Why read Queenship and the Women of Westeros?

Book cover of Queenship and the Women of Westeros: Female Agency and Advice in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire

Book description

Is the world of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO's Game of Thrones really medieval? How accurately does it reflect the real Middle Ages? Historians have been addressing these questions since the book and television series exploded into a cultural phenomenon. For scholars of…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Queenship and the Women of Westeros as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Zita Eva Rohr

Author

I recommend this book not on the basis of my co-editorship with Lisa but rather on the basis that the essays contained in it speak to the unexceptionality of premodern female power and influence in both the fantasy fiction world and in historiography and how these sometimes reflect one another—without forcing the issue. The germ of the idea for the essay collection came with the screening of the sixth series HBO television cultural phenomenon when all of a sudden the female characters started to emerge as leaders and belligerents in the quest for the Iron Throne and all that that…

From Zita's list on The best books about premodern women of power and influence: unexceptional but plenty to see.