Throne A Bone: The Men of Game of Thrones
Five episodes into HBO's Game of Thrones and I think it's time we addressed something important: this show is full of attractive men, and nobody seems to be talking about it.
The internet is awash with discussions about the show's treatment of women — the gratuitous nudity, the "sexposition" scenes, the way female characters are used as props. All valid conversations. But I want to talk about the other side of the coin, because Game of Thrones has assembled one of the most impressive collections of handsome men on television, and they deserve their moment.
Let's start with the obvious: Sean Bean as Ned Stark brings the kind of weathered, noble gravitas that makes you want to follow him into battle. There's something about a man who looks like he's carried the weight of honor on his shoulders for decades. Kit Harington's Jon Snow is the brooding pretty boy of the piece, all dark curls and wounded eyes, which is exactly the kind of thing that launches a thousand Tumblr blogs.
But the real surprise for me has been Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister. Here's a man playing one of fiction's great villains — a man who pushed a child out a window in the very first episode — and somehow he makes you understand why half the kingdom swoons at the sight of him. That's acting, but it's also cheekbones.
Jason Momoa's Khal Drogo barely speaks English on the show, communicating mostly through intensity and muscle, and it absolutely works. Peter Dinklage is doing career-best work as Tyrion, proving that charisma and wit are the most attractive qualities a person can possess. And Richard Madden as Robb Stark is the boy next door who suddenly has to become a king, and he wears it well.
What makes Game of Thrones interesting from this perspective is that it treats male beauty with the same frankness it treats everything else. These men are objects of desire within the story — characters comment on their looks, scheme to bed them, fight wars over them. It's refreshingly honest about something most fantasy fiction pretends doesn't exist.