One thing I love about the Lannister siblings is how they are all bodyimageissues.com, and GRRM forces them to re-evaluate their relationships with their bodies over and over again in similar but different ways.
Tyrion has internalised a lot of the ableism that he has faced throughout his life, to the extent that he believes the only way he can get any semblance of love or affection is by paying for it. Since his trial, the hate he's faced has driven him to Richard III levels of "since I cannot prove a lover… I am determined to prove a villain" and throughout ADWD he journeys down a dark path. Tyrion projects his self-hate onto Penny, a dwarf just like him. In her, he sees someone who was so loved by her family even though she shares his dwarfism. He also recognises that love has made her optimistic and trusting, whereas Tyrion himself is cynical and bitter, even though Penny has had none of the societal and monetary privileges he's had in life. He resents that she isn't angry at the world in the way he is, and that she disproves the lie he has always told himself that if he had been born a peasant he would have been killed for his dwarfism. He also resents that Penny seems to care for him and he cannot cope with the fact that he receives affection from a dwarf, the very thing he has learnt to hate about himself. Penny is almost that trick that some psychologists do with people with low self-esteem – they force their patient to look at a picture of themselves as a child and get them to see if they can say the hateful things they say to themselves to that child. Tyrion is forced to play that psychological game every day in Penny's company, and it makes him deeply, deeply uncomfortable.
Cersei has been rendered an object by her father and society due her a) female and b) beautiful body. In some respects, her body is the tool she uses to obtain and wield power as it enables her to manipulate men to do her bidding. Yet while Cersei is proud of her body for these reasons, deep down she believes that a beautiful object is still nonetheless an object, and only a male body can be subject. In response to this fear, Cersei tries to mesh her identity with a person who has the body she wishes she could have, her twin brother, Jaime. In doing so, she makes Jaime her sword (ie. enacting the violence she feels alienated from by her body) and dresses him up in her image. Once complete with their matching clothes, Cersei imagines Jaime everything she would be if she had a male body: beautiful and deadly, powerful and violent. Yet that imagining is a lie. In AFFC, while Jaime takes the time to hone and train his body in response to his maiming, Cersei uses her newfound power to indulge in wine and food and sex, which has a powerful effect on her body. Her clothes suddenly don't fit, she's often drunk, she assaults Taena and her mental health deteriorates. Power reveals, and Cersei's experience as regent proves her to be much more like the drunk, whoring, hedonistic Robert that she had so hated rather than the restrained, chaste Jaime. Her Walk of Shame finally strips Cersei of the beauty that had rendered her an object and alienated from the instruments of violence forced upon those with male bodies. I wonder whether the passing of her beauty – the very symbol of her status as object – will lead Cersei more directly to engage with the levers of "male" power she has been denied so long. Violence, violence, and more violence.
On the surface, Jaime's body gives him all the privileges his siblings lack. He's a handsome, able-bodied man, and his father imagines him the glittering heir that will continue the Lannister family name. His male body enables him to usurp the claims of his older sister to Casterly Rock, to wield a sword, and to fully embody the chivalric ideals he was obsessed with as a child. However, Jaime soon discovers that his cherished knightly ideals are not all they are cracked up to be. Being a Kingsguard means living by the sword, and yet he finds that violence he is entrusted with is not always enacted justly – he is forced to stand by when his king rapes his wife, and then is roundly condemned for killing Aerys, the man who was about to destroy an entire city. After Aerys' murder, Jaime grows cynical about the ideals of chivalric violence, and to cope with the way such male violence is both fetishised and villainized by the system, he meshes his identity with his sister, retreating into the comfort of chivalric love. As his sister's lover, he commits violence for her, protects her, and is forced to love her from a distance, never getting too close... just like any good Lancelot would do for his Guinevere. However, after the loss of his hand – the very thing that allowed him to commit the violence that comes along with a male body in his society – Jaime's ideas of both chivalric violence and chivalric love are transformed. Once he has returned to King's Landing, Jaime takes a step towards his beloved and asks for genuine commitment before the world, but Cersei doesn't want that. She just wants a weapon to wield, an imagined male version of herself. The loss of Jaime's hand also means he cannot just cut through the Gordian knot with a sword anymore, and he is forced to make use of other skills like diplomacy and people management. Also, his relationship with his body is thrown into stark relief by Brienne – even though she has a female body, she is more the true chivalric knight than he has ever been. She genuinely strives to protect the innocent and does not grow cynical or deviate from her path when people mock her for her ideals. The genuine care she shows him after he loses his hand is also the complete opposite to how Cersei – the object of his chivalric love – reacts when she sees he has been maimed. Cersei recoils, disgusted that the idealised image of her perfect male body has been shattered, while Brienne bathes him, cleans him, and holds him through the worst pain. Jaime puts Cersei on a pedestal, but he knows Brienne. He also entrusts the truth of the Kingslaying to her – this innocent little knight who still holds onto the ideals he thought corrupted – and in the bath, in her arms, he is reborn.
Throughout the books, Tyrion, Cersei, and Jaime are all forced to reconceptualise their bodies in response to changing circumstances, and GRRM makes them all look at mirror images of themselves (Penny, Brienne, Robert). Tyrion struggles with what he sees, Jaime falls in love with his reflection, while Cersei looks away.
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