Okay when I talk about how much I love Cersei I am not trying to excuse her fucked up behavior. I’m not trying to justify her treatment of the people in her life. She is a prime example of internalized misogyny and I think that’s important to the narrative at large and also to the juxtaposition between Sansa and Cersei’s characters. It frustrates me that we didn’t get any Cersei until AFFC when she was arguably at her most volatile. Cersei is not an evil whore. Please stop. She is a human being, albeit a fictional one, along with every other character in the series. She fucks up tremendously — just as every other character does. She does things that are completely disgusting and amoral. Even the most admirable characters have done really despicable things. Ned refused to explain Jon’s sudden appearance to Catelyn, but expected her to provide him with food, care, and education all the same. I have yet to hear anyone scream about Arya killing people to escape King’s Landing because Arya did that to survive. It is very easy to understand that Arya needs to kill people to survive and she has a desire to kill certain characters for revenge. That’s a pretty fucked up desire but given the circumstances that lead up to it, which as readers we were all witness to, her anger and vindictiveness is pretty understandable. Key word: understandable — not necessarily right.

We never got the whole story with Cersei, and unfortunately we probably never will. What I’m saying is that I love how wonderfully magical realism works for this series and how fantastic the characterization is. Coming to the series with a background in feminism aids in approaching the narrative and plot with an interpretive lens and provides a better understanding of all these characters as fictional human beings. I’m not going to tell you who to stan and who to despise. I think a lot of what personal taste comes down to is personal experience. You tend to enjoy things you can relate with. All I ask is some critical thinking about the spaces between the lines that George doesn’t have the time or concern to fill because they aren’t immediately important to the ongoing narrative. I feel like that’s an important step to take as a reader before discussing important facets of a story as a whole or deconstructing it to analyze it on a larger scale. A story doesn’t exist in a void and what a story means to the reader, if formalists are to be believed, is ultimately more important than the author’s intentions in writing it.