Cersei Lannister and the Shallow Politics of Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones is a mediocre render. It shortchanges the complexity of its ain story in a hasty rush to delight its fans with grand "moments" absent depth.

A is the character with many artistic properties, fans may very healed be part of the trouble – non just fans of the reveal, but too of the books. Consider one item of popular consensus: "A Feast for Crows is the worst book in the series." The specific reasons vary, but overall they chalk up to it: (1) being slow; (2) leaving come out the more important characters pro of inferior interesting ones; and (3) having digressions that open little immediate payoff.

These reasons are hard to argue with, but the conclusion is ill-conceived. Feast has in spades what even the fifth book – A Trip the light fantastic toe with Dragons – and especially what Game of Thrones as a series set non; genuine authorial integrity.

To be sure, the critique I am about to indite is non intended to suggest that Game of Thrones should simply have done what the books did. The guide is only that the show has missed a genuine opportunity.

A Storm of Swords was the Act 3 earthquake. Three numb kings, three conquered cities, family betrayals, assassinations, and pandemonium in the north; the kingdoms are ravaged, agitated, and turned upside down. What often follows events look-alike those are spirals, quality breakdowns, run afoul escalations, and uncomfortable breaths ahead the next plunge. A Feast for Crows has all of these.

One of those spirals in Feast is particularly stimulating along a political level; the degeneration of Cersei as a ruler. Her story in that book is a neat little contrast to the cynicism of the overall series and imparts few relevant lessons in politics.

George R.R. Martin inverts traditional genre tropes, develops characters by taking away their noteworthy origin of strength and makes readers fear their mortality. As such, it is fitting that Cersei's perspective begins immediately after the expiry of her father Tywin – the great golden rock upon which she learned the ways of power and politics. Without him, the prophecy she has feared since childhood begins to creeping at her.

Over the course of the book's events, she consolidates king to a small group of bumbling yes-men. She refuses another Hired man and even off goes so far as to go up the Tower. She willfully ignores the kingdom's debts to the Iron Deposit. Her financial irresponsibleness wreaks further economic havoc on the kingdoms, and she does nothing about it. As she grows increasingly distrusting of the Tyrells, she dispatches Loras to siege Dragonstone and Jaime to the Riverlands – campaigns that both end miserably even in victory. For her worst idea, she empowers the Faith Militant to encourage bonded herself. So, when she seeks to use religious law against Margaery, her plans backfire spectacularly.

Cersei takes pride in her womanhood while simultaneously lamenting that she had not been born a man.

Cersei's paranoia and narcissism are the driving forces behind every mistake she makes, and she expresses these attributes through her sexed hostility. She sleeps with Lancel and Osney Kettleblack (after likely having also slept with Osmund before) to whip them into doing her bidding, and dominates Taena of Myr. Like a combining of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, her mind is full of scorpions, from each one thinking to a greater extent violent than the unalterable equally she grows discontent with her surroundings, despite maintaining that she has done whol the right things to secure her position. In increase, she drinks herself stocky, and wakes from her bed heavily sweating from dreams of doom. Clearly, this is the optimal state of health and priorities for soul in charge of seven kingdoms soon to fount an ice-elf/zombie invasion.

Also, Cersei takes pride in her womanhood while simultaneously lamenting that she had not been born a man. And she tells herself constantly that nary unrivalled can defeat her because no one understands her. She seethes all over the fact that Tywin is buried with a smile on his face, which she believes betrays his memory. She tells herself again and over again that Tommen canful wait because this is "her turn," and she believes that she has earned it by outwitting everyone from Robert to Jon Arryn to Ned Stark while also having endured the worst of indignities American Samoa a fair sex (note: this is all ahead she is shaven, minimum unassisted, and gets bad cabbages thrown her way). She looks at Senelle with murder in her eyes. She preens herself – in graphic detail – concluded how she fooled Robert perpetually into believing that her children were his. Then, when everything unravels, she turns back to Jaime, believing in his unilateral cultism to her and completely oblivious to the extent to which her murderous schemes and extra-loving affairs birth alienated him.

Feast, in sum, has one character embodying the worst attributes of Richard Nixon, Catherine of Aragon the Large, Niccolo Machiavelli, Edmund Hillary Clinton, Donald Ruff, and Bloody Mary. Cersei's cynicism Crataegus laevigata not have been wholly unreasonable under the circumstances, simply if that's completely you take over as someone who actually of necessity to govern, you'ray in a race against yourself to the bottom. Cersei cannot rule because she doesn't see a continent that needs to cost managed; only enemies who pauperism to glucinium priest-ridden or hushed and a position at the top of a ladder to keep.

To comprise sure, most of these are flaws that would but also cripple the leaders of a world in her position even so. Account is full of deviate sons World Health Organization couldn't live up to their fathers, and so is the royal line of Westeros. Til now Cersei herself, in all the irony, thinks herself immune from these issues precisely because she's a woman. In the end, she's sporty other person, who barely soh happens to be in charge of everything, and is horrifyingly out of her depth at being a ruler.

Consider what all this says about power and those who desire to wield it, particularly in a civilized nation desperately in need of some unity. By subtly showing Cersei's death done her have view, Martin warns against autocracy. He doesn't depend on the nature of these family squabbles turning into colossal wars to doh this thematic lifting for him. He has some Cersei's twisted femininity, sex furore, and inmost madness appearance that power concentration poses a risk of infection to everyone. He shows the destructive consequences of believing that most jobs can be through by anyone; that you can ignore budget problems eternally thus long As you tush revenue enhancement people; that you can cope on decisions that foresee only if half-dozen inches forward; and that those who most crave power are by nature equipped to wield it responsibly if they've lived long enough its proximity. Then he telegraphs all that again in the epilogue of Dance where Varys shows up, monologues approximately how He's been ready and waiting for years for the Lannisters to demolish themselves, and and so kills Kevan in what appears to be the final push towards the full destabilization of the kingdoms that Cersei has been unwittingly facultative this full-page clock.

This is a political thesis that is… dare I say, conservative? Leastways in the sense that it appears to constitute genuinely skeptical of power; Martin mightiness rightfully cause written outside himself. In Feast, he has turned a substantially-meaning, albeit spiteful, maternalistic protector into exactly the forgiving of unchecked and feckless tyrant that conservatives fear.

But you wouldn't know whatsoever of that if you were going past the show only. The writers gave Cersei an easy outlet by screening how much of a weasel Tommen is after the Faith enters the render. They given a rectilineal difference with the Faith intelligibly meant to equate them with faultfinding Christians who denounce homosexuals and fornicators. She rump exclusively be sympathetic compared to them, peculiarly when a dead Myrcella shows up right after her walk of shame. The show put distance between Cersei and Tommen, tethering him nigher to the Faith and qualification her dupe to it. So she gets a Godfather kind of termination that makes for the back most awesome triumph after the recapture of Winterfell.

No abuse of power, no genuine mistakes, No psychological deterioration, no nonentity. HBO's Unfit of Thrones features a Cersei who is just a hated, grief-laid low woman that has her vengeance with red region.

Perhaps she will become more knotty and blemished every bit Flavor 7 begins, but until such a time it seems clear that a honest-to-god disagreement in storytelling exists between the much beloved show and the often reviled fourthly account book. Game of Thrones is overrated and A Feast for Crows is underrated. You need look no further than their respective treatments of Cersei for proof.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/cersei-lannister-and-the-shallow-politics-of-game-of-thrones/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/cersei-lannister-and-the-shallow-politics-of-game-of-thrones/

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