Should I even touch on this? I have no Story Enneagram of Episode One because I turned it off in disgust. I was only watching for pleasure, with no thought of writing about it, and the purview of this blog is not for me to rant with no structural issue worth discussing.
However, I’m horrified at the casual violence a showrunner would create surrounding a woman. I specifically refer to Aemma Arryn and her birth scene. And, no, I don’t mean a Cesarean section performed by Renaissance-equivalent maesters. Physical agony is a part of childbirth, and often a plot will take an extreme angle on it. (See A Quiet Place for an astonishingly honest look, deeply connected to character and story.)
Here we have a ninth-month pregnant queen lecturing her teenaged daughter about breeding. It’s a warrior’s pursuit, a woman’s battlefield. Based on my own experience, I agree. The princess’ reaction struck me as unimaginative and cliche, but the mother’s comment gave me hope for a fresh storytelling take.
No. Sorry.
When she goes into labor, Aemma’s birthing room is every Hollywood trope imaginable. She’s on her back in bed. (Without the requirements a hospital puts on a woman, she will choose to stand or sit, usually.) And her nightgown is red at the crotch to indicate distress and complications. (Every woman bleeds. It’s normal.) And . . . the baby is breech.
Midwives have known for millennia how to palpate an abdomen in order to turn a baby in the last trimester so that it settles head down. A queen with as many woman attendants as this one would certainly have competent midwives. The maesters, the scholars and doctors of the show, would have learned this by now. A breech delivery is the laziest writing pitch.
Let’s give all this a pass, though. I’m offended by the attempt to shock the audience by using ignorant scene-setting, but okay. Aemma is dying in childbirth.
They needed to fridge her, for whatever reason. Let’s accept that, too.
A woman who spoke so bravely about childbirth as a warrior’s path, a woman who’s had at least one other birth, would not cower and whimper at her death. I can speak with authority that, when a woman has been in labor that long, she’s ready to end it by any means. I have freely and with perfect seriousness said, “Kill me now.” The mental, physical, and spiritual exertion of childbirth doesn’t leave time or energy for a tantrum.
The intensity of pregnancy is the heroic battle. I wish the director had chosen a more complex treatment of this. He could’ve still had his gore. One doesn’t exclude the other.
This might be beyond what I normally write about, but I’ve been clear about how much I value truthful characters. Every story is better when people do believable things. The dangers of childbirth are not a new idea to Aemma. Her begging and weeping are insulting. Nothing in previous scenes suggests she’s a simpleton who doesn’t know that delivering a son is crucial to the kingdom.
Please don’t play a woman’s labor for cheap horror. If she must die, let her do so with grace.