A Caution for Young Girls is an erotic book, allegedly the autobiography of Lady Coryanne Wylde, one of Queen Alysanne Targaryen's handmaidens. It is known as one of the most debased works of carnal debauchery circulating through the Seven Kingdoms. Despite its depravity and infamy, however, the book has proved very popular.[1]
History
[edit]A Caution for Young Girls first appeared in Westeros around 90 AC, forty years after Coryanne Wylde was Queen Alysanne Targaryen's handmaid.[1] Several hundred copies were ordered burned by King Baelor the Blessed during his reign, but this failed to destroy all of them. Hundreds more have since been recopied, circulating around the brothels and other low places of Westeros.[1]
There are several variants of the book in circulation, due to its nature as a book of erotica: most of the population in Westeros is illiterate, and professional book-copiers only serve the elite. Maesters are strictly trained to reproduce books exactly, while septons are encouraged to strike out passages considered obscene or offensive. Such professionals would not transcribe erotica, so A Caution for Young Girls was probably copied by various less reliable sources such as expelled drunken septons, failed students from the Citadel, and mummers. In particular, mummers are deemed the most unreliable, since they add increasingly more lascivious incidents to works they are reproducing.[1]
These inaccurate transmissions and intentional additions had the combined effect of producing different versions which are truly different books, and indeed, do not even share the same title - through all do share the subtitle "A Caution for Young Girls", by which maesters refer to them collectively. The four primary variants are Sins of the Flesh, The High and Low, A Wanton's Tale, and The Wickedness of Men. Sins of the Flesh and The High and Low are apparently the earlier versions, and they are shorter, while A Wanton's Tale and The Wickedness of Men appear to be later versions, especially because they are longer with additions not present in the others.[1]
Archmaester Gyldayn used A Caution for Young Girls as a source for his book Fire & Blood, for details regarding an incident during the reign of Jaehaerys the Conciliator, as all official sources of the time considered the event too scandalous to remark upon at all.[1]
Contents
[edit]The book is supposedly the memoir of Lady Coryanne Wylde, recounting a life of "sin, suffering, and slavery"—in the words of Archmaester Gyldayn—in which she finds herself as handmaid to a queen, the paramour of a young knight, a camp follower in the Disputed Lands, a serving wench in Myr, a mummer in Tyrosh, the "plaything" of a corsair queen in the Basilisk Isles, a slave in Volantis, the handmaid of a Qartheen warlock, the mistress of a pleasure house in Lys, and ultimately a septa in the Starry Sept of Oldtown, where she sets down the story of her life as a warning to young maids.[1]
Lady Coryanne was the daughter of Lord Morgan Wylde of the Rain House. At the age of thirteen, she was deflowered by a "surly lad" from the stables. According to A Caution for Young Girls, her lover was a handsome boy her own age, but according to the maester at Rain House, he was thirty years old and pox-scarred. Per both accounts, he was gelded and sent to the Wall shortly afterwards. Coryanne was confined to her chambers, where in 48 AC, she gave birth to a bastard son, who was soon sent away to Storm's End to be fostered by a castle steward and his wife.[1]
Allegedly because of her scandalous history, in 50 AC Coryanne was hired as Queen Alysanne's handmaid in order to seduce her brother-husband King Jaehaerys I Targaryen. This was an attempt to break up the incestuous marriage, which at the time was unconsummated, so that it would not incite another Faith Militant uprising. The variants of the book disagree on who is supposed to have hired Coryanne: Sins of the Flesh and The High and Low say it was Lord Rogar Baratheon's younger brother, Ser Borys, whereas A Wanton's Tale and The Wickedness of Men that it was Rogar himself; A Wanton's Tale also adds that Rogar had sex with Coryanne first.[1]
The versions of the book differ again on what happened between Jaehaerys and Coryanne. A Wanton’s Tale insists that Coryanne not only bedded the king, but also all seven members of the Kingsguard, while The High and the Low tells Coryanne had sex with both Jaehaerys and Alysanne at the same time. Sins of the Flesh narrates that Coryanne had grown to respect the queen and the king, and instead of attempting to undo their marriage, she took it upon herself to educate Jaehaerys in the art of giving and receiving carnal pleasure, so that he might not prove incapable when the time would have come to bed Alysanne.[1]
The tale of Sins of the Flesh is deemed somewhat more plausible by some scholars, although the veracity of all these lewd stories is questionable according to Gyldayn. In any case, it is certain that in the same year Coryanne eloped with the married Ser Howard Bullock, the younger son of the commander of Dragonstone's garrison, and Lord Rogar’s plan to drive Jaehaerys and Alysanne apart did not succeed.[1]
Recent Events
[edit]A Dance with Dragons
[edit]Tyrion Lannister has the choice of three books aboard ship, including "a well-thumbed tome about the erotic adventures of a young slave girl in a Lysene pillow house", which he considers "the worst written but the most engrossing".[2] It is possible that the book is a variant of A Caution for Young Girls.
Quotes
[edit]It purports to be the testimony of a young maid of noble birth who surrendered her virtue to a groom in her lord father's castle, gave birth to a child out of wedlock, and thereafter found herself partaking of every sort of wickedness imaginable during a long life of sin, suffering, and slavery.[1]
—writings of Gyldayn