Joffrey Baratheon

"We've had vicious kings, and we've had idiot kings...but I don't know if we've ever been cursed with a vicious idiot for a king!"

- Tyrion Lannister, summarizing King Joffrey Joffrey Baratheon is a major character in the first, second and third seasons. He is played by Jack Gleeson and debuts in the series premiere. Joffrey is the current ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, having claimed the Iron Throne after his father, King Robert Baratheon, died. However Joffrey is actually the bastard son of the incestuous relationship between Ser Jaime Lannister and Queen Cersei Lannister. Because of this, his claim to the Iron Throne is challenged by Robert's younger brother, Stannis Baratheon. He is formally styled as Joffrey of the House Baratheon, the First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.

Joffrey was originally betrothed to Sansa Stark, whom he kept captive in King's Landing after he beheaded her father for treason, as Eddard Stark tried to reveal the truth about his parentage. However, he later set Sansa aside in favor of Margaery Tyrell, as part of the new alliance between House Lannister, the primary supporter's of Joffrey, and House Tyrell, the ruling house of the Reach whose support helped save King's Landing from Stannis Baratheon's attack.

Background
Joffrey is believed to be the oldest son and heir of King Robert Baratheon and Queen Cersei Lannister. In reality, his father is Jaime Lannister, the queen's brother. He has a younger sister, Myrcella, and a younger brother, Tommen - both also the children of Jaime and Cersei. Cersei and Robert made a political marriage alliance after Robert took the throne by force from the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen.

Joffrey takes after his mother in terms of looks and personality, his blonde hair being a subtle clue that he isn't really a Baratheon, who famously always possess black hair even when one of their parents possesses blonde hair. He is usually accompanied by his sworn shield, the formidable Sandor Clegane, who is better known as the Hound. Joffrey is spoiled, arrogant, cowardly, and sadistic.

Season 1
Prince Joffrey accompanies his parents to Winterfell and is betrothed to marry Sansa Stark as part of King Robert's plan unite House Baratheon to House Stark by blood. Both seem happy with the prospect, and Joffrey is charming and polite towards Sansa. However, he shows no sympathy when Bran falls from a tower and is severely injured, and has to be physically chastised by his uncle Tyrion before he will pay his respects to Bran's parents.

While on the Kingsroad to King's Landing, Joffrey is walking with Sansa and chances upon her sister Arya practicing sword play with a commoner, Mycah. Joffrey sees a chance to have some fun with Mycah, who is too scared to move. Joffrey accuses him of assault on a noble girl and makes a cut on his face with his sword, but Arya hits Joffrey, allowing the butcher's boy to get away. When Joffrey turns on Arya, her direwolf Nymeria overpowers Joffrey, injuring him, and Arya throws his sword in the river. Joffrey begs for his life. Sansa offers aid, but Joffrey is angry at her because she saw him weak and defeated. Later, he lies about the incident and says he was attacked in an unprovoked manner. King Robert knows Joffrey is lying, and is disgusted that Joffrey let a little girl disarm him, but agrees to forget about the incident in return for the death of Nymeria. When she cannot be found, Sansa's direwolf Lady is executed instead.

In King's Landing, Joffrey tells his mother about how he would handle the people of the North as she treats his injury. He suggests capturing Winterfell, taxing the people hard and forcing their warriors to join a "royal army". Cersei elucidates the flaws in his plan and warns Joffrey that a king needs to be more careful in choosing his battles. Cersei tells her son that, "Anyone who isn't us is an enemy". She also urges Joffrey to do something nice for Sansa to win back her goodwill.

Eddard Stark discovers that Joffrey isn't King Robert's son and rightful heir, by examining the family history and realizing that black hair is a dominant trait in the Baratheon line. Eddared realizes that Joffrey's true parentage can be attributed to the incestuous relationship between his mother and his "uncle" Jaime Lannister. Meanwhile, Joffrey wins back Sansa's affection by giving her a pendant.

When King Robert Baratheon is grievously wounded in a hunting injury, he talks to Joffrey on his death bed and says he could have been a better father. Joffrey ascends the Iron Throne. He orders that preparations be made to crown him within the fortnight. Eddard refuses to recognize Joffrey's claim to the Iron Throne. He presents a proclamation from Robert making him Regent and Protector of the Realm to enforce his authority, but Cersei tears up the document. Eddard expects Lord Petyr Baelish and Commander Janos Slynt of the City Watch to take Cersei and Joffrey prisoner, but is betrayed. Eddard is taken into custody and his remaining guards and household are murdered.

Sansa is taken captive as well, but Arya manages to escape into the city. Joffrey dismisses Ser Barristan Selmy from the Kingsguard and names his "uncle" Jaime as the new Lord Commander. Barristan is shocked, as the Kingsguard are sworn to serve for life, and it is legally impossible to dismiss one of their members. Joffrey listens to Sansa's pleas for her father, and he agrees to show mercy to Lord Eddard if he admits treason and recants his claim that Joffrey has no right to the throne. Sansa is sure that he will.

Joffrey is present at the Great Sept of Baelor for Eddard's public trial where, due to threats to Sansa's life, he confesses to treason and acknowledges Joffrey as the true king. Joffrey, playing to the crowd, reveals that his mother and his betrothed have both urged him to spare Eddard's life and exile him to the Wall (this deal had been worked out involving Queen Cersei, Varys, Grand Maester Pycelle, the High Septon, and Yoren waiting in the crowd to take him in custody). Joffrey had been told to spare him, but surprises everyone by saying that his mother and betrothed have the weak hearts and constitutions of women, whilst he has no mercy for traitors. He orders Ser Ilyn Payne to bring him Eddard's head. Payne carries out the order, whilst Sansa faints from shock and Cersei - aware this will fuel the war with the Starks - angrily tries and fails to overrule her son. .

Days later, Joffrey holds court. Marillion sings a song he wrote about King Robert and Queen Cersei, which includes lyrics saying that the boar may have disemboweled Robert, but the "lion in his bed" (the Lannisters' sigil is a lion) was the one who tore his balls off. Joffrey is displeased by the song and its insults against his parents. He forces the minstrel to choose between having his hands or tongue removed, then orders Ser Ilyn to instantly carry out the order, ripping out his tongue in front of the entire horrified court. Joffrey and his guards escort Sansa out of the courtroom and he states to her that she will be kept captive there and will still marry him; he also casually mentions that his mother said he should "put a son in you" as soon as Sansa has had her blood. They arrive at the castle's wall, where there are several heads mounted on long spikes - one is revealed to be Ned's. When Sansa is appalled, Joffrey angrily points to another spike carrying the head of Septa Mordane, revealing that he also needlessly killed Sansa's own Septa. She confronts him about his promise to show mercy to her father, but he says it was mercy, as he gave him a quick death. Then Joffrey forces her to look at the severed heads, and he says that he will give her Robb's head on a spike, too, but she retorts, "Or maybe he'll give me yours." Joffrey is infuriated, but restrains himself from striking her as he says "Mother tells me a king should never strike his lady" - so he simply calls on Ser Meryn Trant to strike her for him, and the knight slaps Sansa hard across the face twice. Sansa comes up behind Joffrey on the walkway, obviously thinking of pushing him, though it would mean her death. The Hound realizes this and stops her, under the pretense of wiping the blood off her lip.

Season 2

 * Main: Joffrey Baratheon Season 2

Joffrey rules with cruelty and arrogant whims while his grandfather Tywin Lannister fights to secure his position. Joffrey celebrates his name day with a tourney and continues to torment the captive Sansa Stark. He is perturbed when his uncle Tyrion Lannister is made acting Hand of the King. Rumors about his parentage begin to circulate and he confronts his mother, Queen Regent Cersei Lannister with them. He asks her about King Robert Baratheon's bastard children and she slaps him. He threatens her life and then arranges for a city wide massacre of the bastards. Tyrion responds by exiling Janos Slynt and installing Bronn as the replacement Lord Commander of the City Watch.

Robb Stark continues to win victories against Joffrey's supporters in House Lannister. Joffrey has Sansa Stark brought into the throne room and before the whole court, threatens to kill her with a crossbow. Instead he orders her publicly stripped and beaten as revenge. Tyrion interrupts the proceedings and criticizes Joffrey, as Sansa is his future queen. When Joffrey says that he is a king and may do whatever he wants, his uncle reminds him that Aerys thought he could do whatever he wanted as well, a thought that led to him being overthrown.

Talking to Bronn, Tyrion decides that Joffrey is at an age when sexual frustration might be an issue, and this could be one reason for his torment of Sansa. He then sends Joffrey two prostitutes, Ros and Daisy, as a belated nameday present. Joffrey forces one prostitute to beat the other as a message to Tyrion that he will tolerate no further interference.

Joffrey attends the departure of his sister Myrcella Baratheon for Dorne as part of a marriage alliance pact. Joffrey is confronted by an angry populace as he makes his way back to the Red Keep. He is struck by thrown cow excrement and triggers a city wide riot by ordering the deaths of hundreds of citizens in response, despite being escorted by only a dozen of his own guards. He barely escapes the riot under the protection of his Kingsguard and Tyrion publicly berates him for his vicious idiocy. He is also dismissive when it is revealed Sansa has been lost in the chaos, demanding she be left to the mob; Tyrion has to point out that the Starks will kill his uncle Jaime in retaliation if she comes to harm.

King Stannis Baratheon sails on King's Landing with a fleet of over 200 ships. Joffrey is determined to fight personally, scaring his mother. Cersei suspects that Tyrion is encouraging Joffrey and plots to blackmail him into ensuring Joffrey's safety by imprisoning his lover. Joffrey tours the sea wall of the city with Tyrion and insists that he will kill Stannis himself. His bravado is undercut by his woeful lack of appreciation of the danger he is in; he stupidly suggests that they should be planning to assault Robb rather than defending their capital.

Joffrey procures a new sword for the Battle of the Blackwater, naming it "Hearteater." He forces Sansa to meet him in the Throne Room before going to the city walls, making her kiss the blade and claiming that when he returns it will have Stannis' blood on it. Sansa carefully undermines his claim by questioning if he will fight in the vanguard. Joffrey is frustrated by not being made aware of Tyrion Lannister's plans to defend the city and angrily threatens his uncle. The absence of the Royal Fleet frightens Joffrey. He is pleased when Tyrion's wildfire explosion decimates Stannis' fleet. However, his courage wanes when he sees the size of the landing force that comes ashore. A sortie led by the Hound fails to drive the attackers back. The Hound then deserts his place on the Kingsguard rather than go back out. Joffrey is relieved when Ser Lancel Lannister tells him that the Queen has ordered him back to the Red Keep and ignores Tyrion imploring him to stay and lead. His cowardly exit damages the morale of the men but Tyrion is able to rally them into a further sortie, protecting the gates from a battering ram. Tyrion is wounded during the fighting but the battle is won by the arrival of a host of House Lannister and House Tyrell soldiers under the command of Lord Tywin Lannister.

Joffrey rewards Tywin by naming him Savior of the City. He also grants a favor to House Tyrell for their aid and Ser Loras asks Joffrey to unite their houses in marriage. Joffrey balks at setting aside his betrothal to Sansa, but is easily convinced in a sham dialogue with his mother and courtiers and agrees to marry Margaery Tyrell.

Personality
Joffrey is cruel, arrogant, sadistic, and a tyrannical ruler. However, he is also incompetent, unintelligent, naive, cowardly, and prone to rash outbursts of violence. Much like earlier Targaryen kings, it is suspected that Joffrey's incestuous bloodline has resulted in severe defects in his sanity. Nonetheless, Joffrey is consumed by megalomaniacal delusions of grandeur. Even though he is absurdly unskilled at ruling, making far more problems than he solves, he is convinced that he deserves praise and utter devotion from everyone around him. Despite the fact that at the start of the War of the Five Kings most of the realm rises in rebellion against him, to the point that his faction essentially controls only the Westerlands, the Crownlands, and a narrow strip of the southern Riverlands between them, Joffrey is convinced that he is the greatest king in the history of the Seven Kingdoms. Added to what was an unstable personality to begin with, Cersei utterly spoiled and indulged Joffrey his entire life, resulting in him possessing a massive sense of entitlement which knows no logical bounds.

Joffrey is deceitful, but shows even less tact than his mother. He was willing to take advantage of the trust that Sansa Stark initially placed in him, when she was blinded by fantasies of marrying her handsome prince. In general, however, Joffrey is usually too short-sighted to bother lying, often simply committing various atrocities in public, without concern for the consequences.

Joffrey is obsessed with the self-conception that he is a great warrior like King Robert, but displays no martial skill whatsoever. Even the young Arya Stark was able to overpower him. Particularly, despite the fact that his faction was losing the war and bracing for a siege in King's Landing, Joffrey insisted that now was the time to "strike" against Robb Stark, at which Tyrion had to point out that his own city was on the verge of attack by Stannis' superior forces.

Despite his noted incompetence, Joffrey does successfully analyze the key weaknesses of the feudal levy system used to raise and train armies in the Seven Kingdoms, and proposes the radical idea of raising a standing Royal Army to address them, although his proposal that the army also be used to subjugate rebellions even when the army might be drawn from those rebellious regions confirms his lack of military experience.

Quotes
"Killing you would send your brother a message."

- Joffrey Baratheon to Sansa Stark

"You're here to answer for your brother's treason."

- Joffrey Baratheon to Sansa Stark

"The king can do as he likes!"

- King Joffrey I

"Everyone is mine to torment!"

- Joffrey to Tyrion and Tywin

Behind the scenes
Jack Gleeson has said his performance is influenced by numerous Hollywood villains from over the years. He takes particular inspiration from Joaquin Phoenix's role in the movie Gladiator.

Gleeson was born in Cork, Republic of Ireland. He is a student of Trinity College Dublin and a member of DU Players. As a result, Gleeson's natural speaking voice actually has a pronounced Irish accent: the upper-class, Received Pronunciation accent he adopts while playing Joffrey on-screen is a conscious part of his performance. In the Blu-ray commentary for "Lord Snow", Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) explains that for amusement between takes, the English-accented Turner and Irish-accented Gleeson would imitate one another's accents.

In the books
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, Joffrey is twelve years old when the story begins. He is described as a handsome young man, taller than average for his age, but not especially skilled at arms. His uncle Tyrion occasionally tries to teach him something of politics and learning, but he is uninterested in such matters. He and Robert have a distant relationship, but his mother dotes upon him. Throughout the books, Cersei is willfully blind to Joffrey's insane and homicidal behavior, no matter how ridiculous. Rather than recognize the monster that she has unleashed on the Seven Kingdoms by putting Joffrey on the throne, Cersei embraces the fantasy that he is a great king, or at worst "willful", and chides her younger son Tommen that he should try to be more like Joffrey. Later books also retroactively reveal that Joffrey's siblings Prince Tommen and Princess Myrcella have lived in terror of Joffrey their entire lives.

The reason for Joffrey's sociopathic, borderline-insane behavior is suspected to be due to his incestuous parentage, much like some of the earlier Targaryen kings. Joffrey had a distant relationship with his "father" Robert, and his mother spoiled him, but he grew up as a pampered crown prince, thus there does not seem to be any non-biological cause for his mental instability. From a strict technical standpoint Joffrey is not "insane" in the sense that King Aerys II Targaryen was, in that he doesn't have hallucinations or hear voices. Otherwise, Joffrey is a megalomanical sociopath by any measure.

In the second book, A Clash of Kings, Joffrey at several points shoots and kills peasants with his crossbow, for largely imagined insults. When crowds of refugees from the war he started come to the castle gates to beg for bread, he picks them off with his crossbow from the battlements, for daring to consider him "a baker". He then brags about doing this in open court, before having Sansa stripped and beaten in front of everyone. When Sansa asks if he killed any of the peasants, Joffrey matter-of-factly states that of course he did, he was trying to kill them.