Digioia, A; (2020) The Queen in the North: Conceptualising International Relations, Popular Culture, Gender, and How Feminine Power Won the Game of Thrones. St Antony's International Review , 16 (1) pp. 116-146.

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Abstract

This article contributes to existing literature on the connections between gender, International Relations, power, and Game of Thrones. Scholars have demonstrated that there is a clear relationship between power, gender and political authority. Politics and world pop culture relate to one another. The arts have been an indicated as being a catalyst for societal change, showing that some forms of fictional and factual politics have a relationship with one another. This article uses existing scholarship on the gendered dimensions of political power in International Relations to show that Sansa Stark won Game of Thrones by repeatedly rejecting masculine power. Instead, Sansa adopts a policy rooted in feminine power (letter-writing, collaboration, patience and strategy) that win The Battle of the Bastards, and, ultimately, the North's independence. By doing so, this article shows that the coronation of Sansa Stark represents the triumph of feminine-coded power and policy, and that the rise of such power in the fictional world of Westeros can be mapped onto the non-fictional political world in a number of different examples. In our real world, Sansa's non-fictional counterparts stand out in stark contrast to a political landscape littered with political 'strongmen', who could be read as sabre-rattling pseudo-Targaryens.

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