Call For Contributions: Tales of Ice and Fire: Queenship, Female Agency, and the Role of Advice in Game of Thrones

We are pleased to announce a call for contributions to a new collection of what will be a selection of ground-breaking scholarly essays to be edited by Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz, in
association with the Royal Studies Network. The collection will be published in a 90,000-word volume, which has already welcomed the interest of a major international scholarly press of
considerable prestige and standing. It is the editors’ intention that the volume will likewise initiate a series of conference sessions to be sponsored by the Network at selected international conference events.

We seek proposals from distinguished scholars, early career researchers and exceptional graduate students who understand the importance of the Game of Thrones phenomenon to twenty-first century medieval, and early modern historical, feminist, gender, literary, and cultural studies. It has been noted elsewhere that premodern queens endured considerable challenges in the acquisition and maintenance of power and influence. The path to power for a premodern queen is still very much a road less travelled by researchers, one which increasingly demands rigorous exploration by specialist scholars to help us understand the challenges with which these women were confronted as well as their ultimate successes or failures. Game of Thrones is in some senses a watershed cultural moment, providing a platform from which to tackle questions and issues raised by popular culture, current geopolitics, and the study of premodern men and women and the times in which they lived.

Intellectual Justification

The aim of this collection is to study the questions, issues and themes raised by both Game of Thrones, the television series, and George R. R. Martin’s epic novels series, A Song of Ice and Fire, for the consideration of twenty-first century audiences and readerships. This scholarly collection will focus upon their relevance to, and points of intersection with, existing and emerging queenship scholarship and how popular historical understandings of this scholarship informs Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire.

Medieval and early modern queens and powerful elite women were expected to adhere to the gold standard set by the Virgin Mary. They further emphasized this standard by the conscious and careful display of visible and overt femininity and devotion. However, to be recognized as a force to be reckoned with in premodern times, a powerful queen needed to synthesize masculine qualities to manifest un cuer d’homme, whilst paradoxically adhering to gendered social norms—a non-threatening pious and devout feminine outward appearance.

While some hold that most of the female characters in Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire exist and act solely in the service of male protagonists, their elite women such as Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister and Arya Stark exhibit independent agency and drive the plot forward. This is especially the case with the most recent sixth television season, about which a commentator has recently remarked “is suddenly all about powerful women getting their way”. (LaSota, 2016) Season six has likewise tapped into a trope of longstanding: “anxieties about women being something other than they seem” (Garber, 2016) — especially evident in the great reveal of Melisandre, the Red Woman, as well as the subtle strategies employed by Margaery Tyrell to neutralize her power-hungry mother-in-law, dowager-queen Cersei. In the case of Melisandre, George R. R. Martin employs “the historical definition of ‘glamour’—as a brand of magic that specializes in deceptive appearances.” (Garber 2016) In many respects, Melisandre’s resemblance to Jean d’Arras’s late fourteenth century heroine, Mélusine of Lusignan, is striking and worthy of scholarly comparison and analysis.

In Game of Thrones, one notable example of a queen who manages the difficult balancing act between her masculine and feminine qualities is Daenerys Targaryen. (Rolker 2015) Margaery
Tyrell is yet another. Premodern queens and elite women could aspire to carve out a career for themselves in politics and diplomacy through their children as guardians and queens-regent. A
queen’s power frequently pitted females against one another. In the imaginary world of Game of Thrones this is reflected, for example, in the competition for political power between Margaery and Cersei. There are many such examples of instances of female to female power struggles during the actual world of the premodern period.

For feminist scholars, anxieties surrounding the Unknowable Woman, women such as Daenerys, Melisandre and Margaery Tyrell in Game of Thrones, bring into play such analytical lenses as reputation, self-fashioning and gender. The role, place and efficacy of advice in general, and advisors in particular, are significant ideas embedded within all six seasons of Game of Thrones and the epic novels of the A Song of Ice and Fire series. For scholars of history and literature, this is of considerable relevance to the study of women such as Christine de Pizan and Anne of France, who counselled queens and elite women to look to the achievement of a spotless reputation and an enduring legacy. To exercise independent agency, power and influence in what was almost exclusively a man’s world, both Christine and Anne urged for the deployment of a good dose of juste ypocrisie combined with conscious acts of self-fashioning and self-representation. For Anne, no mere observer and commentator of gender politics, this was the secret to her success.

Likewise, the evolution of the character of Tyrion Lannister offers a place to explore the idea of good counsel from not just the perspective of women’s studies, but the wider social context.
Tyrion uses his powerful intellect, combined with his facility for reading the character of others as easily as he does books, to overcome the travails and prejudices he must face to rise to the
position of Hand of the Queen on Daenerys’s Small Council. The Small Council itself, the body advising the King of the Seven Kingdoms, and its shifting membership, is likewise worthy of
attention in light of the functioning of privy councils and secret councils of monarchs across multiple geographies and geopolitical contexts during the premodern period, which saw the
emergence of the successful territorial monarchies that were the precursors of the early modern state.

Listed below are some suggested topics and themes contributors might wish to explore, but should not confine themselves to (not in any particular order of precedence):

• The Unknowable Woman
• Reputation
• Self-fashioning
• Self-representation
• Patronage
• Female Agency
• Female Power and Influence
• Gendered Strategies for the Acquisition and Maintenance of Power
• Soft Power
• Violence and Conquest
• The Male Gaze
• Revenge
• Viricide, Familicide etc.
• Female Military Prowess
• Female Regency
• Marriage
• Dynasties
• Succession
• Illegitimacy
• ‘Proactive’ Motherhood
• Rape
• Incest
• The Other
• Queerness
• Alliances
• Allegiances
• Advice and Advisors
• Magic
• Myth and mythical creatures
• Mélusine of Lusignan/Melisandre, the Red Woman
• Spirituality, Spiritual Leaders
• Gendered Discourse and Action
• Male and Female Relationships and Partnerships

Please send a 500-word proposal and a one-page c.v. to both Zita Rohr, zita.rohr@mq.edu.au, and Lisa Benz, lisalbenz@gmail.com. Due date for proposals is May 1, 2017, with notifications
of accepted proposals to be made by June 1, 2017. Chapter drafts of 8,000 words, including notes and bibliography, will be due to the Editors by September 1, 2017.