This is true, still the basic idea of her liking him after he raped her may piss some off. Didn't the Watchmen GN take some heat from that?

Probably GGK. <3 GGK.

Probably. People are sensypoo about rape. I thought it worked in Watchmen.

It's not hard to imagine the young girl basically sold into slavery/marriage growing to like/love her husband/captor/owner. It's a bit harder to imagine her making that change mid-rape because he's got magic fingers or something.

I think the "how can the relationship start with a rape" comments are a bit overblown. Yes, *we* know it's rape, and in modern times it would be unthinkable to progress beyond that unless we're allowing for Stockholm syndrome possibility.

But in their culture, she is basically his property and it wouldn't occur to him that he is not entitled to sex whenever he wants. Presumably she also understands it is expected as her duty despite not liking it. So what we would call rape is a cultural norm for them, and I don't think you can just say "omg rape can never be forgiven", it's a whole different cultural context and a relationship can progress differently under their circumstances than it could in our world.

Besides, in the book he rapes her repeatedly and painfully after the first night anyway, so what's the difference, how can we say that's believable to overcome but not if it's the first night? If we think rape is a dealbreaker it should be the same no matter when it occurs.

Besides the main point of the Daeny/Drogo relationship is to introduce Daeny. She is clearly portrayed as the weak and frightened young woman here (not just with Drogo, even moreso with her brother). In the book that scene was also much more about Drogo. Given the very compressed nature of showing this on tv it makes a lot of sense ot show both Daeny and theri relationship starting out this extreme so that they can change during season 1.

I can even see what that New York Times reviewer was about criticizing this show for its portrayal of women. The female characters that play a role in this episode are Daeny, Sansa (gonna Sansa), Cersei (who seemed a bit dull - if you leave out the incest) and Cately (who just plays a supporting role for her husband here). Only later in the series do these women grow (crazy in two of those cases - but they still take a much more active role).

Yeah, it's not like he was a stranger who jumped her in a dark alley, her enduring the wedding night for what she thought was the good of her family is the start of her whole plot arc.

I would bet that throughout human history on any arranged wedding night, the woman is pretty scared most of the time. A decent portion of that time the act might constitute what we'd consider rape. That scary first night is even sung about in Fiddler on the Roof, hoping he's going to be gentle.

Obviously rape -> is pretty standard historically, I still think it's going out on the edge in terms of potentially alienating the audience. They aren't going to alienate me, or anything.

Regarding the Daenerys/Drogo dynamic. This has been among the more discussed scenes from the premiere, and has caused no shortage of controversy amongst fans.

For clarifications, in the books, Daenerys is crying as they enter the scene and Drogo wipes the tears from her eyes, saying "no", then undresses her, gently but firmly, saying "no" again as she covers her breasts. He spends a long time in foreplay before she is turned on, at which point he tries to take things further, says "no?" as a question, to which she responds "yes" and takes charge. However, subsequent sex scenes are very rough and unwelcome, much like this one, not so much because Dany isn't at least theoretically interested in sex with him, but because the days of hard riding are taking their physical toll on her and she is entirely not ready for it. Eventually as she acclimates to the lifestyle, the sex becomes more welcome and she eventually takes charge.

From that perspective, the scene in the show is a departure, but only just. I suspect that there were a couple of reasons for the change: first, because sufficiently depicting the above would have taken too long (the show was a VERY jam-packed infodump, with every second fighting for space), and second, because the transition from welcome, to unwelcome, to welcome again is a bit complex for the show and harder to depict without the paragraphs of explanation.

From the scene, while it was clear that the sex itself was unwelcome (Dany never stops crying), at the same time it's clear from the earlier scene that Drogo was going out of his way to be gentle with her. It's clearly rape from a modern perspective, but neither Daenerys nor Drogo is going to view it from that perspective. Although Dany will be very unhappy about the event, no doubt, she would likely view it as a situation brought on more by being rushed into an arranged marriage that she was not really prepared for, as well as the inherent brutality of the Dothraki culture. It's unlikely that she would transfer that unhappiness to Drogo personally, thus she won't ever really view him as "her rapist" and as she grows more and more accustomed and comfortable with the Dothraki culture she will grow more and more open to sex with Drogo. Those who paint the scene as paving the way for her eventually becoming a victim of Stockholm Syndrome (as many are claiming in other forums) I think are way off base.

All in all I thought it was a fantastic episode, but I almost think it's going to be impossible to judge by itself until the season is complete. It's not ten standalone stories by any stretch - like "The Wire" and a few other shows that are really aiming for greatness, it is making absolutely no attempt whatsoever to shoehorn each episode into an encapsulated story with a beginning, middle, and end, the way that most shows do. The show as a whole is one dramatic unit and I think that will be the only fair way to judge it.

I will say that I thought that Mark Addy (as King Robert) and Harry Lloyd (as Viserys) were particularly good.

Great post Shaffer.

It's a good 8 years or since I read the first book. Does this mean we're going to see Emilia Clarke's ass bouncing up and down on top of Drogo by the end of the season? Also is she going to be full-frontal in the final scene of the season, or just topless?

Don't know, don't particularly care. I will say that I think it's pretty safe to say that the role will have no shortage of teh nekkid.

There's no way they could have done the original Daeny sex scene. It would have come off as comedic, and actually watching it on TV it would've been impossible to actually tell what happened... Drogo arouses her enough that she agrees to it.

Shaffer I agree with what you're saying a little bit, but I think that it's a pretty big difference. Her physically being uncomfortable during sex in the books and her physically and mentally not wanting it in the show are quite a big difference. She also makes it pretty clear that she wants to become enough of a Dothraki to be able to endure the sex and the travel all day which thus makes her stronger. The reason she wants to do this is because she loves Drogo.

If she doesn't love Drogo she loses most of the motivation for this, except that she's just a bad ass which is slightly unbelievable at this point. I don't see there being any other way to do the scene, but it's still a pretty major difference.

I don't really care how you slice it, that's brutal rape. She did not love Drogo at the time when that was occurring, she had had one pleasant encounter with him but he was still a foreign, alien monster to her, completely isolated, using her essentially as a f__ toy. I'm not saying this to be judgmental of him - he's a product of his culture, and doesn't know any other way to treat a woman until Dany shows him - just to highlight that there's no real way to spin the books to imagine that their growing to love each other doesn't originate from a very brutal situation. Those who attempt to do so simply do not have a sufficient understanding of the book.

I actually think that the show will never go that brutal - that from here, it will rather quickly transition to a more positive place.

But she finds freedom in Drogo from the start. Keep in mind the rest of her life was dominated by interactions with Vyseris and his "waking the dragon." The fact that she was so cool with what happened to Vys is a good indication that she saw Drogo as "the alternative," and she very much preferred that alternative.

Drogo was the less brutal option for her (even if he was brutal by our modern and objective standards).

(I mean that mentally she chose Drogo, and did so from the start. And that's a significant difference.)

Also, wtf at this. You don't care about her ass? Am I alone in my reaction to that ass? I mean, Junt is just plain into asses like that. But for me, that ass is like a religious experience.

I agree, and I think that's a big part of what makes the evolution of their relationship palatable in the book, just as it will be in the show. I just think that it's completely inconsistent to say about the show, "hey, that's rape, how does she grow to love him after that?" while failing to acknowledge that the exact same dynamic occurred in the books, albeit in a slightly different order.

It's quite different from rape.

The point of the wedding chapter is that she finds the strength to mentally conquer her fears. In this chapter she knows her place as Drogo's wife and consents to having sex with him.

This chapter is about her conquering the physical demands of joining the khalasar, Drogo's sexual desires being one of them.



I think not calling this a big difference downplays the mental aspects of rape.

Very true. At the same time, the argument being made is that Dany cannot possibly be depicted as realistically falling in love with Drogo in the show because of the relative brutality of their wedding night. I'm just confused as to how that is so unpalatable as compared to the books, which (despite the wedding night being more pleasant and consensual) make that exact same transition from an even more brutal place. Does the fact that the wedding night is pleasant somehow justify the brutality of their subsequent encounters?

I acknowledge that it's a perfectly wonderful ass. I'm just old and care more about things like story and characterization than about the mechanics of the sechs scenes.

I don't think she loves him that early at all, and I think the early scenes are just as brutal and mentally unwelcome as the TV version. Her motivation is not love. She's doing it all for herself at the beginning. The blood of the dragon and all that. It's not until AFTER all that that the actual relationship starts. After she casts off her brother and takes Drogo outside and has him stick a baby in her cowgirl-style, that's when he starts to see her as a strong and worthy mate instead of a plaything.

Frankly I think the "tender" scene is mostly being misread and over-romanticized. There's nothing to suggest her consent is anything more than out of the duty that she's been trying to summon up the courage for all day, combined with being physically stimulated by the foreplay she had no authority to refuse. His unexpected tenderness doesn't have to be for her benefit, he can just be enjoying his brand new plaything. His asking for permission isn't all that profound when he knows what her answer is required to be.

This is truly inspirational.

She does that in the chapter we just quoted, after her wedding, almost immediately following.

I don't really see anything from the rest of the chapters that suggest that Drogo would have ever thought of Dany as just a "plaything".

That chapter covers weeks(?) of travel, the front part of which she spends enduring the pain of riding hard all day and getting pounded every night. Eventually a dragon dream starts her toward healing, then we start getting stuff about noticing the beauty of the land, pain turning to pleasure, etc. Then they reach the Dothraki sea and then we get the Viserys incident. She's a plaything or **** toy or whatever we want to call it for the early days/weeks via the passages already quoted; he wants nothing to do with her day in and day out except **** her with no regard for her pain or tears.

You can't view Dany/Drogo as rape. It was her wedding night. You know, marriage is normally considered consent for sex.

Historically, it was common for arranged marriages. And probably often enough a young girl ended up scared and crying with an older man she had just met. What do you think's going to happen? The man is going to hold off and court his bride for a few months until she truly desires him before he sleeps with her?

Edit: And obviously there is no way that Dany considers it rape or that a single person in their world considers it rape. So there's no reason that why she can't love him after it.