HBOâs hit show Game of Thrones (2011â2019) provides some tantalizing possibilities for the role of female antihero. It features a slew of possible contendersâlady knights, girl assassins, and ruthless queens who upend conventions with barbarous glee. The series, based on George R. R. Martinâs Song of Ice and Fire novels, is a sprawling fantasy epic with scores of interlocking plots and at least a dozen central characters. Since the show lacks a single protagonist, its approach differs from dramas like Breaking Bad and The Sopranos, which operate as elaborate character studies of individual antiheroes. Yet, for our purposes, the showâs epic scale and plethora of strong women allow questions of heroism, villainy, and audience response to emerge in especially stark terms. Moreover, since the show has as its primary focus the future of civilizationâwhat society should look like, who should hold power, and by what meansâit is particularly suited for our analysis since, as we have been arguing, the figure of the antihero pivots around sociality and its destruction. This chapter analyzes two central female characters, Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), mirrored figures whom the show (up until the penultimate episode of the final season) codes as villain and hero, respectively.1 Recognizing the parallels between them while keeping in mind the disparate reaction of fansâwho love Daenerys and love to hate Cerseiâallows us to parse what acceptable female transgression looks like and where audiences draw the line.
Cersei and Daenerys differ from fan-pleasing tomboy characters like Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) and Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) because they must find ways to assert influence from positions traditionally coded as female. Arya and Brienne observe a world that values masculinity and physical force, and both decide theyâll play by its rules. They turn themselves into an assassin and a knight, respectively, casting off any associations with conventional femininity to guard against a world that views all things female with disdain.2 They both spend entire seasons out on the road, apart from the societies that establish them as women. Cersei and Daenerys, meanwhile, are always enmeshed in a social and political context. They must find a way to crack the code of culture without abandoning it completelyâto be taken seriously while remaining associated with the feminine. They thus establish the primary objective of the female antihero in television drama: not to opt out of civilization but to fundamentally alter its modes of conduct. Cersei and Daenerys set the terms for understanding the other female antiheroes examined in part 1 of this bookâElizabeth Jennings of The Americans, Olivia Pope of Scandal, and Carrie Mathison of Homelandâall women who occupy positions associated with state power but whose gender performance undermines the usual operations of the state. In this way they endanger the status quo more effectively than do outliers like Brienne and Arya, threatening to undo establishment hierarchies from the inside out and occupying leadership positions that might allow them to codify these rebellions.
Of course, Game of Thrones has long been appreciated for the way it upends convention. Indeed, the show is often understood in one of two ways: as a political allegory or as a critique of the fantasy genreâs traditional conservatism and nativism. In the former, Daenerysâs dragons are nuclear weapons, and the danger posed by the Night King and his band of ice zombies is the threat of climate change, dismissed by arrogant kings who play the âgame of thronesâ while ignoring the long winter coming for them all.3 In the latter, the show replaces the genreâs usual swashbuckling male heroes with âcripples, bastards, and broken thingsâ (the title of season 1, episode 4), situating characters like Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), Jon Snow (Kit Harington), and Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) at the center of stories that usually marginalize these figures.4 In this reading, the showâs interest in female characters stands as an important corrective to fantasyâs masculinist worldview. It is part of a larger attempt to give voice to the voiceless and thereby stoke audience identification. As Brent Hartinger has written in his investigation of âfreaks and outcastsâ in Game of Thrones: âAs humans, most of us seem to be instinctively drawn to outsiders, to the excluded. At least on some level, most of us sympathize with those who are denied even the opportunity to prove their full worth.â5
Yet Game of Thrones reveals that weâre drawn to outcast figures not at the moment when theyâre denied the opportunity to show their worth but at the precise moment that theyâre invited to prove it. That is, downtrodden characters appeal only when they flip the script, turning victimhood into an unabashed show of triumph. Otherwise they merely frustrate or disgust, as the example of Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) under the control of Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) demonstrates. This dynamic partly explains the audienceâs contrasting reactions to Cersei and Daenerys, whom we come upon at different moments in their shared story arc. When Daenerys is introduced to us, sheâs young and defenseless, and her onscreen trajectory involves the development of self-respect and agency. We delight in Daenerysâs discovery that she has the blood of the dragon inside her, portending her glorious insurgence. We come upon Cersei, instead, at the moment her authority begins to waneâas she ages, her children grow out of her control, and her sexual indiscretions threaten her status. Daenerysâs story is the lure, a pleasurable fantasy about a scared girl sold into marriage who has the potential to take over the Seven Kingdoms. But Cersei is the fierce, sinking counterweight: the knowledge that female ascendency is impossible to retain and will cost a woman all that she holds dear. If Daenerysâs arc showcases a womanâs rise to power, Cerseiâs highlights her inevitable declineâinto loss, menopause, and isolation.
But wait, the savvy reader objects, youâve got it all wrong! We donât love Daenerys for her upward trajectory; we love her because sheâs good! Because as the âbreaker of chains,â she plans to free the slaves and better the world. And Cersei, well of course sheâs despised; but not because sheâs past her prime. Rather, she is, in common parlance, a bitchâcruel, rapacious, and self-aggrandizing. She needs to get her just deserts no less than Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance), Walder Frey (David Bradley), and the showâs other savage autocrats.
Perhaps. Certainly, the show provides Daenerys the classic heroâs cut, gracing her with fist-pumping action sequences and showering her with onscreen adoration. Cersei, meanwhile, is stuck in dimly lit castles, swilling wine and delivering barbed insults. The show telegraphs from its beginning that viewers are meant to read her as hopelessly depravedâin the first episode she beds her brother, and in the second she orders the execution of a little girlâs direwolf puppy.
But a closer look reveals that Cersei and Daenerys, who for much of the show are positioned as oppositesânefarious queen and benevolent Khaleesi, ironfisted matriarch and waifish ingĂŠnueâare startlingly similar. Both are blond, beautiful daughters of royal households; both are sold into marriage to secure political alliances; both are fiercely determined to protect their childrenâeach has three (and a firstborn that dies in infancy), and each has been told by a witch that she can bear no more.6 Incest, too, haunts the storylines of both, although Daenerys responds ambivalently to her brother Viserysâs (Harry Lloyd) creepy advances and is, at least at first, an unknowing participant in her affair with nephew Jon Snow.7 Perhaps, most importantly, the ruthlessness with which both women persecute their enemies and pursue world domination is remarkably alike. Indeed, even before Daenerys brutally murders the citizens of Kingâs Landing at the series conclusion, she seemed to be adopting the rules of a fascist playbook, making her potentially a greater villain than Cersei. That Daenerys remained (almost to the end) a fan favorite while Cerseiâwhose motivations, we argue, can be read in more feminist termsâwas âofficially the most hated character on Game of Thronesâ8 tells us a thing or two about the limits of the female antiheroâs appeal. Specifically, it suggests that viewers may be more comfortable with savage imperial violence than they are with unabashed female pleasure, especially when the first is dressed up in plunging necklines and flowing hair and the second is articulated by an aging, barren, and increasingly unfeminine woman.
âTears Arenât a Womanâs Only Weapon. The Best Oneâs between Your Legsâ
Both Cersei and Daenerys are introduced to us in season 1 as victims, albeit uneven, of their familyâs will and their husbandâs abuse. Daenerys has been bartered by her brother Viserys to Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa), warlord of the Dothraki, in the region that stands in for the Middle East in the showâs spatial imaginary. The first episode presents her as powerless and humiliated, first violated by her brother and then raped so painfully by Drogo on their wedding night that she has trouble walking the next day. Meanwhile, across the Narrow Sea in Kingâs Landing, Cersei has been forced by her father to marry âthe usurper,â Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy), a man who brazenly proclaims his love for another woman (Ned Starkâs deceased sister, Lyanna) and who takes every opportunity he can to whore it up with the locals in Cerseiâs (and her familyâs) presence. (âHe likes to do this while Iâm on duty,â a seething Jaime Lannister [Nikolaj Coster-Waldau] remarks. âHe makes me listen as he insults my sister.â)9 While Cersei, unlike Daenerys, comes off as vicious and scheming, her backstory and framing encourage audiences, at least at first, to view her with some sympathy. Indeed, even when she is shown in what appears to be a consensual sexual liaison with her brother, Cerseiâs physical stanceâtaken with considerable force from behindâechoes Daenerysâs stance with Drogo, reinforcing their parallels as sexual supplicants. Sex coach Doreahâs (Roxanne McKee) advice to Daenerys in episode 2 might apply to Cersei as well: âDothraki take slaves like a hound takes a bitch. Are you a slave, Khaleesi? Then donât make love like a slave.â10
At the same time that they are subordinated, however, both Cersei and Daenerys wield a certain amount of influence, a consequence of their beauty and fertility. As Daenerys learns from Doreah how to pleasure Khal Drogo, she improves both her treatment at his hands and her standing in the Dothraki community. And once she becomes pregnant, her new status as âmotherâ drives every important moment in Daenerysâs growing agency over the course of season 1. She rids herself of her feckless brother Viserys after he threatens her unborn child, and she saves a group of captured women from being raped by Drogoâs army by claiming them as her children. When Drogoâs lieutenant, Mago (Ivailo Dimitrov), complains that Daenerys has thwarted his ârightâ to âmountâ the conquered women, Daenerys insists, âI have claimed many daughters this day, so they cannot be mounted.â Mago challenges her authority, but Drogo responds with admiration: âSee how fierce she grows? That is my son inside her, the stallion that will mount the world, filling her with his fire.â11 Motherhood is here figured both as the protection with which Daenerys would cloak the women and as the âfireâ that gives Daenerys ascendency. âI am Khaleesi. I do command you,â she declares to Mago. This particular lesson on the power of queenly motherhood is not specific to the Dothraki. Back in Kingâs Landing, Robert Baratheon suggests killing Daenerys precisely because he recognizes that despite her young age, the Khaleesiâs fertility poses a threat. As he tells Ned Stark (Sean Bean), âSoon enough, that child will spread her legs and start breeding.â12
A similar dynamic can be observed with Cersei, who wields power principally through her status as mother. Indeed, the mystery that structures the first season pivots on the problem of Cerseiâs rogue sexuality and the questionable legitimacy of her children. Patriarchy is built on precisely this issue, as the phrase that Hortense Spillers popularizedââMamaâs baby, Papaâs maybeââmakes clear.13 Because men can never be assured of their paternity, they must put into place all manner of restrictions to guarantee that their wives remain subjugated and sequestered. That Cersei has managed to skirt these by carrying on a clandestine affair that results in two sons who become heir to the throne is impressive indeed; it indicates that she, no less than Daenerys, understands how women, largely dispossessed, may wield power. In a moment, perhaps, of would-be feminist solidarity, she attempts to impart this lesson to young Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) while the two are holed up awaiting Stannis Baratheonâs (Stephen Dillane) invading army in season 2. Inexperienced and romantic, Sansa is fond of declaring that âcourtesy is a ladyâs armor,â but Cersei explains that a womanâs virtue provides no shield against the soldiers that would sack the city. Lamenting that Stannis (labeled âWesterosâs Al Goreâ on fan websites for his humorless adherence to rules14) would reject her seduction attempts should his army prevail, Cersei then taunts Sansa: âHave I shocked you, little dove? Tears arenât a womanâs only weapon. The best oneâs between your legs. Learn how to use it.â15 While Sansa appears mortified, her canny manipulation of Lord Baelish (Aidan Gillen) in subsequent seasons indicates that Cerseiâs advice does not fall on deaf ears. âI learned a great deal from her,â Sansa tells a surprised Jon Snow years later.16
It bears repeating that the ability of noblewomen to weaponize their sexuality (and their consequent status as mother) is precisely the thing that Arya and Brienne reject. When Ned Stark tells a young Arya that she canât be a lord of a holdfast, but instead that she âwill marry a high lord and rule his castle, and your sons shall be knigh...