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Cersei's Ladies in Waiting?


Heavenly

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THIS! This has always driven me nuts.  Cersei should have had a retinue of all the daughters of the Lannister vassals and such attending her the whole time.  It's one of the things that  GRRM didn't devote much thought to until later - when Margaery shows up, she has a large train of ladies in waiting and Cerai basically poaches Lady Merryweather from her.

 

 

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20 hours ago, Daena the Defiant said:

THIS! This has always driven me nuts.  Cersei should have had a retinue of all the daughters of the Lannister vassals and such attending her the whole time.  It's one of the things that  GRRM didn't devote much thought to until later - when Margaery shows up, she has a large train of ladies in waiting and Cerai basically poaches Lady Merryweather from her.

 

 

My guess is that there's a high turnover rate; Cersei doesn't seem like an ideal employer. Then there's whether or not they get killed for seeing Cersei and Jaime... together.

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12 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

My guess is that there's a high turnover rate; Cersei doesn't seem like an ideal employer. Then there's whether or not they get killed for seeing Cersei and Jaime... together.

I agree.  Being Lady in Waiting to Cersei is not an honour anyone wants, as Senelle might testify, had she not been tortured to death.

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Add to all of the above Cersei's vanity.  While from her POV chapters she hasn't admitted to herself yet that her age is catching up to her and her looks are fading, I would suspect that she would find excuses to minimize the number of younger, attractive females in her orbit.

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On 11/14/2022 at 1:57 AM, Daena the Defiant said:

THIS! This has always driven me nuts.  Cersei should have had a retinue of all the daughters of the Lannister vassals and such attending her the whole time.  It's one of the things that  GRRM didn't devote much thought to until later - when Margaery shows up, she has a large train of ladies in waiting and Cerai basically poaches Lady Merryweather from her.

 

 

Selyse should have -and she actually has- a host of them as well but we never get to see them in detail.

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Queen Selyse descended upon Castle Black with her daughter and her daughter's fool, her serving girls and lady companions, and a retinue of knights, sworn swords, and men-at-arms fifty strong. Queen's men all, Jon Snow knew. They may attend Selyse, but it is Melisandre they serve. The red priestess had warned him of their coming almost a day before the raven arrived from Eastwatch with the same message.

 

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On 11/15/2022 at 8:27 AM, Fencer said:

Add to all of the above Cersei's vanity.  While from her POV chapters she hasn't admitted to herself yet that her age is catching up to her and her looks are fading, I would suspect that she would find excuses to minimize the number of younger, attractive females in her orbit.

This is a valid point, but still, a train of ladies and minstrels and such is a trapping of power and status and Cersei certainly doesn't stint herself.  

It's also shrewd politics and something I'm surprised Tywin didn't press on her. You can bestow favors on your favored vassals by taking their eligible daughters and making them ladies in waiting so they can network and be seen at court and potentially make advantageous matches. On the flip side, and this something much more in line with Tywin's ruthlessness, it also makes them hostages to compel loyalty - which actually see in ADWD when Jaime collects a son and a daughter from the Brackens and Blackwoods (I forget which one produced which) - he gets to be a squire and she gets to be a lady attendant to the queen as an "honor" but they're hostages. 

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4 hours ago, Daena the Defiant said:

This is a valid point, but still, a train of ladies and minstrels and such is a trapping of power and status and Cersei certainly doesn't stint herself.  

It's also shrewd politics and something I'm surprised Tywin didn't press on her. You can bestow favors on your favored vassals by taking their eligible daughters and making them ladies in waiting so they can network and be seen at court and potentially make advantageous matches. On the flip side, and this something much more in line with Tywin's ruthlessness, it also makes them hostages to compel loyalty - which actually see in ADWD when Jaime collects a son and a daughter from the Brackens and Blackwoods (I forget which one produced which) - he gets to be a squire and she gets to be a lady attendant to the queen as an "honor" but they're hostages. 

Maybe the fact that they'd be hostages puts people off. Think of Sansa getting beaten by Joffrey.

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17 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

Maybe the fact that they'd be hostages puts people off. Think of Sansa getting beaten by Joffrey.

That's a good point - Tywin's reputation for brutality was "baked into the cake" when Cersei became queen - it's possible that the Westermen were wary of giving over the daughters and sisters knowing what House Lannister is capable of.

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The reason is quite simple.

Cersei has developed misogynistic behavior since she was a child. She killed Melara, a 10-year-old girl and her companion, because she liked Jaime whom Cersei saw as her property and thought all the girls who came after Melara were snakes trying to separate her from Jaime. And none of them lasted long, which proves that even if their company was initially forced on her, Cersei could still do without them. And in the future, as queen, she would have much more autonomy for that since Robert didn't give a shit about her.

And since Robert was a womanizer, he was quite likely to sleep with one of his wife's ladies-in-waiting, which would be a further source of humiliation for Cersei. See Rhaella.

Furthermore, Cersei hates women and hates being a woman, because it takes her away from the power she wants so badly. Her thinking has never been that the ruling patriarchal system in Westeros is unfair. On the contrary, she accepted it and sees women as inferior beings, her hurt is being born on the wrong side because she thinks she's too smart and capable to be a woman. Even though she seems to enjoy Taena's company, she thinks of her as a whore for having premarital sex and plans to gather information about her lover to use against Taena in the future. She sexually abuses her. Cersei doesn't want women company and may reject it.

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