User blog comment:Sachoras/Cersei - friend or foe?/@comment-5014364-20121221033022/@comment-5670832-20121222192635

Cersei definitely has a human side, especially in the tv series. She had regrets that she and Robert couldn't be happy, she mourned her first child that died, and she isn't blind to Joffrey being nuts, or she wouldn't have had that scene with Tyrion about how her incest has resulted in Joffrey being the punishment. Yes the books make her much more self involved and both show her as power hungry, but she isn't unfeeling in either version.

And during Blackwater, Cersei was increasingly certain that they were all about to die a horrible death. She was expecting to be raped, and she nearly gave Tommen poison. So you did get ugly glimpses of her personality, but not just ugliness. The story of the lion she tells to Tommen as she is about to give him "shade of the evening" is like a bedtime story. There is love and caring there.

It is true that all of these scenes of a human Cersei never appear in the books.