Cersei Lannister, Robert Baratheon’s widow, casts off her husband’s name and claims the throne for herself. Daenerys Targaryen co-operates with her brother’s brutal murder to blossom into a leader of global proportions and Brienne of Tarth is perhaps this world’s only honourable knight. But there are no prominent characters who move between genders and no societies in which gender has broken down or moved beyond a binary opposition. The show’s famous maxim: “When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die”, leads inevitably to a lot of deaths. Part of what makes the show so gripping is that any character, even the central protagonist, can be killed. In most of Westeros, open same-sex desire is impossible. So, what has happened to our queer cast? Renly Baratheon, dead. Ellaria Sands, chained up with her daughter’s rotting corpse. Vitto Russo, the gay film critic, noted a trend in some film representation where the gay man is presented only to meet an unhappy, punishing and often fatal ending.
Lesbian characters meet similar fates, or are raped into compliance. US academic John Clum observed the same trend on stage and referred to it as “ritualistic purgation”.
