CLOSE READING

Hillary Clinton Compared Herself to Cersei Lannister in Her Book What Happened

The White House meets Westeros.

Sep. 13, 2017

Getty Images

Hillary Clinton has been called every nasty name in the book by now, but surprisingly the name she would give herself is one from Westeros. The former Democratic presidential nominee, currently promoting her new book What Happened, likens herself in the book to one of the most polarizing characters on Game of Thrones: Cersei Lannister.

Cersei is both seen as cunning and misunderstood, and tellingly, Clinton identifies with the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms at vulnerable moment. According to Mashable, a passage from the chapter “On Being a Woman in Politics” reads: “It’s not easy for any woman in politics, but I think it’s safe to say that I got a whole other level of vitriol flung my way. Crowds at Trump rallies called for my imprisonment more times than I can count. They shouted, ‘Guilty! Guilty!’ like the religious zealots in Game of Thrones chanting ‘Shame! Shame!’ while Cersei Lannister walked back to the Red Keep.”

And while Cersei’s politicking is not the most ideal, the misogyny she faced throughout her fight for the Iron Throne is no doubt relatable to Clinton’s election campaign. As Newsweek notes, Thrones actress Lena Headey previously spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the nature of the scene, drawing similar comparisons to Clinton’s passage on Trump rallies:

“It’s not hard when people are screaming at you and you look like sh– and you’re being humiliated to figure out how that would feel. There’s a part of you that’s terrified. I can’t even imagine people wanting your blood. Cersei has done wrong, but she doesn’t really deserve this.”

Clinton continues with the analogy, describing how Trump supporters jeered at her in a way that has never been seen on the political stage before. She also compares herself to other historical female figures, writing, “As Susan Bordo, a Pulitzer Prize–nominated gender studies professor, put it in her book The Destruction of Hillary Clinton, ‘It was almost medieval.’ Mary Beard, the Classics professor at the University of Cambridge, observed that this venom harkened back to an even earlier time. One popular image among Trump supporters, found on everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs, depicted Trump holding up my severed head, like Perseus from ancient Greek mythology, lifting high the head of Medusa.”