I do and don't sympathize with Cersei. On the one hand, almost everything that happens to her is her own damn fault. On the other hand, she was dealt an incredibly difficult hand, and it's not like the rest of her family are exactly paragons of mental health and handling things well either.

I also saw a lot of ugly sexism in the Cersei-hate that came out after the last book, which gets my hackles up and makes me want to defend her.

I think that having your brother's children is a symptom of damage that was caused to you, but at some point you're grown, and that point is before that baby was made.

Indeed. I really don't know what to say to people who get the screaming heebie jeebies at the mere thought of a vagina. Except that in this case, they're clearly reading a different set of books than I am, since, of Cersei's many vile character traits, having a vagina is not one of them. Nor are her negative traits at all universal among the vagina-having population of Westeros, so proclaiming her gender the source of her nastiness is flawed reasoning at best.

I think that having your brother's children is a symptom of damage that was caused to you, but at some point you're grown, and that point is before that baby was made.

You know, I would think that by this time in the history of Westeros, "The Targaryens did it" would be Warning Sign Number One for Bat Shit Crazy.

But that's how you get to rule Westeros! Being bonkers. And having dragons. You probably need both.

I'm going with the dragons being more relevant.

Ha - I don't even count the incest (and subsequent incest-kids) among Cersei's sins, which just shows how low the bar for moral behavior is in Westeros.

Nor are her negative traits at all universal among the vagina-having population of Westeros, so proclaiming her gender the source of her nastiness is flawed reasoning at best.

Well, I never saw anyone explicitly say "I hate Cersei more than Vargo Hoat because of her vagina." But there was [book 5 spoilers] such glee over the fallout from the thing with the Septon. People were rejoicing in a really disgusting way that I did not see with any male character in similar circumstances.

I don't even count the incest (and subsequent incest-kids) among Cersei's sins, which just shows how low the bar for moral behavior is in Westeros.

This. And I do hate her being villainized simply because she's a woman -- not at all the point, people, hello. And the past two episodes made it look like she at least knows she could have made different choices, even if it's too late for her now.

I have a lot of sympathy for Cersei. She's a not very nice person in a world populated with that and more. She's not nearly as good at playing the game of thrones as she thinks she is, but she's a scrapper. Her kid is a little shit and this little world probably would've been much better off if he'd been the one flung from a Winterfell window rather than Bran, but I at least can understand the choices she's made in her life, even if those choices are terrible.

It would have made so much sense for her and Tyrion to be allies, since both of them were not the heirs their father wanted (not that Jaime really was, either), and both of them want to be him (more or less). A unified Team Lannister might well have been nigh-unstoppable.

I say this despite how much I love both Tyrion and Jaime's arcs, which, from what I can tell, are basically "screw Team Lannister" (Thematic spoilers for things not yet fully underway on the show)