'Game of Thrones' Did a Disservice to Cersei and Jaime
Cersei Lannister, the most ruthless leader to ever sit on the Iron Throne, finally met her end on Game of Thrones, cowering in the Red Keep as her city burned and her people burned with it. She died with her twin brother Jaime Lannister holding her, their unborn baby between them, as the castle fell down on top of them. It was a tragic ending-not because she died trying to protect her child, a fearsome mother until the very end, and not because she died knowing the only man she loved was always loyal to her. It was tragic because a woman of such strength and cunning deserved a better death after eight seasons than to get dragged into a crumbling basement by her dumbass brother.
As Daenerys went all Mad Queen on King's Landing and burned it to smithereens with Drogon, Cersei stood in her tower and watched it happen in disbelief. People in Game of Thrones just do not have good battle strategies or anything resembling a back-up plan. Then Jaime showed up at the last minute, despite double stab wounds in his gut, and led her to the keep. Down there, he thought he'd find a way out to the boat waiting in the bay, but since every building was in ruins, obviously the entrances were blocked off. Cersei cried that she doesn't want her baby to die, and he took her face in his hands and said, "Nothing else matters. Only us." And then they got squashed.
Cersei long thought her brother Tyrion would kill her, thanks to a prophecy she was told when she was a little girl: "When your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you," the valonqar translating to her "younger sibling." HBO didn't include that part of the Valonqar prophecy in the show, but many fans thought that it meant Tyrion, who did play a hand in her death by being the hand of the Dragon queen. A different interpretation is that Jaime was the valonqar, because technically he was born seconds after Cersei. And in Episode Five, Jaime did technically wrap his hands around her neck and then they did die. But that's a stretch. The Valonqar prophecy was a bust.
We knew Cersei had to die. But she should have been forced to answer for her cruelty. It was lazy to not hold her accountable. And dropping some rocks on her was an easy out. Her end came not because she was outsmarted-there was nothing smart about anyone's battle strategy-or because she was betrayed by a brother she trusted. It didn't happen in a dramatic face-to-face showdown between her and another power player like Dany or Sansa, which would have been so satisfying. There was no plan. Cersei froze up and stopped making decisions for herself, which was deeply un-Cersei-like, and then let her brother step in to do the heavy lifting, filling the role of knight in shining armor. She died scared and powerless and relying on a man to save her.
But Jaime went the way he wanted to go. Back in Season Five, he told Bronn that he wanted to die in the arms of the woman he loved. Wish granted.
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