Do you agree that Cersei Lannister is so tragic that her Freudian Excuse alone would make her Inconsistently Heinous?

[boltons are sick]

18 minutes ago, SaffronLady said:

Of course we could play the blame game all day, but out of all victims of Westerosi systemic sexism, Cersei has gone too far to make her actions defensible by merely that. Even Lysa Arryn nee Tully is less atrocious.

Also, most of the other women didn't suffer through the combination of all the same things Cersei has gone through, so I really don't like how people focus just on that. Cersei has probably suffered far more than any other woman in the series except Dany, yet people act like what she went through is something all women in Westeros generally go through which is not the case.

Edited December 25, 2023 by boltons are sick

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight9]

There's nothing inconsistent about how heinous and despicable of a person Cersei is.

[SaffronLady]

1 hour ago, boltons are sick said:

Also, most of the other women didn't suffer through the combination of all the same things Cersei has gone through, so I really don't like how people focus just on that. Cersei has probably suffered far more than any other woman in the series except Dany, yet people act like what she went through is something all women in Westeros generally go through which is not the case.

Ah yes. Of course. Indeed. I see. 

Developments of this matter have enlightened me the wisest course of action is to ignore you and your attempts to defend Cersei. It is proving bad for my blood pressure.

Does it count as murder if I die from a stroke you cause? I should tell my family they have suffered far more than any other via systemic cyber-violence.

[SeanF]

Cersei is not a tragic figure.

A tragic figure is one who possesses some good qualities, yet is brought down by some fatal flaw.

Cersei is cruel, malicious, vindictive, and completely indifferent to the suffering she inflicts on those she has power over.

[boltons are sick]

54 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Cersei is not a tragic figure.

A tragic figure is one who possesses some good qualities, yet is brought down by some fatal flaw.

Cersei is cruel, malicious, vindictive, and completely indifferent to the suffering she inflicts on those she has power over.

Cersei has good qualities. i will copy and paste them:

Quote

 

She loves her family members except for Tyrion (more specifically, her children,her father, Tywin and her mother, Joanna). She is very protective of her children, doesn't want them to die and constantly fears for their safety.
When her son Joffrey dies, she breaks down over his corpse and cries and then she stays with his corpse and mourns it for days. At one point, she has a nice dream where Joffrey is still alive and she marries her brother, Jaime.
She is angry when Tyrion sends her daughter, Myrcella, to Dorn without her permission and starts threatening him. She breaks down into tears when he mentions that if Myrcella stays, she could be killed in the coming battle. She is also shocked when she learns that Myrcella has lost one of her ears.
In the fourth book she gets very protective of her son, Tommen, after the death of Joffrey. When Tommen chokes on his wine, she is afraid that someone had poisoned him, quickly stands up and goes to him to help. When she discovers that no one has poisoned him, she goes away and starts crying. During her imprisonment by the Faith Militant, she constantly thinks about her son and how she wants to go back to him. When she goes back to him, she starts spending a lot more time with him than ever before because she was relieved to see him again after her long imprisonment.
At one point, she had a nightmare where Tyrion has tied her up. She begs him to spare her kids, even though in the dream her own life is in danger.
She loves her father as she wants his respect, constantly thinks about what he would do and is sad when he dies.
She loves her mother. She blames her younger brother, Tyrion, for "killing" her mother because this is what she saw from her father. She also mentions to Sansa that when she was a little girl she prayed to the Gods to give her mother back.

On one occasion, after Ned gives her a chance to escape with her children from the city before he reports to Robert that she had been cheating on him, Cersei tells him that because of this she would allow him to go back to Winterfell and live out the rest of his life if he kneels to Joffrey and swears fealty to him. Ned doesn't do it and he ends up dead for this reason, but there is no indication Cersei wouldn't have kept her word if he had accepted and she still doesn't agree with Joffrey executing him.
Even though she is rude to Sansa, she still tries to give her advice about how to rule as a Queen, about the specifics of the female body and that she shouldn't love too many people or else she would get hurt. It's implied that the reason for this is because Cersei sees Sansa as a younger and more inexperienced version of herself. While, Cersei lates desires to execute Sansa because she believes that Sansa was involved in Joffrey's death, it doesn't entirely subvert her prevention because during her Walk of Shame, she still noticebly feels bad about how things turned out and that Cersei could have provided a good marriage for her if Joffrey hadn't beheaded her father. Sansa is also one of the people Cersei hallucinates about which indicates that she feels guilty about how she treated her
She is capable of feeling remorse on certain occasions. After the torture of the Blue Bard, she feels bad for him and tries to justify herself even if she doesn't take moral responsibility for what she did, and for a moment she even considers stopping his torture.

 

Also, no. Someone who was once a good person or even a hero, but later in life becomes evil can still be Pure Evil if they willingly choose to subvert all of their good qualities and in fact these types of characters are oftentimes more depraved than the more traditional villains.

Examples of this include Sauron from Lord of the Rings, Saruman from Lord of the Rings movies, Light Yagami from Death Note, Zamasu from Dragon Ball, the Lord Commander from Final Space, Darth Krayt from Star Wars, Poison Ivy from the Batman & Robin film, etc. These are all characters who started out as good people and in some cases like Darth Krayt, Sauron and Saruman they were even great heroes who have done a lot of good deeds, but they have become Pure Evil by subverting all of their good qualities and committing evil acts which allow them to stand out. This means that none of them are considered to be tragic because the fact they are Pure Evil means they don't have a valid tragedy which could explain why they have decided to subvert all of their redeeming qualities and why they have decided to become evil despite initially starting out as good people. Granted, there is an explanation provided for all of them, but it's not enough to explain their actions, so it doesn't count.

Meanwhile, Cersei is tragic because she would have been a good person if not for the tragedies which have occurred in her life, she has excuses for her actions and redeeming qualities (unlike the abovementioned characters who used to be good and in some cases even great heroes but have subverted all of their good qualities at some point in pursuit of selfish goals).

Edited December 25, 2023 by boltons are sick

[boltons are sick]

42 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Cersei is not a tragic figure.

A tragic figure is one who possesses some good qualities, yet is brought down by some fatal flaw.

Cersei is cruel, malicious, vindictive, and completely indifferent to the suffering she inflicts on those she has power over.

Also, no. According to more modern understanding, a tragic villain is someone who has suffered from some kind of tragic experience throughout their life which has impacted their personality negatively and has caused them to commit morally questionable or evil acts for whatever reason.

A person who has some redeeming qualities but is brought down by some flaw they have would not be considered tragic if they haven't actually experienced a tragic event in their lives.

[SeanF]

11 minutes ago, boltons are sick said:

Cersei has good qualities. i will copy and paste them:

Also, no. Someone who was once a good person or even a hero, but later in life becomes evil can still be Pure Evil if they willingly choose to subvert all of their good qualities and in fact these types of characters are oftentimes more depraved than the more traditional villains.

Examples of this include Sauron from Lord of the Rings, Light Yagami from Death Note, Zamasu from Dragon Ball, the Lord Commander from Final Space, Darth Krayt from Star Wars, Poison Ivy from the Batman & Robin film, etc. These are all characters who started out as good people and in some cases like Darth Krayt they were even great heroes who have done a lot of good deeds, but they have become Pure Evil by subverting all of their good qualities and committing evil acts which allow them to stand out. This means that none of them are considered to be tragic because the fact they are Pure Evil means they don't have a valid tragedy which could explain why they have decided to subvert all of their redeeming qualities and why they have decided to become evil despite initially starting out as good people. Granted, there is an explanation provided for all of them, but it's not enough to explain their actions, so it doesn't count.

Meanwhile, Cersei is tragic because she would have been a good person if not for the tragedies which have occurred in her life, she has excuses for her actions and redeeming qualities (unlike the abovementioned characters who used to be good and in some cases even great heroes but have subverted all of their good qualities at some point in pursuit of selfish goals).

Love of family, and occasionally being decent to Sansa (and bear in mind, she planned to have Sansa killed if Stannis won), is setting the bar very low.

She has Robert’s children murdered out of spite.  She tries to frame Margaery and her friends for adultery and treason.  She has dwarves murdered by her agents.  She sends people to Qyburn for vivisection.  She cares nothing for the smallfolk’s suffering, people who in theory should be able to seek her protection.  She plans to send an assassin to murder Jon Snow.  At every turn, her actions are cruel, stupid, and self-defeating.

[boltons are sick]

Just now, SeanF said:

Love of family, and occasionally being decent to Sansa (and bear in mind, she planned to have Sansa killed if Stannis won), is setting the bar very low.

She has Robert’s children murdered out of spite.  She tries to frame Margaery and her friends for adultery and treason.  She has dwarves murdered by her agents.  She sends people to Qyburn for vivisection.  She cares nothing for the smallfolk’s suffering, people who in theory should be able to seek her protection.  She plans to send an assassin to murder Jon Snow.  At every turn, her actions are cruel, stupid, and self-defeating.

She is doing them to prevent Maggy's prophecy from coming true because she fears for the lives of her children. This makes her tragic because the prophecy has clearly traumatized her and is causing her to commit terrible actions out of desire to protect her loved ones.

[kissdbyfire]

10 minutes ago, boltons are sick said:

She is doing them to prevent Maggy's prophecy from coming true because she fears for the lives of her children. This makes her tragic because the prophecy has clearly traumatized her and is causing her to commit terrible actions out of desire to protect her loved ones.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight9]

And Cersei claims she loves her family but she only sees and loves Jaime and her children as extensions of herself not the individuals they are, the moment Jaime stopped being what she imagined him to be she was disgusted by him, and she's horribly abusive to Tommen in AFFC, and that's not counting her abusive relation with Tyrion. So her "love" for her family isn't really a positive quality, as even her love for others turn out to be extremely self-centered, and none of her relationship is a truly positive and non-toxic one, and it's certainly not a redeeming one.

There's not a single redeeming trait to Cersei, nothing that stops her from being an awful and twisted human being or of having any chance of becoming a better person.

Edited December 25, 2023 by Terrorthatflapsinthenight9

[Aldarion]

1 hour ago, Terrorthatflapsinthenight9 said:

And Cersei claims she loves her family but she only sees and loves Jaime and her children as extensions of herself not the individuals they are, the moment Jaime stopped being what she imagined him to be she was disgusted by him, and she's horribly abusive to Tommen in AFFC, and that's not counting her abusive relation with Tyrion. So her "love" for her family isn't really a positive quality, as even her love for others turn out to be extremely self-centered, and none of her relationship is a truly positive and non-toxic one, and it's certainly not a redeeming one.

There's not a single redeeming trait to Cersei, nothing that stops her from being an awful and twisted human being or of having any chance of becoming a better person.

This. I mean, doesn't Jaime look just like a male version of Cersei? No wonder she "fell in love" with him!

[Alester Florent]

Quote

We also don't know if she really didn't try to help Melara because the text never mentions it. For all we know, she may have tried to help Melara, but failed to do it in time which would explain why she feels guilt and why she quickly tries to forget about it every time she starts thinking about it. I would say, wait at least until the 6th book comes out which would probably shed more light on this situation before using this to condemn Cersei based on pure speculation and fan interpretation

What we know:

• Maggy tells Melara that Cersei will kill her in the very near future
• Cersei believes Maggy's prophecies, meaning her previous ones (that Cersei was aware of) turned out to be true
• Cersei considers Melara to have turned out to be "a greedy little schemer"
• Melara expressed a romantic interest in Jaime and Cersei is very jealous with regards to Jaime
• Melara fell down a well shortly after meeting Maggy and Cersei was there
• Cersei feels a little guilty about her death
• Cersei once considered her a friend but seems to think she got what was coming to her

All of this suggests Cersei was directly involved in her death. None of it suggests that Cersei made any attempt to help her. Even if Cersei didn't push her into the well (the most likely conclusion) the next-most-likely conclusion is that she saw her fall into the well and then left her there rather than getting help. That Cersei didn't try to help her is entirely unsupported by the text.

Moreover, this murder would be entirely in keeping with the character we know and see. Cersei has sent her friends t obe vivisected and ordered the murder of infants. Nothing about the Cersei we know suggests she would try to help her friend under the circumstances: everything suggests she played a part in her death. To give Cersei the benefit of the doubt we would have to assume that she underwent a complete personality change between the ages of 10 and 33 when in fact everything we know about her childhood points to her having remained pretty consistent throughout.

GRRM is not an author to explicitly and unambiguously highlight things where he can instead leave clues and heavy implications and leave the reader to put two and two together. I doubt, for instance, that we will ever learn for certain that the Freys were killed by Wyman Manderly and baked into pies. But from all the contextual clues, they obviously were.

It's the same here. Why would GRRM revisit this scene: it's not really plot-relevant and he's already given us all we need to interpret it.  We may not be able to say that we are absolutely certain that Cersei killed her such that a criminal conviction beyond reasonable doubt would be safe.  but from what we see, and also applying our metatextual knowledge of how GRRM operates, it is all but certain that Cersei killed Melara. Any other conclusion is a Russell's teapot: just because it can't be conclusively disproved doesn't mean it's reasonable or right.

[SaffronLady]

As an aside, if Cersei did try to help Melara, why wouldn't she have thought about it in her monologue? "I'm such a nice person, I tried to save that scheming bitch while she was drowning in a well." That certainly fits what we know of her arrogant, self-absorbed state of mind.

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

On 12/25/2023 at 5:22 PM, boltons are sick said:

What crime? The "crime" of cheating on her abusive husband (who is also cheating on her) which apparently should be punishable by death? Not to mention she only started cheating to find some comfort in her life which her marriage didn't provide.

No, I don't care if she lied about the parentage of her children. If she didn't do it, she and her kids would still be executed which means she had no choice but to do it and she was forced to do it by the sexist laws of her society.

Listen, I am tired of this argument. It’s a bad argument because it relied on ignoring all other circumstances. How many people have now died in tbe War of 5 Kings? A lot right. Guess what? If Robert amd Cersei had a baby, the war is mich less likely to happen. So, I am going to state this absolutely : I get it, the law IS sexist. However, it doesn’t realy matter. By preveneting Robert’s line to continue, she directly had to enter a situation where war was enivatable. It doesn’t matter how sexist the law is, because what is important here isn’t the cheating (one way or the kther) but rather that the King needs an heir and within their society this is of utmost importance towards peace.

Your argument relies on the reader to completely ignore what is at stake, and how little Cersei (or Jaime) care about the consequences of their actions. They absolutely don’t. Cersei WANTS the title of queen and power but she doesn’t do the VERY BASIC part required of her to be a Queen. You get that right - Cersei wants to have her cake and eat it too, and it blows up in her face, because that is what always happens whrn you try to have your cake and eat it, too. Cersei is RESONSIBLE for countless death, anf her reasoning for causing that death is entitely selfish.
 

Stop whitewashing Cersei’s part in this war. Stop acting like being selfish is a perfectly valid excuse to disregard others freedoms and very lifes. Cersei is an asshole. A vindictive, selfish, self-absorbed asshole. Just like Tywin, there is NO REASON for people to be spending this much time defending such a terrible terrible person. 

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

12 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

Cersei has good qualities. i will copy and paste them:

Yes, yes you will, lol. 

[boltons are sick]

31 minutes ago, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Listen, I am tired of this argument. It’s a bad argument because it relied on ignoring all other circumstances. How many people have now died in tbe War of 5 Kings? A lot right. Guess what? If Robert amd Cersei had a baby, the war is mich less likely to happen. So, I am going to state this absolutely : I get it, the law IS sexist. However, it doesn’t realy matter. By preveneting Robert’s line to continue, she directly had to enter a situation where war was enivatable. It doesn’t matter how sexist the law is, because what is important here isn’t the cheating (one way or the kther) but rather that the King needs an heir and within their society this is of utmost importance towards peace.

Your argument relies on the reader to completely ignore what is at stake, and how little Cersei (or Jaime) care about the consequences of their actions. They absolutely don’t. Cersei WANTS the title of queen and power but she doesn’t do the VERY BASIC part required of her to be a Queen. You get that right - Cersei wants to have her cake and eat it too, and it blows up in her face, because that is what always happens whrn you try to have your cake and eat it, too. Cersei is RESONSIBLE for countless death, anf her reasoning for causing that death is entitely selfish.
 

Stop whitewashing Cersei’s part in this war. Stop acting like being selfish is a perfectly valid excuse to disregard others freedoms and very lifes. Cersei is an asshole. A vindictive, selfish, self-absorbed asshole. Just like Tywin, there is NO REASON for people to be spending this much time defending such a terrible terrible person. 

Yeah, let's blame a woman who is seriously traumatized by her abusive marriage to a rapist for not wanting to have said rapist's children.

Do you realize that a lot of women who are raped, abort their rapist's child simply because they can't cope with the trauma. Are these women also evil/immoral or whatever because they don't want to have a child from the person who raped. Why do you expect Cersei to have a child with a man who raped her, so that this child could remind her further of what she has experienced and traumatize her further. How selfish of her that Cersei doesn't want this?

And yeah, let's blame this traumatized woman for the war doing what most women do after being raped just because she is in a position as queen and even though there are so many other people who are to blame for the deaths. You are essentially saying that Cersei has to put up with rape and has to endure the trauma of having a child which would remind her of her rapes and say she is evil because she doesn't want this.

And for the record, Cersei tried to avoid the war by negotiating with Ned Stark to leave her alone, so it's not like Cersei wanted to be caught or cause a succession war. Ned Stark was the one who chose to try to arrest her still, which means that the choice to prevent the war was his and he chose to try and arrest her for the sake of his "honor" which directly led to the war. Just because he is more "honorable" than Cersei and because he was following the oppressive and sexist laws of his society while Cersei wasn't, doesn't mean he is not at least as much responsible for what happened as Cersei.

Or why don't you actually blame the people who order war crimes to be committed against the common folk which is something Cersei doesn't do by the way, because she was pretty inactive during the war and her overall body count is pretty low.

Or why don't you blame Littlefinger who was the one who intentionally caused the War of the Five Kings in the first place but blame a traumatized woman who simply didn't want to have her rapist's children and wasn't aiming to cause it in the first place?

The only reason why you only blame Cersei is because you don't like her but you like or are indifferent to characters like Ned, or Jaime, or Littlefinger, or Lysa, etc., so of course they are completely blameless for the war unlike the woman who didn't want to have children with her rapist. Tywin also shares a much bigger fault than Cersei because he was the one who ordered the Riverlands to be decimated, making him responsible for the biggest war crimes during the war and the biggest amount of victims, yet I don't see you blaming him either.

Edited December 26, 2023 by boltons are sick

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

20 minutes ago, boltons are sick said:

Yeah, let's blame a woman who is seriously traumatized by her abusive marriage to a rapist for not wanting to have said rapist's children.

Do you realize that a lot of women who are raped, abort their rapist's child simply because they can't cope with the trauma. Are these women also evil/immoral or whatever because they don't want to have a child from the person who raped. Why do you expect Cersei to have a child with a man who raped her, so that this child could remind her further of what she has experienced and traumatize her further. How selfish of her that Cersei doesn't want this?

And yeah, let's blame this traumatized woman for the war doing what most women do after being raped just because she is in a position as queen and even though there are so many other people who are to blame for the deaths. You are essentially saying that Cersei has to put up with rape and has to endure the trauma of having a child which would remind her of her rapes and say she is evil because she doesn't want this.

And for the record, Cersei tried to avoid the war by negotiating with Ned Stark to leave her alone, so it's not like Cersei wanted to be caught or cause a succession war. Ned Stark was the one who chose to try to arrest her still, which means that the choice to prevent the war was his and he chose to try and arrest her for the sake of his "honor" which directly led to the war. Just because he is more "honorable" than Cersei and because he was following the oppressive and sexist laws of his society while Cersei wasn't, doesn't mean he is not at least as much responsible for what happened as Cersei.

Or why don't you actually blame the people who order war crimes to be committed against the common folk which is something Cersei doesn't do by the way, because she was pretty inactive during the war and her overall body count is pretty low.

Or why don't you blame Littlefinger who was the one who intentionally caused the War of the Five Kings in the first place but blame a traumatized woman who simply didn't want to have her rapist's children and wasn't aiming to cause it in the first place?

The only reason why you only blame Cersei is because you don't like her but you like or are indifferent to characters like Ned, or Jaime, or Littlefinger, or Lysa, etc., so of course they are completely blameless for the war unlike the woman who didn't want to have children with her rapist. Tywin also shares a much bigger fault than Cersei because he was the one who ordered the Riverlands to be decimated, making him responsible for the biggest war crimes during the war and the biggest amount of victims, yet I don't see you blaming him either.

I am not readint everything. You strawman my argument from the get go. I don’t exprct Cersei to have Robet’s children. I expect her not to cause a war particularly when another pwrson (who is knwon to be honerable) promised tompretect her. But Cersei’s motivations were always self

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight9]

And it would be ridiculous to say that Cersei is less evil than her father because she's cleary just as if not even more vile, petty, vindicative and sadistic as he was, and that Tywin at least had a few positive relations in his family. 

[boltons are sick]

12 minutes ago, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

I am not readint everything. You strawman my argument from the get go. I don’t exprct Cersei to have Robet’s children. I expect her not to cause a war particularly when another pwrson (who is knwon to be honerable) promised tompretect her. But Cersei’s motivations were always self

Yeah, Ned promised to "protect" by simply giving her a little headstart before he tells Robert. After that, Robert would have found her through Varys' magical network of spies and would have killed her and her kids. 

I really don't see where this whole argument that Ned promised her protection comes from when he literally threatens her life and just gives her a few days to get out of the city before he tells Robert about her cheating on him who would execute her for it. And even if she took his offer, she and her kids would have still died, so her only option to protect her family was to stay in the capital, kill Robert and then deal with Ned afterwards. She had no other choice.

Edited December 26, 2023 by boltons are sick

[boltons are sick]

3 minutes ago, Terrorthatflapsinthenight9 said:

And it would be ridiculous to say that Cersei is less evil than her father because she's cleary just as if not even more vile, petty, vindicative and sadistic as he was, and that Tywin at least had a few positive relations in his family. 

Cersei loves her children, meanwhile Tywin doesn't love any of his kids (which is even listed on his Near Pure Evil page). Cersei is Also capable of feeling remorse unlike Tywin. Also, Cersei has much bigger excuses for her actions than Tywin.

Tywin didn't experience the following things:

1) He didn't experience systematic sexism on a constant basis and had a much easier life than her because he was a man and a heir to Casterly Rock.

2) He wasn't emotionally abused and neglected by his own father all the time.

3) He didn't receive a prophecy which foretold his death and the death of all his kids which made him paranoid and caused him to commit crimes to stop it from happening.

4) He wasn't forced into an abusive marriage and raped for 14 years.

5) He wasn't threatened with execution and the execution of his lover and his kids if anyone finds out he is cheating on his abusive spouse.

And Tywin is largely responsible for the way Cersei is which makes him even worse than her. If Cersei was raised by, say Ned Stark, who was a supportive father and taught his children moral values and wasn't emotionally abusive, she would have become a good person.