Kermode & Mayo’s Take - S2,Ep2 Cersei Lannister’s Power Behind The Throne (GOT)

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

As Cersei says: ‘power is power’ and she’s got it in spades. We investigate how she becomes a master manipulator, and we take an honest objective look at her over-familiar relations with her brother Jaime.  We want to hear about any theories we might have missed, what you’ve thought of the show so far and your character suggestions. Please drop the team an email (which may be part of the show): [e-mail] NEXT CLIENTS ON THE COUCH. Find out how to view here  Tommy Shelby, Peaky Blinders (Season 1) Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season 7) Michael, Office (USA. Season 1) Chandler, Friends (selected episodes) Sydney, The Bear (season 2) CREDITS We used clips from Season 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones.  Starring: Sean Bean as Ned Stark, Mark Addy as Robert Baratheon, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister, Michelle Fairley as Catelyn Stark, Jack Gleeson as Joffrey Baratheon, Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister and Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister Based on: "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George R.R. Martin Created by: David Benioff and DB Weiss Written by: David Benioff, George R.R. Martin, Dave Hill, Bryan Cogman, Ethan J. Antonucci, Gursimran Sandhu, Vanessa Taylor and Jane Espenson.  (S1&2) Directed by: David Nutter, Alan Taylor, Daniel Minahan, Alik Sakharov, Brian Kirk, Timothy Van Patten, Nei Marshall, David Petrarca and Tom McCarthy. Produced by: Home Box Office (HBO), Television 360, Grok! Studio, (Grok! Television), Generator Entertainment and Bighead Littlehead. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey Mark, you know I've been spending a lot more time in Denmark recently. Yep, the bakery date is in the calendar still. Well it being a Nordic country and everything, I found the perfect solution to streaming all those lovely films and TV shows that we review whilst I'm there. What on earth would that perfect solution be Simon? Well NordVPN of course, you see it's Nord, Nordic. You don't know it yet. I get it.

Moving on. With one click NordVPN can change my device's virtual location so I can access all the content I need when I'm abroad. I can now watch poor things whether in London or Paris. Why even wait until you're on holiday? You can do it right now and access content in over 61 different countries unlocking all this content for less than a price of a pano raisin a month. To take our huge discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com slash take. Our link will also give you four extra months for free on the two-year plan. Now, back to the show. Hello, it's Simon here.

And Mark. Thank you for listening. There's a special thing in our feed here, and it's shrink the box. This week Ben and I will be putting Cersei Lannister in therapy. Cersei's a sinister matriarch of the most powerful family in the fantasy world of Westeros. She's also, well, very fond of her brother, let's say. And this leads her to make some pretty unconventional life decisions. Not sure any therapist wants them on their couch. Precisely. So, on with the show. in the realm for yourself. Jaime told me about the day King's Landing fell. He was sitting in the Iron Throne and you made him give it up.

All you needed to do was climb the steps yourself. Such a sad mistake. I've made many mistakes in my life. But that wasn't one of them. Oh, but it was. When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground. It's Ben Bailey-Smith here.

And I'm Nimone Metaxas. And welcome to the pod that gets inside the heads of TV's most talked about people, where we put fictional characters from the biggest, the best shows into therapy. Thanks to our psychotherapist here, Nimone, whilst I draw back the curtain on the other side of things, I guess a bit of the actor side, the right side of things too. And like we always say, there's only a certain amount of time to dive as deep as we can into these fascinating creations. So as ever, there's an inordinate amount to be discussed. So much more, we want to hear from you, your theories, your opinions,

what you think about what we're saying, other sides that we might have missed. Always shrink the box at sonymusic.com, please. Yep. Okay, no mind. Let's get cracking. Tell us about that first clip. That was Queen Cersei Lannister played by Lena Headey in episode 7 of Game of Thrones. So we've gone quite far into the first series there. In that clip we heard Ned Stark, Sean Bean, who's handed the king at that point confront Cersei.

Ned has put two and two together that Cersei is having an incestuous relationship with her twin brother and they have produced a child that is not the king's and therefore not the rightful heir to the throne. Ned feels it's his moral duty to tell his master, but as you heard, do not mess with Cersei. No, she should have a rap tune with that as the chorus. I can imagine her kind of coming on to a sort of rap backing track. I mean it's a great show though, right?

It's engrossing is how I I describe Game of Thrones, you know? Like, it's riveting at times and it's maddening at other times. Like, so irritating that you just want to grab it like Homer does Bart, you know? Just move on! Get back to the story. I think you know what I'm alluding to. Yes, exactly. On the whole, yeah. Super enjoyable show. Great to see Sean Bean in series one being Sean Bean as well because, you know, when you think of some of the movies you've seen

him in, where he must be doing an American accent in this one, surely, and he's just Sean Bean. He's just Sean Bean. And I love it because in this he sort of inverts the Sean Bean dynamic because he's Sean Bean, but he's the King of the North. So everybody has to sound like Sean Bean as opposed to his normal Hollywood situation. No one sounds like Sean Bean except Sean Bean. He's like, no, this is my town.

He's quietly in charge. Yeah, absolutely. I have to say the same thing happened to me watching Game of Thrones again for this, as it had the first time I ever saw it, which was... What is this? And I couldn't get with it for like the first four episodes. And then suddenly, Tyrion starts to be Tyrion and the characterisation for several of the main players in this is just immense and I think that's what kind of drew me in eventually.

And it's the thing that sets it apart from so many other series. The traditional television structure you see it most explicitly within sitcoms, you know, curb your enthusiasm, you'll see it there, you'll have like a A strand, a B strand, a C strand. In this, you look forward to getting back to everybody's story where they are, and these are different players all over this fantastical world that they live in. And that's a massive achievement of writing, you know, it's incredible. You see the build in these characters and you become intrigued. And that's a massive achievement of writing. You know, it's incredible. You see the build in these characters and you become intrigued. And that's what keeps you going. That and the politics in the traditional sense, but also like...

The machinations. Yeah. Political machinations. What it makes you feel about humanity and how morals are corrupted and stuff like that. All that stuff is fascinating. Then they just thrust these boobs at you for like three minutes and it's like, no, that was really interesting. Can we get back to it? I'm not trying to be right on at all. Literally, it gets to the point where you're just like, but can we please? I was really interested in that story just

there. I was watching it again, my husband and I, about being made for the male gaze in lots of ways and female gaze. But for me, that detracted for those first few episodes. I was like, I can't get with this at all. I know we're not talking about later seasons, but it gets worse because they know they don't need it, but they feel like they have to crowbar it in. So it actually becomes laughable, like Benny Hill laughable.

But thankfully we're not getting into that. We're sticking with series one and we're focusing on a real enigma in Cersei Lannister. We're going to look into the reasons that she and her twin brother have chosen to take on board a sexual relationship. Her unstoppable survival instincts as well. And her position sort of self-earned as master manipulator. This is Game of Thrones, and we've already mentioned boobs, so you can expect all the adult content from a discussion around this show. And there is going to be season one spoilers as well, so just bear that in mind.

So here we go, we're going to delve into the seven kingdoms of Westeros, or at least a few of them. So settle in, strap your seatbelt onto your dragon's back, for shrink the box. Okay, I feel like this is a deep breath moment, am I doing the recap? Yeah, there's quite a lot to squeeze into as a summary. So obviously we're only going to concentrate on the plot that concerns Cersei Lannister at this point, because otherwise we'll be here all day. So don't be writing to us to say, yeah, what about Charming the Wall? We know, we know, we're just focusing on this particular character, this amazing one-off

of a woman. Okay, so we're in Winterfell. This is the north of Westeros as I mentioned earlier. This place is visited by the royal family who hail from King's Landing, which is in the south. So that's King Robert Baratheon, Queen Cersei, her brothers, Jaime and Tyrion Lannister and Cersei's children who include Prince Joffrey, the insufferable Prince Joffrey. And as we said, King Robert asks Ned Stark to become Hand of the King. So that's like, we've talked about on other shows, the Consigliere, he's like the second in command, he's sort of in charge of the armies and stuff. He's

kind of like the chief advisor. Deputy. Yeah, yeah. Ned agrees. Meanwhile, Ned's second youngest son Bran, who at this point is what, 11? Yeah, maybe even younger. Maybe even younger. Still very playful, primary age I'd say. He loves climbing walls and he sees Queen Cersei and her brother Jaime in a room through a window in the midst of an incestuous sexual act. And Jaime pushes Bran out of a tower window to keep the secret, which paralyzes

Bran. They first think he might die. Shortly thereafter, Ned leaves Winterfell with the royal family for King's Landing, and he takes his two daughters Sansa and Arya with him. Now here's the first spoiler alert, King Robert dies in a hunting accident and the power shifts between the Stark and Lannister families, which we're going to explore a bit later. We're going to be using clips throughout, which will hopefully illustrate some of this stuff because I know it is quite detailed and there'll be details of all those clips in the programme notes of this episode. So, Nermone, let crack on. Your client, please. Some details. Queen Cersei, then, widow of King Robert Baratheon, as you've just intimated. She was

daughter of Lord Tywin Lannister. Tywin Lannister, played by Charles Dunst. Oh my gosh. I know. Twin sister of Jaime Lannister, elder sister of Tyrion Lannister. She is a woman involved in an incestuous relationship with her twin brother, Jaime, as you've just mentioned, and sees no issues with blood being shared when it comes to her family. Now, before we get onto the darker side of Cersei's behaviour, what are our initial sort of realisations? The idea that you don't mess with her.

At least that's the impression that she's putting out. It might be good to explore her relationship with Joffrey, who's her son. Sansa Stark from the other families shows great interest in Joffrey, but then her little sister, Arya the Daowulf, who's her pet, ends up biting Joffrey's arm. So this is kind of a turning point in how we view Cersei,

because she wants revenge for Joffrey, and she wants the pet to be killed. In this moment it seemed to me that Cersei's totally blind to her son's true nature, which we end up finding out is sadistic and cowardly. And she is a survivor at all costs, no matter who gets hurt. That might lead us to think and get curious about her upbringing, how she had to survive, what she was being modelled. And Cersei's role as a mother is a combination of traditional mother figure and fiercely loyal.

And we hear some of this in the way she speaks to Joffrey and kind of educates him when she's wrapping his scar after the direwolf incident. A king should have scars. You fought over direwolf. You're a warrior like your father. I'm not like him. I didn't fight off fight off anything it bit me and all I did was scream The two star girls saw what both of them. That's not true You killed the beast you only spared the girl because of the love your father bears her father I didn't die when Ares to Gary and sat on the Iron Throne. Your father was a rebel and a traitor Someday you'll sit on the throne and the truth will be what you make it.

I just have to say, just from a performer's point of view, the kid that plays Joffrey is so phenomenal at being disgusting. That's such a great performance. I think it's kind of underrated because, mean obviously there's lots of bigger characters and stuff as we go forward but What a performance from that young man and we're seeing the beginnings of the making of this character if you like because Cersei's rewriting history as she's talking to her son and he's trying very hard to go No, it's not mom. It didn't really happen like that. Those girls saw me and I just cried and she's not to her son and he's trying very hard to go, no, it's not mom, it didn't really happen like that.

Those girls saw me and I just cried. And she's not having any of it. She is completely kind of giving him the imprint, if you like, or the template for what happened and saying, if you tell people that's what happened, that's what they'll believe. Especially if you end up on the throne. Yeah.

And it's got to be linked to her obsession with loyalty. You know, she has a lot of secrets and lies. And so she sort of wants everybody within her narrative, you know, like on board with the narrative, the way she wants to present. So she has to be really forthright about that. And it's a bit of a defense mechanism, perhaps. You do see her. She does feel a little more vulnerable around Joffrey.

That sense of protection is still there. Whichever way you slice it, it's very overbearing, you know? And I wonder, like, that style of parenting, if that starts really early, that can be dangerous, right? early that's that can be dangerous right what's kind of demonstrated in caring or over caring can be something that stops a child from stunts them slightly well it just doesn't allow for their own expression so he's not going to be allowed his own story around this at all emotional growth yeah I mean to do that he's not going to deal with the disappointment or the upset of,

yeah, do you know what? Actually, the wolf did knock me down and I did get bitten. What does that feel like? Because there's no mention that that just didn't happen, according to Cersei. So that will have all kinds of implications. As you've mentioned, this kind of changes Joffrey and his development because he takes on board what she's saying and goes on to show sadistic tendencies in

his relationship with his own new wife, Sansa, the kind of Sansa Stark. She's one of Ned's daughters. Yeah, the marriage of convenience. Joffrey is sadistic once he becomes king, much to his mother's horror, but again, I was thinking that might be political, just sort of feign horror. And when she speaks to Joffrey, she can also be blunt and rude and to the point. She's demonstrating the ultimate power that he can hold, but that they can hold as a family. And as we'll go on to see, it's her own interests that she's taken care of ultimately. Do I have to marry her?

Yes. She's very beautiful and young and if you don't like her you only need to see her on formal occasions and when the time comes to make little princes and princesses. And if you'd rather f*** painted whores you'll f*** painted whores. And if you'd rather lie with noble virgins, so be it. You are my darling boy and the world will be exactly as you want it to be." I mean that that just addresses her privilege. Geez, I never had that tool. I mean her manipulation is is beyond really in that moment and the world will be exactly as you want it to be, just speaks to the privilege.

And we start to see her manipulating again, something we'll address more in a little bit later on when talking to the Starks about bringing Sansa into their family. Cause she's sort of identified that Sansa would be quite useful to them. Yeah. Certainly. So she's teaching Joffrey these, can you call them skills? Are they skills?

Or survival strategies? What she knows. It's how to stay alive. She definitely has the idea that anyone outside the family is enemy. And at one point she does say to Joffrey, a good king knows when to save his strength and destroy his enemies. Everyone who isn't us is an enemy. She is, like you say, she's building a kind of team or unit

It definitely has that vibe. Yeah, doesn't it of protection? This idea of team comes up again when Cersei's trying to antagonize Ned Stark and she says You're just a soldier, aren't you? Take your orders and you carry on Suppose it makes sense Your older brother was trained to lead and you were on. I suppose it makes sense. Your older brother was trained to lead and you were trained to follow. I was also trained to kill my enemies, Your Grace.

As was I. So she's very aware of enemies, loyalty, educating her son. Does she give herself the same confidence as Queen? I think it's a role. It feels like a role that she's definitely playing, but one which she might be slightly lost in. I mean, she sees her role as stoic, heroic Queen.

And she even kind of reframes her own PR when she's under physical attack. So that is King Robert Baratheon, right? Taking his hands to Cersei because she's dead to kind of say actually I'd be ruling better than you. He's a corporal and womanizing Drunkard really isn't he? Their relationship is so interesting. It's a loveless marriage by all accounts. And several times Cersei is questioned about whether she loves Robert at all because obviously she's been having affairs too. And I think you very much get the impression from her that she went into the marriage

absolutely besotted by Robert Baratheon. But quickly realized that their marriage was haunted by a ghost who happens to be the sister of Ned Stark. This is where the tapestry weaving starts to come in. If there was any other show we'd say it's so incestuous, but you can't say that about this because we've got the literal. Alright, let's get into the biggie. You know, we've skirted around it enough. Sleeping with your own brother. Instinctively, you'd know it's not acceptable,

or you'd be worried about everybody who is, like Cersei says, everyone who isn't us is our enemy. That's how you might feel. You know, listen, it's very, very complex being a human, but it feels like one of those that's global, universal, dawn of time kind of wrong. Do you know what I mean? How do you broach that in therapy?

I'd be interested to know if that was something she might come to therapy to kind of unpeel the layers back on. I mean, remember this is Westeros. She says very clearly to Ned Stark at one point. My brother's worth a thousand of your friend. Your brother or your lover? Targaryens went brothers and sisters for three hundred years to keep bloodlines pure. Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We shared a wound. Came into this world together, we belong together.

There are lots of reasons why they're in a bind, as we see early on in the first series. They are a brother and sister, obviously in a romantic, sexually active relationship together. I'm not sure how long that's been happening, because that would be key to discussing this with Cersei in terms of when it started. We can say at the very least it's 15 years because that's how Joffrey is roughly. Yeah. Which is pretty crazy. So you're right in a sense that for them there's an air of what would happen if people found out about this.

Are they more worried about the political implications or the shame? For them, probably both. Because remember, Cersei's having affairs outside of her relationship with the king, Robert Baratheon. What would he do if he found out? As we played in the first clip, Ned feels like he has a moral duty to tell the king

that the heir to the throne currently who is Prince Joffrey is not the rightful heir. So politically, it's really messy for them as well. I mean incest is taboo in the eyes of the church, society here, Game of Thrones has moral references and religiosity laced all the way through it, but there is the medical fact that sex between siblings results in the sharing of identical genes. That might mean adverse effects or potential ill health for any offspring, which would be another consideration for their relationship. But we'd be looking at kind of creating as non-judgmental a space as possible for Cersei to explore what it feels like for her. And then of course, there were other considerations. Did it start out

of innocent curiosity? Is it completely consensual? Does it turn into something else with the initiator stuck somewhere in it for having started it? Is their relationship abusive? Or is Cersei or Jamie wielding control over the other? It's not like this brother who's like 10 years older. They're twins. I know. Which is another thing that sort of suggests equality, I guess. Because it's also a man's world, right?

That world of Westeros, you know, you see so much abuse against women across the course of Game of Thrones. The misogyny in Game of Thrones is everywhere I mean it's very definitely a man's world and of course that will impact Cersei's way of being. It's not an easy watch in that respect however the additional caveat to that caveat is that she outranks him she She's a queen. She has a lot of power. Not saying she necessarily has it over him, but I'm saying like it feels to a layman that it's as close as you could get to some kind, some semblance of equality, sexually speaking. We're talking about adult incest at this stage. So that would be another consideration. Is a client coming and talking about something

that happened historically? Are they talking about something that happened in the UK, which will be bound by UK law? Obviously here we're talking about Westeros. What are the laws and norms that govern there? If they're the same age and they're above the age of consent, what's the law? It's illegal. It's illegal. Incest. It is an offence for a man to have sexual intercourse with a woman who he knows to be his granddaughter, daughter, sister, mother. There you go. That's incest by a man, incest by a woman, the same, but grandfather, father, brother or son. It's a bit tangential because like you say,

the laws of Westeros are incredibly different to the laws of modern society that we live in here on Earth. But the amount of opprobrium and disquiet and downright disgust is still there. It's there even in this sort of presumably ancient kind of magical world. It's still there. It's so difficult to place it temporally, isn't it? I don't know what it is. And maybe we're undoing it by even trying to. Who knows? If Cersei came to therapy and was wanting to talk about incest, I'd be explicit about

abiding by a kind of ethical framework, which would include confidentiality, but equally includes limitations to confidentiality especially if other people are at risk. If you talk about two adult siblings they're breaking the law do you have to report that like you would with someone's revealed to you that they've murdered someone they've sexually assaulted someone. So this is the whole point of trying to create as non-judgmental a space as possible. And ideally we're supporting the client to take action themselves.

So you'd be wanting to open up conversation. You know, are you talking with someone who is possibly a danger to children or other adults as a result of this? So do you have to train your face and your tone of voice? Like someone drops that bombshell on you and you're like, okay, it's actually really important that I get detail here of what is happening before I register. You don't want to register is what I'm saying.

Your shock or your surprise or your fear or your, you know? The frame of therapy partly is about creating this non-judgmental space. And as part of that, you'd know and have worked with your own judgments. My reaction. What do you do? Do you do a little count in your head? Because it'd be so hard for me not to go, what the f***, say that again?

You did what? Oh my god. But that includes judgement, doesn't it? It does, yeah. That's what I'm saying. How do you train yourself to be ready? Once they walk in the room, that's like a deal that's already in place. That's part of what you're providing, as non-judgmental space as possible, whilst understanding that your judgment comes into the room anyway. I should mention supervision here.

It's essential if something comes into a therapy room that you're feeling uncomfortable about or you notice something. That's where we would take those feelings and work out what's happening, be supported, think about the best course of action. So if we did think that perhaps this was the time to broach the idea of confidentiality or break confidentiality, you'd at first look at talking to the client about that, but you'd also be talking about it in supervision. So that is kind of like an extra layer of security for the client and the therapist in terms of making sure these things are held in the

best way possible for the client. I think the thing that fascinates me most about the show is how much emotion drives political decision. Great shows that have politics at the forefront, they recognize that mix you know so you think of Succession, West Wing, Veep, Thicke Viet and when we see here this secret love that we've been talking about this incestuous act is what basically starts the whole saga. Jamie's decision to throw Bran out of the tower it's a bad political decision, as well as like, I don't know, this emotional one. You know, in some areas, politically,

you want to know exactly what you think, and it has to be very black and white decision. In that context, you have to kind of demonstrate you've thought through various possibilities, but you know what you think, and you act on it, which is exactly what Jamie does. In the therapy room, we're almost trying to undo that and kind of work out how people are relating to the world, sort of their internal world and their

external world, and it's not as black and white. But it's a great example of acting in the moment in Throws of Passion because he says, the things I do for love. Yeah. I'm in that line. What line? To be sarky in that moment. It's like, wow, okay, these Lannisters of peace, it'll work. The viewer knows then who they're dealing with. I think the Starks take a little while to catch up with that.

Game of Thrones shows what having secrets and keeping them can involve and result in, doesn't it? He's protecting himself and her. Absolutely. And we later hear him complain to one of Ned Stark's men. Robert is kind of brilliant around Jamie because whether he knows or doesn't know that Cersei is sleeping with her brother, he doesn't treat Jamie brilliantly. You know, he stands him outside his room and exactly,

test his loyalty by making him stand guard while he gets up to all sorts with other women Robert does. And in that moment, I felt that when Jamie was complaining about that to Ned Stark's man, he was almost using that to justify his relationship with his sister. I get, you know. Yeah. Is confusing familial love with romantic or sexual love part of a bigger psychological problem?

There will be a fair amount of shame involved in being in this incestuous relationship. Part of her wanting power and to be in charge might be to diminish that level of shame. Yeah. And of course, you know, any plans that they may have been making of sweeping this whole thing under the rug are thrown way up in the

air by the fact that Bran isn't killed by the fall. So then you've got this ticking clock because he's sort of in a coma kind of thing. Yeah he hasn't died as they'd imagined and won't be able to speak and they don't know what he'll remember or not remember. That seems like quite a good cliffhanger actually to go to a break on. There's a ton more to get into here as I'm sure any of you have seen the show know. We're going to look at what a successful manipulator looks like and we're going to ask, is Queen Cersei, is she a narcissist or a sociopath?

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We went out talking a bit about chief manipulators. Some people are amazing at this, just playing other people like pawns on a chessboard. What makes Cersei such a pro? Potentially, her manipulation comes from her background of privilege. She's always been able to get what she wants. And as we heard her tell Joffrey, the world is as you want it to be, which you get the impression is perhaps how she would like it to be. I'm not sure that's how she's always experienced the world because I think we're given little insights into potential trauma that she's experienced in terms of being married off and not necessarily

being in control and being a woman in Westeros which as you've said wouldn't bring its own frustrations. We experience her manipulation really early on when she says to the Starks, your daughter will do well in the capital such beauty shouldn't be hidden away up here and you feel like she's already grooming Sansa to be with Joffrey. Yeah, well she was groomed herself. She tends to see the little pattern with her. She tends to find or at least appear like she finds a lot of joy in other people's misery essentially.

I'm really interested in that then actually. I mean we say master manipulator, we see this again when she visits Caitlin Stark, who's Ned's wife, Bran's mother, when Bran is in a coma having been pushed out the window by Jaime. And instead of comforting Caitlin, and she's obviously gone to mitigate any thoughts that she would have been involved somehow in Bran's demise, I think, instead of comforting her, she talks about her own son's death, almost kind of alluding to the fact that Bran might die. This is not Joffrey, by the way. This is another child. This is another child who has died.

I lost my first boy. Little black-haired beauty. He was a fighter, too. Tried to beat the fever that took him. Forgive me. It's the last thing you need to hear right now. I never knew. It was years ago. And her emotional outpouring when Bran has his accident.

I mean, was she trying to find kinship in the pain? I saw Caitlyn looking a bit perplexed when Cersei was talking about this, whilst not knowing if Bran was going to survive. And it felt to me that Cersei might have wanted to inflict additional pain. It's hard to tell whether that is, you know, part of an act or whether she is genuinely Machiavellian. I mean, she in subsequent series, Cersei is powerful, but from memory, she's a bit lonely actually.

Yeah, definitely. And drinking more and more heavily. You see the men constantly drinking wine but just as often, Cersei is banging down like goblets of red wine constantly. She sees Jaime leave, he has to leave because Tyrion's been caught by the Starks and Jaime's gonna go and help his brother and she substitutes Jaime for another cousin. Has she got empathy? Does she fall in love? Is it sociopathic? We'll come back to that in a moment. Yeah I mean it's a tricky one. It's another classic Metaxas tease like is what is she? Yeah, because what is she? What is she? But you know... Why are we all of the above?

I do love waiting to find out, you know, good things come to those who wait. So we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors, unless you're a shrinker, which is what we're calling you now. Congratulations. I'm so glad that you guys are here and that we have a name, in which case,

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slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. All right, you're back with Ben and Limone here discussing Cersei, Lannister and Game of Thrones. I'm just going to throw it right at you and put it on you Limone. Thanks. Narcissist or sociopath? Or can you be... is it a bit of both? Well, shall we get into that Ben? She shows narcissistic tendencies, definitely.

Lacks ability to truly empathise. What do you think? How does she feel about Jamie throwing Bran off the window ledge? There is an element of horror. There's still a mother in there. In another way, it's an element of John Cusack with the ghetto blaster above his head. It's like a big, bold act of love and protection and defiance. You know, there's us and there's the enemy, you know, there's a bit of that in there as well. She is confusing because she professes constant love and care for her children and her brother

Jamie and she does and says a lot and her behaviour might look like she loves in a conventional way because it's, but it's difficult for someone with such a strong narcissistic character to be able or to be capable of kind of altruistic and unconditional love, although it can sometimes look like that. But again, for Cersei, others aren't real or complete and we're into object relations here. Her relationship with others is only as a partial object and certainly not subjective, subjective relationship. She's splitting basically.

Right. So it's our old friend Melanie Klein who wrote extensively about that. People is good or bad objects and in the early form when we're really little, again it's a sort of a developmental phase so it's not linear. We move in and out of it. People will be all bad or all good. It's a defense to protect us against the idea which would be really scary. The people can be both. They're unpredictable. And they might not satisfy our needs. The basic ones in the beginning, being fed, watered, looked after.

And we therefore might feel like we could be annihilated or killed by the actions of these objects. And she can't see herself as including good or bad traits either, i.e. strengths and weaknesses. For her psychic survival, Cersei must either adhere to the notion that she's all good, brilliant, gifted, in charge, beyond reproach and perfect, or she's all bad, worthless, no good, damaged and hopeless. How do you think she sees herself?

Well, I mean, on the surface, it appears like the former strategy prevails, doesn't it? I am the strong, good queen. What I say goes, this is the perfect way of living. And that's sort of how we think of narcissists, I thinking that they're the best, but they don't. And they may not even be conscious of the other side of the coin, which is the deeply insecure, fearful sense

that actually they're not that, they're not the image that they project to the world, that they are worthless or they're hopeless that, they're not the image that they project to the world, that they are worthless or they're hopeless and that they are bad. And they have to maintain the veneer of good and best at all costs because the idea of being bad, being even possible could end in psychic annihilation, which would be death,

in the sense of facing psychological collapse. So I wonder if she loves herself at all, or if she knows how to be gentle with herself and have some form of self-love in there at all. It's difficult to tell with Cersei and Jamie as well, isn't it? Really, they're in the upbringing. Jamie's slightly clearer cut, I think, as we delve deeper into the series, you know, like what he really, really deep down thinks and, you know, where his compass actually sort of leans, Cersei stays enigmatic throughout. More difficult to read. I mean, remember these are internal object relations, so it's a way of

internally mapping the world around us from an early age. And it is a coping strategy for dealing with emotional pain and hurt. It's a really effective defense mechanism for an experience of deep trauma, which has rocked the psyche, which would again lead us to have a think about and question Cersei's earlier experiences. Are narcissists incapable of love? Well, we often think that they'd be incapable of unconditional love that sometimes it looks like Cersei is showing but it is love of the self which is evident as in the original Greek myth that's really underlying their love and as such the love of others is an extension of Them the love for themselves

Not Joffrey or Jamie as separate entities. They share my blood. I mean, we hear Cersei in that opening clip with Ned Stark, Jamie and I shared a womb. Therefore he's part of me. And her one true love is Jamie, her twin. Who looks like her? So falling in love with one's twin is the ultimate kind of self-love. It sort of embodies the very essence of narcissism, doesn't it?

When Jamie leaves in season one, like I said, she strikes up a relationship with her cousin. She is looking for another to mirror what she believes to be perfection. And the incest becomes a fantastical form of onanism. It's like a masturbation on a whole other scale. It could be. I mean, this is one theory behind why Cersei is like she is. She demonstrates what looks like regular unconditional love because she's warm to her offspring. She really wants their happiness. She's defending them to the last. With Joffrey and the Deerwolf. But it isn't love at depth. And then there's kind of that link again to OG Narcissus.

It's surface. We sort of tiptoed around sociopaths. Sociopaths tend to be more calculated. However she is quite calculated. They don't care for the well-being or pain of others. Again, I think in her case, the jury is quite calculated. They don't care for the well-being or pain of others. Again, I think in her case, the jury is probably out. As you said, you could think that she was slightly fearful of what might happen to Bran, but the ultimate kind of ideal for her was

for him not to have seen anything and for him to be killed. Yeah, absolutely. Elsewhere, there's little or no remorse for collateral damage. The one thing I will say about sociopaths tend to derive pleasure from their behavior and narcissists are different. They're acting in the surface of self-inflation, so any collateral damage is usually not the main target. You know, she's on a path to potentially becoming genocidal because her start a position of

is us and them. If her family are going gonna hold all seven kingdoms, then lots of people are gonna have to die deep down. She knows that. Oh yeah. And you know what Ben, we should probably make the point that this is just the beginnings of Cersei's character because all the characters develop into such depth in the series that come later. This is Cersei from season one. Yeah, for real. I think because I watched everything in such a...

I mean, I don't think I slept. No. I didn't speak to my family. Mainline Game of Thrones. For this. Quite an undertaking, man. I must have put on so much weight in that three months. You could have called it Game of Stones.

Game of Stones. Stop it. In the Smith households. So much weight in that three months. You're going to go to Game of Stones. Game of Stones. Stop it. In the Smith households. Nimone, who's going to be our client next time? Oh, I think you're going to like this. Gillian Murphy goes from strength to strength, seemingly unstoppable currently in his rise to movie stardom. But let's not forget his brilliant, and I would go as far as say career-changing perhaps, turn as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders.

So here's the landlord of the pub bravely questioning Tommy as he's just been betrayed by his lover. The past is not my concern. The future is no longer my concern either. What is your concern, Tommy? A one minute. A soldier's minute. In a battle, that's all he gets. One minute of everything at once. One minute of everything at once. And anything before is nothing.

Everything after. Nothing. Nothing in comparison. In that one minute. I mean, bringing us kind of surprisingly into mindfulness and the area of being in the presence as a way of coping, you can just hear almost his entire life story in that clip in a few sentences but we're torn because Tommy Shelby has a dark side and in places could be considered a very nasty piece of work on so many levels. Absolutely is. You get a lot of the best drama when you've got that conflict going on. Give us a follow if you fancy it. Apple podcast, Spotify, Amazon music, wherever you like to

get your pods. Spread the word so we can keep making more. If you want to listen without the ads just subscribe to Extra Takes simple as that you get ad free episodes from our friends at Kermode and Mayo's Take access to their weekly bonus episodes which are great and you can start a free trial no press just click try free at the top of the shrink the box show page on Apple podcasts or by visiting extra takes.com then I have always wanted to be a teacher and say homework. This is where I get to live out that fantasy. So homework alert.

On the program notes of this episode, we are going to put the next few characters and shows we'll be covering. So you can make a note, get watching or refresh your memory if you've already seen them and be with us when we're talking about them. We definitely need to thank our production team again, production management, Lily Hambly, the assistant producer with Scarlett O'Malley, the studio engineer is Matthias Torres-Sole, the senior producer with Selena Ream and executive producer Simon Paul. Thank you. All right. Let's go our separate ways. Until next time, Amo.

See you then. Ta-da.