Game of Thrones Ruined Cersei and Jaime's Story Arc by Ignoring This Prophecy
The showrunners were provided with great tools to wrap up the Lannister siblings’ story by GRRM, yet they decided to ignore the very peculiar prophecy from the books.
Most Game of Thrones fans tend to agree that Cersei and Jaime Lannisters’ story arc was virtually butchered in the last season. After many years of watching Jaime develop and become better as a person, he suddenly came back to his lover sister and died by her side — as if the last few seasons of character growth were in vain.
As frustrating as this fact is on its own, it only becomes worse when you learn about the valonqar prophecy. It was the perfect tool to provide a fitting finale for the Lannister siblings, but the show seriously mistreated its importance to the plot.
If you remember, there was a very special prophecy regarding Cersei Lannister’s children: it claimed that all of them would die one by one. The thing is that the prophecy had a second part, too — and it was ignored in Game of Thrones.
"...And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you,” the second half claimed.
“Valonqar” means “little sibling” in High Valyrian, so the very obvious assumption would be that the prophecy foresaw Tyrion Lannister, the only little person in the Lannister family (and the show in general). Seeing how Tyrion killed his lover Shae by strangling her, this definitely seemed like a viable finale for his hated sister.
However, there was also a second interpretation of the prophecy: valonqar could refer not to physical height but to age, instead. While Tyrion was still the youngest of the three Lannister siblings, Jaime was born after Cersei. He was slightly younger.
Many fans speculated that the prophecy foreshadowed Jaime killing his lover and sister in the future, and seeing the direction in which his character development was going until the finale, it was an entirely viable option, too. Jaime could have taken care of his beloved to save more people from dying — kind of like Jon killed Daenerys.
This would’ve been quite a fitting finale for the twins’ love-hate story and Jaime’s character arc…but instead, he was returned to his default settings and did the one thing he was clearly not supposed to do: he came back to Cersei to die by her side.