Now, before I begin, I should acknowledge two things:
(1) I am a Game of Thrones newbie. I’ve only seen the show through S2 episode 8.
(2) It’s possible things change later, or the books reflect a different light.
However, given that: Cersei is a brilliantly drawn picture of what immaturity looks like in someone given far too much power and influence. It’s both perfect and incredibly hilarious, or at least it would be if the consequences weren’t so serious. I have to keep reminding myself that the actress is actually acting the part because it’s such a well-done portrayal. I literally went over to my favorite search engine yesterday, typed in “Cersei is an idiot,” and found an entire forum thread dedicated to just that proposition.
I’ve seen some of those high school dramas, which annoyed the hell out of me even when I was a teenager. Somehow, seeing a preppie cheerleader put into a world where her petty antics get thousands upon thousands killed is remarkably amusing. Seeing her slowly (well, not at all slowly) destroy her own position by constantly attacking her best allies, ignore all reality so long as she can keep living in her little picturebook world another day, and usually get herself completely outplayed all the while never ceases to entertain me.
At some point, I realized I was watching a well-dressed version of Neelix from Star Trek: Voyager. Neeliz, for those blessedly not in the know, was an obnoxious little pest the writers could never quite figure out. They believed he would be a funny breakout character, but the writing was so poor that he become this ugly millstone around the series. (Much later they sort of got this sorted out. Sort of.) Neelix tended to believe he was being remarkably clever when he was generally causing more hardship for everyone else, and never entirely understood why most of the things he did fell apart into shit. And that’s basically Cersei. She’s just more narcissistic.
Damn it. Now I want to see Neelix beam down to King’s Landing and end up causing another bloody palace massacre when he serves the wrong cheese to Joffrey.
I think you must be watching a different show. Of all the characters in the show she’s probably the most villainous. That is you never see any real rationale for any of her actions. Still with a father like Tiwin you can’t help feeling sorry for her.
I don’t know if this was directed at me, but I assume so. Allow me to clarify if there is any doubt:
Cersei is a complete monster with essentially no redeeming qualities whatsoever, perhaps the only such character in the series so far. She has managed to destroy more lives for lower motives that I could have imagined possible. I would hold her responsible more than any other living man, woman or child for the utter chaos Westeros fell into, and she did it out of willful ignorance, narcissism and petty desire for revenge against the world. She’s so filled with bile and venom that she misses the basic realities of life, politics, and war. When she tries to be dramatic, she usually ends up being moronic.
In short, what amuses me is how thoroughly she’s screwed herself over, and how she is constantly undercutting anyone and everyone who tries to fix her boneheaded mistakes. She’s not actually stupid per se, but her constant rage against the world pushes her into terrible, terrible decisions.
I don’t think Cersei is that villainous, I mean she is no Ramsay torturing and raping for the LULZ.
If I could pinpoint the absolute stupidest thing she did it would be having sex with her brother while on official vacation in another castle, which set the whole plot in motion. That was stupid beyond sloppy stupid.
Second stupid thing is not parenting Joffrey and allowing him to become a prostitute murdering psycho, unless by parenting you mean do what you want. If you watch the episode again she seems shocked Joffrey orders Ned killed.
Honestly the show kind of gets laughable when you realize the whole cast is such a clusterfuck of mental illness and stupidity it could very well be a sitcom if it wasn’t a drama. It is just too concentrated in too few characters.
Robert: Drunken aged frat boy whose chief interest is brothels, has to be in denial to miss that wife is duplicitous and hateful towards him and son who will be the future king is a psycho.
Cersei: Stupid narcissist that can’t resist having sex with her brother, doesn’t reign in psycho son. These two factors make her do a lot of horrible shit, when she could have just been more discrete if she must boff her brother.
Joffrey: Not too bright psycho.
Twin: Absolute idiot who hates his children, turns out having your son and his wife raped can have consequences.
Tyrion: Knows exactly how much his family hates him, still sticks around.
The Starks are models of sanity compared to the first family.
I think *you *must be watching a different show. The one I’ve been watching has almost been tripping over itself to show why Cersei’s gonna Cersei. She’s a bitter shrew, yes (and then again, compared to many of the characters in the series, the evil that she does is pretty limited in scope), but her rationales are quite transparent. She’s not an insane Bond villain by any stretch.
@**grude **: Robert always knew his wife hated his guts. Remember the bittersweet scene just before he left for his last hunt, when they trekked down memory lane asking if things coulda been different ? Or how he deliberately rubbed it in Cersei and Jaime’s faces, too ?
He just didn’t think she had it in her to *do *something about it.
Now, now - she does love her children ( blindly, obsessively ) and Jaimie ( blindly, obsessively, not exactly faithfully ) and…uhhh…she…ummm…she can be decent at coming up the occasional snarky one liner ;). Granted that’s about it. But at least she’ll have something to list when she reaches the pearly gates.
I’ll just add for the seventh time that Lena Headey’s TV Cersei is miles better than book Cersei. Much as I prefer the books in some contexts, Headey makes the character come alive and you can actually feel some pathos for what would otherwise come off as much a cardboard villain as psychopathic Joffrey.
Speaking of which I’m going to throw Cersei the character as well as Robert a bone. Their parenting didn’t help matters any, but they still somehow managed to raise two pretty normal, sweet kids in Tommen and Myrcella. Joffrey is obviously organically mentally ill wayyyy beyond what you’d expect from mere overindulgence. At worst they exacerbated what was always going to be a bad seed.
What redeeming qualities can you find in Joffrey?
Cersei is hugely entertaining to watch. At one point she has a line “An unhappy wife makes for a happy wine merchant” or something along those lines. It explains why she’s drunk all the time.
