"he’ll feel compelled to go back to Cersei when shit goes down in King’s Landing" but how can Cersei remain in power in KL after the WftD when Aegon is about to attack? Isn't it more plausible that the Jaime/Cersei confrontation happens in Casterly Rock, after she ran away from Aegon after he took the city?
I have a hard time picturing this confrontation in Casterly Rock, because Casterly Rock is---Lannistans pls don’t be mad at me---a relatively marginal place in the context of the story. It matters only to Jaime, Cersei and Tyrion, it has no magical relevance and so far it has never been a theatre of actual action. As a city, Lannisport is much less populated than King’s Landing and there are no hidden wildfire caches there, so the stakes in this confrontation would be infinitely lower, and the Cersei = Aerys 2.0 parallel wouldn’t work that well, imo.
I also wouldn’t underestimate Cersei’s ability to stay in charge. She’s one of the main human villains of the story and she might be sloppy and reckless but she’s resourceful and VERY pissed. Her last chapter in ADWD is a promise of terrible things to come. I do not expect her to go down easily or permanently *retire* to a secondary location like Casterly Rock anytime soon. (yes, I know that GRRM said we would eventually see CR but that doesn’t necessarily have to be via Cersei’s pov---it’s more likely to be Tyrion’s, imo). Not unless it’s temporary or a red herring. Say Aegon takes the city, but is overthrown by Dany, who doesn’t nuke KL yet and then goes to join the WftD---with the dragon queen temporarily otherwise occupied, Cersei, completely indifferent to the threat of the Others because she, herself, is unwittingly a human agent of the Great Other, is free to retake the city and reestablish her deadly rule. And that’s just ONE way it can happen, plot-wise.
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Would Tywin have approved of Brienne as a bride for Jaime? Politically and strategically, would she have been a good match?
I have a hard time picturing an approving Tywin. Not only he would be disgusted by Brienne’s physical appearance and… everything she is, he would not allow his son to be associated, let alone MARRIED, to a renowned laughingstock (”Brienne the Beauty”) who made a public show of trespassing gender rules and whose father couldn’t beat into appropriate feminine obedience.Â
Politically and strategically, while Brienne is highborn, she’s not highborn enough, and Tarth isn’t that important strategically (at least in Tywin’s worldview). I think anyone less than the daughter of a Warden or Lord Paramount would be considered irrelevant, if not a downright insult. The fact that the Tarths were once kings and their recent connection to house Targaryen might do something to tip the scale in Brienne’s favor, but we don’t have enough information about either and there’s no indication that Tywin ever gave a passing thought about Tarth anyway.
I'm re-reading AGoT for the first time and I don't remember exactly how things played out, at the end of Tyrion's first pov, the exchange he has with Jaime, really confuses me. Did Tyrion know, or suspect, about Jaime and Cersei's relationship? And did he know or suspect that they had something to do with Bran falling from the broken tower? Jaime telling him sometimes he doesn't know which side Tyrion is on just because he wants Bran to wake up is a little suspicious imo.
Yes, I think Tyrion at this point already knows or strongly suspects the twincest, and Jaime suspects that he knows.
Tyrion turned back to his siblings. Twins, male and female. […] Tyrion wondered what it would be like to have a twin, and decided that he would rather not know.
And then with perfectly staged innocence he baits them to react to the news of Bran possibly surviving the fall.
“Oh, not so unlucky as all that, surely,” Tyrion said. The servant brought his plate. He ripped off a chunk of black bread.Cersei was studying him warily. “What do you mean?”Tyrion gave her a crooked smile. “Why, only that Tommen may get his wish. The maester thinks the boy may yet live.” He took a sip of beer.Myrcella gave a happy gasp, and Tommen smiled nervously, but it was not the children Tyrion was watching. The glance that passed between Jaime and Cersei lasted no more than a second, but he did not miss it.
“Speaking for the grotesques,” he said, “I beg to differ. Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.”Jaime smiled. “You are a perverse little imp, aren’t you?”“Oh, yes,” Tyrion admitted. “I hope the boy does wake. I would be most interested to hear what he might have to say.”His brother’s smile curdled like sour milk. “Tyrion, my sweet brother,” he said darkly, “there are times when you give me cause to wonder whose side you are on.”Tyrion’s mouth was full of bread and fish. He took a swallow of strong black beer to wash it all down, and grinned up wolfishly at Jaime, “Why, Jaime, my sweet brother,” he said, “you wound me. You know how much I love my family.”
It’s all very subtle, but Tyrion is very perceptive, very observant, not lacking in imagination, and he’s known these two since he was born (and probably suffered as a child watching them have this special relationship he was not allowed into). Plus Jaime not going hunting with the king and the rest of the men, the same day Bran has an almost fatal incident falling from an isolated tower? pfftt. He did the maths, and the twins’ behavior confirmed his suspicions.
I know this is really out there, but I sometimes wonder what Cercei would have been like as a man - if she would have been the son Tywin wanted. Do you think as a man she would have been able to live up to his quiet sexist expectations?
Cersei thinks she would.Â
Not only she believes she’s Tywin’s true heir, the only one worthy of carrying on his legacy (as we know what she thinks of Tyrion, and by AFFC her other brother proves to be just another spineless fool)…
If Lord Tywin could see me now, he would know he had his heir, an heir worthy of the Rock.
…but she aims even higher than that. She actually wants to outshadow Tywin’s memory with her own greatness:
The Lord of Casterly Rock deserved rainbows. He had been a great man. I shall be greater, though. A thousand years from now, when the maesters write about this time, you shall be remembered only as Queen Cersei’s sire.
Cersei feels the inequality with which she’s treated (in comparison to Tywin) very sharply:
No one had ever balked her lord father. When Tywin Lannister spoke, men obeyed. When Cersei spoke, they felt free to counsel her, to contradict her, even refuse her. It is all because I am a woman. Because I cannot fight them with a sword.
I mean, she’s really, really BITTER about it.
Aurane had asked her leave to name [a ship] Lord Tywin, which Cersei had been pleased to grant. She looked forward to hearing men speak of her father as a “she.”Â
She thinks her gender is the only reason why people don’t take her as seriously as Tywin. Jaime, however, disagrees.
His sister liked to think of herself as Lord Tywin with teats, but she was wrong. Their father had been as relentless and implacable as a glacier, where Cersei was all wildfire, especially when thwarted. […] She does not lack for wits, but she has no judgment, and no patience.
so is Cersei right to believe she’d be the son Tywin wanted? Is Cersei right about anything at all?
Is Cersei’s problem, the root of all her failures, the lack of experience/education in the fields she wants to operate in and the fact that nobody takes her seriously because of her gender, which causes frustration and endless sloppy lashing out in turn? Or is Cersei simply not as good at this as she thinks? (in which case, wouldn’t being born male just highlight her ineptitude even more, rather than fixing it?)Â
It’s a bit of a chicken/egg situation: was Cersei actually born as Tywin’s *true heir* but with the wrong gender, or was exactly Cersei’s gender (with all the experiences that came with it) that shaped her into the person who wants to be Tywin’s heir? The Cersei we have in the original timeline—the Cersei who thinks she’s Tywin with teats, who feels like she was robbed of her birthright because of her gender and who relentlessly and violently rages against the system—not to subvert it, but to take control of it—is a Cersei who was largely shaped by her experiences as a woman in that society. Take those experiences from her, and you might get a completely different character. But not necessarily one that’s more similar to Tywin, or that Tywin would respect.
More importantly, is Tywin’s model really a winning one?
Tywin’s M.O., based on fear, repression and rewarding those who cower and accept his despotic rule, only works in the short run. His reign of terror granted house Lannister its 15 minutes of glory, sure. But what did it leave? Destruction and famine. A divided country. Three children at war with each other. Three illegitimate grandchildren, whose illegitimacy caused the shitstorm that is currently eating Westeros from the inside. Nobody is willing to fight for the Lannisters, because everybody either fears, or hates, or wants to use them. Compare it to Ned’s legacy, to a North that, however wounded, will rise in rebellion once again for his children, and you’ll see whose legacy is actually winning the game. Make no mistake, if house Lannister is falling, a good 80% of that is Tywin’s doing, and it KILLS me that he isn’t alive to see the mess he’s done (not that he’d take any responsibility for that, of course).
I think this is why you have not only one, but two parallel (but different) “Tywin’s true heir” examples in both Cersei and Tyrion. Both were, for different reasons, written off by Tywin, who placed all his bets on the able-bodied firstborn son (the irony, of course, is that Jaime is the LEAST like him). But in my opinion Cersei’s ~true heir~ narrative is a red herring, and represents a foil to Tyrion’s. While Cersei spends all her time telling herself she’s the most like Tywin, the Tywin=Tyrion equation is spelled out by the mostly unbiased voice of Genna. Tyrion is the one whose rise as *true heir of Lannister* would offend Tywin the most. Tyrion is Tywin’s most hated child, the one he disavowed in the end. Tyrion literally kills Tywin, an action that is rife with archetypal (and freudian) subtext about replacing one’s father. While Cersei has no problem or inner conflict about embracing Tywin’s violent legacy, Tyrion has much more ambivalent feelings about it (although his ADWD arc might suggest otherwise, and although he has his own share of darkness, for all his life Tyrion has rebelled against the idea of being a monster). While Cersei will probably die in the attempt to give her best performance as Tywin-with-teats, uncritically replicating Tywin’s violent and oppressive ideology, Tyrion is bound to rise ABOVE it. (Literally, maybe, on the back of a dragon.)
tldr; I don’t think asoiaf’s thesis re: Cersei is “OH, IF ONLY SHE WAS BORN MALE, SHE’D BE SO GREAT AT HAVING ACTUAL LEGITIMATE POWER”, no. (That would come with a troubling subtext that Cersei deserves power because she is the best at being ~A REAL MAN~ despite her gender, as if being masculine-spirited or whatever is the only thing that gives legitimacy to her feelings of being unjustly denied opportunities—which, incidentally, is what Cersei believes, and she’s wrong. Nobody “deserves” to have power, especially not on account of having more “masculine”-coded traits, but all people deserve to have the same opportunities. Cersei could be as meek as lady Tanda, and a society that discards her because of her gender would still be wrong.)
MAYBE, with proper education, resources and recognition from social peers, Cersei would have become another Tywin. But ~the heir house Lannister NEEDS~ is not another Tywin. It’s someone who will take Tywin’s ideology and rip it apart (that’s why it’s Tyrion).That’s the only way house Lannister can survive, and I don’t even know if it will be enough, to be honest. A male!Cersei might have lived up to Tywin’s expectations (maybe, because Tywin’s expectations are so toxic they’re impossible to live up to), but she’d lack empathy and the intelligence to recognize the true enemy all the same, which are the essential qualities a political leader is required to have, at least in the particular circumstances Westeros is right now. A male!Cersei would probably bring house Lannister to its grave even quicker than in original timeline, I think.
I've always thought the Lannisters were doomed from the beginning and if any of them was goona make it out alive it'd be Tyrion. But now the only Lannister I see surviving is Jaime. S7 showed us Dany doubting Tyrion and it ended with him making a hidden deal with Cersei to which afterwards she calls Jaime "the stupidest Lannister", then he was lurking in the shadows staring down at Dany's door. I don't know what are they doing with his storyline but S8 clearly not gonna go well for him
mmmmmmdon’t know. There’s clearly some trouble brewing between Jon, Dany and Tyrion, and it’s true the writers made a big deal of NOT showing what Tyrion promised to Cersei. However, Cersei isn’t going to keep her word anyway, so I’m not sure it will be relevant, because once Cersei breaks the deal Tyrion will not be obligated to honor his part of it, whatever it was.
I also doubt the show will go as far as creating a permanent rift between Tyrion and the other two main heroes, so I strongly suspect it turns out to be a lot like #starkbowl, i.e. they play with our fears and tease a major conflict but nothing really serious happens. One thing that seems very likely to me is that Varys & Tyrion’s doubts re: Dany’s fire and blood phase will finally come to fruition, and they will be tempted to support Jon’s claim over hers. Though it doesn’t necessarily have to be a full on betrayal, maybe they just suggest that Jon marries Dany, officially to reunite their claims but actually as a way to limit Dany’s power and keep her in check. (which Dany might not particularly like, of course.) How Tyrion’s potential feelings for Dany would play out in this scenario, I’m not sure. But I don’t think whatever he’s plotting will be his downfall. It’s more likely that he subverts Dany’s line about not being /heroic/ by making a truly heroic sacrifice in the end.
As for Jaime, I still think he is 90% dying 10% ending up in the Night’s Watch. The “stupidest Lannister” actually did the wise thing for once, and rode north to join the fight against the White Walkers. It might be that the show rewards this choice by letting him survive… but it might just as well reward him with a heroic death, too.
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I read your male!cercei post and I agree that Jaime (in any scenario) is the least like Tywin. I think that if you superficially lived up to Tywin's expectations, he more or less left you alone/delegated education to others during your childhood. It's vaguely implied in the books and show that Jaime took advantage of that (more so than Cercei or Tyrion). His siblings have a bad/horrible relationship with Tywin, but Jaime seemed to keep a deliberate distance to (alive) Tywin - or is it just me?
Thing is, Jaime won the genetic lottery and looked exactly like the heir Tywin wanted, exceptional martial skills included, and yet he still failed Tywin’s expectations.Â
By joining the kingsguard, he actually completely deviated from Tywin’s designated path and made the future of his house, the house his father worked so hard for, suddenly uncertain. But Tywin, in his infinite double standards and capacity for selective amnesia (see: doggedly ignoring the twincest), was just too attached to his own fantasy of Jaime the Perfect Male Heir to really admit to himself that his golden son could be such a major fuck up. He redirected most of his rage against Aerys for “stealing” his precious heir, and kept thinking Jaime’s choice of being in the kingsguard was just a juvenile phase that he’d eventually grow out of (the kingsguard’s vows are forever? what? who? I suddenly can’t read!).Â
Jaime was in a much easier position than his siblings to begin with, because his father simply never accepted to see him as anything but his one and only heir (determined as he was to deny the obvious alternative, i.e. Tyrion).Â
Ironically, Jaime’s male heir privilege is in large part what allowed him to develop the distance you mentioned. The self-confidence of knowing since childhood that you’re supposed to become, one day, Tywin’s equal, and the larger freedom that comes with being male, rich and able bodied in a martial society. Jaime was sent to squire in another lordly house, broadened his horizons, absorbed chivalric values, found non-Lannister role models like Arthur Dayne, all of which allowed him to (in part) escape Tywin’s clutches and judgment in a way his siblings couldn’t afford to.
He also never directly defied Tywin (not until Tywin straight up orders him to leave the KG and he says, fuck no) and, I gotta say, maintained a frustratingly passive attitude for most of his life that sort of kept him under Tywin’s radar. The Tysha incident, for example: Jaime just lazily followed Tywin’s instructions, and apparently it never occurred to him that he, as Tywin’s eldest son and a knight of the KG, could intervene in Tyrion’s defense, or the girl’s.Â
Hi! =D Something that's been on my mind lately is how would Tywin's relationship with his children change if Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion had been born Triplets? With Tyrion still being born last, as a dwarf, and Joanna still dying? Would Tywin blame all his children for her death or just Tyrion? How different could Tyrion & Cersei's relationship be? Also do you mind spoilers? There's a season 7 spoiler I heard about that I'd like to ask about, but only if you don't mind!
I don’t mind spoilers!
I think the Lannister siblings being born triplets wouldn’t radically change their dynamics. Tywin would still put the blame almost exclusively on Tyrion, because the real reason he blames Tyrion for Joanna’s death even in the original timeline is ~~~~a b l e i s m~~~~, so Tyrion being born last and a ~monstrous~ dwarf would definitely put a huge target on his back, even if Joanna only had one pregnancy. What changes is Tywin loses Joanna much earlier and is left alone to raise three children, one of whom is disabled, and I can’t see how this could ever be a good thing. Not having their mother around for the first 7-8 years of their lives would probably reflect negatively on Jaime and Cersei’s development; on the other hand, having no memory of Joanna might mean a slightly less resentful Cersei towards Tyrion (because a huge part of her early abuse on Tyrion was a way to cope with that tremendous loss and the sense of powerlessness and vulnerability that came from it)… but I think she’d still model her behavior on Tywin’s and absorb his ableist views, especially if Tywin decides to lock Tyrion away in some separate part of the castle and forbid the triplets to grow up together. I can easily imagine Cersei developing a revulsion at the idea of Tyrion sharing a womb with her and Jaime, who look like two peas in a pod and not like Tyrion at all, and convincing herself that Tyrion is some kind of changeling or intruder put in her mother’s womb by who knows what kind of evil magic.
Hi~ I just found your blog ad I love it! If you don't mind me asking, what are your thoughts on the role Kevan played in Cersei's walk of shame and his thoughts during it? I understand that he likely couldn't have helped her in any way, but his thoughts on her during it really rubbed me the wrong way =( Also how do you think Cersei will feel about his death? And finally, If Tywin could somehow see beyond the grave and witness the walk of shame, do you think his opinion on Kevan would change?
Hi! Thank you!
It seems that the idea of the walk of atonement came up during Kevan’s meeting with the High Sparrow, shortly after Cersei confessed some of her crimes:
“I have spoken with His High Holiness. He will not release you until you have atoned for your sins.”“I have confessed.”“Atoned, I said. Before the city. A walk—”“No.” She knew what her uncle was about to say, and she did not want to hear it. (Cersei I, ADWD)
It’s possible that Kevan really couldn’t do anything about it and wouldn’t dare to openly oppose the Faith, but later he talks about it as if he had an active role in it:
“Whatever Cersei may have done, she is still a daughter of the Rock, of mine own blood. I will not let her die a traitor’s death, but I have made sure to draw her fangs. All her guards have been dismissed and replaced with my own men. In place of her former ladies-in-waiting, she will henceforth be attended by a septa and three novices selected by the High Septon. She is to have no further voice in the governance of the realm, nor in Tommen’s education. I mean to return her to Casterly Rock after the trial and see that she remains there. Let that suffice.” The rest he left unsaid. Cersei was soiled goods now, her power at an end. Every baker’s boy and beggar in the city had seen her in her shame and every tart and tanner from Flea Bottom to Pisswater Bend had gazed upon her nakedness, their eager eyes crawling over her breasts and belly and woman’s parts. No queen could expect to rule again after that. In gold and silk and emeralds Cersei had been a queen, the next thing to a goddess; naked, she was only human, an aging woman with stretch marks on her belly and teats that had begun to sag… as the shrews in the crowds had been glad to point out to their husbands and lovers. Better to live shamed than die proud, Ser Kevan told himself. “My niece will make no further mischief,” he promised Mace Tyrell. (Epilogue, ADWD)
“I have made sure to draw her fangs”. Is it a coincidence that Cersei receives the same punishment that Tywin inflicted on Tytos’ mistress, which Kevan remembers vividly?
I have no reason to feel guilty, Ser Kevan told himself. Tywin would understand that, surely. It was his daughter who brought shame down on our name, not I. What I did I did for the good of House Lannister. It was not as if his brother had never done the same. In their father’s final years, after their mother’s passing, their sire had taken the comely daughter of a candlemaker as mistress. […] Tytos Lannister’s ear was between his lady’s legs. She had even taken to wearing their mother’s jewels. Until the day their lord father’s heart had burst in his chest as he was ascending a steep flight of steps to her bed, that is. All the self-seekers who had named themselves her friends and cultivated her favor had abandoned her quickly enough when Tywin had her stripped naked and paraded through Lannisport to the docks, like a common whore. Though no man laid a hand on her, that walk spelled the end of her power. Surely Tywin would never have dreamed that same fate awaited his own golden daughter. “It had to be,” Ser Kevan muttered over the last of his wine. His High Holiness had to be appeased. Tommen needed the Faith behind him in the battles to come. And Cersei… the golden child had grown into a vain, foolish, greedy woman. Left to rule, she would have ruined Tommen as she had Joffrey. (Epilogue, ADWD)
Why would Kevan feel guilty if it was ALL the High Sparrow’s doing? Also:
Cersei was soiled goods now, her power at an end.
that walk spelled the end of her power.
AT THE VERY LEAST, Kevan washed his hands clean. But, in my opinion, once the High Sparrow made it clear that he wasn’t going to release Cersei until she had publicly “atoned”, it was Kevan who came up with the idea of the WoS, drawing inspiration from Tywin’s punishment of Tytos’ mistress, firmly convinced that he was acting in the realm’s, in Tommen’s, and even in Cersei’s best interest. The fact that Cersei was currently locked in a cell like a rat was an outrageous insult to house Lannister and to the crown, and made the young king look weak, so he had to get her out of it some way. But at the same time Cersei needed to be put in her place, stripped of all her weapons and permanently removed from power. The WoS killed two birds with one stone. (for the record, Kevan isn’t wrong to believe that Cersei is a 100% terrible ruler and a danger to herself and to Tommen. He also had plenty of reasons to resent her on a personal level, for what she did to Lancel and for the titles she denied him out of spite. But fairly sympathetic motivations aside, if he really is behind the concept of the WoS, he chose a disgustingly misogynistic way to deal with her.)
If Tywin could somehow see beyond the grave and witness the walk of shame, do you think his opinion on Kevan would change?
as we see in the passage above, Kevan is tormented by the thought of What Would Tywin Think of him. He tells himself he had every reason to act the way he acted, and wouldn’t Tywin do the same anyway? Didn’t he use the exact same punishment before? Didn’t he also publicly punish and humiliate Tyrion? But the problem with Tywin is that he had such MASSIVE double standards. Women who behave like harlots need to be crushed, ten times so if they embarrass house Lannister. But not if they’re Lannisters themselves, because a Lannister is always > everything else. Except Tyrion. Tyrion needs to be punished every day of his life, BUT NOT BY OTHER PEOPLE, because we don’t want to look weak, GOD FORBID.
Kevan tries to convince himself that Tywin would approve, but Tywin followed no rational logic and was always a huge self serving hypocrite about this sort of things (not that Kevan seems to be any better, as far as hypocrisy goes). The main problem with Cersei’s WoS is that FROM THE OUTSIDE, actually from every perspective, it’s the Faith who inflicts that punishment. It looks like the High Sparrow brought house Lannister to its knees, and Tywin would #rage against that. Kevan thinks he took a page from his brother’s book, and the irony is HE TOTALLY DID, but unfortunately this means that he let Cersei, his own niece, the daughter Tywin worked so hard to make queen, be turned into a laughingstock in front of the population of King’s Landing. And who benefits from that? In the eyes of everyone that counts, not Tommen the boy king, not Kevan the lackluster Lannister, not Jaime who is somewhere in the Riverlands doing fuck knows what, but the Tyrells. I think Tywin’s rolling in his grave, to be honest.
how do you think Cersei will feel about his death?
Conflicted, perhaps oddly pleased (Kevan is her uncle, and yet he didn’t lift a finger for her) but mostly terrified, confused, under attack. More scared than ever, thus more dangerous and more determined to get her payback and destroy her enemies. Kevan’s death is another sign that someone is targeting the Lannisters, one by one, and Cersei’s getting increasingly paranoid and not without cause. Varys made sure to use a crossbow, so she will blame either Tyrion (she tried to blame on him what happened to Myrcella too, even though it made zero sense), or the Tyrells, but likely both. That’s what Varys is counting on.Â
