Marriage of Cersei Lannister and Robert Baratheon

The marriage of Cersei Lannister and Robert Baratheon was arranged by Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King, who argued that the match would bind the powerful House Lannister to the new Baratheon dynasty and secure the realm against any Targaryen restoration. Robert, still grieving the loss of Lyanna Stark, had no wish to marry, but he yielded to his foster father's counsel. The wedding took place in the Great Sept of Baelor in King's Landing, a grand ceremony that united the lion of Casterly Rock with the stag of Storm's End. The union produced three children—Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen—but the marriage itself was a hollow shell from the first night.

The Poisoned Wedding Night

On the night of their wedding feast, the first time they shared a bed, Robert, drunk and reeking of wine, called Cersei by Lyanna's name. He was on top of her, inside her, and he whispered "Lyanna." This moment, which Cersei later recounted to Eddard Stark in the godswood of the Red Keep, became the defining wound of their marriage. Cersei, who had entered the union expecting at least the dignity of a queen, was instead reduced to a stand-in for a dead woman. From that night forward, she resolved to never let Robert inside her again. She found other ways to pleasure him when he staggered to her bedchamber, but she ensured that he was usually so drunk that he forgot everything by morning. The king's lusts were the subject of ribald drinking songs throughout the realm, and he fathered bastards openly—a daughter named Barra in a King's Landing brothel, a boy named Gendry apprenticed to an armorer, a daughter in the Vale, and a son fostered at Storm's End—while his queen cultivated her own secret life.

The Queen's Secret Alliance

Cersei's true bond was not with her husband but with her twin brother, Jaime Lannister. From childhood they had been lovers, and she considered them "one person in two bodies." When she became pregnant by Robert, Jaime found a woman to cleanse her, and she never allowed the king to father another child on her. All three of her supposed children with Robert were in fact Jaime's, a truth that Cersei guarded with ferocious determination. The incest was the secret that Jon Arryn discovered and that ultimately cost him his life, and it was the knowledge that Eddard Stark uncovered when he investigated the Hand's death. The Baratheon look—black hair, blue eyes—was stamped on every one of Robert's bastards, while Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen all had the golden hair and green eyes of the Lannisters. The seed is strong, Jon Arryn had cried on his deathbed, and the genealogies confirmed it: whenever a Baratheon married a Lannister, the Baratheon coloring prevailed.

A Court Divided

The marriage's dysfunction radiated outward, poisoning the entire court. Robert and Cersei were openly antagonistic, their quarrels erupting in public. At the feast after the Hand's tourney, Robert, drunk, roared at his queen, "You do not tell me what to do, woman. I am king here, do you understand? I rule here, and if I say that I will fight tomorrow, I will fight!" Cersei, her face a mask, gathered her skirts and stormed off. Robert later admitted to Ned that he had dreamed of giving up the crown, but the thought of Joffrey on the throne with Cersei whispering in his ear stopped him. "How could I have made a son like that, Ned?" he asked, unknowingly speaking a truth far deeper than he realized. The queen, for her part, told Ned that Robert had never been a true husband to her, and that she had not let him inside her for years. The marriage was a cold war fought in the bedchamber and the council chamber, with the realm as its battlefield.

The Collapse

When Robert lay dying from a boar wound—a death that Cersei had hastened by providing his squire Lancel with strong wine—the marriage's legacy became the realm's crisis. Robert's last words to Ned were to protect his children, but Ned knew the truth: Joffrey was not Robert's son. The king died believing he had fathered an heir, while the queen moved immediately to secure her son's throne. The marriage that had been meant to unite the realm instead tore it apart, as the revelation of the children's true parentage triggered a war that would consume the Seven Kingdoms. Cersei herself summed up the tragedy when she told Ned, "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." The marriage of Cersei Lannister and Robert Baratheon had been a game from the start, and in that game, both of them had lost long before the first battle was fought.