50% Done and Enjoying Cersei's POV (Spoilers)

[poor_fellow]

I think Lena is Amazing as Cersei. It ticks me off each year when she doesn't get nominated for something. She is definitely way underrated. She humanizes her in the most subtle and beautiful ways even when you can't stand Cersei, Lena brings out her humanity.

Cersei doesn't have any humanity. The character Lena plays is not the one portrayed in the book. Cersei is narcissistic, cruel, and unbelievably selfish. The Cersei in the show is some politically correct "heroic" single mother who just loves her children to pieces. In the book Cersei does love her children, but that love is heavily tainted by narcissism.

For a smart woman she is really dumb. Her main bent, besides loving her children, is that she should have had equal rights with men. She should therefore should have considered favouring and joining one of her children by marriage to a Kingdom/house where females DO have rights to the throne. I can't believe she didn't think of this, because further down the road it might all pan out for her sex, but not for her personally, as its all done and dusted for the Lannister Kingship.

So perhaps she is truly selfish and lacks humanity with no hope of reversal. I am only halfway through FOCs btw.

Where did you get the idea that Cersei is smart? She makes huge, mind boggling mistakes all throughout FFCs. Also, she is no feminist crusader. She's only interested in those issues because it affects her personally. She couldn't care less about rights or justice.

[Nelapsi]

Found the Ironmen Chapters the hardest to enjoy.

Oh my how I hated those.... It was a real pain in the a** not to skip them. I remember I actually googled something along the lines of "are the ironmen chapters important to understand the rest of the story?" lol and yeah...they actually are.

I find it ironic that slowly she is turning mad just like the man her brother slew.

This is indeed ironic. Never thought of this.

However, I don't agree with poor_fellow. I think the only difference between GRRM's Cersei and Lena's is that, since it's two different media, we only see Lena's, whereas we hear GRRM's stream of consciousness... other than that, I see no other big gap between the two. Maybe slightly differnet approaches, that's all.

[Ser Rodrik]

Cersei, on the other hand, is predictable and annoying. There is no depth to the way she behaves; everything she does stems out of paranoia and a deep seated resentment over the fact that she was born a woman and not a man. Her actions are predictable (everyone is an enemy, let's throw wine at them), and she seems to be allergic to reason. Before AFFC I thought she was a misunderstood and complicated character, but after reading the book she is just annoying, selfish, and ignorant. She acts like a child, not a woman, and that made her much less of an intriguing character to me.

I actually agree with you on some points. I think that she is predictable, and quite honestly she infuriates me with the way she is so horrible to everyone. However, I think that her chapters are extremely interesting, purely because she is so paranoid and because she is so 'allergic to reason'. It's not the buildup to certain events that make Cersei chapters interesting; the unpredictability plays a part when people react to her actions

[Lady Sapphire]

It seems that Cersei has good reason to be so paranoid...much of her paranoia stems from the original prophecy foretold to her by Maggy the Frog back when she was young, and she knows that this fortune is well on its way to coming completely true.

I think Cersei is rotten to her core, even since she was a young child. I keep thinking back on the story told by Oberyn Martell about Cersei hurting baby Tyrion. I guess being raised in part by Tywin, and just being his offspring in general, contribute to her narcissistic personality...she has nature and nurture to blame.

However, this Maggy prophecy in light of Joffrey's death is what seems to have pushed her to greater extremes of madness. I find her frequent recollections of her childhood friend Melara Hetherspoon very intriguing. I suspect that Melara did not fall into that well and die by accident. Cersei once mentioned something along the lines of Melara having 'aimed above her station' or something like that, and Melara had revealed her own little crush on Jaime. So I'm suggesting that Cersei may have herself set into motion the fulfilling of Maggy's prophecy, and now that Joffrey's dead she's blinded by her desperation to stop its further fulfillment.

Her chapters are fun to read, that's for sure!

[~Shiera Seastar~]

yes yes yes! I couldn't be more agree with this topic! I'm by the half of ADWD and nothing compares to Cersei's POV. I really hated her in the previous books, but reading her chapters, made me see her whith a differente view, and it's great. Her chapters are full of comedy and that's something the saga needed it. All the lannisters have a great skill for sarcasm. Everytime she refers to Margaery as the little queen and her hens, I just crack into giggles.

And check this out, every Cersei chapter she throws a slap in the face or a glass of wine into someone. That's just hilarous, and reminder of the golden soap operas.

Cersei is the star of AFFC and I think her POVs were more fun to read than her brother's POV in ADWD.

[The Killer Snark]

Cersei is an incompetent, half-mad, drunken, hysterical paranoiac. Everything she schemes falls to pieces, and you find yourself mocking her with every one of her 'thoughts'. That said, she is a brilliant character, and her POVs in the book are pure hilarity and the best things in it by a mile.

[dkohalloran]

Cersei doesn't have any humanity. The character Lena plays is not the one portrayed in the book. Cersei is narcissistic, cruel, and unbelievably selfish. The Cersei in the show is some politically correct "heroic" single mother who just loves her children to pieces. In the book Cersei does love her children, but that love is heavily tainted by narcissism.

I think Cersei changed a lot in the books though, after the death of Joffrey. We don't know that side of Lena Headeys portrayal yet because they're not that far. She definitely doesn't show much love for Tommen, and definitely not Myrcella, who I don't think she thinks about in AFFC even once. She uses Tommen as an excuse to rule basically. I remember one scene where she goes into the room and Tommen has kittens. Instead of talking or even saying hello she just says "Sign this." and leaves, she knows how much Tommen loves his signet ring. I am optimistic Ms. Headey will nail it, because of the amount of affection her character is showing her eldest son. She's a really great actress.

[vjott]

I think most of us agree that losing her son and father had a deep IMPact on Cersei. She became unhinged and started seeking 2 things; power and the safety of her son, to the exclusion of everything else. Her fevered paranoia gives A Feast for Crow its most entertaining and interesting moments.

[The Killer Snark]

Especially when she burns down The Tower of the Hand because she thinks that Tyrion is still hiding inside the walls.

[Lady of Dragonstone]

I find her frequent recollections of her childhood friend Melara Hetherspoon very intriguing. I suspect that Melara did not fall into that well and die by accident. Cersei once mentioned something along the lines of Melara having 'aimed above her station' or something like that, and Melara had revealed her own little crush on Jaime. So I'm suggesting that Cersei may have herself set into motion the fulfilling of Maggy's prophecy, and now that Joffrey's dead she's blinded by her desperation to stop its further fulfillment.

Her chapters are fun to read, that's for sure!

I suspect that Cersei is the hand who pushed Melara. Nice thought that this set the prophecy into motion, though. I hadn't thought of that being the event that made the dice roll. :)

[The Killer Snark]

Yup, Cersei pushed Melara down the well all right, but I suspected it wasn't so much because of her crush on Jaime, but because it was Melara (or am I wrong?) who suggested going to see Maggie the Frog.

[Pinkie Baelish]

Oh my how I hated those.... It was a real pain in the a** not to skip them. I remember I actually googled something along the lines of "are the ironmen chapters important to understand the rest of the story?" lol and yeah...they actually are.

Why does everyone hate the Ironborn chapters in AFFC? I really enjoyed them, mainly for Victarion. I loved his second chapter and was really disappointed that it was his last. Yes, Aeron's chapters were dull as hell, but we still got the Kingsmoot, the introduction of Euron and a subplot that finally firmly links Westeros to Daenerys.

[The Killer Snark]

I enjoyed all the Ironborn chapters, and the Martell ones apart from Arianne's last (which read like it was rush-written). I enjoyed the Brienne chapters but felt the first few could have been condensed more because at first her arc seemed like filler. I found the first few Sansa chapters plodding, and found the Samwell and Arya chapters mostly too static, except for odd moments. I liked Arya's chapters in AdwD but the background to them, especially having to learn new geographical locations with no map, I found a bit of a chore. And, yeah, I'd have liked Asha to do more maybe, because I loved her in ACoK, but the Victarion chapters were great.

Whenever I hit Samwell's stuff in particular, except where he meets Arya, I'd look ahead to see when Cersei or Jaime would next turn up.

[Pinkie Baelish]

I wasn't too enthralled at first with the Dornish subplot, but it definitely needed more chapters. There's no way the whole crowning Myrcella process should have only had one chapter. Didn't care about Arya's chapters, especially the last one, and they really should have been left for ADWD. I think half of Tyrion or Jon's chapters from ADWD should have been moved to AFFC-it was a bad idea to leave out Tyrion, Jon and Daenerys. I was disappointed that Sansa only had 3 chapters, as I found the whole LF subplot quite intriguing. Both Sansa and Brienne needed about 5 chapters each, no more, no less. And while Cersei was the best part of AFFC, I felt that she had too many chapters. 10 or 11 should have been enough.

Also, the pacing was really off. We go to Dorne, then fall into a Cersei/Brienne/Jaime pattern, then get an Ironborn chapter, and hear nothing from the Iron Islands later.

[The Killer Snark]

Arianne needed two chapters ahead in the novel to make Doran's actual intentions credible, not just The Princess in the Tower chapter, which drops everything in at if it's been pulled out of a hat, and it's by far the worst written chapter in the series. I believe that Martin was getting tired of reshuffling his own work by that point and having to add bits in, so he just wanted the Dornish stuff over and done with as a means of setting up ADwD. There's a lot of good stuff in the Sans chapters, it's just that they should have been broken up and spread more. They are laborious to read at first because they are so condensed.

[Woftis]

I can't help think, why would Cersei push the girl down the well knowing that was part of the prophecy (in which her own death was included)?

[The Killer Snark]

Because she is a buffoon, and never tied in her deliberate fulfilling of her friend's prophecy with the fact it would give credence to her own.

[JaTyAdo]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one that enjoyed her chapters, not because I love her.... I hate her so much and the reason why I love reading her chapters are these:

Cersei, on the other hand, is predictable and annoying. There is no depth to the way she behaves; everything she does stems out of paranoia and a deep seated resentment over the fact that she was born a woman and not a man. Her actions are predictable (everyone is an enemy, let's throw wine at them), and she seems to be allergic to reason. Before AFFC I thought she was a misunderstood and complicated character, but after reading the book she is just annoying, selfish, and ignorant. She acts like a child, not a woman, and that made her much less of an intriguing character to me.

and also because she had witty lines too, that combined with her dumbness was pretty funny to me..

Cersei doesn't have any humanity. The character Lena plays is not the one portrayed in the book. Cersei is narcissistic, cruel, and unbelievably selfish. The Cersei in the show is some politically correct "heroic" single mother who just loves her children to pieces. In the book Cersei does love her children, but that love is heavily tainted by narcissism.

Yeah, I thought I'll like Cersei in the book. I watched the show first and she became my favorite female character.. until I got into her mind in the book and damn, didn't expect her to be so dumb.. but Lena actually played Cersei well.. she's like a good version of Cersei(the only actress that made the word 'good' and 'Cersei' fit together).. she doesn't read the book(pity, right?) so she doesn't know.. she also thinks that Cersei is just misunderstood...... but who knows? probably in the book, Cersei will get some humanity in her...

[The Killer Snark]

Cersei momentarily gains some humanity during her 'walk of shame', which with a more intelligent and despite their moral inadequacies human character (Theon, Jaime) might have led her on the path to some contemplation and redemption. This being Cersei, she just thinks at the end of it everyone should be wiped out. She is the pantomime villain of A Song of Ice and Fire. It's interesting to think what Lena Headey's performance would have been like if first she'd read the books.

[Thyrza]

I agree with Freerider, the Cersei in the movies has nothing to do with the Cersei in the books. One of the chapters where the differences are the largest is the one where Sansa bleeds for the first time: in the book, the queen is callous and cruel -- as always -- especially because she knows how much this hurts Sansa (who is used to gallant language and gentility); by contrast, the Cersei in the show is actually kind -- we get to see a face that never existed in the book, where she does not love her children as much as being possessive of them. Also, she professes to love Jaime but sleeps with practically everyone in the kingdom except her children (there are a couple of characters who do that, too :S).

The callous way GRRM writes the Cersei POVs in A Feast for Crows shows the same character that we saw -- albeit from afar -- in the first books. It has the same manias, the same incredible love for scheming without a particular goal other than just scheming, the same desire to rule. It is NOT the same Cersei as portrayed in the series. Of course, we can argue that the character was not WRITTEN by the actress, and that she IS a good actress for portraying well what was given to her. Possibly. But I would still like to have watched the character that drove Sansa to a morbid fear of speaking her mind or even thinking her own mind (it's an abuse of the English language, but you know what I mean).