‘Game of Thrones’ Season 7: Jaime Will Kill Cersei

Jaime and Cersei were born one right after the other, with Jaime holding onto Cersei’s foot. Their entire lives, they’ve thought of themselves as two parts of one thing. But their respective arcs in the show and the books has been pushing them farther apart.

Jaime has been steadily maturing from a saucy swordsman to an able diplomat. The deaths of innocents weighs increasingly heavily to him and he increasingly uses his power to stop the senseless violence. Cersei, on the other hand, filled a ancient historically, architecturally and religiously significant cathedral with wildfire and blew up half the nobles in the Kingdom, most of whom had really done nothing wrong.

In A Feast for Crows, Cersei wrote to Jaime while she was under trial, pleading her brother to return to King’s Landing and save her. A younger Jaime would have gone running to her side. Instead, Jaime burns the letter.

Now let us look at Maggie the Frog’s prophecy about Cersei: ‘And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.’

Given that every other piece of the prophecy has come true we have no reason to doubt this section. We know that Cersei will die - the only question is ‘by whose hand?’

Valonqar is high Valyrian for little brother. Some readers, and Cersei herself, assume this is Tyrion. This is why Cersei burned down the Red Keep in the books, for fear that Tyrion was hiding in the walls. By now I think we all know George well enough to know that he NEVER takes the most obvious path on a story. The entire structure of Game of Thrones was built around subverting expectations on a protagonist’s role in a fantasy narrative. So, for me, Tyrion is out.

Cersei has another little brother, however. Though they’re twins, Jaime came out of the womb after Cersei holding onto her ankle. He is her younger brother by a matter of seconds. Also of significance, Jaime destroyed his reputation and was marked as Kingslayer and Oathbreaker when he killed The Mad King Aerys Targaryen, to stop him from using wildfire to kill innocents. Sadly, Cersei has gone down the path of the Mad King and used wildfire to burn the Great Sept of Baelor killing hundreds of innocents in the process. These are the ingredients of a catastrophic falling out.

Their pairing and love is so powerful that we know their ultimate fates must revolve around each other. What more fitting end could there be for their narrative then for one to die at the other’s hand? What more fitting end could there be to their arcs of growing responsibility on one side and growing insanity and violence on the other. In truth, though, she could never imagine it, but Cersei would probably not want to be killed by anyone else. Love you both.

My bet is this will go down in one of the final episodes of the show, but let’s track how it develops in Season 7.