According to GRRM

[james_davis_nicoll]

To leave out the gratuitous rapes in Game of Thrones would be to undermine the essential realism of that zombie and dragon-filled world.

Comments

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I'm avoiding spoilers as I haven't had the chance to see the series yet, and there's a big spoiler warning at the top of that article, but it occurs to me that there's a difference between setting realism and character realism. Pile all sorts of absurdities in the setting and the creator can be praised to the greenish-hued skies, as long as the characters act realistically (or at least within genre conventions).

This is to say nothing of whether Martin or the producers of GoT needed to depict quite so much rape in the manner they have; as I say, I haven't seen it, but one hears things.