Eddard confronts Cersei

Eddard Stark confronts Cersei Lannister in the godswood of the Red Keep, a private meeting that seals his fate and the fate of the realm. The conversation takes place at sunset, after King Robert has been mortally wounded by a boar and lies dying in his bed. Ned has summoned the queen alone, telling her, "So the gods can see." She arrives simply dressed, in leather boots and hunting greens, the bruise from Robert's blow still visible on her face, faded to yellow. Ned touches her cheek gently and asks, "Has he done this before?" Cersei admits, "Once or twice," but adds, "Never on the face before. Jaime would have killed him, even if it meant his own life." She declares that her brother is "worth a hundred of your friend." When Ned asks, "Your brother? Or your lover?" she does not flinch from the truth: "Both. Since we were children together." She explains that the Targaryens wed brother to sister for three hundred years to keep the bloodlines pure, and that she and Jaime are "one person in two bodies." She tells him that when Jaime is inside her, she feels "whole." Ned then asks about Bran, and Cersei does not look away. "He saw us," she says. She asks Ned if he loves his children, and when he answers, "With all my heart," she replies, "No less do I love mine." Ned realizes that all three of Cersei's children are Jaime's. He has already confirmed the truth through his research in Grand Maester Malleon's book on the lineages of the great houses, which showed that whenever a Lannister married a Baratheon, the child always had black hair, the Baratheon trait, never the Lannister gold. The seed is strong, as Jon Arryn had cried on his deathbed. Cersei reveals that Robert got her with child once, but her brother found a woman to cleanse her. She says she can scarcely bear for Robert to touch her and has not let him inside her for years, using other ways to pleasure him when he is drunk enough to forget by morning. When Ned asks what Robert did to make her hate him so, she tells him that on the night of their wedding feast, the first time they shared a bed, Robert called her by Lyanna's name. Ned tells her he knows what he must do, and Cersei puts her hand on his leg and offers him an alliance: "The realm needs a strong Hand. Joff will not come of age for years. No one wants war again, least of all me." She touches his face and his hair, promising he will never regret it if he is kind to her. Ned asks if she made the same offer to Jon Arryn, and she slaps him. He tells her dryly that he will wear that as a badge of honor. Cersei spits at his honor, asking how he is any different from Robert, or her, or Jaime, mentioning his own bastard and the Lady Ashara Dayne. Ned tells her he does not kill children. He says he will lay the truth before the king when Robert returns from his hunt, and commands her to be gone by then, with her children, not to Casterly Rock but to the Free Cities or farther. "Exile," she says. "A sweeter cup than your father served Rhaegar's children," Ned replies. Cersei warns him, "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." She turns up her hood to hide her swollen face and leaves him in the dark beneath the oak, under a blue-black sky as the stars come out.