Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) is the Game of Thrones character I love to hate. There isn’t a single quality of hers that I could relate to over the course of seven seasons... until last night.
In the season 8 premiere, we see Cersei back in her court with Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbæk), who is updating her on the successful acquisition of the Golden Company. Euron has made it abundantly clear that he has two goals: become king of the Iron Isles (check) and, as he so eloquently phrased it, to “put a prince” in Cersei. When he presses Cersei about her promise to wed, again with such vomit-evoking candor, her response is perfection, “You want a whore, buy one. You want a queen, earn her.”
While I will never root for Cersei to win the Iron Throne, this simple phrasing resonated with me. Being single in New York is no cakewalk. With the advent of online dating and the swiping culture, it’s easy to feel dispensable. There’s ghosting, submarining, orbiting and even (fittingly) throning—there’s so many weird dating trends and ways to be rejected that I can’t keep track anymore. Ultimately, it’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole questioning your value.
And it’s a daily task to help friends dissect text messages and come up with explanations for why a guy they had two great dates with is suddenly MIA. When they said “hey” did they mean “hey” or did they mean “hey”? Was it something she said? Did she not wear the right outfit?