#simon of cyrene

To absolutely no one’s surprise, I’m gonna propose Cersei join Tyrion and Ned as antitypes of Christ - the Walk of Shame being a mirror of the Stations of the Cross.

Two people experience an intense public humiliation, forced to walk from point A to point B (point B for Christ being His place of execution, for Cersei being safety and freedom until her trial).

Both people are stripped of their garments; Cersei before the walk, Christ afterwards. Ser Kevin is not there to witness his niece’s sexual humiliation and extreme vulnerability, Mary is present to witness her Son’s.

Speaking of which: Christ has friends interspersed throughout His walk. Women mourn over him, and an extra-Biblical tradition says a woman helps clean his face; for Cersei, women call her whore, harlot, and many other names, a man throws a piece of meat that smears her body in grease and blood, and another man exposes himself to her to further humiliate her as people make lewd and obscene comments about her body.

Christ is innocent; He asks His Father to forgive those who humiliate and execute Him. Cersei is guilty; she fantasizes about her brother carving the eyes out of onlookers, and hopes she will one day tear the tongues out off the septas complicit in this disgusting spectacle.

Someone is pressed into service to help Christ carry His Cross; Christ accepts this help without (recorded) comment. A knight tries to help lead Cersei through a dangerous crowd; she lashes out at him.

There was a brief second, when Cersei fell for the third time, where I thought that George R.R. Martin was using his lapsed Catholic upbringing in a way that was incredibly on the nose; but Cersei falls a fourth time ten yards further, breaking the perfect parallelism but nonetheless invoking the same kind of imagery.