Overall, the female characters in Game of Thrones are no smarter or stupider than the male characters; intelligence seems to be distributed randomly across the sexes in the series, as it is in real life. (Now that's progress!)

There is a dilemma when it comes to archetypes in fiction. Archetypes are immediately and effortlessly familiar and an easy way to make sense of the world.

This can be bad, too. The extreme of an archetype is a stereotype -- a simplified, often clichéd image of others held in common by a group. As we all know, stereotypes can infiltrate the political and social fabric of life and have insidious, damaging effects.

Yet the existence of archetypes in fiction is universal, no less prevalent in the past than in the present, historically and culturally specific, and endlessly fascinating.