How is it a narrative failure of GRRM? Their relevance (or lack thereof) is in keeping with the setting. It’s weird to argue against “presentism” in almost all your writings here and then give bizarre versions of feminism a pass regardless of how illogical they are, and I say that as an actual feminist who helped organise the Women’s March on London this year. Not that I expect you’ll answer me.

I’ll answer you. 

I don’t think there’s anything bizarre about saying that Joanna Lannister, Elia Martell, Rhaella Targaryen, Lyanna Stark, et al. could have been given more character description and a sense of “interiority.” That seems to me to be a rather straightforward writing issue. 

Moreover, there’s nothing presentist about noting how in some ways GRRM has somewhat misunderstood the historiography that he’s read, or in other cases chosen to exaggerate medieval European society. I’m not a medievalist by training, although I’ve read a good amount of medieval historiography, and it seems to me that the arguments that noblewomen were more active in their lives than the “Dead Ladies Club” has been allowed to be is on reasonably solid ground.