The Unsullied: Impressive On The Battlefield, Less So In The Bedroom

[LeGrandElephant]

I looked through all the pages on this board and there doesn’t seem to be a thread on the Unsullied or Grey Worm. Sorry if I missed discussion on this that has already happened. 

 

Heres my question: doesn’t castrating a boy remove the part of him that makes testosterone, and thus make it harder for him to build muscle? Doesn’t seem like a great way to build an army. Have they ever discussed this?

[Happy Harpy]

The Unsullied aren't a creation of the show, they're purely GRRM's. So it's probably the kind of discussion you might find on the book threads here, or on boards fully devoted to the book series  and the ASOIAF universe discussions.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Happy Harpy

[AuntieMame]

@LeGrandElephant

I always wondered about this too, especially as Varys is portrayed as castrati actually are physically. Of course Martin couldn’t see beyond his love of sadism (hey, I know, I’ll create an army of heartless, unbeatable warriors via torture and and and castration) to consider that castration does, at the very least, lower the muscle to fat ratio that gives men upper body strength. The timing of the castration matters too: before puberty versus after puberty. It’s also hinted that many of the castrati in the books and the show also lost their penis. How did they heal given the low level of surgery in the world? Removing the testicles is medically pretty easy; removing the penis is not. 

The Unsullied training as described might net you a couple of warrior psychopaths but they wouldn’t be ripped mavens of manhood. More likely you’d get a lot of people with PTSD and not a lot oof muscle mass. The Unsullied were at least partially created as a means of shocking the viewer because if you think about it for more than thirty seconds it is clear that they make no sense whatsoever. 

[John Potts]

It's not impossible to produce testosterone without testes: women have testosterone, too (in fact, old women have, on average, higher testosterone levels than old men) and it can be produced in the adrenal glands as well. The Unsullied's testosterone levels would tend to be lower than other men, but they would have some (more info here).

However, aside from the somewhat unsatisfactory "It works however GRRM writes it as working in Westeros", the Unsullied (on the show, at least) aren't portrayed as being especially ripped so much as able to endure more than other soldiers (both mentally and physically) which wouldn't be affected by their testosterone levels. In fact, endurance training (where the Unsullied excel) may in fact lower testosterone in men (presumably studies wouldn't include any men who'd been castrated, however).

I have to admit the 14 year old inside me I remember being can't help but wonder how they pee, however! Do the Wise Masters (or whichever Masters they were) reconnect their urethra to,,, something? Do they uncontrollably wet themselves in battle? It would seem much easier to just castrate them than perform an extremely elaborate and unnecessary operation on them so they can remove "the pillar and the stones" yet still allow them to function. Pretty sure they don't have a catheter fitted.

….I have definitely thought WAY too much about this!