The most underrated moment in the Game of Thrones books
A Feast for Crows follows many new characters, none more interesting than Cersei Lannister. While most of the new POVs are meant to establish underdeveloped areas like Dorne and the Iron Islands, Cersei’s chapters exist to give the reader exactly what they want: a look into her twisted psyche. For the past three books we watch her plot, scheme, and war against so much of the cast, and in the fourth we understand that her mind is even worse than her actions.
Throughout the entire book Cersei’s mind does stream-of-consciousness loop-de-loops over all the ways she’s been hurt or disrespected, and all the ways she hopes to take revenge. We also see a more contemplative side to her, her mind drifting off to Rhaegar Targaryen, who she believed she was going to marry when she was young, and to a fortune she was told as a girl by a woman called Maggy the Frog. In the chapter I look to analyze, her mind is first on war as she sends Loras Tyrell on a suicide mission to retake Storm’s End from Stannis Baratheon, but as she goes to bed, she is greeted by Taena Merrywether.
Taena, a book-only character, is a courtier from Myr. She becomes an ally to Cersei, spying on Margaery and feeding her what Cersei wants her to know. When she is introduced, Cersei (or perhaps this is George R.R. Martin speaking directly through Cersei’s mind) Cersei notes how beautiful she is, and when Cersei finds Taena in her bed (a handmaiden sleeping in the same bed as the lady she serves isn’t abnormal) Cersei once again thinks about her beauty. She admires her nipples, wonders what it would be like to kiss her, full on the lips, and what it would be like to “use her” the way Cersei’s dead husband Robert had “used” Cersei.
Cersei is a character defined by her sex, both the sex she has and the sex she was born with. Despite her cunning and how she and Jaime could switch clothes and pass perfectly as each other, Cersei wasn’t allowed to wield power the way men had. Moreover, the only two men Cersei truly desired were Rhaegar Targaryen, who was “taken” from her, and Jaime, who was “taken” from her as well. So, she gains power the way she can; by marrying a king and then birthing Jaime’s children so Robert’s blood doesn’t take the throne. Cersei doesn’t enjoy sex; she uses sex to get what she wants.
Robert, on the other hand, was a simple man who took what he wanted. As her husband, sex with Cersei was his “right”, and Cersei recalls the nights when he penetrated her as the worst nights, bringing only soreness to her body. She also recalls a day after when she told Robert that he hurt her, and Robert halfway denied it, saying “it was the wine.” There were glimpses of Cersei’s vulnerability before this. She broke down in front of Tyrion when attempting to keep her son in King’s Landing (Tyrion plotted to send Tommen away for his safety), and we know the woman she is with Jaime, but nothing makes me understand her more than that series of thoughts. She is a victim who wants power more than anything in the world, so she schemes, she takes power in her mind, and is hypervigilant against any threat, real or imagined, that would take that power away. Despite this, she cannot stop the forces of time that age her body, taking her beauty, or the forces of patriarchy which take her autonomy.
Cersei is about to have a moment of solidarity with Taena, admitting to her that she is a “true friend”, when she’s called away to handle another matter (one of the many subplots in Cersei’s chapters where she makes hilariously poor decisions to disastrous results). When she returns to Taena, she’s drunk, and curiously feels at her breasts. When Taena’s eyes are open, she asks how it feels, and when Taena tells Cersei she feels good, Cersei pinches. When Taena gasps “You’re hurting me”, Cersei tells her that it’s just the wine making her brutish, and that she means to claim her rights.
After this moment, Taena tells Cersei “Do what you will” and enjoys the sex they have. Cersei does not. Her mind is not on the pleasure she brings this woman, her mind is on her dead husband. Cersei hoped to assault Taena in the same way Robert assaulted her, but instead she is left hollow, thinking of how she would “eat” Robert’s heirs, please him with her hand or mouth so she wouldn’t get pregnant, and imagining her fingers as a boar’s tusks, goring this woman in the same way her husband was gored. She gets no pleasure from it, and when Taena asks what she can do for Cersei, the queen asks her to leave. When she does, it’s as though it never happened.
A major point made in A Feast for Crows is that Cersei is becoming Robert. She drinks constantly, gains weight (she believes her seamstresses have some sort of conspiracy to make her dresses too small), and most importantly she does a horrible job at ruling. While she is thinking of Robert denying the hurt he caused Cersei, she thinks, “Deep down Robert Baratheon was a coward.” Robert letting the realm fall into Lannister hands, ignoring his obligation to rule was not malice, not foolishness, but cowardice. As Cersei becomes more and more like Robert, we see that she is the opposite of him. Robert shirks his responsibilities; enjoys the boons power brings him while ignoring the responsibilities. Cersei embraces her responsibilities while declining the pleasure. Cersei intended to rape Taena, to feel whatever pleasure, whatever power her husband had over her. When she gets what she wants, she feels empty. While Robert Baratheon lusted for the past, when he was a young, strong man who could fight any man and bed any woman, Cersei is haunted by her past. She constantly fears the fortune she was given as a child, and she seems to have no concrete vision of the future.
A concept the books tackle is what power does to identity. Danaerys must deny her desires and her birthright to rule in Mereen, while Arya and Sansa are forced to take new names, erasing their previous identities to survive Lannister violence. At both ends of the hierarchy, it destroys your identity. In this scene, we see that Cersei exists on both ends. She seeks to destroy other’s identities, denying that Margaery Tyrell is the queen, denying Sansa freedom, and here denying Taena reciprocity. She is also a woman whose identity has been erased through patriarchy, sexual violence, and shame. Yet when Arya and Sansa are erased, they have their family name and pleasant memories to help them reassert themselves. All of Cersei’s memories are of pain, trauma, and anger. For Cersei, there is no returning to better times.
It’s almost enough to make her sympathetic.
