And I forgot to mention that Martin's construction of highly racially divided societies is painfully outdated. Maybe you could find pseudo-ethnostates in the pre-modern world, but any major trade route or port city would have a much more diverse range of people. I suppose it's kinda convenient that Westeros, the place with all the white people, is the most powerful nation in that world, while the continent with all the brown people is mostly made up of disparate city-states and warlike savages. Fans argue that since we're seeing those cultures from the eyes of white people we aren't getting the full story, giving Martin the benefit of doubt, but if that's the case it probably should be made a little more explicit in the text. And in the War of the Roses time period Martin is most directly inspired by, Europe was a balkanized backwater while the Islamic world was a cultural powerhouse and China was already a thousand year-old empire and I'm sure other peoples were also very impressive compared to Europe but I'm unfamiliar with their histories. But, it could be argued that Martin is commenting on the modern White Supremacist state of the American Empire moreso than any obtuse point about Europe in the Middle Ages so I'm not sure how to feel about that particular point.

Fuck I'm such a nerd. Read theory you dumb bitch. GRRM literally doesn't matter.