In my initial review of the first episode I said that the female characters were a bit weak, and didn’t get much screen time. But, like their counterparts in the books, there was a good chance we’d get to see them develop into a pretty well-rounded bunch of characters. Let’s take a look at a few of them to see how HBO did.

Danaerys Targaryen

Danaerys (Emilia Clarke) was one of the more problematic characters in the first episode. She’s presented as a mostly passive tool for her brother’s plans of conquest, and pushed into a forced marriage with a disturbingly non-consensual first night. By the finale episode things have… sort of improved? She has definitely developed as a character, becoming a leader in her own right and banishing any notions that she might be passive or weak (“I do not have a gentle heart,” she declares).

She’s stood up to her brother, dealt out harsh justice, and worked to improve people’s lives by attempting to make the Dothraki end their practise of raping prisoners from their raids. Oh, and she’s got her own dragons, the first to be seen in a long, long time. On the other hand, the presentation of the dragons highlights one of the remaining issues in how she’s depicted. Rather than striding into the fire untouched and walking out resplendent, a reborn queen with her dragons behind her, she’s found the next day, curled up and naked, providing the episode’s HBO nipple quota. It’s also possibly the first use of a strategically placed dragon in mainstream TV.

The other issue with Danaerys is that her entire relationship with Khal Drogo just feels more than a little Stockholm Syndrome-y. The show never really addresses that first night, or the other occasions where we see her having sex against her will. Instead, she just learns to love him, and most of his respect for her seems to come solely from the fact she’s carrying his child. It’s not ideal.

Continuing the theme of arranged marriages…

Cersei Lannister

Evil, incestuous, and an arch-schemer, Cersei (Lena Headey) was presented initially as almost a caricature of the Ice Queen archetype. Ten episodes on, and she’s still evil, still incestuous, and still manipulative. But she’s also a lot more human and almost sympathetic. We’re given a genuinely revealing conversation between her and King Robert (Mark Addy), in which we glimpse a young woman who was married for political reasons to a king who was in love with a dead woman. We see how, raised for almost exactly this purpose, she tried to make it work, and how their flaws destroyed them and bought them to the sad state they’re in now. It makes her something a little more interesting than just evil for evil’s sake.

Sansa Stark

The last character linked by an arranged marriage is the young Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner). She’s perhaps the one we’ve seen the least progress out of. Raised from birth to meet the expectations of what a noble lady should be, and to someday marry a prince and have lots of little noble children, she’s got a lot of conditioning to overcome.

By the end of the series she’s still the most passive of the characters, still being used in other peoples’ schemes instead of forming her own. But she has at least seen that the dream she was sold was a false one, and that Joffrey is not a good king to marry, or even a remotely decent person. We get a brief glimpse of some steel in her as she talks back to him and moves to throw him off the castle wall. It’s not much, and she’s punished for it, but it gives us a hint that she might eventually get to be as cool as her sister.

Sansa: “I’m supposed to marry Prince Joffrey. I love him, and I’m meant to be his Queen and have his babies!”

Arya: “Seven hells!”

Which leads us to…

Arya Stark

Ah yes, Sansa’s sister. Standing alongside Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister as one of the best cast characters in a well cast show, Maisie Williams’s Arya is the polar opposite of her big sister. Sword-wielding, cat-chasing and adventurous, Arya actively rebels against the rules for what a noble’s daughter ought to be. On the one hand, this makes her incredibly badass. On the other hand it’s notable that she only gets away with things and survives because people mistake her for a boy. It highlights just how tight the gender roles are in the Seven Kingdoms, that even her father – a remarkably open minded man for the setting – can’t conceive of a life for her that doesn’t involve marrying a lord and having lots of offspring.

Where Arya is allowed to practise her sword fighting only as a father’s indulgence for his wilful child, and told she’ll never be a knight, her brother Bran continues to train in archery back at Winterfell. Arya is the more skilled of the two (shown in the very first episode, as she makes a shot Bran can’t), but as a girl it’s inconceivable that she could live that life, just as it’s impossible for Bran not to.

And lastly, amongst our main characters…

Catelyn Stark

She’s quite possibly the best of the bunch, in a quiet and determined way. She’s not got Danaerys’s flair or Cersei’s scheming prowess, but she gets things done and will not be stopped. It’s Catelyn (Michelle Fairley) who comforts her son after Ed’s death, not the other way round. It’s she who sums up what needs to be done: “We get the girls back. Then we kill them all.” It’s she who walks into a not-entirely-friendly castle keep alone to make the deal that’ll get their army across a major river. It’s nice to see an older female character on this show who knows what needs doing and gets it done.

On the other hand, there’s an issue with the repercussions of some of what she gets done. Her capture of Tyrion sparks a lot of drama, sees people killed and injured, and is one of the contributing factors to the war that breaks out. The whole treatment of it smacks a little too much of “flighty women do not think their actions through, and men must pick up the pieces.” It’s a key part of the plot in the books though, so that’s on Martin as much as it is on HBO.

There’s half a dozen secondary characters worth discussing as well (Shae, the Wildling woman, Sansa’s nursemaid, Catelyn’s sister), but not nearly enough room to discuss them. Damn you GoT for being so sprawling. Overall though, there are still definite issues, and there’s always the obligatory HBO nipples in each episode, but the characters are improving and will hopefully continue to do so if they stick to the course of the books. Roll on Spring 2012 and Season 2.

All images copyright HBO, taken from A Wiki of Ice and Fire

What’s been almost more interesting than the content of the show itself has been the response from critics. Ginia Bellafante kicked things off in the New York Times, labelling the show as “boy-fiction”, and suggesting that the standard HBO sex has been thrown in to appeal to otherwise disinterested female viewers. Because obviously boys like swords and fighting and girls like sex and drama. That’s how gender works, right? Wait, no.

Annalee Newitz at io9 argues back, but instead of dismissing the whole notion of gender essentialism and stories that are “for” one gender or another Newitz takes it the other way, arguing that this is clearly a tale for women. Oh, wait, perhaps it’s a satirical exaggeration of the idea, to highlight the ridiculousness of Bellafante’s review. Well, hopefully it is. It still doesn’t get around the issue of thinking people of any particular gender are wired to want certain things from their fiction, though.

Ilana Teitalbaum weighs in with a more straightforward critique of the ways in which Bellafante’s review is terribly misguided over at the Huffington Post, and probably provides the most sensible view on the discussion. I’m going to quote her here, because what she says is worth repeating for anyone too lazy to click through the links.

The characterization of fantasy as “boy fiction” is offensive to the genre and offensive to women. That we for the most part will only read what Oprah has picked, and especially if a woman wrote it, is a stereotype that is not only demeaning to women — it is also untrue…

…When we categorize books as “boy fiction” and “girl fiction” it’s just another way to promote gender stereotyping. It is predicated on the assumption that people will only read books that reflect their personal experiences, so therefore women will only deign to read about dating, shopping, and kitchen intrigues.

Okay, with that said, on to the show itself. Trying to avoid spoilers here, but apologies if any slip through. As an adaptation, it’s generally pretty damn solid. There are the inevitable minor changes that come with translating a work to screen, but there are none of the glaring alterations that make you stand up and go “They did what? But that’s totally out of character! Did they even read the books?” The casting is good (Harry Lloyd as Viserys Targaryen is palpably creepy and unpleasant), the costumes are well done, and Arya Stark and Tyrion Lannister already shine as the best characters. Arya Stark gets painfully little screen time though, which leads to the first issue with the show.

Danaerys Targaryen being blonder than thou.

The female characters, as of the first episode, do not get much representation. Hopefully this is a temporary thing and, like the books, we’ll get to see Arya, Danaerys, Catelyn etc grow into being hugely important badasses that sit firmly at the centre of key plot points. But right now they’re just not there. They get scarcely any screen time, and when they are shown they’re mostly cast in passive, receptive roles. Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) sleeps with a prostitute (because it’s not a HBO show without frequent sex and nudity) who gets more lines than Cersei Lannister and Arya Stark put together.

And Danaerys… Okay, this falls on the book as much as the adaptation, and it’s hard to see a way they could have worked around it, but her initial role as a tool for her brother’s plans, without any say in her own life, feels very awkward. Two scenes in particular are awkward enough to be uncomfortable to watch. First there’s the close up of a nude Danaerys (Emilia Clarke) being examined by her brother (and bear in mind this is a character written as being just thirteen in the book, though thankfully HBO seem to have aged her up a bit), to make sure she’s up to scratch for bartering away in exchange for an army, with oddly lingering shots of nipples and buttocks. This scene, which really should convey “look how bloody nasty and unpleasant Viserys is,” instead comes off more as “and here are some breasts, do you like them?”

And then we have the consummation of the marriage to the head of said army, Khal Drogo of the Dothraki, a scene that is shown to be even more upsetting and non-consensual than it was originally written. And it was pretty damn bad to start with. The scene is at least short, and cuts away before anything graphic, but it does raise the question of why someone at HBO thought “Hmm, what this scene needs is to be made a bit more rapey.” Seriously, there is pretty much never a time when this is a good thing for a piece of fiction. Ever.

Still, as said, there is hope that the characters will develop along the same lines they did in the book, so this issue might be a passing one. The second problem, though, is less likely to improve with future episodes.

Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), doing his best Douchey Prince Charming act.

The second issue, you see, is the unfortunate race failure. You could argue that it’s just being faithful to the books, but honestly that’s not much of an excuse. Everyone is oh so very white, and everyone we’re told is attractive (Cersei, Jaime, Danaerys) is oh so very blonde to boot. The closest we get to non-white characters are the slightly-tanned Dothraki horsemen with whom Viserys is trying to forge an alliance. And, of course, they’re depicted as crude savages. And I don’t mean “they’re a bit misunderstood” – we’re talking full on “these people are barbaric, they are not like us.” We see two men fighting over a woman, one literally pushing the other away mid-thrust and hopping on himself (which is a whole other pile of issues), before blades are drawn and someone gets disembowelled. True to the books it may be, but there’s a definite problem with a world where everyone is divided into groups of “white people” and “savages”.

Issues aside, it’s worth sticking with. If nothing else it’ll be interesting to see how they handle the events that happen to Eddard Stark, what with Sean Bean being their big name cast member.