'Game of Thrones' is not a misogynistic show, female stars say ahead of final season

Game of Thrones has been accused time and time again of being a fundamentally misogynistic show, careless in its depictions of violence, sexual assault and abuse of female characters.

One scene in particular – when Sansa Stark was brutally raped by her sadistic husband Ramsey Bolton in Season 5 – had viewers everywhere saying that the show had finally gone too far.

Rape scenes like that are not acceptable, not even in shows set in an – albeit fictional – medieval patriarchal society, critics said.

But now, four of the show's top female stars say that the show was actually always on the female characters' side. In a joint interview with Vogue, Maisie Williams, Sophie Turner, and Lena Heady addressed the criticisms (Gwendoline Christie aka Lady Brienne also took part in the interview, but did not address this topic).

"There are some people who make comments like, ‘It’s a misogynistic show because all these women are getting raped,’" Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, told Vogue. "[But] most of the people coming out on top are women."

Maisie Williams, who plays Sansa's little sister Arya, says in the interview that it's the women who get the last laugh on Game of Thrones. "I’d say the key players this season are all female."

Lena Heady, whose character Cersei was the centre of a much-debated rape scene with her twin brother-slash-lover Jaime, told Vogue that "upending the patriarchy of Westeros" was always the intention of author George RR Martin and the show's creators, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss.

"That’s why they could shoulder all of the criticism. They knew what was coming and what they had in store for these women," Heady told Vogue.

What will happen to Cersei, Sansa, Arya and the rest of the bad ass women in the final season we don't know, but safe to say that those ladies have been through enough.