Fire & Blood & Toes: Consent, Coercion, and #ShowFeet in Westeros
Larys the Clubfoot, master of whispers, is one of George R. R. Martin’s more sinister secret keepers. His on screen portrayal began in subtlety but was quickly escalated in the first season of HBO’s House of the Dragon. In episode 9, “The Green Council,” his now long standing relationship with queen Alicent Hightower is laid bare- just like Alicent’s royal tootsies.
A lesser man swearing himself to a chaste and honorable woman… It is a trope in high fantasy and a special little warped one in GRRM’s work in particular. What exactly is the REAL deal between the Clubfoot and the Queen in Chains?
For those unfamiliar with the books, Fire & Blood contains the details of the Dance of the Dragons and is the primary source of adaptation for the hit show. The book reads less as a sprawling fantasy in the way of A Song of Ice and Fire and more as a text book. In a way it is Martin’s Silmarillion but with an even less clear account of events. Rumors swirl in and out of royal accounts and oral storytelling written down later. For the most part the show has not chosen a side, nor has it landed itself in grey areas for its narrative choices. Instead, it goes a bit around the corner of any or all of the narratives from Fire & Blood and says, “there ya go.”
Larys Strong is no exception. He is one of a few rumored to be responsible for his family’s downfall (RIP Ser Harwin, we remain down-bad-i-ly yours). He is noticeably friendless to be so amiable and so able to mingle at King’s Landing. His work on behalf of the Greens is mostly unquestioned, but the actuality of his loyalty is.
And so it makes sense that the relationship between himself and Alicent Hightower is not one of doting lord and devout lady. Instead, Larys is yet another fumble in Alicent’s many attempts at taking power where there is no power to take. As Rhaenys says in this same episode, “You desire not to be free but to make a window in the wall of your prison.” Alicent’s beliefs and actions need to be supported by a higher power, such as the Seven, or more often, by men, the place she believes power truly lies.
Now onto the perceived fetish of it all.
Twitteros and vocal audience members on the internet as a whole were shaken to their core by the introduction of this foot fetish. But what’s it really about?
Coercion and control.
Some falsely equated the foot scene with another edition of Game of Thrones’ infamous gratuitous kink and smut at the hands of D. B. Weiss and David Benioff. But this was no background sexposition. Nor was it violence made titilation, no lingering shots on bare-breast corpses or slow pans up the body of someone being tortured. There’s seemingly no obvious foot fetishist behind the scenes either- Our discomfort was not accidental. Our discomfort was the point.
While I think House of the Dragon is doing an incredible job of balancing Alicent the victim with Alicent the perpetrator, some disability advocates voiced their concerns that making a man known as Larys Clubfoot a foot fetishist was another harmful example of disability in a character pointing to malice or perversion. A valid point and an important concern to acknowledge and contend with. It’s hard to strike a balance. After all, high fantasy even more than other literature is an inherently symbolic medium.
But I argue that the scene wasn’t about his disability at all. Instead it’s the culmination of many things, not least of all how Larys the Clubfoot weaponizes latent ableism in the structure of a patriarchal society and what it allows.
There are many fan theories about Larys Strong specifically but I personally ascribe to the theory that his disability is not a birth defect. It is instead a thing that happens to him or is perhaps done to him that shapes his motivations and general sourness somewhat later in life. While we don’t have the kinds of POVS in Fire & Blood that we do in A Song of Ice and Fire, seemingly House Strong does not limit or malign Larys for his condition. There is no inkling that he’s in the position of, say, Tyrion Lannister.
It’s still a slippery slope to correlate disability with kink like this but for me these adaptational choices read as what ableist society condones in men who will exploit perceived harmlessness.
Take for example his constant presence amongst the tea spilling seshes at King’s Landing. If you missed it, keep an eye out for Larys on your rewatch wherever women are sitting and talking, unguarded, less performative. He’ll be peeking around a corner. It is no different at court.
The women of Westeros, while less powerful on the whole than their male counterparts, are too ableist to consider him a full person with full agency. They do not respond to him as a “Real Man,” & by infantilizing and pitying him they let a fox in with the chickens. By not bucking the perception of himself as harmless and outside of the ruling class, Larys is easily armed with the holy word of gossip. Shittalk is protective for women. There’s a reason men get left out. Men are weapons. Larys Strong is no exception & those women were fools not to see it. In Larys’ hands the word of the day a woman may only use to know who to steer clear of to protect her own reputation and house’s standing as a lifeline becomes a dangerous tool.
Additionally, the foot scene didn’t come out of nowhere. Alicent spends so much time walking a thin line, holding her breath, she is bound to slip out of her role some time. In the episodes before this one she has let the mask slip around Larys. Is it desperation? Is it the same perception of a disabled man as lesser, safer, toothless? It could be all of the above. Whatever the case may be, Alicent perceives Larys’ cunning as a gift. A simple favor. When he delivers the news that his family has died in a terrible accident, she is in her dressing gown. She returns to her chambers to find Larys already digging into her food and wine and takes off her shoes in front of him. She treats Larys as if he is her close personal friend.
By episode nine, it is clear that this perception has soured, even more so than it might’ve from the terrible curse of Kinslaying, which, while the sin was his, was ultimately used as a secret between them, creating both a deeper sense of intimacy and devotion and potential blackmail against Alicent should he claim she ordered it.
Alicent returns to her room and exasperatedly removes her shoes, then her stockings. Larys speaks:
“There is a web of spies at work in the Red Keep […] your father knows this but keeps them in place. […] There is one way to destroy his advantage.”
“I assume this task falls within your expertise,” she answers with a sigh, unable to look directly at him, knowing she is once again trapped.
Alicent has learned the cost of her “friend,” the cost of subverting her father, the cost- in her mind- of protecting her children, the cost of the illusion of control. She is no longer a little girl chewing her fingers, a stress action tied to the demands of her cold and calculating father, The Hand.. She is an object of lust and worship who has become reliant on the only person who will pretend to level with her, by presenting her feet.
From Olivia Cooke’s delivery (what an incredible performance she gives overall) it’s safe to assume this is not the first time this has happened. In removing how it all started, we’ll never know how sexualization came into play. Did Larys further exploit Alicent’s naivety and the women of courts’ ideas about some inherent weakness in him, deserving of pity, to ask to see her foot? Were her feet mpre exposed accidentally at any point in the passing years and he got the idea? Did she offer him the privilege of viewing a “normal” foot up close? Was it simply a natural progression for her to have her bare feet up on a couch near her companion that he turned into something more?
Whatever happened, and however awful the consequences of Alicent’s actions are, I don’t see anything but coercion.
House of the Dragon has such economical storytelling. Wielding the issues of our age is already a confirmed move by the writers, directors, and cast. Per Olivia Cooke, she and the directors decided that she would be playing Alicent as a Westerosi equivalent of Women for Trump. Feet pics is a haha joke to many but it’s a modern running theme in exploitation & sexualization of women. YTubers, streamers, just folks posting selfies are cautious about their feet because men will sexualize anyone & anything without consent. We laugh it off because we can do little else about it.
We can’t be sure of further intention but of course modern film bros and those of us outside of the cis male mind have willingly or unwillingly watched Quentin Tarantino sexualize women and their feet unnecessarily and be applauded for it for decades. For some of us our entire lives. To see it be pointedly exploitative, to see it be laid bare like that removes us from the joke and drops us firmly in the reality: men who build their personalities around being outliers of masculinity somehow, men who think they have something wise and left of the status quo to say about masculinity, are often disgusting little nerds and will use their genius to fuck a foot.
