Martin's psuedo historical setting is extremely indulgent in a lot of ways. The average age of first marriage in the middle ages was like 23 for women and 27 for men, not thirteen. Were their child marriages for political purposes? Certainly. But there were plenty that weren't. Martin chose to have a child marriage, then chose to describe the sex scenes, and chose to have it be a major character development moment for the 13 year old protagonist. Plus there's obvious practical issues; Medieval people weren't stupid. They knew that a child had a much, much higher chance of complications in pregnancy than an adult woman.
He could have made her 18. He could have done a fade to black way, way earlier in the scene. He could have done a lot of things. But he did what he did. It's not especially egregious by the standards of fantasy writers, but taken as a whole with the gratuitous misery of the whole series I think it adds up to a pretty good reason not to recommend ASOIAF.
OK I have to rewrite this post after it was eaten by the temporary lock lol.
CW: discussion of sexual assault and CSA
spoiler
Wasn't it that the "marriage was actually usually in the late twenties in the middle ages" thing actually only for peasants and for the nobility child marriage was indeed common? Thats what I read anyway.
I categorically agree with your point that "he chose to have it that way" but for me, there are a number of reasons why I don't think changing Dany to 18 would have worked. First of all, its an important part of [i]Viserys[/i] character that he is a huge bastard for giving away his little sister to Drogo, and for treating her as property to be given away in the the first place. He is a desperate kid who wants to be king and will literally give his 13 year old sister away to a war lord to get it. Its also important to Dany's character because like, here's the thing. Dany doesn't act like a young adult who's canon age happens to be 13 (like a lot of children in fiction). She's a realistically portrayed child I think. Martin is shockingly adept at writing children, in many cases from the child's POV. The Stark kids (especially Sansa) are very well written children with realistic trauma responses. Joffrey and Tommen are also good examples. And yeah, so are Viserys and Dany.
The books also don't portray Dany/Drogo as romantic like the show does really. It does portray Dany as being genuinely in love with Drogo which... I'm ambivalent about because is decently realistic for a child to have that as a trauma response but Martin is still an adult man who chose to write her that way. So I get how people would be put off by that. There's also the whole mess with the different portrayal of the "sex" scene itself between book and show. Since, in the book, Dany is portrayed as giving nominal consent to Drogo (which many idiot fans think means it was consensual despite Dany being 13 and Drogo a grown man). The show meanwhile does away with this and instead explicitly portrays it as rape... but then goes on to romanticize the relationship after? And I think the show decided to do that to put rape porn on tv for shock value not out of perceived moral obligation to portray rape as rape.
![[CW: Pedo shit] Pillar of american culture](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/w7IraBiZuk.png){kind=link}
Martin's psuedo historical setting is extremely indulgent in a lot of ways. The average age of first marriage in the middle ages was like 23 for women and 27 for men, not thirteen. Were their child marriages for political purposes? Certainly. But there were plenty that weren't. Martin chose to have a child marriage, then chose to describe the sex scenes, and chose to have it be a major character development moment for the 13 year old protagonist. Plus there's obvious practical issues; Medieval people weren't stupid. They knew that a child had a much, much higher chance of complications in pregnancy than an adult woman.
He could have made her 18. He could have done a fade to black way, way earlier in the scene. He could have done a lot of things. But he did what he did. It's not especially egregious by the standards of fantasy writers, but taken as a whole with the gratuitous misery of the whole series I think it adds up to a pretty good reason not to recommend ASOIAF.
OK I have to rewrite this post after it was eaten by the temporary lock lol.
CW: discussion of sexual assault and CSA
spoiler
Wasn't it that the "marriage was actually usually in the late twenties in the middle ages" thing actually only for peasants and for the nobility child marriage was indeed common? Thats what I read anyway.
I categorically agree with your point that "he chose to have it that way" but for me, there are a number of reasons why I don't think changing Dany to 18 would have worked. First of all, its an important part of [i]Viserys[/i] character that he is a huge bastard for giving away his little sister to Drogo, and for treating her as property to be given away in the the first place. He is a desperate kid who wants to be king and will literally give his 13 year old sister away to a war lord to get it. Its also important to Dany's character because like, here's the thing. Dany doesn't act like a young adult who's canon age happens to be 13 (like a lot of children in fiction). She's a realistically portrayed child I think. Martin is shockingly adept at writing children, in many cases from the child's POV. The Stark kids (especially Sansa) are very well written children with realistic trauma responses. Joffrey and Tommen are also good examples. And yeah, so are Viserys and Dany.
The books also don't portray Dany/Drogo as romantic like the show does really. It does portray Dany as being genuinely in love with Drogo which... I'm ambivalent about because is decently realistic for a child to have that as a trauma response but Martin is still an adult man who chose to write her that way. So I get how people would be put off by that. There's also the whole mess with the different portrayal of the "sex" scene itself between book and show. Since, in the book, Dany is portrayed as giving nominal consent to Drogo (which many idiot fans think means it was consensual despite Dany being 13 and Drogo a grown man). The show meanwhile does away with this and instead explicitly portrays it as rape... but then goes on to romanticize the relationship after? And I think the show decided to do that to put rape porn on tv for shock value not out of perceived moral obligation to portray rape as rape.