House Lannister

Cersei Lannister

Queen Regent of the Seven Kingdoms

Life: no fixed AC year given; twin to Jaime Lannister
House: Lannister by birth, Baratheon by marriage

Alive, ruling as Queen Regent in King's Landing, though her grip on power has grown shaky.

Cersei Lannister was raised to believe that her beauty and her birth entitled her to power equal to any man's, and married to a king who made it plain, within the first years of their union, that he had wanted her only for the alliance her name provided. A childhood prophecy from a woods witch — that she would be queen, until a younger and more beautiful queen cast her down, and that all her children would die — hardened into an obsession she has spent the books' events trying, and repeatedly failing, to outmaneuver. As queen and then Queen Regent, she governs the way she survived her marriage: through suspicion, favoritism, and a conviction that anyone cleverer than her must be an enemy, a policy that costs her allies faster than she can count them. A maester observes, not without a certain professional sympathy, that Cersei's tragedy is her genuine talent for the wrong kind of cleverness.

The arc of Cersei Lannister

This carries the character’s road through the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.

Ruling in her young son's name after Robert's death, Cersei survives one crowned son's murder and crowns another, purging rivals and stacking the small council with loyalists of increasingly poor judgment. Her scheming eventually delivers her into the Faith Militant's hands, and a public reckoning for her private conduct strips her, quite literally, of the dignity she prized above nearly everything else.

Where the books leave Cersei Lannister: alive as of A Dance with Dragons, having endured public penance at the Faith's hands — the Walk of Atonement — and returned to the Red Keep diminished, still queen but no longer unchallenged

These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.

In the timeline

Theories about Cersei Lannister

SourcesAGOT · EddardASOS · JaimeAFFC · CerseiTWOIAF · The Reign of Robert I

Is Cersei Lannister alive?

Yes, alive as of A Dance with Dragons, restored to the Red Keep though considerably diminished — the chronicle keeps the particulars veiled.

Who is Cersei Lannister?

Tywin Lannister's eldest child and Robert Baratheon's queen, whose ambition for power equal to any king's collided, again and again, with a court that underestimated her only until it was too late.