Breaker of Chains/Jaime-Cersei sex scene


 * This is a sub-page branching off from the "Notes" section of the main article for the third episode of Season 4, "Breaker of Chains".

Multiple reviewers and websites were very confused and upset by the sex scene between Jaime and Cersei in the Great Sept of Baelor (in front of their own son’s corpse) in the third episode of Season 4, "Breaker of Chains" - saying that it was apparently portraying Jaime raping Cersei. This allegation/interpretation was near-universal – not simply "on messageboards" but in every measurable manner, as a reaction seen on almost every major critic or review website. These ranged from io9 and the A.V. club,, to the front page of Yahoo News, , Entertainment Weekly and Time magazine,  , and even the front page of The New York Times itself.

What made this all the more baffling is that the sexual encounter between Jaime and Cersei in this scene in the books is presented as consensual. TV-first viewers were offended, while book-first readers didn't understand why the TV show was, apparently, changing it into a rape scene – particularly because it simply didn't fit with Jaime’s overall storyarc of redemption and trying to be a better person after losing his sword-hand. Moreover, Jaime in particular is a character who as a result of his backstory is horrified by rape: at King Aerys II Targaryen's court, he was forced to stand guard outside the doors as the Mad King raped his wife Queen Rhaella; later on and in the show itself, he saves Brienne of Tarth from being raped by Locke's men even though she was his captor and he could easily have just let it happen.

The TV producers were slow to respond to such massive outcry, and even when they eventually did, their answers seemed to be vague, waffling, and at times contradictory This backfired completely: instead of clarifying the issue with an instant and clear response of "No, Jaime is not raping Cersei" or "Yes, we are introducing a massive change to the material", reviewers were left even more confused and to draw their own conclusions.

This article is Game of Thrones Wiki ' s attempt to determine exactly why the scene was filmed this way, and if it can be said that Jaime did or did not rape Cersei in the TV continuity.

What this article is not trying to do is deny that many viewers perceived it as a rape scene and were offended by it, because when presenting sexual violence in television or film, moreso than usual the stress is on the interpretation of the audience, and filmmakers must not fail to adequately convey their intent.

=The Jaime/Cersei sex scene in the books versus in the TV episode= In the books, Jaime only returns to King's Landing soon after Joffrey dies, and was not present for his wedding. The TV series shifted his return to slightly earlier, so he is present for Joffrey's death, changing the dynamic. When Jaime encounters Cersei in the Great Sept in front of Joffrey's corpse, it is actually the first time that they have seen each other in over a year since he was taken prisoner by the Starks. Both of them are overcome by emotion, but at seeing each other again and their anguish over the death of their son. Cersei seems mildly worried that people will see them having sex in such a public place, but soon drops such concerns and quite clearly is having consensual sex with him. This entire subtext was lost by moving the scenes around in the TV series.

In the book version, the third novel A Storm of Swords, Chapter 62, Jaime VII, Cersei's consent is much more explicit:


 * "She kissed him. A light kiss, the merest brush of her lips on his, but he could feel her tremble as he slid his arms around her. “I am not whole without you." There was no tenderness in the kiss he returned to her, only hunger. Her mouth opened for his tongue. "No," she said weakly when his lips moved down her neck, "not here. The septons..."


 * The Others [White Walkers] can take the septons." He kissed her again, kissed her silent, kissed her until she moaned. Then he knocked the candles aside and lifted her up onto the Mother's altar, pushing up her skirts and the silken shift beneath. She pounded on his chest with feeble fists, murmuring about the risk, the danger, about their father, about the septons, about the wrath of gods. He never heard her. He undid his breeches and climbed up and pushed her bare white legs apart. One hand slid up her thigh and underneath her smallclothes. When he tore them away, he saw that her moon's blood was on her. but it made no difference.


 * "Hurry," she was whispering now, "quickly, quickly, now, do it now, do me now. Jaime Jaime Jaime." Her hands helped guide him. "Yes," Cersei said as he thrust, "my brother, sweet brother, yes, like that, yes, I have you, you’re home now, you're home now, you’re home." She kissed his ear and stroked his short bristly hair. Jaime lost himself in her flesh. He could feel Cersei’s heart beating in time with his own, and the wetness of blood and seed where they were joined."

The scene is clearly consensual in the book version: Jaime and Cersei meet for the first time in a long while, Cersei only objects specifically because she's afraid they'll get caught (and that Joffrey's body is in front of them) but her initial objections about timing and place stop, and she wholeheartedly has sex with Jaime, urging him on.

In the TV version, the only dialogue is:
 * Jaime:"You're a hateful woman. Why have the gods made me love a hateful woman?"
 * Cersei "Jaime, not here, please. Please."
 * Cersei: "Stop it. Stop it. Stop. No. Stop it. Stop. Stop. Stop. It's not right. It's not right. It's not right."
 * Jaime: "I don't care."
 * Cersei: "Don't. Jaime, don't.
 * Jaime: "I don't care. I don't care."

The camera doesn't specifically show Cersei embracing Jaime or kissing him back, or even shouting "Yes!" or "Do me now, Jaime" as she does in the novel. At least as the TV scene presented it, Cersei seems to be half-heartedly saying, "No [we will be seen]", but eventually just stops worrying about that – but then the camera cuts away to the next scene too quickly, without really firmly establishing that Cersei is indeed consenting to this. Something basic along the lines of having Cersei start saying "Yes! Yes! Yes!" for a few seconds at the end of the scene would have drastically altered (or clarified?) its presentation.

Author George R.R. Martin received many e-mails from fans asking what had happened, so he ultimately made one statement via his blog, saying this was the only comment he would ever make on the issue:


 * I think the ;butterfly effect;that I have spoken of so often was at work here. In the novels, Jaime is not present at Joffrey’s death, and indeed, Cersei has been fearful that he is dead himself, that she has lost both the son and the father/ lover/ brother. And then suddenly Jaime is there before her. Maimed and changed, but Jaime nonetheless. Though the time and place is wildly inappropriate and Cersei is fearful of discovery, she is as hungry for him as he is for her.

The whole dynamic is different in the show, where Jaime has been back for weeks at the least, maybe longer, and he and Cersei have been in each other's company on numerous occasions, often quarreling. The setting is the same, but neither character is in the same place as in the books, which may be why Dan & David played the sept out differently. But that's just my surmise; we never discussed this scene, to the best of my recollection.


 * Also, I was writing the scene from Jaime's POV, so the reader is inside his head, hearing his thoughts. On the TV show, the camera is necessarily external. You don;t know what anyone is thinking or feeling, just what they are saying and doing. If the show had retained some of Cersei's dialogue from the books, it might have left a somewhat different impression — but that dialogue was very much shaped by the circumstances of the books, delivered by a woman who is seeing her lover again for the first time after a long while apart during which she feared he was dead. I am not sure it would have worked with the new timeline.


 * That's really all I can say on this issue. The scene was always intended to be disturbing...but I do regret if it has disturbed people for the wrong reasons."

TheMarySue.com assessed Martin's comment as terse and "diplomatic". Martin really only described the obvious: the scene is different than it was in the novels. Martin, however, is in a precarious position and cannot easily publicly criticize the adaptation, because legally HBO has the rights to it instead of him. Similarly, he has avoided making prominent criticisms about the changes to Talisa and Tysha in the TV series, again only tersely noting that the TV version is "different". Therefore, Martin's tightly-worded response might be indirectly saying through clenched teeth that he has no idea why it is different, he didn't tell them to change it, nor did they consult with him.

The one major fact we can ascertain from Martin's comments is that he was never informed of this change and didn't become aware of it until after the scene was filmed. While Martin did write the second episode of Season 4 ("The Lion and the Rose"), he does not personally sit down in the four-person writer's room - which in Season 4 consisted of Benioff, Weiss, Bryan Cogman, and at times their assistant Dave Hill (later promoted to full writer in Season 5). It is known, however, that while Martin is not present in the writer's room, they do send him outlines of all of their scripts: "While George isn't in the writer's room, he reads the outlines and gives his notes" (Bryan Cogman, New York Observer, April 2, 2015.)

There can only be two logical explanations:


 * 1) Martin never saw this in the script outlines because they weren't in the actual, main script for the episode. Benioff and Weiss never wrote in their script that they intended for Jaime to be raping Cersei or having anything other than fully consensual sex with her.  The final script is the physical embodiment of the writers' "intent", the explicit written instructions they give to the writers and director, and thus if Martin didn't see it in the script outline because it was not in the full script itself, then it was not Benioff and Weiss's "intent" to change the scene (meaning that it was perhaps an unauthorized invention of the director and/or actors).
 * 2) Martin never saw this in the script outline, but Benioff and Weiss later included it in the full script without informing him at all. Which would mean that either:
 * 3) They for some reason wanted to sneak it in knowing that Martin would object to it if he found out, or
 * 4) They simply didn't think that the change - explicitly giving written instructions to turn a consensual sex scene between two major characters into a rape scene - was "significant" enough to mention in the script outline that they sent to Martin.

=Did the TV series cast and crew actually intend to portray Jaime raping Cersei?=

The three groups involved are:
 * 1) The scriptwriters for the episode itself (who also happen to be the showrunners) David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
 * 2) The director of the episode, Alex Graves.
 * 3) The two cast members involved, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) and Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister).

A fourth factor is the editing process in post-production - which Alex Graves has stated he was also responsible for: he was the editor, he had final cut on how it appears, and there are no alternate or extended cuts of the scene. If they wanted to show a consensual sex scene, with Cersei initially hesitant but then dropping her fears and consenting to it, why did the scene cut away before clearly showing this? Was it Graves's intention to edit the camerawork in such a way that it appeared non-consensual, or did this simply happen by accident?

What the Scriptwriters initially had to say after the episode aired
Writers Benioff and Weiss remained surprisingly silent on the question of what their intent, if any, in this sex scene was, and if they indeed intended for it to be rape.

The only thing either of them said about it in the week following the episode's airing was in the "Inside the Episode" featurette for "Breaker of Chains" that was released by HBO the same day that the episode aired. Benioff is the only person to comment on the scene, and only very briefly (neither Weiss, nor Martin, nor Graves, nor the actors make any other comments in the video).

Benioff's exact words were: "It becomes a really kind of horrifying scene, because you see, obviously, Joffrey’s body right there, and you see that Cersei is resisting this. She’s saying no, and he’s forcing himself on her. So it was a really uncomfortable scene, and a tricky scene to shoot."

Benioff's comment was very brief, and didn't make clear what exactly he meant one way or the other, i.e. if he felt it was significantly different from the book version of the scene. He did not put into full context what, if anything, he meant by that comment. Observationally, he is of course pointing out that - even as in the books - it is a disturbing scene because Cersei and Jaime are having sex in front of their son's corpse. As for the consent in the scene, he mentions that Cersei is "resisting" this - which before they have sex she clearly is - and that he is "forcing" her - though whether he means "emotionally pressuring her" or "sexually assaulting" her is also unclear. Benioff doesn't elaborate on what is supposed to be going on in the scene, or why it is happening. Benioff made no other comments on the scene for months afterwards, never clarifying if his complete intent was that Jaime was "raping" Cersei in as many words (given that there is a strict difference between "rape" and "consensual sex"). Moreover...even if their intent was that Jaime was raping Cersei, Benioff and Weiss made no attempt to explain why they chose to make such a change (if indeed they did consciously intend to). Curiously for such a drastic change (if it even was meant to be a change), the scriptwriters Benioff and Weiss remained utterly silent about the matter.

Both TheMarySue.com and Vulture.com were aware of Benioff's line in the Inside the Episode video, and both expressed the view that it was so brief and vague that they weren't sure what he meant by it - when they were subsequently weighing it against interviews that the episode's director Alex Graves gave. When Vulture.com interviewed Alex Graves within a week of the episode's premiere (see below), they reached out to HBO to contact Benioff or Weiss so they could clarify what exactly their public position was (as Benioff's previous comment was so vague), but the article stated: "Editor’s note: We also reached out to HBO for comment from showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss; a rep for the network said they were unavailable." Thus major news sources felt that Benioff had not clearly expressed himself, and were attempting to contact Benioff and Weiss so they could publicly explain why the scene turned out this way.

Nonetheless, neither Benioff nor Weiss made any further statements on the content of the scene until a full 11 months later, just before Season 5 began (see below).

What the Cast members had to say
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Lena Headey both delayed a long time before answering questions about this sex scene, but both eventually said that they didn't think it as a rape scene, and did not play it as a rape scene when they were filming.

In late April 2014, the week after the episode aired, both Coster-Waldau and Headey were asked about the scene in separate interviews, but gave only vague and hesitant responses, seeming to not want to speak for the scriptwriters.

In January 2015, both actors appeared in a Q&A panel at the FanX convention in Salt Lake City. When directly asked about this scene in an unprepared question, Coster-Waldau explained that when they were filming the scene, he thought the characters having an intimate moment next to their dead son's corpse is what would cause the outrage, and it never even occurred to either of them that the sex would be construed as controversial. This is the reason why the actors and writers pervasively made stray comments that it was a "tricky" scene to film and they had reservations about it - not because they thought it was a rape scene. Even book readers who acknowledge that it was consensual in the books still consider it somewhat disturbing that they had sex in front of their son's corpse.

The actors' exact words were:


 * Nikolaj Coster-Waldau: "Maybe I was just being naive, but I never thought of it as rape, I thought of it as two people that had a long, very physical relationship and they were both in a very extreme emotional state and needed something that was expressed in that way.  I didn't see it as rape."


 * Lena Headey: "That sense of loss and not being able to stem your grief. Like Nick said, they've had this long history and it was a moment where she needed him, that's how I was playing it.  The confusion was a just mother who had lost her son. We didn't set out for it to be taken as such [as rape], but I guess people see what they see."

What Director Alex Graves had to say
The comments by the episode's director Alex Graves are the most confusing. In the week after "Breaker of Chains" aired, Graves gave three separate interview - with HitFix.com, Vulture.com, and HollywoodReporter.com - in which he made statements which were at times self-contradictory.

In HitFix.com, Graves said:


 * "Well, it becomes consensual by the end, because anything for them ultimately results in a turn-on, especially a power struggle. Nobody really wanted to talk about what was going on between the two characters, so we had a rehearsal that was a blocking rehearsal. And it was very much about the earlier part with Charles (Dance) and the gentle verbal kidnapping of Cersei's last living son. Nikolaj came in and we just went through one physical progression and digression of what they went through, but also how to do it with only one hand, because it was Nikolaj. By the time you do that and you walk through it, the actors feel comfortable going home to think about it. The only other thing I did was that ordinarily, you rehearse the night before, and I wanted to rehearse that scene four days before, so that we could think about everything. And it worked out really well. That's one of my favorite scenes I've ever done."

A key point from this is that here, Graves claims that he never really gave Coster-Waldau or Headey specific instructions on what the characters emotions were in this scene, purely focusing on their physical mechanics. He didn't tell Headey "Cersei is not consenting, this is rape".

In Vulture.com, Graves said:


 * Question: "What kinds of things did you talk about with the showrunners in terms of how to play the sex scene between Jaime and Cersei, and why was it changed from how Martin had written it in the book?"
 * Graves: "There wasn't a lot of talk about it, to be honest. Everybody knew and then confirmed with each other this is a sort of animalistic, desperate escape moment in the middle of a tragedy that is twisted enough that only Jaime and Cersei could pull it off. That was all that was really discussed besides laying out the scene physically, and what would and wouldn't happen in terms of protecting the actors. The biggest focus was how to evolve out of the larger scene with Tywin into that. Going from a kidnapping of Cersei’s only living son, into Jaime’s “Hey, I came to visit, and I’m starting to feel like we could have sex” and they have sex. It’s the last place you think anyone's going to have sex. So it was working from Tywin’s exit to that first kiss, which is met with rejection, complicating things for him. It was very tricky.


 * Question: "There’s a lot of chatter about it online this morning. Have you read the books?"
 * Graves: "I have read a lot of the books, but I didn’t read that scene because I wasn’t doing that scene; I was doing the scene our writers wrote. Lena is very conscious of wanting to focus on what the show is doing rather than worrying about something in the books that may or may not affect her.


 * Question: "The reason I ask is because many of the people who have read the books are questioning why the scene was changed. As described in the book, told from Jaime’s point of view, Cersei initially resists but quickly gives her consent."
 * Graves: "I see, I see. What was talked about was that it was not consensual as it began, but Jaime and Cersei, their entire sexual relationship has been based on and interwoven with risk. And Jaime is very much ready to have sex with her because he hasn’t made love to her since he got back, and she’s sort of cajoled into it, and it is consensual. Ultimately, it was meant to be consensual. [The writers] tried to complicate it a little more with her rejecting his new hand and the state of things."


 * Question: "One of my colleagues suggested that the tweak, making Jaime the kind of person who might force himself on Cersei, might have happened to remind viewers that he’s not a morally upright guy, pouring out his heart to Brienne notwithstanding. Was that part of the decision to your knowledge?"
 * Graves: "No. It’s a very, very complicated scene. The thing about it is that Jaime has come home and is trying to convince himself that things are the same: that he and Cersei are a unit, they’re in love, they have sex, everything comes out of that bond. And he’s desperate to reinvigorate that and it has not been working. That’s part of what’s behind him, that lie he’s telling himself, that seasons two and three didn’t happen. So it’s a last act of stupid clinging to what’s been home for him, because it will never be the same. It’s also setting up something that happens in the finale. For Cersei, she is so blindsided and in the middle of the audacious murder of Joffrey at his own wedding, she’s standing there pondering all this with her other son, her sweet son. And her father comes in and basically says, “There is no way you’re going to have control over this kid” and takes him away. So she’s just empty. She’s decimated. What I said is what we just talked about. It’s just fleshing it out.


 * Question: "You say it “becomes consensual by the end.” I rewatched the scene this morning, and it ends with Cersei saying, “It’s not right, it’s not right,” and Jaime on top of her saying, “I don’t care. I don’t care.” It leaves some room for debate. Were you involved with cutting the scene? Was there a longer version of the scene that might have read more like they were both consenting?
 * Graves: "It’s my cut of the scene. The consensual part of it was that she wraps her legs around him, and she’s holding on to the table, clearly not to escape but to get some grounding in what’s going on.-- And also, the other thing that I think is clear before they hit the ground is she starts to make out with him. The big things to us that were so important, and that hopefully were not missed, is that before he rips her undergarment, she’s way into kissing him back. She’s kissing him aplenty."


 * Question: "Right, and part of what she’s resisting is that this is all happening next to Joffrey’s body.
 * Graves: "It’s bizarre, and I highlighted that in how I shot it..."


 * Question: "How does this interaction change Cersei? She’d been raped by Robert. How does Jaime’s aggression in this moment affect her?"
 * Graves: "She needs Jaime to deal with Tyrion. That’s really what that scene is about. It’s her saying, “I want you to kill him,” and Jaime saying, “I don’t see why I would kill him.” That’s probably the main reason she consents, is to pull him in, because she’s results-oriented, period. The only man she really feels any respect and admiration for, and authority for, is her father. Beyond that, she loves her children. I think — and I say this personally — she’s largely using Jaime and he hasn’t figured it out yet."

Weighing these two interviews, TheMarySue.com concluded:

"OK. So going by these two statements it could - could — be read as a case of Graves genuinely intending to film consensual sex but just screwing it up royally. He needed to get some outside eyes on that incredibly sensitive scene and ask their owners “Hey, just curious, you’re getting that Cersei’s consenting, right? No? Crap, back to the editing room.” It’s not like he walked into work that day thinking “I’m going to film one of the show’s fan-favorite characters raping his sister.”"

Several key points were therefore established by these first two interviews:


 * 1) When specifically asked if the showrunners Benioff and Weiss told him anything specific about how to film the scene, Graves stated that "There wasn't a lot of talk about it, to be honest." -- they gave him no specific verbal instructions.
 * 2) Graves stated that he didn't read the book scene (intentionally, due to the ongoing fear of accidentally mixing it up with how the TV version of the storyline is at times slightly different). Graves stated that he was purely working off of the scene as written in the script (and, again, he stated that he received no verbal instructions from Benioff and Weiss that were not in the written script).  This does mean that some of the nuances of the scene from the novels might have been lost on him - or not, depending on how well Benioff and Weiss conveyed written instructions through their script.
 * 3) Graves only really gave the actors instructions on physical movements in the scene (blocking), and said he really didn't discuss with them what their characters were thinking or their emotional states (i.e. meaning he didn't specifically tell Lena Headey, "Cersei is terrified, not consenting to this, and being raped".
 * 4) Graves's phrasing was that "the scene" (not necessarily the sex act) was not "consensual when it began"...but he repeatedly emphasized that it was consensual "by the end" (again, not clear if he meant before or after they were actually having sex). His phrasing is vague, but if he meant emotional consent when Cersei first warns Jaime that they will be caught in such a public place, it is not that different from how the book scene generally played out.
 * 5) Graves also adamantly insists that three things were intended to show Cersei's consent: wrapping her legs around Jaime, that she should be visibly kissing him back, and that at the end she clutches the tablecloth to balance herself to continue to have sex.  This raises two other issues:
 * 6) First, are these actions visible enough in the final cut? Can the audience tell that Cersei is actively kissing Jaime back and consenting?
 * 7) Second, the point is that regardless of whether they were visible or not, at the least, Graves publicly stated that he intended to have Headey perform physical actions in the scene to affirm that Cersei is consenting to it.
 * 8) Graves flatly denied that this was an attempt to make Jaime seem like a morally grey character again, to balance him out after he had been on a redemptive arc for the past season, and make him a more complex character who is not always morally upright. (This is important because before Season 5, Benioff specifically claimed that this was his actual intention when he wrote the script, but that will be addressed in turn below).
 * 9) Graves was the editor of the scene, not a secondary cameraman, and not Benioff or Weiss. He stated "It's my cut of the scene".
 * 10) Graves points out that the idea was for the scene to mirror another scene that occurs in the Season 4 finale...occurred seven episodes later, and airing two months later, which viewers had no way of anticipating. In "The Children", the roles are reversed, and Cersei sexually advances on Jaime while he is in the White Sword tower, and he is telling her to stop for fear they might be caught, but he then gives in to her and consents.
 * 11) Graves stated in as many words that "the main reason Cersei consents" is because she is manipulating Jaime, or rather, she knows that she needs him on her side if she is going to succeed in convincing him to kill Tyrion for her.

That same week, however, Alex Graves also did an interview with HollywoodReporter.com. On reading it, TheMarySue.com pointed out that he bizarrely shifted to describing the scene as "forced sex" and "rape" -- even though the other two interviews (particularly the length one with Vulture.com), Graves emphatically and repeatedly stated that it was "consensual".

Alex Graves's specific statements about the scene in his interview with HollywoodReporter.com were:


 * Question: "This feels like Tywin's episode. What was filming his scene with him and Tommen like?"
 * Graves: That was one of the greatest days I've ever had filming. To film Charles (Dance) kidnapping Lena's son with words for three minutes of monologue -- and to have Lena keeping up with him at the highest bar of acting possible with no words at all -- was a joy. It was directorial crack to do that scene. It was one of my favorite scenes I've ever shot. It's almost like a build from Ordinary People meets a Hitchcock movie, because you're sitting here going, "This is so dysfunctional and bizarre." She's a wreck. Tywin is really going on about this historical stuff, and you slowly start to go, "He's kidnapping her only boy," because she's not going to have him anymore. And then he succeeds, and then Jaime comes in and he rapes her. That was like -- you read the scene and go, "Wait, who's directing this?"


 * Question: "That whole scene has to be one of the most taboo, disturbing things that has happened on the show."
 * Graves: "I'm never that excited about going to film forced sex. But the whole thing for me was about dead Joffrey lying there, watching the whole thing. (Showrunners) David (Benioff) and Dan (Weiss) loved that, and I was like, I wanted to make sure I had Jack in there as much as I could. Of course Lena and Nickolaj laughed every time I would say, "You grab her by the hair, and Jack is right there," or "You come around this way and Jack is right there."

These statements seem vague and contradictory, however, it does seem that Graves is speaking more loosely in the HollywoodReporter.com interview - that is, he seems to have considered the scene to be Jaime emotionally "forcing" himself on Cersei, but really didn't keep good track of where the lines blurred between "emotional pressure", "forcing himself", and "rape"...to the point that he uses these terms interchangeably. Judging from his lengthier and more direct answers to questions about this in his Vulcture.com interview - in which the questions were both more numerous and much more specific - Graves's comments were at times vague or bizarrely misusing sensitive language, but he did repeatedly make it clear that the sex scene was meant to be "consensual".

The week after the episode aired, Elio Garcia, owner of Westeros.org and co-author of the World of Ice and Fire sourcebook with Martin, appeared on Sky Atlantic's Thronecast to discuss it. He summed up the comments of Graves and others on the scene, saying:


 * "It seems that what they wanted to convey is not what shows up on the screen in the end. There have been interviews with the director in particular, Alex Graves, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as well, where they said, they wanted to do something ambiguous, more ambiguous than what's in the novel, but they still wanted the ambiguity of, well, maybe this is how they're interacting, that it is forceful and its rough and its dark, but it's in the end a consensual relationship.


 * But a lot of people couldn't see that on the screen, and they've missed some of the sexual scenes between them prior to this point, because a lot of it is in flashback. They don't have that.  In fact in the books the dynamic between the two characters is actually kind of like that:  Jaime initiates, and Cersei  kind of always says "stop that, uninterested" - and then she gives in to it.  And it's not intended as "rape", that is their sexual dynamic, and it's worth remembering these are siblings, these are twins, this is not a normal sexual relationship by any stretch of the imagination."

The Atlantic also surmised:


 * "Given the responses by Graves and Coster-Waldau, it seems more likely that everyone involved somehow believed they’d constructed a scene that was more unpleasant than the book’s but still at least moderately ambiguous, rather than the not-at-all-ambiguous scene that viewers saw. How does a mistake like this occur? My best guess is that Benioff and Weiss indulged in their longstanding penchant for ramping up the sex and violence of their source material, and this time they did it so carelessly that even they didn't recognize where it had taken them.

As TheDailyBeast.com more bluntly put it: "The rape wasn't supposed to be a rape. It was supposed to look consensual. The filmmakers messed up."

Therefore, as surmised by the editorial staffs of Westeros.org and TheMarySue.com, it seems that Alex Graves became so eager to turn up the level of how "dark and edgy" the scene was that he – quite unintentionally – made it look like a rape scene to any new viewer who had no idea what the book scene it was attempting to portray was like. In a lamentably poor direction choice, Graves chose to shoot and then edit the scne in such a way that it seemed needlessly "dark and ambiguous", but it honestly never occurred to him that viewers would not take the matter of rape and sexual assault as an ambiguous and unanswered question, but arrive at the logical conclusion (based solely on the scene as it aired) that they were actually attempting to show a "rape scene".

Footage analysis
Besides the dialogue in the Jaime/Cersei sex scene (quoted above), there are also the physical movements of the actors visible in Graves's final edit of the scene. The entire scene lasts about 50 seconds. Analyzing this footage is not entirely useful: it doesn't change the fact that many viewers still thought it looked like Jaime was assaulting Cersei, nor does it exactly confirm the intent of the writers and director. What analysis of it can demonstrate is if the actors were indeed performing the physical actions meant to show consent which Graves claims he instructed them to perform, as he stated in his interview with Vulture.com, which to reiterate were:


 * Graves: "It's my cut of the scene. The consensual part of it was that she wraps her legs around him, and she’s holding on to the table, clearly not to escape but to get some grounding in what's going on.-- And also, the other thing that I think is clear before they hit the ground is she starts to make out with him. The big things to us that were so important, and that hopefully were not missed, is that before he rips her undergarment, she’s way into kissing him back. She’s kissing him aplenty."

Graves claimed that:
 * 1) Cersei wraps her legs around Jaime to embrace him consensually
 * 2) Cersei shows her consent by grabbing the table to steady herself
 * 3) Cersei is indeed passionately kissing Jaime back

Relevant screenshots from the scene, with descriptions:

From analysis of the footage, it can be determined that:


 * 1 - Yes, Headey does appear to be consensually kissing Jaime back and even drawing him in for a deeper kiss - and thus does appear to be acting off of set directions which told her to play the scene as angry but consensual, not rape (instead of hitting Jaime throughout). However, this is visible for under one second, not in focus because both actors are sinking to their knees and the camera is jostling around to follow them, and then the camera quickly pans down to their waists so their heads aren't even in the frame.
 * If Headey actually was actively returning Coster-Waldau's kisses, the camera angles Graves chose to use in his final edit can barely catch it - particularly because many shots only show the back of Cersei's head. There are several shots in which Headey stops hitting Coster-Waldau and by her body poster might be returning his kisses (thus signalling consent) but the audience can't see through the back of Cersei's head.
 * 2 - If it was Graves's intent to show Headey consensually steadying herself against the table, before she is laying on her back on the ground, he failed for the same reason: there are a few shots in which judging by her body posture/arm position Headey might be leaning back against the table (to steady herself as she actively presses forward into Jaime) - but the camera cannot see through Joffrey's corpse to see what Headey's hands are doing.  In the shots from the other camera angle that did make it into the finished shot, we can only see Headey pushing Coster-Waldau (or, for a fraction of a second, embracing his head for a deeper kiss).
 * Also note that in this same shot, from the other side of the table looking across Joffrey's corpse, is another shot in which the camera simply can't see through Cersei's head, because she is standing between Jaime and Joffrey's corpse, and thus facing away from the camera. Headey might have switched to actively kissing Coster-Waldau again, just as she has stopped pushing him, but once again, but this camera angle cannot show it.
 * Once Headey is on the ground, the scene ends with her gripping the altar cloth tightly in her left hand - though she doesn't need to that that for balance at this point. This gesture is so vague that it could be taken either way:  Graves could have intended this to indicate Cersei was feeling consensual pleasure, but the shot's meaning is so vague that the audience was just as likely to interpret it as Cersei gripping the altar cloth in pain and terror.
 * 3 - Graves claimed that the camera shows Headey consensually wrapping her legs around Jaime once they are both on the ground. While Headey might indeed be doing this - her legs do seem to be up in the air she is wearing so many heavy layers of skirts that it is difficult to see what her legs are doing at all.

In conclusion, the theories forwarded by Vulture.com and TheMarySue.com do seem to be correct: the scene was intended to show consent, but the scene suffered from vague camerawork and bad editing. Graves's claims that he had the actors perform several physical motions to show consent do appear to be correct - but he failed to adequately convey through his camerawork what the actors were physically doing on set that day. Headey may be wrapping her legs around Coster-Waldau, but her skirts heavily obscure this even in replay. Headey does seem to be bracing against the table in some shots - but only when she is seen from the opposite side of the table, and the camera cannot show what her hands are doing because Joffrey's corpse is in the way. Finally and most importantly, there is a shot of Cersei grabbing the back of Jaime's head and clearly drawing him in for a closer kiss - but only for a fraction of a second, and only really visible using replay and screenshots. There could have been no realistic expectation that audiences would pick up on such minute details from such poorly filmed and poorly framed camerawork.

A point that this does reveal is that the actors were attempting to show a consensual sex scene, not rape, and that in tandem with his comments to Vulture.com, director Alex Graves was also attempting to show a consensual sex scene. This further implies that they were not instructed in the scripts - or by the scriptwriters themselves - to film it as a nonconsensual sex scene.

The Jaime/Cersei scene was subsequently ignored for the rest of Season 4
If Benioff and Weiss did intend that Jaime is actually raped Cersei and she did not consent, in subsequent episode she would presumably react as if he had - if not in dialogue, then in how scenes play out nonverbally. For the rest of the season, however, Cersei and Jaime don't act like he raped her – not that this would necessarily disprove that he did, but it is extremely incongruent that in the very next episode she doesn't particularly react as if that is what happened. The episode immediately following "Breaker of Chains" was "Oathkeeper", written not by Benioff and Weiss but by Bryan Cogman.

After the massive uproar in the press in the week immediately after "Breaker of Chains" aired, many critics and review sites were confused that all subsequent episodes did not include Cersei and Jaime acting in any way which would imply that he had sexually assaulted her. By the end of the season, multiple critics were puzzled, asking if it had ever been their intent that Jaime actually raped Cersei. If it was their intent, they seemingly wanted the audience to "ignore" that it had happened - while if it was not their intent, then they also seemingly wanted the audience to simply "ignore" that the camerawork had been done in a misleading way, even though Benioff and Weiss never made specific comments via HBO or interviews to explain the scene.

TheDailyBeast.com produced an article titled "Why We Should Pretend the ‘Game of Thrones’ Rape Scene Never Happened":


 * "In short, despite the fact that virtually nothing onscreen suggested “giving in,” neither the director of the scene nor the two actors who played it seem to think that Jaime raped Cersei—and the story itself is continuing to chug along as if the rape never happened and Jaime is still a character we're supposed to root for.


 * As a viewer, this is a very strange situation to find yourself in: a character has clearly done something horrible—but the show doesn't realize it. Maybe a consensual line was cut. Maybe Graves thought Cersei's body language was enough. Maybe everybody assumed that what was going on in their heads on set somehow materialized on screen. But it didn't. So how should we react?


 * We could continue to insist that Jaime is a rapist and spend the rest of the series complaining about his inconsistencies every time he's depicted in a relatively flattering light—thereby allowing a single instance of unintentionally ham-fisted filmmaking to jaundice our entire impression of his character.


 * Or, we could ignore the rape — at least from a narrative perspective. Pull the clip from the show. Play it in sex ed class. Use it as a teachable moment. Insist that it's as clear an illustration of rape as you're going to see on cable TV—because it is. That said, as you watch the rest of Game of Thrones, you might also want to consider pretending that Benioff and Weiss had adhered to George R.R. Martin's original scene instead of botching it."

In response to TheDailyBeast.com ' s article, YesMagazine.com produced an article titled "The Game of Thrones Rape Scene: Why We Can't Pretend It Never Happened" said:


 * Pretending that a rape never happened is a problem—regardless of whether it took place in fiction or reality. For the record, I’m not convinced by this argument. The showrunners may or may not have intended to write the scene as it unfolded, but as a viewer, that’s irrelevant. In the HBO series Game of Thrones, Jamie raped Cersei. Whether that was intentional or just bad filmmaking, Graves filmed and edited a rape scene. It happened; now the show’s creators have to write these characters with the consequences. No take-backs.


 * It's also clear that Alex Graves, the director of this episode, did not intend to film a rape scene. Graves’ defense winds through power struggles and turn-ons and consent, but his take on this scene is that Jaime and Cersei had, by the end, consensual sex. He did not intend to orchestrate a rape scene.

Whatever the interpretation to make, audiences and critics were noticeably confused about how to react to the scene - compounded by the fact that Benioff and Weiss made no specific comments about it for months, not even by the end of Season 4. As Bustle.com surmised:


 * "The fear that was plaguing so many of us has been confirmed: Game of Thrones forgot about Jaime’s despicable rape scene. The show continued Jaime Lannister’s storyline as though he never laid an unwanted golden hand on his sister-lover, Cersei. The Kingslayer continued on his path of redemption, and even more so, seemed to be one of the only people in the episode who displayed a touch of humanity. This was an episode that hailed Jaime Lannister when just last week, we wanted to spit on him.


 * It was like the rape never even happened. It was as though the show didn’t take a cue from its previous sexual assault that, oddly enough, wasn’t a rape scene in the book. (What’s up with these showrunners forgetting to add in a line in these sex scenes that indicates consent? Facial expressions of terror do not indicate consent — a “yes” does. You cannot say that a sex scene is consensual if there is no consent.) Sure, Cersei scowled at him, but never once did she mention the rape. Never once did we see Jaime trying to apologize. Instead, we saw Jaime doing nothing but good — like the Jaime we had gotten used to, except this time, it seemed oddly discordant.


 * We saw the Kingslayer talk to Tyrion and assert that, contrary to his sister-lover’s wishes, he would never slay his brother. He then — in a moment that would have been more poignant had he not forced himself upon Cersei last week — gave Brienne of Tarth the Valyrian steel sword formed from Ned Stark’s sword, a kick-ass suit of armor, and Podrick Payne as a squire. We saw in Brienne’s eyes that she truly has feelings for this man. She admires him and respects him. This episode seemed to be dressed in the notion that Jaime is, in fact, a good, respectable guy — and a whole lot of other problematic issues.


 * Ignoring the rape could be indicative of the fact that the showrunners do not believe last week’s scene to constitute as rape, which is why of course Jaime would continue on his redemptive path of doing good and earning love and respect. This also suggests a scary subtext of, “hey, maybe Jaime raped his sister, but that doesn’t take away from the rest of his life!” which is gross.


 * His constant acts of goodness also suggests that maybe the showrunners do see something flawed in that sex scene’s execution, and therefore decided to dunk Jaime in a pool of atonement, hoping that if the audience saw him do enough good this week that we’d move on and forget about last week. That’s quite an assumption to make of an audience — we’re not that quick to buy anything.

We can analyze this until the White Walkers take us, too, and we can come up with a plethora of theories, but the emphasis on Jaime’s redemptive qualities in this episode just seemed far too out of place, and '''it truly appeared as though the series decided to just move upward and onward, assuming the rape scene was forgotten. It was not,''' and as Brienne looked longingly in Jaime’s eyes, I thought, do you even know what he did to Cersei?"

TheMarySue.com also concluded that not really referring to the scene again, instead of as a long and developed subplot, trivializes rape.

Benioff's comments at the Oxford Union on the eve of the Season 5 premiere
On March 20, 2015, David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Kit Harington, and David Bradley appeared on a panel discussion at the Oxford Union, in anticipating of the premiere of Season 5 which was only three weeks away. The panel took place over 11 months after "Breaker of Chains" had aired containing the Jaime/Cersei sex scene - and 11 months after the firestorm of attention it received among critics and in the mass media, the time period when director Alex Graves and actors Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau had spoken about it in several interviews. In that entire 11 month period, Benioff and Weiss gave no public comment on the controversy to clearly state what their intent was.

During the Oxford Union panel's ending Q&A section, however, they were publicly asked about the scene for the first time, at a live event. A young female audience member directly asked them about the scene - which she specifically described a "a rape scene" - asking both why they had included it (what their intent was), and what sense it was supposed to make in the context of Jaime's overall storyarc:

University-age female audience member:
 * "I had a question about, well in general, about how women are represented in the show, because I think on the whole the show does a pretty good job. You've got a lot of female characters that aren't just stereotypical 'Strong Female Characters', you've got a real range of personalities.


 * But with that in mind, I was wondering specifically about a scene from Season 4, specifically, um, what I call 'the rape scene', which is where Cersei and Jaime, well, where Jaime forces Cersei to have sex next to their son's grave. Now people have interpreted this differently, but it did cause a lot of controversy when it came out.


 * So I was sort of wondering what your thoughts were on that? Why you included it?  What you felt it contributed to the character arcs, specifically Jaime?  And what your thoughts would be on dealing with this kind of material in the future, because this caused so much of a controversy?"

D.B. Weiss:
 * "Jon?" (Weiss tried to defuse the tension in the room from the heavy question by turning to John Bradley (Samwell Tarly), who was also at the panel - the joke being that Bradley wouldn't be in a position to know anything about it, and she was directly asking Benioff and Weiss). [room laughs]

David Benioff:
 * "Just to take the last question first, I would hope that it would not affect at all our future writing on the series, the fact that it created controversy, because I would hope that we have the courage to write what, you know, the show demands for that particular scene, regardless of what the reaction is going to be.


 * As far as the scene itself, it's, I think it's, I think it's - you're right to be disturbed by it. I think it was a brutal scene, I think it was, um, incredibly well acted by both Lena and Nikolaj, and it's, uh, it was a very very difficult day, it was a difficult thing to shoot, it was difficult, um, to, to - you now, be with the actors that day.  I mean, Lena's someone who gets so into the role, she's, part of the reason she's such a brilliant actress is because she becomes Cersei, you know, as soon as the director calls 'action', she becomes Cersei, and so it was a really rough day for her, and I thought she performed it brilliantly.  And it's, uh, it was a brutal thing to watch."


 * [Note: In the next paragraph Benioff finally attempts to answer the fan's specific question, why this change was made, and what the writers intended - but after spending over 60 seconds waffling and rambling, avoiding giving a straight answer.]


 * "But you know, it felt to us, when we were writing it, like this was, this is something the character was going to do at that moment. And it's a, it's a horrible thing, to do, and, and at the same time, I think, you know -


 * - I think part of the reason it was so hard for some people is because Jaime's had this kind of redemptive arc, and it feels like he's becoming a good guy, you know, and uh, and that's true, he did a lot of heroic things in previous seasons, and he saved Brienne, and all sorts of stuff. But we also can't remember that this is a guy who in the very first episode shoved a little boy out a window, you know.  He's not a good guy, he's a very complex guy.  He's not - and one of the things we loved about the books from the beginning, is that there are so many characters like this, that are not so easily aligned, you know, you can't put them in Dungeons & Dragons alignments of Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil, I don't know where you would align Jaime Lannister.


 * And in that particular scene, given what he had been through in the past, and his tortured relationship with his sister - this felt like something he would do. And, uh, it's a, it's again, you know, not bringing judgement on it, but that's - so we're going to write it, you know, without regard for whatever - furor, it might create.


 * And to our kind of, amazement, it actually, that scene led to a front page article in The New York Times, you know, which is the paper of record in the country where we're from, and also a newspaper which in four seasons has never failed to pan our show. So it was kind of amazing to see that, um, the fictional interaction between two fictional characters became front page news."

Kit Harington (Jon Snow, who wasn't in this scene and wasn't on set that day), then interjected with his opinion after Benioff finished (Weiss continued to remain silent):
 * "I think, if I might add, that one of the things that I think is exciting about our show is that it does cause controversy and it does cause discussion. And also, rape does happen on a daily basis in marriages, between apparently good people and bad people, and I think it is right to write scenes like that, and for people to view it.  I don't know, that's my opinion."

Benioff and Weiss have been suspiciously evasive about the issue
At the Oxford Union panel, over two minutes pass from when Benioff started talking, but during most of that time he simply waffled around avoiding the question, or turning to to tangents and talking points such as "the cast works very hard" or "that was a disturbing scene". D.B. Weiss could have said something but simply didn't (after his joke to John Bradley at the beginning). The original question directly asked the writers why they included what the questioner described as "a rape scene" and "Jaime forcing Cersei to have sex", as well as how that was supposed to fit within Jaime's overall character arc. Cutting out all of the time that Benioff was wandering off-topic, this is all that he responded on the matter:

David Benioff:
 * "But you know, it felt to us, when we were writing it, like this was, this is something the character was going to do at that moment...And in that particular scene, given what he had been through in the past, and his tortured relationship with his sister - this felt like something he would do."

Benioff didn't actually answer the first question: he simply restated the question back at the audience member.  "Why did Jaime do that?" "It felt like something he would do." Benioff didn't say if Jaime was supposed to be frustrated or taking revenge, or asserting control, or what exact motivations would make Jaime cross such a moral line that he has never crossed before. Benioff simply avoided answering the second question at all: how would this make sense in Jaime's character arc? When, as multiple critics above noted, Jaime has been in a redemptive arc since losing his sword hand up until this moment - and also Jaime's character arc after this scene, when no reference is made to it again throughout the rest of Season 4, and multiple major critics noted how bizarre it was that the very next episode had Cersei and Jaime interacting as if he had not raped her.

Benioff's response to the question at the Oxford Union panel raises several points:


 * 1 - Taken by surprise by a live question in front of an audience, Benioff takes a very long time going through unrelated tangents before making any attempt to answer the specific question. He even insisted on answering the last, unrelated question first, about violence on the show in general, taking more time before he had to address the specific question of the Jaime/Cersei sex scene.
 * 2 - Even after Benioff finally started addressing the question (60 seconds in), he repeatedly waffles and restarts in his response, with long pauses, or starting one sentence but abandoning it then trying to say something else.
 * 3 - Benioff actually tries to talk about "the question" three times, but then quickly moves on to talking about other things - he is not making a direct, clear statement, but seems to be umcomfortable and trying to avoid the question.
 * 4 - Benioff is not simply rambling about specific aspects of the question, and just getting a little carried away with it. Instead he is notably falling back on stock talking points:  fixating on phrases about how Lena Headey "works really hard and becomes Cersei", launching into a speech which has often come up when describing the series that it doesn't have stock charcters with clear alignments but they are all morally grey and complex, restating that the scene was "brutal" and "disturbing", without really addressing the question of why it is like this.
 * 5 - Benioff is using repetitive language, which are a tell in lie detection. He not only repeats stock phrases, but repeats the same vocabulary words multiple times without variation:  "difficult scene", "brutal scene",  "It felt to us...like this was something the character was going to do" - and then 60 seconds later - "this felt like something he would do."
 * 6 - Benioff is using distancing language, another tell for when someone is lying or anxiously avoiding giving a direct answer. Notice that in the entire, rambling two minute answer, Benioff never used the word "rape", or "assault", or "forced".  The questioner herself used these phrases, describing it as "a rape scene" and "Jaime forced Cersei to have sex" -- Benioff, while restating the question back at her, is careful to avoid using any of these terms.  Instead he uses demonstrative adjectives "did this", "did it", "that scene", etc. while avoiding using specific terms such as "rape" - which would be acknowledging that it was "a rape scene".  Even Kit Harington (who was uninvolved with the scene or its writing and speaking simply as a viewer) interjected a comment about depictions of marital rape - and referring to "marital rape" using those actual words.
 * 7 - Perhaps most importantly, this interview confirms that Benioff and Weiss were not ignorant of the massive media outcry over the Jaime/Cersei sex scene. Benioff even specifically cited his shock that The New York Times itself ran a reaction to the scene on its front page. Given the writers' past comments that they generally avoid reading critics (for fear that they would overreact to subjective complaints), as TheMarySue.com pointed out there were some suspicions that Benioff and Weiss were simply unaware of how controversial this scene was (or perhaps, the editing of this scene as it appeared in its final form).  This interview confirms that they opposite was true:  they were painfully aware that the scrutiny of the entire mass media was on them, up to The New York Times itself - which may go a long way to explain why they were hesitant to give any specific response, which would be further scrutinized.

Benioff was clearly taken off-guard and upset by the live question, anxious, and unsure of how to respond. It would be inaccurate to say that he was "lying", because he in truth he was hesitant to make any specific reply to the question (simply restating it, but using distancing language instead of "rape").

Fundamentally, despite the media outcry over the scene, in which a major point is that major critics weren't even certain what the writers had intended by the scene - in almost a full year, Benioff and Weiss avoided making any public comments simply to clarify what their intent was (even if they had intended it as a drastic change in which Jaime is actually raping Cersei).

From this it can be concluded:

In an interview with Observer just before Season 5 began, writer Bryan Cogman was asked about the Jaime/Cersei sex scene, but declined to comment, except to say that he didn't write it, his superiors Benioff and Weiss did, so it would be out of place for him to comment on it instead of them - given that, as he put it, they had not "publicly" made a significant comment about it since it aired in early Season 4:
 * 1 - This is not a question that the scriptwriters have been eager to answer.
 * 2 - Benioff and Weiss were painfully aware of the intense scrutiny and controversy this sex scene caused in the media, and were stunned that even the front page of The New York Times was talking about it.
 * Point 2 may go a long way towards explaining Point 1.


 * Question: The enormous, intense audience brings additional scrutiny, and the reaction can get very vociferous. I’m thinking of “that scene” from last season with Jaime and Cersei in the sept next to Joffrey’s body. Book purists felt the scene altered the character dynamic, people concerned primarily with social justice issues felt it excused sexual assault, and people parsed every word Dan, Dave, director Alex Graves and actors Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau said about it for what the scene was “really” doing. If you can speak to it specifically, what happened there?:


 * Cogman: "My bosses, the showrunners, haven’t publicly commented on it. So while there’s a lot I could say about it and the media’s reaction to it...I don’t feel it’s appropriate."

The actors and director denied that they received such instructions
Despite the fact that Benioff's comments at the Oxford Union panel did not specifically answer the questions that were directed at him, he did make several other comments about the scene - though given his surprise at the questions and notable struggle to phrase them clearly, he may have misspoken some of these without pausing to articulate himself fully - a live panel question is not the same as a measured answer in a print interview.

Speaking very loosely in response to a live question, then, Benioff raised three points:


 * 1 - He tacitly claimed that he and Weiss actually "wrote" the scene - as in, gave specific instructions in their script that they gave the director and actors that it was supposed to be this way.
 * An outgrowth of the first point: Benioff was hesitant to use the word "rape" in his response - yet when the questioner used the word "rape", and even Harington used the word "rape", Benioff did not interject to correct them.  Thus Benioff did not make an effort to confirm or deny that he intended to write a "rape" scene, but avoided the question.
 * 2 - Benioff tacitly implied that he was on set the day this scene was filmed - not necessarily where it was filmed, but briefly implied that he at least saw Lena Headey later that day. Taken to an extreme, this could be taken to imply that he was on-set and giving instructions that day, though his comment is very vague.
 * 3 - Benioff's most substantive claim - other than restating the question as "we felt it was something he would do" - was to essentially put forward the claim that they were trying to remind the audience that Jaime is a very morally grey and complex character. The questioner specifically asked that Jaime "raping" Cersei didn't make sense in context of character arc, either before or after the scene (it was never mentioned again, as if it wasn't filmed that way).

Each of these four points could be taken to mean that Benioff "claimed" or "stated" that his intention was that Jaime actually raped Cersei -- but he is being so careful to avoid giving a definitive response that if that is the case, he was not very clear or enthusiastic about it. Moreover, all three of these points that Benioff raised were contradicted by statements that the director and actors gave months before. Even "contradicted", however, is a strong term - because Benioff was being very vague and noncommittal.

1 - Unlike actors and directors - whose specific "intent" is intangible - scriptwriters leave physical proof of their instructions and intent for an episode: the script they wrote.

Did the script that Benioff and Weiss, in as many words, give instructions that Jaime was "raping" Cersei? Or "forcing her to have sex"? This could hypothetically be proven or disproven with a copy of the script.

George R.R. Martin stated that no mention of this scene being any different from the consensual sex in the book version was made in the script outline he was given, nor did Benioff or Weiss ever mention it to him verbally. Martin did not see the finished script. There are two possible explanations: first, the finished script did contain specific instructions that it was rape, but Benioff and Weiss either didn't think it was important enough to tell Martin about, or consciously hid it from him because they knew he would reject it. The second possibility is what many review sites such as TheMarySue.com concluded: Benioff and Weiss did not give instructions that it was rape in the script, and it was thus never their "intention" - and the impression that it was was simply an accident due to bad camerawork and bad editing.

Why would Headey and Coster-Waldau state at FanX 2015 that they never considered this scene to be depicting "rape" and did not play it as such - if the script provided for them by Benioff and Weiss specifically stated that it was? Their statements, if true, lend evidence that Benioff and Weiss never "wrote" it as a rape scene in the script.

Director Alex Graves (despite a few bizarre and insensitive uses of terminology) publicly and repeatedly - particularly in his Vulture.com interview - described the sex scene as "consensual" and denied that it was "rape". If Graves had received specific written instructions in the script from Benioff and Weiss that it was "rape" or "nonconsensual", he would have cited this.


 * When specifically asked if the showrunners Benioff and Weiss told him anything specific about how to film the scene, Graves stated that "There wasn't a lot of talk about it, to be honest." -- they gave him no specific verbal instructions.
 * Graves stated he didn't read the book scene, but was working strictly from the description given in the script Benioff and Weiss produced.
 * Graves didn't only gave the actors instructions on physical movements, not what their emotional states are.
 * Graves (while using vague and at times bizarre language) stated multiple times in the Vulture.com interview that the sex was "consensual".
 * Graves insisted that he had the actors perform three physical actions in the scene, intended to indicate that the sex was consensual: Cersei is returning Jaime's kisses, Cersei wraps her legs around Jaime, and Cersei grips the table to steady herself to lean into Jaime.  Very close analysis with replay and screencaps confirms that the actors were indeed performing these motions - though whether or not he adequately focused on these actions, or adequately conveyed this intent to the audience, is another matter.  Screencaps clearly reveal that Headey was embracing Coster-Waldau's head to return his kisses - visible only for a fraction of a second.  Cersei's heavy skirts mean we can't prominently see that she is wrapping her legs around Jaime.  If Cersei is indeed gripping the table, Joffrey's corpse is in the way, so we can't see it.

Graves would not have had Cersei returning Jaime's kisses - confirmed in screencaps, albeit very badly filmed and edited - if the script Benioff and Weiss provided him with instructed that it was rape.

One group or the other is not being entirely truthful: the writers, or both the director and actors.  The director and actors said they considered the scene to be "consensual sex" and "not rape". The writers...did not so much say "it was rape", but when presented with the accusation that it was, nervously avoided acknowledging or denying it. So either Benioff and Weiss did write instructions that it was "rape" in their script, or Graves, Headey, and Coster-Waldau are all lying.

Yet Benioff only said in the vaguest wording that they "wrote" the scene - he gave no specifics about the "scripting process" to indicate that this actually existed in the script. Nor did he say they "wrote it as rape" - his comments broadly said they "wrote the scene". The most he said was: "But you know, it felt to us, when we were writing it, like this was, this is something the character was going to do at that moment." - "And, uh, it's a, it's again, you know, not bringing judgement on it, but that's - so we're going to write it, you know, without regard for whatever - furor, it might create."

Benioff's comments did not firmly establish or prove that the script - the physical embodiement of his "intent" for the scene - actually changed it into a rape scene. He provided no clear explanation of how his "writing" produced scene many interpreted as a rape scene - he was largely avoiding giving a specific answer.

2 - Graves said that Benioff and Weiss also didn't even give specific verbal instructions, nor substantive discussions about its content. It also does not appear were they on set when the scene was filmed. Had Benioff or Weiss verbally instructed Graves, "this is a rape scene", he would have noted in the Vulture.com interview as something noteworthy they told him. Instead he stated that he didn't really discuss the scene with the writers, via verbal or written means, and was relying purely on their script as written.

From the Vulture.com interview:


 * Question: "What kinds of things did you talk about with the showrunners in terms of how to play the sex scene between Jaime and Cersei, and why was it changed from how Martin had written it in the book?"
 * Graves: "There wasn't a lot of talk about it, to be honest. Everybody knew and then confirmed with each other this is a sort of animalistic, desperate escape moment in the middle of a tragedy that is twisted enough that only Jaime and Cersei could pull it off. That was all that was really discussed besides laying out the scene physically, and what would and wouldn't happen in terms of protecting the actors.

This probably indicates that neither of the writers were actually on set that day - nor is that unusual, for such a large production filming multiple scenes in multiple countries at once. At the Oxford Union panel, Benioff made passing and vague mention that "it was difficult, um, to, to - you now, be with the actors that day" - but he could have just meant he ran into them later that day in the green room.

Regardless, Graves said he had no further input or discussion from the writers, and neither he nor the actors indicated that they were on set with them.

3 - This could not be an attempt to portray Jaime as a morally grey character, because when he was asked, Graves specifically denied this possibility.

Benioff said:
 * "I think part of the reason it was so hard for some people is because Jaime's had this kind of redemptive arc, and it feels like he's becoming a good guy, you know, and uh, and that's true, he did a lot of heroic things in previous seasons, and he saved Brienne, and all sorts of stuff. But we also can't remember that this is a guy who in the very first episode shoved a little boy out a window, you know. He's not a good guy, he's a very complex guy."

Yet Graves denied this months earlier by saying:
 * Question: "One of my colleagues suggested that the tweak, making Jaime the kind of person who might force himself on Cersei, might have happened to remind viewers that he’s not a morally upright guy, pouring out his heart to Brienne notwithstanding. Was that part of the decision to your knowledge?"

Graves: "No. It’s a very, very complicated scene. The thing about it is that Jaime has come home and is trying to convince himself that things are the same: that he and Cersei are a unit, they’re in love, they have sex, everything comes out of that bond."

In comparison, given the rambling nature of Benioff's spur-of-the-moment response to a question he was unprepared to answer, it seems more like Benioff was falling back onto a familiar talking point of "the characters in this series are morally grey and complicated", even though that could not have been his intention. Very specifically in this case, either Graves or Benioff was not telling the truth: Graves's comment was filled with more details regarding that specific moment, while Benioff veered off into a generic description of the show having morally grey characters. It seems likely that Benioff was simply struggling to find an answer.

Nor does Benioff provide any explanation for why the rest of Season 4 seems to ignore that Jaime raped Cersei. If they had intended to show Jaime raping Cersei as part of a planned character nuance, they would have had Cersei reacting to it in any way during the subsequent episodes. If it was an accident (from sloppy camerawork and editing by Graves), we would expect to see basically what we saw: the next episode not acting as if the previous episode included a rape scene. When directly asked about how having Jaime "rape" Cersei fit with his storyarc, Benioff simply avoided the question.

If anything, the point raised by The Daily Beast, Yes Magazine, and Bustle stands: if Benioff and Weiss had actually intended for Jaime to be raping Cersei, actually had it scripted - then in the next episode both characters would have reacted as if he had just raped her. Instead, they bizarrely ignored it - because it wasn't intended as that, but was simply a camerawork and editing error.

Similarly, if Benioff and fully thought it out as a "rape scene", and given these instructions in his script, he should have been able to quickly recite the reasoning he had for why this change was made, and how it affected the character arcs, that he gave to the cast, director, and other writers. Instead, he spent two full minutes waffling between talking points and avoiding the question.

Instead, Benioff fumbled around for a rationale, and only repeated the question back at the audience member - because he never made that change, in his scripts. He cannot provide a coherent explanation for why he chose to make it a rape scene, because that was never his intention.

Conclusion: Benioff and Weiss did not intend to write this as a rape scene
The director and actors said they were working from the script as written by Benioff and Weiss. Neither said they received verbal instruction from Benioff and Weiss separate from the script - indeed, when directly asked, Graves said they didn't really discuss the scene at all before he filmed it. Graves, Headey, and Coster-Waldau have all said that they thought it was a consensual sex scene, and indeed, physical actions you can see Headey performing (grabbing Jaime's head to kiss him more deeply) did happen when they were shooting the scene, they are just badly filmed and barely appear within the camera frame.

All of this points to the conclusion that the script Benioff and Weiss produced never included instructions that this was "rape" or "non-consensual sex", and that was simply a false impression given by very bad camerawork and bad film editing. It was not Benioff and Weiss's intention that Jaime was raping Cersei. Nor could their script have included such instructions.

The earlier analysis of TheMarySue.com appears to be correct:

"...a case of Graves genuinely intending to film consensual sex but just screwing it up royally. He needed to get some outside eyes on that incredibly sensitive scene and ask their owners “Hey, just curious, you’re getting that Cersei’s consenting, right? No? Crap, back to the editing room.” It’s not like he walked into work that day thinking “I’m going to film one of the show’s fan-favorite characters raping his sister.”"

As does the view expressed by Elio Garcia of Westeros.org:


 * "It seems that what they wanted to convey is not what shows up on the screen in the end. There have been interviews with the director in particular, Alex Graves, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as well, where they said, they wanted to do something ambiguous, more ambiguous than what's in the novel, but they still wanted the ambiguity of, well, maybe this is how they're interacting, that it is forceful and its rough and its dark, but it's in the end a consensual relationship.

Both actors have said they didn't play it as a rape scene. The director said he didn't intend it to be a rape scene. Physical actions the actors can be observed making (albeit only through freeze frame) do seem to indicate that when they were acting out the scene on set, it looked more consensual (Headey passionately pulling Coster-Waldau's head closer to hers - which was only visible for a fraction of a second in the final edit). All of this can be explained relatively easily.

Yet the question remains: 'Why have Benioff and Weiss been so utterly hesitant to confirm or'' deny that this was intended to be a rape scene. Why didn't they simply say in an interview the week after the episode aired that the impression it was rape was not intentional, but merely due to bad camerawork and editing?'''

=Why didn't the writers simply acknowledge this was a camera and editing error right after the episode aired?=

Possible responses
TheDailyBeast.com, YesMagzine.com, and Bustle.com each offered views on how to respond to this entire situation - not only that this was apparently an accident of camerawork and editing and not an intent to show Jaime actually raping Cersei, but also that it was ignored for the rest of the season - even if it wasn't rape.

They raised the issue of creator intent versus audience perception. Taking as a given that this was an accident and not the intent of the creators, there are still many audience members who are unaware of any of these comments and interviews, and who honestly interpreted the confusing camerawork and editing to mean that Jaime was actually raping Cersei. Even for audience members who have been informed that the creator's intent was something else, that doesn't change that they were offended.

YesMagazine.com took the view that audience perception is all that matters, and even thought it acknowledged that the scene was just badly edited and not intended as a rape scene, felt that the TV series had to follow up on it as if it was, based on audience perception:

"Whether that was intentional or just bad filmmaking, Graves filmed and edited a rape scene. It happened; now the show’s creators have to write these characters with the consequences. No take-backs."

TheDailyBeast.com felt that there were two options:

1 - "Pretend it never happened" from a perception viewpoint: that is, Jaime actually raped Cersei within the narrative, but the audience should just forget about it because it doesn't match the overall character, or

2-"Pretend it never happened" from an intent viewpoint: bitterly pretend that the director never filmed the scene so badly, which TheDailyBeast.com bluntly said was "ignoring the rape" because it would ignore how viewers were offended.

Bustle.com was annoyed that even if we are to understand that this was merely a filming error, the creators made no efforts to fix the video, to redress what happened.

Benioff and Weiss's response
Given these arguments, it becomes easy to see how Benioff and Weiss must have felt they were in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation:


 * If they re-edited and re-released the episode (something like overdubbing Cersei's lines so off-screen it sounds like Lena Headey is shouting "Yes!"), it could have been seen as attempting to deny that some viewers were offended by the originally aired version.
 * ...which would mean that their other option would be to leave it as it was, but then move forward acknowledging that Jaime had raped Cersei in-universe? Even though this made no sense in his character arc?

Given the intense media scrutiny they were under, it is easy to see that Benioff and Weiss were horrified. As Benioff noted, he was stunned that the front page of The New York Times itself reported on it.

What generally seems to have happened is that Benioff and Weiss that anything they said would only make matters worse, and end up offending one side or the other...so they avoided talking about the controversy at all, and hoped it would eventually fade away.

Had the writers said "we never wrote it as a rape scene" it might have been interpreted as them being callous to viewers who were offended. On the other hand, they really never adamantly confirmed that Jaime actually raped Cersei in-universe -- because they never wanted to do that, and it made no sense for his character arc.

The Oxford Union panel was the whole year-long situation in microcosm: Benioff didn't want to offend the questioner by denying that it was written as a rape scene, when she stated she viewed it as such and was offended, but at the same time he avoided calling it "rape" in his comments. All he was left to do was cycle around saying it was hard to film - but without confirming or denying that it was ever "a rape scene" because someone would be offended no matter what he said.

Secondarily, Benioff and Weiss might also be deeply embarrassed that this scene got as far as it did, into a finished episode - long after both the filming and editing processes were over, and in their minds, there wasn't enough time to fix it before it went to air. Thus Benioff only makes the terse comment that Jaime is "forcing himself" on Cersei, in the Inside the Episode featurette released the same day as the episode premiere, but without making fully clear what he meant.

Certainly, given the media reaction, it would seem to be very embarrassing that such a mistake in camerawork and film editing occurred. Alex Graves was not asked to return as a director in Season 5, though we have no way of knowing if this was due to fallout from this incident, or simply due to his own schedule.

Yet Benioff and Weiss's functional plan basically amounts to saying nothing, because admission of indirect guilt in an accidental failure is embarrassing...and therefore, they are going to let some viewers continue to assume that they must have actively intended for this perceived change to occur. They would rather let some fans assume Jaime actually raped Cersei, then admit that it was a mistake of bad camerawork and they are embarrassed that it slipped past them.

Yet within the narrative itself, there are examples of when this course of actual has disastrously failed. During the Sack of King's Landing, Tywin Lannister's bannerman Gregor Clegane raped and murdered Elia Martell. Tywin did not intend for Gregor to do this, and was in fact deeply embarrassed about it. The Martells were furious at the crime. Tywin could have simply admitted that through inaction he did not realize what Gregor was going to do until after he did it, and then taken steps to make amends (punish Gregor). Tywin, however, thought that this would be an embarrassing admission that he was not in 100% total control of all of his subordinates, and thus he would be viewed as weak. So instead, Tywin said nothing, neither confirming nor denying anything. As events turned out, however, this only backfired on Tywin: his silence led the Martells to the logical assumption that Tywin must have actively ordered Gregor to kill Elia, which made them far more angry than if he had simply admitted that Gregor had done something he did not intend for him to do.

Interesting parallels aside, Benioff and Weiss are in a very difficult situation. They are coordinating one of the largest projects in television history, with a massive cast, which in Season 4 was filming simultaneously in three separate countries (Northern Ireland-UK, Croatia, and Iceland). No human being could plausibly coordinate such a massive undertaking without making a few mistakes, as they simply could not be everywhere at once.

Television audiences are generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment and fair treatment. Re-editing the scene in a future re-release to emphasize that Cersei is consenting to having sex with Jaime would not "offend fans for trying to deny that they were offended when they watched the original version". Rather, it would be an acknowledgement that viewers were upset, the production team then recognized their error, and then they took steps to address their complaints and fix it. As for the extreme view that there can be no "take-backs" ever, by that logic, even scenes with technical problems like having microphones accidentally in the shot shouldn't be remastered. Purely technical problems stemming from unintentional editing mistakes can and should be addressed.

What "really happened" in the TV show
In terms of what happened “in the TV continuity”, as a persistent alternate fictional reality and not merely within the frame of the camera in a single scene, Jaime did not rape Cersei in “Breaker of Chains”. This was never the actors performing the scene or the director. While they have yet to confirm or deny it in as many words, the writers also never intended for Jaime to be actually raping Cersei.

The exact intentions of the director Alex Graves remain vague, but it seems that he just kept pushing for "dark and edgy" camerawork that went too far until it was misleading - in any case, the creators' intent supersedes mistakes in camerawork.

Therefore, throughout the "Game of Thrones TV continuity" as documented in Game of Thrones Wiki, Jaime and Cersei were having disturbing, rough, angry sex next to their own son's corpse - but consensual sex. It is also tacitly assumed that the production team will eventually remaster or redub the scene (perhaps years from now) to make its intent more clear. Hopefully in the meantime audiences can put this incident behind them, and calmly focus once again on the ongoing story of incestuous twins carving a path of homicidal intrigue amidst a tale of Machiavellian court politics.

=References=