We need to appreciate the violence of the women in Game of Thrones

Let me start off by saying that I’m #TeamDany, #TeamArya, and #TeamSansa forever. Let’s also acknowledge that among the nobles in the world of Ice and Fire, murder is basically a state-sanctioned activity. Literally, we’ve never heard of anyone belonging to the knight-class or one of the seven noble houses being tried for murder, even a petty one, and indeed the only trial(s) we’ve seen on the show involved the conduct and misdeeds of women. The gendered imbalance of power and agency has never failed to shine through on screen, and the criticism for wielding such always tends to land at the feet of the female characters, especially in one specific realm: violence.
Take, for instance, the rise of Daenerys Targaryen’s power. By the time she has achieved Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, titles, titles, titles status, she has killed surprisingly few people, especially once you consider that she essentially subdued an entire continent. Yet the doubts about her mental state and general disposition from viewers increasingly look something like this:

Dany has a shockingly low penchant for brutality, particularly when it comes to the innocent, but the Mad Queen theories stick to her like glue. The cruxifixion of the masters, and the burning of the Dothraki leaders offer a view into Dany’s no-nonsense view of justice, and also her magnanimity. Those incidents put together add hundreds of deaths to Dany’s scoreboard, but neither represent unnecessary or wanton violence. Hearing of her approach to the city of Yunkai, after her sack of Astapor, and burning of Kraznys mo Nakloz—who by the way objectively deserved his roasting—the masters of Yunkai crucified slave-children, 163 in total, and posted them at every mile leading up to the city as a warning to Dany and her burgeoning army. In her first act of retribution—a show of equal and opposite force—she crucified 163 masters and posted them along the streets of Meereen. This display showed restraint, and she didn’t ever seem particularly happy to be doing so; she could have rained fire and blood but the crucifixion of the masters was as tactical as it was impactful.
When she is abducted by the Great Khalasar en route to their ancient city, Vaes Dothrak, Daenerys immediately begins planning a way out. Unable to bargain with them or talk her way out of her imprisonment, Dany finds out that they plan to hold her against her will until her death among the wise old widows of the great Khals. She is supposed to accept this reality as her fate, but we know that our Khaleesi will not abide this life of obscurity. Dany knows that she can’t cut her way out of the grasp of 100,000 men so she uses the tool she has been accustomed to wield: fire. In a culture that values strength above all else, she knows a show of overwhelming strength will win her the prize that she desires, so when the heads of all the Khalasars gather to discuss what to do with her, she finds her way out. Dany, as we’ve seen, is impervious to fire so in one fell swoop she burns all the Khals alive, while roasting herself in the process, and she steps out of the council unscathed. After that she could have killed as many Dothraki as she wanted to but she didn’t. She enlisted them all into her Khalasar, spared the innocent, and even named all of them her blood riders.
You can say that she likes seeing flames, so does Melisandre, and you can also say she likes seeing people burn, which in this world seems to be everyone except for the Hound, but I ask what choice did she have? Stripped of her agency, power, and even possibly her bodily autonomy was it not the right move to use her one strategic advantage to her benefit? She killed because the alternative would have been to have her life taken away from her, not out of sheer maniacal terror. Outside of the hundreds she’s killed in battle (Drogon’s kills count as hers), a dozen Khals, and the 163 masters, Dany has only killed three people, Mirri Maz Duur, Pyat Pree, and Khal Drogo. Each of them was killed out of revenge or mercy; the same can’t be said for any other man on the show. The one person who she would have actually had just cause to execute, Jorah, was pardoned and allowed to return to her service, so yeah, it doesn’t appear that she’s too keen on killing when it isn’t necessary.
Arya is a different case altogether, but there’s little evidence to suggest she’s a totally disassociated murdering machine. For all the mysticism and fanaticism of the Faceless Men, they are essentially contract killers. A group of assassins that value and accept a different form of currency to perform their duties; a life pays for a death. Arya is not only indoctrinated in this belief, but she’s specifically warned against using her considerable set of skills to kill anyone she’s not assigned to. She strays from that only to pursue her end (and starting) goal: completing her list.
“Joffrey, Cersei, Walder Frey…”
Arya’s kill list is her prayer for the demise of those that have personally wronged her, killed her family members, or harmed her friends. She learns as a child that the world is unjust—after seeing her father beheaded—so she understands that there is no karmic justice coming for the people who do evil things. She takes it upon herself to be that justice. In arguably the purest cause on the show, next to Jon Snow’s, she repeats it ad nauseam as a reminder that people need to be held accountable for their crimes. It’s not purely revenge, not with all of them anyway. Even when she’s specifically ordered to kill someone with which she harbors no personal enmity, she intervenes to save Lady Crane’s life. She kills the Waif, which in my opinion is the final test—to kill a part of yourself. This act is her ticket out of the order and leads her back to the path of becoming Arya Stark.
If you’ve made it onto Arya’s list you’ve done something B-A-D. Of the names that have landed on her coveted list, five have died, and she’s only personally crossed off two. The first, Meryn Trant, absolutely deserved to die the way he did, and I’m glad Arya took her chance to kill him even if did cost her her eyesight for a few months. There is no way you will get me to slander Arya by saying she delighted in his death too much, and certainly not after we found out that his proclivities included children. She personally avenged Syrio Forel, got justice for her father who was sold out by Trant (and Littlefinger btw), and took an objectively bad dude out the world.
The second, and the source of the “dark Arya” concerns, was Walder Frey. Once she returns from Braavos, Arya makes a bee-line for the Twins to repay Lord Frey in kind for what he did to her family at the Red Wedding—the most unprecedented breach of custom, faith, and diginity in the entire series. We know that Arya is a trained assassin, so it’s understandable that she’s killed a few redshirts along the way, and it’s unclear whether the face she took to get close to Walder was taken on her way out the House of Black and White—the girl did look rather Volantene—or she was the unfortunate victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, either way, Arya is on a mission.

In a chef’s kiss act of retribution, Arya returns to the Old Way by feeding Walder Frey a pie with his sons baked into it, a la the Rat Cook, and slices his throat like his eldest son Black Walder did to her mother. The pièce de résistance of Arya’s revenge is when she dons the face of old Lord Walder and presides over a feast including all the Frey men “worth a damn” and watches as they all choke to death after drinking from poisoned chalices of wine. Arya does look rather content after having administered the Frey’s comeuppance, but we see later that her façade is just an armor, as it is broken through after she learns that her family has survived, and retaken their place at Winterfell.
Sansa opts-in to the chance to dole out her own justice on her rapist and captor Ramsay Bolton, by using his greatest form of terror against him. It’s understood by everyone in the castle that her’s should be the final face that Ramsay sees, and when a slight smile creeps onto her face after having watched him meet his end, we all see it as an absolute win. The only one that continues to dilute the theory of the women in the world dishing out justice is Cersei Lannister. She has gone far afield of the pursuit of justice or vengeance by being indifferent to the death of innocents, and her desire to inflict sheer terror upon anyone she deems an enemy has certainly led her down the path of madness. Special shouts to Olenna Tyrell, who in her final flex lets his dad know that Joffrey’s death was supplied by her own hand, and Brienne of Tarth who has an unimpeachable level of commitment to loyalty and justice in the world.
I bring this to light because in this world we as viewers are conditioned to expect that the men, even the ones we root for, are cold-blooded killers. Those of them that are knights, lords, or kings tell tales of cutting men down in conflicts at every stage in their lives. Lesser known, or seen, characters commit smaller (yet, no less horrifying) acts of violence, like hanging or burning innocent women and children. Of the characters we know, Robert Baratheon ordered the death of Daenerys while she was a teen, Joffrey ordered the deaths of Robert’s offspring, even the babies. Tywin Lannister commanded the Mountain to murder Elia Martell and her children, while Jamie Lannister, as a ruse to escape, killed his own cousin for no apparent reason. Tyrion Lannister needlessly killed Shae in a fit of rage, and even though his father probably deserved it, he didn’t actually have to kill him. Instead, he made a mockery of him by killing his father on the chamber pot. The Hound killed Mycah, a kid, because he was a convenient scapegoat for punishment, and Jon Snow has killed numerous conspirators, whether coerced or not, for betraying the Night’s Watch. And on and on and on.
With notable exceptions, namely the three worst characters and Dany’s dad, no one has gone so far to feign concern over the predilections of men and their affinity for killing. They are basically given wide latitude because that’s what they’re supposed to do, and at times are even cheered on for it. This story is one of righting the injustices of the world, and rewriting the established order to cement womens’ power in a more respected and dignified place. The female characters who have taken the reigns of control for themselves using the experiences and skills they’ve learned through the hardships of their lives will be fine—okay, maybe not Cersei. There is little doubt that in this realm you have to accumulate power through force, and as far as women being the ones bringing the violence to right the wrongs of the past, I only have one word: good.
