On one hand it makes sense that medieval european social relations imply, well, medieval european social relations and it makes sense to use your novel (or your show) to examine those.
On the other I can relate to many people wanting to see women in medieval fantasy to be represented in some other way than constant misery porn.
It gets extremely lazy sometimes. There's the city Qarth that's the seat of a renowned trading empire and it's a rival to the surrounding areas. It's depicted as controlled by rulers only interested in gold and jewels who maintain their decadence through control of the sea lanes. Oh and it's on a separate continent.
It's just Carthage, it's how Romans talked about Carthage.
Carthage is Qart Hadasht in it's original Phoenician too
Is that lazy though? What's wrong with putting Carthage in a story
Nothing, they just want to be Mad At Something Popular
yeah I have problems