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Cersei's less-than-reliable accusation


TimJames

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I intend for this to be a reasonable discussion, not an argument. Be polite and respectful. I know sexual abuse and crimes related to it are a sensitive topic, but if everyone can keep a level head this can go smoothly.

Ok, now that the disclaimer is out of the way, I will get to the actual point of it: Cersei was not raped.

I have good reasons for coming to this conclusion. But before I will get into that, I need to bring up the important fact that the burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused.

http://criminal.lawyers.com/criminal-law-basics/criminal-trials-who-has-the-burden-of-proof.html

I should also bring up that that until someone has been proven guilty, he or she should be presumed innocent.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence

Having said that, Cersei's narration is the only place where Robert is accused of raping her. Her narration is not enough for me because Cersei is an unreliable narrator. She constantly views the situation around her in such a way that makes her look like the hero and everyone she doesn't like look like a**holes. For me, Cersei's word lost validity when she accused Eddard of raping a peasant during the war.

We don't have any real witnesses to back up Cersei's claim.

What we do have, however, is both Robert and Cersei admitting to Eddard that they haven't had sex in years. This means that Cersei is refusing to sleep with Robert, and he's not pressing the point. If Robert was a rapist than he would not be taking no for an answer.

Speaking of 'no', Cersei never told Robert that the few times they actually did have sex. This leads me to believe she consented (even if begrudgingly).

Ok, this is my stance. Feel free to agree or disagree, just be respectful and level-headed.

Edit: I should mention, that there are multiple types of unreliable narrators.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator#Classification

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Ugh. The burden of proof to subject someone to criminal penalties for rape is on the state to prove that they did it beyond a reasonable doubt. The burden of proof to subject someone to civil penalties for rape is on the accuser to prove that they did it to a preponderance of the evidence. There is no burden of proof for readers to declare that a fictional character is a rapist.



Also - just because Robert doesn't constantly rape her, doesn't mean he didn't rape her on several occasions.



And, just generally, yuck. Why is this something you want to argue about?


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Does Cersei actually accuse Robert of raping her? I think we, speaking in a different time, can read what happened and realize it was rape but, iirc, Cersei does not call it rape.



I dont think there is any real reason to think that she is lying to herself. It serves no reason, she doesn't share this story to illicit sympathy nor does she use this as some kind of justification for cuckolding him. She uses Lyanna and his own infidelities for that.



Robert was drunk and slept with his wife who didn't want to. I doubt many in Westeros would have considered that rape. We see it differently though.


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Whether it objectively was rape or not depends on your definition, your personal beliefs, and the jurisdiction you're using to evaluate it - it certainly wasn't under the laws of Westeros. I'm not going to pass judgement, because there's no one true answer to that, in any case.



What I think is that no matter the objective truth of it, Cersei never bothered to make her feelings on the matter very clear to Robert - and he certainly didn't go to any great lengths to learn of them, either. It's perfectly possible that Cersei feels raped and violated, while Robert sees nothing wrong in that part of it (he does vaguely remember being violent, but that's not necessarily related to the topic of rape).



Note that these are fictional people, so while the subject itself is understandably a sensitive one, it shouldn't be outside the boundaries of a civilized discussion. Cersei's reliability is certainly fair game for examination, and this is a part of that.


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And, just generally, yuck. Why is this something you want to argue about?

Because whenever there is a discussion about Robert Baratheon there is always someone who says "Robert is a dirty rapist!!!" and I simply do not think that is true.

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Whether it objectively was rape or not depends on your definition, your personal beliefs, and the jurisdiction you're using to evaluate it - it certainly wasn't under the laws of Westeros. I'm not going to pass judgement, because there's no one true answer to that, in any case.

Except insofar as they influence the story, which they don't in this case, why on earth should we care about the laws of Westeros?

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I don't believe that Robert raped her. She had already said that she finished him off otherways. I believe that Cersei simply lying to herself, like she always does, in order to ease her *mind* that she was right to do what she did.

Exactly! That's the conclusion I came to as.

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Agree (partly).

Her chapters do seem unreliable. Every good looking guy she meets she'll think "he wants me" even lancel when he became pious, although not good looking she still thinks "he still wants me". Which probably wasn't true. Plus I don't see why they would want her, alcohol abuse doesn't have a nice effect on you. It becomes visibly noticable as Jaime pointed out.

And I remember a bit where she met up with Tommen practicing swords with loras and she then thinks "the atmosphere went more sinister". Which isn't true, she wants to believe that when she walks into a room people become frightened but in reality that's not true.

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Because whenever there is a discussion about Robert Baratheon there is always someone who says "Robert is a dirty rapist!!!" and I simply do not think that is true.

I mean, on several occasions he (allegedly) forced himself on his wife when she wasn't interested. That's rape. I don't see any reason to think this isn't true, and nothing Robert says about Cersei not wanting to have sex contradicts that - it just means Robert only raped her occasionally.

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It was only the 20th Century that the law in the UK was changed such that a husband could be considered, at law, to have raped his wife.



We do love to impose our 21st Century morality into a medieval setting. The fact is that Robert wasn't a good husband but, when considered against the context, he wasn't a terrible one and could have been much worse. Whereas Cersei was a pretty terrible wife. If anyone had the comparative moral high ground, it was Robert.


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Except insofar as they influence the story, which they don't in this case, why on earth should we care about the laws of Westeros?

What the characters believe is certainly relevant to this discussion, no? And the laws of the land, whether we agree with them or not, reflects and influences the people that live in it.

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It was only the 20th Century that the law in the UK was changed such that a husband could be considered, at law, to have raped his wife.

We do love to impose our 21st Century morality into a medieval setting. The fact is that Robert wasn't a good husband but, when considered against the context, he wasn't a terrible one and could have been much worse. Whereas Cersei was a pretty terrible wife. If anyone had the comparative moral high ground, it was Robert.

How was Cersei worse?

They both fucked around, there was domestic violence on both sides and they both hates each other.

Why did Robert have the moral high ground?

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I mean, on several occasions he (allegedly) forced himself on his wife when she wasn't interested. That's rape. I don't see any reason to think this isn't true, and nothing Robert says about Cersei not wanting to have sex contradicts that - it just means Robert only raped her occasionally.

That's kind of his point is that he believes the evidence for this basically Cersei's word, which he feels doesn't amount to much. So what's wrong with this topic being brought up?

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That's kind of his point is that he believes the evidence for this basically Cersei's word, which he feels doesn't amount to much. So what's wrong with this topic being brought up?

Well, that's not his whole point, since a lot of it is trying to parse definitions so that what Cersei describes doesn't count as rape. Beyond that, we have very little evidence, so there's not really much to discuss. Cersei says it happened, we have nothing to directly contradict that, and Cersei's not terribly reliable. What's there to discuss, except arguments about how this particular form of sexual violence doesn't qualify as rape, which is distinctly distasteful.

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What the characters believe is certainly relevant to this discussion, no? And the laws of the land, whether we agree with them or not, reflects and influences the people that live in it.

So your argument is that because the characters don't understand the concept of marital rape, that means that Martin intends that we should think it's fine?

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