You Know It's Not GRRM When...

You know you're reading a Medieval Romance and not Game of Thrones when...

1). The hero rides out unarmed with both his first and second of command at his side (and they are his brothers) in a show of bad tactics family unity and not only does it not turn into a slaughter but turns out well.

2)When soldiers are revealed as traitors, they are quietly executed somewhere off screen by someone other than the hero himself (Ned Stark would not approve).

2a) When the hero does finally kill someone, it's a sadistic villain and the hero executes him by quickly skewering the bad guy rather than chopping off his head (because that would be ookie and thus unhero-like.)

3) When one of the protagonists is thrown into a dungeon by the sadistic villain, she suffers no more than a punch in the face and some bruising (the woman who ate her own fingers before starving to death when in the clutches of Martin's Boltons is no doubt envious.)

4) When someone goes crazy due to injury they're mostly faking the crazy (and take regular baths, and don't go by the name Reek)

5)With regard to a forced political alliance marriage between warring factions, rather than someone being arrested for murder, someone fleeing into the arms of a pervert who lusts after her mother or someone forced to suffer I don't even know what unspeakable things (ugh, Boltons) the forced marriage (where not one single person dies at either the wedding or the reception) turns into a blissful love match between incredibly noble, compassionate, emotionally available good people such that...

7)When the bad guys try to thwart the peace by sabotaging the peace accord, the good guys figure it out and rather than go to war with one another they team up to beat the villain.

8) And the previously fragile peace accord goes so spectacularly well that by the end of the novel they're one big cross-married family.