It’s really ironic how many fans of ASOIAF think Tywin is somehow more sympathetic than Cersei when he is listed as Near Pure Evil while she is listed as Inconsistently Heinous.

For those of you who don’t know, there are several wikis for villains. One of them is called Pure Evil wiki (which, in short, is about villains with no redeeming or sympathetic qualities), the second is called Near Pure Evil wiki (Which, in short, is about villains with almost no redeeming or sympathetic qualities but they still can’t qualify for the Pure Evil wiki for some minor reason. However, there are other cases where a villain can be Near Pure Evil even if they don’t have any redeemable qualities like slightly lacking moral agency or slightly failing the heinous standard of the series because they don’t go the extra mile in terms of crimes). There is also a third wiki called the Inconsistently Heinous wiki (which, in short, is about characters who have committed awful crimes, but they still have too many redeeming and sympathetic qualities and excuses for their actions to qualify as Pure Evil or Near Pure Evil). The name “Inconsistently Heinous” means that the characters are too inconsistent in their heinousness to be Near Pure Evil and they need to have many redeeming and sympathetic qualities and/or excuses for their actions. Often times Inconsistently Heinous characters can even be morally ambiguous heroes in the stories they are depicted, but they also do some bad things along the way.

Tywin is listed on the Near Pure Evil wiki due to his minor Freudian Excuse and because he seems to have some slight feelings for some members of his family but they are considered to be minor preventions. He is considered to barely have any redeeming qualities and his Feudian Excuse is very weak. Here is [his Near Pure Evil page](https://near-pure-evil.fandom.com/wiki/Tywin_Lannister) which explains why is considered to be close to Pure Evil because his “moral standards” are not a redeeming quality, but purely self-serving and him trying to increase the power of his House is done purely for himself. Here is a list of the things which prevent Tywin from qualifying as Pure Evil in the books:

* He has a tragic backstory as he had to watch his house and his father being mocked by other houses, so it fell to him to restore the Lannisters to prominence, and his wife died in childbirth, which is the reason he hates Tyrion, and it certainly made him harsher and colder. However, its not treated with too much sympathy in universe, so it is minor, especially the latter part since he was already a ruthless individual even before that and it is more just an extension of his next prevention.
*
While his relationship with Jaime and Cersei is murky at best, he has some family members that he genuinely loves, such as his late wife Joanna, as he married her purely for love, and never remarried after her death. He also seems to love his father Tytos, calling him a good man though also a weak one, and possibly his mother as well, and his brother Kevan, who he as a good working relationship with, and never shown to manipulative towards him, and his grandson Tommen, whom he shields from having to witness Joffrey’s death, and acts grandfatherly towards him and tries to mentor him when he is crowned king.

Meanwhile, Cersei is listed as Inconsistently Heinous (the same category under which her brother Tyrion is listed) because she has so many redeeming and sympathetic as well as many excuses for her actions that she doesn’t qualify as Pure Evil or even Near Pure Evil. Here is a list of all her redeeming and sympathetic qualities which prevent her from qualifying as Near Pure Evil (and notice that her list is way longer than Tywin”s):

* She loves her family members except for Tyrion (more specifically, her children,her father, Tywin and her mother, Joanna). She is very protective of her children, doesn’t want them to die and constantly fears for their safety.

1.

When her son Joffrey dies, she breaks down over his corpse and cries and then she stays with his corpse and mourns it for days. At one point, she has a nice dream where Joffrey is still alive and she marries her brother, Jaime.
2.

She is angry when Tyrion sends her daughter, Myrcella, to Dorn without her permission and starts threatening him. She breaks down into tears when he mentions that if Myrcella stays, she could be killed in the coming battle. She is also shocked when she learns that Myrcella has lost one of her ears.
3.

In the fourth book she gets very protective of her son, Tommen, after the death of Joffrey. When Tommen chokes on his wine, she is afraid that someone had poisoned him, quickly stands up and goes to him to help. When she discovers that no one has poisoned him, she goes away and starts crying. During her imprisonment by the Faith Militant, she constantly thinks about her son and how she wants to go back to him. When she goes back to him, she starts spending a lot more time with him than ever before because she was relieved to see him again after her long imprisonment.
4.

At one point, she had a nightmare where Tyrion has tied her up. She begs him to spare her kids, even though in the dream her own life is in danger.
5.

She loves her father as she wants his respect, constantly thinks about what he would do and is sad when he dies.
6.

She loves her mother. She blames her younger brother, Tyrion, for “killing” her mother because this is what she saw from her father. She also mentions to Sansa that when she was a little girl she prayed to the Gods to give her mother back.

*

Cersei is too tragic to be Near Pure Evil:

1.

She lost her mother at the age of 7 which has left her traumatized.
2.

At the age of 10, Cersei received a prophecy from Maggy that all of her kids would die, that a younger and more baeutiful queen would take everything she holds dear and then Cersei herself would be killed by her younger brother. This made Cersei very paranoid about her life and the lives of her children, made her even more abusive towards Tyrion because she believes that he is the younger brother from the prophecy and caused her to become distrustful towards most other people. A lot of the crimes she commits are an attempt to prevent this prophecy from happening and saving her children and herself.
3.

Her father Tywin was neglectful most of the time, barely displayed any parental love aside from a few occasions and he was a brutal ruler who taught his kids that they should be merciless, that they shouldn’t care about morality only about the end results and that they should look down on small folk or anyone who isn’t a Lannister. He is also strict with his expectations of her and doesn’t allow her to deviate in any way from what he envisions her to be but at the same time he never disciplines her on how she should treat other people properly, never corrects her behaviour and even makes her believe that her younger brother Tyrion “killed” her mother due to simply being born which causes her to hate him. Even after she becomes a Queen, he still acts in a controlling way towards her and orders her around despite the fact she outranks him, doesn’t seem to care a lot about how her husband treats her or if she is happy with her life, doesn’t take her opinions into consideration most of the time and tries to force her into a second marriage despite Cersei’s immense displeasure, which would also deprive her of her position as regent to King Joffrey and force her into another position where she is a powerless housewife to someone else, just because Tywin wants to increase his own power with him possibly even wanting to take the regency for himself away from Cersei. Her upbringing as Tywin’s daughter causes her to have a very warped view of the world and because she feels unappreciated by her father and suffers from insecurities, she tries to emulate him in any way she can to win his approval.
4.

She was married to Robert Baratheon, who cheated on her and abused her by sometimes even raping her which also has an affect on her because she feels powerless during the rapes and she doesn’t want this to happen again. The affect the rapes have on her is displayed when she tries to force herself on another woman because she wants to feel powerful and learn what Robert has felt when he had done that to her but stops at the last moment because she realizes she doesn’t feel enjoyment and just feels empty.
5.

In the world of Westeros if it’s discovered that she had cheated on her husband with Jaime, she and all of her kids would be executed while her husband also cheats on her all the time with dozens of different women which displays the double standards of Westerosi laws. The reason why she kills Robert and Ned is because she wants to protect her life and the life of her kids from execution.
6.

In general, she has suffered from systematic sexism throughout her whole life starting from childhood because she was born in a highly sexist society where women are inferior to men and she and Jaime were treated differently because of their gender. Jaime was groomed to become the heir to Casterly Rock and was taught how to rule and fight while she was groomed to be married off and be a housewife despite being older than her brother. When she was married to her husband, she also suffered from the sexism of her society because her husband was allowed to cheat on her while if she was caught cheating, she and her entire family would be executed. She was also raped because there was no definition of marital rape in Westeros.

*

She suffers from a lot of insecurities (about being a woman, winning her father’s approval, being fit to rule, etc.). She also has insecurities about not having any friends and she immediately decides to befriend the first woman she meets in the fourth book simply because she doesn’t want to feel lonely.
*

On one occasion, after Ned gives her a chance to escape with her children from the city before he reports to Robert that she had been cheating on him, Cersei tells him that because of this she would allow him to go back to Winterfell and live out the rest of his life if he kneels to Joffrey and swears fealty to him. Ned doesn’t do it and he ends up dead for this reason, but there is no indication Cersei wouldn’t have kept her word if he had accepted and she still doesn’t agree with Joffrey executing him.
*

Even though she is rude to Sansa, she still tries to give her advice about how to rule as a Queen, about the specifics of the female body and that she shouldn’t love too many people or else she would get hurt. It’s implied that the reason for this is because Cersei sees Sansa as a younger and more inexperienced version of herself. While, Cersei lates desires to execute Sansa because she believes that Sansa was involved in Joffrey’s death, it doesn’t entirely subvert her prevention because during her Walk of Shame, she still noticebly feels bad about how things turned out and that Cersei could have provided a good marriage for her if Joffrey hadn’t beheaded her father. Sansa is also one of the people Cersei hallucinates about which indicates that she feels guilty about how she treated her
*

She is capable of feeling remorse on certain occasions. After the torture of the Blue Bard, she feels bad for him and tries to justify herself even if she doesn’t take moral responsibility for what she did, and for a moment she even considers stopping his torture.
*

She is also played for sympathy a lot as shown by the above examples. Aside from the examples that are already mentioned, during the Walk of Shame when she paraded naked through the streets of the city and the common people throw things at her, the story tries to frame the moment as an “Alas. Poor Villain” by presenting it from Cersei’s point of view, presenting it in excrusiating detail, showing how it affects her psyche. The story clearly tries to make the readers feel bad for her during this chapter.

As you can see, Tywin is Near Pure Evil and Cersei (and Tyrion) is Inconsistently Heinous because she has way more redeeming and sympathetic qualities than him and I find it very ironic that so many people think that Tywin is oh, so sympathetic, but that Cersei is completely irredeemable.

by AmphibianJolly8699