The Evil of King Joffrey

Welcome to my final entry in my Month of Thrones series. Don't forget to check out my other articles covering the people, places and events in the world of Game of Thrones. And thank you for reading!!!!!

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While there are many people in the Game of Thrones series that are reprehensible, none is more hated than King Joffrey, First of His Name, King of the Iron Throne. Unlike other evil and terrible characters like Gregor "The Mountain" Clegane and Ramsay Snow, Joffrey doesn't actively participate in violence or torture that those characters do. Like we saw in Season Two, he can easily order anyone to be beaten or maimed, which makes him worse than the other two previously mentioned because of his perceived infallibility as a king and a young one at that. Not to mention the actor Jack Gleeson, who has been doing a fantastic job convincing millions of people to hate him.  Joffrey has truly become the uniting factor amongst different parts of the fandom as everyone can agree of their hatred of him. There's even a statue of Joffrey in Auckland, New Zealand whose purpose is to get a large enough Internet following/tweets to bring down the Joffrey. This way viewers can finally bring down the most hated character in the series and become 'kingslayers' themselves.

The viewers opinion has also become very important to the popularity of the show. Joffrey has become the character we all love to hate and his continued presence infuriates the majority of people as he is the one who has ordered the death of Ned Stark and the physical abuse of Sansa Stark. Joffrey is the kind of sadist, evil character that has no redeeming character traits, as he didn't have a difficult childhood or the need to want for anything (which can oftentimes be the cause of bad behavior). I believe that Joffrey's tendencies arose from his lack of love from his father, his result of being a product of incest, and his relationship with his mother (a monster in her own right).

As he is one of the key characters of the show/book, he has had many scenes. Most of the scenes depict him more as a sadist than anything else. In Season One, there was the incident with Mycah/Arya and the ordered death of Ned Stark, which lead directly to the war with the North. Season Two showed his cruelty to Sansa as he regularly had her beaten and forced her to look at her father's decapitated head while he watched gleefully on. He also turned coward during the battle of the Blackwater, diminishing moral and forcing his uncle Tyrion to do something to try to save everyone. Then he of course took the credit (and gave some to his grandfather) and no further mention of his cowardice was made. He continued his reign of terror in Season Three, showing his immaturity/incompetence at ruling and making not-so-subtle threats to Sansa. These actions and his general disposition make it easy for people to loath this stereotypical type of evil character.

By looking at the history of the books and his background, we can try to understand how he got his sadistic tendencies. The first important thing to mention is that he is a product of incest (mother and brother). Not only that but his biological parents are the offspring of a first cousin pairing (which wasn't shunned), so the double incest is present in him. In this world incest causes extreme dichotomies of personality, either madness or genius/effective leadership. This was seen in every generation of the Targaryen family, which practiced this exclusively (only sometimes marrying out due to lack of siblings). Two characters that can be contrasted are Daenerys and Viserys as examples of the result of incest.

Going forward we will see the continued manipulation of Joffrey by Margaery and we will also see their relationship grow. I'm not sure how this pairing will fair as I like Margaery (she's like Sansa with a backbone) and I'm not sure how she will handle Joffrey as a husband, even if she firmly establishes a positive (in his twisted way) relationship. His continued spats with Tywin and Tyrion will surely keep the viewers entertained as we see this family inter-argue and possibly implode despite being the ones on top (for now, at least). Joffrey as an evil character has had some important moments that have progressed the story and it will be interesting to see where it takes us from here.