A Cersei Celebration!

[Winter's Knight]

And telling the milkmaid that she would get her tongue cut out because "cows don't need tongues, only teats".

And she was eight.

We're taking the word of a person hostile to the Lannisters? Even Tyrion was hesitant about believing Oberyn.

[Queen Cersei I]

Cersei started her run early - using baby Tyrion as a freakshow for her (IIRC Dornish) guests and twisting his manhood.

Is that how it really happened? In the tradition of the following:

How the scene in the tower Really Happened

"Well hello there, Bran. This is indeed an awkward situation. Lets you and I sit down and talk about what you're feeling right now, and I'll try to explain what you saw."

'Jaime wait! it is I, Bloodraven, communicating with you through ESP. You must push Bran out of the window!'

'Push an innocent child out a window? I could never do that!'

'But you'd be doing him a favor! Its the only way to open his third eye and set him on the path to becoming a magic tree, or something. You love trees, don't you Jaime?'

"Sigh...the things I do for love." *push*

'Jaime Lannister you are a gentleman and a scholar'

'Yes'

I'd say no. What we saw was only half the story. The following is what truly happened to Cersei Lannister that fateful day:

How the scene with Tyrion really happened

Cersei: Oh little brother! How I adore you! Let me clutch you to my 8-year-old bosom!

Mysterious voice: Cersei…. Cersei….. CERSEI!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cersei: WTF?

Mysterious Voice: It is I, the Great Other!

Cersei: WTF?

The Great Other: Cersei, would you like to be my handmaiden, doer of my will and reaper of mine own vengeance, my powerful sovereign daughter upon this earth, taker of vengeance, slayer of lies, destroyer of goodness, and bringer of the second night?

Cersei: Ummm… not really, no.

The Great Other: But Cersei, Cersei, I love you. You are mine own daughter, and must do mine own will.

Cersei: Yeah… well okay then.

The Great Other: Cersei, our great partnership has begun! Let me tell you my first order: pull the dwarf’s wang!

Cersei: Erm… wha???

The Great Other: Pull… the dwarf’s… wang.

Cersei: I am only a young girl, and know nothing of the ways of pulling genitals. But I can clearly see that this is wrong, and I refuse to do it.

The Great Other: But Cersei, you must! If you do not, than Tyrion will never grow up to be an utter basket case misogynist with a raging whore Madonna complex. Worse, he will never develop the complex that will lead him to employ countless pretty whores as his part time girlfriends. Is that what you want, Cersei? A Tyrion who is not obsessed with whores?

You do love whores, don’t you, Cersei?

Cersei: Oh! Ever since I was a little girl!

The Great Other: Then do it!

Cersei: Hey, conveniently gathered Dornish visitors, come look at me abuse my brother! (Yanks on Tyrion.)

The Great Other: Cersei Lannister, you are a gentleman and a scholar.

Cersei: maniacal laughter.

The Great other: And so it begins.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=7g9WjcGdxuM

[corbon]

I see your wiews. Killing of Lady was definitely her showing her power. (I think it was mostly Robert's responsibility that it ended the way it did).

It is sad that we never see any tender moments between her and the children, it would make her more human, I think. I believe she loved them yes, in her own, selfish way, that did not help any of them to develop like a child should, but she still liked them.

I don't believe there are any tender moments shown because she didn't truly love them. She treated them (and loved them) only as extensions of herself, not them as 'them'.

That said, I'm sure there were tender moments, and I'm sure that she did love them, just in a kind of superficial way.

Exactly. My point was that it was a mutually sick relationship; a crutch, a mutual dependency. When Jaime kills the king and loses all his ideals at the age of 17 and is shunned by the people he takes refusge in an obsessive relationship with his sister based significantly in fantasy, with Cersei as the maiden and himself as her white knight. In the beginning of the books it is hinted that he feels jealous of his own children for the place they hold in Cersei's affections. "If I were a woman, I would be Cersei," he thinks at one point (and Cersei echoes the same sentiment in AFFC, though by then we can see that it is not true.)

While I agree that the relationship is unhealthy from both sides, and on Jaime's side you have pretty much nailed it, I think the difference is that Jaime actually gets into the relationship with Cersei. Sure, he thinks they are a lot alike, but he's with her as her, not as himself.

Cersei isn't in a relationship with Jaime, she is in a relationship with a male model of herself.

I think I read that he was jealous of the children because they had her, and he didn't really, only stolen moments here and there - and of course, less moments since the children absorbed some of her time. And parent knows about this.

I don't really feel jealous of my boy for this, but his arrival definitely had a cost, even though the sum is greater now (and hopefully when the kids are grown a little some of what was lost can be regained). I can understand Jaime, who isn't getting any of the benefits of fatherhood, being jealous of the children (not really his, except biologically) who have effectively stolen some of his relationship time away.

Cersei was disappointed in her marriage, so took refuge in Jaime. He played the husband in some cases where Robert failed to turn up-- for instance, he was at Cersei's side while Robert went off hunting. Cersei turns to Jaime and expects everything for him, and is sure that no matter what, he is the one person who will come through for her. "Not Jaime, not with my life at stake", she thinks to herself in AFFC.

Cersei was into Jaime before her marriage turned sour, and clearly had no intention of giving him up. Its bullshit to blame Robert for their relationship.

Of course she thinks he will come through for her because to her, he is her, just the male version.

He can't possibly not come through for her in her world view because he isn't actually a person just an extension of her. A Jaime without her doesn't exist as a concept in her mind, so nothing could be more important than saving her.

My point was that, despite Jaime being (compared to Cersei) the more moral of the two, I cannot see Jaime as the good, true, pure and selfless lover, Cersei as the bitch who unspeakably betrayed him. IMO, Jaime was not a true, pure, selfless lover. It seems to me that Jaime's "love" for Cersei was better summarized by an earlier poster when he said, "unfortunately, Jaime seems to be addicted to fucking his sister."

While I wouldn't call Jaime pure or selfless or anything, I do think he was actually into her. It really was a relationship for him, screwed up as it was and with elements of selfishness to it.

This is simplifying the whole thing a bit too much, of course. But it hits on an essiential truth about the relationship-- like any addiction, Jaime's feelings for his sister are obsessive, unhealthy, consuming, irrational, and ultimately, selfish. His near obsessive repetition of "she's been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and moonboy too for all I know" is a good illustration of his fundamental imbalance.

I totally disagree. Not about Jaime's feelings being obsessive, unhealthy, consuming and irrational, and even a little bit selfish. But not the way you claim them to be selfish.

I think his unbalance isn't caused by the obsession though. I its a good indication of how shocked and hurt (so hurt it goes beyond actual hurt) he was by the realisation that she was never truly into him at all. He's been blindly ignorant for more his whole life believing that this one person really loved him (mother dead, father a distant and loveless figure, no one else socially worthy) and what they had together was worth grinding convention under his heel and gave him the strength to thumb his nose at the world in any and every way he wanted to.

His foundation has been ripped away at the same time as the veil torn from his eyes and he sees her for what she really is - which ends his love for her of course. The repetition is that sort of dazed semi-disbelief. Not that it happened, but that he could have been so blind, and hence further self-disgust.

I think it has been more traumatic for him, more jolting, more changing, than losing his hand.