![]() Even if the Summer Islanders were a very war-like people life there would be much better than in Westeros simply because there is no winter there - or no winter that includes snow and ice. Which in this world is really a big deal. This is intentional exoticism, I assume, although I imagine could tell us more about the intention behind the way Yandel talks about different cultures and peoples - and at times even about different species of men (which I found very racist when first reading it - all that crap about Ibbenese not being able to have offspring with other humans, etc.).Īnd one has to consider that in context a place the Westerosi call 'the Summer Islands' clearly evoke a worldly paradise for them regardless how exactly the people there live - simply because it is a place of eternal summer, not touched or marred by winter. This is a trend the Yandel narrator continues very much with the cultures outside Westeros. ![]() Second of all, there is often an orientalist assumption inherent in this faux-woke rhetoric that Essos, a huge continent, is this large, monolithic mass of brown and black people who apparently all have the same culture, nationality, religion, ethnicity, language, belief system, customs, and rituals.TWoIaF does not only exoticise far away places like Yi Ti, Leng, or the Summer Isles, but also ephemeral cultures like the Ironborn (although we do have an aboriginal archmaester telling part of their history there), the Dornish, the Northmen (and especially there the crannogmen and Skagosi), and, of course, the wildlings. ![]() We know from the complex and rich history of Essos that this isn't true. Many different Essosi places are mentioned throughout ASOIAF - Braavos, Vaes Dothrak, the Dothraki Sea, Asshai, Lys, Myr, Volantis, the Free Cities, Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen (which are all part of "Slaver's Bay"), Lothar, Naath, the Summer Isles, Qarth, Lhazar, Old Valyria, and more. These places are all incredibly different from each other. Not only that, but there are thousands of different ethnic and national groups that inhabit these places. The Dothraki and Ghiscari are described as brown-skinned/darker-skinned, but people from Lys are pale. Melisandre and Kinvara are from Asshai, and they're both white. Valyrians are from Essos, and they are silver-haired, violet-eyed, and pale-skinned. Illyrio Mopatis lives in Pentos, and he is white. Jaqen H'ghar lives in Braavos, and he is white. Dany is just as Essosi as Missandei or Grey Worm or Melisandre or Varys. So we see even on the show that there are plenty of white/pale-skinned Essosi. They wouldn't be called "white" and Missandei wouldn't be called "black" and Shae wouldn't be called "West Asian" because those categories don't exist in ASOIAF! We can't read our modern system of racialization and white supremacy into ASOIAF because 1) it's a fictional medieval fantasy world, 2) GRRM did not set up a consistent racial allegory in which there are groups that are neatly "white" and groups that are neatly "not white", and 3) categories such as "white", "Black", etc don't exist in ASOIAF. ![]() I do think things analogous to racism and orientalism clearly exist in Westeros and Essos both - the Dothraki, for instance, think the Lhazareen are lesser to them, and white Westerosi clearly hate the Martells (and the Dornish in general). ![]()
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