Adultery, Treason, and Betrayal

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Conclusion 371

Conclusion The Shame Game, from Guinevere to Cersei: Adultery, Treason, and Betrayal

Larissa Tracy

A woman steps out into harsh, bitter sunlight.* Naked and shorn, she faces a public that only weeks before feared her, revered her, heralded her every move, and worshipped her as their queen, or queen mother. Publicly shamed, she af- fects contrition and begins her penance. Each step is agony on her bare feet; each movement is torment to her limbs, weakened by starvation and dehydra- tion. She steps gingerly through puddles of filth and feels the slime of the street upon her skin as she winds her way through the narrow city streets thronged with people who taunt her, hurling insults and rotten food at her. But this is her only option: Confess to fornication, incest, treason, and the murder of her husband, the king, endure public humiliation and shame; or face death—execu- tion as a traitor, an even more shameful end. So, the people see her naked, and they stare at the body that has given birth to kings. This she can endure.1 The last three episodes of Season 5 of HBO’s Game of Thrones, adapted from George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire (1991–), leads up to this moment as Queen Mother Cersei Lannister’s grand plans for wresting con- trol of the throne and her youngest son, Tommen, away from his guileful bride Margery Tyrell and her House, backfire. Cersei’s uncle Kervan, called to King’s Landing to serve as the Hand (the King’s chancellor), urges her to confess to adultery with her cousin Lancel, take her punishment—a public walk of shame, naked, through the streets of King’s Landing—and spare the Lannis- ters, and her son, any further embarrassment.

* An abbreviated version of this article was originally published online as “The Shame Game: Medieval Adultery, Public Shaming, and Game of Thrones” (June 14, 2015): . It was reposted by Salon.com, Business Insider, Elite Daily, Entertainment Weekly, The Wrap, Women in the World (New York Times), La Prensa (Peru), Series Adictos (Spain), Game of Thrones Greek Community (Greece), and Spoiler TV (Poland). I am grateful to Asa Simon Mittman, Fiona Tolhurst, and Kevin Whetter for their comments and suggestions regarding this much-expanded iteration. 1 George R.R. Martin, Song of Ice and Fire: Vol. 5, A Dance with Dragons (New York: Bantam Books, 2011), 931–41; this is also the final scene of the fifth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones: “Mother’s Mercy,” S5 E10 (June 14, 2015).

Cersei’s punishment echoes numerous medieval literary accounts of public humiliation for adultery, providing a visual framework for understanding the gravity of this penance and the accusations of adultery as treason that neces- sitate it. As Carolyne Larrington writes, in addition to its elements of high fantasy, the Game of Thrones series encompasses “very real questions about the politics of kingship, religious faith and social organization.”2 Often, the events of Westros and contemporary politics mesh together in uncomfortable ways for modern audiences, especially regarding treason and justice.3 In the case of all queens who fornicate with someone other than their king, Cersei is also guilty of treason (not to mention the regicide of planning her husband King Robert Baratheon’s untimely demise).4 Even more than Guinevere, one of the most famous adulteresses in medieval literature—known in modern popular culture and a significant amount of the medieval tradition for her di- sastrous liaison with either her husband’s best knight, Lancelot, or his neph- ew/son Mordred, and whose mauvaise renommée [bad reputation] resounds through the centuries—Cersei’s reputation will suffer from this spectacle more than she realizes. This moment in the modern series Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire (hereafter GoT/SoIF) captures the essence of medieval punishment for adultery, when the aggrieved party is not simply the wronged husband but the King, while ignoring the larger question of that betrayal as treason.5 However, numerous medieval literary accounts of infidelity em- phasize the treacherous nature of adultery itself, when the betrayal of a royal

2 Carolyne Larrington, Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016), 1. 3 Larrington, Winter is Coming, 5. Katha Pollitt makes this point in her article “This Season, ‘Game of Thrones’ Cut Deep: In a Fantastically Misogynist Imaginary World, A Highly Qualified Woman gets Close to Winning Power,” The Nation (August 31, 2017), observing that “Daenerys is Hillary Clinton with dragons.” (accessed August 31, 2017). 4 The adultery and incest between Cersei and her brother Jaime produces the heirs to the throne that have been passed off as the children of Robert Baratheon. King Robert is killed while hunting boar, having drunk drugged wine, to cover this up as other characters close in on the truth. This is major thread running through most of the novels and is alluded to repeatedly. George R.R. Martin, Song of Ice and Fire: Vol. 1, Game of Thrones (New York: Bantam Books, 1997), esp. 485–8, 507–13, and 528 and George R.R. Martin, Song of Ice and Fire: Vol. 2, Clash of Kings (New York: Bantam Books, 1999), 61–2, 410–2. 5 While Cersei’s punishment comes long after the death of her husband, her adultery and treason are running plot lines throughout the books and the HBO series, and, essentially, it is only when she is in a position of political weakness that she is tried for adultery. She faces other charges but avoids another trial by blowing up the Sept at King’s Landing with most of her political enemies inside it at the very end of Season Six: “The Winds of Winter,” S6 E10 (June 26, 2016).