GRRM and Romance
So, this isn’t something I have seen so much being said on tumblr, but I have seen it said other places, most specifically when it comes to Jon and Daenerys’ relationship, and it’s this: “George R. R. Martin doesn’t do romance!”
And when I see it said, I always do a “what?” double take. Because it’s clear people who say or think this don’t know of GRRMs writing credits outside of ASOIAF/GOT. More specifically, one credit in particular: the television show Beauty and the Beast which aired on CBS from 1987-1990. He was not only one of the main writers for the show, (penning 14 episodes out of the total 46 of the show’s run, the third most of any of the writers for the show), but was also one of the supervising producers of the show as well. And at the time, and even after it short run was over, it was considered to be one of the most romantic shows ever produced for television.
I was around 9 or 10 when the show first came on back in the 80s, and was so not into dramatic romance shows. So I never watched it when it was in its original run. It was actually about a year after it ended when I first started watching it (having just entered my early teens). And to this day, almost 30 years later, that show still has not only left an impression on me, but is also still one of the most romantic shows I think has ever been done for television, just as was said about it when it first aired.
The show wasn’t just a romance, it was a High Fantasy Romance. Unlike the reboot on the CW a few years back that had a pretty handsome-looking guy who would “beast” out or whatever, the Vincent of the original looked as he did in the above image from the beginning of the show until the end of it. His physical appearance never changed. And along with his otherworldly looks, he and Catherine shared what could only be described as a mystical connection between them. They could only describe it between them as a “bond” but the gist of it was, they could feel each others emotions. They could feel what the other was feeling at almost every moment. Which, on one level, help to add some “action” into the show, since Catherine was a lawyer and so would get into life-threatening situations with some of her cases. Vincent could feel when she was in trouble and rushed to save her, usually killing the people that were trying to hurt her, giving in to the more “animalistic” side of his nature (though the network kept wanted to reign that fact back).
However, the point of their bond was more than just for that. It was to enhance the idea of the theme of the show, the theme of the beauty and the beast tale in general, of being able to see the true beauty inside someone. On the surface, Vincent and Catherine both appeared to be ugly. Whereas Vincent just had the physical ugliness, Catherine actually started out the story as a typical spoiled rich girl “yuppy” type, who’s dad would pay for anything she wanted. She’s mistaken for somebody else one night, brutally beaten and left for dead in Central Park, where Vincent finds her and saves her life.
It is here that their bond begins to form. Vincent, who was always guarded and would hide away from people because of his looks, (except from his “family,” a society of people who lived under NYC as well like he did, and were all viewed as outcasts for various reasons), allows himself to begin to feel worthy of being loved. And Catherine, changed not only by her experience but the kindness of Vincent’s heart, starts working at the DA’s office instead of her dad’s law firm, to help people in any way she can.
The show only ran three years because of lots of behind the scenes drama. The main one being, Linda Hamilton wasn’t fully committed to doing a tv show just in general. (Filming tv is much different than filming movies). As George himself says in this interview from the Hollywood Reporter, she wanted to go back to doing movies, plus have children. (She and director James Cameron were a couple at the time, and they did have a kid together. Her relationship with him would go on to have a lot of drama in and of itself too). So, when the time came when she could leave the show, she left. Meaning, given the premise of the show, Catherine’s character was killed off. The bond between her and Vincent got broken so he couldn’t save her when she got into a situation beyond her control with one of the most powerful men in the city.
However, the reason the bond got broken was revealed to be because the bond got transferred into the child she and Vincent conceived a few weeks back, when Vincent was going through a “violent madness” - basically losing his humanity to his more “animalistic” side. The bond between them is what was able to save him from the madness and, though you never see them make love (which you never did at any point during the show even before this, mostly because the network didn’t seem to want to show such a thing), they did, and conceived a child that night.
The whole theme of this part of the story became based around the Dylan Thomas poem And Death Shall Have No Dominion. A poem I still know most of by heart because of this show.
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
The final episodes of the show closed out the story, with Vincent able to find Catherine before she died (the man who kidnapped her kept her alive when he discovered she was pregnant, then injected her with an overdose of morphine after she gave birth to her and Vincent’s son). They quoted those above lines from that Dylan Thomas poem to each other as she died in his arms. Vincent was able to find the child later and save him too, with the help of a new “beauty” in Diana Bennett. And while I personally did like her character, the whole premise of the show was the uniqueness of Vincent and Catherine’s bond. There was just no way you could take that and begin to try and transfer it to a new character being placed in the “beauty” role. As George R. R. Martin himself said about it:
Basically I look back on it now and think we were in a no-win situation. I think we did some very fine work in the third season, but the core of the show was the romance. It was Vincent and Catherine. We brought in a new Beauty in the person of Jo Anderson, who was a wonderful actress in the part of Diana Bennett. She was great to work with. But you can’t do two seasons of telling the world, “This is a love story for the ages, this is Romeo and Juliet,” and then suddenly third seasons say, “Juliet? Forget Juliet. It’s Romeo and Harriet. Here’s a different love story for the ages!” So that didn’t work. When the love story stopped, our core audience left. If Linda had not left the show we could have gone for five years at least.
So basically once Vincent found his son, the show was over.
And it was his experience with writing for the show, and the limits that came with writing directly for tv that he experienced while doing so, that made him leave tv writing behind and go off and begin writing A Song of Ice and Fire. Because with a book, you don’t have to worry about production budgets for creating a world (like the underground NYC world of the show), or actors wanting to leave because they don’t want to do tv anymore, which basically kills your whole show’s premise; or the network not wanting more darkly violent acts for the “beast” to commit when trying to protect his “beauty” … along with never being able to show them having sex, and only confirming that they ever did when a child finally comes into the story but only because said actress now wants to leave the show, and is pregnant at the time in real life anyway.
A Song of Ice and Fire, and by extension the tv show adapted from it Game of Thrones, isn’t a High Fantasy Romance story. A love story isn’t the main driving narrative of the story. However, the idea that GRRM wouldn’t put a romance in the story, and one that is highly romantic in its nature, seems like a very bad take when it comes to his backstory as a writer. If anything, the love stories and relationships he does write about are ones that are just as unconventional as Vincent and Catherine’s was. They don’t follow the normal tropes of relationships or love stories you usually find in romance stories, even in the genre of high fantasy. GRRM himself said that his favorite part to write in Fire and Blood was the story of King Jaehaerys I Targaryen and Queen Alysanne, which he himself has also called a “great romance.”
Yet, it was straight up an incestous relationship between a brother and a sister and, in universe, they created and had people preach what more or less was a doctrine of exceptionalism in order to justify the relationship. Yet, their reign was one of the most peaceful periods in Westeros history, lasting over 50 years. And yet, their reign also help to set the stage for the Dance of the Dragons civil war just over two decades later. So even the relationship he called a “great romance” has his patented “shades of gray” to it.
Jon and Daenerys are already unconventional when it comes to romance stories in general, not just high fantasy love stories; and the incest part of it not even being the main thing with regard to that IMO. Their fates are clearly entwined, yet they never meet until what is essentially the final act of the story. Just basic and standard writing tropes would have had Jon and Daenerys meeting in act one of the story, forming a connection. And then, though circumstance, being split apart by the end of the first act, so that they would spend the majority of act two trying to get back to each other. Or with that at least being one of their goals, to reunite, along with whatever other goals they needed to accomplish in act two of the story. However, in ASOIAF/GOT, Jon and Daenerys go on their Joseph Campbell-esque Heroes Journeys separately, completely unaware of the other’s very existence until the third and final act of the story begins. That’s just not how it’s usually done, and you usually only see third-act romantic hookups in long-running tv shows after you get multiple cast change-overs. But again, this is why GRRM left writing for tv, so he could do unconventional things like this with his story.
So this idea that some people have that George R. R. Martin doesn’t do romance is ridiculous. Not only does he do it, he clearly likes very much to do them in highly romantic ways, ways that make them great romances in his view. He just doesn’t do or write conventional romances. His great romance couples are never written in a conventional mode, or have standard conventional romantic tropes about them. And there is always a shade of gray to them. And Jon and Daenerys are no exception to all of that.
