The producers of HBO’s hit fantasy series Game of Thrones found themselves in coming in for criticism with the latest episode of the show, ‘Breaker of Chains‘, which deviated from George R.R. Martin’s source material by having Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) rape his sister and lover Cersei (Lena Headey) next to the corpse of their incestuous offspring Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson).
Although director Alex Graves has since told Vulture that the sex “was meant to be consensual”, it certainly didn’t come across like that in the episode, with fans subsequently criticising the show for messing with Jaime’s arc (especially after he’s just lost a hand preventing a rape). Well, Martin himself has now weighed in on the subject, posting his feelings on his official LiveJournal:
I think the “butterfly effect” that I have spoken of so often was at work here. In the novels, Jaime is not present at Joffrey’s death, and indeed, Cersei has been fearful that he is dead himself, that she has lost both the son and the father/ lover/ brother. And then suddenly Jaime is there before her. Maimed and changed, but Jaime nonetheless. Though the time and place is wildly inappropriate and Cersei is fearful of discovery, she is as hungry for him as he is for her.
The whole dynamic is different in the show, where Jaime has been back for weeks at the least, maybe longer, and he and Cersei have been in each other’s company on numerous occasions, often quarreling. The setting is the same, but neither character is in the same place as in the books, which may be why Dan & David played the sept out differently. But that’s just my surmise; we never discussed this scene, to the best of my recollection.
Also, I was writing the scene from Jaime’s POV, so the reader is inside his head, hearing his thoughts. On the TV show, the camera is necessarily external. You don’t know what anyone is thinking or feeling, just what they are saying and doing.
If the show had retained some of Cersei’s dialogue from the books, it might have left a somewhat different impression — but that dialogue was very much shaped by the circumstances of the books, delivered by a woman who is seeing her lover again for the first time after a long while apart during which she feared he was dead. I am not sure it would have worked with the new timeline.
That’s really all I can say on this issue. The scene was always intended to be disturbing… but I do regret if it has disturbed people for the wrong reasons.
How did you feel about the scene? Let us know your thoughts below…
Originally published April 22, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
