One snippet from the latest Game of Thrones season 7 trailer has had fans in a right flutter: Yara Greyjoy and Ellaria Sand snogging like teenagers.
We've already followed Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell's tragic love affair, and Oberyn Martell and Ellaria's very open relationship (both parties, the show implied,were bisexual) but could Yara and Ellaria become the show's first lesbian power couple?
With a fleet of ships at their behest and a newly forged entente with Daenerys Targaryen, there's at least an outside chance.
There's an equally strong possibility (some might say inevitability) that things will go south for the pair - or even that the moment we witnessed was just another killer kiss from Ellaria (RIP Myrcella). Still, now seems as good a time as any to think about what this could mean for Game of Thrones's depiction of sexuality.
Like so many aspects of the show, Game of Thrones's portrayal of LGBT characters has come under scrutiny in seasons past. While some praise the drama for its inclusivity, pleased that it actually features gay characters in the first place (slow round of applause), others have issues with the way these characters seem to be consistently punished for their sexuality.
Snogging like teenagers: Yara Greyjoy and Ellaria Sand in the latest Game of Thrones trailer.
Pop culture site Vulture, for example, has denounced past storylines, arguing the show's plotting is symptomatic of the "bury your gays" trend in television, in which gay characters are rarely given a happy ending.
It's true Renly was finished off by a shadow baby, Oberyn's head imploded thanks to The Mountain, and Loras was blown up... after being forced to renounce his "crime" of sex with other men. However, this is Game of Thrones. Happy endings are harder to find than Benjen Stark and grisly deaths are in abundance. With the rate the Stark family are being bumped off, one could just as easily argue that characters are punished for having a northern accent.
What's more, we have to think of these characters in context. Westeros is largely inspired by European Medieval history, as George RR Martin himself has often stated.
Even the structural organisation of Westeros' main religion, the Seven, is strikingly similar to Catholicism. Back then, any sex that wasn't strictly procreational was forbidden, including but not limited to, sex between men.
Of course, rules were regularly broken... but it is pointless projecting our twentieth-century definitions onto a past where things were radically different.
To me, the point of showing Loras's imprisonment and trial for "laying with other men" was not to label him as immoral or suggest that his punishment was deserved, but to highlight the warped morals and corruptness of the religion of the Seven - not to mention Cersei Lannister, who engineered his arrest.
Renly and Loras on Game of Thrones. Photo / YouTube
More often than not, the LGBT characters in Game of Thrones are nuanced and don't conform to stereotypes (although this complexity of Martin's novels is sometimes lost as the plot is streamlined for TV). Loras and Oberyn are both formidable warriors, and the series never falls into the dated trope of using effeminacy for comedic effect, as is so often the case in other TV shows (shout out to the likes of Will and Grace and Glee).
The relationship between Loras and Renly was gentle and loving. They whispered sweet nothings and shaved each other's chest hair, just like any other couple. The actor Gethin Anthony, who played Renly, praised the show for its portrayal of the couple. Similarly the relationship between polyamorous bisexual couple Ellaria Sand and Oberyn Martell was believable in its tenderness - albeit with some added brothel-based titillation.
Up until season six, however, there was a distinct lack of lesbian characters, aside from some smutty fondling in Littlefinger's brothel to satisfy the male clientele. But that all changed with Yara Greyjoy.
Yara's sexuality was revealed shortly after her escape from the Iron Islands, where she took a quick pit stop in a brothel. Like any adventuring sailor would. This was a bit of a deviation from the books, where Theon's elder sister Asha (the name was changed to Yara for the TV show) is romantically linked to a man, but it was a welcome one for many.
Yara's unabashed declaration of her sexuality was refreshing and even a little funny, inverting the tired old trope of the hyper-feminine gay man.
What rankled with some, however, was that her interest in women took on misogynistic overtones, when she smugly told younger brother Theon that she was "off to f--- the tits off of this one".
Her assimilation into the man's world in which she was trying to gain a foothold was a little disappointing - the first lesbian protagonist's lust took on a male gaze. That said, it also felt believable, given Westeros's largely patriarchal society.
All in all, Game of Thrones' LGBT characters are trying to navigate a heteronormative, medieval world. Their sexuality isn't a reflection of their morality, but just another facet to their personality, and I'm hoping that that the decision to reorientate Yara's sexuality (whether it was made in the interests of diversity, for later plot development, or just to convincingly bump her off at the hands of Ellaria Sand) remains consistent with this.
Should Ellaria and Yara become a couple, or just enjoy a short-lived (potentially lethal) tryst, what is important is that their sexuality does not become their defining characteristic - or worse still, a novelty factor.
