The glamour of Westeros

As is usual for Game of Thrones , the most shocking moment of the season six premiere was saved for the very end. Lady Melisandre (Carice van Houten), the Red Woman, high priestess of the fire god, whose magic and ruthlessness had made Stannis Baratheon a serious contender for the Iron Throne, is alone in her chambers. She disrobes slowly; the last to go is the necklace with a red stone that she is never seen without. But as soon as she removes the necklace, we see her age instantaneously. Or rather, we see her as she actually is: hundreds of years old (a fact that has been alluded to more than once in the books by George RR Martin), with heavily wrinkled skin, a hunched back, sunken cheeks and barely a hair on her head.

The camera’s gaze on the aged Melisandre was every bit as lingering and — some would say — gratuitous as the scenes where we see her youthful self seducing men like Stannis and Jon Snow. The only difference was that now, we were looking at her minus her ‘glamour’, the magic used by a witch to change her appearance, generally making her look younger and enhancing her sexual attractiveness.

It is a fallacy to assume that a witch’s ‘glamour’ is an amplified form of the more commonly employed usage of the word: a certain intangible quality that makes Nicole Kidman or Hugh Jackman look like members of a different species; shinier, spiffier, better. In fact, the converse is true. ‘Glamour’ originated in Scotland, in the early 18th century, and it was used by Walter Scott, among others, to indicate magic used to fool your eyes.

The Oxford English Dictionary also acknowledges its closeness to the word ‘grammar’, which in the Middle Ages was associated with all kinds of learning, including the occult arts. Author Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen and possessor of the most gorgeous Scottish accent on the planet, makes a similar point in the documentary The Mindscape of Alan Moore : ‘grimmoire’, the word used for a compendium of magical spells, is just a fancy way of saying ‘grammar’.

In Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman series of comics, Lord Morpheus, aka Dream (an anthropomorphic representation of the metaphysical concept) is appeased by the fairies: a fairy princess named Nuala is offered to him as companion. Nuala is initially drawn as the quintessential blonde waif, high cheekbones and wispy strands of hair falling down her forehead. But before he accepts her into his life and his kingdom, Dream has a very specific request. He says: “If you are to remain here, Nuala, you must remove the glamour you wear. I mislike little magics in this realm.” And with a snap of his fingers, he disables her glamour. The sleek blonde hair gives way to a frumpier brown, the clothes are crumpled and she reveals the pointed fairy ears that fans of The Tempest will recognise instantly.

The actions of Morpheus and Melisandre are emblematic of the politics behind glamour. It is important to remember that we are talking about worlds where women’s disenfranchisement was at a dizzying level. Women were systemically oppressed, pushed into a corner until they utilised what they felt was the only weapon they had: their sexual desirability. What power could a fairy, even a fairy princess, wield over the lord of dreams? What power could a witch, even one as canny as Melisandre, assume over generations and generations of bloodthirsty Westeros kings, for whom genocide is a matter of course? That she managed to survive for hundreds of years while keeping her true age and appearance a secret is a testament to the efficacy of Melisandre’s glamour.

Take a good long look at the season six premiere and you’ll see the footprints of glamour all over the episode. Daenerys Targaryen, forced to flee from the land she is still rightful queen of, is captured by the Dothraki, the gypsy-like race of barbarians she married into. They strip her of her finery (thus removing her own personal brand of glamour) and chain her to a horse. When the wife of the Dothraki leader Khal Moro looks at Daenerys, she warns her husband: “All women with blue eyes are witches. Cut her head off before she casts a spell on you.” In a couple of lines, the confluence of magic, sexual power and gender politics is established.

The de-glamourisation of Cersei Lannister (which began with her naked “walk of shame” in the last season’s final episode) is complete when she realises that her daughter Myrcella is dead. The ruthless bitch queen act is dropped and she confesses that creating a pure and kind person like Myrcella made her feel “less of a monster”. Arya Stark had acquired a glamour of fearlessness and butchery after she slaughtered the paedophile Meryn Trant in the previous season. The gruesome stabbing went a long way in convincing viewers that she wasn’t a confused orphan anymore. In this episode, we see her blinded, hungry, disoriented and, finally, stripped of the one thing she had going for her: her fledgling prowess in combat. When The Waif beats her black and blue with a stick, we witness the departure of her glamour.

One might think that the allure of Melisandre has gone along with her glamour, in the eyes of the (male) viewer, that is. But remember, glamour was and is primarily a kind of power accumulated by knowledge: the knowledge of old texts, the knowledge of illusion and knowledge of human nature that one accumulates through experience.

And as we know by now, experience is something that Melisandre has aplenty.

COMMENT NOW