Cersei was one character that most people really hated. She was bitter, petty, envious and just plain evil at many points in the story, but no one can say that she wasn’t a nuanced character. She had so many little intricacies and notes to her character that made her such a complex and deep character that undeniably did some evil things, but often with reason.
Though she was cruel and vindictive, no argument can be made against the fact that she absolutely loved her children. It was her most admirable trait as she did almost everything she could in order to keep them safe. This lent a feeling of relatability to Cersei. So, let’s go over her best scenes in the run of the entire show!
15. Badge of Honour (Season 1, Episode 6)
After Ned had been injured in his fight with Jaime, Robert goes to him to talk to him. However, Cersei is there as well and she starts to berate and threaten Ned for fighting her brother, causing Robert to lose his temper and slap her hard across the face. This, however, doesn’t faze Cersei, who instead claps back to Robert by saying that she will wear this slap on her face like a badge of honor.
14. You win or you die (Season 1, Episode 7)
This is a scene that takes place shortly after the previous one where Ned has finally found out the secret that Jon Arryn died for, that all of Cersei’s children are bastards that she had with Jaime and are not Robert’s children. Ned, being the honorable man that he is, confronts Cersei and tells her that he will soon tell Robert the truth, to which Cersei replies with this extremely iconic line.
13. Robert’s death (Season 1, Episode 7)
Let us cheat here a little bit. Though the actual scene of Robert dying doesn’t feature Cersei in it at all, it still counts as one of her biggest and most important moments because she is, in fact, the person that’s behind Robert’s death. She tricks her cousin Lancel to get Robert very drunk to the point of incoherence, which eventually causes him to get killed by the boar. This shows how cunning she truly is.
12. Power is power (Season 2, Episode 1)
This scene is a very important one for both Cersei and Littlefinger. Just when Baelish was getting very manipulative and cunning for his (and everyone else’s) own good, Cersei was there to humble him down a peg. Since she never really knew whose side Petyr was truly on, she reminded him that ‘power is power’ and she is the one who held this power. If he would ever double-cross her, she would show him who is really pulling the strings.
11. Blackwater (Season 2, Episode 9)
This episode is amazing for Cersei, but not in the way most of her moments in the show are. This is great as it shows her coming to terms with her potential demise. While the true focus of this episode is the battle, the little moments of Cersei drunkenly mocking Sansa’s prayers and being bitter are just as poignant.
This is especially true towards the end of the episode, where she is sitting on the Iron Throne and is convinced that Stannis will win. So, she is just about to drink a poison potion and give the same to Tommen because it would be better to die than whatever Stannis would do to them. It is a rare moment of vulnerability and defeat we see in Cersei.
10. Schooling Margaery (Season 3, Episode 8)
Margaery was one character that really had some good one liners on Cersei, where she indirectly called her old and an alcoholic. However, this one time, Margaery insisted on holding Cersei’s arm and walking around jovially as if there was no bad blood between them. She kept calling Cersei ‘sister’, to which Cersei replied that if she does it one more time, she will have Margaery strangled in her sleep. Ouch.
9. Unhappy wife (Season 3, Episode 10)
This is a small moment but one that is absolutely one of the best lines from Cersei in the whole show. In her talk with Tyrion, she reveals to him how truly unhappy she is in her marriage and she delivers the legendary line ‘an unhappy wife is a wine merchant’s best friend’.
8. Cersei the Politician (Season 4, Episode 5)
Following the gruesome but totally well-deserved death of Joffrey, Cersei’s character arc really focuses on how much she absolutely loathes her imp brother as she believes him to be responsible for the death of her son. Her skills as a politician are greatly underrated as this scene shows her approaching Oberyn and others as judges to be on her side for Tyrion’s trial so that he may be found guilty.
7. Standing up to Tywin (Season 4, Episode 10)
Cersei has always been a very strong character that was never afraid to speak her mind, which was made evidently clear whenever she would confront Robert about anything. However, her father Tywin was someone she was always terrified of. When Tywin is the one who threatens to separate her from her family, though, Cersei is the one to stand up to him, revealing the truth about her and Jaime as well as the nature of all her children and threatens to reveal this to the world if Tywin goes through with his plan. To this day, she remains one of the very, very few people to actually best Tywin.
6. The Gift (Season 5, Episode 7)
Season 5 of the show sees Cersei making some serious moves politically to make her own power and reign absolute. She does this by getting Margaery thrown into prison and herself being appointed as Queen Regent. However, Cersei gets too arrogant and cocky, which leads to the Faith Militant uprising which leads to herself being thrown into prison. A great learning and reflective moment for her.
5. I choose violence (Season 6, Episode 8)
Upon being brutalized and humiliated in her walk of shame, much of season 6 shows Cersei as being on the back foot and being more submissive due to the stinky High Sparrow having grown in power substantially. However, with the Mountain at her side, she is confronted by the High Sparrow’s men who tell her to come with them or there will be violence. Cersei claps back with ‘I choose violence’, showing that there is still some fight left in her.
4. Baelor (Season 6, Episode 10)
Arguably Cersei’s greatest moment in the entire show, this is the scene that absolutely blew everyone away and left the audience with their hearts in their throats. The whole thing starts off with everyone gathering at the Sept of Baelor with a beautiful and haunting somber piano piece playing in the background. Then, we realize that Cersei is not at the Sept at all, she is watching on from the Red Keep.
Margaery is the first to notice this and immediately notices something is wrong. She brings this up with the smelly High Sparrow, who also suddenly realizes something is about to happen and that it’s already too late to do anything about it. Despite Margaery’s screams, he stands there when suddenly, the entire Sept blows up and is engulfed with Wildfire, with Cersei looking contently at it, knowing that she has no more political enemies.
3. Revenge on Unella (Season 6, Episode 10)
Unella was very annoying. She made Cersei’s entire stay at the prison way worse than it already was, constantly physically and psychologically torturing her. So what does Cersei do when her power in the world is unquestioned? She starts to torture Unella by waterboarding her. Truly horrific.
2. Meeting Dany (Season 7, Episode 7)
Season 7 didn’t have many good scenes for many characters, but the meeting between Cersei and Dany is one worth remembering. Upon seeing a real dragon, anyone on the planet would be scared out of their minds, but Cersei didn’t get intimidated by Dany at all. She still insisted on having everything her way.
1. Killing Missandei (Season 8, Episode 4)
Missandei was Dany’s closest friend and also her oldest friend. Though season 8 was atrocious and Dany’s turn to evil was something that was totally unearned, seeing her closest friend die an unfair and cruel death is what sent her over the edge. And who was the one behind it all? Good ol’ Cersei Lannister.
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