boltons are sick

I listed multiple things that most women in the series don't face and she has suffered more than them. And even if some of the things Cersei has faced are things all women in general face, Tywin as a man hasn't experienced any of those things, so he still doesn't have Cersei's excuses which makes him worse. The fact Cersei feels remorse shows she is not an inherently evil person an is just a person who has experienced a lot of hardship and is forced to commit her crimes to save her children and can be redeemed unlike Tywin who never displays any regrets about anything he does while lacking Cersei's excuses. She is a "perpatrator" of something her husband also does which is cheating, so I don't blame her at all for what she has done to him or to Ned. The fact Cersei is listed in the Inconsistently Heinous wiki means she is on around the same morality as Tyrion who is also there. The fact Tywin is in the Near Pure Evil wiki means he is almost Pure Evil and thus is worse than Tyrion or Cersei who have too many sympathetic and redeeming qualities to be Near Pure Evil. Also, did you just compare a woman who has murdered at most a few dozen people to mass-murdering dictators who have murdered millions. Yes, in cases like that, it does matter who is worse?

I have seen certain people claim that Tywin is somehow a better person than Cersei and I think a huge part of this perception stems from the fact that people are far more willing to excuse male characters than female characters (which is why Tyrion and Jaime also get more excuses than Cersei) and their arguments to describe why Tywin is somehow a better person than Cersei are laughable. Apparently, Tywin is a morally better person than Cersei because he is less emotional than her and is more rational (like... how does this make you a morally person exactly?) and because he doesn't appear to be suffering from any mental illness and seems to be sane (So, apparently, if someone suffers from a mental illness which is caused by the abusive and toxic environment you live, then that makes them a worse person than someone who is perfectly sane, but chooses to commit atrocities despite this. If anything, having a mental illness should be used as an excuse and should make that person less evil than the the person who is perfectly sane and still commits atrocities. This argument that Cersei's haters use to "prove" why she is worse is extremely ableist and insulting. Do you also think that Arthur Fleck from the 2019 Joker movie is also more evil than Tywin by that logic?). Now, I will provide arguments why Tywin is much worse than Cersei and why she deserves a chance at redemption more than him. First, Cersei has a deeply tragic backstory which Tywin DOESN'T have. Cersei was born in a deeply misogynistic society where she was constantly discriminated against because of her gender, thus she has an excuse for why she is resentful. Tywin was born a man in this society and he never experienced any discrimination based on his gender, thus he doesn't have an excuse in that regard which makes him worse. Cersei was born first, but instead of being made heir to Casterly Rock, her brother who was younger than her, was groomed to become the heir, which reinforced in Cersei the feeling of being discriminated against because of her gender. She was then sent off to be married to Robert where she was powerless and was abused which makes her understandably resentful about how her life could have turned out if only she was born a boy. Tywin, in contrast, doesn't have this as an excuse as he was always groomed to become heir to Casterly Rock and was always meant to have a lot of power. Cersei received a prophecy at the age of 10 that all of her children would die and then she herself would die which traumatizes her, and is what causes her to commit some evil acts in the hope she can save her children from this prophecy and is why she is lashing out on different people and is paranoid (which is one of the things people use for why Cersei is so much more "evil" than Tywin, when in fact the reason for her paranoia is pretty understandable). Tywin, in contrast, DOESN'T have the excuse that he believes if he is not committing atrocities to prevent a prophecy he has received, his children are going to die. He just wants more power for himself which is a far less sympathetic motivation than genuinely believing you need to do some evil to protect the lives of your family from dying. Cersei was also repeatedly RAPED for years by her husband which is what causes a lot of her negative qualities and desire to not feel ever again stem from. Tywin was never raped (as far as we know) in his entire life which gives him far less of an excuse for his behaviour. Also, because of the sexist double standards of Westeros, Robert was allowed to cheat on her, but if Cersei did the same to find solace in Jaime, and she was caught, she and her children would be executed. This gives far more of an excuse in her actions against Robert and Ned in the first book because if she didn't do them, she and her children would have been executed because of the sexist laws of Westeros. In contrast, Tywin doesn't have the excuse of having to act to save his children from certain death or that he had to hide his affair or he and his children would face execution. Everything he does is purely to increase his own personal power which makes him far less sympathetic than Cersei who was acting to save her children. In addition, Tywin is largely responsible for Cersei as he instilled in her the belief that she she look down on almost anyone outside of their House and she needs to display cruelty. Cersei doesn't want her father to ignore her (which he does) and she wants to be treated better, so Cersei's negative traits largely stem due to lack of familial love and trying to act like Tywin to gain his respect. Tywin, in contrast, had a very soft father who didn't instill such values in his son which means that Tywin's father is not responsible for how Tywin acts as an adult to the same extent in which Tywin is responsible for how Cersei acts because Cersei learned every negative trait from her father in the hope to be treated with respect by him and not ignored while Tywin is more self-taught and never learned these things from his father, so unlike Cersei, he can't blame his parenting for what he has done. So, in general, Cersei is an insecure victim who has absorbed many of the negative traits of her father, suffers from mental issues due to the bad things that have happened to her and lashes out due to her insecurities and because she believes that she needs to commit some evil acts to stop Maggy's prophecy and save her children. Tywin doesn't seem to be that insecure (or at least not to an extent where he can't fully control his behavior unlike Cersei) and he is committing terrible atrocities just to increase his political power and gain prestige with no indication he is traumatized or that he believes if he is not doing what he is doing, his children are going to die. Cersei also feels bad while she is torturing the Blue Bard but feels she needs to do it to stop Maggy's prophecy. She also seems to feel a little bad about some of the things she has done if her hallucinations are any indication. Tywin, in contrast and as far as we know, never feels bad about anything he has done which makes Cersei a better person in that regard. Now, let's look at what crimes they have done. Cersei kills and tortures a relatively small number of people in her immediate vicinity and is not above killing children. And she had some part to play in starting the War of the Five Kings, but that could be said for a lot of other characters (Littlefinger, Lysa Arryn, Jaime Lannister, Ned Stark, etc.) Tywin exterminated two noble Houses, the Reynes and the Tarbecks along with all their servants and peasants which is confirmed to include children and infants, forced his father's mistress to perform a Walk of Shame across Lannisport and then banished her with no clothes or money, pillaged King's Landing with his army after he had deceived Aerys to open the gates which results in many atrocities and murders against the citizens, ordered the murders Elia Martell and her two children, one of which is an infant while the other is a 4-year-old girl and Elia was raped by the Mountain before being killed, ordered a little girl to be gang-raped by an entire garrison of soldiers and even forced his own son Tyrion to participate in the rape, sent out several groups led by the the Mountain, Vargo Hoat and Amory Lorch to burn and pillage across the Riverlands which resulted in the destruction of numerous villages and the deaths of countless peasants with a lot of rape and torture commited by the raiders as well, hangs an innocent innkeeper just because Tyrion was kidnapped in her inn even though the woman had nothing to do with the kidnapping, is behind the Red Wedding which is considered to be a taboo and a violation of guest rights even in Westeros by promising protection to Walder Frey, Roose Bolton and the other participants and the Red Wedding kills thousands of people who accompany Robb Stark, punishes all the soldiers who fled during the Battle of Blackwater by having their knees broken with hammers, so they would be forced to beg on the streets for the rest of their lives and tries to have his own son Tyrion executed. As you can see, Tywin has caused a lot more carnage and devastation with his brutal pillaging where entire villages are wiped out, his is responsible for the biggest violation of the guest right in Westeros, he has murdered children (to be fair, Cersei has also killed children, but Tywin is responsible for the deaths of far more children than Cersei) and he orders a young girl to be gang-raped by an entire garrison of his soldiers and forces his son to watch and then participate even though he is in love with the girl (this is far more depraved than anything Cersei has done). I could go on, but I think I made my point already. I decided to make this post in response to how many people seem to think that Tywin is more sympathetic than Cersei simply because he is less emotional and more concerned with just increasing his own political power which apparently is supposed to make him a better person!!! Also, Tywin is listed on the Near Pure Evil wiki while Cersei is listed on the Inconsistently Heinous wiki (the same wiki on which Tyrion himself is listed) which means these wikis rank Tywin as morally worse than Cersei.

For those of you who don’t know, there are several wikis for villains. One of them is called Pure Evil wiki (which, in short, is about villains with no redeeming or sympathetic qualities), the second is called Near Pure Evil wiki (Which, in short, is about villains with almost no redeeming or sympathetic qualities but they still can’t qualify for the Pure Evil wiki for some reason. However, there are other cases where a villain can be Near Pure Evil even if they don't have any redeemable qualities like slightly lacking moral agency or slightly failing the heinous standard of the series because they don't go the extra mile in terms of crimes). There is also a third wiki called the Inconsistently Heinous wiki (which, in short, is about characters who have committed awful crimes, but they still have too many redeeming and sympathetic qualities and excuses for their actions to qualify as Pure Evil or Near Pure Evil). The name “Inconsistently Heinous” means that the characters are too inconsistent in their heinousness to be Near Pure Evil and they need to have many redeeming and sympathetic qualities and/or excuses for their actions. Often times Inconsistently Heinous characters can even be morally ambiguous heroes in the stories they are depicted, but they also do some bad things along the way. Tyrion and Cersei from ASOIAF are both listed on the Inconsistently Heinous wiki which means they have both done some terrible things, but they can't qualify as Pure Evil or Near Pure Evil because they have excuses for they actions and many redeeming qualities and sympathetic moments. The characters who listed on the Pure Evil wiki in the books are Joffrey, Ramsay, Gregor, Rorge, Craster, Euron and Maegor Targaryen. The characters who listed on the Near Pure Evil wiki in the books are Tywin, Littlefinger, Roose Bolton, Walder Frey, Kraznys mo Nakloz, Aerys Targaryen and Lo Bu. There are of course many more characters who could fit on the Near Pure Evil, but so far those are the only ones who have been proposed. At this point, Tyrion has armed the clans from the mountains and has incited them to attack and pillage the Vale and has expressed a desire to reduce it to ash through said attacks (which gives him a higher body count than Cersei), has given the Antler's men to Joffrey to be brutally tortured and killed, has killed a singer and had his body cooked into stew and fed to poor people, has murdered his former girlfrined Shae and has raped at least one sex slave out of spite, yet many fans think he is a good person or at least a "grey-zone character" who deserves to get a happy ending. At the same time, Cersei, who has suffered a lot throughout her life and who has lived in fear her whole life that she and her children would get killed which is what fuels most of her actions as she is trying to protect her family and her killing Robert and her actions against Ned are also fueled by trauma from the rapes she has endured and by a desire to save herself and her children from an unjust execution which is enforced by the sexist laws of Westeros who say that a woman who cheats on her husband should be executed while him cheating on her is fine, is somehow "irredeemably evil" and she apparently desrves to be punished and apparently doesn't deserve a chance to change unlike Tyrion even though the two of them have both terrible things. The way in which Cersei is judged for her actions even though a lot of fans would do them if they were in her place and they think she is "evil" and should be punished, while they give free pass to other characters who do equally horrible things (and sometimes for far less justifiable reason like with Tywin who has suffered FAR LESS than Cersei throughout his life and doesn't even have the excuse that he believes he and his children are going to die if he doesn't do what he does and doesn't have the excuse of being brought by someone like himself) and they don't think the characters they like are "evil" or should be punished for their actions is one of the biggest double standards I have seen. Tyrion and Cersei have both done terrible things and they both have a lot of excuses for their actions as well as redeeming and sympathetic qualities, but fans only think one of them is "evil" and think that only one of them deserves sympathy and a chance to get better. This is a list of Cersei's redeeming and sympathetic qualities for reference: She loves her family members except for Tyrion (more specifically, her children,her father, Tywin and her mother, Joanna). She is very protective of her children, doesn't want them to die and constantly fears for their safety. When her son Joffrey dies, she breaks down over his corpse and cries and then she stays with his corpse and mourns it for days. At one point, she has a nice dream where Joffrey is still alive and she marries her brother, Jaime. She is angry when Tyrion sends her daughter, Myrcella, to Dorn without her permission and starts threatening him. She breaks down into tears when he mentions that if Myrcella stays, she could be killed in the coming battle. She is also shocked when she learns that Myrcella has lost one of her ears. In the fourth book she gets very protective of her son, Tommen, after the death of Joffrey. When Tommen chokes on his wine, she is afraid that someone had poisoned him, quickly stands up and goes to him to help. When she discovers that no one has poisoned him, she goes away and starts crying. During her imprisonment by the Faith Militant, she constantly thinks about her son and how she wants to go back to him. When she goes back to him, she starts spending a lot more time with him than ever before because she was relieved to see him again after her long imprisonment. At one point, she had a nightmare where Tyrion has tied her up. She begs him to spare her kids, even though in the dream her own life is in danger. She loves her father as she wants his respect, constantly thinks about what he would do and is sad when he dies. She loves her mother. She blames her younger brother, Tyrion, for "killing" her mother because this is what she saw from her father. She also mentions to Sansa that when she was a little girl she prayed to the Gods to give her mother back. Another prevention is that Cersei is a bit too tragic and her tragedy holds up. She lost her mother at the age of 7, she was born in a highly sexist society where women are inferior to men and she had to witness every day how she and Jaime would be treated differently (one example is that Jaime was groomed to be Tywin's heir because he was a boy, even though Cersei was older than him) and this treatment made Cersei extremely resentful of her status. At the age of 10, Cersei received a prophecy from Maggy that all of her kids would die, that a younger and more baeutiful queen would take everything she holds dear and then Cersei herself would be killed by her younger brother. Needless to say, this made Cersei very paranoid about her life and the lives of her children and made her even more abusive towards Tyrion because she believes that he is the younger brother from the prophecy. A lot of the crimes that are listed above are an attempt to prevent this prophecy from happening and saving her children and herself. Another aspect that makes her tragic is that her father, Tywin, was neglectful most of the time and he was a brutal ruler who taught his kids that they should be merciless, that they should care about morality only about the end results and so on. There is enough evidence that Cersei was seriously affecte by this upbringing. For example, on one occasion, while she is torturing the Blue Bard, she feels bad for him and wants to stop the torture. But then, she remembers that her father would probably be ashamed of her sign of weakness and he wouldn't do something like that, so she continues with the torture. She was married to Robert Baratheon, who cheated on her and abused her by sometimes even raping her which also has an affect on her because she feels powerless during the rapes and she doesn't want this to happen again. In the world of Westeros if it's discovered that she had cheated on her husband with Jaime, she and all of her kids would be executed. The reason why she kills Robert and Ned is because she wants to protect her life and the life of her kids from execution. In general, she has suffered from systematic sexism for most of her life starting from childhood where she and Jaime were treated differently because of their gender and Jaime was groomed to become the heir to Casterly Rock while she was groomed to be married off despite being older than her brother. When she was married to her husband, she also suffered from the sexism of her society because her husband was allowed to cheat on her while if she was caught cheating, she and her entire family would be executed. She was also raped because there was no definition of marital rape in Westeros. She suffers from a lot of insecurities (about being a woman, winning her father's approval, being fit to rule, etc.). She also has insecurities about not having any friends and she immediately decides to befriend the first woman she meets in the fourth book simply because she doesn't want to feel lonely. On one occasion, after Ned gives her a chance to escape with her children from the city before he reports to Robert that she had been cheating on him, Cersei tells him that because of this she would allow him to go back to Winterfell and live out the rest of his life if he kneels to Joffrey and swears fealty to him. Ned doesn't do it and he ends up dead for this reason, but there is no indication Cersei wouldn't have kept her word if he had accepted and she still doesn't agree with Joffrey executing him. Even though she is rude to Sansa, she still tries to give her advice about how to rule as a Queen, about the specifics of the female body and that she shouldn't love too many people or else she would get hurt. It's implied that the reason for this is because Cersei sees Sansa as a younger and more inexperienced version of herself. While, Cersei lates desires to execute Sansa because she believes that Sansa was involved in Joffrey's death, it doesn't entirely subvert her prevention because during her Walk of Shame, she still noticebly feels bad about how things turned out and that Cersei could have provided a good marriage for her if Joffrey hadn't beheaded her father. Sansa is also one of the people Cersei hallucinates about which indicates that she feels guilty about how she treated her She is capable of feeling remorse on certain occasions. After the torture of the Blue Bard, she feels bad for him and tries to justify herself even if she doesn't take moral responsibility for what she did, and for a moment she even considers stopping his torture. She is also played for sympathy a lot as shown by the above examples. Aside from the examples that are already mentioned, during the Walk of Shame when she paraded naked through the streets of the city and the common people throw things at her, the story tries to frame the moment as an "Alas. Poor Villain" by presenting it from Cersei's point of view, presenting it in excrusiating detail, showing how it affects her psyche. The story clearly tries to make the readers feel bad for her during this chapter.

I still don't agree with using this as undeniable proof that Cersei murdered or even that she abandoned her to die. Her feeling guilt might be because of survivor's guilt in that she feels bad about surviving and outliving her friend and we don't know for sure if she didn't try to help because we barely know anything about what happened that night, but I can understand why many people would have this interpretation of the situation. Can we discuss who is more evil between Lo Bu and Tywin Lannister? This thread is not supposed to be about Cersei, but about them.

Where is it mentioned that she didn't try to help and didn't call for help? It's not! She might have done it, but it was too late at that point. We really don't know what happened or what didn't happen that night, so until we get more info on that, it shouldn't be used as proof for anything.

No, Cersei is not solely responsible for the War of the Five Kings and claiming that a woman who is traumatized due to being raped for years in her marriage which is what made her find some solace and cheat on her husband should take all the responsibility for what happened is sexist, not to mention utterly disgusting. Cersei does share some of the responsibility, but she also tried to prevent the war from happening by offering an alliance to Ned. Ned rejected her offer and tried to arrest her despite this which is what started the war in the first place. Littlefinger is also the one who set everything into motion and deliberately engineered the war, so if any one person should be blamed, it should be him. Also, Cersei shouldn't be blamed for atrocities that her father Tywin Lannister as well as Robb Stark decided to commit against the peasants because ultimately it's their decision. This is just like blaming Catelyn Stark for what Tywin did to the Riverlands. Catelyn arrested Tyrion which is what caused Tywin to attack the Riverlands, but she didn't intend for this to happen and ultimately, it's Tywin's decision to do all these atrocities against the Riverlands, not Catelyn's. Similarly, it's Tywin and Robb's decision to commit the atrocities they did, not Cersei's, and she shouldn't be blamed for what they do when she didn't intend to create a war in the first place and she has absolutely no control over Tywin's or Robb's decisions during the war.

Where in the books is it explicitly stated that Melara was killed by Cersei. Everyone uses this as "proof" for why Cersei is SO EVUL, but I am yet to see someone who can quote an exact passage where the text says she pushed her friend down the well and there is no other explanation for why a young girl could fall down an unsafe well in the middle of the night. Don't use fan theories like that as "proof". As for her killing children, yeah, that's one of the worst things Cersei has done, but killing children in the ASOIAF setting is hardly unique to her. Jaime, Sandor and Theon have all killed/attempted to kill children, and the fandom considers them redeemed and sympathetic anti-heroes, so what Cersei did is hardly unique to her.

I am not commenting Robb's decision to go to war. I am commenting his decision to have the Westerlands pillaged (which certainly killed a lot of innocent people, don't doubt that just because we don't have a POV character in the Westerlands who can describe the damage the Northmen did to the local population). He could go to war and just kill the enemy soldiers and not pillage the lands of his enemies where innocent people live who have nothing to do with Tyson's decisions during the war. And Cersei didn't want to kill Ned, in fact she offered him to go back to WF and forget about her and her children, but he refused and tried to arrest her and her family and give the throne to Stannis which undoubtedly would have led to Cersei and her children's execution. So, even in this instance, Cersei was acting out of self-preservation.

No, it's only ok when the murders are commited by characters you like. Which is why apparently it's ok when Robb Stark goes on a pillaging campaign in the Westerlands and kills way more innocent people than Cersei ever does. It's also ok when Tyrion arms a band of wildlings and specifically incites them to pillage the Vale with him thinking in delight about how the Vale is going to be reduced to ash which also kills way more people than Cersei ever does. It's also ok when Daenerys tortures little girls in front of their fathers and crucifies random 163 people without caring if they are actually innocent or guilty. But when Cersei kills someone who has raped her for years and who would have killed her and her entire family if he caught her cheating even though he himself also cheats on her and that's her only option to save her children, then that's the most evil and malicious act imaginable not only in the entire human history but also in the history of the whole cosmos. I completely agree with this and I don't think it's a double standard.

Probably, but I am not using the trope's definition specifically when measuring who is more evil. I just mentioned that both of them happen to be listed as Near Pure Evil, listed the a bad things they have done and mentioned the mitigating factors each of them has. This way, someone can decide for themselves who is more evil even if they are completely unfamiliar with the definition of the trope and they don't need to know the definition to make up their minds on who they think is more evil based on the information I wrote.

This is not TV Tropes, but Fandom Wiki. And it's perfectly appropriate to have it here because this is an ASOIAF forum and right now I am comparing two ASOIAF characters.

For those of you who don’t know, there are several wikis for villains. One of them is called Pure Evil wiki (which, in short, is about villains with no redeeming or sympathetic qualities), the second is called Near Pure Evil wiki (Which, in short, is about villains with almost no redeeming or sympathetic qualities but they still can’t qualify for the Pure Evil wiki for some reason. However, there are other cases where a villain can be Near Pure Evil even if they don't have any redeemable qualities like slightly lacking moral agency or slightly failing the heinous standard of the series because they don't go the extra mile in terms of crimes). There is also a third wiki called the Inconsistently Heinous wiki (which, in short, is about characters who have committed awful crimes, but they still have too many redeeming and sympathetic qualities and excuses for their actions to qualify as Pure Evil or Near Pure Evil). The name “Inconsistently Heinous” means that the characters are too inconsistent in their heinousness to be Near Pure Evil and they need to have many redeeming and sympathetic qualities and/or excuses for their actions. Often times Inconsistently Heinous characters can even be morally ambiguous heroes in the stories they are depicted, but they also do some bad things along the way. Tywin and Lo Bu from ASOIAF are both listed on the Near Pure Evil wiki which means they both come close to being Pure Evil but there are some minor things which prevent them from qualifying as Pure Evil. This is what both of these characters do: Tywin exterminated two noble Houses, the Reynes and the Tarbecks along with all their servants and peasants which is confirmed to include children and infants, forced his father's mistress to perform a Walk of Shame across Lannisport and then banished her with no clothes or money, pillaged King's Landing with his army after he had deceived Aerys to open the gates which results in many atrocities and murders against the citizens, ordered the murders Elia Martell and her two children, one of which is an infant while the other is a 4-year-old girl and Elia was raped by the Mountain before being killed, ordered a little girl to be gang-raped by an entire garrison of soldiers and even forced his own son Tyrion to participate in the rape, sent out several groups led by the the Mountain, Vargo Hoat and Amory Lorch to burn and pillage across the Riverlands which resulted in the destruction of numerous villages and the deaths of countless peasants with a lot of rape and torture commited by the raiders as well, hangs an innocent innkeeper just because Tyrion was kidnapped in her inn even though the woman had nothing to do with the kidnapping, is behind the Red Wedding which is considered to be a taboo and a violation of guest rights even in Westeros by promising protection to Walder Frey, Roose Bolton and the other participants and the Red Wedding kills thousands of people who accompany Robb Stark, punishes all the soldiers who fled during the Battle of Blackwater by having their knees broken with hammers, so they would be forced to beg on the streets for the rest of their lives and tries to have his own son Tyrion executed. Lo Bu is the Emperor of Yi Ti who tried to commit total genocide against the Jogos Nhai people, even the women and the children, and he started a campaign against them which successfully killed 1 million people and then planned to kill millions more people until all Jogos Nhai have been exterminated which gives him both an extremely high successful body count and an extremely high attempted body count. One of the reasons why Tywin can't qualify as Pure Evil is because he loves some members of his family like his father, his wife and his brother Kevan. The other thing which prevents him from qualifying as Pure Evil is his Freudian Excuse of having to watch his House being mocked by everyone because his father was indecisive, having to endure mockery from Aerys Targaryen while he served him and losing his wife in childbirth.However, his Freudian Excuse is not portrayed with too much sympathy by the text, thus, it's considered a minor prevention. The reason why Lo Bu can't qualify as Pure Evil is because the Jogos Nhai had been raiding Yi Ti for 2000 years and over the centuries had destroyed a dozen cities, a hundred towns and farms and fields beyond counting and had also taken many Yi Ti citizens into slavery and those raids had increased during the reign of Lo Bu's father. There isn't much information about Lo Bu, but from the way the text presents the situation, he wanted to protect his people from future raids and to avenge what was already done to them in the past which is why he decided to commit total genocide on the Jogos Nhai and, thus, he can't qualify as Pure Evil either. However, he goes too far with his actions when he tries to exterminate millions of people, most of whom didn't even participate in the raids against his kingdom and it's not portrayed with too much sympathy by the text, thus, it's considered a minor prevention. So, who would you say is more evil between these two Near Pure Evil ASOIAF characters? Tywin Lannister or Lo Bu?

Literally nearly every single character in these books is a murderer in some capacity. NEARLY. EVERY. SINGLE. CHARACTER. However, when a character you don't like does it, he/she is a monster because of it even if they have justifiable reasons, but when a character you like does it, he/she is not a "murderer". In the same book Daenerys literally burns a woman alive for daring to take revenge against the Dothraki who raided her town and raped and killed all of her neighbors. She later tortures two young girls in front of their father for information. Catelyn slices the throat of Jinglebell even though he is innocent and his death wouldn't accomplish anything at this point because Robb has been killed. Arya kills a person for fun and to practice her assassination skills during her exile. Robb Stark goes on a sacking campaign in the Westlands which kills way more people than Cersei ever does. I don't hate any of the aforementioned characters and I understand the circumstances behind their decisions, but I am sure you are going to come up with a defense for their actions while you think that Cersei killing the people who threaten the lives of her children makes her a monster. The reason for this is because you like all these other characters and you are more willing to defend them, but not Cersei. If you think that in the case of Cersei murder is never justified and she can't save the lives of her children by murdering people who endanger them, then that's fine, but you should extend the exact same scrutiny to all the other ASOIAF characters like the Starks or Daenerys and not overlook them because every single one of them has murdered people, sometimes even more than Cersei. And, yes, it's important to check your facts before claiming that Cersei has murdered someone because I can also claim that Daenerys is a serial torturer of kids and has had dozens of kids tortured simply because she has done it once, but I have no evidence to claim that, so you shouldn't make Cersei out to be worse than she is without evidence. And for the record, killing Lady is one of the least evil things anyone has ever done in these books because she is a direwolf, not a sentient human being.

Also, no, not a troll. Why is it acceptable to defend the male characters in the series who go around a murder people and do similar things to what Cersei has done, but somehow, it's not ok to defend Cersei when she does exactly the same things as the other characters from ASOIAF because she lives in a brutal world where murdering people is more "acceptable" than today.

I don't feel like writing a lot, so I will just answer a few points. It's not blaming the victim. It's just called multiple people having shared responsibility for the war. Just like in history, in ASOIAF when something bad happens, rarely only one side is at fault. Ned is just as much at fault for the War of the Five Kings as Cersei. The difference is that I have a lot more sympathy for Cersei than for Ned because Cersei literally didn't have any choice if she wanted to protect her family while Ned had a lot more privileges than Cersei and freedom of choice. But, for some reason, people place the whole blame for the war solely on Cersei, yet they completely ignore Littlefinger, Jaime and, yes, Ned. And yes, if someone engangers my own children in the same way Ned endangered Cersei's children, and my only other choice is for me to wait my family to be killed, I would kill him. And Cersei didn't even kill Ned. She was actually planning to send him to the Wall. Joffrey was the one who ordered Ned's execution. Smoking weed and cheating on someone who rapes and abuses you are not even remotely the same thing and the latter is not even a crime by today's standards, so your comparison is completely invalid. Not to mention your life wouldn't be in danger for smoking weed in the first place. Also, I like how everyone is hellbent on pointing out the bad things Cersei did, but no one points out the wrongdoings for the rest of the characters. Nearly every character in ASOIAF has done bad things and has murdered people. Yet, Cersei is the only one who gets labeled as "evil" even though she has a far better excuse than most of the other characters in the series. And no, she doesn't even commit "tons of murder". She kills and tortures a relatively small number of people which is small potatoes considering she literally has control over millions of subjects and there are tons of characters who have killed way more than her (some of which are liked by fans by the way. She is not "good" by any means, but she is not even remotely close to characters like Ramsay, Gregor, Rorge or Euron. I don't think we have any proof she actually ordered Mycah's death. Can you provide evidence?

You could also argue that Ned's actions led to war. Because if he had just accepted Cersei's offer to return to Winterfell and forget about the fact her children are not from Robert instead of trying to arrest her and her kids, none of this would have happened. Ned doesn't care about the well-being of the kingdom or its people in this instance. He just cares about his own "sense of honor" which doesn't allow him accept someone who is not the legitimate heir as the next King of the Seven Kingdoms... even though he supported Robert Baratheon's claim to the throne just because Robert is his friend. So, Ned's "sense of honor" is very flexible and he is willing to support his friend as the King of the Seven Kingdoms even though his friend also has absolutely no claim to the throne, but he is not willing to overlook that Cersei's children are not legitimate even though this could have saved thousands of lives. So, Ned is just helping his friend on both occasions and doesn't actually do it out of sense of honor even if he tells himself that he does. Ned didn't really give her much of a choice because if she had fled the city, she and her kids would have been hunted down by assassins for the rest of their lives, so the safest option was for her to remain and kill Robert and Ned. She absolutely did it to protect herself and her kids from getting killed and it was also partially motivated by a reaction to the rape. Also, about her "covering up her crimes", if you are talking about her cheating on Robert... yeah, I don't consider this to be a crime at all. She was also forced to lie about the parentage of her kids considering how otherwise Robert would have killed and I don't blame her for that, at all, and can be excused. Also, most of the crimes she commits in book 4 aren't motivated by a desire for more power. She wants to prevent Maggy's prophecy from coming true to save herself and her kids which is a very sympathetic reason for why someone would do bad things and many people might even do the same things as her if they were in her shoes. Also, I would like to point out that Cersei was actually trying to prevent the war from happening by making this offer to Ned, but Ned is the one who is insitent on going after her

During the whole ordeal when Margaery is imprisoned, Cersei pretends to think that Margaery is innocent and acts like that in front of the High Sparrow. So, she is not pushing for the death penalty herself and pretends to believe in Margaery's innocence because she doesn't want to anger the Tyrells, but she clearly expects Margaery to receive it nonetheless.

Ok, I found the fourth book in a Bulgarian online site for books. I am not sure if the text is exactly the same as the original English version because right now I am translating from Bulgarian to English, but the meaning should at least be the same. This is coming from Cersei's POV: The little queen has appetites that Tommen is still too young to satisfy. "That was always the danger when a grown woman married a child." “More so a widow. She can claim that Renly didn't touch her, but I won't believe her.' Women drank moon tea for one reason only; the virgins had no need of it at all. "They cheated on my son." Margery has a lover. This is high treason, punishable by death. "If only that shriveled witch, Mace Tyrell's mother, lived to see the trial." In her insistence that Tommen and Margaery marry, Lady Olenna had given her precious rose to the executioner's sword. Jaime led Ser Illyn Payne away. Guess I'll have to find a new King's Justice to snap her head off. Cersei specifically says that Margaery having a lover and cheating on Tommen is high treason, punishable by death.

No, it was because Cersei thinks Margaery is the younger and more beautiful Queen from the prophecy and Cersei believes if she dies, the prophecy won't come true. I specifically recall how in her own thoughts (or it might have been in a conversation with Taenna) Cersei mentions how they would need to find someone to replace Illyn Payne (because at the time he is traveling with Jaime) to behead Margaery. If they kill Tywin and place someone else in his place, they would no longer need to pay up their debts. Varus doesn't really have much interest to protect Cersei and her kids.

Right now I don't have the books with me but the whole reason why Cersei was trying to prove that Margaery was cheating on Tommen (which is why she tortured the Blue Bard for example) was because she was trying to get Margaery executed to prevent Maggy's prophecy from coming true. Tywin rules just the Westlands and if rebels, everyone would unite against him, so there is not that much he could do when he is not in KL. Because in this case it would ruin his reputation and image that his Queen has been cheating on him for 10+ years and has fled with her children and has left him with no heirs, so he would seek to make an example out of her wherever she runs. So, she is not really "offered a way out".

Margaery would have been executed for just cheating on Tommen in the fourth book, so all your arguments about how Cersei wouldn't be executed just for cheating are completely invalid. Where do you even get your information that she wouldn't be executed for cheating on Robert? I just provided evidence about how Margaery in the fourth book would in fact be executed if it is decided that she cheated on Tommen which proves that these are the laws that apply to women in Westeros, so now it's your turn to find some evidence from the text which proves that Cersei wouldn't be executed for cheating on Robert. I am waiting. Cersei didn't accept Ned's offer because if she did, Robert would send assassins after her and with Varys' spy network, she would be caught and killed. Her only option was to stay in KL and deal with Robert and Ned. Tywin is forcing her to marry Robert whether she likes it or not. Her story is sad and tragic and part of it is literally because she can't be with the man she loves and she is stuck with someone she doesn't love.

So, you are fine with a woman being executed for cheating on a man who constantly rapes her and also cheats on her even if she only does it to escape the misery of her abusive marriage and even though she only pretends that her children belond to her husband and not to her lover because she is afraid about what her husband would do to her and her children if he finds out about her affair to escape her abusive marriage? Also, you are fine with her husband who also cheats on her and even rapes her repeatedly to get off scott free with his rapes simply because the sexist society he lives in doesn't hold him to the same standard as his wife?

The comparison is not insulting because both the laws of Nazi Germany and of the Seven Kingdoms prosecute different types of people. While in Westeros women are not systematically sent to camps to be exterminated, they are still treated as a property to their men and they wcan get abused and their men can even execute them if they cheat on them while there wouldn't be any consequences if a man cheats on his wife. Both laws are discriminatory and no one should listen to them.

The only reason why she is even forced to hide the parentage of her children is because she lives in an extremely sexist society where if she reveals that she has an affair with anyone but her husband she would be excuted which IS sexist. Stop pretending that she wouldn't have been executed even if she was just cheating and stop pretending like she had any other choice to cover her affair and save the lives of her family aother than pretending Jaime's kids are Robert's. Westerosi laws are sexist and discriminatory. Also, nobody would even care about the incest as the things they want to execute Cersei for have nothing to do with the fact her lover is her brother. This is like saying a Jewish war prisoner of Nazi Germany is not allowed to try an escape from their camps and kill guards because it would be a crime according to the laws of Nazi Germany and should just wait for them to gas him and his whole family because this way he would be abiding to the laws of the country he lives in, no matter if said laws violate the human rights or not. Similarly, Westerosi laws violate Cersei's rights and she has the moral right to rebel against them and kill those who enforce them.

I even made a topic here: