The Incest Bunch

[Midgar Mist]

Is kind of what I associate the Lannisters to be all about. Its why Joffrey was a crazed psycho for one.

Its my understanding that during the English Middle ages such debauchery wouldve gone on. Us English have a whole load of Plantagenets to feel bad about.

So, when you first knew Cersei and Jamie were brother and sister and knocking boots (so to speak) were you

Shocked?
Or
So used to this kind of explicit programming it didn't touch you?

How about when she two timed Jamie and slept with her cousin?

I personally fell in the shocked category a bit more, especially when I saw King Joffrey in action.

I'm happy with either opinion. I ask out of mere curiosity and I shall place no social or moral judgement upon your answers

Go ahead and proceed :-)

[Jinx]

At first I found it unpleasant, particularly because season one Jaime and Cersei were both unpleasant people.

Now I find them endearing and often don't think about the fact that they're siblings.

At the end of the day they're both consenting adults, so.

[Pheesh]

I was talking about this with a friend a week or so ago. It's easy to forget that the catalyst for so much of what has gone on was due to Jaime and Cersei being afraid their incest would be revealed.

As for the incest itself, I find it to be a clever device to quickly paint a character as good or bad. You'll notice as the show has tried to condition Jaime and Cersai to be crowd favourites their physical relationship has been less in your face and it's not even communicated that much either. When they wanted Jaime to start becoming more likeable they had him off flirting with crowd favourite Brienne, while Cersai was back at King's Landing smurfing her cousin. They use it as a socially recognisable taboo that we associate with bad, and it works pretty effectively.

[Night Fury]

Jamie and Cersei have a very spiritual twin bond. It is referred to a lot that they shared a womb and are each other's halves etc.

also, Cersei loved Robert a lot - A LOT, at first! But he was hung up on Lyanna and frequented brothels which made her resentful of him. Lannisters are about protecting themselves and Cersei takes that to the extreme of having her children be well.... Lannisters.


And actually to be more precise the REAL incestuous family are those Dragons, the Targaryens.

[Midgar Mist]

I've only seen series 1 that was enough. But I'm thinking of reading at least one of the books. Explicit scenes don't affect me as much if they're written down.

It seems like TV has run out of taboo subjects now GoT is so popular. And I'm sure if I did some research I would find medieval english aristocrats bedding their family members in actual reality. The only actual one I know about is the Romantic poet Byron but that was later.

I would love to know in more detail what inspired George R R Martin to write themes such as incest etc.....

[Night Fury]

In the case of Cersei and Jamie's incest, I explained it is because of the spiritual bond they have. Game of Thrones is all about house lines and incest occurs usually when families are trying to protect their lines.

in a show where a woman can birth a shadow demon from nothing that can kill people, characters can nest in a burning pyre and emerge with dragons, people can put themselves into animals, and there are people wearing faces of the dead.... The incest really isn't a big deal.

[Pheesh]

Incest is cruel and wrong because while the risk is yours, the punishment is your child's. There's a reason it's illegal and that reason is because you're rolling the dice with the mental and physical well being of your innocent child. Then as a result we get Joffrey, who's battrout insane, kills Ned, beats Sansa, cuts out people's tongues; all because Jaime and Cersai couldn't go find a nice brunette.


It seems like TV has run out of taboo subjects now GoT is so popular.

Simply not true. Watch the last episode of House of Cards season 4 for a very recent example.

[Midgar Mist]

Really? Errr I don't think I wanna know...

And Night Fury I wasn't questioning your explanation, I just happened to be writing my post at exactly the same time as you were so I thought I was replying to Pheesh.

And I'm fully aware of worse things that happen in Game of Thrones, its just I don't wanna go off topic is all.

[Formalhaut]

At first I found it unpleasant, particularly because season one Jaime and Cersei were both unpleasant people.

Now I find them endearing and often don't think about the fact that they're siblings.

At the end of the day they're both consenting adults, so.

Pretty much this. It was surprising and the fact that they're portrayed as unlikable characters cemented it as a taboo, bad thing. I mean, heck they pushed a kid off a tower when they were caught mid-act.

But as the season went on, I didn't really notice it. I mean, they are consenting adults. I don't think a child should have been born from it, let alone three.

[Slothy]

Incest is cruel and wrong because while the risk is yours, the punishment is your child's. There's a reason it's illegal and that reason is because you're rolling the dice with the mental and physical well being of your innocent child.

Not technically true. Provided two people aren't predisposed to genetic illness the odds of an incestuous couple producing a child with genetically determined mental or physical problems are, i believe, somewhere around 2% higher than the average in the general population. It goes up when you deal with multiple generations of incest (hello royal family), but 2% isn't a huge increase. Honestly, if your family had a history of serious generic illness you could probably see a similar risk increase our worse regardless of who you copulate with. If i even did want kids in not sure I'd try without getting tested first anyway.

Anywho, incest is still largely illegal because people think of it as icky and are under the mistaken belief that banning it altogether somehow reduces sexual abuse of children which i don't agree with.

As to the topic question, i want really shocked. And honestly i couldn't care less that their relationship is incestuous. It's the fact that they're frequently awful people that raised an unbelievably horrifying little shit that's the bigger problem if you ask me. Maybe they should forget about incest and make that taboo instead.

[Pheesh]

Don't know where you got your source from but the one I found (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201210/the-problem-incest) puts the chance of genetic defect or early death in a child born from first degree relatives (parent and child, brother and sister) at close to 50%.

[Del Murder]

I don't think the incest is what is leading to the Lannsiters' kids having early deaths...

[Pheesh]

Incest is second only to George RR Martin as a cause of premature death.

[Madame Adequate]

Incest of only one generation has a low likelyhood of causing problems, but it increases extremely rapidly if it spans several generations, i.e. brother and sister have a boy and girl, then THEY have a boy and girl, and then THEY have a kid, etc.

The real problem with incest is the extreme power dynamics and differences that are inherent in incestuous relationships most of the time. Like yeah if you bang your auntie who you've seen twice ever in your life that's probably not an issue, but your parent or sibling or whatever? That carries a huge amount of risk that someone isn't consenting.

[Ayen]

The fact Joff was pretty much told from the beginning that the Iron Throne was his by right and he would rule the Seven Kingdoms after his father probably didn't help how he grew up into such an entitled douche on top of being mentally insane. That and the fact his parents (legal or actual) were just horrible role models.

[Forsaken Lover]

Both of Joff's siblings are perfectly sweet. Joff being a sociopath is just a thing that happened to him, not because he was born of incest.

Incest isn't that big a deal, anyway. The blood of the dragon do it because...well,they are the blood of the dragon. They're literally magic so they gotta keep that shit in the family.

[Raistlin]

Don't know where you got your source from but the one I found (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201210/the-problem-incest) puts the chance of genetic defect or early death in a child born from first degree relatives (parent and child, brother and sister) at close to 50%.

Yeah, that's written by a psychologist who only cites a 1971 paper (https://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/152391) where many of the parents had pre-existing disabilities. Even assuming this one study, with its own confessed limited information, is generally accurate, it is useless for assessing any risks between healthy individuals.

[escobert]

The Targaryens were all about incest so it wasn't something new in the Kingdom.

[Ayen]

That, and it's socially acceptable in Westeros to mate with your first cousin. Tywin and his wife were cousins, so while not as close in blood as siblings would be, there's still more incest going on in the family than Cersei and Jaime.

[Mirage]

First cousins have a lot more genetic diversity than siblings, and second cousins way more than that again. In siblings, the only diversity you have is a slightly random mixing of the same two blueprints.

If you seriously are worried about the offspring, there's no need to be alarmed unless it's siblings and they're telling their kids to follow their example.

Of course, historically, it has been a lot harder to avoid the results of intercourse than it is today, so it's pretty understandable why it became a taboo. If it wasn't, I'm sure you could have gotten situations with two consecutive generations of solid inbreeding not too rarely. After all, if your parents did it, how bad could it be?