Why is Cersei different?

[Night's Princess]

This is interesting and seems on mark.

And yet for reasons I can't explain,

I struggle with forgiving Sansa, while finding delight in

Cersei's over the top bitchiness.

This is because Cersei is at least fun to read. For example:

"No, septa." But someday I will have your eyes removed with a hot poker, and that will be hilarious.

Some of her stuff is just hilariously cruel and or crazy. I love her chapters and sort of hate Sansa's.

[Dofs]

Honestly, too much fits to call her a sociopath. Even GRRM himself told about that in interview. And people are born sociopaths. I don't imagine what kind of monsters Cersei's mentors have to be to raise a person such as Cersei. And other women like Joanna and Genna that were raised in CR seem to be perfectly fine so why would Cersei be so different? Did Tywin specifically hire the worst possible mentor for Cersei in Westeros or what? While how Cersei was raised without a doubt played it's role, I seriously doubt that she would be any better by being raised somewhere else. Sometimes nature does play its part and sometimes people are just bad. Especially when they are born sociopaths with inherent lack of any empathy.

[BitsOfBrains]

I think beginning of story Jamie was as bad if not worse than Cersei.

The only reason Jaime isn't a complete piece of shit anymore is because he can't physical cash the checks his mouth still wants to write.

The only reason Tyrion wasn't as big of a piece of shit is because he never could physically back up any tough talk he wanted to issue.

All Lanisters are as much of a piece of shit as they possibly can be at any given time. It just so happens that Cersei has the greatest ability to be a piece of shit at the moment. Joffrey used to have the greatest capacity for shitdom but he overdid it and one of the checks and balances took care of him.

You see Joffrey over drafted his piece of shit account, and got foreclosed on.

Same thin happened to Cersei. She over reached in the piece of shit department and now has to rebuild her piece of shit account from the bottom up, but she will get there.

Once Jaime learns to fight left handed his level of shitbaggery will again rise.

[Kaminsod]

She's a complete sociopath who is unable to care about anything other then herself, including her own children, it's just that simple.

I think beginning of story Jamie was as bad if not worse than Cersei.

The only reason Jaime isn't a complete piece of shit anymore is because he can't physical cash the checks his mouth still wants to write.

The only reason Tyrion wasn't as big of a piece of shit is because he never could physically back up any tough talk he wanted to issue.

All Lanisters are as much of a piece of shit as they possibly can be at any given time. It just so happens that Cersei has the greatest ability to be a piece of shit at the moment. Joffrey used to have the greatest capacity for shitdom but he overdid it and one of the checks and balances took care of him.

You see Joffrey over drafted his piece of shit account, and got foreclosed on.

Same thin happened to Cersei. She over reached in the piece of shit department and now has to rebuild her piece of shit account from the bottom up, but she will get there.

Once Jaime learns to fight left handed his level of shitbaggery will again rise.

This man speaks the truth.

[Dofs]

I think beginning of story Jamie was as bad if not worse than Cersei.

The only reason Jaime isn't a complete piece of shit anymore is because he can't physical cash the checks his mouth still wants to write.

The only reason Tyrion wasn't as big of a piece of shit is because he never could physically back up any tough talk he wanted to issue.

All Lanisters are as much of a piece of shit as they possibly can be at any given time. It just so happens that Cersei has the greatest ability to be a piece of shit at the moment. Joffrey used to have the greatest capacity for shitdom but he overdid it and one of the checks and balances took care of him.

You see Joffrey over drafted his piece of shit account, and got foreclosed on.

Same thin happened to Cersei. She over reached in the piece of shit department and now has to rebuild her piece of shit account from the bottom up, but she will get there.

Once Jaime learns to fight left handed his level of shitbaggery will again rise.

Ha, ha, that's hilarious. :drunk: :bs:

[DireWolfSpirit]

This is because Cersei is at least fun to read. For example:

"No, septa." But someday I will have your eyes removed with a hot poker, and that will be hilarious.

Some of her stuff is just hilariously cruel and or crazy. I love her chapters and sort of hate Sansa's.

So true,

and it's so over the top I don't get upset like I would with say Joff.

Instead the more outrageous she is . the more I'm chuckling.

If anything I have to admit Cersei is at least consistant.

[Dofs]

So true,

and it's so over the top I don't get upset like I would with say Joff.

Instead the more outrageous she is . the more I'm chuckling.

If anything I have to admit Cersei is at least consistant.

Cersei is a great source of black comedy. Her and Victarion. :)

[BitsOfBrains]

Cersei is a great source of black comedy. Her and Victarion. :)

I agree.

Like when Cersei sends her friend Falise (?) Stokeworth off with Qyburn she doesn't feel at all guilty. Only a vague icky feeling she quickly shuffles off her mind.

[Warrewal Halfaxe]

She has the taint.

Hue hue.

Cuz she's a woman. :

[Valyrian Fork]

Honestly, too much fits to call her a sociopath. Even GRRM himself told about that in interview. And people are born sociopaths. I don't imagine what kind of monsters Cersei's mentors have to be to raise a person such as Cersei. And other women like Joanna and Genna that were raised in CR seem to be perfectly fine so why would Cersei be so different? Did Tywin specifically hire the worst possible mentor for Cersei in Westeros or what? While how Cersei was raised without a doubt played it's role, I seriously doubt that she would be any better by being raised somewhere else. Sometimes nature does play its part and sometimes people are just bad. Especially when they are born sociopaths with inherent lack of any empathy.

He didn't hire the worst possible mentor for her, but he certainly fucked around with her by all the Secret-Betrothal-to-Rhaegar shit, and remember: Genna and Joanna were both raised by different people, including one assumes their own mothers, and Cersei wasn't. She was raised to think she was better than everyone else who wasn't a Lannister, but without a mother she had to defer to and show respect. Only Tywin and Jaime would be people she saw herself as truly equal to and needing to respect once Joanna died. Maybe Gerion and Kevan, on some level, but seemingly not. For most of Cersei's life, she was the highest-ranking woman in every situation she'd ever encounter, and what Tywin was secretly teaching her is: you are better than everyone, eventually you will be Queen, you will be the highest ranking woman in Westeros and in fact even most men will be beneath you. Hell, unlike Margaery, there wasn't even an old granny or anything she'd have to show respect towards. Actually, Margaery is a really interesting contrast because she's surrounded all the time by women, both higher and lower-ranking than she is, where Cersei has none of that. Margaery has her gran and her mother, so those are women above her, but she also has women of similar and lower rank who she's somewhat beholden towards as well, and it's teaching her the value of co-operation and mutual respect and solidarity. So just there, we can kind of see how Cersei just doesn't have the same kind of social situations as other women of her rank. In her flashback, we see how contemptuously she thinks of the girls she goes to Maggy the Frog's tent with, and she's clearly not particularly respectful of Genna either. She was basically raised like Joff was, in essence, just in a somewhat smaller context.

Jaime, on the other hand, is raised as a boy and an heir, in a military context. He's a page, then he becomes a squire, and that teaches humility. Plus, unlike Joffrey, he didn't just want people to tell him he was a great fighter and have other people do the dirty work, Jaime really wanted to be a great warrior and that requires a lot of hard work and effort which is its own teacher of humility. It runs all through his chapters; he has a lot of respect for other men who are not Tywin as long as they're competent, because he was able to serve with very good ones like Arthur Dayne, Gerold Hightower, Barristan, and so on. In a sense, Aerys really did "take him" from Tywin, because as strong as Tywin's influence was, Jaime was put in a position where he had to confront how he wasn't god's gift, how there were people better and more experienced than him. I think that time he spent fighting the Kingswood Brotherhood with Arthur Dayne is probably more responsible for the Jaime we see in AFFC than anything else, because serving with Arthur Dayne taught him respect.

Tyrion's interesting, because the empathy and consideration we see him show in the first books seems like it was won the hard way and like being an object of scorn and mistreatment has taught him how much it sucks and how to be nice to others, but then at the same time, because Tywin wouldn't let him become a Maester or do much of anything productive, he lived kind of an entitled and parasitic existence and it starts to show through as he gets power as Hand and wrestles with his desire to be respected and well-regarded and recognized.

So by the time Tyrion's climbing up to the Hand's Tower to kill Tyrion after Jaime lets him go, they're at this crossroads where Tyrion is really losing most of his empathy and growing in entitlement, and Jaime's coming back to his own empathy and reconnecting with a source of humility and service that he'd lost touch with.

[Valyrian Fork]

This is because Cersei is at least fun to read. For example:

"No, septa." But someday I will have your eyes removed with a hot poker, and that will be hilarious.

Some of her stuff is just hilariously cruel and or crazy. I love her chapters and sort of hate Sansa's.

Yeah, Sansa's just fucking insipid, especially in AGoT and ACoK. She gets a bit better by Storm but I think GRRM just straight up wrote her too stupid to begin with and took way too long to start to correct that. Part of the sharpest contrasts between Sansa and Arya to me is that Arya's just very clearly smarter, probably the smartest Stark kid overall and Sansa might be the dumbest, certainly the dumbest of the four we get POVs on. Hell, AGoT Sansa is up there with the stupider characters across the whole books, like Aeron and Victarion.

[LordStoneheart]

Yeah, Sansa's just fucking insipid, especially in AGoT and ACoK. She gets a bit better by Storm but I think GRRM just straight up wrote her too stupid to begin with and took way too long to start to correct that. Part of the sharpest contrasts between Sansa and Arya to me is that Arya's just very clearly smarter, probably the smartest Stark kid overall and Sansa might be the dumbest, certainly the dumbest of the four we get POVs on. Hell, AGoT Sansa is up there with the stupider characters across the whole books, like Aeron and Victarion.

Wrong. He wrote her as observant yet naive. From her first chapter we see her intelligence, and we see her idealistic view on the world. That does not equal stupidity.

[JonisHenryTudor]

Some people are arseholes?

That pretty much sums it up.

Why did Joff turn out to be a twat while Tommen and Myrcella seem to be genuine people? Some people are just asses.

[abandonship]

I think beginning of story Jamie was as bad if not worse than Cersei.

The only reason Jaime isn't a complete piece of shit anymore is because he can't physical cash the checks his mouth still wants to write.

The only reason Tyrion wasn't as big of a piece of shit is because he never could physically back up any tough talk he wanted to issue.

All Lanisters are as much of a piece of shit as they possibly can be at any given time. It just so happens that Cersei has the greatest ability to be a piece of shit at the moment. Joffrey used to have the greatest capacity for shitdom but he overdid it and one of the checks and balances took care of him.

You see Joffrey over drafted his piece of shit account, and got foreclosed on.

Same thin happened to Cersei. She over reached in the piece of shit department and now has to rebuild her piece of shit account from the bottom up, but she will get there.

Once Jaime learns to fight left handed his level of shitbaggery will again rise.

I somewhat agree with this.

[SeanF]

More than Tyrion and Jaime, there's something wrong with Cersei; not just morally wrong, but wrong in the way she sees the world, and reacts to others. I think we're being shown how the world looked to Aerys II. For Cersei, the world around her is terrifying; everyone is out to get her; she can rely on the loyalty of nobody; only threats and bribes can keep people in line; and she has to get her retaliation in first.

As mentioned above, her story is blackly funny. My favourite example is when she's praying to the Mother to stop her from having nightmares about the man she tortured.

[JonisHenryTudor]

Tyrion has Tywin's wits, Jaime has Tywin's strength, and Cersei has his coldness.

Soon in more ways than 1.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Black humor that's it. Perfect descriptor.

http://www.swtorstrategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/3.jpg

[dsug]

Some people are just born sociopaths. Some people are just born arrogant. Some people jut happen to be born privileged assholes. If those three were a pie chart, Cersei would fall on the small section where all three overlap.

[IdoTheChoombi]

Same reason joffrey is a sociopath while tommen and myrcella are absolutely adorable, she was born that way.

[A Highborn Maid]

Because she's a woman maybe?

If Cersei were a man, she would receive a tenth of the hatred she gets. Most people on the anti-Cersei bandwagon are men themselves. Sad in this day and age.

Tyrion is a misogynistic rapist. Jamie is a child murderer. How is Cersei worth less than them? A lot of her cruelty comes from paranoia and vindictiveness (that's partly justified by Joffrey's murder). She lives in a cutthroat world and acts accordingly, just like many of the other characters. Her father has a similar outlook.

She also has a lot of guts, which people never seem to give her credit for instead lambasting her as 'arrogant.' How dare a woman be authoritative?!