Book precedent for Cersei claiming Queenship

[Luna Longmoon]

 While on a much smaller scale than The Iron Throne, both Lady Dustin and Lady Hornwood are holding seats as childless widows with no blood claim.  Especially Lady Hornwood who keeps title and keep even after remarrying. And then the new husband claims everything when she dies on the basis that she named him heir.  In universe, the biggest protest was vows said at swordpoint are not valid not that she couldn't name an heir that didn't have a blood claim. So there is precedent for Cersei claiming the throne when her husband and children die.

[longest night]

Neither of those are royal seats. A lady who marries a lord takes the lord's surname, and thus marries into his house. A lady that marries a king keeps her own surname and has no claims to the king's house.

[BlackLightning]

3 hours ago, GOLDENSTORMWOLF said:

 While on a much smaller scale than The Iron Throne, both Lady Dustin and Lady Hornwood are holding seats as childless widows with no blood claim.  Especially Lady Hornwood who keeps title and keep even after remarrying. And then the new husband claims everything when she dies on the basis that she named him heir.  In universe, the biggest protest was vows said at swordpoint are not valid not that she couldn't name an heir that didn't have a blood claim. So there is precedent for Cersei claiming the throne when her husband and children die.

@longest night is right

Also, you have to remember that neither Lady Dustin nor Lady Hornwood have the rap sheet Cersei Lannister does. Lady Dustin and Lady Hornwood are also smart enough not to destroy their relationship with their peers, superiors and vassals...and they sure didn't try to go out of their way to destroy their relationships with family members.

Need I also mention that Lady Dustin and Lady Hornwood are pretty popular and well-liked?

[Daemon The Black Dragon]

There's no book precedent for Cersei claiming the IT in the show. With the show deciding not to have a key player show up, they needed someone for Dany to go up against when she first arrived in Westero and that's Cersei in the show.

[Ser Uncle P]

Basically TV Cersei is claiming the IT by "right of conquest"...having blown up all other players in Kings Landing. I think something similar might happen in future books  

When I first read the Dance of the Dragons, I thought of the Maggy the Frog's prophecy.  Rhaenyra clinging to power while many of her children died.  Cersei's arc might be similar. 

But I can't see book Cersei still in power as long as she has held it in the show. 

[nyser1]

No.

[MinscS2]

6 hours ago, Ser Uncle P said:

Basically TV Cersei is claiming the IT by "right of conquest"...having blown up all other players in Kings Landing. I think something similar might happen in future books 

This.
Which makes all the recent talk about line of succession and "true heir" weird.

It doesn't matter if Jon or Daenerys got the better claim to the IT, Cersei won't abdicate just because they ask nicely.
A modicum of force is required to dethrone her (assuming she doesn't die from other causes), at which point whoever did it, regardless if it's Daenerys or Jon, will claim the right to rule via conquest.

The whole line-of-succession-talk in Winterfell is the very definition of fake tension.

 

[bloodsteel bitterraven]

I think Cersei will sit on the throne in the books too (if the books ever come out).  In the letter George had sent to his publisher back in the early '90s, Jaime kills everyone who is ahead of him in the line of succession and claims the throne, while blaming Tyrion for all the murders.  Cersei didn't exist in that first draft, so my guess is that when he created the Cersei character, he gave her many of the characteristics (and plotlines) he was initially planning to give to Jaime.

I believe however that it will play out much differently in the book, and there will be a decent explanation for how Cersei ends up sitting on the throne. 

[Lord Varys]

Lady Hornwood and Lady Dustin are precedents for a widow having a claim - and making good of it - to the seat of her lord husband.

But there is no precedent for this in relation to the Iron Throne. However, it is imaginable that a queen consort, being literally the last person of a dying dynasty left standing might take things in her own hands, too. Not very likely, though, because the very thought of female rule is anathema in Westeros, especially on the royal level. The men around such a woman would all have to be lobotomized morons to allow her to go through with this.

Thus insofar as the books are concerned Cersei should never be able to do such a thing - for one, because she knows she can't. She was Queen Regent in AFfC, effectively ruling the Seven Kingdoms, but she neither dared nor even tried to mount the Iron Throne herself or name a woman (Taena) to her Small Council. Even if Cersei wasn't as abhorred and loathed as she is she could never hope to officially seize power in KL because the men around her would never suffer that. Even if she blew up all of KL, the people around her would not have that.

The show never gives any explanation for this thing, and it really can't, since the status of women was even more worse in the show than it ever was in the books - after all, we hear early on that women cannot hope to sit the Iron Throne (i.e. Mordane explaining Sansa that Tommen would succeed Joffrey if she were to give him only daughters).

There is no 'right of conquest' there, since Cersei is neither a person with an army nor conquering anything. The king just kills himself, and then she takes the throne. There is no explanation for this, no legal or other explanation whatsoever.

Which is completely nonsensical because nobody should follow Cersei Lannister in this. Men should abandon her by the thousands simply because of the unnatural fact that she as a woman presumes to rule over men. But also because the Lannisters are not exactly popular. That should be worse in the books due to the fact that people there would actually remember her walk, the crimes she stands accused of, the rumors (and eventually publicly acknowledged fact of the twincest), the Lannister sack of KL at the end of the Rebellion, etc.

Cersei likely will continue to be a power in the books, but she never going to sit on the Iron Throne as queen regnant. She might eventually return to KL - after she flees from the Tyrells and Aegon - as queen consort to sit at Euron's side, and perhaps they even end up ruling jointly, but in her own right Cersei should never claim the Iron Throne.