Game of Thrones Special . The Iron Lady

As epithets go, this one wasn’t much of a paean. Cersei Lannister’s brother and sworn enemy Tyrion Lannister tells her in one memorable conversation: “You love your children. It’s your one redeeming quality; that, and your cheekbones.” By the end of the eighth and last season of Game of Thrones ( GoT), Cersei, doer of several unspeakable, super-villainous acts, might find herself left with just those facial bones as her sole saving virtue.

Cersei belongs to the richest family in Westeros — the House of the Lannisters — and is the lover of her twin brother, Jaime. We discover in Season 1 how she is the queen of Seven Kingdoms and the wife of King Robert Baratheon after the end of a bloody war.

What is it about Cersei that makes her — and the series, about to come to a grand end on May 20 (in India) — so riveting? “There’s certainly a great level of narcissism in Cersei. She has an almost sociopathic view of the world and civilisation,” Lena Headey, who has won critical acclaim for playing the feared and admired villain, said of her character in an interview.

When it comes to villains, GoT has a fair share of them, including many from the netherworld. Men, women, good characters going rogue, villains becoming more bloodthirsty — it has them all. And with some so-called evil-doers shedding wickedness, GoT also leaves you with a question that is as true about the mega show as it is about life: Can any action be judged in black-and-white? And, then, evil queen Cersei takes centre stage, and it appears that she, indeed, is all black. Almost.

Our introduction to Cersei lays the foundation for what is to follow. In her first scene, she is far from her throne in King’s Landing, the capital of Seven Kingdoms, and in the fiefdom of Winterfell, the icy northern Castle, which belongs to the Stark Dynasty, one of the Seven Kingdoms. She looks at her subjects with the chilling disdain that characterises her through the series.

But there may be a reason for that. Cersei is also cursed by a prophecy. When still a young princess, a witch — the much-feared Maggi the Frog — tells her that she would have three children, and outlive them all. The fear on the little girl’s face is palpable — as it is on the grown-up queen’s face while her children are alive, for she knows that her beloved offspring will all die before her.

Her character might primarily have been influenced by the two legendary queens from the 15th century War of the Roses, on which the GoT plot is loosely based. But were those queens really all that evil? Or were they also stigmatised and demonised over time? Some feminist revisionist histories of Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville believe so.

Margaret of Anjou was the wife of Henry VI of the Lancasters. The Lancasters under Henry VI were twice attacked by the Yorks, who tried to stake their claim to the throne of England. While they were thwarted the first time by the queen after she raised an army, she failed to an extent the second time around. The series has reached a point where a new ruler of the Iron Throne, where the Lannisters at present rule, has to be decided upon.

Elizabeth Woodville was beautiful, like Cersei, with blonde hair and striking features. She was also queen to Edward IV, who had brought an end to turbulent times after defeating a “mad” king, just as Robert Baratheon succeeded mad king Aegon Targaryen. Woodville is rumoured to have tried to get her daughter married to her brother-in-law Richard III, even though he had killed two of her sons. Did Woodville sacrifice her children to political ambition? Cersei certainly did.

Many GoT viewers hold that her character is particularly misogynistic. But let us not forget that she was stripped and forced to walk naked to the palace while her subjects booed her with shouts of “Shame”. And also consider the other women leaders in the series. They are shown to exhibit follies traditionally considered feminine — such as jealousy and vanity. What’s notable is that when these characters have suffered defeat or been chastised, they begin anew, washing off all sins. Cersei’s chastisement, however, just eggs her on to be more evil.

But perhaps Cersei has her legion of fans because there is also a tragic element to her character. Her children are dead and gone. Her father dies a painful death, killed by Tyrion. Jaime, also the father of her three children (and another on its way), was protective of her.

But after being in love with her for most of the eight seasons of the series (which began in 2011), he has now parted ways. Cersei’s consort now is Euron Greyjoy. Another personification of evil, he owns the ship Silence, which is run by a crew of mute people whose tongues he had ripped out.

GRR Martin, the author of the books on which the show is based, has gone back to classic tales for inspiration, and Cersei’s character has shades of the evil stepmother from fairy tales. Her name is a clear reference to the witch Circe in Greek mythology. Circe was banished for murdering her husband and turned Odysseus’s men into pigs.

Cersei is now ready to make her final move. And the queen has nothing to lose.

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