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

Cersei is a villain and you shouldn't be distracted by her handful of moments of politeness. Martin just insisted on writing morally gray characters; i.e. with the exception of Joffrey, even "villainous" characters like Tywin Lannister aren't doing "evil" things 24 hours a day.

In the case of Sansa, in that scene she's still trying to trap Sansa into a marriage to her homicidal maniac of a son. Cersei refuses to acknowledge that Joffrey is evil; she's built up the mental construct that he's a great king and ignores the reality, no matter how ridiculously obvious it becomes that he's a "vicious idiot".

Cersei thinks that she's the center of the story, and that it's a story about "pity me!" -- thousands of people are dying in the war, and yet in her mental head-space (in the books), she thinks the story is about how the world is ganging up on her poor defenseless children.

She's self-centered and oblivious. Her occasional ability to muster some politeness about it doesn't change anything she did; this isn't even supposed to be a debate.