Breaker of Chains/Jaime-Cersei sex scene

Work in Progress
 * 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?"
 * Gravese: "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 Oxford on the eve of the Season 5 premiere
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."

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 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.

The actors and director denied that they received such instructions
Unlike actors and directors, whose "intent" is intangible...scriptwriters leave physical proof of their instructions and intent for an episode: the script they wrote.

Why would Headey and Coster-Waldau state at FanX 2015 that they never considered this 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?

Graves in fact gave multiple comments which directly contradicted things which Benioff claimed. He specifically denied, when asked, if they were attempting to portray Jaime committing rape as part of trying to depict him as a more morally grey character. Graves stated he received no specific verbal instructions from Benioff and Weiss, and had no substantive discussions about the scene with them. Graves then publicly and repeatedly - particularly in his Vulture.com interview - described the sex scene as "consensual" and denied that it was "rape".

Benioff, a full eleven months later, then tried to pull a complete reversal, and claim that he had intentionally tried to write the scene as Jaime raping Cersei? Despite the fact that both actors denied ever receiving such instructions? Despite the fact that the episode director Graves specifically denied, the same week the episode aired, that he did not intend it to be non-consensual?

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.

Cogman also seemed nervous when asked about the issue and declined to comment - even though, as a member of the writers' room, Benioff and Weiss would have discussed such a drastic change with him - had they intended it - and at the very least he would have access to the filming script (the physical record of what their "intent in writing" was).

Benioff and Weiss have been suspiciously evasive about the issue
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:


 * 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."

Conclusions: Tywin, Gregor, and Elia Martell
Benioff and Weiss think it is embarrassing that through inaction, Alex Graves's bizarre camerawork decisions - made without the knowledge of them as scriptwriters or the actors - managed to slip into the final version of the episode, without them noticing that it looked so much like rape. This was not their intention when they wrote the scene as neither the actors nor the director mentioned it as in the script they produced. They seem to be of the mindset that it is more embarrassing that acknowledge that a subordinate made a mistake they failed to notice, because it makes it appear that they are not in total control of the production - even though it is a massive TV production with multiple filming units running simultaneously in multiple countries, and mistakes and oversights are bound to happen.

In the week after the episode aired, Benioff and Weiss tried to ignore the issue - but eventually it became painfully obvious that ever media outlet thought Jaime was raping Cersei, as even Benioff acknowledged he was aware that it ran as a front page story in The New York Times.

Realizing they could not longer simply hope that audiences and critics would not view it as rape, they tried to "own" it, and claim that Jaime actually was raping Cersei because he's a grey character (even though this still doesn't fit with Jaime's characterization or Cersei's interactions with him for the rest of Season 4). Benioff and Weiss apparently think that it is less embarrassing to claim that they made a controversial decision on purpose, instead of admitting that it was an accident that occurred outside of their control.

Consider that similarly, Tywin didn't order Gregor Clegane to rape and murder Elia Martell, Gregor did it on his own initiative without Tywin's orders. Tywin did not punish Gregor or take actions to make amends for it, instead allowing everyone to tacitly assume he must have given the order - because in Tywin's mind, being unable to control Gregor made him look weak.

Concerns about sexual violence in the TV series as a whole
The TV series has already come under frequent criticism for its use of gratuitous sex and nudity (“Sexposition”), an extreme “male gaze” imbalance of pervasive female nudity and comparatively little male nudity, and perhaps relying on “rape-as-drama” to the point that it is gratuitous. They should have been more conscientious when filming an violent/angry sex scene to show that it was fundamentally consensual, in light of these criticisms they were already under.

Thus while Jaime didn’t rape Cersei in the episode, the fact that the production team pushed for it to be so ambiguous, “dark and edgy”, that an overwhelming number of reviewers thought that it actually was rape, underscores that the TV series has had more generalized problems with not realizing when sexual violence (or the mere suggestion of sexual violence) may offend viewers. It probably didn’t help that Season 4 had no female writers on the staff, and that director Alex Graves is not a woman.

Response
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 intent of the writers or the actors performing the scene. 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 writers' intent (combined with actor intent) supersedes misleading camerawork. The writers did later claim they had intended it to be non-consensual, but they were apparently lying out of embarrassment at not noticing what the director had done until it was too late: had their intent when they produced the scene been to show Jaime raping Cersei, it would have specifically said this in the script they produced - but both the actors and the director stated they never received instruction that it was a rape scene, and therefore, the script the writers produced could not have contained such instructions, despite their later, retroactive claims.

As for how to respond to this incident,