Childhood Deprivation: the Dangers of Growing up in ‘Game of Thrones’
If you were born in the Seven Kingdoms, chances are you experienced a tough childhood. As exemplified in HBO’s Game of Thrones, life as a child in Westeros is full of dangers and bad influences. How children are represented in the show is an interesting mix of childhood deprivation and forced power acquisition. All in all, the children of Game of Thrones are thrown into their families’ games, whether they like it or not.
Innocence v. Responsibility
George R.R. Martin’s world features a great lot of characters who can be considered children (this without even acknowledging the fact that they are all much younger in Martin’s books than in the HBO series).Technically, when the show began, most of them (including Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, Robb Stark and Theon Greyjoy) are still teenagers. From the Starks to the Baratheons, all child and teen characters face a number of great responsibilities and are subjected to more threats than their young ages should allow. From the get-go, most of them are confronted with difficult options: run, fight, or oblige, which divide the family units. Rickon, Bran, and Arya Stark, for instance, all had to run when things went south for their family.
Many of the twisted characters in Game of Thrones were teens, Joffrey Baratheon and Robyn Aryan to name a few. It seems that too much power too soon turned a lot of them into individuals with highly questionable values. Few of the ones given adult responsibilities early in life actually handle it well. Put on the Iron Throne without having time to develop any leadership skills, Tommen Baratheon is a good example of a child who does not know how to manage his kingdom without the advice of adults. On the other side of the spectrum, season six introduced a new child character who confirmed that youth does not justify poor ruling: Lyanna Mormont. The fiercest young lady in the series reinforced the idea that having a normal childhood is impossible for the high-born children of Westeros, but showed that there is no need for adults to make wise decisions. Sure, she has advisors and other people to help her understand who is who and what is going on in the world, but she does not need a parent to tell her how to take care of her own people.
Bad influence
If Lyanna Mormont appears to be a strong leader and to perform her duties well, it might be because she is not influenced by a parental figure like most of the other children of the show. When Sansa left home, she ended up under the Lannister’s yoke, her parents being replaced by Cersei and co. After that, she was chaperoned by Lord Baelish who gave her to the Boltons. As she told him in “The Door” (season 6, episode 5), “you freed me from the monsters who murdered my family. And you gave me to other monsters who murdered my family.” The point is, Sansa was never in a good situation as long as she was controlled or supposedly “helped” by a parental figure. In fact, it seems that having a parental figure in this world does more harm than good. Daenerys for instance, or even Arya, did better on their own than characters dependant on an adult guidance. None of Cersei Lannister’s children benefited from her influence, and even Tommen committed suicide in the season six finale when he could not deal with his mother’s actions anymore. Sansa Stark had one of the darkest storylines in the show until she finally freed herself from the influence of an older character. In comparison to her sister, Arya has a knack for getting away from adults who are not helping her survive. She got away from the Faceless Men as soon as she realized they were trapping her humanity. Sansa on the other end had a hard time finding her independence, and even now her ties to Littlefinger are thick enough to question her true freedom.
High born = trouble
The least that can be said is that it is complicated to grow up in the Seven Kingdoms and, as Tyrion Lannister said in “The Battle of the Bastards” (season 6, episode 9), they “all had complicated lives.” The stakes that come from being a child in the Seven Kingdoms are high. If Rickon and Bran’s lives were in jeopardy it is because they were heirs. The mere idea of them taking over Winterfell scared their enemies. Being highly born puts the children of Game of Thrones in difficult positions, boys or girls. Only poor Shireen Baratheon was rejected, from the beginning, by her parents and payed the price of having a father who chose ambition over family. Catelyn Stark and Cersei Lannister were both mothers who would give anything for their children, but none of them were able to protect them. In the end, the children of Westeros have higher chances of survival and success if a parental figure isn’t stealing their thunder.
Breaking the wheel
Being better off on their own, some of the children of Westeros learned from their parents’ mistakes. “We are going to leave the world better than we found it,” Daenerys told Yara Greyjoy when they met. That idea of “breaking the wheel” and not ruling over Westeros the same way as other Houses have is something that the Mother of Dragons has mentioned before. With people like her and Yara Greyjoy, the show presents the rise of power figures who want to show the people of the Seven Kingdoms what kind of rulers they can be. They are wiser than their predecessors and know how to play the games. Even Sansa Stark demonstrated her own cleverness in the penultimate episode of the sixth season, when she explained to Jon Snow why their brother Rickon would not survive. Poor Rickon, another child who did not get to be one.
