Cersei Lannister: A Character Study

Cersei Lannister has persistently lied and murdered her way through Game of Thrones’ seven seasons. She has concocted hateful schemes and brutal demonstrations of power, but firm morality isn’t something Game of Thrones does well, and Cersei is made up of so much more than her violent acts. She is mostly a victim of shitty circumstance and near constant abuse. Cersei Lannister is never feelingless. If anything she feels too much, even if that feeling is most often hatred (at least outwardly so). More than her hatred, she feels desperate love for her children and Jaime and all-consuming fear of losing her own autonomy, both of which in turn lead to an even stronger form of hatred. She may be cruel, but every Game of Thrones character is. They live in the clutches of a violent, cataclysmic, lethal war. As Lena Headey said in an interview with Mashable: “I don’t play her as a villain, I don’t set out to do that consciously, I just play a woman who is a survivor and will do exactly what a man would do — which is, you know, murder somebody when you’re in a war. Maybe just not directly.” She is as violent as she is damaged.

I am a lioness. I will not cringe for them.

Since her youth, Cersei has been commodified and objectified by nearly everyone around her. Losing her mother at age four, her closest points of reference were Tywin and her brothers. Therefore, the primary understanding she has of herself is through the men around her. As she tells Sansa during the Battle of the Blackwater: “When we were young, Jaime and I, we…