155 replies to this topic

[A Shadow]

Women are not dresses they wear and they have minds and wits to influence and change things around them.

Marriage is a two sided deal where one supports the other, when that other is at his weak point.

Cersei likes to think about herself as a strong one (and somehow at the same time a helpless victim), but she has never really tried to rein Robert in and make him love her or respect her or be a better man in any way. She actually enjoyed ruining him. Happy to have a cause to complain and cling to her illusions of being someone who "never had a chance".

A man is responsible for himself, however Robert was easy to indulge and could have been steered by some strong presence. Khal Drogo was changed by Dany and he was a lot less likely to bend.

Cersei banked on Robert and then abandoned him. She made her own bed, but did not want to sleep in it. With Robert. So she broke all the rules there was. And made a bad husband into a crappy one and a bored king into an angry one.

Bad wife and a bad queen. And yet Robert is blamed

[Jem]

Yes Robert is blamed. Because he is a bad husband and a bad king.

[Dracarya]

Some good points. Okay. Here we go:

My stance on this is that Cersei immediately decided that she would not try with Robert when she first saw him going off with another woman. Jaime says to her "do you want him dead?" and she says "no, I want him horned" (paraphrasing, don't have my books on me, feel free to correct me). This was the beginning of a gods-awful marriage.

While I don't agree with cheating on either side, deciding to have another mans' children instead of your husbands' is not the normal course of action for most women, I should think. I think that Cersei never wanted Robert as he was second-best to Rhaegar, but I also believe that she only really wanted what these two men could give her - power. I don't think she understands the concept of love, which is unsurprising considering she had Tywin as a father, and her marriage to Robert was doomed from the beginning because of this, along with many other reasons.

Jem, on 11 May 2012 - 05:14 PM, said:

Yes Robert is blamed. Because he is a bad husband and a bad king.

The realm had peace under him for like what, 15 years? He can't have been that bad a king. Bad husband? Debatable. But Cersei is not blameless, and I think that's the point that the OP is trying to get across.

Edited by Dracarya, 11 May 2012 - 05:16 PM.

[Catastrophe]

I think Cersei certainly made the worst of a bad situation, but I'm certain Robert would've still cheated on her all the time, even if she'd been a perfect wife. It's just who he is. (Not that it justifies Cersei raising her bastard children as his heirs... What she did was far worse than mere adultery, especially in a place like Westeros where lineage is a fundamental aspect of society and politics.)

Also, you can't blame Cersei for making Robert a bad king. That was all his fault, and his marriage had nothing to do with it.

For what it's worth, I like Robert. I think he was basically a decent guy. Still, he was very poorly suited for the responsibilities of Kingship and even more poorly suited for the responsibilities of marriage. He even admits it himself.

Edited by Catastrophe, 11 May 2012 - 05:21 PM.

[Biglose]

@Jem
The irony in it beeing, that in order to be a better king, he would have needed to be a worse husband.

The problem in itself is, that Robert needed to be quite an Idiot to be so blind. But still he somehow manage to become King due to personal achievement and not birth.

Lets be honest: What Cersei did would have lead to her death in 9 out of 10 cases (and to quite an embarressment to House Lanister).

Edited by Biglose, 11 May 2012 - 05:24 PM.

[FuzzyJAM]

Is this serious?  The man starts their marriage off by screaming another woman's name during sex and from there goes to be a drunkard and sleep with many hundreds of whores.  Every single time we see any interaction between the two, and everything we know about their relationship, shows Robert to have been about as bad as you can expect a husband to be.

Obviously Cersei was a terrible wife, but to give her the blame for Robert being a terrible husband on top of that is just. . .ridiculous.  If anything, Robert is far more responsible for Cersei being a bad wife than she is for him being a bad husband, but the circular argument of who is more to blame is just stupid to the extreme.

[Dracarya]

Catastrophe, on 11 May 2012 - 05:18 PM, said:

I think Cersei certainly made the worst of a bad situation, but I'm certain Robert would've still cheated on her all the time, even if she'd been a perfect wife. It's just who he is. (Not that it justifies Cersei raising her bastard children as his heirs, which is far worse than simply cheating or having bastards.)

Also, you can't blame Cersei for making Robert a bad king. That was all his fault, and his marriage had nothing to do with it.

For what it's worth, I like Robert. I think he was basically a decent guy. Still, he was very poorly suited for the responsibilities of Kingship and even more poorly suited for the responsibilities of marriage. He even admits it himself.

I agree, I like Robert too, and I think his character was quite sad. It's a shame we never got his POV really, that would have been interesting.

Cersei, however, I have no sympathy for. This thread could turn into a train wreck, but people are allowed their own views

[Winter's Lady]

Well I think with Robert it's acombination of things, his grief over Lyanna he never got over, an unhappy marriage and the weight of the reign on his shoulders, all contributed to his personality. He sure wasn't mr. Nice Guy, but not the epitome of evil either.

Cersei clearly contributed to make him what he was in the end, she did nothing to make him a more stable person, she didn't try to do anything about it in any way, and that's why I partly blame her for Robert's personality.

[Jem]

Dracarya, on 11 May 2012 - 05:15 PM, said:

The realm had peace under him for like what, 15 years? He can't have been that bad a king. Bad husband? Debatable. But Cersei is not blameless, and I think that's the point that the OP is trying to get across.

That is because Robert had good advisers. Robert was a 'good king' in the sense that he kept to his whoring and drinking while better men ran the realm.

To the OP, seriously Robert and Cersei are as bad as each other. It is an exercise in futility to try to make out that one of them is the victim and the other the villain.

[Jamie Lannister]

They were both terrible.

I just happen to like Cersei a lot more as a character, so her side of it speaks to me a little more.

Edited by Jamie Lannister, 11 May 2012 - 05:30 PM.

[Currawong]

To be fair to both parties,neither Cersei or Robert wanted the marriage - it was a politically arranged one, like so many in Westeros.   And when that happens, it doesn't automatically mean that a wife dutifully supports her husband, or the other way around.   If they are married but hate each other's guts, they're not going to be wildly supportive of each other.   In most arranged marriages, people came to a reasonably amicable - or at least non-hating - type of day to day relationship.

The Jaime / Cersei incest was going on well before the R/C marriage, and Robert was in love with another woman.   He even got drunk and screamed her name on their wedding night!  Great start to any marriage.   Who can blame Cersei for not exactly being enthused about trying to make a go of their marriage? It seems that both people continued on their merry way - Cersie with Jaime, and Robert with his whores.  Don't throw all the shit on Cersei!

From a purely practical point of view, she was a complete idiot not to have at least one of Robert's children, especially if the dark-haired Baratheon line   "bred true".   One or two dark haired kids would have neatly muddled up any question of which kids were legitimate, because it would have then been easy to say that "they're all Robert's of course - some take after him, some take after me".   Perfectly normal in any family.

ETA:

Quote

Cersei clearly contributed to make him what he was in the end, she did nothing to make him a more stable person, she didn't try to do anything about it in any way, and that's why I partly blame her for Robert's personality.

   No-one is 'responsible' for Robert's personality other than Robert himself.

Edited by Currawong, 11 May 2012 - 05:31 PM.

[Dracarya]

Jem, on 11 May 2012 - 05:22 PM, said:

That is because Robert had good advisers. Robert was a 'good king' in the sense that he kept to his whoring and drinking while better men ran the realm.

To the OP, seriously Robert and Cersei are as bad as each other. It is an exercise in futility to try to make out that one of them is the victim and the other the villain.

I agree, but he probably wasn't as bad as the previous kings. Nobody got burned alive by Robert, to my recollection

It's interesting that you say that, because that's another point I got from the OP - Robert is blamed for the majority, if not all, of what happened between him and Cersei, and why that is is puzzling. I agree that they were as bad as each other, in certain circumstances at least, e.g. violence against one another.

[All Men Must Rhyme]

I think the sad thing is that neither wanted to be married to the other. You can argue that both should have tried harder. It's harsh perhaps to place blame on either party, though both are certainly at fault. My feeling is that, while Robert and Cersei are both part of an arranged marriage, Cersei originally DID want Robert, but turned against him when she discovered he still loved Lyanna. Robert lost the only girl he loved, and found it hard to move on. Cersei could easily have done more to try and make Robert a better man, and come to love her, but she took it as a personal slight and chose to spite him instead. Could Robert have done more to make Cersei happier? Of course. But fault for their marriage falling apart goes both ways.

[Buckwheat]

I think I see what you are talking about, OP. Well, Cersei definitely shares some of the blame for the unsucess of their marriage. She never gave Robert as much as a chance, she decided in the beginning she did not like him.

But, would it not be right also to consider that Robert called her Lyanna on their wedding night?

[etu]

Robert was always going to make a bad husband. He was a casual arrogant drunk who'd sleep with anything pretty and willing.

Cersei was always going to make a bad wife. She was a power-hungry arrogant shrew who only wants to sleep with her brother.

Putting them together =/= Win.

[Little Miss Sunshine]

People often forget that we are products of our life experiences and the environment around us.

Robert was crushed by Lyanna's death. If his version of the story was true (which i don't think so), the girl he loved just got kidnapped and died at the hands of her rapist. That's some heavy stuff to deal with. If his version isn't true, and he was just in denial because he couldn't accept the fact that Lyanna didn't love him or wouldn't want to be with him (which I believe so), I'm pretty sure having to accept that someone you love doesn't love you back can make you suffer like mad.

I'm not saying he's not to blame - he cheats, he was known to be fond of whoring even when he was young, he never tries to overcome Lyanna's death. But he's marked by what is indeed a very painful experience in his life (whatever version of the story you choose to believe), and that just contributes to his downward spiral.

As Jamie Lannister said before me, they were both terrible. And neither of them wanted to be married to each other, they were "forced" into this marriage to secure the Kingdom's peace and union. Saying another woman's name in your wedding night is awfully bad, but as far as I could tell Cersei did nothing to try to "bend" him, like it's said in the OP.

Just like Robert, Cersei is molded by her life experiences. Would she be what she is if, say, she had her mother around? Probably not, or at least not in such a way.

All in all, like we say in my country, "guilt never dies single" - they both share the blame for that sad excuse for a marriage.

Edited for grammar.

Edited by Little Miss Sunshine, 11 May 2012 - 06:35 PM.

[Dracarya]

etu, on 11 May 2012 - 05:27 PM, said:

Robert was always going to make a bad husband. He was a casual arrogant drunk who'd sleep with anything pretty and willing.

Cersei was always going to make a bad wife. She was a power-hungry arrogant shrew who only wants to sleep with her brother.

Can we assume either of these things? If Robert had married Lyanna, he might have been so in love that he never slept with another woman. If Cersei had married Rhaegar, same story, and maybe the incest with her brother would have been a little bit of 'innocent' experimenting when they were very young and stopped at that. There are many contributing factors to each of their personalities; being married to one another is a small but interesting part of that.

[Dark Night Full of Ninjas]

As far as being a good king goes, as I believe has been stated before, Robert was better at winning thrones than keeping them. The peacefullness of th realm was due to good advisors, I believe (save for being MASSIVELY in debt to the Queen's daddy)

As far as being a good husband goes, Robert and Cersei both had their faults, some very major faults. Robert could have saved himself some grief by not whoring around, and TRYING to have a relationship with Cersei. Cersei could have saved herself some grief if she gave Robert a chance in the first place. It seems to me that she never even wanted to be married to him, but since she was, she could have TRIED

[Buckwheat]

Jcooper, on 11 May 2012 - 05:26 PM, said:

I think the sad thing is that neither wanted to be married to the other. You can argue that both should have tried harder. It's harsh perhaps to place blame on either party, though both are certainly at fault. My feeling is that, while Robert and Cersei are both part of an arranged marriage, Cersei originally DID want Robert, but turned against him when she discovered he still loved Lyanna. Robert lost the only girl he loved, and found it hard to move on. Cersei could easily have done more to try and make Robert a better man, and come to love her, but she took it as a personal slight and chose to spite him instead. Could Robert have done more to make Cersei happier? Of course. But fault for their marriage falling apart goes both ways.

I agree that their fault goes both ways, surely. What do you think they both could have done so as not to make their marriage that terrible as it was?

I think that Cersei could have given Robert a chance and tried to forget about Jaime after the wedding. She still claimed she loved Rhaegar at the time, and we know that Rhaegar is not Jaime. I think she could have helped him even in the later years, at least tried to convince him to stop drinking so much.

But, she decided against it because of the covenience his state brought her most of the time.

[Jem]

Dracarya, on 11 May 2012 - 05:33 PM, said:

Can we assume either of these things? If Robert had married Lyanna, he might have been so in love that he never slept with another woman. If Cersei had married Rhaegar, same story, and maybe the incest with her brother would have been a little bit of 'innocent' experimenting when they were very young and stopped at that. There are many contributing factors to each of their personalities; being married to one another is a small but interesting part of that.

I admire your naivety, but no, Robert was not "in love" with Lyanna. She was just his best friend's hot younger sister that he was looking forward to boffing.