He may be younger, but thanks to gods old and new, Game of Thrones ' Margaery Tyrell didn't have to sleep with Tommen Baratheon's brother Joffrey while he was alive. In a wonderfully long exit, Joffrey is poisoned and dies at the wedding party, leaving King's Landing's new queen, Margaery, without a king. Enter Tommen, the long-toed little brother who takes over Joffrey's place and helps conceive Margaery. But the age gap between Margaery Tyrell and young Tommen is considerable. Is there no similar rape law in King's Landing? Obviously not. Because like most marriages in the Seven Kingdoms, this one is entirely political.
Interestingly, the ages of these two characters actually affected the screen adaptation of Fire and Ice in ways you might not expect. The show is filmed in exotic locations around the world, but in Ireland, where much of the HBO series is filmed, broadcast etiquette laws set the age of consent at 16, not for the actor playing the character, but for the character himself. Therefore, given Margaery's age and Tommen's youth, the entire plot thread would be meaningless.
Luckily, the main Game of Thrones kids have been growing up on the show for at least a few years. It worked out well for Tommen, who made the biggest age leap of any kid. When the book begins, he is only 6 years old. But in the show, his starting age is 10 years old. Now, he's about 13 or 14 years old. The actor who plays him, Dean-Charles Chapman, is 17 years old.
In the books, Margaery's starting age is 16. Currently, she's probably around 21 or 22 years old on the show - though that's unclear. Apparently, the creators of Game of Thrones were so impressed with Natalie Dormer's performance that they decided to raise her age when casting her, even though she's only supposed to be 18 in the show. This makes their characters about eight years apart in age - a year or two apart.
Natalie Dormer is 32 years old in real life, which makes her kiss scene with 17-year-old Chapman even more unpleasant. This really scared Chapman. He told MTV News he could barely watch the scenes.
"It's very disturbing," he said. He added that he only learned about the scene by reading the script, meaning no producers or anyone on set sat him down and prepared him for it. Even though there were only a limited number of people on site that day, they did a lot of drills to make sure everyone was comfortable.
Luckily, Dormer made filming this scene much easier despite Margaery's advanced age. Chapman told MTV in the same interview, "Natalie is a lovely person and she makes everything go so smoothly. As a viewer, it's really weird - even when I watch it, it's chaotic, Because Tommen is so young. "Margaery is like a mature woman and she's really just using Tommen to gain power from him. "
Of course, Game of Thrones is no stranger to controversy, and for a show that deals with themes of incest and rape, the age difference between Margaery and Tommen may seem a little odd to some viewers. It's definitely eye-catching, to say the least.
