**SPOILER ALERT!**

Even if you read the books, those of us who have seen last week’s Game of Thrones episode “Breaker of Chains” were in for a shock: Jaime raped Cersei.

The scene happens differently in the book A Storm of Swords and along a completely different timeline: Not present when Joffrey dies, Cersei believes Jaime to also be dead. While she mourns next to Joffrey’s body, he appears, and while at first she resists, they both eventually give in to their incestuous carnal desires.

But in last Sunday’s episode, Jaime, who has been back at King’s Landing for an indeterminate amount of time and has continuously been rebuffed by a repulsed Cersei, flat-out rapes her, next to Joffrey’s corpse.

After backlash and inquiries about the episode, author George R.R. Martin posted an explanation on his blog:

“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 [producers] 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.”

What do YOU think about the event in last Sunday’s episode? Was it out of character for the “new” Jaime Lannister? Did the scene go too far?

[via Entertainment Weekly]