A nice post I found on Tumblr which elaborates on the Madonna/whore complex the fandom has regarding Jaime and Cersei's relationship.

[boltons are sick]

I found a nice post on Tumblr which critisizes the Madonna/whore the fandom has regarding Jaime and Cersei's relationship, how they blame Cersei for all the bad things Jaime does, how the fandom thinks Jaime deserves so much sympathy while having none for Cersei even though she has suffered much more than Jaime, etc.

You can read that post here

I will also copy and paste the post here:

Quote

Jaime/Cersei isn’t a well liked ship, not because it’s toxic to both Cersei and Jaime but because people think Jaime could do better. Jaime Lannister is not a good person at all but he got his POV chapters before Cersei and they made him sympathetic. The problem is that people latched onto his character and then they essentially erased his flaws and blamed his mistakes on Cersei. They decided he’s on a redemption arc and the only way to close it is to sever ties with Cersei completely (usually by murdering her). Cersei is seen as basically the devil on his shoulder so Jaime apparently needs an angel on his other shoulder to counter her influence and because he and Cersei are romantic partners, the angel is going to be another woman who he falls in love with.

 

Madonna-whore complex is basically good woman versus bad woman. The good woman is a virgin, innocent, flawless (sometimes in canon, sometimes only in fanon), a healer, patient, morally upright, etc. She’s there to fix Jaime, make him a better person heaven forbid he does it himself. She has some mild negative traits but is otherwise accommodating to all of Jaime’s needs after initially giving him a hard time to get him to shape up. Most importantly she’s understanding of all the terrible things Jaime did because it’s not really his fault is it? All these traits are meant to contrast Cersei’s canon characteristics and make the good woman come out looking perfect. This applies heavily to Brienne who is a virgin, a good person, to some level of flawless (bad things happen to Brienne but they’re never self inflicted). Brienne fans like to credit her for Jaime’s ‘redemption’ arc even though it doesn’t exist (it’s an identity arc y’all). She’s essentially the angel on his shoulder. She’s not the only female character that they put in this category. There’s Sansa, Lyanna, Catelyn, etc.

 

Cersei on the other hand is seen as an especially promiscuous woman for sleeping with multiple men (a handful, nothing like Robert or Tyrion). She’s very flawed, cruel, vindictive, impatient and unwilling to essentially roll the carpet out for Jaime every time he does the bare minimum. On top of her canon nastiness,  Cersei’s the reason Jaime does terrible things apparently as if he wasn’t an adult capable of making his own decisions. Even situations like Jaime trying to kill Bran, which he did on his own accord, the blame rarely given to Jaime and when it is people expect Bran will forgive him because Jaime’s a good guy, he’s no longer with Cersei! Every mistake Jaime ever made is laid on her feet, each and every mistake. I’ve seen people blaming her for the whole ‘let’s trebuchet a baby.’ 

 

There’s rarely any understanding for Cersei’s actions which are often fueled by trauma and mental illness. She’s blamed for all the toxicity of the relationship. In fact whenever Jaime has a harsh or violent thought towards Cersei, it’s celebrated but if Cersei sees Jaime as a liability because he doesn’t believe her assertions that they are surrounded by enemies, she’s called abusive. Only Jaime is allowed to be dissatisfied with his partner and only Jaime is allowed to abandon his partner. Before Cersei was made to go through the horrific Walk of Shame, she begged Jaime for help and he burnt the letter. If it was the other way around, if Jaime was caught by Brynden Tully and he begged Cersei for help and she refused to help him, she’d be crucified even more than she is now.

 

I’m not saying Cersei’s a good person, I’m saying neither is Jaime. They have a very unhealthy codependent relationship where they hurt each other. Demonising Cersei and declaring she’s not good enough for Jaime but Brienne or Sansa both are is sexist for several reasons. It’s not upto women to fix men, being a virgin does not mean you’re a good person, men have responsibility for their actions, redemption arcs that end with the murder of woman are misogynistic and support domestic abuse. We have an interesting dynamic between two interesting characters but you’d rather villainise one to an extreme and make the other a saint. The fact is people are far more comfortable supporting the madonna-whore complex because otherwise they would have to deal with the fact that they’re shipping good people with someone who’s basically a villain.

Do you agree with this post or not?

Edited November 16, 2023 by boltons are sick

[Lee-Sensei]

Jaime being faithful to Cersei does make him better in the relationship in at least one way, but that's not the only thing. Not that it matters. Jaime slept with a married woman and got cheated on himself. It seems like typical GRRM karma. Cersei also admits to constantly lying to him. They aren't really equal.

[Aejohn the Conqueroo]

We all have a complex?

[Dofs]

I'll go point by point with this, since there are things I agree and disagree with:

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

Jaime/Cersei isn’t a well liked ship, not because it’s toxic to both Cersei and Jaime but because people think Jaime could do better.

He absolutely could.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

Jaime Lannister is not a good person at all but he got his POV chapters before Cersei and they made him sympathetic. The problem is that people latched onto his character and then they essentially erased his flaws

This is an extremely generic and vague way to describe anyone. "Not a good person" or "having flaws" means nothing without context and specifics. Whether Jaime is a "good person" or "not a good person" doesn't say anything about whether he is "too good" for Cersei or not.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

blamed his mistakes on Cersei

That I agree with, I do think people blame his mistakes and flaws on Cersei a bit too much.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

They decided he’s on a redemption arc

He is on a redemption arc though. Literally confirmed by Martin himself, if it wasn't obvious already.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

the only way to close it is to sever ties with Cersei completely (usually by murdering her).

While I agree that severing ties with Cersei doesn't complete Jaime's redemption arc, it should definitely be a part of it.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

Cersei is seen as basically the devil on his shoulder so Jaime apparently needs an angel on his other shoulder to counter her influence and because he and Cersei are romantic partners, the angel is going to be another woman who he falls in love with.

Cersei absolutely did have a huge influence on Jaime, comparing her to a devil on Jaime's shoulder isn't that far off. That said, Jaime definitely doesn't need an angel on his other shoulder and Jaime's redemption arc isn't about whom he listens to, Cersei the devil or Brienne the angel. A lot of people definitely do tie Jaime's arc to him choosing Brienne over Cersei, but the thing is, in the meat of his arc in aSoS Cersei wasn't relevant at all. Jaime's arc is about honour and his place in the world, not about what romantic partner he chooses.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

Madonna-whore complex is basically good woman versus bad woman. The good woman is a virgin, innocent, flawless (sometimes in canon, sometimes only in fanon), a healer, patient, morally upright, etc. She’s there to fix Jaime, make him a better person heaven forbid he does it himself. She has some mild negative traits but is otherwise accommodating to all of Jaime’s needs after initially giving him a hard time to get him to shape up. Most importantly she’s understanding of all the terrible things Jaime did because it’s not really his fault is it? All these traits are meant to contrast Cersei’s canon characteristics and make the good woman come out looking perfect. This applies heavily to Brienne who is a virgin, a good person, to some level of flawless (bad things happen to Brienne but they’re never self inflicted). 

Brienne is definitely a contrast to Cersei. She is a sort of a polar opposite to her. But I definitely dislike this idea that Brienne is there to fix Jaime. Not because this is not fitting for a character, or that it's some kind of a bad trope, but because we are literally in Jaime's head and follow his exact thought process and we can see what makes him change and rethink his life. And it's not Brienne. She is there, but Jaime's mentality makes a switch when he loses his hand and realizes that he was nothing without it. At no point he was looking at Brienne and seeing her as some kind of an example. So Jaime actually did exactly what this poster implies he should have: he becomes a better person by himself.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

Brienne fans like to credit her for Jaime’s ‘redemption’ arc even though it doesn’t exist (it’s an identity arc y’all).

I agree that Brienne is not a reason for Jaime redemption arc, but Jaime does have a redemption arc. And an identity arc too. He has multiple arcs.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

She’s essentially the angel on his shoulder. She’s not the only female character that they put in this category. There’s Sansa, Lyanna, Catelyn, etc.

What, those three and others  are angels on Jaime's shoulder? Seems like the author of this post has way bigger issues with Cersei's portrayal overall than just with her relationship with Jaime.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

Cersei on the other hand is seen as an especially promiscuous woman for sleeping with multiple men (a handful, nothing like Robert or Tyrion). She’s very flawed, cruel, vindictive, impatient

Well, none of that is false indeed.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

unwilling to essentially roll the carpet out for Jaime every time he does the bare minimum.

Jaime has sacrificed any opportunity for a normal life just to follow her whims and has been essentially her "yes-man" for over a decade. If that's a bare minimum, I am not sure what a normal amount looks like.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

On top of her canon nastiness,  Cersei’s the reason Jaime does terrible things apparently as if he wasn’t an adult capable of making his own decisions. Even situations like Jaime trying to kill Bran, which he did on his own accord, the blame rarely given to Jaime and when it is people expect Bran will forgive him because Jaime’s a good guy, he’s no longer with Cersei! Every mistake Jaime ever made is laid on her feet, each and every mistake. I’ve seen people blaming her for the whole ‘let’s trebuchet a baby.’ 

Some people do blame Cersei too much for Jaime's faults but this right there is so extreme, I've never seen Cersei being blamed to this level. I will say though that with regards to Bran, people excuse her too much, taking her words at face value that she didn't want Jaime to do it, when she clearly did. But overall, of course it's silly to blame all the bad things Jaime did on Cersei, though like I said, I don't really see people going so extreme about it.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

There’s rarely any understanding for Cersei’s actions which are often fueled by trauma and mental illness. She’s blamed for all the toxicity of the relationship. 

I don't think that trauma and mental illness excuses toxicity. In fact, a lot of times people are toxic exactly because of those two things. But they are still toxic, like Cersei totally is.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

In fact whenever Jaime has a harsh or violent thought towards Cersei, it’s celebrated but if Cersei sees Jaime as a liability because he doesn’t believe her assertions that they are surrounded by enemies, she’s called abusive.

I would call Cersei abusive due to other reasons than that. Her thinking Jaime to be a liability because he doesn't agree with her is just another example of her thinking that anyone who disagrees with her is a liability. That just makes her stupid, not abusive.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

Only Jaime is allowed to be dissatisfied with his partner and only Jaime is allowed to abandon his partner. Before Cersei was made to go through the horrific Walk of Shame, she begged Jaime for help and he burnt the letter. If it was the other way around, if Jaime was caught by Brynden Tully and he begged Cersei for help and she refused to help him, she’d be crucified even more than she is now.

Jaime had way more valid reasons to break up with Cersei. Like, veeery valid. The only problem with Jaime's behaviour is why the heck he didn't break up with her earlier. I wouldn't even blame Cersei for trying to manipulate him, that just what she does, Cersei's nature should have been absolutely obvious to Jaime ages ago anyway, yet only now did he start to see it.

If Jaime was caught by Brynden Tully and Cersei refused to help, she would have been rightfully crucified indeed.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

I’m not saying Cersei’s a good person, I’m saying neither is Jaime.

Like I have said in the beginning, this doesn't say anything without context or specifics.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

They have a very unhealthy codependent relationship where they hurt each other.

Jaime doesn't hurt Cersei until, like, end of aSoS.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

Demonising Cersei and declaring she’s not good enough for Jaime but Brienne or Sansa both are is sexist for several reasons. It’s not upto women to fix men, being a virgin does not mean you’re a good person, men have responsibility for their actions, redemption arcs that end with the murder of woman are misogynistic and support domestic abuse.

As I have already mentioned, Jaime's redemption arc is not about anyone fixing him in the first place.

11 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

We have an interesting dynamic between two interesting characters but you’d rather villainise one to an extreme and make the other a saint. The fact is people are far more comfortable supporting the madonna-whore complex because otherwise they would have to deal with the fact that they’re shipping good people with someone who’s basically a villain.

To be honest, this bit seems to me that the author of this post should have a bigger problem with GRRM and not the readers. The author really likes this idea of a complex villainous relationship between Jaime and Cersei that they have in their head, and blame other readers for not seeing it like that. But I don't think the author is honest to themselves about how George himself has portrayed it in the first place.

Edited November 17, 2023 by Dofs

[SaffronLady]

I couldn't be sure before, but this post basically confirms the OP has a Cersei fetish. She's the sort of person you don't even want to be coworkers with in real life, much less be in an intimate relationship with, much less be blood relations with. Just accept that and let this obsession go. Stop trying to defend her or "hey but Robert/Jaime/Tywin was a horrible person too". It's painful to go through this again and again and again and again.

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

I mean. I don't know. Cersei is abusive to Jaime though. Like directly. In chapters we read. I seem to remember there is a scene where he refuses to do something, and then she follows it by just being mean to him/hurtful and telling him she lies to him constantly (which seems to surprise him). Like, ....that's abusive. If you ask someone to do something, the refuse and give you reasons why they are refusing, and then you IMMEDIETELY turning nasty insulting them and hurting them as much as you can...that's like a textbook abusive behavior. 

Also, you talked about Cersei asking for Jaime's help. She sent Jaime away even though he asked her not to! And we were in her head, we know the reason she did it...was because she was pissed at him (and again, she said mean, hurtful, awful things to him once again...while he was NOT doing that to her). Like, we read the scenes. One character is being nasty/controlling, and the other character ..isn't. 

Also, the Madonna thing. Listen. Brienne is her own character. She has a character arc separate to Jaime. She does not merely exist in the story for Jaime's redemption. However, she does make Jaime a better person by being around him. That happens. Being around good people tends to effect people positively. Just like being around negative people can effect people negatively. That's just life. And also...comparing Brienne, a well written complex character to.....some random trope that sexist men used "save male characters" is ridiculous. Come on. We both know that just isn't what Brienne is. Those characters are always gorgeous women with little/no character OUTSIDE the relationship with the male character. For example, manic-pixie dream girls. That isn't Brienne, and you know it. 

TLDR - Cersei is abusive to Jaime. Sorry, not sorry, that is painfully obvious. Jaime is not, from what we see, evenly abusive to Cersei. Again, that just isn't how it plays out in the books. At all. Cersei is so actively nasty to Jaime in AFfC...like did you read the book? Basically, Jaime tries to be a better person, and Cersei hates it. Also, Brienne is not some "angel" on Jaime's shoulder. She is her own character. 

[The Bard of Banefort]

On the one hand, fans do blame Cersei for Jaime’s faults—this appears to be the result of how Jaime evolved as a character in GRRM’s mind, since we know that he was supposed to be a supervillain at first. At the same time, if their genders were reversed, no one would have any problem identifying female-Jaime as a victim of male-Cersei’s physical and psychological abuse. 

[boltons are sick]

5 hours ago, SaffronLady said:

I couldn't be sure before, but this post basically confirms the OP has a Cersei fetish. She's the sort of person you don't even want to be coworkers with in real life, much less be in an intimate relationship with, much less be blood relations with. Just accept that and let this obsession go. Stop trying to defend her or "hey but Robert/Jaime/Tywin was a horrible person too". It's painful to go through this again and again and again and again.

You could say the exact same thing for many fan-favorite characters, yet Cersei is the only one who gets criticized which is what annoys me. For some reason, male characters in fiction are allowed to be very flawed and get judged mostly based on whether they are well-written and compelling or not but female characters like Cersei get judged based on whether "I want to be in a relationship with her" which is a double standard and the same happens to Cersei in comparison to her brothers and even in comparison to her father Tywin who has far less redeeming qualities than her and has suffered far less. Cersei has redeeming qualities and she is a victim of circumstances who has suffered a lot in her life, is desperately trying to protect her family which is a noble intention and most likely would have become a good person had it not been for all the trauma she experienced which is compelling, but because she is a woman, fans judge her based on whether they want to have a relationship with her or not which they don't do for the other anti-hero characters in ASOIAF they like. This is what annoys me and I will continue to call it out.

[boltons are sick]

4 hours ago, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

TLDR - Cersei is abusive to Jaime. Sorry, not sorry, that is painfully obvious. Jaime is not, from what we see, evenly abusive to Cersei. Again, that just isn't how it plays out in the books. At all. Cersei is so actively nasty to Jaime in AFfC...like did you read the book? Basically, Jaime tries to be a better person, and Cersei hates it. Also, Brienne is not some "angel" on Jaime's shoulder. She is her own character. 

I will just answer to this, but Jaime is also abusive to Cersei just in a different way. He literally raped her while she was mourning her son (yes, this scene is rape in both the books and the show because Cersei tells him she doesn't want to do it and she is clearly upset about her son's death, and Jaime still forces her to have sex with him through brute force. Just because she eventually complies because she has no other choice, doesn't mean it's not rape.) and Cersei mentions that he is forceful to her about sex with him against her wishes through brute force. Their relationship had almost as much negative impact on Cersei as it did on Jaime but people only focus on how Jaime was impacted.

Edited November 17, 2023 by boltons are sick

[Alester Florent]

The OP seems to misunderstand what the madonna/whore complex is. It might be that the fandom hold female characters to an unreasonable standard and damn Cersei for her promiscuity, but that's not a madonna/whore complex, and in any case I think Cersei's promiscuity is one of the things I see brought up least in criticisms of her.

 Fans dislike Cersei because she's cruel, spiteful, arrogant, completely self-unaware, and in general destructive of the institutions and people around her for no good reason. I rarely see people mention her relationship with Lancel or Osney Kettleblack: people may not like her for this but they're not the foundational cause of their dislike.

Characters in the books have damned her and punished her for her relationships with Lancel and Osney and Moon Boy for all I know, but to conflate the charges brought against her for the walk of shame with the fan criticism of her is at best lazy and at worst disingenuous. If fans do on some level think she deserved the walk of shame (and again, I don't think this can be taken for granted) this is most likely because they are just glad to see her stopped and punished given her many crimes, even if the charges she has been brought to book for are in their view trivial. It's like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Nobody cared about the tax evasion, but everyone was glad to see the guy locked up.

2 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

I will just answer to this, but Jaime is also abusive to Cersei just in a different way. He literally raped her while she was mourning her son (yes, this scene is rape in both the books and the show because Cersei tells him she doesn't want to do it and she is clearly upset about her son's death, and Jaime still forces her to have sex with him through brute force. Just because she eventually complies because she has no other choice, doesn't mean it's not rape.) and Cersei mentions that he is forceful to her about sex with him against her wishes through brute force. Their relationship had almost as much negative impact on Cersei as it did on Jaime but people only focus on how Jaime was impacted.

I'm not going to argue the rape point in any detail, in light of general good taste and @mormont's comment in the other thread, but I will defer here to GRRM himself.

 

Quote

 

“In the novels, Jaime is not present at Joffrey’s death, and indeed, Cersei has been fearful that he is dead himself, that she has lost both the son and the father/ lover/ brother. And then suddenly Jaime is there before her. Maimed and changed, but Jaime nonetheless. Though the time and place is wildly inappropriate and Cersei is fearful of discovery, she is as hungry for him as he is for her.

The whole dynamic is different in the show, where Jaime has been back for weeks at the least, maybe longer, and he and Cersei have been in each other’s company on numerous occasions, often quarreling. The setting is the same, but neither character is in the same place as in the books, which may be why [producers] played the sept out differently. But that’s just my surmise; we never discussed this scene, to the best of my recollection.

Also, I was writing the scene from Jaime’s POV, so the reader is inside his head, hearing his thoughts. On the TV show, the camera is necessarily external. You don’t know what anyone is thinking or feeling, just what they are saying and doing.

If the show had retained some of Cersei’s dialogue from the books, it might have left a somewhat different impression — but that dialogue was very much shaped by the circumstances of the books, delivered by a woman who is seeing her lover again for the first time after a long while apart during which she feared he was dead. I am not sure it would have worked with the new timeline.

That’s really all I can say on this issue. The scene was always intended to be disturbing… but I do regret if it has disturbed people for the wrong reasons.”

 

It seems fairly clear that the scene wasn't written as rape and I don't think it was generally viewed as such by readers before the TV show screwed it up.

2 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

You could say the exact same thing for many fan-favorite characters, yet Cersei is the only one who gets criticized which is what annoys me. For some reason, male characters in fiction are allowed to be very flawed and get judged mostly based on whether they are well-written and compelling or not but female characters like Cersei get judged based on whether "I want to be in a relationship with her" which is a double standard and the same happens to Cersei in comparison to her brothers and even in comparison to her father Tywin who has far less redeeming qualities than her and has suffered far less. Cersei has redeeming qualities and she is a victim of circumstances who has suffered a lot in her life, is desperately trying to protect her family which is a noble intention and most likely would have become a good person had it not been for all the trauma she experienced which is compelling, but because she is a woman, fans judge her based on whether they want to have a relationship with her or not which they don't do for the other anti-hero characters in ASOIAF they like. This is what annoys me and I will continue to call it out.

Come on. ASoIaF has plenty of flawed female characters and Cersei stands alone in terms of the way she is viewed and treated. There's a whole mob out there devoted to attacking Arya's character and people rally to defend her. Arianne is promiscuous, and nobody hates her for it. Dany has legions of fans. Asha doesn't attract the opprobium that Cersei does. Sansa and Cat have had their share of hate, admittedly, but you never mention any of these characters, or how their treatment by the fans differs from that of Cersei, or why. You're so fixated on Cersei's being a victim of misogyny you ignore all the other flawed female characters in the story and the counterexamples they offer.

That the fans hate Cersei has very little if anything to do with her being a woman. It's because she's a villain. Not an antihero. A villain.

If I were inclined to be charitable, which at this stage I'm not, I would suggest that your reading of Cersei has been contaminated by the show, which gave her a more sympathetic face including some character traits not really present in the books. I think she was still awful in the show but she was admittedly less so than in the books. Your posts frequently confuse or conflate show events or characterisations with book ones.

We've been through her "redeeming features" and "trauma she's experienced" so many times it's frankly boring, but even if we accept that they exist, which for the most part I don't (again, she had possibly the most privileged upbringing of any woman in Westeros, and feeling a bit bad about a torture victim's screams but not enough to stop the torture, is not a redeeming feature) they are not sufficient to actually, you know, redeem the character. It might make her marginally less awful, but she's still godawful.

The question I want answered, and I don't think I'm alone in this, is why you are so insistent on defending her? I don't know how many threads you've now made on the subject - largely copy-pasted threads admittedly, but it's been a lot. You haven't taken on board anything that anyone else has said on the subject from thread to thread or even often within the threads themselves. What is it about Cersei that makes you so keen to defend her to the exclusion of almost all other topics in the books?

Because I'll tell you now, she wouldn't thank you for it. She doesn't do gratitude.

Edited November 17, 2023 by Alester Florent

[SeanF]

21 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

The OP seems to misunderstand what the madonna/whore complex is. It might be that the fandom hold female characters to an unreasonable standard and damn Cersei for her promiscuity, but that's not a madonna/whore complex, and in any case I think Cersei's promiscuity is one of the things I see brought up least in criticisms of her.

 Fans dislike Cersei because she's cruel, spiteful, arrogant, completely self-unaware, and in general destructive of the institutions and people around her for no good reason. I rarely see people mention her relationship with Lancel or Osney Kettleblack: people may not like her for this but they're not the foundational cause of their dislike.

Characters in the books have damned her and punished her for her relationships with Lancel and Osney and Moon Boy for all I know, but to conflate the charges brought against her for the walk of shame with the fan criticism of her is at best lazy and at worst disingenuous. If fans do on some level think she deserved the walk of shame (and again, I don't think this can be taken for granted) this is most likely because they are just glad to see her stopped and punished given her many crimes, even if the charges she has been brought to book for are in their view trivial. It's like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Nobody cared about the tax evasion, but everyone was glad to see the guy locked up.

I'm not going to argue the rape point in any detail, in light of general good taste and @mormont's comment in the other thread, but I will defer here to GRRM himself.

 

It seems fairly clear that the scene wasn't written as rape and I don't think it was generally viewed as such by readers before the TV show screwed it up.

Come on. ASoIaF has plenty of flawed female characters and Cersei stands alone in terms of the way she is viewed and treated. There's a whole mob out there devoted to attacking Arya's character and people rally to defend her. Arianne is promiscuous, and nobody hates her for it. Dany has legions of fans. Asha doesn't attract the opprobium that Cersei does. Sansa and Cat have had their share of hate, admittedly, but you never mention any of these characters, or how their treatment by the fans differs from that of Cersei, or why. You're so fixated on Cersei's being a victim of misogyny you ignore all the other flawed female characters in the story and the counterexamples they offer.

That the fans hate Cersei has very little if anything to do with her being a woman. It's because she's a villain. Not an antihero. A villain.

If I were inclined to be charitable, which at this stage I'm not, I would suggest that your reading of Cersei has been contaminated by the show, which gave her a more sympathetic face including some character traits not really present in the books. I think she was still awful in the show but she was admittedly less so than in the books. Your posts frequently confuse or conflate show events or characterisations with book ones.

We've been through her "redeeming features" and "trauma she's experienced" so many times it's frankly boring, but even if we accept that they exist, which for the most part I don't (again, she had possibly the most privileged upbringing of any woman in Westeros, and feeling a bit bad about a torture victim's screams but not enough to stop the torture, is not a redeeming feature) they are not sufficient to actually, you know, redeem the character. It might make her marginally less awful, but she's still godawful.

The question I want answered, and I don't think I'm alone in this, is why you are so insistent on defending her? I don't know how many threads you've now made on the subject - largely copy-pasted threads admittedly, but it's been a lot. You haven't taken on board anything that anyone else has said on the subject from thread to thread or even often within the threads themselves. What is it about Cersei that makes you so keen to defend her to the exclusion of almost all other topics in the books?

Because I'll tell you now, she wouldn't thank you for it. She doesn't do gratitude.

I’ve only seen Madonna/whore among the nuttiest of Jonsa shippers.  Sansa/Sophie is the Madonna, chastely in love with Jon/Kit.

No prizes for guessing who the whore/fallen woman is, in that scenario.  

[SaffronLady]

5 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

"I want to be in a relationship with her"

If you have more relationships with women (regardless of your own sex and gender), you know such as teacher-student, coworkers, doctor-patient, customer-seller, and of course friendship, you won't have interpreted my comment this way.

Set yourself free and you know, set the forum free. 

5 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

Cersei has redeeming qualities and she is a victim of circumstances who has suffered a lot in her life, is desperately trying to protect her family which is a noble intention and most likely would have become a good person had it not been for all the trauma she experienced which is compelling

So what? Not only is she a trauma victim, she is also a literal fault line across the social structure of Westeros, causing the deaths of thousands of highborn and smallfolk alike like a repeating earthquake zone. No, screw that, earthquakes kill less people than Cersei did.

Not only do I not want to meet anyone like Cersei in real life - in the workplace, in school, anywhere - I don't even want her remotely close within my "radius of living", i.e be handling my papers in a government capacity. Imagine her throwing a tantrum and destroying some very important document - medical expenses report, immigration application, etc. - that could mean life and death for me is adult fear territory.

5 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

This is what annoys me and I will continue to call it out.

Oh come on few enough people dislike Cersei simply due to the madonna-whore complex that this thread in particular is just plain annoying. She is written as an unlikeable character and being not liked is the success of her storyline. What more do you ask? Warp perceptions so she is liked for being unlikeable?

[Jaenara Belarys]

You seem to think we have a special hate for female characters, OP. 

I don't like Cersei because she's just in general a cancer on everyone else. She either brings out the worst in others (sleeping with Jaime to try and get him to kill Arya), or forces others to be horrible to her and others (Tyrion's not a good man in ACOK, but he's not a douche like ADWD Tyrion. Tyrion threatens to kill/rape Tommen if Cersei does anything to Chataya's worker, forget her name.)

People don't like spiteful idiots. 

We do like people who sound pretty nice and funny: Dany, Arianne, Asha, etc and most people like Sansa, Arya and Cat. 

[boltons are sick]

10 hours ago, Alester Florent said:

The OP seems to misunderstand what the madonna/whore complex is. It might be that the fandom hold female characters to an unreasonable standard and damn Cersei for her promiscuity, but that's not a madonna/whore complex, and in any case I think Cersei's promiscuity is one of the things I see brought up least in criticisms of her.

 Fans dislike Cersei because she's cruel, spiteful, arrogant, completely self-unaware, and in general destructive of the institutions and people around her for no good reason. I rarely see people mention her relationship with Lancel or Osney Kettleblack: people may not like her for this but they're not the foundational cause of their dislike.

Characters in the books have damned her and punished her for her relationships with Lancel and Osney and Moon Boy for all I know, but to conflate the charges brought against her for the walk of shame with the fan criticism of her is at best lazy and at worst disingenuous. If fans do on some level think she deserved the walk of shame (and again, I don't think this can be taken for granted) this is most likely because they are just glad to see her stopped and punished given her many crimes, even if the charges she has been brought to book for are in their view trivial. It's like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Nobody cared about the tax evasion, but everyone was glad to see the guy locked up.

I'm not going to argue the rape point in any detail, in light of general good taste and @mormont's comment in the other thread, but I will defer here to GRRM himself.

 

It seems fairly clear that the scene wasn't written as rape and I don't think it was generally viewed as such by readers before the TV show screwed it up.

Come on. ASoIaF has plenty of flawed female characters and Cersei stands alone in terms of the way she is viewed and treated. There's a whole mob out there devoted to attacking Arya's character and people rally to defend her. Arianne is promiscuous, and nobody hates her for it. Dany has legions of fans. Asha doesn't attract the opprobium that Cersei does. Sansa and Cat have had their share of hate, admittedly, but you never mention any of these characters, or how their treatment by the fans differs from that of Cersei, or why. You're so fixated on Cersei's being a victim of misogyny you ignore all the other flawed female characters in the story and the counterexamples they offer.

That the fans hate Cersei has very little if anything to do with her being a woman. It's because she's a villain. Not an antihero. A villain.

If I were inclined to be charitable, which at this stage I'm not, I would suggest that your reading of Cersei has been contaminated by the show, which gave her a more sympathetic face including some character traits not really present in the books. I think she was still awful in the show but she was admittedly less so than in the books. Your posts frequently confuse or conflate show events or characterisations with book ones.

We've been through her "redeeming features" and "trauma she's experienced" so many times it's frankly boring, but even if we accept that they exist, which for the most part I don't (again, she had possibly the most privileged upbringing of any woman in Westeros, and feeling a bit bad about a torture victim's screams but not enough to stop the torture, is not a redeeming feature) they are not sufficient to actually, you know, redeem the character. It might make her marginally less awful, but she's still godawful.

The question I want answered, and I don't think I'm alone in this, is why you are so insistent on defending her? I don't know how many threads you've now made on the subject - largely copy-pasted threads admittedly, but it's been a lot. You haven't taken on board anything that anyone else has said on the subject from thread to thread or even often within the threads themselves. What is it about Cersei that makes you so keen to defend her to the exclusion of almost all other topics in the books?

Because I'll tell you now, she wouldn't thank you for it. She doesn't do gratitude.

I will answer why I am so defensive of Cersei. I started the series by first reading the books and in the first three books I didn't really sympathize with her because she was presented from the POVs of people who dislike.

Then, the fourth book came and it made me feel really bad for Cersei. You get to see her constant fear about her losing her children because of Maggy's prophecy, how she has been always repressed by her society, how she was emotionally abused and neglected by her father who had a very bad influence on her and how in general he has ruined her life, how she was raped by her husband and disrespected in other ways, etc.

I even started to understand her hatred of Tyrion more because before I thought she was just an elitist who despised him for being a dwarf but the fourth book does show that she mainly hates him because she genuinely believes he is an evil man who wants to kill her kids and herself because of Maggy's prophecy and she was also poisoned against him by her father who imprinted the idea inside her head from a young age that he is responsible for her mother's death.

I also started to understand her actions against Robert and Ned. Robert treated her horribly and he also cheated on her, so it's hypocritical to expect Cersei to be faithful to him. I really don't blame her for her actions against Robert or Ned because this was the only way for her to save the lives of her kids and she is a victim of the sexist laws of her society in this situation which forced her to do it in order to protect her family from an unjust execution over the "crime" of cheating on a husband who is also unfaithful to her and raped her. Her lying about the true parentage of the children was something she was also forced to do because otherwise they would be executed, so I don't blame her for that, at all, either, and I hate how the fandom loves to blame a woman who is traumatized from rape and tries to find some solace from her abusive marriage for starting the War of the Five Kings as if she is some kind of conniving devil who wanted the war to happen, when in truth she didn't want the war to happen and she just wanted some calm from her unhappy marriage and Littlefinger is the one who orchestarted the whole war.

Most importantly, I started to understand that most of her actions are done out of extreme fear of losing her children and while it doesn't make them ok, it still makes them far more understandable to me compared to before where I thought she was just a power-hungry queen. She gives people to Qyburn because she wants him to make a strong undead warrior for her because she believes that he could protect her children from harm, she tries to have Margaery executed because she believes that if "the younger, more beautiful queen" from her prophecy dies, her own children would survive (when her plot initially works, she even goes to Tommen, kisses him and thinks about how he is safe now which shows she is really doing it because she wants to save her kids), she tortures the Blue Bard because she needs his confession to damn Margaery for the same reason, etc. Again, none of these actions are justifiable, but I really hate how the fandom loves to exress the opinion that Cersei is just some devil who does these things because she is some sort of devil who just enjoys it and compare her to Ramsay, when in reality, she is a paranoid and mentally disturbed woman who believes if she doesn't do these things, her kids are going to die.

 

So, as a whole, I didn't sympathize with her in the first three books but the fourth and fifth books made me really understand her even if I still don't think she is good, but almost nonre of the characters in ASOIAF are good, so she doesn't really stand out in that regard.

Then, I went online and I was really disturbed and shocked by how little understanding there is for Cersei's situation. Now, it's fine if you dislike her, but many of the opinions that were accepted as "truth" by the fandom were flat-out wrong and it was clear that fans were keen on removing any nuance from Cersei's character from their discussions of her simply due to dislike of her while excusing characters who have done just as bad or worse than Cersei. they sometimes also gang on and viciously attack anyone who would sympathize with Cersei while at the same time, they support Tyrion who tries to have an entire kindgom pillaged and destroyed, is a murderer, allowed Joffrey to torture and kill the Antlers Men and is a rapist, which is just hypocritical.

Some of the opinions the fandom expresses about Cersei which are just wrong, annoying and show zero understanding of the character are:

• She doesn't love her children and just sees them as extensions of herself. - She literally cries over Joffrey's corpse when he dies and mourns him, she tries to save Tommen when he thinks he is going to choke and cries in relief when it turns out to be a false alarm, she has a dream where Tyrion is torturing her and in that dream, Cersei still specifically begs him not to harm her kids and doesn't ask about mercy for herself, she thinks about how he is going to protect Tommen from dangers, she is upset when Tyrion wants to send Myrcella to Dorne and cries when she hears about the possibility of Myrcella dying if she stays, etc. 
• She is born evil, had a perfect life and doesn't have any reason for her actions - No, this is not true. I talked about this a lot already and I am not going to do it again.
• She owes heirs to Robert Baratheon and is ungrateful to him - No, she doesn't. It's perfectly understandable if a woman doesn't want to bear her rapist's children. And she doesn't have anything to be "grateful" about because Robert only married her for political reasons and he won Tywin Lannister's money after this, it's not like he made her a Queen out of charity or anything like that, it's just a political marriage.
• She is solely responsible for the War of the Five kings - While she shares some of the responsibility, she didn't intend any f this to happen and there are multiple people whose choices made the war possible. If Ned had accepted Cersei's offer to just keep quite instead of going against her because of his "honor", the war would have been avoided and a lot of casualties would have been avoided. If Littlefinger hadn't deliberately orchestrated all the events to make the war between the different factions happen, it would have been avoided. You can even blame Jaime for choosing to sleep with Cersei, but for some reason the fandom likes to blame Cersei for this and not Jaime. If Tywin Lannister wasn't such a warmongering maniac who decided to order the complete decimation of the Riverlands, the war wouldn't have had so many casualties (you can't blame Cersei for that one either because she had absolutely no control over what her father was doing and in fact, she ordered him to go back to King's Landing with his army while he decided on his own to ignore her and go to the Riverlands commit some of the vilest war crimes ever seen in the history of Westeros). You can even blame Robert in a more indirect way for raping her and ensuring that she would hate him, feel miserable in her marriage with him and wouldn't want to bear his children. But, of course, it's always the woman's fault even when she didn't intend for something to happen and tried to prevent it while the male characters, some of whom deliberately wanted it to happen, are all blameless. In fact, in AGOT, Cersei tried to prevent the war between the Lannisters and Starks from happening by making a peace offer to Ned (albeit for sefish reasons but she still tried to avoid it) but, of course, the fandom ignores this.
• She is so evil and unsympathetic while Tywin is this sympathetic and understandable badass characters - First, there is a reason why Tyrin is listed on the Near Pure Evil wiki and Cersei on the Inconsistently Heinous wiki and it's because Cersei has way more redeeming and sympathetic qualities than her father. But, other than that, let's look at different factors and compare them:
  • Motivation
    • Cersei - Wants to protect herself and her kids and does bad things to save them from an impending doom because she believes that if he doesn't do them, her kids are going to die.
    • Tywin - is a power-hungry noble who only cares about himself and wants to gain more power purely for himself. I am not buying that he is doing it for his relatives even if he does love some of them because House Lannister is just an extension of his will and he barely shows any love for any of his children.
  • Freudian Excuse
    • Tywin - Was angry that some people laughed at his father and his House and his wife died in childbirth.
    • Cersei - Lost her mother at a very young age, was neglected and emotionally abused by her father Tywin from a young age where she was taught to act like him, was constantly oppressed by sexism throughout her entire life, received a prophecy at the age of 10 which states that she and her kids would die and that her younger brother would kill her which has traumatized her, was forced into a marriage where she was disrespected, unloved and raped repeatedly by her husband and was under constant stress that she, Jaime and their kids would be executed if their affair is discovered.
  • Crimes committed
    • Cersei - Killed and tortured a relatively small number of people.
    • Tywin - Committed some of the biggest war crimes and vilest atrocities ever known in the history of Westeros like wiping out two noble Houses along with their servants down to the children, pillaged all of King's Landing with many killings and rapes and destroying huge parts of the city, ordered the decimation of the Riverlands which includes the decimation of entire villages, the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of peasants, the rape and torture of many and is widely considered to be the biggest atrocity in a long time and is responsible for the Red Wedding which also one of the most infamous acts in Westerosi history. Hhe also forced his own son to watch as his bride is being gang-raped in front of him and then forced him to participate which is a level of depraved cruelty Cersei has never reached. 

 Yeah, Tywin is a way more symathetic character than Cersei, I can totally see that, nevermind he is one of the main reasons she is the way she is in the present. I could go on with this comparison, but I don't feel like it.

Hopefully, this last trend has been dying out in recent years, but it was pretty prelevant years ago.

Like I said, I am not saying you are not allowed to dislike her, but it always pisses me off when people don't even try to understand where Cersei is coming from but then these same people often excuse characters who have done just as bad or even worse than her.

And, to answer your question, I defend her because, even if she is not good, I feel the fandom still treats her unfairly compared to other characters. If she had more support in the fandom, I wouldn't even be bothering to do it.

Edited November 17, 2023 by boltons are sick

[Jaenara Belarys]

24 minutes ago, boltons are sick said:

they support Tyrion who tries to have an entire kindgom pillaged and destroyed, is a murderer, allowed Joffrey to torture and kill the Antlers Men and is a rapist, which is just hypocritical.

I skimmed through the rest and don't really have the patience or time to address every single point, but I do want to hit on this. 

People don't support Tyrion as wholly as you support Cersei and the Stark haters support Dany. Lots of people, me included, recognize all the shitty stuff that Tyrion does. There's literally a thread where the vast majority of the thread is people arguing about Tyrion raping the Sunset Girl. People have brought up the Antler Men and the Vale situation. He's not being completely praised and having people try to justify every action he does like you do. 

[boltons are sick]

2 minutes ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

I skimmed through the rest and don't really have the patience or time to address every single point, but I do want to hit on this. 

People don't support Tyrion as wholly as you support Cersei and the Stark haters support Dany. Lots of people, me included, recognize all the shitty stuff that Tyrion does. There's literally a thread where the vast majority of the thread is people arguing about Tyrion raping the Sunset Girl. People have brought up the Antler Men and the Vale situation. He's not being completely praised and having people try to justify every action he does like you do. 

I am not trying to justify every single action Cersei takes. I just explain the reasons behind them because they are relatable reasons but most of the fandom seems to think she just does bad stuff because she enjoys it which is not case as she is doing it to save her family (though I will justify her murder of Robert to the end of the world).

[SaffronLady]

35 minutes ago, boltons are sick said:

I am not trying to justify every single action Cersei takes. I just explain the reasons behind them because they are relatable reasons but most of the fandom seems to think she just does bad stuff because she enjoys it which is not case as she is doing it to save her family (though I will justify her murder of Robert to the end of the world).

Cersei is, I have to admit, one of GRRM's finest literature creations. On one hand, as your attitude demonstrates, Cersei does have reasons and backstory to her crimes and tyranny; OTOH, her POV shows she might not have needed them to be an utterly horrible person, though she might not have done the exact set of crimes she did in the books since she would be quite a different person.

1 hour ago, boltons are sick said:

She owes heirs to Robert Baratheon and is ungrateful to him - No, she doesn't. It's perfectly understandable if a woman doesn't want to bear her rapist's children. And she doesn't have anything to be "grateful" about because Robert only married her for political reasons and he won Tywin Lannister's money after this, it's not like he made her a Queen out of charity or anything like that, it's just a political marriage.

Either you have this very postmodernist view regarding medieval marriage, or the wiki you copy from does, because essentially Tywin is investing in his grandson's reign by making his son-in-law's reign work. 

Imagine the chances of Tywin's grandson becoming king if his son-in-law realizes ... that's not his son. We have of course, the Tyrells, very patiently scheming in the background for some major scandal like this.

[Alester Florent]

1 hour ago, boltons are sick said:

Like I said, I am not saying you are not allowed to dislike her, but it always pisses me off when people don't even try to understand where Cersei is coming from but then these same people often excuse characters who have done just as bad or even worse than her.

And, to answer your question, I defend her because, even if she is not good, I feel the fandom still treats her unfairly compared to other characters. If she had more support in the fandom, I wouldn't even be bothering to do it.

So there are, I think, some technical/factual inaccuracies in your approach but at least I now understand roughly where you're coming from. I'm not going to engage on every detail, but just on the broad sweep.

Firstly, you say "these same people often excuse characters who have done just as bad or even worse than her". By this I'm assuming you basically mean Tywin and Tyrion... because there aren't many characters who've done "just as bad or even worse than" Cersei and even fewer who have any defenders.

And we're back to the Tywin vs Cersei debate that I think we've had a number of times, the essence of it being that Tywin is an "ends justify the means" character, and it is possible without ever being in his head to see what he's trying to accomplish, how what he does is intended to accomplish it, and why what he's trying to accomplish is apparently worthwhile. We may disagree with him and deplore his methods but it makes sense.

With Cersei, not only does it not make sense, but we do get to see inside her head and...

58 minutes ago, boltons are sick said:

I just explain the reasons behind them because they are relatable reasons but most of the fandom seems to think she just does bad stuff because she enjoys it which is not case as she is doing it to save her family (though I will justify her murder of Robert to the end of the world).

...the thing is, I don't think they are relatable reasons. She saw a fortune-teller when she was a girl and everything she's done, starting with the murder of her friend (not sure how that was meant to assist with the prophecy, and seems to have been pure jealousy) is built upon that. But so what? Can you imagine a world where people justified atrocities on the basis of what some fortune-teller told them? If you open a fortune cookie and it says "death is near" does that justify you going on some murder rampage?

I do not believe Cersei's reaction to a fortune-teller is any kind of justification for what she goes on to do. Not least because if she had just ignored the fortune-teller and not done any of the terrible things she goes on to do, the prophecy wouldn't have come true! She could quite easily have upended the prophecy by having one of Robert's kids, for instance. Indeed, "attempting to avoid an unfavourable prophecy and in the process making it come true" is a standard fantasy/fairytale trope for "wicked queen" archetypes; that Cersei fits so neatly into that groove is one of the things GRRM plays with a fairly straight bat.

Is she paranoid? Yes, absolutely? Is that a defence? I don't think so. Stalin was paranoid. Most dictators are. It doesn't excuse murder, and so forth.

Indeed, I think the prophecy is not so much a driving force behind Cersei's actions as it is something she uses to justify her natural jealousy, selfishness and cruelty. She does these things not because she believes they're necessary but because that's who she is, then when she feels a bit guilty about them afterwards she can assauge that by telling herself "I had to do it because of Maggy the Frog". The prophecy is, I think, at least as much a way for Cersei to avoid taking responsibility for her actions as it is a motivation for them.

 

[Lee-Sensei]

18 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

I will answer why I am so defensive of Cersei. I started the series by first reading the books and in the first three books I didn't really sympathize with her because she was presented from the POVs of people who dislike.

Then, the fourth book came and it made me feel really bad for Cersei. You get to see her constant fear about her losing her children because of Maggy's prophecy, how she has been always repressed by her society, how she was emotionally abused and neglected by her father who had a very bad influence on her and how in general he has ruined her life, how she was raped by her husband and disrespected in other ways, etc.

I even started to understand her hatred of Tyrion more because before I thought she was just an elitist who despised him for being a dwarf but the fourth book does show that she mainly hates him because she genuinely believes he is an evil man who wants to kill her kids and herself because of Maggy's prophecy and she was also poisoned against him by her father who imprinted the idea inside her head from a young age that he is responsible for her mother's death.

I also started to understand her actions against Robert and Ned. Robert treated her horribly and he also cheated on her, so it's hypocritical to expect Cersei to be faithful to him. I really don't blame her for her actions against Robert or Ned because this was the only way for her to save the lives of her kids and she is a victim of the sexist laws of her society in this situation which forced her to do it in order to protect her family from an unjust execution over the "crime" of cheating on a husband who is also unfaithful to her and raped her. Her lying about the true parentage of the children was something she was also forced to do because otherwise they would be executed, so I don't blame her for that, at all, either, and I hate how the fandom loves to blame a woman who is traumatized from rape and tries to find some solace from her abusive marriage for starting the War of the Five Kings as if she is some kind of conniving devil who wanted the war to happen, when in truth she didn't want the war to happen and she just wanted some calm from her unhappy marriage and Littlefinger is the one who orchestarted the whole war.

Most importantly, I started to understand that most of her actions are done out of extreme fear of losing her children and while it doesn't make them ok, it still makes them far more understandable to me compared to before where I thought she was just a power-hungry queen. She gives people to Qyburn because she wants him to make a strong undead warrior for her because she believes that he could protect her children from harm, she tries to have Margaery executed because she believes that if "the younger, more beautiful queen" from her prophecy dies, her own children would survive (when her plot initially works, she even goes to Tommen, kisses him and thinks about how he is safe now which shows she is really doing it because she wants to save her kids), she tortures the Blue Bard because she needs his confession to damn Margaery for the same reason, etc. Again, none of these actions are justifiable, but I really hate how the fandom loves to exress the opinion that Cersei is just some devil who does these things because she is some sort of devil who just enjoys it and compare her to Ramsay, when in reality, she is a paranoid and mentally disturbed woman who believes if she doesn't do these things, her kids are going to die.

So, as a whole, I didn't sympathize with her in the first three books but the fourth and fifth books made me really understand her even if I still don't think she is good, but almost nonre of the characters in ASOIAF are good, so she doesn't really stand out in that regard.

Then, I went online and I was really disturbed and shocked by how little understanding there is for Cersei's situation. Now, it's fine if you dislike her, but many of the opinions that were accepted as "truth" by the fandom were flat-out wrong and it was clear that fans were keen on removing any nuance from Cersei's character from their discussions of her simply due to dislike of her while excusing characters who have done just as bad or worse than Cersei. they sometimes also gang on and viciously attack anyone who would sympathize with Cersei while at the same time, they support Tyrion who tries to have an entire kindgom pillaged and destroyed, is a murderer, allowed Joffrey to torture and kill the Antlers Men and is a rapist, which is just hypocritical.

Some of the opinions the fandom expresses about Cersei which are just wrong, annoying and show zero understanding of the character are:

• She doesn't love her children and just sees them as extensions of herself. - She literally cries over Joffrey's corpse when he dies and mourns him, she tries to save Tommen when he thinks he is going to choke and cries in relief when it turns out to be a false alarm, she has a dream where Tyrion is torturing her and in that dream, Cersei still specifically begs him not to harm her kids and doesn't ask about mercy for herself, she thinks about how he is going to protect Tommen from dangers, she is upset when Tyrion wants to send Myrcella to Dorne and cries when she hears about the possibility of Myrcella dying if she stays, etc. 
• She is born evil, had a perfect life and doesn't have any reason for her actions - No, this is not true. I talked about this a lot already and I am not going to do it again.
• She owes heirs to Robert Baratheon and is ungrateful to him - No, she doesn't. It's perfectly understandable if a woman doesn't want to bear her rapist's children. And she doesn't have anything to be "grateful" about because Robert only married her for political reasons and he won Tywin Lannister's money after this, it's not like he made her a Queen out of charity or anything like that, it's just a political marriage.
• She is solely responsible for the War of the Five kings - While she shares some of the responsibility, she didn't intend any f this to happen and there are multiple people whose choices made the war possible. If Ned had accepted Cersei's offer to just keep quite instead of going against her because of his "honor", the war would have been avoided and a lot of casualties would have been avoided. If Littlefinger hadn't deliberately orchestrated all the events to make the war between the different factions happen, it would have been avoided. You can even blame Jaime for choosing to sleep with Cersei, but for some reason the fandom likes to blame Cersei for this and not Jaime. If Tywin Lannister wasn't such a warmongering maniac who decided to order the complete decimation of the Riverlands, the war wouldn't have had so many casualties (you can't blame Cersei for that one either because she had absolutely no control over what her father was doing and in fact, she ordered him to go back to King's Landing with his army while he decided on his own to ignore her and go to the Riverlands commit some of the vilest war crimes ever seen in the history of Westeros). You can even blame Robert in a more indirect way for raping her and ensuring that she would hate him, feel miserable in her marriage with him and wouldn't want to bear his children. But, of course, it's always the woman's fault even when she didn't intend for something to happen and tried to prevent it while the male characters, some of whom deliberately wanted it to happen, are all blameless. In fact, in AGOT, Cersei tried to prevent the war between the Lannisters and Starks from happening by making a peace offer to Ned (albeit for sefish reasons but she still tried to avoid it) but, of course, the fandom ignores this.
• She is so evil and unsympathetic while Tywin is this sympathetic and understandable badass characters - First, there is a reason why Tyrin is listed on the Near Pure Evil wiki and Cersei on the Inconsistently Heinous wiki and it's because Cersei has way more redeeming and sympathetic qualities than her father. But, other than that, let's look at different factors and compare them:
  • Motivation
    • Cersei - Wants to protect herself and her kids and does bad things to save them from an impending doom because she believes that if he doesn't do them, her kids are going to die.
    • Tywin - is a power-hungry noble who only cares about himself and wants to gain more power purely for himself. I am not buying that he is doing it for his relatives even if he does love some of them because House Lannister is just an extension of his will and he barely shows any love for any of his children.
  • Freudian Excuse
    • Tywin - Was angry that some people laughed at his father and his House and his wife died in childbirth.
    • Cersei - Lost her mother at a very young age, was neglected and emotionally abused by her father Tywin from a young age where she was taught to act like him, was constantly oppressed by sexism throughout her entire life, received a prophecy at the age of 10 which states that she and her kids would die and that her younger brother would kill her which has traumatized her, was forced into a marriage where she was disrespected, unloved and raped repeatedly by her husband and was under constant stress that she, Jaime and their kids would be executed if their affair is discovered.
  • Crimes committed
    • Cersei - Killed and tortured a relatively small number of people.
    • Tywin - Committed some of the biggest war crimes and vilest atrocities ever known in the history of Westeros like wiping out two noble Houses along with their servants down to the children, pillaged all of King's Landing with many killings and rapes and destroying huge parts of the city, ordered the decimation of the Riverlands which includes the decimation of entire villages, the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of peasants, the rape and torture of many and is widely considered to be the biggest atrocity in a long time and is responsible for the Red Wedding which also one of the most infamous acts in Westerosi history. Hhe also forced his own son to watch as his bride is being gang-raped in front of him and then forced him to participate which is a level of depraved cruelty Cersei has never reached. 

 Yeah, Tywin is a way more symathetic character than Cersei, I can totally see that, nevermind he is one of the main reasons she is the way she is in the present. I could go on with this comparison, but I don't feel like it.

Hopefully, this last trend has been dying out in recent years, but it was pretty prelevant years ago.

Like I said, I am not saying you are not allowed to dislike her, but it always pisses me off when people don't even try to understand where Cersei is coming from but then these same people often excuse characters who have done just as bad or even worse than her.

And, to answer your question, I defend her because, even if she is not good, I feel the fandom still treats her unfairly compared to other characters. If she had more support in the fandom, I wouldn't even be bothering to do it.

1) Cersei's kids are in danger, because she's made terrible choices in her quest for power.

2) Cersei was abusing Tyrion in her crib. Tyrion has flaws, but of the two of them, she's by far more evil.

3) There's nothing sexist about that law. Cersei didn't just cheat on him (which she did on the morning of the wedding). She aborted his children and got pregnant by her brother to pass them off as the rightful heirs of the throne knowing that it would cause a bloody succession crisis out of spite and because she wanted power. Ned, out of the kindness of his heart, warned her before going to Robert with the information to protect her children. She had the opportunity to run. Instead she chose to murder Ned's people and toss him in the dungeons. And yes... Cersei is more responsible for the war than Littlefinger.

4) I actually like Cersei, but she's still a terrible person.

5) That's because Tyrion is a much better person than Cersei.

6) At the very least, she was evil from an early age. She murdered her best friend as a child and listed to her screaming for help.

7) Then she shouldn't have married him. Robert did actually have a right to know the paternity of his children and lying about that was a despicable crime.

8) No. Cersei isn't solely responsible for the war, but she's primarily responsible. I'm definitely not going to blame Ned for it just because he didn't stand back and let Cersei get away with her crimes.

9) Most people consider Tywin a monster too.

10) Means, friend. Tywin's had the means to commit atrocities on a grand scale in a way that Cersei didn't. She exercised power through men that put checks on her. Robert, Tywin and Tyrion. She only gets to rule in her own right, because Tywin is dead and Tommen's a child. She considered Robert weak for not committing genocide against the Ironmen. Tywin himself said that you should forgive your enemies when they're defeated as a general rule. So if she had the power, it's very likely that the atrocities she'd have committed would equal Tywin's. Maybe even dwarf his.

[Springwatch]

On 11/16/2023 at 8:06 PM, boltons are sick said:

I found a nice post on Tumblr which critisizes the Madonna/whore the fandom has regarding Jaime and Cersei's relationship, how they blame Cersei for all the bad things Jaime does, how the fandom thinks Jaime deserves so much sympathy while having none for Cersei even though she has suffered much more than Jaime, etc.

You can read that post here

I will also copy and paste the post here:

Do you agree with this post or not?

 I like it.