Warning! Mentions of rape and abuse
In honor of the new (and last!) season of
Game of Thrones, I’ll talk about something that bothers me a lot about the show and the books as well. Almost everyone in the
A Song of Ice and Fire novels exists in a sometimes lighter sometimes darker shade of grey morality. The show cleaned that up a bit and made certain characters more likable and heroic. Usually, however, characters are given a justification or at the very least an explanation for how they act. They are given redeemable traits and made more or less sympathetic, or at the very least partially relatable, especially if they happen to get a viewpoint. Cersei is not awarded that luxury.
Don’t get me wrong, her chapters are fun to read since she sees everything in the most negative light possible, but what started to bother me the more I read her chapters, is that GRR Martin grants her zero redeemable traits. Not even the fact that she loves her children is presented as a positive quality. To me that is absolutely maddening since even the violent rapists and killers from the iron islands are granted positive qualities.
(source: https://www.n-tv.de/leute/Nackte-Cersei-geht-ins-Geld-article13727041.html)
Most obvious is the difference in how the characters are treated in the comparison between Cersei and Jaimie. When we first read chapters from Jaimie’s viewpoint, he is still 100% obsessed with Cersei. Almost everything he has done in his life up until that point, has been out of a fixation on her. A fixation, that is btw, not healthy for either of them. Cersei is less fixated on him, or shows it differently. In these first few chapters, it becomes clear, that if he could, Jaimie would kill each and every person standing in the way of his ‘happy end’ with Cersei. In the novels Jaimie doesn’t really care about his children, only insofar as they make Cersei happy. The show toned his obsession way down (and also had him be caring at least towards Myrcella), possibly to make his development more believable since they didn’t have this much time (on the other hand, they had Jaimie practically rape Cersei next to their dead son and threaten Edmund with killing his newborn baby to get back to Cersei much later in his story, so maybe the showrunners just didn’t give much thought to that). Nevertheless, Jaimie commits atrocities in the name of love, like he says, or in the name of his fixation, which is more accurate.
Despite all of this, Jaimie is a popular character in fandom and allowed a redemption arc that turns him into a hero in the source material. Have we collectively forgotten that he threw a young child out of a window with a smile on his face????
This is not to disparage Jaimie’s character or everyone who likes him. I like his character development and am looking forward to see where it will still lead. This is to make a point about the disparity about how he and his twin sister are treated by the author/showrunners and the fandom (hah, just like how they are treated differently in-universe).
And it’s not like Cersei’s backstory and the things that happen to her don’t provide ample material for justification. From the day she is born, Cersei is told she was lesser and less important than her twin brother who she regards as being otherwise utterly similar to her. She grows up with her father’s ambitions with the ingrained knowledge that this ambition can’t go anywhere due to the accident of her gender. When she is still young, she is sold to a stranger to be his wife. This stranger hates her from day one, because she isn’t who he wants. Over time he only resents her more and more and rapes and abuses her (why don’t we ever acknowledge that this abhorrent behavior is part of Robert? why do we see him as a silly drunkard but largely good?). Additionally, he openly disgraces her by sleeping with a plethora of other women. Her only solace is her brother and later the children she has with him. No matter how much solace they bring, a sword of Damocles hangs over her. She lives in fear of being discovered, a discovery which would entail imprisonment and death not only for her but also for her brother and children. If that isn’t a backstory that lends itself to justification then I don’t know what is.
Over the course of the show she loses that bit of solace, her children die, Jaimie is absent for longer parts and then leaves her. The Walk of Shame is such a traumatic experience that it would’ve been a perfect springboard to give her some character development and maybe give her some redeemable - or, you know, relatable - qualities. I’m not saying that Cersei should have a redemption arc, having a complex female villain is good and interesting, nor am I saying that her actions are excusable. She does some atrocious things fully aware of how atrocious they are. Again, my intention is to make a point about how her suffering is dismissed and her actions are portrayed and interpreted as inexcusably terrible, even though men’s horrific actions are ignored (Jaimie attempting to murder a child, Robert repeatedly raping Cersei, Stannis killing his little brother and having people - including his daughter in the show - burned alive, basically anything Khal Drogo does, and don’t get me started on how - at least in the novels - Tyrion murdering Shae is terrible*).
So what is it that makes her less deserving of sympathy in the eyes of the author/showrunners and fandom? First of all, we need to detangle the different perspectives that I have thrown together until now. On the one hand we have the creators, GRR Martin and the showrunners, who have influence over how to construct and portray a certain character. On the other hand we have the fandom who interprets a character and shares this interpretation until a somewhat collective opinion is formed. Fandom often isn’t kind to women. Women are sexualized or seen as disposable; their actions are scrutinized and the worst thing they can be is annoying. Compare the hate Lori and Andrea from
The Walking Dead accumulate to the favorable view of objectively terrible people like Merle and Negan. Or, to use another example from GoT: the way the fandom hates Sansa for … being naive in the beginning?????
But it’s not like the fandom is fully to blame for their harsh treatment and unforgiveness of women. A lot of times a distaste with female characters stems from the simple fact that they’re just not written well. They’re too often flat characters that only exist to facilitate a man’s storyline as mother, daughter, sister or lover. It’s no wonder that the audience does not respond favorably to characters like this.
The case with GoT is a bit different, because I don’t accuse GRR Martin of being unable to write three dimensional women. The show’s somewhat worse in that regard but still nowhere near as bad as TWD for example. Nevertheless, GRR Martin had been fully capable of granting Cersei some positive - or relatable - qualities or moments even and decided not to. He decided to write her the way he did, and therefore influenced the fandom’s perception of her.
(source: https://www.concierto.cl/2019/02/actriz-game-of-thrones-troll/)
But we still haven’t answered why her crimes are seen as so much worse? It’s not the murder, because that doesn’t distinguish her from her male villainous or even heroic counterparts. Is it the way she kills? Through scheming and intrigue? What I gathered is that some people blame her for not controlling Joffrey and excusing his actions and for not loving Jaimie as much as he loves her and for “cheating” on him (which are both ridiculous - and ridiculously gendered - explanations). But mostly, I think, it’s because she’s a bad woman. And by that I don’t mean that she’s villainous. Bond’s lady villains for example are largely accepted. It’s more to do with “unlikability”. Not being perceived as likeable is such a grievous crime for fictional women (and to a degree for real life women, too) that everything they do is interpreted much worse.
Before anyone misinterprets what I’m saying: I don’t want there to be no "unlikable" women in media. Women are people and are therefore able to be unlikable and audiences need to get used to seeing women they deem unlikable (that are often simply women with attributes they don’t like). There is, however, a difference between writing an authentic woman that is deemed unlikable by fans for whatever reason, and writing a woman that has zero relatable character traits whatsoever especially when you grant a comparable male character a redemption arc.
In conclusion, while I think Cersei’s actions are largely abhorrent, I always feel kind of protective about her as a character because of my frustration with how she is presented in canon and fandom. I honestly believe there is such a promising basis for her and am so disappointed that no one decided to do anything with it,
Satori over and out
*You know what, I’m gonna say it anyway. It makes me so mad that Shae’s “betrayal” of Tyrion is portrayed and interpreted as much more horrible than Tyrion murdering her. In the novel, Shae is a teenager and it’s clear that while she does like Tyrion, she is mainly here because she’s a prostitute. It's heavily implied that her testimony at Tyrion’s trial was coerced out of her with threats and violence. Like. I know the show made her older and somewhat changed their relationship, but still.
