Given that Dorne does have such a tradition of female rule (strict primogeniture should mean that about half the noble houses would be ruled by a lady rather than a lord due to the coin flip of gender of the firstborn), there should indeed be a reasonable expectation that the wife may outrank her husband and he shouldn't expect any stronger influence over her decisions than that provided by affection and respect.
There was that thing that the woman who'd expected to marry Brandon Stark pointed out in ADwD, that it was the accepted habit for the ruling family of each subkingdom of Westeros to marry amongst their own bannermen (if not their own kin), until a few years before the time of the opening of the first book, when a bunch of great lords fought together during a war and made friends and started fostering their children with each other and arranging betrothals between their houses. So yeah, it would have made sense for Arianne to be examining her father's bannermen for her potential future husband, though I guess I can see her being attracted to a pretty face or having some vague thoughts about a great union between subkingdoms. Ambition, but not being allowed to know her father's actual plans. And he really failed her amazingly -- not only in keeping her ignorant of his own treasonous planning on her behalf (possibly a good idea for her own protection), but in never giving her training in how to rule Dorne (which would have been good preparation for being queen of Westeros, and as it now turns out is a really massive oversight since she's going to be princess of Dorne after all). GRRM seems to be cheerfully oblivious to the role of most medieval great ladies in terms of holding down a castle in their husbands' absences (or serving as regent in the event of their widowing while the heir to their husband's title is still a minor) and at least some of these ladies should have had much more practical training.
(That's a whole damned overarching theme in the book, about women being kept from learning how to rule and thus having to fumble around learning on the fly. I've really noticed the extent to which Cersei and Dany mirror each other in terms of their pawn-to-queen transformations and their respective mistakes as they find themselves trying to wield increasing amounts of power. And there's the whole thing where GRRM has drastically overestimated the fatality rate of childbirth (unless those maesters really have no fucking clue what they're doing obstetrically and are killing women right left and center) and pretty much every adult character lost their mother young and almost none of the women had a mother around to steer them into adulthood teaching them the female road to power. Margaery Tyrell is the really huge exception, having both her mother and most importantly her grandmother around to train her, as the TV series is making really blatantly obvious. Aside from the Tyrells, Cersei and Catelyn seem to be the only noble mothers who have lasted long enough to teach their daughters, and neither of them had a mother around during her own adolescence to teach her.)
ETA: Book rec of sorts, for Philippa Gregory's The Constant Princess, being about Catherine of Aragon as the daughter of a ruling queen of Spain and as a queen of England whose second husband knew less about properly ruling a country than she did.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2014-12-20 08:53 pm (UTC)There was that thing that the woman who'd expected to marry Brandon Stark pointed out in ADwD, that it was the accepted habit for the ruling family of each subkingdom of Westeros to marry amongst their own bannermen (if not their own kin), until a few years before the time of the opening of the first book, when a bunch of great lords fought together during a war and made friends and started fostering their children with each other and arranging betrothals between their houses. So yeah, it would have made sense for Arianne to be examining her father's bannermen for her potential future husband, though I guess I can see her being attracted to a pretty face or having some vague thoughts about a great union between subkingdoms. Ambition, but not being allowed to know her father's actual plans. And he really failed her amazingly -- not only in keeping her ignorant of his own treasonous planning on her behalf (possibly a good idea for her own protection), but in never giving her training in how to rule Dorne (which would have been good preparation for being queen of Westeros, and as it now turns out is a really massive oversight since she's going to be princess of Dorne after all). GRRM seems to be cheerfully oblivious to the role of most medieval great ladies in terms of holding down a castle in their husbands' absences (or serving as regent in the event of their widowing while the heir to their husband's title is still a minor) and at least some of these ladies should have had much more practical training.
(That's a whole damned overarching theme in the book, about women being kept from learning how to rule and thus having to fumble around learning on the fly. I've really noticed the extent to which Cersei and Dany mirror each other in terms of their pawn-to-queen transformations and their respective mistakes as they find themselves trying to wield increasing amounts of power. And there's the whole thing where GRRM has drastically overestimated the fatality rate of childbirth (unless those maesters really have no fucking clue what they're doing obstetrically and are killing women right left and center) and pretty much every adult character lost their mother young and almost none of the women had a mother around to steer them into adulthood teaching them the female road to power. Margaery Tyrell is the really huge exception, having both her mother and most importantly her grandmother around to train her, as the TV series is making really blatantly obvious. Aside from the Tyrells, Cersei and Catelyn seem to be the only noble mothers who have lasted long enough to teach their daughters, and neither of them had a mother around during her own adolescence to teach her.)
ETA: Book rec of sorts, for Philippa Gregory's The Constant Princess, being about Catherine of Aragon as the daughter of a ruling queen of Spain and as a queen of England whose second husband knew less about properly ruling a country than she did.