I don't really see Jaime as less ambitious, he's less focused on political power, but both were equally ambitious and driven in their own arenas. It's just that Jaime's arena was the knighthood (his whole identity was shaped around being the best knight), whereas Cersei's was the Royal Court.
Jaime’s likeability vs Cersei comes from a bunch of places and this comment will go forever if I get started with that >.>
And oh gods I wrote out like 5 replies trying to summarise and just can’t, Cersei is unsympathetically written and placed in an awful environment at best, Jaime gets a much nicer arc, is a stereotypically alpha male and yet still a romantically loyal guy, which is likable, and he is able to be that and fit in and still excel in his environment.
Then of course Cersei is set up as the immediate villain, wonderful Ned’s good old friend’s shrewish and unfaithful wife, it’s strongly implied she poisoned Jon Arryn thus starting everything throughout the first book, it’s suggested she had involvement with the attempted murder of Bran after he was injured etc etc. Jaime certainly got some of that as well, but even there he was the direct and impulsive throw the kid out the window guy whereas Cersei was the scheming, manipulative poisoning woman, and Jaime's arc undid a lot of that damage.
There’s a whole other discussion about why it was so easy to write Cersei into that role, why people so immediately bought into it and why such different values are placed on the ways they acted, but this would go on forever and it's long already!
Cersei is certainly no angel and I don't mean to whitewash over the shitty and stupid things that she did, but shitty and stupid is a near universal theme and Cersei gets a massively disproportionate amount of hate for it, especially when contrasted with Jaime and they really are incredibly similar once you strip a lot of the external crap away.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Lannister
Date: 2012-02-15 11:29 am (UTC)Jaime’s likeability vs Cersei comes from a bunch of places and this comment will go forever if I get started with that >.>
And oh gods I wrote out like 5 replies trying to summarise and just can’t, Cersei is unsympathetically written and placed in an awful environment at best, Jaime gets a much nicer arc, is a stereotypically alpha male and yet still a romantically loyal guy, which is likable, and he is able to be that and fit in and still excel in his environment.
Then of course Cersei is set up as the immediate villain, wonderful Ned’s good old friend’s shrewish and unfaithful wife, it’s strongly implied she poisoned Jon Arryn thus starting everything throughout the first book, it’s suggested she had involvement with the attempted murder of Bran after he was injured etc etc. Jaime certainly got some of that as well, but even there he was the direct and impulsive throw the kid out the window guy whereas Cersei was the scheming, manipulative poisoning woman, and Jaime's arc undid a lot of that damage.
There’s a whole other discussion about why it was so easy to write Cersei into that role, why people so immediately bought into it and why such different values are placed on the ways they acted, but this would go on forever and it's long already!
Cersei is certainly no angel and I don't mean to whitewash over the shitty and stupid things that she did, but shitty and stupid is a near universal theme and Cersei gets a massively disproportionate amount of hate for it, especially when contrasted with Jaime and they really are incredibly similar once you strip a lot of the external crap away.