the creation of Lightbringer: an alternative theory

This is…slightly creative inductive logic which is admittedly not my favorite mode of analysis, but what are meta blogs for, if not crackpot theories?

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Honestly, I love the theory.

But I want to talk a little about just how uncomfortable the story of Lightbringer makes us. zaldizer-sovensi calls it, “ the empowerment of a man by way of his martyring a woman” and “an unappealing storyline, for reasons both philosophical and aesthetic.” Who could disagree?

GRRM presents us with a legend- A man who was a mythic savior, and used the power of the gods to save the world from death and darkness. The story itself is pretty awful, and is presented that way in the text: Saaladhor Saan is the first to describe the myth, I think, and he clearly isn’t partial to it:

As I said, I think most of us are on the same side as Saaladhor- we find this specific flavor of tragedy-myth pretty distasteful. What are we to make, then, of the fact that this myth is clearly based on a real event, that occurred right on the boundary between history and prehistory? Moreover, the events of the ASOIAF books are clearly building to a reenactment of the event(s) that were turned into the myth. If we find the myth unpleasant, why have we read five 1000+ page novels about it?

My initial (if admittedly cynical) instinct is to say that clearly a lot of people disagree with us, because it’s such a popular trope.

My actual take is that, yeah, there’s not really a clear line between invoking sexist tropes, even critically, and straightforward depiction which trades on our social conditioning to respond favorably to them. I think the fact that we’re told the story of Lightbringer by someone who views it critically and who explicitly comments on the erasure of Nissa Nissa’s perspective (”why she did this thing, I cannot say”) frames the story as being quite ugly. Or, you know, I’ve seen Victarion Greyjoy put forward as a candidate for AAR, and I’ve seen people disgree with that theory on the grounds that he’s completely abhorrent, but I kind of think that’s the point: that Victarion “The Actual Worst” Greyjoy can be confused with Azor Ahai, and so maybe Azor Ahai isn’t a real admirable guy.

But still, the Others are a threat that mere mortals are unequipped to take on; does the narrative criticizing Nissa Nissa -type stories in this way actually reinforce the idea that violence against women is ~just the way it is, inevitable or at least unimportant in the grand scheme of things?

Ultimately, I don’t know. I know I’d rather consume a story which makes me ask these questions and expects me to think critically about this type of mythology than a story which assumes I will accept it or pretends that it’s not part of the cultural context in which it exists. But that’s a preference, not at all an unqualified good.