Airedale260
Well-known member
Right, and since works of fiction aren’t determined by random chance, this is otherwise known as “because the author says so.” There’s a bunch of literary analysis on it but the outcome is predetermined.
What follows is a long-winded response (as you can tell I’ve got a rather strong opinion on this subject) so don’t take it as an attack on your comment; rather, it’s me ripping into GRRM for being an idiot.
Not really. Sure,it did happen but the incidents Martin refers to are notorious because it wasn’t commonplace. You see, Martin doesn’t care too much about real history; he only cares for pop history. Most medieval families didn’t marry their kids to people four times their age, even nobles. Usually it was to someone in their age range (especially because the old codgers you referenced would have already been married and had other heirs, which doesn’t help the dynastic alliance prospects of the young woman’s family (or young man on occasion -there was one notorious incident involving Edward IV’s wife who arranged for a 19-year-old or so relative to marry the Duchess of Norfolk, who was 70 or so, so that he’d inherit her fortune. Except this failed because he got captured in battle and summarily executed).
And there’s plenty else Martin gets wrong. Generally women weren’t married off as children and giving birth at 12 or 13* for two reasons: 1) The people of the Middle Ages weren’t morons and knew that the younger a woman was, the higher the risk of her (and the child) dying in childbirth, which rather defeats the whole point. And even if they survived, there were plenty of complications; oh, and 2), it was outright illegal**. Even if civil law didn’t cover it (which it usually did), the Catholic Church (which had far more influence and power over such things than the Faith of the Seven) wrote it into canon law that the parties in a marriage had to be at least 16 (male) and 14 (female). Again, there are some exceptions to this but generally, if you couldn’t get the Church to sign off on the marriage (which you needed because marriages outside of Church authority weren’t considered valid), you were SOL.
Then there’s other stuff like Johanna Swann, who was trafficked into sex slavery because her uncle wouldn’t pay a ransom (which is stupid on multiple levels***), or Coryanne Wylde who gets repeatedly raped and molested and nobody does anything to help her, but instead everyone mocks her for being a girl who really gets around (oh and somehow the book telling this story keeps circulating with lots of copies despite being banned and the only way to produce them are by hand by septons and maesters...which implies that both organizations are made up of nothing but sex-obsessed perverts...and if so, why the hell would any lord or even any commoner allow them anywhere near their wives and children without a thorough purging of the ranks?
*-The example most people think of is Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. She was the sole heiress to the Beaufort fortune & lands which made her extremely valuable. Also because at the time, the Lancastrians were on the back foot and since any son she birthed would be a serious contender for the throne. Then when she gave birth (already a widow), her mother flat out said if a choice had to be made on who to save, Margaret was the expendable one. Understandably, she was pissed and never forgot this.
In fact when her son started to pull this with his eldest daughter (her namesake) in a marriage to James IV of Scotland (who was about 28 to her 13, which...yeah big age gap but not as bad as Martin’s), Margaret Beaufort threw a shit fit over it. As it was, the marriage took place but wasn’t consummated until she’d turned 16 or so (her first pregnancy and birth was James V when she was 17).
Likewise when Edward IV’s wife, Elizabeth Woodville, arranged a marriage between her 4-year-old younger son and the 5-year-old heiress to the Duchy of Norfolk (well, the lands and fortune, at least), there wasn’t really much ability to reject that although obviously *that* wasn’t consummated (and yes, stunts like this really did not help the Woodvilles’ public perception). When Edward died in 1483 it was “good riddance.”
**-The reason these were allowed was because the Church couldn’t really take action against the kings themselves when they permitted this -Edmund Tudor was Henry VI’s half brother and obviously they couldn’t do much about the Queen Consort of England, either.
***-the problems with this being 1) most of the people captured by Barbary and Turkish slavers were sailors. Raids happened, or occasionally they’d pick up a passenger as a captive, but it was rare they wouldn’t get the ransom unless it was set stupidly high, or they tried ransoming commoners with no means to obtain the money demanded. There are a couple of anecdotes on this but no prominent nobles because, surprise surprise, they didn’t travel long distances by ship because of the risk. Not to mention that a noblewoman like Johanna (politically and physically attractive) would be such a valuable marriage commodity that the money paid to her family would be more than a ransom would cost. George apparently took the writings of 19th century Orientalism about the 15th-17th centuries at face value and ran with it...again, because he doesn’t actually know shit about history.
