Game of Thrones Why Cersei & Jaime’s Romance Was Banned (Despite Targaryen History)

Game of Thrones: Why Cersei & Jaime’s Romance Was Banned (Despite Targaryen History)

In Game of Thrones, the romance between Cersei & Jaime Lannister was a dirty secret, despite Targaryens marrying brother to sister for centuries.

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Game of Thrones Why Cersei & Jaime’s Romance Was Banned (Despite Targaryen History)

The romance of Cersei (Lena Headey) and Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) in Game of Thrones was banned and treated as a dirty secret in Westeros, even though Targaryens had ruled the country for centuries while wedding brother to sister. In both Game of Thrones and the A Song of Ice and Fire books the show is based upon, audiences are introduced to the incestuous relationship between the Lannister siblings almost immediately after they first appear in the story. Aside from being one of the most striking ways that George R.R. Martin plunges readers into a world where just about anything can and does happen, it also leads to one of the series’ most enduring, complicated, and even powerful relationships.

The romance between Jaime and Cersei makes for various key storytelling points, not least in how the product of their relationship – their three children, Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), Tommen (Callum Wharry, Dean-Charles Chapman), and Myrcella (Aimee Richardson, Nell Tiger Free) – and the unleashing of the secret of it plays such a crucial role in the death of Ned Stark (Sean Bean) and starting the War of the Five Kings. Later, Cersei would be charged with committing incest for her relationship with Jaime, and their romance was something to be abhorred by anyone who knew of it – but that’s despite the previous 300 years being ruled by House Targaryen, who constantly had brothers marrying their sisters (and often more than one).

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When Aegon I Targaryen came to conquer Westeros, he brought with him a pair of sister-wives, Visenya and Rhaenys. It was the custom of House Targaryen, and the many other Valyrian families before them, to marry sister to brother in order to ensure the bloodlines remained “pure”, which was deemed particularly important for controlling dragons and ensuring the survival of the Valyrian race. Aegon, his sister-wives, and their dragons helped establish Targaryen rule, however that doesn’t mean incest was accepted in Westeros at that time. The practice had long been prohibited in the country, but the might of the Targaryens meant that there was little that could be done about it.

That said, it is believed that Aegon I and the High Septon both agreed that the Targaryen’s incestuous marriages were outdated, and that the practice would gradually be weeded out as they became more accustomed to Westerosi customs. This helped hold a peace between the Targaryens and the Faith of the Seven (well, that and the enormous dragons), but later Aegon I’s son, Aenys, wed two of his own children to one another, causing the Faith Militant to rise up against them and the incest they practiced. The Faith was ultimately defeated though, and so the Targaryen tradition of keeping the bloodline pure continued until the house was all but wiped out in Robert’s Rebellion.

It was in this Westeros that Jaime and Cersei lived most of their lives and carried out much of their relationship. The idea of incest was already one mostly seen as a Targaryen issue, but when Jaime and Cersei were adults, with no Targaryens left in Westeros, it was completely disavowed. Even when growing up, despite a Targaryen King whose own children were products of incest, it wouldn’t have been seen as the approved thing for anyone outside of that bloodline to partake in (which in part helped contribute to the theory that Jaime and Cersei were secretly Targaryens themselves).

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That’s why they had to hide it, though it remains unclear exactly how much Tywin (Charles Dance) knew, and what he chose to ignore. When Cersei confronts him in Game of Thrones season 4’s finale, “The Children”, she tells him about her and Jaime and remarks that he didn’t even see what was going on in his own family, and even then he doesn’t want to believe it. It’s possible that’s the case, and that if he did know he would’ve taken more drastic action to stop their relationship, but it’s equally possible he deliberately ignored it to avoid drawing further attention to the issue.

Of course, even that is muddied by Westeros’ approach to incest, and what it actually classifies as such: Tywin may or may not have known that his children were engaged in a sexual relationship, but he himself was married to his first cousin, Joanna Lannister. However, marrying cousins was not considered incestuous in Westeros, so had Jaime and Cersei not been brother and sister in Game of Thrones but still been Lannisters, then their romance would’ve been… totally fine, apparently.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/game-thrones-cersei-jaime-romance-bad-targaryens-reason/

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