Why didn't Cersei try to thwart the prophecy sooner?

[HouseFossoway]

Maggy the frog predicted that a bunch of horrible things would happen to Cersei, so why didn't Cersei try to thwart Maggy's prophecy sooner? Cersei waits till AFFC to try to prevent the prophecy from occuring.

Maggy predicts that Cersei will have three kids, and Robert would have 16. Cersei could have had a child with Robert, or not had a third child with Jaime, or made sure to have a fourth child with Jaime. If Cersei was afraid of the prophecy, and she did think she could change it, she should have just had one more or one fewer child.

[dariopatke]

She doesnt know if Robert has 16 and I think there are two options:

1) she subconciously wanted three kids and assured herself it is the prophecy

2)she never thought about it and only occured her when it started to come true

[Lockjaw of House Boltagon]

Because GRRM came up with the prophecy until AFFC. It's a retcon. 

Oh sure, people will fanwank it to infinity and beyond and say that Cersei was only reminded of and concerned about the prophecy once Joffrey and Tywin died, blah blah blah, but that's a weak argument, IMHO. No matter how much you try to pretend it never happened, you just don't forget a prophecy like this, especially when everything Maggy foretold started coming true long before Cersei's recent traumatic events: Melara died, she married the king, she had 3 children, Robert 16, etc. 

It was a clumsy and frankly unnecessary retcon, IMHO. 

[marsyao]

I guess she does not believe it until the death of Joffery

[Lord Varys]

1 minute ago, marsyao said:

I guess she does not believe it until the death of Joffery

That would be my guess, too. She might even have forgotten about it until that thing hit her.

[BricksAndSparrows]

18 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

That would be my guess, too. She might even have forgotten about it until that thing hit her.

I'd say that was a big part of it. I forget the girls name, Cersei's friend, but her solution was to pretend it never happened and forget the experience,.

I'd say Cersei did try and thwart the prophecy, in her own foolish way, Pushing the girl into the well (killing the only witness,) and forcing it from her mind was her way of "thwarting" the prophecy.

[Springwatch]

It's strange - Maggy's prophecies are bad news for Cersei, but, (it's believed) she goes out of her way to make one of them come true - the death of Melara. Maybe Cersei was thinking if she went along with the predictions, she would become queen, but somehow manage to break the prophecy before it all turned sour.

[sgtpimenta]

30 minutes ago, BricksAndSparrows said:

I'd say that was a big part of it. I forget the girls name, Cersei's friend, but her solution was to pretend it never happened and forget the experience,.

I'd say Cersei did try and thwart the prophecy, in her own foolish way, Pushing the girl into the well (killing the only witness,) and forcing it from her mind was her way of "thwarting" the prophecy.

Agreed. I don't think it was all that important till it started to go south, and that was what triggers all. It's easy to fell safe and everything is going fine. She felt all powerful and in control till her firstborn choke to death...

[Masha]

I definitely need to reread AFFC but if I remember correctly, Cersei killed Melara because "prophecy said so", then she doesn't think about it 

I mean there is certainly a whiff of retcon here but sometimes it happens in the same book perhaps its explained by Cersei's growing madness and her mixing up her memories.

We have Cersei hating Robert because he whispered Lyanna on their wedding night (GOT), then apparently it was because he raped and abused her (AFFC)

We have Cersei hating Tyrion because he killed her mother (GOT thru ASOS) and then her being happy that her mother died since it left her and Jaime free to fornicate and she really hated/feared Tyrion because of prophecy (AFFC)

We have Cersei having a dire prophecy about marrying a king (AFFC) and yet she was crushing on and eager to marry Rhaegar (AFFC) who was going to be king.

I don't really remember was there a mention in the books about her being pretty eager to marry Robert till the actual marriage bed happened or am I confusing this with the show now?

 

[CJ McLannister]

Any question that starts out "Why did Cersei...?" can be answered the same way.

She's an idiot.

[Ser Leftwich]

We weren't in her head until AFfC, so we don't know what she did about it before. It is a complete non-starter.

[BricksAndSparrows]

1 hour ago, CJ McLannister said:

Any question that starts out "Why did Cersei...?" can be answered the same way.

She's an idiot.

LOL

 

1 hour ago, Ser Leftwich said:

We weren't in her head until AFfC, so we don't know what she did about it before. It is a complete non-starter.

Good point... kinda. She does reflect quite a bit through out the chapters and we definitely get the idea that she wasn't really doing anything about the prophecy... other than her Ostrich method.

[Lockjaw of House Boltagon]

2 hours ago, Masha said:

I don't really remember was there a mention in the books about her being pretty eager to marry Robert till the actual marriage bed happened or am I confusing this with the show now?

Yes, she was actually happy until the wedding night thing happened. 

[Masha]

2 minutes ago, Lyin' Ned said:

Yes, she was actually happy until the wedding night thing happened. 

And that happened in AFFC, so basically Cersei killed her friend because "Prophecy said so" and then effectively forgot about it in her eagerness to marry prince (who would be a king) or the actual king.

[thelittledragonthatcould]

Probably because she did not take it quite as seriously till some time after AGOT.

 

Cerise in AGOT seems a rational and competent person, the character she is in AFFC is a paranoid, unhinged mess which is probably to be expected with the amount of emotional trauma she has been through in the series (much of it brought on by her own actions).

 

While Tyrion was not her favorite person in AGOT he seems part of her family at Winterfell and she goes quite out of her way to have him freed later in the book. Clearly she is not paranoid enough then to really believe in such rumors.

ACOK she resents him turning up and taking control. The fact that he (secretly) poisons her, strips her off her loyal guards on a (suicide) mission, sends her daughter away and threatens the lives of both Joffrey and Tommen severely breaks down their, already strained, relationship. She may well be thinking of those prophesies around about now.

ASOS sees the antagonistic sibling bickering start up only for Cersei to see Tyrion kill both her firstborn and father.

AFFC - Cersei is now a complete paranoid trainwreck. Though Tyrion has done enough for her to believe the prophesies and him being free, potentially anywhere would be enough to scare most sane people.

[Peaceable Warmonger]

Kid Cersei did not know what frog lady ment by you 3 and him 16. Her friend being killed by her was not part of the prophecy. Frog lady told her she would die tonight not that Cersei would kill her for wanting to marry her brother. Kid Cersei didn't really believe the prophecy.

[Aderyn]

28 minutes ago, thelittledragonthatcould said:

Probably because she did not take it quite as seriously till some time after AGOT.

 

Cerise in AGOT seems a rational and competent person, the character she is in AFFC is a paranoid, unhinged mess which is probably to be expected with the amount of emotional trauma she has been through in the series (much of it brought on by her own actions).

 

While Tyrion was not her favorite person in AGOT he seems part of her family at Winterfell and she goes quite out of her way to have him freed later in the book. Clearly she is not paranoid enough then to really believe in such rumors.

ACOK she resents him turning up and taking control. The fact that he (secretly) poisons her, strips her off her loyal guards on a (suicide) mission, sends her daughter away and threatens the lives of both Joffrey and Tommen severely breaks down their, already strained, relationship. She may well be thinking of those prophesies around about now.

ASOS sees the antagonistic sibling bickering start up only for Cersei to see Tyrion kill both her firstborn and father.

AFFC - Cersei is now a complete paranoid trainwreck. Though Tyrion has done enough for her to believe the prophesies and him being free, potentially anywhere would be enough to scare most sane people.

I agree with this view.

Maybe she did believe it for a while as a kid (despite acting differently), but as time passed and she grew up it became a ridiculous little memory that rarely passed through her mind. Like you pointed out, at the start of the series Cersei is a rational person who lives in the present, but as the story progresses she starts to feel more and more threatened until the ultimate tragedy happens - one of his children dies. That sends her down the path to a more and more unstable state of mind, which includes increasing paranoia, aggression and weakened sense of reality. Thoughts and memories that she hasn't paid attention to in years come flooding back to her and now she interprets them in a totally different light.

[Nevets]

I have sometimes wondered if she thought Sansa was the "younger, more beautiful" queen, and was planning on keeping her weak and under her control so she wouldn't be a threat.  When you think about it, her insistence on Joffrey marrying Sansa even after her father was executed as a traitor makes no sense.  There no longer is any point to the marriage.  Unless she thought she could circumvent the prophecy by having a queen she could easily control.

[dsug]

When they did the flashback on the show at the beginning of S5 (beginning of Cersei's AFFC material), GRRM did a featurette saying Cersei probably worried about it for a time, then forgot about it. But as it slowly started coming true, it started creeping back to her, nagging her in the back of her mind. 

[sifth]

It does seem like a bit of a retcon. I know we were never inside her head, but the fact that everything that old lady said to her started coming true for Cercie and she just ignored it her whole life does seem very out of place, especially for a character as paranoid as Cercie is.