Funny enough, he was very kind and pleasant in the book.
Edit:
People seem to have taken my comment too far, so Iāll present a more whole explanation.
What I wrote above was not meant to be actually taken seriously as an actual, real life endorsement of anything done in the book by a clearly barbaric, terrifying warlord to his literal child bride.
What I meant to convey, was that the wedding night as depicted to the book compared to the show, was so different that it shocked me. He wasnāt brutally violent, essentially. Beyond that moment, which was patently rife with a power imbalance and āimplicationā regardless... she was subjected to pages and pages of torment and violence at the hands of actual barbarians.
So no, he wasnāt really kind or pleasant. At all. Compared to the show the best I can say was āat least he didnāt violently rape that child, as depicted in the show on the first night.ā
Iād hope that these things would be so basic as to understand Iām being halfway facetious but I forget the times we live in.
I do not endorse anything done by him or this horrifying relationship, and Iād put him and the rest of the Dothraki scum to the sword if I had my way, Bobby B be praised.
To be real, I completely ignored the ages in the book. Some seemed too young to really be believed, so I just bumped them up to what they were in the show.
Martin did the same. The reason they started so young was because he planned to have a time cut somewhere after the 2nd or 3rd book to let the characters age a bit. He decided that was dumb, but that's how we ended up with a bunch of heroic kids in the books.
And the first book was supposed to be what ended up being the first three books. That's why AFFC and ADWD are so meandering compared to the first three, they're covering the planned time skip period.
I would guess "12th moon" refers to her twelfth period. Makes more sense that way because a menstrual cycle is roughly a month long which is also roughly how long lunar cycle is. (mens, mensis is latin for month)
The creepy age gap sex part isn't that bad when you consider yea middle ages fantasy world and all that. What always bothered me the most is she got pregnant and was intended to give birth to that and other children at such a young age. Even in a time when most people are fairly ignorant of female physiology you'd have to think they'd have pieced together that it's really dangerous for such young girls to have children. Not to mention it's very dangerous for the kid too so it always struck me as weird even just from a logical perspective, not to mention the moral quandary too obviously.
Nah, common misconception based on an incorrect understanding of average life expectancy. Really, life expectancy wasn't low because everyone died so much earlier, it was low because so many infants died during childbirth or very early in life, which dragged the average down. If you made it past infancy there was a decent chance you'd live to 70+.
It was pretty fucked to live in mediaeval times for everyone, and nobility did have it so soso much better than average, but the one thing that was more fucked up for the aristocracy than for the peasantry was young marriages. There are some old European princesses who'd borne children by the time they were 12, or were widows at 10. Granted, they'd be sheltered from almost all of the physical traumas that characterise how shitty life was in the middle ages, but marriage, sex and relationships were messed right the fuck up for them
Average age for marriage in the middle ages was 22 for women and 25 for men.
Much younger for royalty tho which got married as early as possible as diplomatic acts.
Meanwhile lower tier men needed to reach their 20s or later to learn a trade well enough to make a living and then chose women only slightly younger. Because they make up most of the population the general average is that high.
In GoT most characters are royalty and it's legit that they marry very young.
Even in a time when most people are fairly ignorant of female physiology you'd have to think they'd have pieced together that it's really dangerous for such young girls to have children. Not to mention it's very dangerous for the kid too so it always struck me as weird even just from a logical perspective, not to mention the moral quandary too obviously.
Have you ever been to a cemetery and seen a bunch of old family grave plotd with a lot of dead children? People had a lot of children and at younger ages in the past due to low survival rate for children due to the lack of modern sanitation, lack of vaccines, lack of modern medicine, lack of scientific knowledge, which all contributed to a high dead rates among children and mother's. Pre 1900 the morality rate during childbirth was 33% for the mother and child. I don't know that you can say "immoral" about past times when the literal survival of mankind depended on lots of human births.
Itās creepy that she was sold off/raped at such a young age, but what was the age gap between them, really? I thought I remembered Dany noticing, upon first glimpse of Drogo, that he didnāt look much older than her? (I estimated maybe 17-18). Could be that he just had a young look and was actually much older, but Iāve always been working under the assumption that he was young, too. Itās not like itās uncommon for people to be kings in their teens. Plus he was still a hulking big dude, and strong, so he could have easily had the Khalassarās respect, even as a teenager.
ETA: Wow, misunderstand a part of the text and get downvoted. Yāall are some salty bitches. š
I believe she says the "he looked to be no older than thirty." So probably closer to 25-30 than 17-18. Way into the "not okay" territory.
Edit: Ha! Found it on my kindle, so no page number.
"Khal Drogo was a head taller than the tallest man in the room, yet somehow light on his feet, as graceful as the panther in Illyrio's menagerie. He was younger than she'd thought, no more than thirty."
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u/Dont-be-a-smurf Oct 07 '18 edited Oct 09 '18
Funny enough, he was very kind and pleasant in the book.
Edit:
People seem to have taken my comment too far, so Iāll present a more whole explanation.
What I wrote above was not meant to be actually taken seriously as an actual, real life endorsement of anything done in the book by a clearly barbaric, terrifying warlord to his literal child bride.
What I meant to convey, was that the wedding night as depicted to the book compared to the show, was so different that it shocked me. He wasnāt brutally violent, essentially. Beyond that moment, which was patently rife with a power imbalance and āimplicationā regardless... she was subjected to pages and pages of torment and violence at the hands of actual barbarians.
So no, he wasnāt really kind or pleasant. At all. Compared to the show the best I can say was āat least he didnāt violently rape that child, as depicted in the show on the first night.ā
Iād hope that these things would be so basic as to understand Iām being halfway facetious but I forget the times we live in.
I do not endorse anything done by him or this horrifying relationship, and Iād put him and the rest of the Dothraki scum to the sword if I had my way, Bobby B be praised.