Having an R-rating didn't mean a lack of toys. "Alien" came out in 1979 to an R-rating. Yet a friend at the time (we were both 10) received a 12" (30cm) xenomorph action figure for Christmas.
A more general rating can also cause people to lose interest. The original Star Wars would have had a G rating, Lucas added a severed hand scene to move it to PG rating making it seem more acceptable to adult audiences.
Because it featured all of those. People would justify it as "a gritty and realistic portrayal of historical attitudes", but any historian will tell you that's a load of bull; it was basically just porn. A good partial deconstruction of GoT's shallow relationship with reality can be found here:
You're probably not totally off. GoT was special in quite a few aspects, but I would not be surprised if it was true in the general case - in fact, I think GoT was popular exactly for breaking that mold, but this gives diminishing returns.
Hell yes they did, the Drogo sex scene would be hilariously uncomfortably outrageous if they even hinted at her being underage.
Game of Thrones was lauded for it's gritty shocking approach to sex and death, at least in the first couple seasons, but I don't think a TV show could ever touch the harshness of the world as described in books.
> Hell yes they did, the Drogo sex scene would be hilariously uncomfortably outrageous if they even hinted at her being underage.
I think it would have been outrageous for a different reason, but the show's scene was still uncomfortable for its lack of consent. One of the key points of that scene in the book was how cautious Drogo was to respect boundaries. In the show, the repetition of "no" was used as a command, as a denial of Daenerys' choices, and to state that her choices do not matter. In the book, the repetition of "no" was used as a question, not a command, in order to ask for consent despite a language barrier. This was used to draw a contrast between Daenerys in Westerosi society, where she had no choices of her own, and Daenerys in Dothraki society, where her choices were respected.
There are a lot of other children in that television show. They did not seem to shy away from implying they had sex with people for all kinds of horrific reasons.
