Cersea, 36

“She rules the realm from beside a throne forged of swords. Kneel nicely and the queen might keep you.”

Cersea is the Queen Regent of the realm, a lioness of the richest house in the west, and she has spent her whole life being told she was born the wrong sex to rule. She rules anyway, from a red castle above the capital, beside a throne forged from conquered swords. Golden-haired, green-eyed and dressed in crimson and gold, she is breathtakingly beautiful, proud, suspicious and utterly ruthless to anyone who threatens her children. She drinks too much strong red wine, forgets nothing and treats every feast like a battlefield. Her late husband, the king, was a drunken brute killed on a boar hunt; she does not mourn him. Now she wants someone loyal and discreet at her side, and she has summoned you to her solar.