5 Worst Things Jaime Lannister Did On Game Of Thrones, Ranked

This story contains discussions of sexual assault.

When we first meet Jaime Lannister, the swordsman played on "Game of Thrones" by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, we learn something shocking about him: his nickname is "Kingslayer." On the HBO series and its original source material — the novel series "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George R.R. Martin — Jaime does something before the narrative that changes the story's entire trajectory, and that thing he does is murder a monarch of Westeros, King Aerys II Targaryen. (We never said the nickname was clever.)

To be absolutely fair to Jaime, he has a good reason to do this: even though he leads Aerys' Kingsguard and is sworn to protect the king, Aerys has, by this point, more than earned the moniker of "Mad King," and is prepared to use a dangerous substance called "wildfire" on the entire population of the Westerosi capital of King's Landing just to take everyone down with him. Jaime's sacrifice earns him a crappy nickname and the ire of his colleagues in the Kingsguard, but it also takes out a dangerous ruler and ensures that the non-mad king Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) can take the throne instead.

This exact contradiction — Jaime does something horrible, but for a genuinely noble reason — tends to define this fascinating character throughout "Game of Thrones." So what are the all-time worst things that Jaime Lannister ever does on "Game of Thrones?" To be honest, there's a lot of competition here, especially when you think for even a moment about his incredibly disturbing relationship with his twin sister Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey). From foolish fights to attempted murder to a shocking about-face, here are the five worst things that Jaime Lannister does on "Game of Thrones," ranked. (Also, this seems obvious, but still: full series spoilers ahead!)

At the very beginning of "Game of Thrones," Jaime is no hero — he does something so reprehensible in the show's pilot, point in fact, that it's included later on this list — and the way he treats the generally honorable Eddard "Ned" Stark, played by Sean Bean, exemplifies this. Early on "Game of Thrones," Jaime operates by a simple yet profane creed that he ultimately expresses to Cersei — "f*** anyone who isn't us" — and that manifests in his treatment of Ned, a Northern lord called to serve as Hand of the King to Robert Baratheon after the previous Hand dies under suspicious circumstances. (Not a great environment in which to accept a job offer, Ned, but you do you.)

In the fourth episode of Season 1 of "Game of Thrones," appropriately titled "The Wolf and the Lion" — referencing Ned and Jaime's respective house sigils — news breaks in King's Landing that Ned's wife Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley) is holding Jaime and Cersei's younger brother Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) hostage. Catelyn incorrectly believes that Tyrion hired an assassin to take out her son Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) while he recovers from a totally different injury (more on that later), and even though it's safe to say Tyrion doesn't have the best relationship with his older siblings all of the time, Jaime flies into a rage. By attacking Ned and his men in King's Landing and even killing some of them, all Jaime does is fan the flames of this war between the Starks and Lannisters, and honestly? He just makes the entire situation way, way worse than it needs to be in the moment.

We'll circle back shortly to the larger situation between Jaime and Cersei, but we definitely can't overlook a deeply controversial moment between these twins and lovers in Season 4 of "Game of Thrones" that most fans think went way too far. In the second episode of that season, Jaime and Cersei's deeply evil eldest son Joffrey ends up murdered at his own wedding, and when Cersei points the finger at Tyrion, the bonds between the Lannisters begin to fracture. That sort of explains how we get to a scene in the Season 4 episode "Breaker of Chains," where Jaime sexually assaults Cersei as they view their firstborn's dead body in the sacred Sept of Baelor.

The encounter might start out on a consensual note, but that's not the full story ... and the episode's director Alex Graves weighed in on why the show added a scene involving sexual assault that's not in the book (in George R.R. Martin's "A Storm of Swords," the encounter is fraught but is definitively consensual). Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter after the episode aired, Graves explained why this happens in front of Joffrey's body:

"He is their first born. He is their sin. He is their lust, and their love — their everything. If he's gone, what's going to happen? Jaime is still trying to believe as hard as he possibly can that he's in love with Cersei. He can't admit that he is traumatized by his family and he's been forced his whole life to be something he doesn't want to be."

We see the vision here, but that doesn't change one thing: what Jaime does is horrifying, full stop. Notably, it is only fourth on this list.

It's remarkable, considering Jaime's track record, that his long-standing affair with his own twin sister is only third on his list of offenses. We mentioned Jaime's attack on Ned Stark earlier, and the strife between House Lannister and House Stark only gets worse when Ned starts realizing something weird: despite Robert Baratheon being "black of hair," all of Cersei's supposed children with the king have blonde hair. That brings Ned to an unavoidable conclusion — Cersei's children are all illegitimate and none of them have a claim to the Iron Throne. Not only that, but these children were all fathered by Jaime.

The relationship between Cersei and Jaime, two golden-haired Lannisters who subsequently produced three babies — Joffrey, Myrcella (Aimee Richardson and Nell Tiger Free), and Tommen (Callum Wharry and Dean-Charles Chapman) — looms large throughout "Game of Thrones," and it's always a little yucky and unsettling when these two lovers reunite. They say you can't help who you love, but on a purely objective level, it is not great to carry on an illicit affair with your twin sister and father three children with her, lying about the whole thing to the point where a guy (Ned) gets his head chopped off for telling the truth. Beyond that, Jaime commits a whole mess of horrible deeds to protect his and Cersei's privacy ... which brings us to one of his worst-ever acts.

At the end of the pilot of "Game of Thrones" — not the botched pilot that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had to hastily reshoot, but the real one — audiences learned that Jaime and Cersei were siblings and lovers through the perspective of another character. That character is Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), Catelyn and Ned's second-oldest son who loves climbing tall surfaces (even as Catelyn constantly begs him to be more careful). Bran spends basically the whole pilot finding things to climb under the watchful eye of his brand new direwolf puppy Summer, but in the pilot's final moments, he scales a tower only to find something alarming.

That something is Jaime and Cersei in flagrante, sharing a moment of passion that, even to a young child's eyes, could only mean one thing. Noticing Bran, Cersei and Jaime both panic, realizing that the young boy will almost certainly run to his mother or father and reveal that the queen and her brother are having an affair. At first, it seems like Jaime might be merciful towards the young boy, especially as Bran swears up and down that he won't tell anybody about what he saw. Unfortunately, after lulling Bran into a bit of a false sense of security, Jaime turns to Cersei and quips, "The things I do for love." Then he shoves Bran, presumably to his death.

Bran survives, and he and Jaime ultimately reunite and make amends many seasons later in "Game of Thrones." Still, is anyone going to argue that shoving a kid out of a tower (and potentially killing him) because said kid caught you getting down and dirty with your sister a good thing by literally any metric? We didn't think so.

Before we get to Jaime's final bad thing, we have to discuss the trajectory of Jaime and Brienne of Tarth, the massively tall aspiring female knight played to perfection by Gwendoline Christie. After Jaime is freed from Stark captivity in Season 2, Catelyn asks Brienne to use him as a trade in return for her daughters, but in typical "Game of Thrones" fashion, nothing goes to plan; instead, the duo end up captured by the truly reprehensible Locke (Noah Taylor). Locke torments Jaime by cutting off his sword hand and nearly kills Brienne by locking her in an arena and forcing her to fight against a bear — forcing Jaime to save her from certain death in one of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's favorite scenes to film from the series — and a bond emerges between the two, leading to an incredible scene where Jaime explains his kingslaying ways.

By Season 8, Jaime is allied with Tyrion, Brienne, and other forces opposing Cersei and joins the show's protagonists in the Battle of Winterfell against the Night King (Vladimir Furdyk) and his army. In the episode following that battle, "The Last of the Starks," Jaime abandons all of his allies to return to Cersei, even as Brienne stands in the entrance of the castle of Winterfell and begs him to stay. Jaime's only explanation? "She's hateful, and so am I," he says, referring to his sister and lover. Not only does this narratively undo Jaime's entire character arc in a frankly infuriating way, it's the worst thing Jaime has ever done.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).