Wow, Game of Thrones really likes to make my job as hard as possible.
SPOILERS FOR SEASON EIGHT, EPISODE FIVE BEGIN HERE
I feel like I have no choice but to make this post an ode to Jaime and Cersei Lannister.
I mean – Jon and Dany also had a moment, where Jon told her he loved her and that she’s his queen and Dany decided that wasn’t enough. I’m not completely certain what passed between them there. Jon obviously had an uncertainty about the romantic love, but I don’t know if that has to do with how Dany’s been spiraling or the incest.
Either way, it definitely didn’t give Dany what she wanted and she withdrew in a big way. Because of Jon’s shitty poker face, we once again were faced with likely preventable deaths – he couldn’t bend the fake knee to Cersei, and he couldn’t kiss Dany 10% more passionately.
Thanks, Jon.
I feel like this isn’t the last we’re going to see of their relationship, though.
But Jaime and Cersei…
…sigh.
Here’s the thing.
I love Cersei Lannister. I have felt a genuine conflict about who I wanted to win because, sure, Cersei isn’t a good queen or a good person, but she’s an amazing character, and I love her. My friends know very well that my dream has always been that Cersei could somehow be happy just leaving the Iron Throne and everything behind and going to some distant island and living out her life.
I love Jaime. If I, like the show, completely ignore that bizarre rape scene after Joffrey died, then he has a really beautiful character arc. His love for Cersei shaped everything he did, even as he grew a moral compass. He went from “I love Cersei, and I would kill a child for her without much thought” to “I love Cersei, and I will stop her because of that love”.
(I still contend that Jaime’s original plan when he left Winterfell was that he would go kill Cersei and then probably himself. I just think that all changed very drastically as events unfolded the way they did.)
(Probably this is me filling things in for the writers and giving them more credit than they deserve but I do what I want.)
I also love Jaime and Cersei together. Just like there’s a difference between a good person and a good character, there’s also a difference between a Healthy and Unproblematic Relationship and a Compelling Fictional Relationship That Hecks Me Up Real Good.
(If you’re wondering how this conflicts with my previously stated love for Jaime/Brienne: It doesn’t. I warned you when this started that I’m a dirty dirty multishipper and I’m not ashamed.)
Listing out all the ways in which their relationship is toxic and codependent and generally violently unhealthy would take thousands of words, and I kind of assume we all already know how that essay would read. Also THEY’RE DEAD NOW and I’M REALLY SAD ABOUT IT, so give me a moment to appreciate their love for each other instead.
Because, honestly? It’s super hard for me not to be affected by how much and how intensely they loved each other. The way Cersei crumbled when she saw Jaime, seeing that he’d come back to her, there at the end of everything? Jaime’s echo of Cersei’s lines, about nothing mattering in the world except them? The way they still clung to each other as the world fell down on them?
I cried a lot, okay?
I knew it was unlikely that I’d get the true ending of my heart – the one where Cersei gets an impossible happy ending, and where Jaime learns to live without her and goes off to beg Brienne for forgiveness and they get their own happy ever after.
I still hoped. Realistically, I could never hope for Cersei to live, but I could hope for Jaime to live.
I’m glad, at least, that their last moments weren’t spent fighting over the many ways they betrayed each other or who fucked up the most or whether any of this would have happened if Cersei had just surrendered earlier or if Jaime had stayed with her, or, or, or. It wasn’t petty barbs. It was just Jaime and Cersei, together, loving each other with every fiber of their beings as the Red Keep crumbled around them.
I’m probably going to have to go cry some more. Seeing Cersei cry has always been a very big weakness for me. I just wanted her to be happy.
There is a part of me whispering what’s the point now that Cersei’s gone but we still have a whole episode left and at least my Stark girls have survived.
…Hey, guys?
Hey, friends?
How the fuck are they wrapping this up in just one more episode?
