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septoncellardoor · 21 hours ago

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Since you're talking about Jaime I've never read asoiaf but I've seen debates over whether or not Jaime rapes Cersei in the book is it a dub con situation or is it clear cut rape?

i’m going to post the whole thing, apologies for length, but it’s the only way to tease this out:

Cersei turned to gaze at Joffrey’s bier. They had dressed the dead king in gilded armor, eerily similar to Jaime’s own. The visor of the helm was closed, but the candles reflected softly off the gold, so the boy shimmered bright and brave in death. The candlelight woke fires in the rubies that decorated the bodice of Cersei’s mourning dress as well. Her hair fell to her shoulders, undressed and unkempt. “He killed him, Jaime. Just as he’d warned me. One day when I thought myself safe and happy he would turn my joy to ashes in my mouth, he said.”

the context is that cersei and jaime’s eldest secret incest baby is dead and lying in state in westerosi westminster. he’s been poisoned at the age of thirteen and his reign as a tyrannical boy king is ended. cersei thinks their brother tyrion did it, which is incorrect, but is actually a pretty reasonable supposition under the circumstances. she wants vengeance. this is what is occupying all her grieving energy at this moment, even though this is a reunion between her and jaime after many months of separation.

“Tyrion said that?” Jaime had not wanted to believe it. Kinslaying was worse than kingslaying, in the eyes of gods and men. He knew the boy was mine. I loved Tyrion. I was good to him. Well, but for that one time … but the Imp did not know the truth of that. Or did he?

“Why would he kill Joff?”

“For a whore.” She clutched his good hand and held it tight in hers. “He told me he was going to do it. Joff knew. As he was dying, he pointed at his murderer. At our twisted little monster of a brother.” She kissed Jaime’s fingers. “You’ll kill him for me, won’t you? You’ll avenge our son.”

this is because cersei uses jaime to prosecute violence she cannot as a woman. she uses sex to manage him in this area, to convince him to do what she wants even against his inclination. this sets up how they are variance in a complex way: cersei wants jaime to kill tyrion, which he does not want; and jaime wants to have sex with cersei, which she does not want, but is willing to have, generally, in exactly this context of using it to manage and reward jaime. this is highlighted from an incident jaime relays in a feast for crows:

Jaime pulled away. “He is still my brother.” He shoved his stump at her face, in case she failed to see it. “And I am in no fit state to be killing anyone.”

“You have another hand, don’t you? I am not asking you to best the Hound in battle. Tyrion is a dwarf, locked in a cell. The guards would stand aside for you.”

The thought turned his stomach. “I must know more of this. Of how it happened.”

“You shall,” Cersei promised. “There’s to be a trial. When you hear all he did, you’ll want him dead as much as I do.” She touched his face. “I was lost without you, Jaime. I was afraid the Starks would send me your head. I could not have borne that.” She kissed him. A light kiss, the merest brush of her lips on his, but he could feel her tremble as he slid his arms around her. “I am not whole without you.”

“i thought she meant me, but it was the girl she wanted, maimed or dead” - they are not in alignment on a basic level here.

There was no tenderness in the kiss he returned to her, only hunger. Her mouth opened for his tongue. “No,” she said weakly when his lips moved down her neck, “not here. The septons …”

“The Others can take the septons.” He kissed her again, kissed her silent, kissed her until she moaned. Then he knocked the candles aside and lifted her up onto the Mother’s altar, pushing up her skirts and the silken shift beneath. She pounded on his chest with feeble fists, murmuring about the risk, the danger, about their father, about the septons, about the wrath of gods. He never heard her. He undid his breeches and climbed up and pushed her bare white legs apart. One hand slid up her thigh and underneath her smallclothes. When he tore them away, he saw that her moon’s blood was on her, but it made no difference.

she was trying to use sex as a bargaining chip, but now she’s saying “no.” there’s a couple of ways you can read this: that she was buttering jaime up, but that she had no intention of having sex at this moment. remember they are in the sept beside the corpse of their dead child. they are in an incestuous relationship and the dead child, and their other two living children, are the treasonous offspring of that relationship, because they were passed off as the legitimate offspring of the king. their remaining, younger son has inherited his brother’s throne. this being confirmed would mean the death of everyone involved. she has very good reasons to not want to have sex here in this moment, and the close of this scene which we’ll get to below suggests the idea that she did not intend to have sex in this place and hour.

if she does not want to have sex, she has no way of not having it here. she denies consent verbally, and jaime ignores it. she resists physically, and jaime overpowers it. she cannot cry out for assistance, for the aforementioned reasons. the countering arguments are queasy. “she really means “yes”, and jaime knows this because of their twin mind connection!” we have just seen how they do not share one mind. “it says “feeble” - she’s just faking resistance!” even if this is true (remember we are in jaime’s close third person point of view), even if she fought with full strength, she should both not have to to get her lover to stop, and jaime would still be able to physically dominate her anyway and is demonstrating in this exact moment his willingness to do so. “this is just a part of their sexual play, as we’ve seen before!” true, but that just complicates the picture. here is their first sex scene in the novels:

in the first screenshot, we see an identical dynamic to the one we see in the sept scene. cersei wants to talk through her worries and the political concerns that hold immense weight for the safety of herself and her children. jaime does not care, and pushes her to have sex. she says stop, and apparently slaps him, and jaime laughs and ignores her.

the sex in the second screenshot also has a similar dynamic. cersei is saying stop, but in a wider context that suggests sexual openness (behaving seductively toward jaime in the sept, pulling him closer here). bran’s identification of her moans as ones of pain are because he is seven and does not have the knowledge to read them as pleasure, but also the language of “hurting her” is evocative in the context of cersei’s entire sexual history. here she is in affc contemplating her history of marital rape:

robert hurts her during sex, but this is categorically different from sex with jaime, to the degree she cannot sub him in imaginatively. i think we should take this seriously. cersei does not consider her sexual encounters with jaime rape, as she also affirms in her next chapter:

still this is important information for cersei’s sexual universe, one where her own desires do not matter during sex and where her sexual body is totally given over to utilization by male prerogative and desires by default, from the time she was a teenager. this is her only point of comparison for the sex she has with jaime. but she does express desire for that sex, and achieves pleasure within it.

“Hurry,” she was whispering now, “quickly, quickly, now, do it now, do me now. Jaime Jaime Jaime.” Her hands helped guide him. “Yes,” Cersei said as he thrust, “my brother, sweet brother, yes, like that, yes, I have you, you’re home now, you’re home now, you’re home.” She kissed his ear and stroked his short bristly hair. Jaime lost himself in her flesh. He could feel Cersei’s heart beating in time with his own, and the wetness of blood and seed where they were joined.

with all this, how do we read her abrupt acquiescence? was she game all along and only putting up a token resistance as part of a longstanding sexual script? or is she submitting because she knows it doesn’t matter either way, because she does love and desire jaime even if she does not want to have sex in this specific instance? is she going along (“quickly, quickly”) in an attempt to hasten it so they are not discovered? i think it can be all three.

But no sooner were they done than the queen said, “Let me up. If we are discovered like this …”

this for me is evidence that her protests were genuine. obviously, her talking about the wrath of the gods as a reason for jaime to desist comes across as performative, because when has cersei ever cared about that - but her fear of discovery related to the public location is real and continues through the entire rest of the scene.

Reluctantly he rolled away and helped her off the altar. The pale marble was smeared with blood. Jaime wiped it clean with his sleeve, then bent to pick up the candles he had knocked over. Fortunately they had all gone out when they fell. If the sept had caught fire I might never have noticed.

this emphasizes again that jaime was not listening to her at all. the blood is from her menstruation, but is evocative of an underlying violence in the scene.

“This was folly.” Cersei pulled her gown straight. “With Father in the castle … Jaime, we must be careful.”

cersei also mentioned their father in her protest. this is another unfeigned concern for her.

“I am sick of being careful. The Targaryens wed brother to sister, why shouldn’t we do the same? Marry me, Cersei. Stand up before the realm and say it’s me you want. We’ll have our own wedding feast, and make another son in place of Joffrey.”

the entire sex scene - which is the beginning of their relationship dramatically fracturing as they are torn apart by the discovery of their very divergent needs and desires - is revealed to be representative of a core conflict. cersei says she doesn’t want to have sex in the sept because they might be discovered, and jaime does not care. cersei’s main concern is still concealing their relationship, and jaime’s mind is on the oppositional desire to make their relationship public. i think this should affect how we read her protests. she was serious! she wants to have sex with jaime, and she will use that sex to attain her goals, but her goals are to keep the relationship private and maintain her power thereby, and jaime’s disregard for this need and desire of hers is shown by the fact that he ignores her protests and has sex with her in a public religious building. jaime in this scene has callously ignored her needs and desires.

She drew back. “That’s not funny.”

and she’s mad!

“Do you hear me chuckling?”

and jaime is not listening to her at all!

“Did you leave your wits at Riverrun?” Her voice had an edge to it. “Tommen’s throne derives from Robert, you know that.”

as in their first scene, cersei is always crystal clear about her priorities. she is not playing with ambiguity: jaime simply ignores her.

“He’ll have Casterly Rock, isn’t that enough? Let Father sit the throne. All I want is you.” He made to touch her cheek. Old habits die hard, and it was his right arm he lifted. Cersei recoiled from his stump.

and jaime’s are in total opposition to those.

“Don’t … don’t talk like this. You’re scaring me, Jaime. Don’t be stupid. One wrong word and you’ll cost us everything. What did they do to you?”

cersei’s concerns are not in fact frivolous or absurd, and deserve to be taken seriously.

“They cut off my hand.”

“No, it’s more, you’re changed.” She backed off a step. “We’ll talk later. On the morrow. I have Sansa Stark’s maids in a tower cell, I need to question them … you should go to Father.”

cersei is frightened of jaime: not of sexual or physical violence per se, but of what his sexual desires, and his willingness to override both her verbal objections and physical resistance, might mean. the sex scene as a whole reflects jaime’s inability to really contend with cersei’s needs and fears.

“I crossed a thousand leagues to come to you, and lost the best part of me along the way. Don’t tell me to leave.”

jaime, to a degree, feels he is owed something from cersei. he is devoted, and has endured great physical and mental suffering to reunite with her. he lost the “best part” of himself - his hand, his skill at arms. cersei’s recoiling from the stump of his hand, and her earlier insistence his martial ability could achieve her vengeance because he still has a hand remaining to him, emphasize how cersei also makes use of his body, utilizes his sexed body for her purposes (in that cersei buys into the idea of a sexed binary for physical possibility - jaime is a warrior, because he is a man; she cannot be a warrior, because she is a woman; she needs, as a woman, her male self in jaime to accomplish her ends). she also feels owed something: something which jaime is not willing to provide on her terms.

“Leave me,” she repeated, turning away.

and here begins the impasse that will lead to jaime ignoring her call for help at her hour of gravest need! in multiple contexts, and where it occurs on their arc, whatever designation you give this sexual encounter - rape, dubious consent - i think it should be taken seriously as an example of the ways jaime cannot comprehend cersei’s interiority or respect what she says she needs when it conflicts with what he wants (and vice versa, although i think jaime’s incapacity is more important in this particular instance). in any case it is an example of patriarchal violence, regardless of the exact gradations, which matter less to me than the overall picture. this scene is (at least as we’ve left them) fatal for their relationship, and for good reason.

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