all, in others women inherited after brothers, in others the inheritance was gender-blind. Moreover, many major regions actually did not practice primogeniture at all, even between two sons: instead of the elder son getting all of the family lands in a winner-take-all system, the land would be divided evenly between two sons. Female landholding affected how many women would therefore wield political power, and many actually did. There is considerable academic debate about exactly how frequent female inheritance was, because not every region has a substantial amount of surviving legal documents and written evidence - it is known that in some regions women did not inherit at all, in others they only inherited if they had no brothers, and in certain regions daughters always inherited at least some land (though a smaller fraction of what their brothers received when the family lands were divided), among various other local practices. Women most commonly ruled and "held" land, however, as widows. Given the number of men who died from wars and disease, widows were frequently left to rule as regents for their children, sometimes for decades if the children were very young.

The inheritance system for Westeros described in the novels is not exactly the way that inheritance functioned in real-life Medieval Europe. First and foremost, primogeniture of any kind may not have been very common in real-life, but in Westeros it is standard. As a result women might be slightly less likely to inherit land in Westeros: in real life, if a lord had two sons and a daughter, his lands might be divided between all three of them (though the daughter would get a smaller fraction, she would still get something); in Westeros, a daughter only inherits if she has no brothers (and many lords spend their lives trying to have more children until they produce a son). On the other hand, Martin has described several women in the novels who indeed had no brothers and simply came to rule in their own right - during the Dance of the Dragons, Lady Jeyne Arryn was an only child, so she became the new head of House Arryn and sole ruler of the Vale of Arryn. Moreover, the novels frequently give examples of some Houses during the main narrative that are currently ruled by widow-regents, such as Lady Donella Hornwood (who gets taken prisoner and killed by Ramsay Snow) and much more prominently, Lady Barbery Dustin (born Barbrey Ryswell), the current ruler of House Dustin. Cersei Lannister herself becomes Queen Regent for her underaged son King Joffrey, and attempts to rule through him (though Joffrey proves uncontrollable, and her father and main political backer Tywin then asserts real control). Another factor is that the inheritance system is so uniform across all of Westeros, which was not the case in Medieval Europe - though this is very easily explained as being due to the uniform law code imposed by the Targaryen Conquest. Indeed, Dorne resisted conquest by the Targaryens and only united under the Iron Throne one century ago through peaceful marriage-alliance, and thus were allowed to keep their own local laws and customs. Specifically because of this, while the other kingdoms practice male-preference primogeniture, Dorne practices gender-blind primogeniture. The previous ruler of Dorne was the mother of Doran and Oberyn, who inherited rule from her own parents, and in the novels, Doran's heir apparent is his eldest child and daughter, Arianne Martell.

Different culture zones of Medieval Europe
Given that patterns of sexuality vary across time and space, it is difficult to talk about "sexuality" across Medieval Europe as a whole, much less sub-regions. Still there are a few very broad culture zones that may be talked about, largely defined by the affect that religious differences had on separate regions. These are only vague generalizations and the borders are ill-defined.

There were three major religions in contact with each other in Medieval Europe and immediately neighboring lands: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. All three were Abrahamic religions in origin, and actually, all three had quite similar models of gender and sexuality. The defining feature that set Christianity apart from these other two religions is that it had a celibate clergy, which Islam and Judaism did not have. This in turn strongly influenced cultural attitudes about sexuality.

Attitudes towards gender and sexuality in Islamic regions (from Spain to Baghdad) and in Jewish communities were not that different from Christian regions in many respects, as they also possessed a gender binary, and frowned upon sex outside of marriage. Attitudes about homosexuality were also generally similar to Christian attitudes. What can be misleading is that a very common rhetorical insult was to claim that enemies enjoyed playing the passive role in anal sex with men (seen as a sign of decadence) or that the enemy sodomized male captives. Christian sources accuse Islamic enemies of this, and Islamic sources accused Christian enemies of this: these were just common stock insults with no basis in reality. There were several small but crucial differences, such that girls tended to marry earlier in the Islamic world because they had no celibate orders of nuns that older women could join. Because Muslims and Jews did not have a celibate priesthood, they did not define proper sex as something done only for procreation the way that the Christian church did. Therefore, sex-for-pleasure within marriage was not frowned upon in Islamic and Jewish communities, the attitude being that this helped to strengthen the marriage bond.

There were also major regional divisions within the Christian lands of Medieval Europew: the Byzantine Empire centered at Constantinople was the most powerful and advanced Christian political entity for much of the Middle Ages, yet Greek Orthodox Christianity did not practice exclusive clerical celibacy. In Orthodox Christianity, lay priests could marry, and only the higher-ranking officials such as bishops had to be celibate. Through missionaries, Orthodox Christianity was spread to the Eastern Europe and Russia, influencing their views on sexuality as well, which generally matched Byzantine patterns. Orthodox Christianity formed a sort of intermediate cultural zone between Islam and Catholic Christianity in Western Europe: it was more tolerant of non-procreative sex (i.e. within marriage) than Western Europe, though not quite as much as Islam or Judaism. Similarly, the Byzantine church criticized homosexuality much less than the western Catholic church did. That is not to say it was "tolerant" of homosexuality, officially it was a sin like pre-marital sex, etc., but the Byzantine church expended less time and effort condemning non-procreative sex in general, due to much of its own clergy not being celibate. Primarily the Byzantine church produced canon letters criticizing homosexual behavior in monasteries - because monks had taken a formal vow of abstinence from any pleasures of the flesh. For the common people, so long as they kept any extra-marital sexual activity (homosexual or heterosexual) from becoming publicly notorious, it was tacitly tolerated.

Even within Western Europe, however, in which in theory everyone was under the same religious influence from the Catholic Church, there was a major division between the north and the south. In the "European Marriage Pattern", discussed above, families tended to wait to marry off their daughters, because a younger daughter who waited too long to marry could always become a nun instead of staying on as a financial burden to the family. The result was that Christian lands, women tended to marry in their mid-to-late 20's, and often to men around the same age as they were (or even a year or two younger than them). In truth, the "European Marriage Pattern" was not followed in all of Christian Europe, and is would be more accurately termed the "Northwest European Marriage Pattern": it is only really observed in the northern parts of western Europe (Britain, Germany, and northern France). The pattern is not observed in lands influenced by the Byzantine Orthodox church, nor even in the southern parts of western Europe influenced by the Catholic Church (Italy, southern France, and the Christian lands of northern Spain):


 * "In northern Europe the dichotomy between active and passive was far less important, or indeed the strict age hierarchy...in those areas, the marriages were more likely to have been chosen by the parties, who would have opportunities to meet potential partners on their own, and were more likely to be companionate."

Therefore, even in the Catholic west, marriages in southern France tended to be between older men and younger women (the husband around 30 years old, the wife in her mid-teens) with a resulting power hierarchy; while in northern France, it was more typical for women to marry in their mid-to-late 20's to a man their own age, and have a more equal relationship.

The exact cause of this split between northern and southern Western Europe not confirmed and remains the subject of ongoing academic debate: it is known observationally that it occurred, due to solid proof from demographic records - church registers, marriage contracts, and other writings that cite what ages people were when they married. A tentative explanation which is generally put forward is that it is one of several major social differences between the northern and southern lands of Western Europe - ultimately stemming from agricultural patterns. Southern Europe has a warm Mediterranean climate with comparatively thin and dry soils, while the cooler lands of northern Europe are better watered by rain and rivers, with heavy clay soils that actually produce a higher crop yield (once the effort was put in to clear the primeval forests that originally covered the area). Farms and settlements in southern Europe therefore required large group effort to irrigate the soil, while those in northern Europe did not. In turn, this meant that settlements in southern Europe tended to be formed from large extended families with multi-generational members in order to work the land. Given that such large kin groups already had large age differences, the social system was better suited for older men around 30 years old to marry girls in their mid-teens. In contrast, the heavy soils of northern Europe were productive enough and naturally irrigated well enough that their social system didn't need to coalesce into large kin-groups, but instead favored smaller family units each capable of working their own lands - which was less likely to encourage marriage between men and women of disparate ages.

Nordic/Scandinavian Europe also possessed different attitudes towards sexuality, in regions that in many cases only recently converted to Christianity. Nordic countries such as Iceland or Sweden began to convert to Christianity much later than the rest of Europe, generally after the year 1000 - in many cases this conversion was only nominal and it took many generations for actual Christian beliefs to take hold among the common people, often merging with previous pagan cult practices, festivals, etc. This eventual conversion had not been finished for long when the Medieval period ended around 1500 and the Protestant Reformation began, during which time the Nordic countries broke away from the Catholic Church and became Protestant (largely for political reasons, similar to England, as local kings wanted to control their own national churches). The combined effect was that pre-Christian Viking-age social views about sexuality still tended to predominate well after the first nominal conversion to Christianity.

The Nordic countries, strongly influenced by a pre-Christian Viking-era martial culture, had a much greater focus on hyper-masculine "active" behavior, and correspondingly, a much greater bias against passive homosexual behavior than other regions of Europe. The active/passive dichotomy about homosexual behavior seen in the rest of Europe was even more extreme in the Nordic countries. They don't seem to attach shame to being the "active"/"top" men who were the penetrator - nothing was unusual about a dominant and aggressive Viking warrior playing the dominant role in the sex act, and the identity of who he penetrated didn't matter that much. However, as evidenced in the Nordic sagas and surviving law codes, simply accusing another man of being a passive homosexual (being anally penetrated) was considered to be so utterly offensive that the accuser would be punished by death. If one man accused another of allowing himself to be sexually penetrated, the second man could kill the man who uttered the insult with legal impunity - but no such laws existed for accusing a man of actively penetrating another man, as this didn't carry the same stigma at all. The words in themselves were not offensive, but the accusation cast doubt on a man's masculinity - accusations of being a passively receiving homosexual were used about as frequently and in the same context as accusations about cowardice in general. It was thought that submitting oneself to another man's active penetration in such a way was the ultimate sign of behavioral passivity and cowardice - because they strongly believed in a link between sexual role choice and overall gender behavior. Thus while regions of "Northern" Europe such as England actually had the least hierarchical sexual relationships, neighboring (across the North Sea and at times invading England) Scandinavian lands such as Sweden had the most emphasis on hierarchical sexual relationships.

Another point is that for both Christians and Muslims in medieval Europe, it was frowned upon to enslave co-religionists: Christians could enslave Muslims and Muslims could enslave Christians, but it was abhorrent for Christians to enslave other Christians or for Muslims to enslave other Muslims. Therefore, in the border regions such as Spain, Christian men sometimes kept Muslim concubine-slaves, and Muslims kept Christian concubine-slaves. A similar effect played out in northern Europe, where there where in the Nordic countries there were still pockets of non-Christianized pagans. Therefore, for several centuries, it was quite common for Viking clan leaders and kings in the Nordic lands to keep women as concubines who had been enslaved in war. The early Frankish kings in the 500's to 600's who had recently converted to Christianity also kept concubines, but the Catholic Church gradually succeeded in discouraging this after several centuries. In contrast, the Nordic lands were only recent converts to Christianity by the late Middle Ages, and located further away from the Catholic Church's centers of power, so it had less success in discouraging these old cultural holdovers from the pre-Christian Viking era. It remained common for Scandinavian leaders to keep several concubines and have children by each of them.

Therefore Christian Europe can be very loosely classed into four different cultural zones with regard to attitudes about sexuality: the Byzantine East (spanning from Greece to Russia), northwestern Catholic (England, Germany, northern France), southwestern Catholic (Italy, Christian Spain, southern France), and the Nordic countries which recently converted to Catholicism. Neighboring Muslims lands as well as Jewish enclaves throughout Europe also had different cultural attitudes towards sexuality.

The Celtic peoples of early Europe - such as Scotland, Wales, and Ireland (where Game of Thrones is primarily filmed) - had their own unique gender and sexual norms quite distinct from the rest of Europe. They weren't quite another full cultural zone in "Medieval Europe", however, because by 1200 they were largely being subsumed by outsiders. Scotland acculturated to English social structures and values in order to resist southern incursions, while much of Ireland was conquered by England, and the remaining unconquered lords scrambled to adopt English styles and manners. Generally, the ancient Celts treated women as the legal equals of men, and they were often encountered as not only political but military leaders. Going back to the time of Julius Caesar, Roman historians remarked on how odd they felt it was that the Celts practiced gender-blind inheritance law, allowing women to inherit land and wield the political power stemming from it just as often as men. Women were not entirely the equals of men in pre-Christian Ireland's Brehon law, but land inheritance by women was still remarkably liberal in Celtic Ireland compared to the rest of Europe in the main Middle Ages. Reports are sketchy, but some Roman historians report that Celtic men openly engaged in homosexual behavior, with no social stigma.

"Homosexuals" were not conceived of as a distinct category of person
While medieval people did conceptualize of sex by the role played instead of object choice, they really did not conceptualize that there was a distinct category of male that preferred having sex with other men, either to penetrate them or to be penetrated by them. There were men who at times enjoyed having sex with other men, but they did not conceptualize of "homosexuals" as a distinct category of person. Homosexuality was not an identity, but a sex act.


 * "To the extent that sodomy was an act, or a set of acts, which a man could commit, rather than an orientation, it was not seem as limited to a minority group but was a more generalized threat. Manuals for confessors for confessors envisioned it as a sin that anyone could commit."

On the other hand, unlike in the Greco-Roman era, while medieval people did not really conceive of "homosexuals" as a distinct category of person that enjoyed having same-sex relationships exclusively...they were starting to develop some vague sense of this. Major church writings and other official documents never treated "sodomites" as a specific kind of person, just as an action that people could commit - yet in medical writings and even the "popular culture" of courtly love poetry, some people at times speculate that certain people exclusively preferred same-sex activity. This emphasizes a broader point: the "Middle Ages" were not simply an unchanging "Dark Ages" in which all social development ceased and society simply hibernated from the fall of Rome until the Renaissance. Rather, the Medieval period was a time of dynamic social change across many centuries: social ideas and conceptions were in flux.

For example, in the Arthurian romantic poems of Marie de France, in her Lanval story, Marie has Queen Guinevere complain to a man who rejects her advances (not realizing it is because he is already in love with another woman):


 * "Asiz le m'ad hum dit sovent / Que des femmez n'avez talent. /
 * Vallez avez bien afeitiez, / Ensemble od eus vus deduiez."


 * "People have often told me / that you have no interest in women. /
 * You have fine-looking boys / with whom you enjoy yourself."

So Marie de France, a French noblewoman composing her own narrative poetry in the late 1100's, seems to have had some notion that there were certain men who exclusively preferred to have sex with other men (and apparently thought it was amusing to imply that men she was writing stories about were homosexuals).

Still, a division between "heterosexuals" and "homosexuals" would have made about as much sense to most people in Medieval Europe as making a differentiation just as strict between "men who enjoy getting fellatio from a woman, and men who prefer vaginal penetration". The real "sexual identity" dichotomy was between the celibate clergy and non-celibate lay people, and in turn, for the non-celibate the only "acceptable" sex was vaginal penetration explicitly for procreation.

A few medical writers in the medieval universities (which were staffed by clergymen) did on occasion postulate that some men had an exclusive preference for having sex with other men, perhaps stemming from differences in their biological makeup - and thus in a sense this was "natural" for them, as in it was according to the nature of their bodies (though this view held that while it was "in their nature", this was a deformation from standard human nature, comparable to blindness - in the sense that people didn't choose to be blind, they were just born that way). The highly influential thirteenth century theologian Thomas Aquinas, however, propagated the view that men having sex with other men could not possibly be said to be "natural" in any frame of reference (not even that the man was acting in accordance with his personal "nature"), and that homosexual behavior was fundamentally "unnatural". However, Aquinas was not - as his wording might imply - making a recourse to "Nature" as distinct from "God". Medieval people lived close by the livestock they raised and they were well aware that animals often engage in homosexual behavior. For that matter, they were aware that animals have no concept of Incest, so if brother and sister dogs weren't separated they would end up breeding with each other (thus leading to discussion on why they also used the word "unnatural" to describe incest). Rather, Aquinas's full line of mental reasoning (as laid out in his Summa Theologica) was that "human Nature" had been designed by God, and thus men who engaged in homosexual behavior were "unnatural" in that they were going against the "Nature" that God had intended for human beings. Aquinas said that sex acts were "unnatural" - not intended by God - if they were "not for the benefit of the species", which he stated meant strictly for procreation. By this definition even oral sex between men and women was "unnatural", as were woman-on-top sexual positions, because they were believed to be non-conducive to conception. Engaging in non-procreative sex, particularly homosexual sex acts, was therefore an extreme sin of Pride, because it was a person believing they knew how to use their own body better than God did (Aquinas believed that Pride was the worst sin of all).

There is a widespread misconception that homosexuals were harshly persecuted in the Middle Ages, which is far from the truth. One of the first major figures in modern academic research about medieval sexuality was John Boswell, a Harvard-graduate and history professor at Yale, whose publications began in 1980 and continued until his death in 1994. Himself a homosexual, Boswell made a complete reevaluation of medieval attitudes towards sexuality, which had previously been based to a large degree on assumptions and modern biases, that the Middle Ages were a time of persecution of homosexuals. Boswell instead concluded that the Middle Ages were actually a time of great tolerance of homosexual behavior, not unlike the earlier Greco-Roman period. Boswell suddenly died from AIDS in 1994, but he spurred an entire generation of medieval scholars who carried on research in this new field. Boswell had made a pendulum-swing reaction against the view that Medieval Europe was completely intolerant of homosexual behavior by strongly arguing that it was greatly tolerated. In the twenty years since his death, however, continuing research in the burgeoning field of medieval gender studies refined its views and has developed a more complex and nuanced model of social attitudes towards homosexuality in Medieval Europe, falling between the two extremes of Boswell and his opponents: there weren't actual laws punishing homosexuality in the Middle Ages, but it still wasn't socially "tolerated" the way that Boswell thought.

The significance of Boswell's developments for the A Song of Ice and Fire novels is that George R.R. Martin conceived of much of the world of Westeros in the early 1990's, when he was working on the first novel and draft out much of the rest of the series. Even in the 1980s Boswell's school of research was still very new and it isn't clear how familiar Martin could have been with it. Moreover, gender studies about the actual status of homosexuality in Medieval Europe have significantly advanced since Martin first planned out the world of Westeros in the first novel.

Two main points that have emerged about homosexuality in the Middle Ages in the past twenty years of academic discourse:

First, "homosexuals" were not conceived of as a distinct kind of person in the Middle Ages, but an act that someone could commit. Therefore, clerical writings that denounce sins of the flesh actually assume that all men might be tempted to engage in homosexual sex, just as much as they might be tempted to engage in adultery with a woman outside of marriage.

Second, that act was not punished particularly severely - it was a venal sin of the flesh, loosely on par with adultery, fathering bastard children, etc. (and a man having anal sex with a woman was equally chastised). Just like adultery, being caught performing a homosexual sex act was not punishable by death, prison sentence, or even fines. There were not outright "laws" against it, as in secular laws - but at the same time, it was not something casually accepted either. It was seen as socially disgraceful, like adultery, and people did still try to hide it (a loose comparison would be to an actor being outed as a homosexual in 1950's Hollywood:  no "laws" were being broken but it would disgrace and effectively end his career).

"Men who had sex with other men" were not really thought of as a distinct category or kind of person - and "women who had sex with other women" even less so. As explained above, their definition of "sex" was so phallo-centric that they had difficulty conceptually understanding that two women even could have "sex" with each other, when no penis was involved, so "women who had sex with women" were even further from being treated as a distinct category of person.

In real life, homosexual relationships were only particularly singled out and villified after the Reformation and Enlightenment, when the priesthood in Protestant parts of Europe was no longer celibate, while the Catholic Church responded by extolling sex within marriage. The divide between procreative and non-procreative sex had weakened and was no longer the defining aspect of "proper" sexual activity. This is similar to another common stereotype, to say that "witchhunts" and witch burnings were "medieval" - in fact, the era of the great mass witch-hunts in Europe also only really began after 1500, due to heightened religious hysteria caused by the wars of the Protestan Reformation. "Witch-hunts" and "executions of homosexuals" are not really a "medieval" activity at all, but a phenomenon of the Early Modern era.

Patterns of homosexual relationships
It is very difficult for historians to determine if there indeed was a homosexual subculture in Medieval Europe, because they left no written records behind. No one openly circulated books of homoerotic love poetry, etc. There were probably brothels or other social clubs in some of the major cities that catered to homosexual men, but there are no surviving records attesting to their existence. One of the largest sources of records is in ecclesiastical court records - while not a secular law punishable by death, in the later Middle Ages certain major cities such as Venice or Florence started exacting morality fines on homosexuals or adulterers (it was a good source of tax revenue).

While there were men who felt an innate physical attraction to other men in the Middle Ages, how they themselves conceptualized these urges was quite different. Because "homosexuals" were not thought of as a category, and there were no examples in romantic songs and epics about love between two men, they had no models to follow. Even in contemporary society, there have been numerous accounts from young homosexuals who grew up in an isolated farming community, etc. who had no idea that such a thing as same-sex relationships even existed, and thus had difficulty mentally processing feelings they did not understand.

A principle which generally seems to hold true throughout history is that patterns of homosexual relationships tended to mirror the current model set by heterosexual relationships in their society. In southwestern Europe, it was common for older men to marry younger women, and thus heterosexual relationships were very hierarchical between a dominant male and a passive female.


 * "In a culture in which sex is hierarchical - a dominant partner doing something to a subordinate partner - it makes sense that the subordinate partner would typically be younger."

Surviving records from Venice, Florence, and other parts of southwestern Europe generally indicate that homosexual relationships in the region imitated the same pattern: powerful older men would enter into relationships with younger men - not "pedophilia" anymore than the heterosexual relationships in the same region, but for both heterosexual and homosexual relationships, there would be a 15-20 year age gap between the older partner and the younger partner.

In contrast, northwestern Europe had its unique marriage pattern of women waiting until relatively late ages to marry, often in their late 20's (and not infrequently to men who were the same age or even a year or two younger than they were). Heterosexuals in northwestern Europe therefore did not have the same extreme hierarchical relationship stemming from a large age difference, and their relationships were more mutualistic (though this is relative; men were still seen as the "active" partner, women the "passive" partner). Accordingly, surviving evidence indicates that homosexuals in northwestern Europe also tended to be in relationships with people closer to their own age, and similarly this meant that their relationships were less hierarchical and more mutualistic.

Indeed, this phenomenon of homosexual patterns mirroring heterosexual patterns can be observed into the 20th century itself. Even through the mid-20th century, the conceptual model persisted that in terms of gender behavior, men were "active" and women were "passive". It was seen as unusual for women to be involved in "masculine" fields such as in the workplace. Sex was therefore conceived of as a dominant "top" man and submissive "bottom" woman. Surviving sources about homosexuals in the early 20th century indicate that prior to World War II, most homosexual subcultures similarly self-categorized between dominant "top" partners and submissive "bottom" partners (also known as "butch" or "femme"). Following the societal changes brought by World War II and ultimately the resulting Sexual Revolution of the 1960's, however, there was a great drive for women to break away from being confined to submissive social roles. In effect, to stop treating the three main aspects of Sexuality - Biological Sex, Gender behavior, and Orientation - as inherently linked. With Second Wave feminism came a new model that heterosexual women could nonetheless be "active" in previously male spheres. Patterns of homosexual behavior, based on models in ubiquitous heterosexual culture, were in turn affected by this push to stop seeing romantic couplings as a union between one "dominant" and one "submissive" partner, and categorizations about "tops" versus "bottoms" in homosexual relationships began to diminish. Then in Third-wave feminism from the 1990's onwards there came a drive to see gender and sexuality as more of a spectrum of behaviors than rigid categories.

There was another key difference between Medieval Europe and contemporary society: while "homosexuality" was not widely accepted, "homosociality" was by far the norm. Deeply passionate yet platonic relationships were celebrated among men, such as a "band of brothers" who formed deep bonds from their shared experiences in war. The male and female spheres of activity were so segregated that men did not form deep personal friendships with women - and it was not expected for a man to have a deep personal connection or even friendship with his wife. "Marriage" was just a breeding arrangement, a method for ensuring political alliances between families and ensuring that the children produced from that union were legitimate (that they were the children of these two people and not someone else). In the narrative, for example, Robert Baratheon doesn't even like his wife Cersei Lannister - almost all marriages among the nobility are arranged, not made for love but to secure political alliances. King Robert's deepest personal relationship was the platonic friendship he had with Eddard Stark, forged when they were both wards of Jon Arryn and then fought in war against the Targaryens together. At the same time, the Middle Ages produced a large among of torrid courtly love romantic epics between men and women - often between a poor male knight trying to woo a rich married noblewoman above his social station, not celebrating love within marriage. Marriages were rarely conducted for love, and thus even for heterosexuals, their most passionate personal relationships were platonic ones with members of the same sex. Thus deeply passionate and also sexual relationships between two men were not as big of a step away from societal norms as it would be in contemporary society (i.e unaware of Renly's homosexuality, many people wouldn't think it that unusual that his deepest personal relationship seems to be with Loras and not his wife Margaery).

Social status of prostitutes
Prostitution, of course, existed in the real-life Middle Ages and throughout history. In medieval Europe, men were rarely outright criticized for visiting prostitutes, because no one - or rather, the men who controlled society and wrote the historical records - thought that the male sex drive was something which could be controlled. Men were never blamed for being unable to restrain themselves, and indeed, prostitution was often seen as a convenient release mechanism for such pent-up desires. While men having sex outside of marriage was often ignored with a wink and a grin, there was a double-standard for women, who were severely punished and vilified if they had sex outside of marriage. In Game of Thrones, King Robert Baratheon frequently had sex with many prostitutes as basically an open secret, yet Cersei's infidelity to Robert is considered unforgivable (though this is not a strong analogy, as in Cersei's case, she was having an affair with her own brother, and in a stunning betrayal, knowingly passed off her children by Jaime as if they were Robert's children).

A major point which might be overlooked, both in Game of Thrones and in the real-life Middle Ages, is that most prostitutes didn't want to be prostitutes. Typically, they were desperate women on the fringes of society that had no other alternative and turned to prostitution as a last resort (survival sex work). Prostitutes were rarely well-paid courtesans happily working in high-class brothels like Ros in Game of Thrones - more often they were like the miserable Fantine in Les Misérables. According to statistical and demographic analysis, most prostitutes in the Middle Ages were "adrift" women who had no recorded family members - no support network to fall back onto, so prostitution was their only remaining alternative.

Because most of the main characters belong to the nobility, most of the prostitutes encountered in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels are high-end courtesans they interact with, not the suffering and starving kind encountered out among the lower classes. Similarly, in the TV series, the narrative tends to focus more on high-born characters from the nobility: when Tyrion visits a brothel he interacts with high-end "courtesans", because as a member of the nobility he can afford to go to the best brothels. Chataya, a woman from the Summer Islands, is a madam who even owns her own high-end brothel in King's Landing (separate from Littlefinger's). Unfortunately, this might skew the perception that most "prostitutes" as a whole throughout the entire realm are living comfortably and happily - but this is only a small, disproportionate fraction of all "prostitutes" throughout Westeros. While a few Sexposition scenes might portray the lives of prostitutes as exciting, indeed sexually liberating for women, keep in mind that most prostitutes were living in desperate conditions and didn't want to be prostitutes. Even Ros, who for a time enjoys a fairly comfortable existence in Littlefinger's high-class brothel, is in the end slaughtered like cattle at Joffrey's sadistic whim, and without repercussions.

Contraception and abortion
Due to high infant mortality rates, the nobility as well as commoners actually wanted to produce as many babies as possible: for the common laborers, each new child was a potential new worker that could assist them on their farm; for nobles, more children meant a guarantee that their lineage would survive (too many heirs could be a problem, but death from disease and war was so common that the greater danger was actually that they would have no surviving children). Both noblewomen and commoner women were brought up with a value set that they were more socially esteemed if they produced more children, so they generally held these beliefs as well. Therefore, prostitutes were the only women in the Middle Ages who regularly practiced contraception: any scholarly research into the history of contraception - women's reproductive rights and control over their own bodies - which extends back to look at the origins of these practices in the medieval era, has to examine records about prostitutes.

Most prostitutes were illiterate, as was normal for many commoners, which meant that they didn't leave written instructions about contraceptive methods they used. What is known about their contraceptive practices has to be pieced together from a few documents made by apothecaries, and (much like homosexual practices) has to be gleaned from church records singling out specific practices in order to condemn them. Even then, many theologians (who were celibate priests) didn't know much about contraception. Thirteenth century bishop and medical writer Albetus Magnus openly wondered in his texts why prostitutes seemed to have such a low conception rate, despite the frequency with which they engaged in sex - which strongly indicates that medieval prostitutes indeed had a low conception rate (i.e. it isn't just that no one was bothering to keep written legal records about children of prostitutes; surviving contemporary writings confirm they had low birth rates). One possibility is that, as with modern prostitutes, they also frequently contracted venereal diseases, some of which can render women sterile. However, this can't account for such low overall birthrates, and other church writings condemn certain contraceptive practices.

Surviving medieval medical handbooks show a variety of practices, some of which were probably more effective than others. On one end of the spectrum, some advised that cutting off a weasel's testicles and wearing them in a pouch on a necklace as a charm would ward off conception. At the other end of the spectrum, however, there was advice to mix various herbs into elixirs to drink (herbs like myrrh, licorice, pennyroyal, parsley, cypress, and others, though notes about what exact combinations and measures were used have not survived). Several of these herb mixtures, in the right combinations, can indeed prevent conception or cause early-term abortion. Most prostitutes were illiterate, however, and few written records survive; what seems probable is that older prostitutes working at brothels would pass down advice and instructions to new prostitutes about contraception purely by word of mouth.

Neighboring Muslim areas were somewhat more tolerant of contraception. According to eleventh-century theologian Al-Ghazali and several parts of the Hadith, given that no current means of contraception was always effective, and not even all sex leads to pregnancy every time, logically, if God really wanted a pregnancy to occur, humans would not be able to stop it, so a couple might as well use contraceptive medications (i.e. if God really wanted them to have a child, whatever contraceptives they used would fail to work at that time).

In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the views of all of the major religions about contraception and abortion have actually not been prominently mentioned - but abortion is quite commonly practiced across Westeros. To induce early-term abortion, women in Westeros do indeed drink a kind of herbal tea called "moon tea", which is a medicinal concoction of several different kinds of herbs (the main active ingredient is a flower called "tansy", but it also includes wormwood, mint, honey, and a drop of pennyroyal). Most if not all maesters know how to make moon tea upon request, as do many woods witches or local apothecaries, etc. What isn't clear is whether making moon tea is openly legal, or, if there are technically religious and/or secular laws against making moon tea, but they are just very frequently ignored on an everyday level. In the novels, Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish actually impregnated the young Lysa Tully while he was living at Riverrun, but this infuriated her father Hoster Tully, who threw Baelish out of the castle, and then forced Lysa to drink moon tea and abort Baelish's child. The Game of Thrones TV series hasn't mentioned moon tea at all - specifically because the detail about Lysa's abortion was condensed out for time.

Male privilege

 * See main article on "Rape"

=Gender and Sexuality in A Song of Ice and Fire=

As with the real-life Middle Ages, social constructs of gender and sexuality vary extensively across Westeros, Essos, and the rest of the known world in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels written by George R.R. Martin. They may have also changed over the centuries within the narrative. It is extremely difficult to examine such values beyond Westeros itself, because so much of the narrative is focused on Westeros. So what follows is an examination of the evidence in the novels about gender and sexuality in Westeros, and a few notes about what has been briefly described in the rest of the world.

Overview of Westeros
The Faith of the Seven is the dominant religion in most of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, having been introduced to the continent 6,000 years ago during the Andal Invasion. Only the North managed to halt the advance of the Andals, and thus continued to worship the Old Gods of the Forest. A few Andals also invaded the Iron Islands, but the Faith found little purchase there, and instead the invaders converted to the local Drowned God religion. The Rhoynar migrated to Westeros about 1,000 years ago and settled in Dorne. They did convert to the Faith of the Seven - but ignored many of its prohibitions on sexual behaviors, making the culture of the modern Dornishmen quite distinct.

The core regions of Westeros, the populous and wealthy kingdoms south of the Neck, follow the Faith of the Seven and broadly fall into the same cultural sphere. The Iron Islands and Dorne are actually stated to have the smallest populations of any of the Seven Kingdoms, while the North is not one of the more populous ones, and due to its vast size, it has a very low population density. Thus by far the majority of Westeros's population and land area falls into the cultural sphere of the Faith of the Seven. Of the five settlements large enough to be called "cities" in Westeros, four of them are located in this central region (King's Landing, Oldtown, Lannisport, and Gulltown). The fifth and smallest city is White Harbor, located on the southeastern coast of the North - but it is ruled by House Manderly, a family from the Reach that fled to the North and continues to follow the Faith of the Seven, actually making it a small enclave of southern culture in the North (indeed, it was the Manderlys who built up White Harbor into a southern-style city; it wasn't a pre-established large Northern city that happened to accept the Manderlys).

Gender and Sexuality under the Faith of the Seven, in most of Westeros
The key factors that shaped conceptualizations of sexuality in real-life Medieval Europe are that it had celibate clergy of both genders (monks and nuns), but an all-male priesthood. This led to a dichotomy not between homosexual and heterosexual, but between celibate and non-celibate, and in turn, a dichotomy between procreative and non-procreative sex. Non-clergy were only supposed to have sex for the explicit purpose of producing children. Meanwhile, because there were no female priests writing about sexual morality, sex was strictly defined as penetrating someone else with a penis. This led to a pattern of conception about sexuality based on role in the sex act instead of object choice.

In contrast, the Faith of the Seven does have a gender-blind priesthood, accepting both men and women without distinction. Men become septons and women become septas, but these ranks are apparently the same (it's just a gendered word, like how a man is an "alumnus" from a university but a woman is an "alumna"). Women can also join the all-female monastic order of the Silent Sisters, though there are many other orders not described in the novels, some male, some female, some maybe both. Women are even explicitly described as becoming members of the Most Devout - the ruling council of the Faith of the Seven, which is basically analogous to the College of Cardinals in Catholic Christianity. Septa Unella - the septa who leads Cersei's naked walk of atonement - is a member of the Most Devout, and thus basically a cardinal. While Martin has never explicitly mentioned it, there may well have been a "High Septa" in the past, a female High Septon (their analogue of the papacy).

Therefore, unlike in the real-life Middle Ages, in Westeros:


 * 1 - Because there are female priests in the Faith of the Seven, they probably don't strictly define sex as "penetrating someone with a penis", but a wider range of behaviors.
 * Someone in the real-life Middle Ages would not describe Jon Snow as having "sex" with Ygritte when he performs cunnilingus on her - yet people in Westeros probably do consider cunnilingus to be "sex".
 * Correspondingly, sexual relationships in general are less hierarchical, because sex isn't thought of as a thing a man does to a woman but a mutualistic experience they do together. Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell are presented as seemingly having a fairly mutualistic relationship, instead of a hierarchical relationship such as the senpai and kōhai (or seme and uke) homosexual relationships among medieval Japanese samurai (Loras served as Renly's squire and as the king's brother Renly technically outranked him, but Loras was considered the more active and martial of the two, one of the best knights in Westeros, while Renly was more of a statesman).
 * 2 - Sexual relationships between homosexual women were barely understood in the real-life Middle Ages, even to criticize them. In contrast, homosexuality between women is probably criticized in Westeros as much as homosexuality between men - because the female priests understand that women can give sexual pleasure to each other without a penis.
 * Indeed, the World of Ice and Fire sourcebook (2014) mentions that septons have tried to admonish the Dornishmen because they feel it is no great concern if a man lays with a man, or a woman with a woman - real-life medieval people would probably not even have mentioned women laying with women, finding it conceptually impossible. It isn't clear if the authors intended this when they wrote this detail, but by coincidence it matches up with the social effects logically resulting from having female priests.

On the other hand, the Faith of the Seven still has a celibate clergy overall, so they would still have a basic dichotomy between celibate and non-celibate, and thus procreative and non-procreative sex (at one point in the novels a member of the Most Devout tells Cersei that the gods made men and women's private parts purely for the begetting of children).

Therefore:


 * 1 - Men who have sex with other men probably are not thought of as a distinct category of person, because all non-procreative sex is considered bad.
 * 2 - Homosexual sex is probably not viewed as particularly worse than other venal sins such as adultery - i.e. Loras Tyrell isn't seen as particularly worse than King Robert Baratheon's frequent whoremongering. At the same time, also like a major lord committing adultery, Loras doesn't just casually acknowledge in public that he engages in homosexual behaviors.

This is the pattern that would be expected of having both a gender-blind priesthood of both men and women and a celibate clergy overall. The question is, do the novels match it?

The A Song of Ice and Fire novels do have characters in them who have same-sex intimate encounters - but realistically, they have never gone into a lengthy speech clearly defining their mental framework about sexual behavior. The novels never say that men who have sex with men are thought of as a distinct category of person: this might be a simple omission and Martin assumed that they actually think of it as a category, however, same-sex relationships have been mentioned in such vague terms that they could easily match the expected model, that they don't think of it as a distinct category.

On a more general level, it does appear that same-sex relationships in the novels are not seen as any sort of heavily vilified taboo, but as expected, a venal sin roughly on par with adultery. No actual "laws" against homosexuality have ever been mentioned in the novels. It is simply seen as socially disgraceful.

Therefore, in general, views on sexuality and gender in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels (in the core regions of Westeros that follow the Faith of the Seven) are somewhat closer to modern patterns than to the medieval model - but, the presence of female priests is a drastic change from how real medieval society operated. The differences observed compared to the real-life Middle Ages - sex is not hierarchical but mutualistic, not strictly defined as something a man does to someone else using a penis, greater insight into female sexuality, etc. - are all things that would logically result from having female priests.

Whether Martin consciously intended these differences is unknown, i.e. as an invented fictional world not connected to real life he was free to make this change, and perhaps preferred writing about people whose mental frameworks are closer to modern ones, both for himself as an author and to readers.

The fringes of Westeros, with unique religions and cultures
Westeros has more than one major religion in it, and they generally co-exist. Medieval Europe had Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. They didn’t get along that much, but all were basically Abrahamic religions and their views on sexuality were not radically different. In contrast, the Old Gods of the Forest and the Drowned God are completely unrelated to the Faith of the Seven and have (or can have) very different value sets.

The fact that three major religions coexist more or less peacefully in Westeros is a marked difference from Medieval Europe, in which the sense of community, of "us" versus "the Other" was often defined as "Christendom" versus those of other religions. In both Christianity and Islam, slavery was actually allowed - the only stipulation was that it was immoral to enslave persons belonging to the same religion as you. Thus Christians had no problem with enslaving pagans in northern Europe and Muslims in southern Europe. In contrast, the Faith of the Seven in Westeros explicitly forbids slavery as a heinous crime - as do the religions of the Old Gods and Drowned God. This is simply a narrative conceit which makes Westeros different from the real-life Middle Ages. In-universe this level of tacit toleration for other religions (and lack of slavery) might be due to the fact that their historical record is over twice as long: the Faith of the Seven was introduced to Westeros six thousand years ago, and there actually was quite a lot of religious strife in the early centuries when it pushed the other religions out to the fringes of the continent. After so many millennia, however, the fighting has long since stalemated, so that all three religions settled into a grudging co-existence.

Northmen and wildlings: followers of the Old Gods
The views of the worshipers of the Old Gods of the Forest towards sexuality are not very clear. In-universe, it is said that the religion of the Old Gods is less formal than the Faith of the Seven, and doesn't have as many "rules" as such. It doesn't even have a priesthood of any kind, male or female, but is based on quite contemplation before Weirwood heart trees in Godswoods. The Old Gods do seem to have several basic social rules, including the sacred bond of Guest right, prohibitions against Incest, Bastardy, Kinslaying, etc. Otherwise, there has never been any mention that the religion of the Old Gods has a specific view against homosexual behaviors - though their exact views are simply unclear.

The only prominent clue has been that Greatjon Umber's uncle Hother "Whoresbane" Umber is apparently a homosexual: he is called "Whoresbane" because in his youth he was sent to Oldtown to train as a maester, but a whore he was with tried to rob him, so he disemboweled the whore (then left Oldtown in disgrace). It is described that the story is only told in whispers, because no one wants to publicly say that it was actually a male whore that Hother was with. Therefore, it would seem that homosexuality is also seen as a social embarrassment in the North.

The Northmen who live north of the Neck but south of the Wall were never conquered by the Andals but in many ways acculturated to the behaviors of their neighbors, such as switching to speak the Common Tongue of the Andals instead of the Old Tongue of the First Men, and adopting a societal model more based on a system of Lordship than clans, etc. This is similar to the North's real-life analogue, Scotland, which in the Middle Ages quickly built itself up into a strong kingdom generally capable of resisting invasion from England to the south by adopting many English cultural and social models.

In contrast, it is said that the wildlings (or "Free Folk" as they call themselves) have very few "rules" beyond what they can keep with their own strength (though they also value Guest right, and have prohibitions against incest and kinslaying). Unlike the Northmen and the rest of Westeros, the wildlings also don't recognize a class of hereditary nobility in their society. Given that a core value of the wildlings is that they don't like other people telling them how to live, it is quite possible that they actually place no social stigma on homosexuality.

Similarly, the wildlings apparently don't have a strict gender binary of social roles, in that they have Warrior women in their culture, that they call Spearwives (though a spearwife can marry and have children while still being a warrior). For most of the Northmen, meanwhile, it is seen as unusual for a female to want to adopt the traditionally masculine role of a warrior (such as Arya Stark). At the same time, in some of the fringes of the North, there are some female warriors: Bear Island is under constant threat by sea from both ironborn raiders to the south and wildling raiders passing around the Wall by ship from the north. Because the men are out all day in their fishing boats they can't respond to quick raids against their homes, so the women of Bear Island - particularly their rulers, House Mormont - have had to develop a strong tradition of having warrior women as a practical necessity.

Therefore, what apparently seems to have happened, is that the original First Men might not have had many social gender restrictions on warrior women or on homosexuality, but over the centuries the Northmen gradually adopted many of the social customs and mores of the neighboring powerful Andal kingdoms to the south. The wildlings that live beyond the Wall, however, apparently have far fewer of such social restrictions. Little more can be postulated due to lack of evidence.

The ironborn, followers of the Drowned God
In the Iron Islands, the distinctive Ironborn culture values raiding, and follows the local Drowned God religion. It is praise-worthy for men to take as many concubines, called "salt wives", as he can, though the children of salt wives are not considered bastards. They do also have rules against bastardy and incest, etc., and marriage is a rite of the Drowned God performed by a priest. For that matter, the Drowned God religion does have an all-male priesthood, the Drowned Men.

Not much is known about the views of the Drowned God religion on gender and sexuality. In general, ironborn culture seems to be very misogynistic. It is considered very controversial that Balon Greyjoy raised his daughter Asha (renamed "Yara Greyjoy" in the TV show) as a surrogate son, and many reject her leadership out of hand just for being a woman. Asha/Yara is very abnormal under the ironborn social model of expected female gender behavior. Then again, there is mention in the fifth novel that some of Victarion's men raped a maester they took prisoner from the Shield Islands. So it is quite possible that the Drowned God religion is actually closest to what happened in Medieval Europe: not a dichotomy between male and female so much as between penetrator and penetrated (active and passive). So long as you were the one penetrating someone else specifically with a penis, it wasn't considered a great concern in Medieval Europe, and men really conceive of women as "enjoying" sex or performing the same action that they did (they didn't care). This is due to the effect that having an all-male priesthood had on Medieval Europe's views on sexuality, and the Drowned God is the only religion in Westeros with an exclusively male priesthood. The Drowned Men are apparently celibate, though this is unclear. For that matter, unlike Medieval Europe, the ironborn don't have a celibate clergy of nuns that women can join - in which case they would probably marry off their daughters as soon as they were old enough to have children; as a result, ironborn girls probably would not have as much of a sense of personhood and social independence, which does seem to match how little power ironborn women seem to wield compared to the rest of Westeros.

Asha is sexually active and no one blames her for it, however this is possibly due to her overall tomboyish attitudes - she is very abnormal under the ironborn social model of expected female gender behavior, and not remotely representative of what is considered "standard" female behavior in their society.

Dornishmen, descendants of the Rhoynar
The Rhoynar ancestors of the modern Dornishmen came from city-states along the Rhoyne River, in the center of the modern Free Cities. They migrated to Dorne about a thousand years ago led by their warrior-queen Nymeria, fleeing conquest by the Valyrian Freehold. There they intermarried with the local population - a mix of First Men and Andals like the rest of Westeros - to form their own unique hybrid culture. The Dornishmen converted to the Faith of the Seven when they migrated to Westeros, but in many ways they just ignored the rules they didn't like, which clashed with their previous culture living in urbane mercantile city-states. As a result they have very different attitudes about sexuality compared to the rest of Westeros - despite the fact that they nominally follow the same religion of the Seven.

A major distinction about Dorne in the novels is that unlike the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, which practice male-preference primogeniture, Dorne practices gender-blind primogeniture. The reason for this is that Dorne managed to resist conquest by the Targaryens and their dragons through resorting to guerrilla warfare, and remained independent from the Iron Throne for the next two centuries. Dorne and House Martell only united with the rest of the Seven Kingdoms about one century before the novels begin, not through conquest but through peaceful marriage-alliance with the Targaryens. As a result they were allowed to keep many of their distinct local laws and customs, such as the head of House Martell being styled a "Prince" or "Princess" instead of a "Lord Paramount", and continuing to practice gender-blind inheritance law.

While daughters do sometimes inherit land and title in the rest of Westeros, it is less frequent, because they only inherit if they have no living brothers. For example, Sansa Stark ranks behind her brothers Bran and Rickon in the line of succession. In Dorne in the novels, in contrast, Doran Martell's heir-designate is his eldest child, who happens to be a daughter, Arianne Martell (who has apparently been omitted from the TV series). The previous ruler of Dorne before Prince Doran was his mother, who inherited rule from her parents in her own right. Dornishmen consider women to be the equals of men, they are treated equally under the law and in inheritance, and they wield political power just as often as men do. The Dornish thus have very different attitudes about the status and role of women than in the rest of Westeros.

In the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, the Dornishmen have a reputation for being hot-blooded and sexually licentious. Indeed, Dornishmen have more "relaxed" views towards sexuality and love than the rest of Westeros. They are quite tolerant about sex outside of marriage, and even have a system of formal mistresses or concubines called "Paramours" - a holdover from the ancient courts of the Rhoynar city-states. Paramours can be held in quite high esteem in Dorne, publicly and openly acknowledged, and in some cases is treated as a lord's wife in all but name. For that matter, it is not considered unusual for noblewomen to openly have their own paramours.

Similarly, bastards do not carry the stigma of shame in Dorne that they do in the rest of the Seven Kingdoms for being born out of wedlock. In the TV series, Prince Oberyn mentions at Joffrey's wedding that his people doesn't despise bastards because they are born out of passion. In fact, bastards are often raised along their trueborn siblings and cousins, and out of proportion to the other Seven Kingdoms, bastards in Dorne much more frequently rise to important positions such as castellans and stewards. The only slight disadvantage that bastards have in Dorne is that they are still considered poor matches for marriage due to their inability to receive inheritance.

The Dornish also have no particular stigma against homosexual behavior, considering it no great concern "if a man lies with a man, or a woman lies with a woman". Oberyn Martell and his paramour Ellaria Sand (whom he treated as a wife in all but name and mother of several of his children) are sexually adventurous, sharing other sexual partners, and not really making a distinction whether they are male or female. In the novels, it is mentioned in passing that Nymeria Sand was "abed with the Fowler twins" when she received word that her father was dead, and later it is casually revealed that the Fowler twins are girls - though it isn't clear if "abed" means she is in a sexual relationship with them, as it is a common practice throughout Westeros for noblewomen to have bedwarmers, literally sharing their beds to keep warm on cold nights.

Thus a Dornish noblewoman can inherit rule in her own right ahead of her young brothers, and while technically married to a man to produce children, also openly keep a female paramour in a deep, loving partner-relationship. The Dornish, however, do not see this as a matter of the object choice dichotomy, given that even women do it. They just have a very fluid and non-binary attitude towards sex.

The Dornishmen inherited their relaxed attitudes about sexuality from their Rhoynar ancestors, but little information has been provided about the cultural factors that made the ancient Rhoynar like this. What is known is that the Rhoynar lived an urbanized lifestyle in mercantile city-states along the Rhoyne River, in contrast with the agrarian culture of the First Men and Andals which was much more focused on direct inheritance of land. It is possible that this more "cosmopolitan" city-culture led the Rhoynar to be more tolerant of sexuality and treat the genders equally. The Rhoynar religion was based on worship of "Mother Rhoyne", the personified goddess of the life-giving Rhoyne River. Mother Rhoyne's had many children who were lesser gods in their pantheon, such as Crab King and the giant turtle known as the Old Man of the River. The fact that their main deity was a mother figure may have also given the Rhoynar a more positive attitude about the social status of women. Even the ancient Rhoynar treated women as the equals of men, and they had many female warriors. Nymeria herself came to rule Ny Sar in her own right, one of the six main Rhoynar city-states.

The attitudes of the Dornishmen towards gender and sexuality don't seem to be based on any direct counterpart from the real-life Middle Ages. Dorne itself is loosely inspired by Medieval Spain, which was ethnically and culturally different from the rest of Medieval Europe due to the Muslim conquests. While the Rhoynar did migrate to Dorne from across the Narrow Sea, they converted to the local religion of the Faith of the Seven centuries ago, peacefully, which is different from the drawn-out Reconquista period in Spain (though in some respects it might still be similar to Spain a few centuries later, after the entire peninsula was reconquered by Christian kingdoms, but the Muslim presence still left behind many unique cultural aspects).

A stereotype that Christian Western Europe had about the Muslim world was that they were more licentious, due to not practicing clerical celibacy and thus not possessing such a religiously-based negative view of sexuality, and stereotypes about Dornishmen in the narrative loosely echo this to an extent (though real-life Muslim writers also accused Christians of being licentious; it was just a standard insult). On the other hand, unlike Dorne, real-life Muslim Spain didn't treat women as equal under the law to men, and did not practice gender-blind inheritance law (so women didn't really wield political power very often). Women in Dorne can inherit land and political power, and rather openly engage in sex outside of marriage with other men - not only did nothing like this happen in real-life Muslim Spain, medieval Christians didn't even have a stereotype about them that resembled this. As evidenced from medieval literature and popular epics, medieval Christians never seem to have believed that Muslims practiced equal inheritance law or that Muslim women had a drastically higher degree of sexual freedom. The popular troubadour poetry contains stories of brave Christian knights seducing the daughters of Muslim princes - not seducing Muslim princesses who ruled in their own right. In that respect, these aspects of the Dornishmen seem to be a pure fantasy construct without basis in reality - though George R.R. Martin has openly said that Dorne is not meant to have a one to one correspondence to any real-life culture: it is loosely like Medieval Spain, with some aspects of Medieval Wales (a semi-independent territory on the fringe of the kingdom), but other aspects of Dorne were simply drawn from Martin's imagination and creative license.

Arguably, the one region of Medieval Europe that had the attitudes about gender and sexuality that the Dornishmen have in the fictional narrative was actually Ireland (prior to the English invasions beginning in the late twelfth century) - where the Game of Thrones TV series itself is based and primarily films. Even after converting to Christianity, reliable records such as the Brehon laws evidence that women were treated as the equals or near-equals of men in Celtic Ireland. Moreover, although less well evidenced, many ancient historians described that the Celts in Ireland openly had same-sex relationships (though the true extent of this is unclear and still debated academically). As English domination in Ireland grew, however, English cultural patterns and inheritance laws subsumed the earlier local Irish laws and customs.

The Valyrians, the Targaryens, and definitions of incest
The Valyrians practiced heavy incest between brother and sister, to "keep the bloodlines pure". House Targaryen was a Valyrian noble family that survived the Doom of Valyria four centuries ago, and settled on the islands off the east coast of Westeros. As the last survivors of the Valyrian Freehold that possessed live dragons, a century later the Targaryens conquered and united the Seven Kingdoms. As a political expedient they converted to the Faith of the Seven, but they continued to practice incestuous marriages. This led to conflict with the Faith of the Seven which was only decided through civil war.

This may have affected how incest was defined in Westeros. In the real-life Middle Ages, the Catholic Church defined incest as any marriage between relatives who were third cousins or closer, i.e. marrying a fourth cousin or a third cousin once removed was not incest. In Westeros, however, it is apparently not uncommon for members of major noble Houses to marry their own first cousins. Tywin Lannister himself married his own first cousin, Joanna Lannister - her surname was already "Lannister" before they were married, as she was the daughter of a younger brother of Tywin's own father, Tytos Lannister. Nor is this a peculiarity of House Lannister, as members of House Tyrell have also married their first cousins: Mace Tyrell's younger sister Mina married her own first cousin Paxter Redwyne. Mace and Mina's mother Olenna Tyrell, born Olenna Redwyne, is the sister of Paxter's father and thus his paternal aunt.

The incestuous brother-to-sister marriages of the Targaryens were still seen as very unusual, but they felt that their royal status set them above the rules of normal men. Apparently this aspect of Valyrian/Targaryen culture was loosely inspired by the incestuous brother-sister marriages among many of the real-life pharaohs of Ancient Egypt.

Polygamous marriages were practiced in the old Valyrian Freehold - it was not universal and frequent, but it was not uncommon either. Aegon the Conqueror was married to both of his sisters, Visenya and Rhaenys. Visenya was the eldest of the siblings and Aegon may have married her for political reasons, while marrying his younger sister Rhaenys for love. After the trio conquered and unified the Seven Kingdoms, however, it seems that Aegon himself realized that practicing polygamy in subsequent generations would push the Faith of the Seven too far, so he discouraged his successors from continuing it. The Faith had not openly criticized the polygamous or even incestuous aspects of Aegon's marriages, and in return he tread lightly around them, making both of his sons marry one woman each from outside of their immediate family. After his death, however, his second son Maegor the Cruel, an infamously vicious tyrant, took multiple wives and forcibly married his own niece, leading to a war with the Faith Militant that lasted throughout his six year reign. After he was deposed, his successor and nephew Jaehaerys I negotiated a peace with the Faith, and the Targaryens never had a polygamous marriage again. They did continue to practice brother-to-sister incest marriages (as Jaehaerys I was married to his own sister, Alysanne), but apparently their rationale was that they already had an incestuous bloodline even if they stopped wedding brother to sister - though they could actively choose not to take multiple wives. The Targaryens didn't always wed brother to sister in every generation, and over two centuries later King Aegon V (younger brother of Maester Aemon) became convinced that incestuous bloodlines were what caused many Targaryens to go insane, so he tried to put an and to the practice altogether, though he did not succeed.

A point raised by linguist David J. Peterson is that he is hesitant to develop certain "everyday life" vocabulary in High Valyrian because it is unknown exactly what everyday life was like in the ancient Valyrian Freehold, i.e. he didn't develop a word for "breakfast", as for all anyone knows they just had what we would call "brunch" and didn't even have a distinct word for "breakfast". The heavily incestuous and even polygamous marriages of the Valyrian dragonlords probably led to very complicated familial relationships: Daenerys and Viserys's parents were themselves brother and sister, making Viserys simultaneously Daenerys's "brother" and "first cousin" - it is unknown if High Valyrian would have a distinct term for such a relationship, distinguishing it from a sibling whose parents were not brother and sister. The ironborn practice a limited form of polygamy (though they don't consider it full polygamy), in which they have only one "rock wife" who ranks ahead of all of their "salt wives". In comparison, in a case where a Valyrian dragonlord was in a polygamous marriage to multiple close relatives, it isn't clear if there was a distinct word for one "primary" wife, etc. Also consider that several real-life languages have more specific terms for family members than English does, i.e. Japanese has distinct words for "older sister" (onee-san) and "younger sister" (imouto). The novels don't really give many details on the ancient Valyrians' family structural dynamics, so Peterson avoided trying to describe it for lack of information.

The definition of what marriages were considered incestuous in real life actually changed over time. During the early Middle Ages it fluctuated considerably, with instances of first degree cousins marrying, but other instances in which seventh degree cousins were forbidden to marry. The Catholic Church only officially set the definition of incest as marriage within third degree cousins or closer at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. The reason that study of the definition of what constituted "incest" in the Middle Ages is important is that it is further evidence that there was never a single "traditional" definition of marriage, but rather, that the definition of marriage changed considerably over the centuries.

Beyond Westeros
Outside of Westeros, we know little and less. Only a vague sketch can be made of the different social models and attitudes regarding gender and sexuality in these regions beyond Westeros itself.

Free Cities
The inhabitants of the Free Cities practice many different religions, so their cultural values about gender and sexuality can vary considerably, perhaps even within a single city.

In contrast to Westeros, on the eastern continent of Essos across the Narrow Sea there are a large number of local religions across the nine Free Cities, but few religions that are widespread across large geographical areas. Even so, each city may contain worshipers of numerous different local religions that are not to be found anywhere else in the world. The Free City of Braavos has a very diverse, cosmopolitan religious makeup, welcoming all faiths.

The one major exception to this is the Lord of Light religion, which is very widespread. The Lord of Light religion is the most popular faith in the southern Free Cities: Volantis, Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh -

Indeed, in the southern Free Cities such as Volantis, Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh, the Lord of Light is the majority religion, and it has at least a plurality in many other major cities of the continent. Still, unlike in Westeros where the Faith of the Seven is often the exclusive religion, in many cities in Essos where the faith of the Lord of Light is the majority religion there are still substantial minorities that worship other religions.

The religion of the Lord of Light *apparently* is a bit more sexually tolerant; in their dualist view, the Lord of Light made humankind male and female, and the Lord of Life is in a struggle of the power of life versus the power of death against the Great Other. Therefore, when male and female are joined together it is a life-affirming, powerful act. This might indicate that they don’t view non-procreative sex as positive, but it is unclear. Either way there are so many other religions worshiped in the Free Cities, even in a single city, that there are multiple homosexual characters from there.

The Valyrians were obsessed with “keeping the bloodline pure” and practiced heavy brother-sister incest whenever possible (though apparently, not parent-child). Polygamy was also fairly common. We know little about how the Valyrian Freehold functioned at its height. We can only see them through the window of how the early Targaryens functioned in Westeros: apparently marriage and bastardy were rules they had, and there were female dragonlords, but Aegon I became lord ahead of Visenya? Was this due to Westerosi influence? Uncertain. Several historical Targaryens were homosexual, but they always stood apart from the peoples they ruled. This may have influenced the incest laws of Westeros, given that first cousins marry often in the Seven Kingdoms.

Courtesans are held in high cultural esteem in Braavos, and throughout the Free Cities formal concubines are not uncommon. Norvos was founded by religious extremists who are a very conservative all-male priesthood and who believe that sex is strictly for the creation of children.

Slaver's Bay
The attitudes in Slaver's Bay about gender and sexuality are less clear than in Westeros and the Free Cities. The great slaver cities such as Astapor, Yunkai, Meereen, and New Ghis have vast slave populations, many of which are treated as mere property by their owners. Female slaves are made to breed new slaves, and slave boys are castrated by the hundreds to be made into Unsullied warrior-eunuchs. There are both male and female pleasure slaves, taken as young children to be trained in "the way of the seven sighs" to service the aristocrats: Yunkai in particular specializes in training bed slaves (though they are not quite as highly esteemed as those in Lys).

The exact sexual norms of Slaver's Bay are therefore unclear: a slave-owner has sexual access to their slaves, but it it is unknown what degree of sexual freedom is considered typical for women from the slave-owning classes (either with other men from the slave-owning classes, or with slaves their families own). While some of them do engage in homosexual activity, and train male or female slaves for a variety of sexual services, it is vague how typical or widespread such behavior is considered.

The Ghiscari religion practiced in Slaver's Bay is centered around a Temple of the Graces in each city, apparently run by an all-female clergy known as Graces, who are color-coded by their style of dress. The Red Graces are temple prostitutes, while the Blue Graces are healers, and the high priestess is known as the Green Grace. Given that their religion includes sacred prostitution, the Ghiscari probably have more relaxed views on sexuality than in Westeros. Meanwhile, their religion is apparently dominated by an all-female clergy, which might affect their views on the status of women. The Green Grace of a city, such as Galazza Galare in Meereen, can wield significant political power.

It is unknown how common it is for women to wield political power in Slaver's Bay, or if it even a normal occurrence. Some of the slaver families such as the House of Pahl seem to be run by women after Daenerys kills all of their men in her conquest of Meereen.

It is unknown if the Graces can marry, though it does not seem that they do. If so this might mean that aristocratic families in Slaver's Bay, as in real-life Western Europe, might marry off their daughters are relatively late ages, because if they wait too long and she is no longer suitable for marriage she can always join the Graces and still occupy a significant social position.

Dothraki
A little more is shown of Dothraki society than other regions in Essos, even several of the Free Cities, due to the time Daenerys spends living with them in the first novel. Even so, not as much is known about their culture compared to Westeros itself. Their religion of the Great Stallion actually has quite a complex belief system of omens and superstitions.

The Dothraki appear to be a male-dominated society, and there is no mention of female warriors. Dothraki men frequently take women from lands they are pillaging as concubines, and they do practice slavery - even against other Dothraki. Sex with slave women apparently isn't a moral concern.

The Dothraki practice polygamy, and the novels mention several other khals who have multiple wives. Khal Drogo just happened to be unmarried already when he married Daenerys. It is unknown if there is any ranking system among their wives - such as how the ironborn have one primary "rock wife", then multiple "salt wives" who are basically formal concubines (though it is considered a marriage and their children are legitimate). The actual status of a Khaleesi is variable, however: some khals may only take one wife who they are infatuated with, who wields great informal power in the khalasar, while in other cases a khal may have multiple wives who he just treats as concubines. It is said that a Dothraki khal might sometimes even share his wife with his bloodriders, though he will never share his horse with them. In some ways therefore it does not seem that women are held in high regard by the Dothraki.

At the same time, however, they do not really have a male-dominated inheritance system, or even a formal inheritance system. When a Khal dies, there is no guarantee that his khalasar will follow his son - they follow strength. If a khal has an adult son who is well-respected, he will be considered his heir (termed a "khalakka"), however if his son is only an infant or if he has no sons, the khalasar will break up into new smaller ones commanded by his former lieutenants. Also, both Dothraki men and women are expected to ride everywhere on horses - even pregnant women, who are apparently not considered weak due to their condition. Only slaves walk on foot, and the only people in a khalasar who are carried in horse-drawn carts are the feeble, the injured, the very old and young, and pregnant women are are in the middle of childbirth (the whole khalasar of thousands of people in transit doesn't stop moving just because one woman went into labor). Khals can also have a great deal of respect for their mothers: Khal Mengo, who first united the Dothraki to begin their first great outburst of conquest at the beginning of the Century of Blood, was said to have been counseled by his mother, the purported witch-queen Doshi.

Interestingly, the only Dothraki "priesthood" of any sort is all-female: the Dosh khaleen who reside in Vaes Dothrak. They are the widows of dead khals, and they serve as seers and wise-women, who read the omens that decide when it is favorable to go to war. Even the most powerful khal would be hesitant to defy the word of the dosh khaleen. Thus women can achieve powerful positions in Dothraki society, specifically dominating their religious clergy which can dictate sexual mores. While these widows are apparently celibate, the Dothraki do not actually have a "celibate clergy" in the sense of a "celibate clerical order": it is not a "lifestyle choice" any woman can make, but part of the natural life course, and only a few Dothraki women ever get married by khals. The dosh khaleen don't choose celibacy and by definition they have all had sex before: they are all widows, and they are attended by eunuchs to protect them so apparently they are no longer sexually active. While in real-life medieval Christianity the celibate clergy held up its own lifestyle as a morally superior choice which the non-clergy didn't make, the dosh khaleen wouldn't expect most Dothraki women (who never marry khals) to be able to choose a life of celibacy at all: therefore there isn't a strong reason for the dosh khaleen to denounce sex among regular Dothraki men and women.

The Dothraki language developed by David J. Peterson offers no specific clues. Dothraki pronouns make no gender distinctions: the language does have grammatical gender, but between animate and inanimate, not male and female (like the Basque language and many real-life Native American languages). In English it is the other way around: English nouns dropped the different grammatical genders found in Indo-European or German, but English pronouns do retain gender distinction. In Spanish, grammar gender endings distinguish between a male cat (gato) and a female cat (gata). Dothraki does distinguish between a male and female goat, but it uses entirely separate words: "dorvi" (male goat) and "jin" (female goat) - just as in English "stallion" (male horse) and "mare" (female horse) are separate words for different genders of the same kind of animal. Little can be firmly read into these points, however, about broader Dothraki conceptualizations regarding human gender behaviors.

The combined effect that all of these factors on Dothraki society is unclear: a powerful female priesthood of widows, generally a male-dominant warrior society, men can have polygamous marriages, but a less formalized inheritance system than Westeros. The novels have simply never mentioned what the Dothraki attitude about homosexual behavior or gender patterns are. For all we know, they might have a concept of more than two genders, like the Native American "Two Spirit" model (the Dothraki are loosely inspired by a mix of real life Turkic and Native American peoples). Just because a Dothraki warrior behaves in ways the men in Westeros find to be "masculine" doesn't mean he doesn't also have sex with men - or, that like Medieval Europe, the Dothraki conception of gender isn't based more on a dichotomy of penetrator/penetrated. Alternatively, the Dothraki could have the same views about homosexuality and gender binary as men in Westeros: the narrative simply has not given any information on the subject (i.e. we've never heard Dothraki insulting men from other cultures by claiming that they are homosexuals, etc., which would indicate that they have a cultural bias against it).

The fact that the Dothraki don't have a celibate clergy might imply that they don't consider non-procreative sex to be quite as shameful as in Westeros. On the other hand, the religions of Islam and Judaism in the real Middle Ages didn't practice clerical celibacy either - and while they were somewhat more tolerant of non-procreative sex within marriage, neither of them were particularly more tolerant of homosexuality than medieval Christianity was. At the same time, even when medieval western Christianity had clerical celibacy, homosexuality was simply frowned upon, there weren't formal laws against it. The presence or absence of a celibate clergy can somewhat indicate the general trend of a culture's attitudes towards sex, but even when it is practiced there is still room for a considerable variation in social attitudes on gender and sexuality, so it is difficult to tell.

The Dothraki are prominently stated to have very different attitudes about shame than people in Westeros or the Free Cities: everything in a khalasar is done in the open, so public nudity or publicly having sex in front of a crowd of people isn't considered to be shameful. Dothraki even openly have sex in wild orgies in front of crowds gathered at wedding ceremonies. On the wedding night the husband and wife also ride out into the fields to have sex for the first time in the open air, not in a tent, as they believe that anything important in life should be witnessed by the sky instead of being hidden. This does seem to be congruent with the fact that the Dothraki do not have a celibate clerical order. Societies in real life with non-celibate clergies are generally more tolerant of non-procreative sex among the non-clergy.

Summer Islands and Sothoryos
The culture of the Summer Islands is very much what might be called "sex-positive" in real life. Summer Islanders believe sex to be a gift from the gods for humanity to enjoy (even when non-procreative), regarding it as a joyous and life-affirming act. Although specific details about the Summer Islander religion have not been revealed, it is said that they consider sex to be an outright "holy" act, and therefore nothing to be ashamed about. While it has not been specifically mentioned, they apparently don't have any stigma against homosexual sex either.

Prostitution is considered a very respectable profession in the Summer Islands and is even practiced by highborn islanders (who do not financially need to do it, but as a form of temple-prostitution). In fact, all Summer Islanders - male or female, highborn or lowborn, rich or poor - are expected to spend one year in the temples of love honoring the gods with their bodies. Those deemed the most beautiful and most skilled earn the right to stay and become revered priests or priestesses. They thus definitely do not practice clerical celibacy, and both men and women can join the priesthood - matching the pattern of a society that doesn't vilify non-procreative sex as sinful.

The Summer Islands religion worships a score or so of gods and goddesses both great and small, but special reverence is shown to the god and goddess of love, beauty, and fertility. The physical union of male and female is sacred to these deities, and thus joining together in sex is considered a form of worship by the islanders that honors the gods who made them (again, it hasn't been mentioned what their attitudes about homosexuality are, given that their two primary gods symbolize and rejoice in the union of male and female, but as they don't vilify non-procreative sex for pleasure, it is probably implied that they are tolerant of homosexual behaviors). The priests and priestesses of the Summer Islands are quite esteemed at their skills, as they consider lovemaking to be an artform, as worth of respect as music, sculpture, or dance. Funerals in the Summer Islands are not somber occasions mourning the deceased but celebrations of the lives they led, with wine and lovemaking.

The Summer Islanders apparently consider women to be the equals of men, both socially and in inheritance law. Apart from being able to become revered priestesses, female islanders are frequently mentioned as rulers of different isles. Each of the islands is ruled by its own prince or princess, and the three largest islands are divided between several rival princedoms. They were once all united for the first time over 5,000 years ago by the warrior-queen Xanda Qo, Princess of Sweet Lotus Vale, who was succeeded by her daughter Chatana Qo, but the islands politically fragmented afterwards (though they remain largely peaceful). It is stated that Summer Islander women are warriors just as the men are, and that both male and female Summer Islanders are considered the finest bowmen in the world.

The Summer Islands themselves are located due south from the Narrow Sea that divides Westeros and Essos. Farther east, due south from Slaver's Bay, lies the third known continent, Sothoryos - separated from the Summer Islands by a considerable distance across the Summer Sea. Little is known about this largely unexplored continent, the northern regions of which are filled with dense and dangerous jungles. The coasts are constantly scoured by slavers from further north, and the only permanent settlements are pirate dens used as bases of operation for more slaver raids. Between Sothoryos and the Summer Islands is the island of Naath, home of Missandei. Very little is known about their culture, save that their religion believes that there is only one deity known as the Lord of Harmony, who created the universe; the religion commands respect for all life, so the Naathi will not fight even to defend their homes and persons. They do not even eat the flesh of animals due to their beliefs, but are vegetarians. Anything else about their culture is unknown, such as if their religion has male or female priests, or even has a clergy, or what their attitudes are about the role of women and moral values about sex.

Qarth
Little is known about the religion of Qarth or their official attitudes about such matters, but they appears to be a sexually open society. The great triple walls of Qarth are considered a wonder of the world (as recorded in the list made by Lomas Longstrider): while the outer wall is 30 feet high and decorated with images of animals, and the middle wall is 40 feet high and decorated with images of warfare, the innermost of the three walls is a 50 foot high edifice made of black marble, decorated with carved images of lovemaking (which make Daenerys blush). Apparently they don't consider such publicly displayed artwork to be obscene.

The traditional dress for Qartheen women leaves one breast exposed. Daenerys switches to this style of dress when she is in Qarth (there is a disproportionate amount of fanart depicting this). The TV series adaptation chose to omit this entirely, feeling that in prolonged scenes it would damage the integrity of the drama.

Qarth has quite a refined and cosmopolitan culture, located at the crossroads of trade between north and south, east and west - particularly due to controlling the straits that lead between the west and the wealthy lands surrounding the Jade Sea to the east. Traders from half a hundred different lands can be found mingling in Qarth, and its rulers are merchant-princes from the different trade guilds who value wealth more than old bloodlines (much like the Free Cities), though the old aristocratic families known as the Pureborn are engaged in defense of the city as much as trade. Qarth is also extensively engaged in the slave trade, and presumably this means slave-owners have sexual access to their slaves, including trained pleasure slaves, etc.

The Qartheen consider exaggerated displays of emotion to be a sign of refinement and civilized behavior, thus if Qartheen men are reporting bad news, they will make an over-exaggerated display of weeping (and apparently don't consider this shamefully effeminate behavior).

Xaro Xhoan Daxos is a powerful and immensely wealthy merchant-prince in the city but it is strongly implied that he is homosexual, as his mansion is noted to have numerous young attractive male slaves, and Daenerys' POV narration points out that despite his verbal protestations of passion for her, his eyes never particularly linger on her body. Xaro's offer of marriage to her is purely for political and economic purposes. Nonetheless, if Xaro is indeed homosexual he takes no significant steps to hide it, i.e. openly surrounding himself with attractive male slaves and remaining unmarried.

The Further East
East of Qarth and the Dothraki city Vaes Dothrak are the largest mountain chain in the world, the massive Bone Mountains, which stretch from the northern to southern coasts of Essos, and forming a major block against east-west travel. At the southern end, the Straits of Qarth form a narrow chokepoint to any sea travel between the Summer Sea to the west and the exotic lands around the Jade Sea to the east. For men in Westeros, knowledge about the world beyond their own shores drastically diminishes east of the Bones - so that these distant lands in the Further East of Essos are half-legendary to them. Most of what they have to go on are unreliable rumors, more than a few of them probably tall tales told by drunken sailors. Little was revealed about these lands in the main novels: the first significant descriptions were given in the World of Ice and Fire sourcebook (2014) (and according to the co-authors, they had no input on these sections, it was all purely from Martin's own imagination).

The emperors of Yi Ti, a massive empire on the north shore of the Jade Sea, have been said to have polygamous marriages to multiple wives, and to keep concubines. However, it is unclear how common such practices are: if they are limited as a special right of the emperors, or of the nobility, or if even commoners do this. Court eunuchs are also apparently fairly common in Yi Ti: men who voluntarily get castrasted so they can hold sensitive government positions of power. Yi Ti has has eleven ruling dynasties in its 8,000 year history, one of which were the "Pearl-white Emperors" - a series of nine eunuchs whose combined rule lasted 130 years, and whose dynasty is considered to have been a golden age of peace and prosperity. Before they ascended to rule they lived as normal men, taking wives and siring heirs, but upon becoming emperor each was then voluntarily emasculated (removing not only the testicles but the penis shaft too), so that they would not be distracted from matters of state. The Nine Eunuchs only reigned many centuries ago, however, and later dynasties stopped doing this. Little is known about religious beliefs in Yi Ti or their organizational structure. Generally it is known that the religion of Yi Ti, somewhat like the real-life concept of Yin and Yang, believes in two major deities: the Maiden-Made-of-Light who preserves the good, and the Lion of Night (depicted as a man with a lion's head) who punishes the wicked. They also venerate their "god-emperors" as minor deities. It is unknown if any women have ever come to rule in Yi Ti, either on the imperial throne or among the local nobility. Otherwise nothing else is known about their religious or cultural values that give any more insight into their views on sexuality.

South of Yi Ti in the Jade Sea is the large island Leng, which was conquered by settlers from Yi Ti but rebelled against the mainland about four centuries ago. The Yi Tish settlers made common cause with the remaining indigenous Lengii people (who still lived in the southern third of the island). Unlike the dynasties of god-emperors in Yi Ti, however, Leng subsequently came to be ruled by a matrilineal line of god-empresses. It is also tradition that each empress of Leng take two men as consorts (one Yi Tish, one Lengii).

The city-states located high in the Bone Mountains have quite unique practices regarding gender and sexuality. There are are only three major passes through the Bone Mountains, each of them guarded by a city-state: Kayakayanaya, Shamyriana, and Bayasabhad. They were founded as garrisons to guard the passes by the now-fallen empire known as the Patrimony of Hyrkoon. These mountain kingdoms are each ruled by a small caste of "Great Fathers", but are dominated by fierce women warriors, infamous for fighting bare breasted, and wearing iron rings pierced through their nipples and rubies in their cheeks. Moreover, it is the custom of the Hyrkoonians to castrate nearly all of their males when they reach the age of adulthood. Only their women become warriors, and make up their entire military. The eunuch males serve as worker-drones, filling all other social roles from scholars and priests to craftsmen and farmers. Only the males they deem the largest, strongest, and most attractive are not castrated, and allowed to mature and become Great Fathers - literally named so, because only they breed with the women of their cities to produce the next generation. The women-warriors of these city-states are among the fiercest fighters in the world, capable of shutting down access to the mountain passes too all outsiders, either the Dothraki from the west or Yi Ti and the Jogos Nhai to the east.

Between Yi Ti to the south, the Shivering Sea to the north, and bordered by the Bone Mountains to the west, are the wind-swept plains of the Jogos Nhai. They are a nomadic people who perpetually raid the lands of Yi Ti to the south and war against the Hyrkoonian city-stats to the west. Unlike the Dothraki, whose khalasars can contain thousands of riders, the Jogos Nhai are divided into smaller close-knit bands of kin groups - though conversely, while the Dothraki khalasars frequently war against each other, as a rule the Jogos Nhai never fight each other. Also while the Dothraki are conquerors the Jogos Nhai focus more on raiding: when their enemies' armies counter-attack they flee back into the plains instead of facing them head-on like the Dothraki would. The result is that they seldom raid neighboring lands in vast conquests but chip away at them through many small but devastating raids which are difficult to counter. It is a cultural rite of passage that young men steal livestock from neighboring clans, while young women customarily "kidnap" husbands from them. Skull-binding is practiced on infants of both genders to elongate their skulls: men shave all of their hair except for a short mohawk, while women shave their heads completely bald. Each band of Jogos Nhai is co-ruled by a jhat (war chief) who is always a man and a Moonsinger who is always a woman: the jhat rules over all things military (i.e. external politics) while the moonsinger is a combination priestess, healer, and judge, who rules over all internal affairs. This division of labor is very strict - though the Jogos Nhai have some quite unique views on gender (see the "Transgender" section below).

If one follows the north coast of Essos past the Bone Mountains, one will eventually reach the Thousand Islands, a large archipelago of windswept rocky islands (of which there are actually no more than about three hundred isles). This is the furthest east that men from Westeros have ever explored, in one of the great voyages of Corlys Velaryon. The isles are not very hospitable and are inhabited by a strange and primitive race who are hostile to foreigners, though they fear the ocean. The islanders are said to be hairless and to file the teeth of their women to points. Most interesting in the description given about them in the World of Ice and Fire sourcebook (2014) is mention that their males are circumcised. This raises another point: it does not appear that any major religion or cultural group in either Westeros or Essos practices circumcision. Judaism never existed in this fantasy world, so there was never an Abrahamic commandment for circumcision - in the modern era circumcision is therefore also near-universal among Muslims, and while dropped as a religious practice in Christianity, it became a common cultural practice in the United States in the nineteenth century due to medical arguments that it was hygenically beneficial. It is also a common practice in indigenous cultures in Africa, the Americas, and Australasia. In contrast, circumcision is apparently so rarely practiced in the world of Westeros and Essos that the Thousand Islands are the only culture ever mentioned as practicing it - and the in-universe maester who was describing them apparently didn't even have a word for it. Instead of just calling it "circumcision", he rather literally describes that they "slice the foreskins from the members of their males". This point about circumcision actually came up in the TV series in Season 5: during Cersei's walk of atonement a male extra flashes her. In the March 20, 2015 issue of Entertainment Weekly, reporters on set noted that a debate was occurring in the production team about whether they should keep the actor they had selected, because he was uncircumcised - at least some of the production team were aware that circumcision doesn't exist in the three major religions of Westeros, and apparently doesn't exist in the known regions of Essos either. Eventually, however, they decided that the shot was so brief that no one would readily notice so they kept the actor.

Very little is known about mysterious and ill-omened Asshai, on the far eastern side of the Jade Sea, feared as a city of sorcerers, warlocks, shadow-binders, and worse. Nothing grows in Asshai: the Ash River it sits next to is poisonous, and its fumes kill any animals or plants brought into the city. Even drinking water has to be imported into Asshai. The fumes from the Ash River also seem to render people sterile if they live there long enough. As a result the Asshai'i do not reproduce with each other, but purchase slave children from the international slave-trade, then raise them as the next generation of Asshai'i. Melisandre herself was born a slave but as a child was taken to be raised in the temple of the Lord of Light in Asshai. The attitudes of the Asshai'i towards gender and sexuality seem to be as enigmatic as virtually everything else about the city - though given that they physically can't procreate anymore, and given Melisandre's open attitudes about sexuality, it doesn't seem that they would have a need to shame non-procreative sex acts.

Far east of even Asshai at the edge of the known world is Carcosa, a strange city ruled by its yellow king - but the less said about that dark city the better.

Transgender people in the A Song of Ice and Fire mythos
No Transgender characters have been mentioned by name in the main A Song of Ice and Fire novels, that is, persons born as one gender but who live as another. Transsexuals apparently do not exist in the modern sense - that is, no culture seems to have the surgical means to carry out gender reassignment surgery, nor can this be done through magical means, etc.

There probably are transgendered people in Westeros, but like real-life Medieval Europe the culture of the Seven Kingdoms only recognizes a gender binary between male and female. There are records of transgendered people in Medieval Europe (that is, those who openly lived this way and did not hide their feelings) but they were found shunned on the fringes of society i.e. a few court records note prostitutes that were actually male-to-female transsexuals who were engaging in survival sex work. Something similar probably happens in Westeros, i.e. Littlefinger says that his brothels cater to any taste, but mainstream society across Westeros really doesn't recognize transsexuals as a legitimate lifestyle.

A better question would be if there are other cultures in the broader A Song of Ice and Fire mythos in which what a modern audience might call transsexuality is openly accepted - and in fact there is one major example. The Jogos Nhai in the Further East have very interesting attitudes towards gender: each nomadic band's jhat (war chief) is a man, while their moonsinger (a combination priestess/healer/judge) is always a woman. However, a physically born male can become a moonsinger - but to do so he must dress and live as a woman, to the point that the moonsinger's biological sex is not immediately obvious to outsiders. Similarly, a biological female can become a jhat, but she must live as a man. The Jogos Nhai do not have a social system that recognizes four genders, however, and they actually have a strict gender binary when it comes to social roles: they simply don't see biological sex to be inherently linked with gender, which is something someone can choose. Among the Jogos Nhai, the jhat rules over all external affairs of war and raid (external politics) and leads the war band in battle, while the moonsinger rules over all internal affairs, being a combination priestess, healer, and judge (presumably this means that any Jogos Nhai merchants have to either be women or transexual men living as women). While the Jogos Nhai have been mentioned in passing in the main A Song of Ice and Fire novels, these more extensive details about their culture were not revealed until the World of Ice and Fire sourcebook (2014).

What is interesting is that while the Jogos Nhai live so far east of even the Dothraki Sea that they are barely mentioned in the novels, this does not mean that they would never be encountered in the lands to the west. Specifically, the Free City of Braavos was founded by former slaves from Valyria who overpowered their guards and fled on the ships transporting them. As a result the founders of Braavos had a very diverse ethnic and religious makeup: Rhoynar, Ghiscari, Summer Islanders, Andals, Valyrian criminals, and even Yi Tish and Jogos Nhai who had been sold into slavery. The moonsingers among the Jogos Nhai fraction of these escaping slaves rose to prominence, and following visions they had guided the fleet north until they found the perfectly sheltered and hidden harbor where they built Braavos. The new city they created honored all faiths, and there is no one religion with a majority or even a plurality - religions from the far corners of the world are followed in Braavos, from the Faith of the Seven to the Lord of Light, to the Many-Faced God of Death is worshiped in Braavos. However, they always gave special veneration to the moonsingers for their role in founding the city, and it appears to be one of the more popular religions in Braavos, with a large temple. Logically, while this has never been outright stated, it is possible that followers of the moonsinger religion in Braavos continue to follow the religion's beliefs about gender roles, i.e. there might be Braavosi sellswords who, following the moonsinger religion of their ancestors, are women who live as men - and conversely, there might be moonsinger men who live as women and work as merchants or even bankers in Braavos. Little of this has been touched upon in the narrative - but unlike the distant plains of the Jogos Nhai north of Yi Ti, Braavos is a quite frequently visited location in the story.

One named Intersex character does appear in the main novels, in Tyrion Lannister's storyline when he reaches Slaver's Bay. After Tyrion is captured by slavers he is sold to the master Yezzan zo Qaggaz, in part because he is a dwarf and Yezzan enjoys collecting slaves with some deformity or another to add to his private grotesquerie - sort of like a private "freak show", though he treats these slaves reasonably well. One of Yezzan's favorites is an intersex slave named Sweets (called a "hermaphrodite" in their context), who has apparently been trained to be a bit of a courtier, speaking four languages including High Valyrian. Sweets uses female pronouns: she is willowy with violet eyes, long purple hair (apparently dyed), and is well dressed in fine Myrish lace and jewels. When asked if she is a man or a woman she says "I'm both". The morbidly obese Yezzan often has Sweets serve as his bedmate. In return Sweets is grateful for how comparatively well Yezzan treats her and his other slaves (i.e. dwarfs and other deformed slaves probably wouldn't last very long in the normal slave markets if Yezzan hadn't collected them for his menagerie). Sweets is presented as a positive character who is friendly and candid with Tyrion and warns him to steer clear of Yezzan's cruel slave overseer, Nurse. She is also witty and astute, having no illusions about what will happen to all of Yezzan's slaves if he dies and the other more cruel masters take them. After Tyrion flees her fate is left unknown. Tyrion's storyline in Slaver's Bay was drastically condensed in the novels, so that well over a dozen characters were cut for time and Yezzan himself only has a brief appearance, so as a result Sweets doesn't appear in the TV series.

=Gender and Sexuality as adapted and depicted in the Game of Thrones TV series= Depictions of gender and sexuality in the Game of Thrones TV series adaptation by HBO generally match how gender and sexuality are presented in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels.

For the most part the TV series has focused on sexuality in Westeros, because the novels simply don't describe different social structures in Essos in very great detail, i.e. the novels didn't go into much detail about the view of the Dothraki on gender and sexuality, so the TV series didn't invent what was already unclear from the source material. In Westeros, the views of worshipers of the Old Gods (the Northmen and wildlings) and the Drowned God (ironborn) are similarly vague in the novels, so the TV series did not invent any new details either.

The TV series does accurately include the details from the novels that conceptions about gender and sexuality are very different in Dorne compared to the rest of Westeros.

A point of minor confusion is that the words "homosexual" and "gay" did not exist in the Middle Ages ("gay" in particular is a very recent term), and they don't exist in the novels either. A commonly used term in the Middle Ages was "sodomy", but the novels have avoided using this term, probably because it stems very specifically from the biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Book of Genesis does not exist in the world of Westeros, so that's not a term they would use either. The TV series kept this point and also avoids using the terms "homosexual", "gay", and "sodomy". The first two of these are more obviously used in modern settings, but without the word "sodomy", "sodomite", etc. the TV series has at times had to struggle with how to refer to homosexuals:


 * When Renly and Loras's relationship was discussed by Cersei, Joffrey, and Margaery in Season 3's "Dark Wings, Dark Words", Cersei just called him a "deviant" (which Joffrey copied), or "perversion". Margaery delicately explained to Joffrey that Renly was a homosexual by using the more convoluted description that "I don't think he was interested in the company of women".
 * Later in Season 3's "The Climb", Tywin Lannister and Olenna Tyrell discuss rival marriage-alliance plans (in a scene invented for the TV series). Tywin just refers to Loras's homosexuality as "unnatural behavior".  Olenna calls it "buggery", though the script also introduces the description "sword swallower" (which is not from the novels).
 * In the Season 4 premiere "Two Swords", Cersei referred to Loras as a "pillow-biter" - which is not a term from the novels, and probably not from the real Middle Ages. Apparently, "pillow-biter" is actually a very modern term originating in the 1970s (and only in British slang, it is not a common term in American slang).  Olenna herself also later refers to homosexuals as "pillow-biters" in Season 5's "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken".

Joffrey in the novels never threatened to declare homosexuality a "perversion punishable by death" (which he said to impress Margaery in "Dark Wings, Dark Words"). There has never been widespread persecution of homosexuals in Westeros, so in context this is sort of like Joffrey saying "adultery will be punishable by death". It is in keeping with his trend from the novels of making outrageous and psychopathically violent proclamations with little or no provocation (i.e. when starving war refugees come to the castle gates begging their king for food, he stands on the battlements and shoots several dead with his crossbow, insulted that they think him "a baker").

Karras 124 - "pluck a rose" as a common sex euphemism in songs and ballads (Tyrells?)

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