Yes yes yes yes YES. Women were bargaining chips, important ones, and they frequently did the bargaining themselves. The closest we see to a real medieval noblewoman is Olenna Tyrell. That's *exactly* what a noble widow looked like: she had money, power, and influence on, if not control of, family strategies. She shouldn't be such an outlier; the Tyrells shouldn't be the only family where grandmothers, mothers, and wives are setting strategy and controlling resources. One of the big impacts of a constant state of war is lots and lots of widows with power, widows serving as regents, and wives running estates and countries for absent husbands. In GoT most of those regents (Cersei and Lyssa for two) are incompetent.
I really, really resent GRRM's hiding between "Oh, it's all just history". No. It's YOUR perception of history, and YOUR choices.
I was shaped for life by Anne Hollander's Seeing Through Clothes. Hollander pointed out that, when costuming a play or movie, even if every single garment was identical to a surviving garment or fashion plate, the movie would still look dated to the period it was made in within decades. Why? Because the costumer picks the authentic garments that look right to him/her, the ones that are attractive, and which shapes and colors look attractive varies across time. You may have picked out the only lime green dress ever worn in 1810 to use as a model. It's authentic, but not representative. For a good example of this, compare the 1920s costuming in the Robert Redford Great Gatsby to the 1920s costumes in the Leo diCaprio Great Gatsby.
Historical fiction is exactly like that. History is big. Unimaginably big. You are going to pick the bits of it you find compelling, amusing, emotionally compatible. What you write about is shaped by your character. Just saying "it's history" doesn't take responsibility for your choices about what to highlight and what to omit entirely.
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Date: 2014-05-06 10:57 pm (UTC)I really, really resent GRRM's hiding between "Oh, it's all just history". No. It's YOUR perception of history, and YOUR choices.
I was shaped for life by Anne Hollander's Seeing Through Clothes. Hollander pointed out that, when costuming a play or movie, even if every single garment was identical to a surviving garment or fashion plate, the movie would still look dated to the period it was made in within decades. Why? Because the costumer picks the authentic garments that look right to him/her, the ones that are attractive, and which shapes and colors look attractive varies across time. You may have picked out the only lime green dress ever worn in 1810 to use as a model. It's authentic, but not representative. For a good example of this, compare the 1920s costuming in the Robert Redford Great Gatsby to the 1920s costumes in the Leo diCaprio Great Gatsby.
Historical fiction is exactly like that. History is big. Unimaginably big. You are going to pick the bits of it you find compelling, amusing, emotionally compatible. What you write about is shaped by your character. Just saying "it's history" doesn't take responsibility for your choices about what to highlight and what to omit entirely.