[ADwD Spoilers] Cersei

[Tyroshi Sellsword]

I don't know if comparing people's suffering is really useful, because all torture and cruelty is repulsive. Does someone's murder make someone else's rape OK? It's not like they cancel each other out.

I think it helps with the self-pity and self-righteousness. Women at the mercy of powerful men, women who haven't committed a single crime, have suffered much worse fates. Cersei has committed massive treasons and atrocities. She got off easy considering what her fate could have been. And I think that is a factual statement and not one of opinion. I understand that the High Septon wasn't trying to punish her for her actual crimes, but she could choose to see her punishment as a slap on the hand and a way of evading future attention. She does have the trial by combat coming up, a trial she has rigged, so in terms of paying for her many crimes, her sentence was light, in a world where innocent people suffer much worse. You know-- perspective. Something Cersei lacks.

I don't even think it's all that healthy to think "well at least I'm not THAT poor bastard!" after going through something shitty -- doesn't that just encourage you to spit on people who've been "beaten" and to try and create some fragile/fake identity that denies that you can be and have been hurt?

Why is it "spitting on" people who have had worse fates? The phrase "There but for the grace of God go I" is not one of contempt for those who suffer more than you. It a way of seeing your own suffering as a grace considering the many worse sufferings the world has to offer. I have thought this very thing when I feel self-pity. But it requires an ability to recognize the suffering of others, feel badly for those people, and value your own many blessings.

There are some ways I can think of off the top of my head that would have been much more libel to break Cersei -- I think one major one would have been to force her to hurt Tommen, for example.

Tommen is the king, so that's not likely as a punishment. I think permanently destroying her beauty would have been horrible, but I think her two worst punishments are in store: seeing all her children die, and watching Jaime fight her champion.

I don't really think Jaime shutting himself off emotionally and logistically is all that heroic or laudable, though I do think that it was a good survival tactic.

Being able to survive seems to be the greatest virtue in Westeros these days. I mean that cynically-- those who have survived have done it at great personal cost.

He just always seems so thoughtless to me that I honestly just count him out most of the time. Like, if Jaime shows up, that's great, but Jaime probably won't show up. Can you be a hero if you're MIA most of the time? Isn't most of the use of a hero to give other people hope? Can you do that if you're utterly undependable?

I guess I don't see him this way. I see him as having shaped his entire life around the love of a person who never loved him b/c she is incapable of anything other than self-love. Now he's trying to unwarp himself back into a real person, and it means he is not going to be around for her. He has been there for Brienne, and for himself. He was finally honest with Tyrion. It's tough not being someone else's reflection.

I think Arya lost herself in her vengeance quest -- I don't know that the person Arya began as is still alive...which is why I find it hard to read her chapters now. In contrast, I think that despite it all, Brienne is still herself, and that's why I love the shit out of her :). And that's why I love Cersei, too -- she's a horrible person, but at least she just keeps being her own same old horrible self, no matter what :).

I don't think Arya is finished yet. I do find her chapters painful too, b/c she is so lost, but she can still come out of this as Arya Stark, and I pray she will. However, part of me fears that she will be a knife in the dark, and no one will ever know it's her. That would suck. I really want Jon to ruffle her hair again.

And the issue about being broken is, I don't know how you can become stronger in the broken places -- because the world just keeps grinding on. The world isn't going to stop just because you cry for mercy, and give you time to rest up. Personally, I don't know if it's better to be crushed into rubble all at once like Ned, or to be slowly chipped apart like Tyrion. Probably there's less torment in being destroyed all in one blow like Ned, and people will look back at you with more fondness, too. Maybe that's an argument for keeping a really rigid sense of honor? And what keeps someone like Brienne or Cersei from being knocked apart too much? Is it that they somehow seem impervious that attracts Jaime to both of them -- is that their similarity?

Interesting to think of Cersei and Brienne as two sides of the same coin: rigid women clinging to their ideas of themselves despite a world that wants so badly for them to fit in a little woman-shaped box. However, Brienne lives to serve others, and Cersei only serves herself. Also, the cliche inner beauty/outer beauty thing.

How do you become stronger in the broken places? You learn. You change. You grow. You don't make the same mistakes over and over until you die. Ned just could not learn the game but insisted on continuing to play it. Play it right or don't play it at all. As for Tyrion, what drove me nuts about him in this book was the staggering amount of self-pity. Come on. You're ugly, you did some shitty things. It doesn't need to define you. I wish that the Tywin that lives in his head could just die already.

I don't think you have to be dangerous to survive. People like Sansa have managed it. In fact, I think that it's a bad idea to try and act like you're the baddest badass around, because that just makes it a point of honor for people to try and take you down. Case in point: Cersei. Though I don't know if it would have been helpful to her to play weak since she's queen and therefore obviously *not* powerless, I think it would still have been a wiser move.

Everyone is dangerous, even Sansa. Just think about what she could do to the whole political situation if she got out from under Littlefinger's thumb and declared herself Lady of Winterfell? Got an annulment from the High Septon from Tyrion, married someone who could really further HER goals, not some man's? Told everyone what Littlefinger has been up to in the Eyrie? She could seriously fuck things up for a lot of people.

I'm not really understanding the concept of honor, I guess? Isn't it just a moral code? Doesn't nearly everyone have their own? And who cares if you break anyone else's as long as you manage to keep your own? But I guess the difference between honor and morality is that honor is socially bestowed?

Your moral code is yours-- it's internal. Honor is what people give you for demonstrating regularly the virtues of your society, like protecting the innocent, keeping your word, remaining loyal to your allies, being just, etc. For a woman, it would be being faithful to your husband, caring for your children, being modest, etc. Cersei's lack of honor was publicly displayed. Everyone now knows that she has none, probably b/c she has no moral code either.

People like Tyrion and Cersei are their own worst enemies b/c they constantly feel victimized by their circumstances. Neither of them embrace who they are. They hate their physical bodies, they feel trapped in them and judged for them (which they are, but again, it could be worse for both of them, something Tyrion learns when he meets Penny). Yes, both of them have sincerely suffered, but both of them are also spoiled brats.

I don't know that "whore" is such a strict category. According to Tywin and probably his children, everybody who is for sale is a "whore," and everybody is for sale because everybody has a price. I also think that, to Tywin, price = worth.

Maybe that's why both Cersei and Tyrion ought to stop letting Tywin's sick worldview continue to warp their thinking. In Tywin's value system, everyone is a whore b/c everyone has a price. Even Ned Stark was a whore in the end, selling the truth about Cersei and her children to save his own children. That's not the definition of whore that I accept, though.

That's why giving Tysha gold made her a whore -- she could have felt like a whore or not inside, it didn't matter. What mattered is that she had gotten her price, that she'd been bought.

But it wasn't her price! She set no price. They gave her gold to make it LOOK LIKE she had a price, that she was with Tyrion for gold, not love. But that was a lie, and Tysha was not a whore.

(which -- how can you consent to become a commodity? is that even possible?).

Everyone is consenting to be a commodity all the time. You work, right? There you go.

[rue721]

I understand that the High Septon wasn't trying to punish her for her actual crimes, but she could choose to see her punishment as a slap on the hand and a way of evading future attention. She does have the trial by combat coming up, a trial she has rigged, so in terms of paying for her many crimes, her sentence was light, in a world where innocent people suffer much worse.

Honestly, I don't see how it could make a person feel *better* to think about how people even more vulnerable and innocent than she is have also been crushed. What does that do except encourage an already shaken-up person to believe that the world is a place where gentleness and goodness are casually obliterated by power-hungry assholes, so the only "safety" is to be one of those assholes yourself? If I were Cersei, I'd rather watch sweet little Tommen and delight in the fact that horrible people haven't managed to ruin everything yet. But of course, Cersei might be too far gone for that -- the "cruelty = safety" lesson was one Tywin really liked to hammer home.

I do agree that now, she should concentrate how to use what she's got (a public shaming) to get what she needs (protection from the High Septon).

It a way of seeing your own suffering as a grace considering the many worse sufferings the world has to offer.

Why should anyone suffer at all? I agree that Cersei could have suffered *much* worse, if that had been convenient for the people around her. But why could things have only turned out worse than they did? They could have turned out better, too.

I agree that it's silly and disrespectful to turn what could be a relatively minor setback or even an asset into an apocalyptic event, but I also think it's defeatist to just swallow suffering like you're doomed to it. Cersei's a queen -- why shouldn't she feel entitled? Why shouldn't everyone feel entitled not to suffer, and to try and make it so they don't, and to feel angry when they're made to?

I see him as having shaped his entire life around the love of a person who never loved him b/c she is incapable of anything other than self-love.

I think Jaime was in love with Cersei as a version of self-love just as much as she liked having sex with him as a version of self-love. For me, he's the sicker of the two because he made it a point to be faithful, and because being only with "himself" was truly satisfying for him.

Probably I'm just aggravated with him because his brother and sister are constantly wishing he were there to protect him, and his father was constantly wishing he would just step into his place as son, and Jaime always slipped out of it. It made him seem irresponsible and untrustworthy, to me, even though I know he was just trying to save his own skin. To me, he just perpetually seems like a deadbeat and it irritates me to see everyone give him so many chances. But if he would have stayed he would have turned even more warped, probably. I guess hallow is better than warped, when it comes time to try and be a good person? Who knows.

Interesting to think of Cersei and Brienne as two sides of the same coin: rigid women clinging to their ideas of themselves despite a world that wants so badly for them to fit in a little woman-shaped box. However, Brienne lives to serve others, and Cersei only serves herself. Also, the cliche inner beauty/outer beauty thing.

Brienne might be ugly, but she's also a powerhouse, physically. Cersei constantly wishes for that. I wonder if Brienne wouldn't mind giving up her physical strength for Cersei's beauty, or Cersei her beauty for Brienne's physical strength? Would there be a way for Brienne's physical strength to be ceremonially stripped from her in the way Cersei's beauty was, or is it somehow more "intrinsic" to her?

I wonder what their respective rigidness is supposed to mean, and why that appeals to Jaime?

How do you become stronger in the broken places? You learn. You change. You grow. You don't make the same mistakes over and over until you die. Ned just could not learn the game but insisted on continuing to play it. Play it right or don't play it at all. As for Tyrion, what drove me nuts about him in this book was the staggering amount of self-pity. Come on. You're ugly, you did some shitty things. It doesn't need to define you. I wish that the Tywin that lives in his head could just die already.

In theory, I agree, but in practice...I think a lot of the storylines in this book were about how *unchangeable* a person is, fundamentally. Tyrion killed Tywin, but he's still in him. Cersei is still Cersei. Theon is still Theon -- even more so, maybe.

I don't mind when the characters are self-pitying. We're inside their minds -- so of course with the more neurotic ones we're treated to a mental running loop where they're constantly picking up on things that trigger self-loathing and then they overcompensate with massive self-aggrandizement and/or angry, bitter shrieking. It's actually endearing to me, because I like watching things through those kind of shattered viewpoints -- where you see sort of what's happening, and sort of what the character *wishes* she could do, and sort of what the character *fears* she will do, and sort of what the character actually thinks she does do. That's what I think GRRM is a master at, btw -- making it sort of obvious that the character is lying to herself, but at the same time making you kind of believe the lies.

I didn't think that GRRM did a great job with Tyrion in particular this time, because I think he was a little...heavy-handed? Unsubtle? But I think Cersei was great in DwD. I loved when she kept hearing bad news and was like: IT'S TYRION! Next item of bad news: IT'S TYRION! Next item: TYRION! LOL. It was like watching the saddest Monty Python sketch in the world.

Honor is what people give you for demonstrating regularly the virtues of your society

Morals = what you know is right. Honor = what society decides is right. (?) Reminds me of The Trial -- it sounds like an individual doesn't really have control over whether he has honor or not, since that's something society decides based on society's rubric and what society knows about a person -- it seems out of any single individual's hands.

I do think that morals are being shown over the course of the series to be *very* important in terms of allowing a person to keep his identity and sanity. But everyone's moral codes are different. Cersei's is about family first, Dany's is about natural rights, Sansa's is about protecting Winterfell, Arya's is about revenge, etc...Maybe morals give a person the drive to live and honor is what people use to sit in judgment of them -- and maybe take that life away?

A character that I find interesting in terms of that is Tyrion, since he obviously has some type of moral code (he takes pains to save Jorah and Penny, for example), but I don't even think he knows what it is.

People like Tyrion and Cersei are their own worst enemies b/c they constantly feel victimized by their circumstances. Neither of them embrace who they are. They hate their physical bodies, they feel trapped in them and judged for them (which they are, but again, it could be worse for both of them, something Tyrion learns when he meets Penny). Yes, both of them have sincerely suffered, but both of them are also spoiled brats.

They are spoiled, in a lot of ways. But I think that something that became clear in terms of both seeing the slaves and seeing the religious people is how *blind* everyone is. Cersei is blind in her way, but the townspeople are also blind in theirs, and the High Septon is blind in his. One thing that became clearer in this book than in any of the others, I think, is how *limited* and skewed each viewpoint is. For example, Penny annoyed me *to no end* when I was reading, until I realized that we were only seeing her through Tyrion's eyes -- Tyrion, who is a nobleman (and dwells on Penny's ignorance), who is feeling extremely guilty at the moment (and dwells on Penny's innocence), and who is trying to stuff Penny into his own little mental box. I wish we would have had more overlap of *everyone's* POVs in order to get a truer picture of who a lot of these characters were, but I do think that it felt like we were really *locked* inside people's heads this time -- which I think is interesting. I don't know why that turned out better for some characters -- such as Cersei -- and worse for some -- such as Tyrion. Maybe because that's more of a change for a relatively distant character with a small number of POVs, like Cersei?

Everyone is dangerous, even Sansa. Just think about what she could do to the whole political situation if she got out from under Littlefinger's thumb and declared herself Lady of Winterfell?

Everybody is dangerous for someone, but everyone is a possible ally, too. I think by putting a lot of emphasis on how dangerous you are, you're pushing yourself apart from your allies and just begging for someone to attack you. That's something Cersei and Tyrion both do a lot, and imo it's a *huge* mistake. Especially since they're doing it out of overcompensation for not *actually* feeling that dangerous. They could both learn something from Varys, I think.

I am so curious about what Cersei does from her new "modest" and "contrite" position, because she might need to emphasize what a "safe" and weak little friend she is now. Boy, that'll be a big change. I'd be so interested to see how she does it.

That's not the definition of whore that I accept, though.

What do you think a whore is?

The townspeople labeled Cersei a whore -- do you think that label has meaning?

Everyone is consenting to be a commodity all the time. You work, right? There you go.

Well, I do think we're all whores. I also work in the entertainment industry ;).

But there, too, it's not like you can *not* work. How are you going to eat? If you choose not to consent to being a commodity, you're choosing to die. Is that a choice? It's like the social contract -- if you can't opt out, are you really "in"?

She set no price. They gave her gold to make it LOOK LIKE she had a price, that she was with Tyrion for gold, not love. But that was a lie, and Tysha was not a whore.

With work, we don't get to set a price, either. You get paid what your wage or salary is, and you can try to wriggle around and negotiate, but it's all within bounds not set by you. I can't just walk up to my boss and say "from now on, I get one million an hour!" Legally, I can't even walk up to him and say, "from now on, I get fifty cents an hour!" I've got to base my price off of the price I'm offered for my services, based on what other people (including the government) think is appropriate.

Tysha tried to negotiate a "salary" of "wife" but Tywin "negotiated" her down to X gold/"whore," based on what he thought was socially appropriate.

I actually don't think it matters whether Tysha was with Tyrion because she thought it was a good "career" decision or because she was in love with him. Regardless, she was still horrifically betrayed, and all in the service of...I don't even know what Tywin's "lesson" was. You think it's love but it's just sex? You think you're invaluable, but you're just worth a golden dragon? Love = money? I don't know.

[Tyroshi Sellsword]

Honestly, I don't see how it could make a person feel *better* to think about how people even more vulnerable and innocent than she is have also been crushed. What does that do except encourage an already shaken-up person to believe that the world is a place where gentleness and goodness are casually obliterated by power-hungry assholes, so the only "safety" is to be one of those assholes yourself?

A lot of assumptions here. I think one could think, I am a person who is privileged: to be beautiful, to be rich, to be powerful, to have a son who is king, to have been loved. This suffering is a tiny thing in comparison to my many blessings, and it is a tiny punishment compared to what I could have gotten for my many crimes. And cut your losses, you know?

Why should anyone suffer at all? I agree that Cersei could have suffered *much* worse, if that had been convenient for the people around her. But why could things have only turned out worse than they did? They could have turned out better, too.

Should's got nothing to do with it. No one should suffer, but everyone does. I don't see HOW things could have turned out much better. Lancel and the Kettleblacks confessed to sleeping with her. She was manifestly guilty. Her punishment left not physical mark, and she is still the Queen Mother. Perspective!

I agree that it's silly and disrespectful to turn what could be a relatively minor setback or even an asset into an apocalyptic event, but I also think it's defeatist to just swallow suffering like you're doomed to it. Cersei's a queen -- why shouldn't she feel entitled? Why shouldn't everyone feel entitled not to suffer, and to try and make it so they don't, and to feel angry when they're made to?

And why should she be a queen? Why are queens entitled? She "shouldn't" be the mother of the king b/c her son is not the rightful king. She should be dead for treason three times over. The truth of these monstrously huge lies has a way of coming out. It's not defeatist to say, I got off easy.

I think Jaime was in love with Cersei as a version of self-love just as much as she liked having sex with him as a version of self-love. For me, he's the sicker of the two because he made it a point to be faithful, and because being only with "himself" was truly satisfying for him.

Is that sick, or is it noble? Fidelity is considered a virtue. He's not exactly in a line of work where he could get away with fooling around much either.

Probably I'm just aggravated with him because his brother and sister are constantly wishing he were there to protect him, and his father was constantly wishing he would just step into his place as son, and Jaime always slipped out of it

Maybe this is just my personal baggage, but I heartily admire someone who does not allow himself to be pigeon-holed by his family into the role of bailing them out when they fuck up all the time. He didn't want Casterly Rock b/c he didn't want to be Tywin's heir. Would you? He didn't want to bail out Cersei b/c she was actively committing evil and didn't really care about him. Tyrion is bound and determined to screw up every aspect of his life. None of this is Jaime's responsibility. Sometimes, you just have to chose YOURSELF. Otherwise, you're just everyone else's dog. Good for him for not allowing his needy, screwed up family to dictate all his life choices. I wish more people (in these books AND in real life) realized this.

Brienne might be ugly, but she's also a powerhouse, physically. Cersei constantly wishes for that. I wonder if Brienne wouldn't mind giving up her physical strength for Cersei's beauty, or Cersei her beauty for Brienne's physical strength? Would there be a way for Brienne's physical strength to be ceremonially stripped from her in the way Cersei's beauty was, or is it somehow more "intrinsic" to her?

Brienne could be maimed. That's the only way to take away her strength. I don't think Cersei would give up her beauty. It's the tool she know how to use, and there's no way she'd ever want to be an ugly woman, no matter how powerful. Now, would she choose to be an ugly man over being a beautiful woman? That's the real question.

I wonder what their respective rigidness is supposed to mean, and why that appeals to Jaime?

They have a strong sense of self and purpose, and he doesn't.

I don't mind when the characters are self-pitying. ... That's what I think GRRM is a master at, btw -- making it sort of obvious that the character is lying to herself, but at the same time making you kind of believe the lies.

It definitely is interesting. I do bring my own personal lens to viewing these characters, and I find the ones who are drowning in self-pity make the worst choices. But I agree that they are all blind, and b/c we can see the big picture, it often makes for some really gut-wrenching reading, watching them make mistakes as we sit there and shout NOOooo!

I also agree that Tyrion was grating in this book and Cersei was great. Tyrion just keeps on surviving despite having no manifest reason for living. I was so hoping he'd hook up with Daenerys and become her primary strategic advisor. God, how she could use someone as pragmatic and clever as he is! And honest (with others if not himself). He needs a reason to live, and she could be it. Cersei, OTOH, is a train wreck in slow motion.

Morals = what you know is right. Honor = what society decides is right. (?) Reminds me of The Trial -- it sounds like an individual doesn't really have control over whether he has honor or not, since that's something society decides based on society's rubric and what society knows about a person -- it seems out of any single individual's hands.

Not at all. A person can choose to act in a way that will be viewed as honorable, or not to. I think the rubric is well-known and easy to access. You start off with some advantages or disadvantages based on your family, but you do have the free will to be honorable or not.

It is complicated, as sometimes things like love cause you to be immoral or dishonorable (Jaime chucking Bran out a window, Tyrion cooking the singer into a stew, Rhaegar and Lyanna running off, etc)

I do think that it felt like we were really *locked* inside people's heads this time -- which I think is interesting. I don't know why that turned out better for some characters -- such as Cersei -- and worse for some -- such as Tyrion. Maybe because that's more of a change for a relatively distant character with a small number of POVs, like Cersei?

Tyrion did a lot of useless dicking around in this book. Traveling on boats for what seemed like forever, thinking the same 5 thoughts over and over again. I'm sure that's what life was like for Tyrion, but as a reader, it got very annoying. Cersei's chapters were action-packed. Not a spare word. That's what made them better.

I am so curious about what Cersei does from her new "modest" and "contrite" position, because she might need to emphasize what a "safe" and weak little friend she is now. Boy, that'll be a big change. I'd be so interested to see how she does it.

She won't. She will go on the offensive bigtime and lose bigtime. That's my prediction.

What do you think a whore is?

The townspeople labeled Cersei a whore -- do you think that label has meaning?

I think a whore is someone who sets a price for a part of them that shouldn't be sold, and then sells it. It's also a technical term for a person who sells sex, but in a more general sense, if you have something precious, like your body, or your integrity, and you sell it, you're a whore. Tysha, therefore, was not a whore. Neither was Cersei. Both WERE SOLD, but they didn't sell themselves. Also, transactions made at swordpoint don't count, so Ned is not a whore, and neither is Tyrion.

Well, I do think we're all whores. I also work in the entertainment industry ;).

But there, too, it's not like you can *not* work. How are you going to eat? If you choose not to consent to being a commodity, you're choosing to die. Is that a choice? It's like the social contract -- if you can't opt out, are you really "in"?

The word starts to lose meaning if you apply it so liberally IMO. Any transaction is not whoring. If you sell something that is part of who you are, cynically, simply for material gain, that is whoring. I am not a whore for doing my job. I am in no way diminished by receiving compensation for my efforts. My core is intact (and where that core is is different for everyone). I am happy to do what I do, and I take money so that I can live in this society. Maybe I'm being too pomo here, but I feel like you're only a whore if you feel like a whore. But on a very literal level, a whore being a person who sells her sexual favors for money, no, Cersei is still not a whore.

With work, we don't get to set a price, either. You get paid what your wage or salary is, and you can try to wriggle around and negotiate, but it's all within bounds not set by you. I can't just walk up to my boss and say "from now on, I get one million an hour!" Legally, I can't even walk up to him and say, "from now on, I get fifty cents an hour!" I've got to base my price off of the price I'm offered for my services, based on what other people (including the government) think is appropriate.

You make choices to be in the line of work you're in, knowing in advance roughly what your salary will be. You can choose to get a different job, retrain, or market yourself differently if you want a different outcome.

Tysha tried to negotiate a "salary" of "wife" but Tywin "negotiated" her down to X gold/"whore," based on what he thought was socially appropriate.

No, she HAD negotiated a salary of "wife," but the contract was forcibly violated by Tywin, who wrongfully downgraded her to "rape victim." The word "whore" here is a lie told to Tyrion to make him swallow Tywin's medicine.

I don't even know what Tywin's "lesson" was. You think it's love but it's just sex? You think you're invaluable, but you're just worth a golden dragon? Love = money? I don't know.

Tywin's lesson is: My children don't marry for love. They marry for gold. Ironically, he married for love... so he's a hypocrite, big shocker.

[LittleDragon]

Who washere it that predicted that GRRM would sexualize Cersei's humiliation? Because, yeah, that was beyond creepy.

I don't buy into the general misogyny accusations that people lob at the series, because I don't think they're founded on the whole. But Cersei's slut-shaming is disturbing, primarily because it's written as though it's righteous. It reads like something out of a Gorean book, in no small part because there was an almost titillating tone to it. It was almost as if it was written to appeal to the TAKE THAT WHORE! sensibilities of some of the readers.

There are a thousand and one horrible punishments that Cersei would justly deserve, but I question the choice to subject her to sexual humiliation. Is that the only "just" punishment he can conceive of for her? Is this what she deserves because she's a bitch? Are we supposed to cheer that she's being demeaned as the worthless whore she is?

This, coupled with events of previous books and notably GRRM saying Robert is a "pretty good guy" despite raping Cersei, inclines me more and more to include that he has a bizarre, inexplicable fixation with sexually tormenting and degrading this particular character. And it really leaves a bitter aftertaste in my mouth.

If I remember well Cersei's oncle explains it clearly: Cersei's humiliation was only one side of the coin, the main issue was to discredit her forever, as who could ever accept any instructions from her seen her naked and filthy in the street. it's more a Tyrell-influence than the High Septon's work, the septon was the tool, but I see the Rose behind it. For them that's only an additional advantage that at the end of the walk, she collapsed.

[Chirios]

If I remember well Cersei's oncle explains it clearly: Cersei's humiliation was only one side of the coin, the main issue was to discredit her forever, as who could ever accept any instructions from her seen her naked and filthy in the street. it's more a Tyrell-influence than the High Septon's work, the septon was the tool, but I see the Rose behind it. For them that's only an additional advantage that at the end of the walk, she collapsed.

It wasn't a Tyrell influence, it was Kevan. He stole the idea from Tywin, who did the same thing to his father's mistress.

[rue721]

I think one could think, I am a person who is privileged: to be beautiful, to be rich, to be powerful, to have a son who is king, to have been loved. This suffering is a tiny thing in comparison to my many blessings, and it is a tiny punishment compared to what I could have gotten for my many crimes. And cut your losses, you know?

Exactly -- but that has nothing to do with reminding yourself what other people endured and everything to do with retaining a sense of personal worth/pride. And is basically what Cersei was telling herself when she was prepping to go on the Walk -- saying that they couldn't really touch her, and in the end she'd be back in the Castle and still Tommen's mother.

No one should suffer, but everyone does. I don't see HOW things could have turned out much better. Lancel and the Kettleblacks confessed to sleeping with her. She was manifestly guilty. Her punishment left not physical mark, and she is still the Queen Mother. Perspective!

I don't know why it's valid to look at her punishment through the context of every possible horrible future and not valid to look at it through the context of Cersei's entire life thus far. The Walk was far from the worst thing to happen to anybody ever, but who cares, since it was one of the worst things to ever happen to *Cersei*?

Besides, I don't actually think Cersei made a huge deal of it. Everyone else within-world is trying to rub the shame of it in her face (ie, the townspeople, Kevan), but Cersei is keeping up a brave face. I don't blame her for internally having a bit of a freak out when she is dealing with one of the worst things that has ever happened to her.

Is that sick, or is it noble? Fidelity is considered a virtue. He's not exactly in a line of work where he could get away with fooling around much either.

He's not even open and generous enough with himself to fuck anyone but "himself"! That's pretty sick, to me. I don't think fidelity counts when you're just being self-absorbed in the most twisted way possible. Or maybe that's all fidelity is in general, who knows!

None of this is Jaime's responsibility. Sometimes, you just have to chose YOURSELF. Otherwise, you're just everyone else's dog. Good for him for not allowing his needy, screwed up family to dictate all his life choices. I wish more people (in these books AND in real life) realized this.

I agree in theory, which is why I try to remind myself that he needed to abandon them to survive. But he would say he loved them, and they would be literally crying for his help, and he wouldn't really try to help them -- so how can he be a *hero*?

I don't think Cersei would give up her beauty. It's the tool she know how to use, and there's no way she'd ever want to be an ugly woman, no matter how powerful. Now, would she choose to be an ugly man over being a beautiful woman? That's the real question.

Cersei is terrible at using her beauty! She thinks she's good at it, and she is good in the sense that she manages to make people remember that she's beautiful -- which she tries to convey into an appearance of majesty. But she's so often so openly aggressive -- fucking for favors, letting other people be torn to shreds sexually. Though sometimes it happens anyway, she rarely *tries* to hide behind someone or use her beauty as camouflage, she rarely *tries* to play on people's assumptions about her based on her looks -- instead, she mostly tries to impress them with how special and scary she is. She plays more often to her weaknesses than her strengths. But that's Cersei -- she's so obsessed with letting people know she's powerful that she lets a fair amount of actual power slip through her fingers. That's why I think she could learn a lot from Varys, and how he'll always make himself seem *more innocuous* at every sign of danger. Cersei has great camo for looking weak, safe, ineffectual, gentle -- but she doesn't really use it, and so she doesn't really get to use the actual power of her beauty, imo.

Sansa's on the opposite path, though. Maybe because Sansa is so powerless so young, and her beauty has so obviously just made her more so? I think that Tyrion's SL could have paralleled with Sansa's, in that he could have spent this book learning how to use his ugliness like Sansa is learning to use her beauty -- and he sort of did, but in such a confusing and half-assed way. *Shrug.*

But yeah, I think Cersei would be a man in a heartbeat, and actually, I think she would *love* to have physical strength, first of all. She's not really a very introspective person -- I think she'd like to have the power to beat everyone she doesn't like into a bloody pulp and for people to quell just from looking at her.

I do bring my own personal lens to viewing these characters, and I find the ones who are drowning in self-pity make the worst choices. But I agree that they are all blind, and b/c we can see the big picture, it often makes for some really gut-wrenching reading, watching them make mistakes as we sit there and shout NOOooo!

Seems like what you think of as "self-pity" I think of as "self-loathing"?

I think self-pity/self-loathing makes a character's head into an echo chamber, where the current situation/decision is reverberating off of all the old assumptions, needs and fears. So the character ends up reacting to her own needs and fears instead of what's actually happening right in front of her.

Which is fascinating for me as a reader, because it makes the puzzle of what's *actually* happening all that much more complex. I don't know that we, the readers, actually ever get the big picture. I think we can try to parse together the bunches of viewpoints to get a viewpoint broader than any single character's, but it's still impossible to know any kind of objective truth.

One of my favorite plays on the POVs aspect of the books is when a character is very self-conscious and has a kind of (usually totally skewed/mistaken/false) "outsider's POV" running through the back of her mind and describing/passing judgment on all her actions. Cersei, Sansa and especially Tyrion do that, which I love. I usually find their mental "what other people are thinking" commentary both hilarious and heart-wrenching -- absolutely love it.

I was so hoping he'd hook up with Daenerys and become her primary strategic advisor. [...] He needs a reason to live, and she could be it. Cersei, OTOH, is a train wreck in slow motion.

I hope for Dany's sake that she doesn't actually listen to much of Tyrion says. Tyrion is clever *at manipulating logistics* but he's not good at figuring out what other people are thinking or feeling. Just as a little example -- when Joffrey was getting married, Tyrion got him a book. A *book.* *Joffrey.* And he's so clever at logistics (and so emotionally isolated that his empathy is pretty limited) that he usually just manipulates them in his own favor without anyone realizing. I guess I just figure that Tyrion will exploit Dany somehow, and she'll get screwed -- so I wasn't really anxious for him to get to her in this book. I don't know why Dany would be a reason to live, for him?

Cersei seems more focused, to me, in that she is still tethered to herself/her family by way of Tommen. I actually think Tyrion is trying to use Cersei as a way of keeping himself tethered in that same way -- and that's why he *continually* brings her up. But whereas Cersei is telling herself that she loves Tommen and wants to help him because that's her mission as a mother/Lannister, Tyrion -- god knows.

A person can choose to act in a way that will be viewed as honorable, or not to. I think the rubric is well-known and easy to access.

The rubric is easy to access in that everyone knows what society thinks is honorable -- but it's not easy to access in that some parts of "honor" are impossible for some people to complete, and society is going to make judgments based on what they assume/see and not necessarily what you're actually doing. For example, Brienne doesn't have access to some aspects of being honorable, because while she can be *like* an honorable knight, she actually can't *be* a knight.

And in this world, I think a lot of what is considered honorable is based on the physical body. I honestly don't think that an ugly woman can be considered "honorable," and same for a weak man. And I also think there's a limit to how "wretched" a beautiful woman or a strong man can be. I guess it's a difference between Lysa (ugly woman) and Cersei (beautiful woman), or Tyrion (weak man) and Gregor (strong man). Even at their lowest, Cersei and Gregor were accorded respect within the narrative in a way that Lysa and Tyrion weren't, it seems to me -- Gregor couldn't just be thrown away, he had to be killed in an "honorable" way, and Cersei was punished, but in a purely ceremonial way in which she remains "untouched." I guess if only weak men can be made wretched in this world, it's even sadder for Tywin that he died half-naked and in a pile of shit. If that's not wretched, I don't know what is.

I think a whore is someone who sets a price for a part of them that shouldn't be sold, and then sells it. It's also a technical term for a person who sells sex, but in a more general sense, if you have something precious, like your body, or your integrity, and you sell it, you're a whore. Tysha, therefore, was not a whore. Neither was Cersei. Both WERE SOLD, but they didn't sell themselves. Also, transactions made at swordpoint don't count, so Ned is not a whore, and neither is Tyrion.

Which parts should be sold and which shouldn't, and who gets to decide? I don't know why selling your body for sex would be any different than selling your body for battle. Now, we connect sex with love, but that isn't necessarily the case in Westeros -- so I think it's actually even better, in an ethical way, to sell your body in a way that creates pleasure instead of in a way that will create pain.

If Tysha and Cersei were sold, does that mean they were slaves? I actually do think so, in a way, in that they became property (and had zero autonomy) at the points where they're being "sold." I don't think that being whored out necessarily implies that you sold *yourself.* If you're a prostitute, somebody paid for using you, and somebody got paid, but you didn't necessary get the money at any point. If you're commoditized, your body is an object that is being bought and sold, not that *you* necessarily transformed your body into an object and sold it (though that *could* be the case). What I think is so horrifying is that you might *not* have the choice as to whether you're a commodity or a person. When Tysha is "sold" into prostitution or Tyrion and Penny are sold into slavery, they're all made into commodities and thereafter treated as commodities, even though *they* still want to believe that they're people and not property. It makes it sadder in a way that they weren't willing in their commoditization, but I don't think it somehow means they weren't commoditized.

And when you sell anything you're making a life/death decision -- you're selling something in order to buy more breaths of life. The same thing goes for working a job as it does for making a confession or "selling your soul" through a lie, I think. Isn't the process: sell what you've got for the highest prices you're able, to create leverage so you will have more to sell when it comes time to buy your next breaths?

Maybe whore is the wrong word, because it implies "renting" yourself out and for sex in particular, when a better word would be "slave"? I do think there needs to be some kind of term we can use to describe the way people are being commoditized -- whether against their will or not.

The word starts to lose meaning if you apply it so liberally IMO. Any transaction is not whoring. If you sell something that is part of who you are, cynically, simply for material gain, that is whoring. I am not a whore for doing my job. I am in no way diminished by receiving compensation for my efforts. My core is intact (and where that core is is different for everyone). I am happy to do what I do, and I take money so that I can live in this society. Maybe I'm being too pomo here, but I feel like you're only a whore if you feel like a whore. But on a very literal level, a whore being a person who sells her sexual favors for money, no, Cersei is still not a whore.

Cersei sold her sexual favors (or rather, Tywin sold her sexual favors) for a social position -- what's the difference between that and being pimped out for money? I do think that there's a difference between someone who is completely made into a piece of property by being sold wholesale, in a way that a slave or even a prostitute is sold, and someone who is selling off their services piece by piece the way someone does for a job. But I think that has to do with the person's negotiating power and not so much what service is actually being performed or for what kind of "earnings" they're given.

The thing about selling services for a job is that you can say "no" to a certain extent -- there are limits to what your boss can physically do to you, because he doesn't actually physically *own* you...so you retain a certain amount of negotiating power. Even though *part* of you is being commoditized and sold, the rest of you remains your own. But that's not true of a wife (in this world) or a slave -- in that case, you are "owned." Maybe a whore is in between -- you're sold completely, but for limited amounts of time and potentially to a whole range of different clients.

The word "whore" here is a lie told to Tyrion to make him swallow Tywin's medicine.

The issue, to me, is that -- from Tywin's perspective -- if Tysha is a whore than how is Cersei not also a whore? You think he just said that as a way of shutting up Tyrion? I don't think so, since he also had his own issues going on about his father's mistress being a "whore" and his mother not being one. I think "whore" meant something specific to him, but I don't know what it was.

What seems strangest to me about Tysha's gang-rape, from Tywin's perspective, is that he wanted to see Tyrion fuck Tysha, and he required that Tyrion do it with utter coldness. If Tywin thinks of Tyrion as the thing that killed his wife, and as a symbol of a curse on the House, isn't that a really strange thing to want to see? Symbolically, your House's curse is that the wives are killed and replaced with (and/or transformed into) whores -- and you want to watch that physically play out? Again?

Of course, maybe Tywin wasn't as interested in metaphor as I am :P. But wouldn't that be like watching his worst nightmare play out?

[Tyroshi Sellsword]

Exactly -- but that has nothing to do with reminding yourself what other people endured and everything to do with retaining a sense of personal worth/pride. And is basically what Cersei was telling herself when she was prepping to go on the Walk -- saying that they couldn't really touch her, and in the end she'd be back in the Castle and still Tommen's mother.

I'm thinking more of how she dealt with it afterwards, not how she steeled herself before. Afterwards, is she thinking, "Well, that's over. It sucked BUT it could have been worse"? Or is she thinking, "GRRR RAGE KILL! I am a queen, how dare they?" I'd say the former would be a more constructive way of viewing it, but since her suffering is the only suffering she can imagine, then her suffering, no matter how well deserved nor how ultimately minor, will prevent her from making good decisions in the future. In that sense, it is going to destroy her and let her enemies win.

I don't know why it's valid to look at her punishment through the context of every possible horrible future and not valid to look at it through the context of Cersei's entire life thus far. The Walk was far from the worst thing to happen to anybody ever, but who cares, since it was one of the worst things to ever happen to *Cersei*?

Not every possible punishment: Cersei's own possible punishments. IF she is ever punished for her ACTUAL crimes, the Walk of Shame will look like a frolic in a field of daises. Too bad she can't remember that, rather than continuing to put herself in the cross hairs, where she is much more likely to have her crimes scrutinized. Doesn't she see, by continuing to antagonize enemies, she is going to bring about Tommen's doom?

Besides, I don't actually think Cersei made a huge deal of it.

Sure she did. She's spending 1/3 of her waking hours obsessively scrubbing her body. She's freaking out about it.

He's not even open and generous enough with himself to fuck anyone but "himself"! That's pretty sick, to me. I don't think fidelity counts when you're just being self-absorbed in the most twisted way possible. Or maybe that's all fidelity is in general, who knows!

Or maybe he's too fearful and insecure to trust his deepest self with anyone else, in which case it's more to be pitied than scorned. AND he is able to walk away when there is enough of a gap between him and Cersei to see that she is far more pathological than he can handle anymore.

I agree in theory, which is why I try to remind myself that he needed to abandon them to survive. But he would say he loved them, and they would be literally crying for his help, and he wouldn't really try to help them -- so how can he be a *hero*?

I think he did his best to help them, and then he just couldn't anymore and still be Jaime, because he was finally realizing who Jaime was, and it wasn't Cersei's reflection and Tyrion's big brother. They were crying for his help b/c they were sort of pathetic, self-indulgent brats, so why is he morally obligated to help them? What have either of them done for him lately? Honestly, look at it from Jaime's side. Have either of them really helped him when he was crying out for it? The person who has been there for him is Brienne. That's it.

Cersei is terrible at using her beauty!

Sad, then, that she thinks it's all she's got. And considering how little energy she spends cultivating other virtues, she's really screwed now.

Seems like what you think of as "self-pity" I think of as "self-loathing"?

Self-pity causes them to dwell on the wrongs done to them, and why they are so put upon. There are many characters in these books who are soaked in self-pity: Cersei, Tyrion, Stannis, Theon, sometimes even Jon and Dany. You want them to think, just briefly, about all the smallfolk with no luxury, no agency, and no hope of surviving the winter if these people don't get their act together.

I hope for Dany's sake that she doesn't actually listen to much of Tyrion says. Tyrion is clever *at manipulating logistics* but he's not good at figuring out what other people are thinking or feeling.

How important is it to care about how people are feeling in wartime? What she needs is someone to say, "Poison the wells outside the city so the Yunkish drink from them and die." She has no advisors to give her even this sort of elementary tactical advice. Instead, she gets, "Marry Hizdahr." Come on. If she needs help picking out gifts for people, then Tyrion is not her man. But he is quite clever at sussing out people's motivations and secrets. He sees right through Griff & Co. He figures out how to escape from slavery with Penny and Jorah. He's pretty damn smart, and she needs that.

I guess I just figure that Tyrion will exploit Dany somehow, and she'll get screwed -- so I wasn't really anxious for him to get to her in this book. I don't know why Dany would be a reason to live, for him?

Why would you think that? He doesn't exploit Penny, or Jorah, or Jaime, or Sansa. He is capable of being caring and compassionate, when he isn't getting in his own way. In Dany he might see a decent person with a lot going for her as a ruler, who has just been getting terrible advice and is pretty alone. Helping her could direct all this aimless intelligence that is driving him crazy. He could be part of something that has meaning, on his own merit. Right now, he's just a cockroach who keeps on surviving despite the fact that he hates his own guts. I'd like to see him have an actual reason to feel good. Corny, isn't it?

Does Cersei actually love Tommen? Or does she love the idea of a part of her being King?

The rubric is easy to access in that everyone knows what society thinks is honorable -- but it's not easy to access in that some parts of "honor" are impossible for some people to complete, and society is going to make judgments based on what they assume/see and not necessarily what you're actually doing. For example, Brienne doesn't have access to some aspects of being honorable, because while she can be *like* an honorable knight, she actually can't *be* a knight.

Brienne refuses to access the "wife and mother" parts of being honorable, and insists on accessing the male-only parts of being a leal knight. She is very brave (I always love people who buck their society's gender roles and give them high marks for courage in a conformist society-- what a strong sense of self-determination! Doesn't Cersei wish she could just do what Brienne did!). But I don't think that makes Brienne dishonorable. It means that society just doesn't know how to evaluate her, so they flail around with comments about her appearance. That doesn't really attack her honor, but it does seek to categorize and marginalize her so people don't have to deal with what she means about their precious gender roles. Cersei would probably despise her b/c she'd be sick with jealousy.

And in this world, I think a lot of what is considered honorable is based on the physical body. I honestly don't think that an ugly woman can be considered "honorable," and same for a weak man.

Lysa Tully isn't considered honorable? Maybe because she had a pregnancy out of wedlock and had to marry a much older man to hide her dishonor? Nothing to do with her looks. She's also crazy, and people don't generally respect crazy, unless it's religious crazy ala Aeron Damphair. People assume that beauty = virtue b/c it's easy to evaluate and doesn't require a lot of probing or thinking about a person's inner life. Now I am trying to think of a plain woman who is considered honorable: Elia Martell? Maege Mormont?

Even at their lowest, Cersei and Gregor were accorded respect within the narrative in a way that Lysa and Tyrion weren't, it seems to me -- Gregor couldn't just be thrown away, he had to be killed in an "honorable" way, and Cersei was punished, but in a purely ceremonial way in which she remains "untouched."

I think their methods of disposal have to be ceremonized because they are too dangerous for a frontal assault. It's not because they are honorable. Would anyone dare pull this crap on a woman who is known to be totally honorable, about whom there are no whispers of impropriety? No, b/c she'd have people who would defend her. No one is sticking up for Cersei, even people ostensibly on her side.

Which parts should be sold and which shouldn't, and who gets to decide?

You get to decide, which is why other people labeling you a whore is a meaningless label, unless they are using it literally. I agree with you, that Cersei was sold into slavery, in a sense. Anyone who is given to another in ownership, who is not free to make essential personal choices, and who does not like it, is a slave. I draw a bright line between slavery and prostitution b/c prostitution very much implies choice. Cersei did have and made choices to defy the terms of her slavery, but those choices were both illegal and immoral. So she is really screwed, and I guess you finally made me feel sorry for her. Good job!

I don't know why selling your body for sex would be any different than selling your body for battle. Now, we connect sex with love, but that isn't necessarily the case in Westeros -- so I think it's actually even better, in an ethical way, to sell your body in a way that creates pleasure instead of in a way that will create pain.

It's not different. It's only different if you feel like you've sold something that should be inviolate, and people are more likely to feel that their sex organs should be inviolate than their sword arm, though I'm sure the slaves in the fighting pits of Meereen might feel differently.

Maybe a whore is in between -- you're sold completely, but for limited amounts of time and potentially to a whole range of different clients.

That could be a meaningful distinction-- being a whore is temporary? Not sure and this part of the conversation is getting kind of convoluted even for me.

The issue, to me, is that -- from Tywin's perspective -- if Tysha is a whore than how is Cersei not also a whore? You think he just said that as a way of shutting up Tyrion? I don't think so, since he also had his own issues going on about his father's mistress being a "whore" and his mother not being one. I think "whore" meant something specific to him, but I don't know what it was.

I do not think we should look to Tywin as any sort of authority on what it means to be a whore, and who is or isn't a whore. His views on commoditization are highly warped and self-serving. His father's mistress was not a whore. She, like Tysha, was a woman who got above her place. Labeling her a whore is a nice societial shorthand to permanently discredit and diminish her.

What seems strangest to me about Tysha's gang-rape, from Tywin's perspective, is that he wanted to see Tyrion fuck Tysha, and he required that Tyrion do it with utter coldness. If Tywin thinks of Tyrion as the thing that killed his wife, and as a symbol of a curse on the House, isn't that a really strange thing to want to see? Symbolically, your House's curse is that the wives are killed and replaced with (and/or transformed into) whores -- and you want to watch that physically play out? Again?

Of course, maybe Tywin wasn't as interested in metaphor as I am :P. But wouldn't that be like watching his worst nightmare play out?

Freud would say that Tywin had to revisit the primal scene and once again punish the uppity woman by branding her a whore. But it's all a lie, a lie he can make reality b/c he shits gold. He's a pretty sick person. I wonder what Joanna Lannister was like...

[rue721]

Tyroshi, I created a new thread called "Dany and Tyrion," and put my responses to parts of your post there. I hope the thread gets approved!

IF she is ever punished for her ACTUAL crimes, the Walk of Shame will look like a frolic in a field of daises. Too bad she can't remember that, rather than continuing to put herself in the cross hairs, where she is much more likely to have her crimes scrutinized. Doesn't she see, by continuing to antagonize enemies, she is going to bring about Tommen's doom?

I agree that Cersei works at cross-purposes with herself a lot of the time, and I think she'll probably work at cross-purposes this time, too. She makes a lot of mistakes, and I think if she could find a way to burn cold instead of burning hot, she'd probably be safer and more clear-headed, and that would be to her and Tommen's benefit. But I don't really begrudge her having some difficulty putting the Walk of Shame into a context that includes the suffering of smallfolk and other people she knows nothing about and cares less than nothing for.

Just because things could have turned out worse, are you supposed to be OK with the fact that they didn't turn out better? While I understand your point about not wallowing in self-pity because that's dangerous, if everybody (Kevan, the High Septon, the smallfolk) is trying to shove you into a tiny box you think you're too big for, how does reminding yourself that other people are being forced into even smaller boxes really help? I think a little anger and unwillingness to bend are completely appropriate at that point -- if Cersei doesn't wholeheartedly take Cersei's side, then *nobody* is on Cersei's side, and that's dangerous, too.

I think he did his best to help them, and then he just couldn't anymore and still be Jaime, because he was finally realizing who Jaime was, and it wasn't Cersei's reflection and Tyrion's big brother. They were crying for his help b/c they were sort of pathetic, self-indulgent brats, so why is he morally obligated to help them? What have either of them done for him lately? Honestly, look at it from Jaime's side. Have either of them really helped him when he was crying out for it? The person who has been there for him is Brienne. That's it.

No, they've never helped him because they don't really see him as a person. They don't really see *anybody* as people, except themselves and maybe their father. I don't think it's morally wrong that Jaime left them, and I think it was the only way that Jaime could survive (or at least survive and not be completely warped/ruined). But if he's capable of throwing away his own brother, sister and father, then he's capable of pretty extreme hard-heartedness, and I find that scary. Jaime has some capacity for warmth, but in the end, he's a cold fish who is going to toss you out of a window or toss you aside completely if he thinks his own well-being is at all at stake. It's hard for me to think of him as a hero even when he does heroic things, because to me, he seems to have such a cold heart.

Self-pity causes them to dwell on the wrongs done to them, and why they are so put upon. There are many characters in these books who are soaked in self-pity: Cersei, Tyrion, Stannis, Theon, sometimes even Jon and Dany. You want them to think, just briefly, about all the smallfolk with no luxury, no agency, and no hope of surviving the winter if these people don't get their act together.

Those are all very lonely characters. Of course they sit there thinking of their own lives in the little echo chamber of their own heads -- they're outcasts and exiles for the most part, so when they reach for context, it's hard for them to find it.

Would the opposite of self-pity be a sense of responsibility? I think that some of those characters -- especially Dany, Jon and Tyrion -- do show that. I think they could show *more* -- especially Tyrion, who is fine with taking responsibility for other people, but won't take any for himself. But I think that because a lot of these characters are so alienated, it is hard for them to figure out who they should feel responsible for. Cersei feels it for her immediate family, her children. Stannis and Theon -- I don't know if they feel any sense of responsibility toward anyone, or if all they feel is a sense of entitlement?

I don't think that makes Brienne dishonorable. It means that society just doesn't know how to evaluate her, so they flail around with comments about her appearance. That doesn't really attack her honor, but it does seek to categorize and marginalize her so people don't have to deal with what she means about their precious gender roles. Cersei would probably despise her b/c she'd be sick with jealousy.

I agree that they don't claim she's *dishonorable* but they also refuse to grant her honor. And I guess society does have the power to grant or refuse a person honor. I think it does so on the basis of you being able to fulfill a rubric that it creates, and which has a lot of physical characteristics -- and others that a person is powerless to change -- on it. There comes a point where, if society is not going to give you any honor, why stick to its system of virtues at all? I think that's the path Arya went down -- society didn't fulfill its end of the contract with her, so now she's done with it.

I think their methods of disposal have to be ceremonized because they are too dangerous for a frontal assault. It's not because they are honorable. Would anyone dare pull this crap on a woman who is known to be totally honorable, about whom there are no whispers of impropriety? No, b/c she'd have people who would defend her. No one is sticking up for Cersei, even people ostensibly on her side.

I think they're dangerous because even in their total depravity, they still fulfill some essential aspects of what makes an "ideal" or "great" man/woman. And even now, the point of the Walk was to tear away any shield of honor Cersei had on herself, but 1. the fact that it still had to be torn away even after all this makes me sure that it was there 2. it might have worked, but Cersei's got a shot to get it back.

In SoS, when Tyrion kept getting super upset at the thought that even dead, Renly was given more honor/awe/respect/credit than Tyrion was in life, I think that was about Renly being someone who had the essential criteria for being considered "honorable" and Tyrion not, and that making Tyrion despair. And I think that criteria wasn't about what each of them *did* I think it was about who they *are.* I think the same kind of story goes on between Cersei (as Renly) and Brienne (as Tyrion).

I think society has some ceremonies that it uses to try and tear honor away from people who would otherwise be automatically "honorable," but I don't know how well those ceremonies actually work...and the fact that they have to be used means that the people they're used on essentially have "honor." Is there a difference between honor and respect?

Anyone who is given to another in ownership, who is not free to make essential personal choices, and who does not like it, is a slave. I draw a bright line between slavery and prostitution b/c prostitution very much implies choice.

Why does prostitution imply choice?

When I think of prostitutes, I think of very desperate people -- people controlled very tightly by other people (ie, pimps), drugs and/or poverty. To me, prostitution implies a *lack* of choice. ("sex slave" I guess).

I do not think we should look to Tywin as any sort of authority on what it means to be a whore, and who is or isn't a whore. His views on commoditization are highly warped and self-serving. His father's mistress was not a whore. She, like Tysha, was a woman who got above her place. Labeling her a whore is a nice societial shorthand to permanently discredit and diminish her.

Maybe it's all more about misogyny than about commoditization anyway, in terms of Tywin. I don't know what Tywin's issue with women was, but I'm interested in it because it obviously echoes somehow in Cersei and Tyrion.

If Tywin thinks of Tyrion as the thing that killed his wife, and as a symbol of a curse on the House, isn't that a really strange thing to want to see? Symbolically, your House's curse is that the wives are killed and replaced with (and/or transformed into) whores -- and you want to watch that physically play out?

Twyin also went from having a wife to having whores, and it was the Curse on the House that killed the wife and ushered him into whore-mongering. So maybe it was a little passion-play of that, that he was watching.

[Tyroshi Sellsword]

Tyroshi, I created a new thread called "Dany and Tyrion," and put my responses to parts of your post there. I hope the thread gets approved!

I will be on the lookout for that one.

But I don't really begrudge her having some difficulty putting the Walk of Shame into a context that includes the suffering of smallfolk and other people she knows nothing about and cares less than nothing for.

Hey, no, me neither. It humanizes her for me that she had that reaction. I am thinking of how she will proceed from there. Maybe counting her blessings instead of going all out for revenge would be a better plan... since she is guilty!

Just because things could have turned out worse, are you supposed to be OK with the fact that they didn't turn out better?

In a word, yes. B/c they were unlikely to have turned out better, and are likely to be much worse if she keeps drawing attention to herself.

While I understand your point about not wallowing in self-pity because that's dangerous, if everybody (Kevan, the High Septon, the smallfolk) is trying to shove you into a tiny box you think you're too big for, how does reminding yourself that other people are being forced into even smaller boxes really help?

I don't know if it would help Cersei, but it helps me. Being more subtle in how you protest your placement in that box also helps.

But if he's capable of throwing away his own brother, sister and father, then he's capable of pretty extreme hard-heartedness, and I find that scary.

How did he "throw away" Tyrion? Tyrion threw him away for being honest with him, as I recall. Cersei also threw him away for not being the same guy after he lost his hand. Seeing this all as Jaime throwing them away is really unfair, and I say this as someone who doesn't love Jaime all that much, really, but I think, of all the Lannisters, he is *now* the most sane and least obnoxious. And how did he accomplish that? By saying, "Fuck the Lannisters." So good for him.

Jaime has some capacity for warmth, but in the end, he's a cold fish who is going to toss you out of a window or toss you aside completely if he thinks his own well-being is at all at stake. It's hard for me to think of him as a hero even when he does heroic things, because to me, he seems to have such a cold heart.

Again, unfair. How can you say that taking on the role of the kingslayer, knowing it would haunt him forever, never revealing the real reason why he did it, is not heroic? I think Jaime has a capacity to withdraw, but in that family, those who don't withdraw just get battered to hell. It's a survival strategy and it's breaking down, I think.

Would the opposite of self-pity be a sense of responsibility? I think that some of those characters -- especially Dany, Jon and Tyrion -- do show that. I think they could show *more* -- especially Tyrion, who is fine with taking responsibility for other people, but won't take any for himself.

I think the opposite of self-pity is perspective. Dwelling on all the wrongs done to you, your losses and sadness, isolation, burdens, etc., can make you feel that things are worse than they are. Realizing that you have many advantages and possibilities is a good antidote. I think Jon has been great at getting past his. Dany and Tyrion can't get out of their own ways, despite their good hearts.

Cersei feels it for her immediate family. Stannis and Theon -- I don't know if they feel any sense of responsibility toward anyone, or if all they feel is a sense of entitlement?

I'm not sure if Cersei loves her kids or loves them as they reflect her. I wonder how she will treat the maimed Myrcella. Stannis and Theon haven't shown much sense of responsibility, just ambition and self-pity, though I have hope for Theon. Stannis is just unbearable.

I agree that they don't claim she's *dishonorable* but they also refuse to grant her honor. And I guess society does have the power to grant or refuse a person honor.

She is not imprisoned, or forced to marry, or stripped of her arms and armor, though. She is allowed to follow the life she has chosen, and that's a pretty big deal in a society as sexist as Westeros. Again, you could dwell on how she isn't given the full honors of a knight, or you could see her as being given far more honor and credit than most women could expect. I also see her on the Kingsguard in the future, as the first woman. You heard it here first.

I agree about Arya feeling failed, not only by society, but by her own mother and father, so she rejects who she is and her society. I hope she finds her way back.

I think they're dangerous because even in their total depravity, they still fulfill some essential aspects of what makes an "ideal" or "great" man/woman. And even now, the point of the Walk was to tear away any shield of honor Cersei had on herself, but 1. the fact that it still had to be torn away even after all this makes me sure that it was there 2. it might have worked, but Cersei's got a shot to get it back.

I think a person like Cersei gets some honor by default: Tywin's daughter, Robert's wife, Tommen's mother. A beautiful, powerful woman, after all. It takes a public statement to counteract all those givens. As for Gregor Clegane, I have no idea why Rhaegar would have knighted such a person in the first place, nor why his honor wasn't stripped much sooner. I can only think it is fear.

I think the same kind of story goes on between Cersei (as Renly) and Brienne (as Tyrion).

Except I don't see Brienne as someone who dwells excessively on the wrongs done her, wallowing in self-pity and accepting the box she is being put in. She largely doesn't give a crap, which is a healthy response.

I think society has some ceremonies that it uses to try and tear honor away from people who would otherwise be automatically "honorable," but I don't know how well those ceremonies actually work...and the fact that they have to be used means that the people they're used on essentially have "honor." Is there a difference between honor and respect?

It is hard to suss out the difference between honor and respect, and I fear that any lines I draw will be arbitrary.

Why does prostitution imply choice?

When I think of prostitutes, I think of very desperate people -- people controlled very tightly by other people (ie, pimps), drugs and/or poverty. To me, prostitution implies a *lack* of choice. ("sex slave" I guess).

I see it differently. I think, in order to be part of a transaction where you are the seller, you have to have agency, ie. choice. Now, if you have a pimp who forces you, or a father, then you are a sex slave, and that is different. You are not the seller: the pimp is, and you are just like a horse or a cow at market, chattel. Prostitutes can be desperate people with drug problems, but that is by no means the only type of prostitute, and all prostitutes have the choice to something else to get money. If they don't, they aren't prostitutes anymore, they are slaves. Maybe that's a semantic difference, but those are my working definitions.

Maybe it's all more about misogyny than about commoditization anyway, in terms of Tywin. I don't know what Tywin's issue with women was, but I'm interested in it because it obviously echoes somehow in Cersei and Tyrion.

I don't either, as apparently he loved Joanna. I'd love to know more about her, though I doubt we ever will.

Twyin also went from having a wife to having whores, and it was the Curse on the House that killed the wife and ushered him into whore-mongering. So maybe it was a little passion-play of that, that he was watching.

I'm not sure Tywin's actions have to have been rational, but I think you're onto something here.

[FacelessDude]

I just completed this chapter. I quite enjoyed Cersei's chapters in aDwD. Yes of course her penance walk was disturbing. It's the harsh reality of her punishment. I think Martin was trying to show how religion punishes women. If Cersei was a man and she slept with many men and or women she wouldn't have had to walk naked in the streets of King's Landing .

In Cersei's first aDwD chapter she 'admits' that women are weak creatures and that's apart of why she committed her sexual crimes. The High Septon agrees that women are weak. It shows how hypocritical religion can be.

Her penance walk also exemplified how damn hypocritical all the people watching her walk naked through the streets were. They enjoyed seeing her at her lowest. Half the people talking shit towards Cersei during her penance walk have probably done what Cersei has done.