Five women who shaped Game of Thrones Season Five

"Who said anything about him?"

These perfectly placed lines of Lord Varys in the first episode seem almost prophetic in the retrospective view of the fifth season of Game of Thrones, which came to an explosive end this week. Game of Thrones has always challenged femininity by positioning it at a precarious edge where women fight to survive against bloated hyper masculine anxieties. But this season, the creators appear to have gone all out, devoting massive footage to women characters, extensively following the female storylines. In the season where women's boots leave imprints even on the snow-covered virginity of Castle Black, the female is definitely going places - Westeros, Dorne, Mereen, Braavos.

From Shireen's cries to Sansa's stoicity, Brienne's tested faith to Arya's search for faith, Lyanna Stark's now eerily familiar crypt to Selyse's rope-stained burdened neck, Season Five's montage is incomplete without the devastatingly torn female characters that define it. Even as pioneering men of power succumb to the saying Valar Morghulis, we look at five women who live on to define Game of Thrones Season Five -

1. Cersei Lannister

When the season began, Cersei Lannister seemed no different from the mollycoddling misanthropic mother we loved to hate. Despite being the most brutal in terms of Cersei's plotline, Season Five has been kindest to her character in offering the greatest scope of developing a depth to her personality. The reason that for me Cersei Lannister is the highly unexpected star of Season Five, is that this season truly problematises the viewer's judgement of Cersei and pushes her into the complicated realm of moral ambiguities.

The season is essentially bookended by Cersei's narrative on either side. In this season too, Cersei's narrative persists as a morally bankrupt attempt at preserving her family. But, in the light of Cersei's childhood scene, which opens the fifth season, her monomania is softened. From that point onwards, her heinousness seems more an act of desperate defiance of a doomed destiny. The acute knowledge of helplessness blunts the sinister edge of her perpetual attempts at safeguarding her children, whether it is sending Jaime to Dorne or acting as faux Hand to King Tommen. Cersei's fight against the inevitable evokes an inexplicable mixture of admiration and admonition.

Although Season Five ends with a signature Game of Thrones last-minute shock, for me, the final episode's defining moment was the spine-chilling walk of shame Cersei is forced to take. In those moments when she is utterly exposed to a world that detests her, her pride crumbles to dust. In that moment, she is no longer Cersei Lannister. She is merely an echo of the words repeated with the bell behind her - "Shame, shame, shame."

And I know, as most viewers knew, that this was probably the moral debt Cersei Lannister was long due to pay. Yet, in that moment, the venom that defined Cersei Lannister became secondary. And I felt pity. Pity, of all people, for Cersei Lannister.

2. Arya Stark

With the Hound dead, Brienne rejected, and no family in sight, Arya is truly alone this season, even in her search for company amongst faceless men. Arya's storyline this season might be distanced by its physical specificities, at the House of Black and White in Braavos. But, this season is all about Arya's unrelenting conflict with her own self.

Despite all odds, Arya succeeds in finding Jaqen H'ghar, who promised to train her in the art of becoming a faceless man. But, this is only the beginning of Arya's difficulties. She suffers deeply in her tryst to become faceless because her life has at its core been about protecting the individuality that defines her, that prevents her from abandoning Needle in the water.

Her desire to become faceless is itself a self-concerned act of preservation and eventually becomes a tool to exact her personal vengeance. Arya as always, remains torn between the family she believes she will never find and the desire to remember it by avenging its losses.

In this way, she appropriates a masculine sense of honour which she abides by, just like the men of her family. But she too succumbs under the weight of this code of honour that haunts her family like a plague, blinded with an uncertain future.

For Arya, who will always be remembered as the girl who abandoned her stitching to outshine Bran at archery in the very first episode of Season One, fitting into the robe of anonymity will take far longer than one season, if it will ever happen at all.

3. Daenerys Targaryen

Daenerys Targaryen, the imposing queen of Slaver's Bay, has been the feminist's staple diet from Season One in Game of Thrones.

But what makes her an interesting character in Season Five is the manner in which this season examines Daenerys when the imperiousness of the slew of her titles fades away. What happens when Daenerys the conqueror, the emancipator, is reduced to just Daenerys, the queen of a conflicted land?

The uncertainty with which the Dragon Mother approaches and eventually flees from her chained dragons in episode one, mirrors the larger anxieties with which Daenerys seeks to maintain the legitimacy of her rule. She is brought down from the pedestal of her throne to cope with the difficult decisions, the compromises that she as a ruler must make.

This is best reflected in the scene where the freemen who once identified with her in the collective call of Mhysa, alienate her with hisses of disapproval.

But, while the weakness is necessary to make her character seem real, it is ephemeral at best. Daenerys lashes out against the nobles behind the rebellious Sons of the Harpy with the full force of dragon fire. Even her compromises are made with a typically Targaryen pride, such as the ironic, nonchalant, proposal moment when she decides to marry Hizdahr zo Loraq, without deigning to give him even a word on the matter.

Her role as a ruler dispensing a justice that her subjects cannot appreciate helps to make Daenerys a far more admirable leader of her nascent "kingdom", if I may use that word.

4. Sansa Stark

Sansa, the eldest daughter of Winterfell makes her way home this season, but on the way, makes all the wrong decisions possible- refusing Brienne's fealty, accepting Petryr Baelish's proposition to marry Ramsay Bolton.

While it is up for debate whether Sansa could actually have refused Baelish's plans, what makes Sansa's affirmation appreciable is the massive sense of individual agency which fuels her actions. Behind her approval is Sansa's burning desire for retribution. Aspirations of revenge make her sacrifice her freedom by marrying a man she hardly knows. Dreams of controlling the North, even if merely through a vicarious rule, empower her to make terrible choices and literally sleep with the enemy.

At Winterfell, Sansa is at ease, even when she gets not-so-veiled threats from Myranda, Ramsay's mistress. Her desire to survive, to rebel and eventually escape survives the long nights of terror she spends at the mercy of a merciless Ramsay.

Sansa is still restrained in many ways, willingly bound to Baelish in what is probably the most disturbing consensual relationship of the series. But she is learning to act, learning to vocalise. Her insistence is able to penetrate into Reek and bring out the Theon, presumed lost forever. Sansa often gets sidelined when placed against Arya's heroic exploits along the length and breadth of Westeros. Although Sansa's battlefields might be castles and bedrooms, their veneer of comfort is revealed explicitly in the much controversialised marital rape scene.

The leap of faith Sansa take at the end of the season is not the first she has taken. Her story of survival is subtly portrayed, but is far more complicated than Arya's obvious quest to survive, and therefore equally commendable, if not more.

5. Lady Mellisandre

No one elicits equal awe and fear from both men and women as the fire priestess, Lady Mellisandre. What makes her uniquely powerful is the legitimacy with which she exploits power through both traditional and unconventional channels. For long Mellisandre has exuded control from the shadows that are intensified in the heat of Stannis Baratheon whom she portrays as the Lord's Chosen Son of Fire. This season too, she keeps the king under her spell, swaying him and his subjects under her authority as the divine representative of the Lord of Light. But she also employs more typically feminine control, unnerving men with her sexuality and openly projecting herself as an object of desire to Jon Snow, among others.

Lady Mellisandre rides high upon her influence through most of the season, as always playing a highly influential role in key events like Shireen's Iphigenia-like sacrifice. Such events reveal the stronghold Mellisandre has on the minds of countless people like Stannis and Selyse, making them see profanity as piety.

But then something unexpected happens. Lady Mellisandre falls. She flees like a shadow cowering in failure. In the last episode, Mellisandre appears more relieved than smugly aware at the sight of the melting ice. But she realises the failure of her actions and runs away from the man she destroyed. The hollowness of a religion that gathers followers based on a liquid infused with parlour tricks is exposed openly.

Of course, Lady Mellisandre is here to stay, fan forums already predicting an important role for her in their resurrection fantasies. But for now, in a season dominated by religious discourse, where characters like the High Sparrow convey the overwhelming power of religion, Lady Mellisandre's blind faith falters and sticks out like a sore thumb, numb from frostbite.