Babies Not Battlefields: Why it is Batshit Crazy to Entrust Women with Leadership Roles of Significance

Introduction

It’s no secret that women fuck up everything. They’re not cool to hang out with, they’re indecisive, and when they do make a decision, it’s the wrong one.

While this is patently obvious to pretty much everyone on the planet, there are a handful of people out there who would take issue with it. To shut them up once and for all, I have provided below indisputable proof of the following principle by citing three concrete examples from Season I of Game of Thrones.

Box’s Law: If there are two or more ways to respond to a critical situation and one of those ways will result in devastating consequences, then a woman will respond in that way.
This also applies to non-critical situations like choosing a movie to watch on a Thursday night.
Common variation: Anything that can be fucked up beyond all recognition, will be fucked up beyond all recognition … by a woman.

To verify the above truth, we will examine three leading females who made critical decisions. We will begin with Catelyn “Kat” Stark, wife of Eddard “Ned” Stark, Lord of Winterfell, then move on to Daenerys Targaryen, one of two surviving children of the ousted King Aerys Targaryen, and finish with Shae, a mysterious foreigner thrust into prominence.

Example I: Kat

The historic television series begins dramatically when precocious climber Brandon Stark, Ned & Kat’s 10-year-old son, happens upon Ser Jaime Lannister, knight of the Kingsguard, porking his sister, Cersei Lannister, Queen Regent of the Seven Kingdoms, doggystyle in the loft of an abandoned tower.

To quiet Brandon, Jaime pushes him out of the window to almost certain death. Brandon survives however, but crippled and in a coma. Shortly thereafter, there is a failed attempt on his life by an assassin armed with a distinctive dagger.

In Episode IV, despite being warned by her husband Ned, who is a man, that they were to do nothing until they had evidence, Kat, who I was actually rooting for and desperately wanted to like on account of her uncanny resemblance to my favorite childhood E.T. stuffie, makes a rash and ultimately disastrous decision at a critical juncture.

While stopping at an inn on her way back home from the capital, King’s Landing, to Winterfell, Kat, who by the way is a total douche to her husband’s completely stand-up but illegitimate son Jon Snow (it’s not his fault so don’t take it out on him you petty bitch!), encounters Tyrion Lannister, the little brother of the aforementioned incestuous duo.

Armed with information asserting that the assassin’s dagger was the property of Tyrion, Kat decides to make a big scene (what a huge surprise, right?! A chick making a big stink in public) by calling out the insignia of families that are loyal to her father and calling on the men wearing them to back her up.

"This man came into my house as a guest and there conspired to murder my son,” she declares without thinking that maybe just maybe it makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever to arm an assassin with your personal, easily identifiable dagger. “In the name of King Robert and the good lords you serve, I call upon you to seize him and help me return him to Winterfell to await the King's Justice."

To her immense satisfaction, swords are drawn as she finishes her dramatic speech and Tyrion, a tortured soul who nonetheless touches everyone around him with his wit, passion, and regular-sized genitalia, is taken into custody.

As a direct result of this rash, horrendous decision at a crucial moment, Ned, the conscience of the Seven Kingdoms, is ambushed by Jamie in King’s Landing, all of his men are killed, and he’s stabbed through the thigh and thrown in a dungeon. When he’s finally taken out at the end of the season, it is only to have his head lopped off in a public execution with his daughters in audience.

Further, this thoughtless, diarrhea decision incites a war between House Lannister, the most powerful family in the kingdoms, and House Stark, leading to the gruesome deaths of Kat’s eldest son Rob as well as Kat herself, and the downfall of Winterfell.

Great fucking decision, Kat! Good thing you didn’t stay home knitting shit at your crippled son’s bedside.

Example II: Daenerys

Meanwhile, across the Narrow Sea on the continent of Essos, the petulant and abusive Viserys Targaryen, son of the Mad King whose throne was usurped, plots a triumphant recapture of King’s Landing by raising an army of Dothraki savages.

To accomplish this, he marries off his younger sister Daenerys, who I really really wanted to like because she showed me her breasts in like the first scene she was in, to Khal Drogo, the leader of the warrior tribe.

After acclimating herself to the situation (i.e. going from being sexed by Drogo to doing sex to Drogo), not only is it declared in Episode VI that she’s pregnant with “the stallion who will mount the world,” but her ill-tempered wienie brother is offed by the Dothraki for being a monumental douche. So with everything going great guns, it’s the perfect time to fuck it up beyond all recognition with some profoundly retarded decision-making.

Strolling through a vibrant seaside market, Daenerys makes her first valiant attempt when she is offered a cask of wine and is keen to indulge. (Did you hear that, ladies!? Even you, despite being blind to reason by estrogen, must surely be outraged at this reckless endangerment of the precious gift of life in her tum-tum!) Fortunately, one of her sworn protectors recognizes that the suspect wine peddler is in fact attempting to poison her and saves the day.

Drogo, apoplectic with rage at the attempt on his wife and unborn child’s life, emphatically vows to give his son the seven kingdoms, swearing that his boy will take his seat on the iron throne that his mother’s father sat upon.

In Episode VIII, after the Dothraki have sacked a city and are taking hostages to trade for gold to hire ships to sail to King’s Landing and are otherwise enjoying the spoils of war, Daenerys forbids a group of men from getting their rape on.

Despite the fact that these warriors are doing the sheep girls a great honor by raping them, Daenerys insists that if the men wish to have their way with them, they must take the women for their wives. Drogo, clearly tired of listening to Daenerys’ bitching and moaning, eventually relents but unfortunately one of his core companions refuses to accept this and draws his sword in protest, slicing Drogo’s chest somewhat when calling him out.

Drogo kills the shit out of him and despite the wound being a mere nick on his herculean body, Daenerys, in full bleeding-heart mode, insists that her “sun and stars” receive medical attention. With no Dothraki healers around, Mirri Maz Duur, the priestess of a temple that has just been destroyed and the possessor of desserts that have just been enjoyed, steps forward saying that she can help since she knows healing smokes and ointments.

Drogo’s remaining core companions, who are men, immediately protest and try to prevent the witch from touching their leader by shrewdly offering to gut her like a pig. However, in this suddenly critical situation, newfound women’s rights activist Daenerys makes the outlandishly stupid decision to allow Mirri access to Drogo’s wound and newly pussy-whipped Drogo again acquiesces.

When we next see Drogo in Episode IX, he is pretty much comatose on top of his horse and we watch as he falls off limply, landing squarely on his head. Daenerys, still oblivious to the jaw-droppingly retarded mistake that she’s made, calls for Mirri for medical attention.

Upon seeing that the wound has festered and spread as we would expect would happen when treated with poison, one of Drogo’s men, who is a man, draws his sword to exact revenge upon the witch. To the consternation of absolutely everyone, Daenerys continues to protect her and not only begs her to save the “moon of her life,” but when told that through Bloodmagic, only death can pay for life she says, “My death?”

“No, not your death,” Mirri replies.

End of discussion.

That’s right, end of fucking discussion!

Daenerys has compounded her mind-numbingly dumb decision by beseeching Mirri to save Drogo by trading death (gee, I wonder who’s death that will be???) for life. (And I wonder how psyched Drogo’s gonna be when he’s back amongst the living and discovers who’s dead.)

Drogo’s companion, still a man, begs Daenerys not to go through with it. He again pleads for permission to kill the witch and Daenerys again tells him to fuck off explaining that she makes the rules. A scuffle ensues and Daenerys is knocked to the ground where she proceeds to go into labor and is brought into the tent so that Mirri can deliver the stallion who will mount the world and sit upon the iron throne.

Or not.

When Daenerys comes to the next morning, she finds that the tribe has left her, her baby is dead, and the moon of her life is a drooling vegetable.

It is around this time that she finally realizes that Mirri was against her from the start and was more than happy to off the future world mounter because by doing so she prevented him from burning cities to the ground and trampling nations into dust.

Daenerys, put off by a potential future of long-term care giving, snuffs out her sun and stars with a pillow and is left to stew in the incomprehensibly harrowing situation that she has created for herself due to her utter ineptitude at making the simplest of decisions in a time of self-induced stress.

You know what would have been a good decision? Staying the fuck out of everything, giving birth to a baby boy, and quietly watching as he re-claims the Seven Kingdoms and once again brings glory to you and your family.

[On a side note, while it is conceivable that Daenerys could rise from rock bottom to a position of prominence via magic or act of God, such rise would only serve to buttress this argument because it proves that she can only obtain success through some form of bullshit, totally unrealistic magic crap and not via anything close to keen decision-making. Further, even if she’s able to bounce back professionally, there’s no filling the gaping void in her heart caused by the death of her beloved husband and unborn child. That’s just not something you get over after a good night’s sleep in a warm bed.]

Example III: Shae

Meanwhile, after being proven innocent via trial by combat and managing to join up with his father’s army, Tyrion Lannister finds himself on the eve of a great battle with the Stark army and prepares by having his man acquire paid female company.

It is here that we meet our third and final prominent female who will put the nail in this case’s coffin. Long-faced and long-chinned like Rocky from the movie Mask but without the acting chops, she is a prostitute by the name of Shea.

Actually, now that I think about it, it’s not so much that Shae makes a horrendous decision in Season I, it’s more that she has a grating personality, dick-in-mouth accent, and a crater-sized butt chin. But that’s more than enough to make my point, right?

Right.

And besides, she only enters the picture in the second to last episode, so if given more time, and if in the highly unlikely scenario where an irritating hooker is put in a position to make a decision of consequence, she would no doubt fuck it up and ruin everything for everyone in that world and this one. But hopefully she would be killed violently shortly thereafter.

Conclusion

To sum up, at critical moments, Catelyn Stark made an impetuous decision to seize Tyrion Lannister leading to the destruction of her family, Daenerys Targeryn made an impulsive, sentimental decision to have her sun and stars treated/poisoned by a distraught prisoner of war leading not only to the moon of her life’s demise but also to the death of her unborn child, and Shea … well … Shea just sucks.

There are infinite examples like this and none that are different; which as a result prove beyond all reasonable and unreasonable doubt Box’s Law to be a given truth. So the bad news, ladies, is that it is incumbent upon you to abandon any and all aspirations of being in a position of leadership, but the good news is that you can re-double your focus on babies & shopping.

Q.E.D.

*Bonus Note: Jennifer Ehle, an actress no one’s ever heard of, was originally cast as Catelyn Stark, but left after shooting the pilot. Great decision, Jennifer!

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