25 reasons we love Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones

Episode 67 (season 7, episode 7), debut 8/27/17: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lena Headey.

photo: Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO

Cersei can actually make you feel bad for Jaime

Not everyone likes Jaime Lannister. However, he, like his sister and brother, does spend time as the sympathetic and likable Lannister sibling. Sometimes it feels as though Game of Thrones actually only allows one Lannister to be sympathetic at a time, lest viewers experience some form of overload.

Generally speaking, Jaime can make Cersei likable or at least make you feel bad for her. Cersei, meanwhile, can do the same for Jaime.

For example, when Jaime makes it back to the Red Keep after losing his hand, he gets rejected outright. Although shippers would disagree, he says he only loves Cersei. (Please feel free to argue about Jaime and Brienne, especially with that “act of love” in season 8.)

To see his faithfulness rewarded with shock and derision hurts him. As a result, it actually makes you sympathize with him, so long as you don’t think about the fact that they’re committing brother-sister incest and have been for a very, very long time.

Conversely, Jaime can also make us feel bad or angry about his treatment of Cersei. Remember what happens while Tywin lies in state? So do we.

Their twisted relationship simply adds another layer of depth to both characters, even if that depth includes “making the audience like one of us and hate the other, depending on the episode.”