#cersei**

[him-e]

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. 

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.” 

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?

I mean, a male!Cersei would be a different Cersei (also different than Jaime, despite their belief that they’re basically the same person). Would male!Cersei have the same drive and ambition that canon!Cersei has—would she have the same hunger for power, in a scenario where power is essentially bestowed on her by virtue of her gender & trueborn status, and she’s expected and entitled to rule her House and doesn’t have to fight for any of those things? Or would she develop the sort of blasé attitude towards power that OT Jaime has? On the other hand, would receiving a proper political/military education prevent Cersei from making the mistakes she does in original timeline? 

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?) 

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.

[him-e]

Hi~ did you get my question about Jaime and Cersei? I suppose it was just me sharing my feelings rather than asking a question =w= As much as I love seeing all the Jaime/Brienne stuff it makes me sad as well to imagine Cersei when Jaime leaves her =( She'll have lost everyone who means anything to her and she never got to meet someone good for her like Jaime met Brianna. Seems like Jaime was given the chance of redemption but she wasn't, you know? What do you think?

Hi, sorry, I’m a bit overwhelmed with questions so PSA, if you sent me meta asks, it will probably take me a long, loong, LOOOOONG time to answer, sigh. Sorry for that, but real life’s a bitch. Anyway, I think this was your question:

I’ve been thinking, as great as it is that Jaime has someone like Brienne to help him on his path of Redemption and such, isn’t it sad that Cersei has no one like that? In the end we know she’s likely to loose everything including her life and if Jaime survives that he may get to move on with his life and be happy while it feels like Cersei never got that chance =( Wouldn’t it be nice to see her be able to bond with someone too?

wouldn’t it be nice?

I guess it would. But this is a precise choice GRRM made with the twins. If he wanted Cersei to bond with some *good* character who brings out her better qualities and offers her the chance to do something nice for once, he would have given her such a character. Actually, he HAD such a character in Sansa, and yet chose to have Cersei treat Sansa horribly, despite the latter reminding Cersei of her younger self in many ways (like Brienne does to Jaime).

But this is hardly surprising to me. I’ve always thought that Jaime and Cersei are built around different tropes. For Cersei, it’s the Evil Queen. And notably, Evil Queens do NOT bond with their female younger selves. 

Like, at all. 

Jaime’s tropes are a mixed bag; he’s a bit of the Mirror (personified) and a bit of the Huntsman and a bit of a Lancelot archetype, but most importantly he belongs to a larger antiheroic type of narrative. In most antihero narratives, what triggers the antihero’s journey is meeting a good character (often a girl) who inspires a change of heart in the protagonist. You can see evident traces of this in Jaime/Brienne. And while I do expect some degree of deconstruction/subversion to happen in that arc, I think for Cersei’s one GRRM will follow the Evil Queen archetype quite straightforwardly. Which, you know, tends to end up in loneliness, misery, and generally death. (note that Cersei has a prophecy predicting this, Jaime does not.)

We can discuss how it’s not particularly progressive on GRRM’s part to systematically and carefully steer clear from female redemption narratives, despite redemption being admittedly one of the things he wanted to explore in asoiaf, or how Cersei *could* have been a fantastic -and rare- example of a female antihero rather than an almost literal adaptation of an Evil Queen trope, or if it’s sexist to *redeem* the male twin while condemning the female twin to a downward spiral into madness and self destruction. But before we can discuss this, we need to acknowledge that this is what GRRM is doing, rather than insisting that *jaime’s arc has nothing to do with redemption*, which is unproductive and contradicted by the author’s own statements on the topic.

Ultimately, only GRRM will know how to untangle the J/C/B “not a triangle” triangle, and if SOMEONE in that threefold dynamic will get anything resembling a happy ending. I’ll leave it to him.

[him-e]

Do you think Cersei's prophecies will come true on the show? Do you have any season 8 theories/thoughts concerning Cersei? Because, based on the leaks this season will end with her in power planning how she'll eliminate her enemies armies not giving a shit about WW whilst everyone is preparing for the war for the dawn and Jaime will leave without killing her. No queen will take everything from her, no valonqar to kill her.

Well, Cersei’s show!prophecies have come true, haven’t they? Gold will be their crowns and gold their shrouds—period. Show!Maggy never mentioned a YMBQ or a valonqar. Now this might be because the showrunners notoriously wanted to avoid the *Lost effect* where the audience spends more time obsessing on the mystery boxes than what’s actually happening to the characters, though.

If you will, that Cersei/Euron exchange about *feels good to kill your brother, you should try* hints to the valonqar. Cersei won’t be happy if Jaime leaves her. And there might come a moment when she is about to kill Tyrion, and the show keeps hinting at how Tyrion and Jaime’s relationship is crucial and how they still love each other despite everything, so it’s not like there’s no established conflict, character motivation or build up for the valonqar to happen.

As for the YMBQ, while Dany is, as in the books, the most likely candidate to overthrow Cersei and *take everything she holds dear*, we should not underestimate Sansa. There’s a reason why they’re being so heavy handed with the idea that Sansa *learned* from Cersei and is now the one person in the North who is most aware of her threat. Cersei should be well past Sansa’s concerns now, but the show wants us to remember that these two are still linked via a personal hero/villain dynamic.

If none of this happens, no valonqar and no YMBQ, I still don’t see Cersei surviving until the last episode. Either she becomes involved with the White Walkers (whether by recognizing them as a threat or hijacking Euron’s narrative as a sort of Night’s Queen figure who welcomes their apocalypse), or she’s just deadweight to the final beats of the narrative, imho.

[him-e]

@pips69 asked:

I know you prefer book Cersei but is there any part of show Cersei you think was done better than in the books?

Not necessarily “better than”, but several things were pretty cool. The “power is power” scene. When she sits on the Iron Throne with Tommen and tells him a story about lion cubs and kings of the forest while she prepares to commit double suicide, believing Stannis is about to take the city. The conversation with Oberyn about Myrcella, a lot of her interactions with Ned in season one, with Tyrion in season 2 and with Tywin in season 3, that scene with Robert in which they discuss their marriage, the one talk she had with Brienne in the purple wedding episode… these are just a few that came to mind.

I actually like show!Cersei, and I completely understand the reasoning behind making her more sympathetic.

Book!Cersei is an extreme character, with very few likable nuances. she never questions herself, she never dwells on her actions and behaviors, she only sees two categories of people (the pitifully useless and the enemies). Thing is, Martin doesn’t exactly write Cersei in a sympathetic light, and I have conflicting thoughts on this. While I appreciate how radical it is to make a female villain so unapologetic, it is a bit unfair that Cersei, unlike various male asoiaf baddies, isn’t even given the luxury of an identity arc. That said, her chapters are extremely fascinating because of the complete disconnect between reality and what she perceives as reality. Under that relentless (occasionally hilarious) stream of bitterness and anger, you can see her tragedy coming a mile away. She doesn’t, which creates loads of dramatic tension.

Show!Cersei doesn’t have that tragically ironic internal monologue so she needed to get under the viewer’s skin in other ways. The writers also needed to appeal to a much wider, more varied audience who isn’t necessarily ready to see so few redeeming qualities in a female lead. TV audiences are really unforgiving with female characters, so they gave her extra humanity and nuance to sweeten the pill, and made choices—e.g. Joffrey being the one who orders to murder all of Robert’s bastards, Cersei giving Robert a chance in the early days of their wedding; Cersei having an emotional breakdown with Tyrion, etc.—that constantly challenged the audience’s perception of her a villain. Giving Cersei a full range of human emotions also ensures that Lena Headey delivers a strong, compelling performance, which is essential because she’s the cornerstone of the King’s Landing storyline. The audience needs to care about her, otherwise the moment Sansa and Tyrion leave there’s no emotional value left in that storyline anymore.

When I complain about the show’s fixation on Cersei’s motherhood, that’s nitpicking on my part. I don’t see show!Cersei as a worthless “Carol”, nor I think the writers are being misogynistic or simply appealing to the ~male gaze~ when they soften Cersei’s edges a bit o spin a sympathetic angle on her. Clearly not every single thing in the showrunners’ treatment of Cersei is progressive, but neither is Martin’s. That doesn’t mean either incarnation of the character isn’t incredibly fascinating, although in slightly different ways.

[him-e]

for answering my questions! And I agree, I don't like the choice to make Cersei pregnant again either for the same reasons. However I don't fully agree about her choosing herself over Tommen. I mean her trial would have likely ended in her death so I can see why she blew it up but I don't think her lack of tears means she stopped caring for Tommen. We saw her pretty much accept that his death was coming after Mycrella's. ((will continue in another note))

((Continued)) So when I saw her looking down at him I thought she looked saddened & tired but not surprised. She didn’t let him go to the trial, she had a guard block the door, she wasn’t expecting him to kill himself but a small part of her had already accepted his death was coming. I’m sure she did morn Tommen but at this point just didn’t have any tears left. Anyway I’m not trying to argue or anything, I love hearing your opinions! =) I just don’t fully agree with this part. 

np! :)) “We saw her pretty much accept that his death was coming after Mycrella's” —> I agree. She realized he was going to become a casualty in her feud with the Tyrells… and she accepted the risk. Which, for a character who’s so far been defined and entirely driven by her borderline obsessive desire to protect her children (at least in the show), is huge.

I’ll admit my take on this is a bit more extreme than yours though. I don’t necessarily think Cersei stopped loving Tommen, but I saw a definite shift in her attitude as she realized her son was no longer under her control. So far her first motivation, what fueled her to endure the WoS, was to protect Tommen, always her little cub in her mind. So when Tommen proved he was no longer a child—no longer an extension of herself, but a young man (however gullible and manipulated by the High Sparrow) willing and capable to make independent choices, something broke in her. Tommen forbidding the trial by combat came as a reality check, after which Cersei was quick to reassess her strategy.

No she didn’t actively choose to sacrifice Tommen—she still did everything she could to ensure his safety, but not at the cost of giving up on her plan, a plan that she knew would result in Tommen tragically losing yet another person he loved. A plan she knew would break him. She went ahead, because it was his happiness against her own. A year ago she might have chosen differently, but now her priorities changed. Locking Tommen in his room was her final attempt to keep him confined in her golden cage, but I think deep down, prophecy or not, she knew it wasn’t going to work. In the end, Tommen wrenched himself free from her grasp and flew away. She didn’t look surprised. 

[him-e]

Mhm I think your take on it is closest with Cersei's character and I enjoyed reading it! I guess I just get really fed up when I see people saying how Cersei no longer loved Tommen or her reaction to his death is proof that she's evil =/ I swear these people think it's impossible for a mother to love her children and want power at the same time, it doesn't have to be one or the other. Also as horrible as it may make me seem, I can see why she pulled away from him a bit when he ((continue)).

((continued)) When he banned trial by combat. Like what the hell was he thinking?! Did he not realize his mothers life depends on that? Did the high sparrow assure him Cersei would win her trial anyway? Hell even if he felt trial by combat is unfair he could have at least waited until his mother & wife are cleared before banning it! Would that be fair? No not really but it would be more understandable then ending it when he did. What do you think?

I think at the very least he was trying to avoid a bloodbath, which would certainly happen if Cersei was allowed to use UnGregor as her champion in a trial by combat. If she had her way, she’d win the trial and seek revenge on anyone who hurt her, including the High Sparrow, the entire Faith, the people of King’s Landing who humiliated her during the WoS, and of course, of course Margaery. Sweet Tommen has fallen for Marge, and Marge is a skilled manipulator who knew her best chance to get rid of Cersei was turning the young king against her. As for the High Sparrow, he too had an easy time manipulating Tommen. Perhaps he promised the Faith would be merciful with Cersei even if she was found guilty, and convinced Tommen it was for the best.

And don’t forget Kevan. He was the Hand, and he was on the king’s side along with Mace Tyrell when Tommen made his announcement. All these people had different agendas but they all agreed on one thing: Cersei needed to be stopped. I have no doubt Tommen was manipulated but was also doing what he thought was the right thing, the good thing to do to prevent his mother from unleashing her rage onto the court, the Faith and the whole city.

I agree with you that people tend to see motherly love as one dimensional, and judge women unfairly because they either love too much, or too little. Mothers are human beings, and I detest the idea that anyone whose motherly instinct isn’t perfectly self-sacrificing all the time is *evil*. The show, in an effort to make Cersei more sympathetic, went a bit overboard with her love for her children, which is hardly her defining quality and doesn’t stop her from having an egotistical streak. Watching her step outside the show-imposed boundaries of “fierce mother” was a breath of fresh air.

[him-e]

My friend's theory is that GRRM put a lot of emphasis on Dany and Cersei beauty. More than with any other female character. Like, even men like Ned seem "captivated" by Cersei beauty. Even Tyrion: "Is this the Cersei that Jaime sees? When she smiled, you saw how beautiful she was, truly." For my friend, it's a clue, Dany and Cersei share the same father, Aerys. Why would it be such a big deal if any of the Lannister kids were Aerys child? Tywin was a shitty dad, especially to Tyrion and Cersei.

Hi anon :) Forgive me if I just skip the ridiculousness of “Tywin was a shitty dad so let’s replace him with an even shittier dad!” (come on…!), anyway, here’s the two major holes in your, pardon, your friend’s theory:

the timeline as we know it does not support it. We have a whopping three years between Joanna and Tywin’s wedding, with the infamous “liberties at the bedding” (263 AC) and the twins’ birth (266 AC), three years during which there’s no account of Aerys visiting Casterly Rock or seeing Joanna again (as she left court shortly after her wedding on Rhaella’s orders). So unless Aerys impregnated her via raven, or unless either of them paid an impromptu visit to the other that isn’t reported anywhere in the known canon, that’s it. (TWOIAF places both Joanna and Aerys at court in 272 AC, which might be around the time of Tyrion’s conception, not the twins’, though I don’t believe Tyrion is Aerys’ son either). 

beauty alone is REALLY too generic to be a clue. Many female characters are described as beautiful in the series. Sansa, Arianne, Ashara, Val, Melisandre, Catelyn, Lyanna, and so on. And while Dany and Cersei are both described as top-notch beautiful, they don’t really look alike very much (Cersei has golden-blond hair and green eyes, Dany is silver-haired and purple-eyed).

There is, however, a larger thematic problem with this theory, in my opinion.

one, it essentially falls flat from a character perspective. 

Aerys means something to Jaime, but he’s virtually no one to Cersei. Not only there is no established prior relationship between Cersei and Aerys, but she doesn’t even have an identity vacuum, so to speak, to be filled or to angst over (as Jon does, for example). Cersei never questions her own identity or even remotely feels some kind of dissonance between what she is and her familial roots, so there’s no narrative groundwork laid out for a subversion of her biological identity. It doesn’t even work in a “ha! you modeled yourself on Lannister values but you aren’t even a true Lannister” sense, ‘cause even in the craziest scenario Cersei remains a *true Lannister* (whatever the fuck it means) via Joanna, who is certainly her mother. 

two, it trivializes Cersei’s downward spiral into paranoid tyranny, making it a rather simplistic narrative of “inherited” madness. 

GRRM has already established a parallel between Aerys and Cersei in the way she is growing fond of wildfire. While this symmetry might be relevant for future plot points (between Jaime being the valonqar and replicating his assassination of Aerys by killing his sister, and the fact that one way or another King’s Landing is going to BURN), Cersei doesn’t have to be the Mad King’s biological daughter to follow his steps. In fact, it would make this parallel less poignant. The way Cersei is now—her disdain for the common folk, her despotism, her casual ordering people to be murdered or tortured, her rampant misogyny and ableism—that’s Tywin’s doing, with a bit of help by Maggy the Frog. Even her paranoia is an inevitable byproduct of the “better be feared than loved” ruling principle that she internalized from Tywin (because, of course, you reap what you sow, and if you establish a reign of terror, expect nothing but living in fear yourself). Making it a matter of genetics instead of a larger discourse around cycles of abuse, and the use and misuse of power in an oppressive society, is tantamount to saying “hey, it doesn’t matter how Cersei was raised, or how Tywin (or the patriarchy) influenced her personality, she’s paranoid and despotic because she took after her biological father the Mad King, she was going to become like him regardless”. 

three, like every other *secret targaryen* theory, it undermines the impact of the one reveal that has been carefully built up since the get go, Jon Snow being Rhaegar’s and Lyanna’s child. 

Being a Secret Whatever is Jon’s thing. Let the kid have his 15 minutes of glory, for fuck’s sake. ;) Jon’s true parentage isn’t only important as far as Jon himself is concerned, but also relevant for the bigger picture, as it would finally reveal the truth about the event that sparked a gruesome civil war, annihilated a dynasty and tore the realm apart. This is probably the biggest mystery of the series, and I don’t want it to be watered down and redistributed among other characters. A “who are my true parents” narrative only works if used sparingly, because it’s a hilariously overused trope. Having Cersei&Jaime, or Tyrion for that matter, being “the secret descendant of (x)” in addition to Jon would simultaneously steal the spotlight from his reveal, and make it less believable (how many mysterious babies turning out to be a Special Someone can a story have before becoming a joke? Just one, in my opinion, which is why I also think Aegon isn’t that Aegon.)

And this is why “it’s such a big deal”.

I will admit, there is a dark irony to this theory, that fascinates me in some aspects. But being “fun” in some fandom-wanky way isn’t necessarily a good reason to turn a solid narrative into a convoluted soap-opera of unknown fathers, dub-con secret liasons and family members who savagely fight each other without knowing they’re related. 

Like, seriously. I get the appeal of making every character who isn’t a Stark a secret Targaryen (because they’re the two “magical” dynasties, and everyone else is just ordinary, I guess?), but this isn’t Star Wars where there’s one family fucking up the whole galaxy with their drama as they say in that post circulating on tumblr these days. Diversity in asoiaf is important, that’s why you have multiple povs. It’s the story of several families, not just one. Making it all about either the Starks or the Targaryens feels counter-intuitive to Martin’s approach to the genre, in my opinion.

Of course, everything is possible! I don’t write asoiaf, grrm does, and he can do whatever he wants with his story, including disregarding his own canon or coming up with extra reveals after failing to leave any solid hint for five books. Who knows? Authors have done stranger things, after all. And GRRM is no stranger to retcon, especially wrt Cersei. But the most recent canon information, from TWOIAF, really does seem to debunk this theory and I’d rather kill my braincells speculating on something that has at least a scrap of textual evidence. :)

[him-e]

Lots of people agree that Cersei will rejoin the political sphere in King's Landing after her walk through the city, but do you think her experience will affect the way she approaches politics and high society? I think she used to view her family name, her wealth, and her sexuality as her main weapons, but now that she has suffered humiliation, do you think she will use them as weapons to further herself the same way?

Uhm, probably not the same way she did before. Like a literal lioness, Cersei is most dangerous when she’s wounded, and she’s just been humiliated in the most vicious, prolonged, agonizing, universally public way. I’m sure her reaction will be equally destructive. The last we’ve seen of her in adwd she was playing meek and submissive, but don’t be fooled, rage and bloodthirst are seething under that facade, which I think she’ll put off after she wins her trial anyway.  

It remains to be seen what means she’ll use and whether she is lucid enough to realize that her “usual” weapons either failed her (being a Lannister didn’t help her, nor did uncle Kevan; the Sparrows won’t be bought with gold; her sexuality was used against her and the men she manipulated proved useless or unreliable), or were neutralized by the WoS (all of King’s Landing saw her naked, exposed in all her stretchmarks and signs of aging, so her body has been stripped of that “godlike” appeal that basically made her sexual favors the irresistible, powerful currency they used to be, which Cersei is painfully aware of even during the walk). Plus the WoS was so horribly traumatizing that I’m not sure she’ll ever be willing to use her body as a bargaining chip again. So yes I can see her change her methods, try different—and possibly more aggressive—tactics. Surely the Lannister name remains a powerful leverage she can use to impose herself at court (with Kevan dead, she’s the oldest Lannister in town and technically Lady of Casterly Rock). And don’t forget Qyburn and UnGregor. They’re her greatest assets now, and I think Cersei will quickly learn how to employ them efficiently. *shivers*