Cersei and Joffrey - A Good King Knows.. - Game of Thrones 1x03 (HD)

Cersei teaches Joffrey some lessons on being a good King.

[benjaminzbogar]

that is actually pretty good advice. Cersei is basically telling her son that he need to choose his fights carefully. Maybe if he bothered to listen the whole war might have gone differently.

[generalgrievous]

What’s funny this is one of those rare scenes where you see Joffrey could’ve been an entirely different person if he was brought up by someone who disciplined him as well as respected him not like his mother who constantly coddled him and fed him false information. Making him think that as a King he could do anything and get away with it.

[TheJaviferrol]

You know; Joffrey was a spoiled sadistic brat but from 0:26 to 0:39 hes got a point. Thats the biggest problem in Westros: one king, seven kingdoms and at the end of the day when theres trouble, each lord fights for his own interest.

[Irrelevant]

Uh, by 'crush them', Joffrey I believe you mean 'get my grandpa to do it for me' right?

[Rlind]

This might be the most intelligent moment for both characters.

In theory, Joffrey's idea of a royal standing army is probably better than the current set up of every Lord having his own personal army. Though Joffrey would have never been able to garner enough respect to form it, his father King Robert might have been, since he was an accomplished and respected warrior back in his day.

Then Cersei makes two good points. First being that you could never invade the North. Its too big, too loyal to the Starks, and God help you if its winter time. Then she gives probably the best advice you could give anyone in King's Landing, never trust anyone who isn't family. You could make a case not to trust family either, especially Lannisters, but none the less it's good advice.

[squamish]

"We should have a standing army" is Joffrey's alotted one moment of sanity in each season.

[RioMadeira]

Fascinating dialogue. Most of what we know about Cersei suggests she's more impulsive and prone to violence than Tywin. Here she seems to be heeding his lessons about caution.

[wilsontheknight]

To Jeoffry’s credit, he isn’t wrong about the necessity to have a standing army loyal to the crown. Giving lords the autonomy to hold their own militaries can be dangerous if they ever revolt, which is exactly what happened. So he isn’t wrong.

[plcdfa]

Joffrey was actually kind of smart. What he outlined here was actually what happened in Europe when feudal kingdoms transitioned into absolutist monarchies. He was also the only one in his family who took Daenerys'es threat seriously. With a little more humility, and a lot less uncontrolled sadism he could have been a pretty decent king.

[maddsrose]

Coming back to simpler times after tonight's traumatizing episode

[philingrouille]

Every time I remember that Bronn is now Lord of Highgarden and Warden of the South (in the show canon anyway) I remember scenes like this. The fact that Bronn, a lowborn sellsword knight, who wasn't even born or raised in the Reach, has suddenly become Lord Paramount of the Reach, is really, REALLY off. There's a reason Walder Frey became Lord of Riverrun, and Roose Bolton became Warden of the North to begin with: Riverrun is in the Riverlands; Walder Frey was born, raised, and ruled the Twins IN the Riverlands. Roose Bolton and his family are Northmen, like the Starks; they understand the North and its people better than the Lannisters, or the Tyrells, or the Freys, or the Martels etc. If you're gonna hand over a castle of a previous lord to another lord, you give it to a lord who ruled in the same kingdom as THAT lord. Randyll Tarly was a great general and all, but the main reason he was selected to became the new warden of the south in season 7 is that him and his family are Reachmen. Bronn doesn't know the culture of the Reach, or the customs or the people of the Reach, but for some reason he's suddenly become Lord Paramount of the Reach?; it shows how little the writers actually gave a shit about the world GRR Martin trusted them to portray on screen.

[weareorigin]

The good old days, when Cersei was a well written character who knew how to act in Westeros

[foolslayer]

0:24 Of all the times Joffrey being a sadistic little prick, this was surprisingly one of the times I agreed with him. He actually has a point, it would be better for keeping power and preventing rebellion if a royal army were organized. A well-trained, centralized army would be efficient and better in a militaristic and combative situation. How come no one had ever thought of it earlier? If the North had a centralized, trained military they would've been able to win the War of the 5 Kings much earlier than being eventually betrayed by one of their own lords. The same for the other 6 kingdoms.

[Traye]

From a modern view Joffrey had a good idea with a royal army but creating one would change Westeros' entire system of government. It would create so much chaos that it would surely lead to war. If the crown has a standing army no doubt everyone creates one.

[ahmetabdulbakioglu]

"I'd crush them. Seize Winterfell and install someone loyal to the realm as Warden of the North."

That was a real foreshadowing. Despite Joffrey was the one who said that, Tywin was the one who actually did that.

[thisrandomdude]

A lotta people are backing the idea of a standing army. I'm not so sure it'd go well. There's a reason medieval society had campaign seasons, armies are money holes with a dubious payoff. The lords would be extremely resistant to the idea, centralization of the state is a surefire way to spark revolt. Mercenaries have loyalty to coin, not the crown, too dangerous. Finally, the highly sectarian westerosi society makes a standing army difficult to hold in a cohesive fashion, a point cersei makes surprisingly well. The northerners don't want to fight for some southern lords, the Dornish are fiercly independent and value their privileges, good luck making the ironborn do anything the way you want, as for the Westerlands, the Reach, the Eyrie, and the Riverlands, they have a more or less cohesive identity (Andal, New Gods), but the Lannisters and the Tyrells have enough wealth and men to rival the throne directly.

The first standing army in Europe was the Janissary corps of the Ottomans. They were slave soldiers, taken young, made to convert to Islam, and provded with some obscene privileges in comparison to your average citizen, becoming a sort of class of their own, even rivaling the aristocracy. So, Westeros, which is a sort of underdeveloped high middle-age society (heavy plate and sophisticated metalworking but no gunpowder, for some reason), has little to no chance when it comes to establishing a permanent army loyal to the crown. And even if someone as competent as Robert were to miraculously succeed, it would only take one bad king, one bad year, one bad decision to tank the entire thing.

[Strikervideos]

I miss scenes like this, this is what made S1 so amazing to begin with, they adapted everything they could and they still had a lot of time left to fill the slots with a bunch of extra scenes, and they were smart because they used these amazing actors. I feel scenes like this really happened a lot less during S4 and 5. I'm happy that in S6 we got some scenes that kinda felt like these. Scenes that come to mind have to be Jaime and Edmure, or Arya and Lady Crane as well as Jon and Sansa and there are more. I'm happy they are trying to do more scenes like these cause this is what made the show truly groundbreaking in terms of dialogue in the first place.

[ronimausanti]

Joffrey is inherintly referring to the rise of the roman empire and how it became such a great military power. Every conquered province had a roman promagnistrate as their governor, who was of course very loyal to rome. It didn't trust vassal kings and chieftants to do the job, because they could easily rebel if left with no other choice. ONE shared homogeneous army would standardize the whole realm of westeros and it would make one big empire. Though, the attempt to do all of this could trigger exactly what you're trying to cease, civil war with their vassals. Cersei replies with "anyone who isn't us is an enemy". The exact ideology the roman empire had. Towards the end of the empire, barbarian chieftains and kings took over for some of the promagnistrates near the borders. One of them, Odacer decided to take his own army(looked like vikings, only romanized) and stabbed their Protector in it's heart, putting an end to the western roman empire.

[TheHulkbuster]

Whoa Cersei actually sounded smart, I wonder what happened? I guess everything goes down hill from that point.

[mobydick]

Joffrey's idea of a royal army is pretty good. It would eradicate the federalism that existed in the middle ages and prevent rebellions and civil wars.