Let’s be honest, Cersei Lannister is the only one who belongs on the Iron Throne

Never has a show divided the country more than Game of Thrones. Except maybe Love Island. And with season seven nearing its end (feeling like it only started like last week), the question on everyone’s lips is “who should sit on the Iron Throne?” Some answers are obvious and totally predictable, like Jon Snow or Daenerys, but they’re boring.

Even a massive plot twist like Robb Stark rising from the dead to claim his rightful place as King in the North isn’t enough for me to start shipping the Starks. Sorry, but my loyalties are firmly in the Lannister corner. More specifically, they lie with Cersei. Daenerys may be the Mother of Dragons, but Cersei is the Mother of Lions, and she is fierce through and through.

Smiling as she watches her enemies burn

Cersei’s prowess as a military commander, her fierce love for her children and her skill at playing the Game of Thrones alone makes her deserve her place. The fact that she’s seen as the show’s main villain because of her thirst for power just makes me love her more. She has risen from being nothing more than a pawn in a game played by men to the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

And where are those men now? Well, one she got so drunk he was impaled by a boar, a maester she had stabbed to death, and another she had arrested for treason kickstarting the show. Sure, Cersei gets her hands dirty, but what do you expect a clever woman to do in Westeros? You want to rule? You have to make both men and women do your bidding for you.

Obviously, Cersei’s not perfect and she’s definitely murdered more than her fair share of enemies. I mean, who can forget that she annihilated her uncle, nearly the entire Tyrell family, the High Sparrow and the Church in one blow (pun intended). But then again, which main character hasn’t murdered whole families for whatever reason? It’s basically like rule number one of Game of Thrones: you must kill the people you’re supposed to love. Tyrion killed Shae, Tyrion killed Tywin, Jon killed Olly, an 11 year old kid and somehow everyone still obsesses over him (even though he’s literally so shit as a character). Arya cooked the two Frey sons into a pie and fed them into a pie – “totally badass” right? And yet, these are everyone’s favourite characters. Because forced cannibalism is totally better than executing a man who betrayed his king, which is something that actually deserves being executed for?

Tyrion’s seen as the smart one of the family, and yet it was his sister who trapped the Unsullied in a castle and removed the last thorn on the Tyrell rose. At the moment, she’s winning the war. She even sussed that she was losing her grip on Jamie and strategically told him she was pregnant (yeah, I’m still not convinced, but Jamie is and that’s all that matters).

So, her kill rate is lower than most, or it was until she blew up the Sept of Baelor at least. But it’s definitely lower than Daenerys’. Plus she’s proved that she’s one of the smartest characters on the show. So why do people hate her so much? Because everyone loves to hate a powerful, clever, successful woman.

Cersei’s gender may have decided the role she should play in life, but she refused to let it determine her ambitions and what she did with them. She may have learnt embroidery instead of swordplay, “to smile and sing and please” so she “was sold to some stranger like a horse to be ridden whenever he desired”, but she’s played their game and now she is the only one who has control over her body. She’s stuck a giant middle finger to the patriarchy by becoming the first woman to sit on the Iron Throne, and I love her for that.

Cersei’s love for her children has always been strong, her first instinct always being to protect them. Yeah, sure, it seems like just another doting mother stereotype but Cersei uses her upbringing of Tommen, Myrcella and Joffrey to ensure their loyalty is to her, not Robert. Not that it worked out quite well enough when it came to Joffrey.

Cersei is too often unfairly blamed for being complicit in Joffrey’s crimes but the reality of the situation though was that she was powerless to stop him. She tried to stop the execution of Ned Stark knowing that it would start a war with the North. She does not order the execution of Robert’s bastards. In both situations she is unable to stop her son. When she slaps Joffrey for insulting her, he threatens to execute his own mother. So much for familial love.

Cersei Lannister is the best of both worlds. Sure, she embodies the feminine ideal. She’s a queen. She’s beautiful. She’s a dutiful daughter. She has three children whom she loves. But at the same time, she subverts the patriarchal ideas of femininity and motherhood instead of perpetuating them. She seeks to overthrow her King instead of serve him. She challenges her father when she should always obey him. She chooses her own lover rather than have one chosen for her.

Her motto is “I choose violence” for one simple reason: she doesn’t give a shit what anyone else thinks about. She needs violence to help get what she wants and she doesn’t care who knows it. If the men get to be violent and get away with it, then why not her too?

I propose a toast to Cersei Lannister, the reigning Queen of Westeros. Who knows what trick she’ll pull next week?