Your tags about Cersei about the feminity thing I posted is ABSOLUTELY IT! Especially when you added the Tyrells.
The Tyrells are the IT family and know how to abuse their social position to the best of their ability. Margaery is a character who in the show is able to use her feminity to its full potential, and in the books is a lady of her station who knows how to act accordingly. Olenna Tyrell is much the same, with her becoming a Tyrell by seducing her husband away from her sister. They acknowledge it to be a tool much like Cersei, but unlike Cersei, don't hate womanhood for it and in fact embrace it, even informing others of its uses.
Cersei only sees her sex being useful because of well... sex. Not underestimation, not the ability to go unnoticed, not allyship that can come from other women like the Tyrells, just seduction. Like how a man would view a woman's use. Doesn't help that objectively, Cersei is the beauty standard of Westeros and considered one of the prettiest woman in the lands, so she can't go unnoticed even if wanted to which she doesn't.
The women Cersei hates the most are also women who fit in with the beauty standards, Sansa and Margaery, the perfect little ladies. Cersei hates all women and herself most of all but she is too disillusioned to notice it. Its why she's one of the best written characters, cause we all know or know of a pick-me who acts like this. She's the realest adult character.
(Also, gotta add that being outside beauty standards doesn’t make someone ugly, I made a post about Arya vs Sansa regarding beauty standards and got death threats cause they thought I was calling Arya ugly. Not dealing with that again lol)
@tired-w THANKS FOR THE ASK!!
And literally! I really do love the Tyrells.
Cersei is Complicated as a character and I do like her because endlessly she’s frustrating and a treat. In some ways her motherhood makes her almost redeeming in that there’s someone genuinely caring underneath all that Cersei-ness. As I said before, it *is* rooted in Narcissism, her love for her children. Because they are of Cersei. She does a lot of things to protect her children because it’s also one of the few things she can genuinely say *are* hers and hers alone, bereft of power and being able to hold land and use steel.
Regarding in ways she can have power, she rejects it in the way it’s okay for women in ASOIAF to have power, through secrets or conspiracy (not entirely)
She wants power in the most raw sense (ie. “Power is Power”
“She dreamt she sat the Iron Throne, high above them all…” (Cersei I, AFFC)
AND she thinks of herself as Tywin’s true heir, “I am the only true son [Tywin] ever had.” (Cersei I, AFFC)
Tywin in no way helped, I might add. Despite it all, Cersei is probably the one who wants to uphold the Lannister name the most, and the Family and Legacy values of Lannister. I also think that a lot of the way Cersei views power is warped because of Tywin, famously cruel and committing terrible atrocities across Westeros. Yet she still looks up to him and in the way he had power, she wants that and rejects “womanhood” in doing so, double-edged. What I mean to say here is that she rejects it for herself in a way she refuses to be bound by those standards. But she refuses camaraderie with other powerful women with subtle power (Tyrells), as well, or women who break that boundary (Brienne). She pointedly hates these women! And she DOES have a special hatred towards Sansa and Margery. She’s cruel and judgemental of the female body.
It’s tragic in a sense. I also want to go out and say there’s multiple times where Cersei wish she would’ve been born a man FOR the power and so that people would finally listen to her and her judgement would be sound with zero push back. Which could mean anything.
She wishes for a lot of things and can never have them. She wants power — she cannot have it. She wants to be openly with Jaime, she cannot have it.
I love Cersei’s POV chapters a lot also LOL. Not quite a Cersei Stan but I feel like I can find it in my heart to have a little sympathy for the devil, if you will. She’s awful, and terrible, and a misogynistic pick-me brat but I think she rocks. I feel like if anyone could ever outwit themselves it would be Cersei.
(And to your last point, that’s terrible! I’m sorry that happened to you. I generally agree. I think it’s odd that like. People are always like these characters HAVE to be beautiful for them to have worth but it’s almost as if GRRM writes plain and ugly characters because beauty can be found elsewhere and your outsides do not [and should not] determine your worth. It’s almost as if. Brienne of Tarth exists to hammer that home. Arya was said to look like Lyanna but she’s definitely ratty and unkempt and probably a bit busted looking, in a Lyanna way [you know because that’s her aunt. It’s almost as if people related to each other look like each other], if that makes sense. She’s just a girl, what does it matter that a girl have to look beautiful for.)
SORRY THIS GOT LONG. Again, thank you for the ask! Banger of a post :)
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