#cersei tag

[kingsmoot]

agot, chapter 39, eddard x

this and the breastplate stretcher scenes are my favorite of robert's. i love that in his most intimate and vulnerable moments with ned, he acknowledges himself as a failure. here specifically he is openly ashamed that he did not act as a king should. ned, notably, thinks it is unkingly of him not to punish jaime lannister for the murder of five stark men, but has no opinion of him punching cersei in the head so hard it bowls her over and leaves a bruise over half of her face. as usual the thing that connects them more strongly than their shared childhood is a dead girl and a beaten wife (but a cold and frigid wife who's mean so it's understandable that robert beats her. charitable, almost! he never loved her. not the way he loves a dead girl who he can no longer remember very well.)

i also love how robert frames his own behavior. he is not sufficiently performing kingliness. i love that his reasoning for why he is failing at his station is similar to how sansa reasons out her own behaviors in accordance with her well-studied noble lady's courtesies.

[minyoongothic]

A rainha da noite.

[pridevigilance]

My Children are utter failures, how dare they.

A Sequel to ‘Tyrion’s Fault’, by Tywin lannister.

[kingsmoot]

cers and tyrion talking about stannis and renly here but tyr could just as easily be talking about them 😪

[kingsmoot]

any thoughts on Cersei and Taena?

yeah, i love cersei and taena. their sex/rape scene is one that reliably makes me cry on every reread. cersei edges so close to perceiving the enormity of what was done to her and then turns away as quickly as possible.

unfortunately, taena is written in a deeply racist and orientalist way. it is a consistent and pervasive problem grrm has throughout the series. taena is exotified, objectified, and given no personhood or depth of her own. she serves to develop cersei's story (that in and of itself is not a bad thing. i've mentioned before that jeyne (notably a white girl) exists within theon's story to give him character development and that's fine because stories need tertiary support characters who develop their main characters) and is a non-person otherwise. but taena is not just an example of a tertiary character, she is part of a grrm tradition of giving his non-white characters little to no voice/interiority/depth, something his white characters (especially those with other marginalized identities) get in spades.

this is both disappointing and consistent. i would love if twow dropped with sudden taena pov chapters but there is absolutely no chance that will ever happen. this makes me sad because i find cersei and taena extremely compelling, especially cersei's cruelty towards taena that is so inseparable from her desire for her. this is just how cersei lannister is. i love her to pieces.

the fact that after cersei's walk of shame she asks for taena to be brought back to her really rips me to shreds. i wonder how taena would feel receiving that summons!!

[kingsmoot]

and this too is romance

[kingsmoot]

it's crazy how every time ned and robert are faced with the chasm between them -- nearly ten years apart, irreconcilably different moral codes, plans within plans, conspiracies, secrets -- they will stare into the abyss they each see in the other's eyes and then call cersei a dumb vindictive lannister cunt and blame it on her

the only thing they have in common anymore is the little girl's corpse they drag between them... the only thing they agree on is how much they'd like to see a woman's head on a spit

[kingsmoot]

i forgot cersei did this oh my god. my bestgirl for fucking ever you evil heartless cunt.