The 8 most empowering Game of Thrones episodes for women

Season 1, Episode 4: “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things”

There aren’t many moments from the first season of Game of Thrones that show our leading ladies in places of power. When we’re introduced to the world of Westeros, we see a society that places little value on its women. But just because the Stark sisters, Daenerys, and even Cersei didn’t immediately take control during the first season of the show doesn’t mean there weren’t smaller moments during which they were empowered.

“Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things,” the fourth episode of the first season, is actually one of the more empowering ones for the show’s women. For starters, fans first see Daenerys stand up to her brother during this episode—a powerful moment for her character and the first hint that there’s far more to her than the meek girl we see married off to Khal Drogo.

When Viserys attempts to punish Daenerys for her acts of kindness, claiming that she’s awoken “the dragon,” she fights back. She uses her status as a Khaleesi to exert authority over him, warning him that the “next time you raise a hand to me will be the last time you have hands.” And while she hasn’t yet moved past using her relationship to Khal Drogo to exercise her power, this is the first moment she seems to realize she can exercise it at all.

And Daenerys isn’t the only Game of Thrones lady who delivers a verbal punch during “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things.” In a conversation with her father in King’s Landing, Arya dismantles the notion of what women should be in just four simple words. Those words come at the end of a discussion during which Arya asks Ned if she can ever become the lord of a holdfast. When he tells her that she’ll marry a lord and have sons that will do everything she wants to, Arya simply tells him: “No, that’s not me.”

This scene between Arya and Ned is one of the first moments we see one of the women of Westeros openly reject the role she’s been told to play. It’s powerful for that alone, but the fact that Arya is still defying those expectations seven seasons later is the truly empowering part of it.