Courtesan

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Courtesan is a profession which uses charm, refinement and sexuality to attract high status suitors, patrons and lovers. Though the term courtesan usually refer to women, male courtesans exist also.[1] They are found in the Free Cities of Essos, most notably Braavos, which is renowned throughout the world for its famous courtesans.[2]

Braavos

Braavos is also renowned worldwide for its courtesans, they enjoy high status and are famous worldwide.

Every courtesan has her own barge and servants to work them. The beauty of famed courtesans has inspired many a song. They are showered with gifts from goldsmiths and craftsmen beg for their custom. Nobility and rich merchants pay the courtesans large amounts of money to appear alongside them at events, and bravos are known to kill each other in their names.[3]

Some Braavosi courtesans are famous, respected and wealthy and enjoy a kind of celebrity status as well as a certain kind of mystique. They are cultured and beautiful.

Some families have produced many generations of courtesans, such as Bellegere Otherys's.

The Kindly Man offers Arya Stark the chance to become a courtesan, giving a glimpse into the lifestyle of a Braavosi courtesan:

Would you sooner be a courtesan, and have songs sung of your beauty? Speak the word, and we will send you to the Black Pearl or the Daughter of the Dusk. You will sleep on rose petals and wear silken skirts that rustle when you walk, and great lords will beggar themselves for your maiden’s blood.[4]

Lys

Lyseni breed their slaves in hopes of producing ever more refined and lovely courtesans and bedslaves.[5]

Famous courtesans

Historical:
During A Song of Ice and Fire:

Recent Events

A Feast for Crows

Brusco makes it plain to Cat of the Canals that while selling her oysters, clams and cockles she is never to speak to a courtesan unless spoken to first.[3]

When Cat is talking to some Westerosi sailors from the Brazen Monkey the youngest monkey, a red-haired boy with freckles no older than sixteen, asks her “What about them fancy whores the singers sing about?" His shipmates look at him and laugh. One of them says,

Seven hells, boy. Might be the captain could get hisself a courty-san, but only if he sold the bloody ship. That sort o’ cunt’s for lords and such, not for the likes o’ us.[3]

Cat tells them that she sold three cockles to the Black Pearl, she called to Cat as she was stepping off her barge.

As she pushes her barrow along the canals Cat sometimes glimpses one of them floating by, on her way to an evening with some lover.[3]

The Winds of Winter

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Warning
This information has thus far been released in a sample chapter for The Winds of Winter, and might therefore not be in finalized form. Keep in mind that the content as described below is still subject to change.

Ser Harys Swyft is accompanied by the Black Pearl to watch a play while in Braavos.[6]

Quotes

The courtesans of Braavos were famed across the world. Singers sang of them, goldsmiths and jewelers showered them with gifts, craftsmen begged for the honour of their custom, merchant princes paid royal ransoms to have them on their arms at balls and feasts and mummers shows, and bravos slew each other in their names.[3]

References

  1. Fire & Blood, Under the Regents - The Voyage of Alyn Oakenfist.
  2. The World of Ice & Fire, The Free Cities: Braavos.
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 A Feast for Crows, Chapter 34, Cat Of The Canals.
  4. A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 45, The Blind Girl.
  5. The World of Ice & Fire, The Free Cities: The Quarrelsome Daughters - Myr, Lys, and Tyrosh.
  6. The Winds of Winter, Mercy