Carolyn Jenkins is a voracious consumer of film and television. She graduated from Long Island University with an MFA in Screenwriting and Producing where she learned the art of character, plot, and structure. The best teacher is absorbing media and she spends her time reading about different worlds from teen angst to the universe of Stephen King.
Just as the great wheel of leadership spins on Game of Thrones, HBO’s critically acclaimed fantasy series was seemingly destined to fall. A series could not fly so close to the sun without getting burned, and the infamous finale of the show proved that. Everyone had qualms about one storyline or another during the Game of Thrones finale, but the most painful disappointment belonged to Jaime Lannister.
Portrayed effortlessly by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau for eight seasons, Jaime was the one that fans loved to hate. The twin brother of Queen Cersei (Lena Headey), who ended the first episode of the series by pushing a child out of a tower window, the knight of the Kingsguard was arrogant, entitled, and a little too fond of incest. This encouraged fans to rally against him, but the following seasons showed the character in storylines that housed some of the best character development on television. Regrettably, the best Game of Thrones character was not given the ending he deserved when the series concluded.
‘Game of Thrones’ Destroyed Jaime’s Character Development in the Final Episode
Jaime Lannister easily could have been a one-note villain in the same way his sister is portrayed in the series, but Nikolaj Coster-Waldau successfully translated the character from book to screen in a powerful tour de force. At the start, Cersei’s twin would have done anything for House Lannister and even went so far as to get caught to remain faithful to his family. This changes as Jaime meets Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) and the two travel to King’s Landing together.
COLLIDER
Collider · Quiz
Collider Exclusive · Game of Thrones Personality QuizWhich Game of Thrones House Do You Belong To?Stark · Lannister · Targaryen · Baratheon · Tyrell
Five great houses. Five completely different answers to the same question: how do you hold power in a world that will take it from you the moment you stop paying attention? Eight questions will determine where your loyalties — and your nature — truly lie.
🐺Stark
🦁Lannister
🐉Targaryen
🦌Baratheon
🌹Tyrell
QUESTION 1 / 8HONOUR
01
Someone powerful is acting dishonourably and everyone knows it. What do you do?In Westeros, the answer to this question has ended more than one great house.
QUESTION 2 / 8STRENGTH
02
What is the source of your power?Every house endures because of something. What is it for yours?
QUESTION 3 / 8LOYALTY
03
Who do you truly fight for?Strip away the banners and the words. The honest answer tells you everything.
QUESTION 4 / 8ENEMIES
04
How do you deal with your enemies?A house's method reveals its character as clearly as its words ever could.
QUESTION 5 / 8RULE
05
What kind of ruler do you believe in?Westeros is full of answers to this question. Most of them end badly.
QUESTION 6 / 8LOSS
06
You suffer a devastating loss. How does your house respond?How a house handles defeat tells you more about it than how it handles victory.
QUESTION 7 / 8WORDS
07
Which of these truths about Westeros do you most believe?Every house has a philosophy. This is yours.
QUESTION 8 / 8THE THRONE
08
The Iron Throne is within reach. What do you do?The answer reveals not just your ambition — but your character.
The Maester Has SpokenYour House Is…
Your answers point to the great house whose words, values, and way of surviving in Westeros match your own. Bend the knee — or don't. That's very much up to you.
Winterfell · The North
🐺 House Stark
Winter is Coming — and you have always known it. You prepare not out of fear but out of duty, because the people who depend on you deserve someone who takes the long view.
You lead with honour even when it costs you, because you understand that a reputation built on integrity is the only one worth having.
Your loyalty to family and people runs deep — not as sentiment but as a code that doesn't bend when things get difficult.
The North endures because Starks endure — not by being the cleverest players in the game, but by being the kind of people others are willing to follow into the cold.
You are that kind of person. The pack survives. The lone wolf dies. You already know which one you are.
Casterly Rock · The Westerlands
🦁 House Lannister
You understand the game — its rules, its exceptions, and exactly when the rules become the exception. You play it without illusions and without apology.
You are sharper than most people realise, and you have learned to use that gap to your advantage.
A Lannister always pays their debts — and you always keep your word, because your word is an instrument of power, and instruments must be kept in working order.
You love your family with a ferocity that sometimes blinds you, and you know it, and you do it anyway.
The lion doesn't concern itself with the opinion of sheep. Neither, in the end, do you.
Dragonstone · The Iron Throne
🐉 House Targaryen
You carry a sense of destiny that is difficult to explain and impossible to ignore — the feeling that you are not simply participating in the world but meant to reshape it.
You are capable of extraordinary things, and you know it, and that knowledge is both your greatest strength and your most dangerous quality.
Fire and blood are not just words to you — they are a philosophy about what change requires and what it costs.
The Targaryens at their best were transformative rulers who broke chains and defied the limits of what anyone thought possible.
At your best, so are you. The dragon has three heads. You are one of them.
Storm's End · The Stormlands
🦌 House Baratheon
You are a force — direct, powerful, and difficult to ignore when you enter a room or a conflict. You do not negotiate with challenges. You meet them.
Ours is the fury — and yours is a kind of intensity that commands attention, respect, and occasionally fear from those who underestimate what's behind it.
You value strength and straight dealing. You'd rather know where you stand in a fight than navigate a web of courtly whispers.
The Baratheons built their house on the back of one of the greatest military victories in Westerosi history — and then struggled with what came after.
The lesson of your house is that winning is not the end of the story. Governing is. You are learning that too.
Highgarden · The Reach
🌹 House Tyrell
You understand that power does not always announce itself — that sometimes it arrives with flowers, good wine, and a smile that doesn't quite reach the eyes.
Growing strong is your house's motto, and you live it: patiently, strategically, always investing in the relationships and resources that will matter most when it counts.
You are charming by choice and calculating by nature — a combination that makes you one of the most effective players in any room you enter.
The Tyrells fed King's Landing and shaped its politics without ever sitting on the Iron Throne — and they were arguably more powerful for it.
You know that the person who controls the food controls the kingdom. And you always know where the food is.
Brienne learns the truth behind his greatest shame and that the character always had the potential for goodness. He just had the bad luck of being born to Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance), who had stamped out any potential for empathy. In turn, Jaime learns to think outside himself and becomes one of the most complex characters in the series. Season 3 marks Jaime’s greatest turn, and for the rest of the series, he never looks back.
He turns away from Cersei and rides to Winterfell to pledge himself to the North’s cause. For some reason, this is completely overturned in the final episode when Jaime decides to return to his abusive twin sister. They perish together in the fall of King’s Landing under a pile of rubble. This is a shocking end for a character who had spent most of the series developing into an interesting person of worth. For no apparent reason, Jaime changes his mind completely and dies with someone who never really loved him.
This devastating plot turn makes no sense for Jaime’s character and is also extremely disrespectful to the fans who had followed him for so long. The characters of Game of Thrones go through significant changes throughout the series, but Jaime was one of the most satisfying. His character assassination was a move that disappointed television fans but was even more baffling for readers of the book.
Jaime’s Character In the Book Was Going in a Vastly Different Direction
Viewers should have seen the writing on the wall for Jaime after Season 4 aired. Even though Jaime’s character development had only just begun, there was one scene that was a hint of the disappointment that was on the horizon. In a rare flashback for the series, Game of Thrones shows a young Cersei going to a fortune-teller, as she does in the books. Maggy the Frog recites the famous prophecy that Cersei will become queen, but for her children, “gold shall be their crown and gold their shrouds.”
The series left out arguably the most significant part, which has to do with Cersei’s death and her dark backstory from the books. Maggy foretells that “when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.” The Volanqar prophecy is missing from the series, which ultimately leads Jaime’s character arc astray. Even though George R.R. Martin has yet to finish the books, the prophecy likely refers to Jaime killing Cersei at the end of all things.
In High Valyrian, “valonqar” means “little brother,” which leads Cersei to believe that Tyrion will be her undoing. She doesn’t for one moment consider that Jaime – who was canonically born after his twin sister – could be the culprit. This is where the books seem to be leading. Unlike in the television series, the books show Jaime leaning further and further away from his former lover.
The last readers see of them, Cersei has been arrested for fornication and begs Jaime in a letter to save her. Jaime, who has undergone a lot of growth in the four books that he’s in, throws her letter in the fire. It seems pretty likely that Jaime is meant to turn away from Cerseicompletely, which should have been the tactic that the show took.
Sadly, viewers had to watch Jaime waste years of character development in a moment that strangely romanticizes his toxic relationship with his twin sister. There was a time when Jaime was the best character on the series, and one moment cemented his ending as one of the worst on the show.