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Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Game of Thrones, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
A Game of Thrones takes place in a rigidly patriarchal society. The people in power are almost always men, and the ultimate ruler is a king, while the queen often serves as nothing more than a figurehead. Throughout the novel, several women and girls challenge that patriarchal structure. When Daenerys’s brother Viserys is alive, she repeatedly endures violence and abuse at his hands. After Viserys is killed, Daenerys claims that she is his rightful heir and therefore has a legitimate claim to the Iron Throne. In the process of accruing power, Daenerys challenges patriarchal Dothraki norms and ultimately convinces Dothraki men to be her “bloodriders,” who are sworn to protect her to death, even though bloodriders have traditionally only served men. However, when Daenerys first declares herself the rightful heir to the throne, Jorah hesitates for a moment before kneeling and calling Daenerys his queen. That hesitation is another example among many of the misogynistic world in which Daenerys lives. To gain power in this world, Daenerys needs to not only amass a following, but she must also convince that following that a woman is fit to rule. In the end, though, she is able to do that much more effectively than her brother Viserys ever could.
Similarly, Cersei is both personally and politically powerless as the queen when Robert is king. She endures violence at Robert’s hands, and the king’s council deprives her of a voice. She then undertakes a shadow campaign to gain power. She tells a relative to ply Robert with wine during a hunting trip, and Robert’s resulting drunkenness contributes to his death. Cersei then takes steps to install her son Joffrey on the throne with the goal of exercising her power through him. Notably, the novel pairs women like Daenerys and Cersei, who are intrinsically suited for power, with incompetent men who abuse them from positions of power. The ineffectuality of those men undermines the argument, voiced by several characters, that the basis of patriarchy is an inherent quality in men that makes them more suited than women to wield power than women. A Game of Thrones uses this discrepancy to critique patriarchy and to show how the very foundation of patriarchal power is morally indefensible misogyny and gender-based violence directed against women and girls.
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Gender and Power ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Gender and Power appears in each chapter of A Game of Thrones. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Gender and Power Quotes in A Game of Thrones
Below you will find the important quotes in A Game of Thrones related to the theme of Gender and Power.
Chapter 2: Catelyn
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“Ben writes that the strength of the Night’s Watch is down below a thousand. It’s not only desertions. They are losing men on rangings as well.”
“Is it the wildlings?” [Catelyn] asked.
“Who else?” Ned lifted Ice, looked down the cool steel length of it. “And it will only grow worse. The day may come when I will have no choice but to call the banners and ride north to deal with this King-beyond-the-Wall for good and all.”
“Beyond the Wall?” The thought made Catelyn shudder.
Ned saw the dread on her face. “Mance Rayder is nothing for us to fear.”
“There are darker things beyond the Wall.” She glanced behind her at the heart tree, the pale bark and red eyes, watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts.
His smile was gentle. “You listen to too many of Old Nan’s stories. The Others are as dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one.”
“Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a direwolf either,” Catelyn reminded him.
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Chapter 22: Arya
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“Your mother and I have charged [Septa Mordane] with the impossible task of making you a lady.”
“I don’t want to be a lady!” Arya flared.
Chapter 45: Eddard
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“You should have taken the realm for yourself. It was there for the taking. Jaime told me how you found him on the Iron Throne the day King’s Landing fell, and made him yield it up. That was your moment. All you needed to do was climb those steps, and sit. Such a sad mistake.”
“I have made more mistakes than you can possibly imagine,” Ned said, “but that was not one of them.”
“Oh, but it was, my lord,” Cersei insisted. “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”
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Chapter 49: Eddard
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Ned produced Robert’s letter. “Lord Varys, be so kind as to show this to my lady of Lannister.”
The eunuch carried the letter to Cersei. The queen glanced at the words. “Protector of the Realm,” she read. “Is this meant to be your shield, my lord? A piece of paper?” She ripped the letter in half, ripped the halves in quarters, and let the pieces flutter to the floor.
“Those were the king’s words,” Ser Barristan said, shocked.
“We have a new king now,” Cersei Lannister replied.
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Chapter 67: Sansa
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Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was wearing a padded crimson doublet patterned with lions and a cloth-of-gold cape with a high collar that framed his face. She wondered how she could ever have thought him handsome. His lips were as soft and red as the worms you found after a rain, and his eyes were vain and cruel. “I hate you,” she whispered.
King Joffrey’s face hardened. “My mother tells me that it isn’t fitting that a king should strike his wife. Ser Meryn.”
The knight was on her before she could think, yanking back her hand as she tried to shield her face and back-handing her across the ear with a gloved fist. Sansa did not remember falling, yet the next she knew she was sprawled on one knee amongst the rushes. Her head was ringing. Ser Meryn Trant stood over her, with blood on the knuckles of his white silk glove.
A voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. “Life is not a song, sweetling,” he’d told her. “You may learn that one day to your sorrow.” In life, the monsters win, she told herself.
Chapter 72: Daenerys
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Ser Jorah Mormont drew her aside as the sun was creeping toward its zenith. “Princess …” he began.
“Why do you call me that?” Dany challenged him. “My brother Viserys was your king, was he not?”
“He was, my lady.”
“Viserys is dead. I am his heir, the last blood of House Targaryen. Whatever was his is mine now.”
“My … queen,” Ser Jorah said, going to one knee. “My sword that was his is yours, Daenerys. And my heart as well, that never belonged to your brother.
As she climbed down off the pyre, she noticed Mirri Maz Duur watching her. “You are mad,” the godswife said hoarsely.
“Is it so far from madness to wisdom?” Dany asked. “Ser Jorah, take this maegi and bind her to the pyre […] I thank you, Mirri Maz Duur,” she said, “for the lessons you have taught me.”
