sitting pretty on the throne

“Queen you shall be, until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear.”

The following post contains spoilers to both the HBO TV show Game of Thrones and the A Song of Ice and Fire book series the show is based on. 

I have a bit of a history of loving the characters that other people seem to love to hate, and the reactions I've seen from casual show watchers to Cersei's infamous Walk of Shame scene in the fifth season finale demonstrate a spectacular interest in seeing falls from grace. Cersei Lannister is written to be a hard character to empathize with in part because she is everything men say they want in a woman and everything women want to be: beautiful, intelligent, charming, and confident in herself. As the queen of Westeros, she occupies the highest position a woman in a patriarchal monarchy can ever dream of achieving—and it will never even come close to being enough for her. 

The ruthlessness to which she craves power is unsettling because it represents a very masculine-coded desire despite the fact that being the queen requires a particular emphasis on feminine gender roles, first as the wife of the king and later as the mother of the next king. At the end of the day it doesn't matter how close she can get to the Iron Throne herself: she will always be ruled by her father, her husband, and her sons simply because men will always be in a greater position of power than what she can access, and the injustice of it all sparks a violent anger within her that manifests itself in her cruelty and selfishness. 

At the heart of what makes Cersei such a tragic character are the moments in which we're allowed to see her vulnerability beneath the cold glares and begin to comprehend her rage and paranoia. "Everywhere in the world they hurt little girls," she says to Oberyn Martell in season four, and it was a line that became almost thematic to the gratuitous depictions of every kind of violence imaginable against women this season. Cersei understands better than anyone that sometimes you can't ever win when the world is waiting to bring you down every chance it gets; she's known that ever since she walked into Maggy the Frog's tent asking for her fortune to be told to her that being hurt isn't a question of "if" but rather "when," and it's the most heartbreaking thing to watch her demand bravery of herself in spite of it all.

There was something in her eyes, stinging, blurring her sight. She could not cry, she would not cry, the worms must never see her weep. Cersei rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. A gust of cold wind made her shiver violently.
And suddenly the hag was there, standing in the crowd with her pendulous teats and her warty greenish skin, leering with the rest, with malice shining from her crusty yellow eyes. “Queen you shall be,” she hissed, “until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all you hold most dear.”
And then there was no stopping the tears. They burned down the queen’s cheeks like acid.

- A Dance with Dragons

Cersei's tenacity in her own self-preservation is so admirable to me because she refuses to let herself give in no matter how badly she wants to be able to let go and express all the pain and grief and anger and raw emotionality she has built up beneath the surface. That Cersei continued to demand such bravery of herself during her Walk of Shame was one of the most powerful moments in the entire series; her ability to keep fighting no matter how much the world wants to tear her apart is absolutely terrifying. 

"A woman may weep but not a queen," she tells herself, because she can't let the world know how badly it hurt her, especially not when she's already so close to the top. Betraying weakness has never been an option, and it's something that I find myself being able to identify with. In the face of fear and uncertainty, sometimes the only thing that you can do is to keep fighting no matter how scared you are of what could happen. For Cersei, it doesn't matter how terrified she is of losing everything: her family, her children, her crown; in a world that seems to want nothing more than to see her suffer again and again, Cersei's resolution to fight for herself and for everything she holds dear represents the ultimate endurance of the human spirit. 

xoxo, vivian

Graphics in this post are my own, originally posted on tumblr.

I will do what queens do

Last Sunday was the season finale of the fourth season of HBO's Game of Thrones, and if you've talked to me at all in the last year, you probably already know I'm addicted to the book series and to a lesser extent, the TV show. Even though I have my own fair share of grievances with certain aspects of this season's adaptations, I'm really going to miss staying up until two in the morning talking with friends about the things I both loved and loved to hate. (You can tell I have a really great relationship with this show, can't you?) (I'm only kind of joking.)

Because it's Wednesday and I'm still transitioning back into life after Game of Thrones, I figured now is as good of a time as any to talk about my Game of Thrones #WomanCrushWednesday. (Is this what you kids are calling it these days? I'm new to the Instagram hashtag game; I got my first ever smartphone less than a month ago and I still don't know what I'm doing.) I chose today's #wcw in particular because the dress in these screencaps is one of my favorite costumes on the entire show ;) (Look at this dress and then look me in the eye and tell me this isn't the sexiest dragon princess gown you've ever seen.)

On a more serious note, I've recently grown to love Daenerys Targaryen, the exiled princess poised to take back the throne that had once belonged to her father, because she is one of the most heroic characters in Game of Thrones. One of the many things I love about this series is how it continues to challenge me to see things differently; I mentioned in my post last year that:

I saw a quote not too long ago that really stuck with me: how can you hate someone once you understand them? and I realized that was exactly why I liked and admired so many of the characters of various morals and ambitions in this massive epic. After reading the narratives of so many different points of view, I saw that the characters that were introduced as the antagonists by one character were the protagonists to others. It was that kind of fluidity that made the series so compelling: maybe there aren't any true "good guys" or "bad guys" in the end; only people, understood and misunderstood by those around them.{more}

and while I still stand by my convictions that plenty of characters are introduced by unreliable narrators, I think it'd be wrong to say that this series lacks its share of heroes and villains. Daenerys is undoubtedly one of the most important heroines in Game of Thrones, and she will make good on her promise to rule as queens do.

I have a confession to make: I didn't like Dany when I first got into this series. Even though I normally love stories about characters who lose everything and manage to fight their way back to glory again, I hated how slow and messy her ascension to power was. My desire to see her succeed splendidly had overshadowed my appreciation of her character development, but as the fourth season of Game of Thrones began to highlight her struggle with becoming a worthy queen in the Slaver's Bay city of Meereen, I reevaluated: her mistakes are what make her human, and it's only through her failures that her triumphs are that much more poignant.

The thing about Dany that gets to me every time is that she's still just a teenage girl who's been forced to grow up too soon. She's such a fan favorite because we get to watch as she grows from being a timid girl sold into marrying a warlord almost twice her age to becoming a woman with confidence in her leadership; we want to root for the underdog because we see ourselves reflected in her, and when she succeeds we revel in her triumphs as well. But here's the thing that sets her apart from most of the heroic types we normally see in our favorite stories: she never had a choice in any of this.

Emilia Clarke, the actress who plays Daenerys on Game of Thrones, answers the question of why Dany wants to be queen perfectly:

I think that it’s something that she just can’t control, it’s something that it’s just...it’s a destiny that she has and it’s kind of shocking to her that it’s ever going to be questioned, because it’s like "If I had a choice, I wouldn’t do this. I wouldn’t go after this...I don’t have a choice; it’s been thrust upon me." {source} 

She's bound by her sense of duty as the last person in a long line of Targaryens to fight to preserve her family's great legacy: her father and her splendid brother Rhaegar had been slain before she was born; her mother had died bringing her into the world; Ser Willem Darry had been taken by a wasting sickness when she was very young; her brother Viserys, Khal Drogo who was her sun-and-stars, even her unborn son—the gods had claimed them all (A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin). It's not fair that everyone in her life had been taken away from her at such a young age, and Dany has long accepted that she has but two options: either look back and mourn for the childhood she lost or keep going and be the queen she is destined to be.

It's because Dany knows firsthand how deeply unjust and unfair life can be that she fights so hard to for justice herself. She strives to be the kind of ruler who could provide everything she can give to her people, and while her heart is in the right place, it isn't enough. When she arrives at Slaver's Bay, Dany's intentions in emancipating the slaves are nothing but out of pure goodness; however, she soon discovers that the people she freed are no better off or happier than before. She becomes frustrated that she can't easily fix the injustice she sees in the world she so desperately wants to improve, and it's an important revelation to both her and to readers/watchers that ruling with good intentions isn't enough; being a queen means learning how to bear the weight of the crown and the responsibilities that come with making diplomatic and political mistakes.

Her sense of justice is one of the many reasons why we're so invested in seeing Daenerys succeed; we see the goodness and compassion inside her and hope that we can see that in our rulers and leaders too. Her weaknesses and flaws make her complicated and human, and at a time when the inevitable winter is coming, we need imperfect heroines to inspire our hope that humanity must triumph in the end.

Happy Wednesday everybody!

xoxo, vivian

Screencaps courtesy of Far Far Away and edited in Adobe Photoshop CS6 by yours truly

if I look back I am lost

The following post may contain spoilers to up until the end of season three of the HBO TV show Game of Thrones and the books in the series that correspond to that same timeline. I've tried my best to be as subtle as I can about the events that happen, but reader discretion is still advised.

If you had told me that I would soon be massively addicted to the epic high fantasy series Game of Thrones four months ago, I would have laughed and told you that I don't read fantasy. The last time I'd read anything in the entire genre was in 2007 when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, and while I greatly enjoyed Hogwarts and Harry's final showdown with Voldemort, I've always been a little hesitant about starting another fantasy series because I didn't think I would like stories of dragons and wars and struggles of good and evil. But as more and more people around me started talking about the upcoming season three premiere of Game of Thrones this last March, I got it in my head that I needed to try something out of my comfort zone for once, and the allure of great ratings and proving people’s expectations of me wrong (I got “you’re reading/watching Game of Thrones?! didn’t expect you’d like it” a lot) convinced me that I had to see my challenge through.

You do not want to mess with this princess and her dragons.

I started this blog not long after I finished reading the first book and watching the first season and talked briefly about the series then, and looking back at my old posts and messages I wrote at the time, it's pretty clear that I didn't really know why exactly I liked the series—all I knew was that I did. Starting the series was exhausting for me: I spent the first two hundred or so pages in half confusion trying to keep track of the main characters and only partially following the narratives themselves. But despite my earlier struggles, I finally did reach the end of A Game of Thrones and found myself completely enthralled by the politics and power struggles in Westeros.

Perhaps part of what makes this series so addicting was how surprising the series—both the books and the TV show—managed to turn every expectation of a fantasy story I had upside-down. Of course it was gritty and medieval and has its share of princesses and dragons, but it was also real: real in the sense that each character is complex in the way that humans are: with different moral codes and senses of loyalty. In the end maybe there are no heroes and villains, simply people in power with different goals and ends to achieve them.

Sometimes politics comes smelling like roses.

I never expected that a fantasy series would leave me questioning what's good and what's evil in the way that this series has: of course there's a bias when you're reading and watching through the good and honorable Starks' perspective: but as more points of view are introduced and we can really see things through the "antagonists'" lens, you can't help but to admire what they represent, even grudgingly. I saw a quote not too long ago that really stuck with me: how can you hate someone once you understand them? and I realized that was exactly why I liked and admired so many of the characters of various morals and ambitions in this massive epic. After reading the narratives of so many different points of view, I saw that the characters that were introduced as the antagonists by one character were the protagonists to others. It was that kind of fluidity that made the series so compelling: maybe there aren't any true "good guys" or "bad guys" in the end; only people, understood and misunderstood by those around them.

Jaime Lannister, Kingslayer. Not your typical knight in shining armor.

One of the characters I ended up absolutely loving and changing my mind about after reading the third book was Jaime Lannister. He was so easy to hate in the first two books after he pushed a seven-year-old boy out of a window and killed a loyal friend to one of the easy-to-like characters; it was astonishing to finally see the world through his eyes, because in his mind, he wasn't the villain people saw him as at all. Both the books and the show do a fantastic job of demonstrating how important perspective is to seeing who the heroes and villains are. I really liked the way Nikolaj Coster-Waldeau, the Danish actor who plays Jaime in the show, put it in this interview:

Imagine if the show had started a year before, and it's about this beautiful and impossible love story between Cersei and Jaime...he's not a bad guy, but he's made bad choices. You saw him as a bad guy [in season one], and now you see him as a good guy...[and] suddenly it's not that clear cut anymore. 

This series is filled with moments that cruelly twist your gut reaction of horror at some of the atrocities committed: we see characters we grew to love brutally killed in one scene, and yet when we find out that their deaths saved thousands and thousands of lives by bringing the war to an abrupt end, you can't help but to feel a bit uneasy in agreeing that perhaps it was "worth it" to some extent. Similarly, we see another character who is saved from a sacrifice that supposedly would have saved the entire realm, and you're left questioning if a single life of a bit player was worth the death of thousands if it meant the end to an entirely different conflict. This series doesn't make morality easy, and maybe it shouldn't be.

Okay, how breathtakingly beautiful is the scenery in Game of Thrones?

And finally, it wouldn't feel right if I didn't talk about how this series taught me how to love the fantasy genre again. Despite (or maybe in spite of) the war and politics, the magic of A Song of Ice and Fire shines through and takes your breath away at times, from the stunning scenery in the show to mythology and the epicness of the tale itself. The fact that the series is called A Song of Ice and Fire and that it’s been alluded to that there really is “A Song of Ice and Fire"* in their world seems to imply that this story—their story—has been foretold in fate and all that’s left is for everything to play out.

As a reader, the prospect of unraveling such an intricately woven and interconnected tale is a joy, and if I had to give one reason why I like the books better, it's because it provides such a fantastic framework to speculate what's to come. I love being able to look at the prophesies and try and find hints of it in the narrative, and even though not all the pieces of the puzzle have been laid out yet, and there are many adventures still lie ahead for all my favorite characters, the thought of there being an epic "song-worthy" conclusion to all this when worlds collide and paths cross has me on edge waiting for the publication of the remaining two books.

"If I look back I am lost."

I haven't been this obsessed and addicted to a series for a long time, and now that I've finally finished the five currently published books and three aired seasons of the show, I'm so thankful for how much this series has made me think and enriched my perspective of both the fantasy genre and storytelling itself. It's been an amazing adventure, and I'm so glad I took a chance and embarked on it despite my hesitation four months ago.

xoxo, vivian

*this was mentioned in the second book, A Clash of Kings; there has so far been no mention of such "song" in the TV series