Jump to content

What is the healthiest relationship in ASOIAF?


Alyn Oakenfist

Recommended Posts

1 minute ago, Daeron the Daring said:

I swear Alekyne sounded like a good name for her. Anyway.

Weird things is, I'm almost 100% percent sure an Alekyne Florent does indeed exist. Actually...

Yeah, he does, he's Alester's son, and currently in Oldtown. Only problem is, he's a guy, so I think he'd be better matched with Loras.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Weird things is, I'm almost 100% percent sure an Alekyne Florent does indeed exist. Actually...

Yeah, he does, he's Alester's son, and currently in Oldtown. Only problem is, he's a guy, so I think he'd be better matched with Loras.

Ya, that's where I got the name from.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, The Wondering Wolf said:

At least there is a good chance that Baela was already dead at that point. Otherwise Elaena could not have hoped to marry Alyn.

Either way, Alyn had many rumoured lovers, he pretty obviously cheated on her, since we are told Baela was often jealous. 

Not that we know anything about his later life.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/24/2020 at 2:47 PM, Peach King said:

No marriage should qualify here, because all of them are unequal (peasant marriages may not have the same gap in power, but we're not given a close look at them.) The husband has almost complete power over the wife. Power to hit her, rape her, make her obey his orders, control who she sees and where she resides, and so on. 

Asha and Qarl would also not really be  considered equal or healthy by modern standards. Asha is a princess with a band of loyal followers who would follow anything she does, while Qarl is a nobody who Asha can have killed at any time.

Sam and Gilly aren't either. Gilly is almost completely dependent on Sam, emotionally and physically.

The most equal relationship in ASOIAF was probably Daeron Targaryen and Jeremy Norridge. They were squires of similar age who grew up together and fell in love. Aegon and his sisters as well, as Rhaenys and Visenya owned dragons and had the power to enact laws and pass decrees.

Why does a marriage need to be "equal" in order to be healthy? Healthy is a relative term anyways. Let's look at Sam and Gilly since it's one of your examples. Sam doesn't actually have any legal or formal power over Gilly and he certainly doesn't own her. She was in a desperate situation and was looking for help. Sam was the only one willing to help and he didn't expect anything in return. What's unhealthy about that? In real life, situations like that can lead to long happy relationships.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Either way, Alyn had many rumoured lovers

Can confirm.

1 hour ago, Daeron the Daring said:

he pretty obviously cheated on her, since we are told Baela was often jealous. 

Yeah, I got the feeling that they were one of those high drama couples that still somehow loved each other.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Healthiest, being a superlative, carries an intrinsic meaning of comparison. The OP asks us to look at the myriad of romantic stories presented to us in the ASOIAF series and pick the healthiest one. I think this is fair.

There are poeple here claiming "healthy" relationships are just impossible in Westeros for reasons that are indeed quite valid, but... not at all nonexistent in our own world. And even though gender inequalities still abound today, some people manage healthy relationships. Refusing the premise of this thread altogether strikes me as very hypocritical. 

I think Asha and Qarl are portrayed as having a healthy relationship. Full stop here. Yeah, there is a class difference, but their private interpersonal dynamic is very loving and respectful. That classifies as healthy in my view. 

The Jon/Ygritte relationship is not healthy per se, but it is healthier than most other in the series. It is traumatic not because of how it develops, but because of how it ends. 

With the amount of secrets Ned keeps from Catelyn and the implict knowledge that she regards sex as baby-making activity and her duty as a wife, not as something she does out of her own desire or for her own pleasure, I can't regard this marriage as a healthy one. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/20/2020 at 5:34 PM, Alyn Oakenfist said:

So given how messed up most sexual relationships are in the story having a lot of incest, dubious consent as well as pedophilia, my question is what do you think is the healthiest relationship in the story?

Dany/Irri.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...