As readers make their way through the What Happened Hillary Clinton book, they seem to uncover shocking revelation after shocking revelation, including the chapter where the former presidential candidate likens her treatment by Republicans during campaign season to the humiliation experienced by Cersei Lannister during a certain infamous “Game of Thrones” scene.
“Crowds at Trump rallies called for my imprisonment more times than I can count,” Clinton writes in her memoir, which was released Tuesday. “They shouted, ‘Guilty! Guilty!’ like the religious zealots in Game of Thrones chanting ‘Shame! Shame!’ while Cersei Lannister walked back to the Red Keep.”
“Lock her up,” was another Trump crowd favorite.
Clinton is, of course, referring to the “Game of Thrones” season 5 finale in which Cersei, played by Lena Headey, who has confessed to adultery, is forced to walk naked through King’s Landing to atone for her sins as the city has come under the grip of a radical and militant-like religious order.
As Cersei marches through the streets, hair clipped close to her skull in punishment, a Septa walks behind her ringing a bell and chanting “shame, shame,” as crowds yell, spit and throw human waste at her.
When talking about filming the scene in 2015, Headey told Entertainment Weekly, “There’s a part of you that’s f***ing terrified. I can’t even imagine people wanting your blood. Cersei has done wrong, but she doesn’t really deserve this.”
It’s this concept of undeserved punishment Clinton tries to bite into with her analogy.
Clinton, of course, earned major criticism for using a private email server to conduct official business in her role as secretary of state under President Barack Obama. Though she was ultimately cleared of charges, she continued to famous an onslaught of attacks from Trump supporters calling for her to face criminal charges.
“What in the world was this?” she writes in a passage shared on Twitter. “I’ve been in politics for a long time, but I was taken aback by the flood of hatred that only seemed to grow as we got closer to Election Day.”
See, people tell me to hate Hillary, but did Bernie’s book reference Game of Thrones, @wmarybeard & Margaret Atwood on a single page? No. pic.twitter.com/gY9TQ20h1L
— Helen Lewis (@helenlewis) September 12, 2017
“I had left the State Department one of the most admired public servants in America. Now people seemed to think I was evil. Not just ‘not my cup of tea’ but evil. It was flabbergasting and frightening,” she continues.
Clinton’s readiness to compare herself to the bloodthirsty queen of Westeros is a somewhat curious decision. In the series Cersei is depicted as a violent, unforgiving and blindly ambitious leader — all qualities Clinton herself has been accused of.
Though the Game of Thrones scene had obvious medieval overtones, Headey said similar realities are still experienced by women around the globe.
“They still do it now. They take women out and stone them to death.”
Clinton isn’t blaming her loss totally on the fact that she is a woman, but she’s not discounting that it played a role either.
“Was all this because I was a woman?” Clinton asks. “No. But I believe it was motivation for some of those chanters and some of that bile.”
