And then Jaime attacks Cersei, ripping her dress.
“Why have the gods made me love a hateful woman?” Jaime asks. They kiss, and then Cersei catches a glimpse of Jaime’s gold hand out of the corner of her eye, and recoils. After Jaime calls off the guards, the two find themselves alone in the Great Sept. “You took too long,” she says, shooting down his advances in the season premiere. Ever since Jaime returned to King’s Landing with his one hand, which was later turned to gold by Cersei, she’s been shunning him. He embraces her and, in a fit of demented anger and frustration, sexually assaults her against the altar of their dead son.īoth the episode’s director Alex Graves and star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau questioned whether the scene was indeed rape, which prompted a rash of essays about why the fictional scene on a fictional show that is set in a mythological, Lockean hellscape where traditional social and sexual mores don’t apply was, in fact, rape.īut was it the most controversial scene in Game of Thrones history? Let’s take a walk down Westeros Lane.Īs far as the sheer number of taboo-violations is concerned, the rape of Cersei Lannister by her brother Jaime against the altar of their dead, incestuous spawn, Joffrey, is the most disturbing yet.
Cersei had been giving the Jaime the cold shoulder since his return, and the one-handed “Kingslayer” reaches his breaking point. So, the grieving parents gather in the Great Sept of King’s Landing and gaze at the “Mother’s Altar” displaying their secret love child.
For those who need a refresher: King Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson), the evil son of incestuous brother and sister Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), was poisoned to death.