Cersei Lannister Is the Queen of Bad Decision-Making 

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Game of Thrones’ fifth season opened with a glimpse into Cersei\'s past, and the root of her paranoia. As a young girl, she visits a fortune-teller to learn her future and receives a disturbing prophecy instead. Yes, she will be queen one day, but she will have a rival: "Another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear." She would have children, but they would die. (This fortune-teller was short on specifics — dying is inevitable for almost everyone in Westeros.) Still, these vague forecasts have been enough to haunt Cersei over the years, and explain why she has been so obsessive about some things (ahem, Margaery) and so dismissive of others (just about any legitimate threat to the Seven Kingdoms).

"She\'s rather shortsighted in all of this," actress Lena Headey laughed. "She\'s about to learn some really severe lessons."

When we caught up with Headey during an international press day for Game of Thrones in Belfast, she agreed on this point about her character: Cersei is the queen of bad decisions. "She doesn\'t really see the bigger consequence," Headey said. "It\'s part of what I love about her. She\'s not too savvy about things." Cersei is no fool, but she doesn\'t bother to stay as informed as the other members of the Small Council or to think long-term. "When Tywin tried to school her on some finer points last year, she was a bit like, \'Hmmm?\'" Headey said. 

Let\'s consider some of her actions (or inactions). When Cersei’s had a chance to make crucial decisions, she\'s either hurt her own cause or aided her enemies. Take when she tried to force retirement on Ser Barristan Selmy, only to have him switch sides. Or when she dismissed a request from the Night\'s Watch to give more men to guard the Wall against White Walkers. Or when she shrugged off reports from the East that Daenerys\'s forces — her dragons and army of the Unsullied — were growing stronger. "I\'m sure if she was actually faced with Daenerys, she would realize the enormity of it," Headey said. "But she\'s a bit like, \'I don\'t know what to do. And so it doesn\'t matter.\'"

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Cersei is also prone to letting her fixations guide her judgment. When she finally gained an audience with her father in season three, she was more upset about Margaery having her "claws" in her son than she was about the crown\'s mounting debt, the weakened state of their armed forces, the lack of food as winter approaches, or just about any other actual problem. "Although she wouldn\'t ever say it out loud, Cersei\'s obviously threatened by her youth and her beauty," Headey said. "The fact that Margaery\'s going to marry her only surviving son, she\'ll be closer to the throne than Cersei is."

And there\'s the rub. Although Cersei won\'t be able to take the Iron Throne for herself, she wants it. And if she can\'t have it, she wants the next best thing — to influence whoever does. "She\'s like, \'Isn\'t it obvious who should be there?\'" Headey said. "She\'s so close, and she\'s been the person who lives near or by the throne at all times, so I genuinely think she\'s just like, \'It\'s going to happen if I just get rid of everybody!\'" Especially Margaery, whom she interprets to be the "younger and more beautiful" queen from the prophecy. Of course, it could also be Dany, Myrcella, or even Sansa.

Cersei\'s other fixation? Tyrion. “With Tywin gone, she\'s sort of driven by a desire to find Tyrion and just kill him. It seems to be one of her main reasons for existing at the moment,” Headey said. Although we didn\'t get the full prophecy in last night’s premiere, there was one extra tidbit in A Feast for Crows that helps explain why Cersei is so hateful toward her own brother, beyond her blaming him for the death of their mother in childbirth. Maggy the Frog\'s prophecy has a postscript: "And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you." In Valyrian, valonqar means brother, and Cersei goes for the most surface interpretation — that the valonqar would be her own brother. (Never mind she has two brothers, and prophecies aren\'t always literal.) "Obviously, there are plenty of people who would like to kill her," Headey said, laughing. "If she was my daughter, I\'d kill her! I often think it\'ll be Arya, because she\'s on her list. And maybe she deserves to die."

Maybe. But Headey suggests that Cersei, misguided as she is, deserves our empathy as well. "I always think of Cersei as a wayward 15-year-old who\'s never had any real parenting," Headey said. “She presents herself as this image of perfection, when underneath there\'s deep paranoia. She has no one to trust now."

Which of course leads to, you guessed it, more bad decisions. "This season, Cersei gets involved, wrongly, with people she thinks are going to be her allies," Headey said. If only she\'d paid attention to who her true enemies and allies were all along. 

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