Joffrey Baratheon

King Joffrey I Baratheon is one of the main antagonists of the A Song of Ice and Fire novel series and its television adaptation Game of Thrones.

At the beginning of the story, he is introduced as Prince Joffrey, the eldest son and heir of King Robert I Baratheon and Queen Cersei Lannister, making him the Crown Prince of the Seven Kingdoms. He is the older brother of Princess Myrcella and Prince Tommen. He is very proud of being Robert's son and has always tried to be like him while also trying to get his attention. However, unknown to him and his siblings, his real father is Ser Jaime Lannister, the queen's brother, thus meaning that Joffrey is not only a bastard but a product of incest. His illegitimate birth and his cruel decision to execute Lord Eddard Stark on false charges of treason would ignite the War of the Five Kings.

Joffrey was strong-willed as a child, had an uncontrollable temper like his mother's, and had an unchecked sadistic streak. He had little sense of right or wrong, which often leads him to trouble, especially when he loses his temper, and when things go wrong, he always blames the problems on others. Despite being willful, he was arrogant, cruel, and prone to irrational and bad judgment calls. Joffrey was unbelievably sadistic and had been since he was a child, stating, "Everyone is mine to torment." He did not recognize himself and his actions as monstrous or evil and simply believed that he was behaving like a true strong king to excuse his cruelty, considering himself one of the greatest and just kings that ever sat upon the Iron Throne. He saw his victims as bad people who needed to be punished.

Simply because of his sadism and eagerness to deal with his first execution of a very important lord, Eddard Stark, King Joffrey caused a war that led to the ascension of two kings, Robb Stark and Balon Greyjoy. Stark's death made it impossible for the Lannisters to make peace with Winterfell and Riverrun and deal with Robert's brothers, Stannis and Renly, who were the ones who truly meant to start a war from the beginning.

As such, Joffrey was a believer in the Faith of the Seven and thought the gods were on his side since he was unaware of the truth of his situation and saw his enemies as usurpers and traitors that were defying Robert's rightful heir. Before the Battle of the Blackwater, he insisted, against his mother and court's will, that he leave the Red Keep to go to the Great Sept of Baelor—even if the mob was infuriating in the streets—and see the High Septon so that he could personally bless him for the battle.

When he succeeded Robert in ruling the Seven Kingdoms, Joffrey ruled in his name only. He would show authority only when it came to punishing (often for little to no reason but imagined slights and treason) people, but not when it came to ruling or fighting wars, as the ambitious adults around him promptly assumed political control. After Robert's death, the small council took over the realm, and during Joffrey's reign, 3 heads of the councils ruled in his stead: his mother Cersei, his uncle Tyrion Lannister, and his grandfather Tywin Lannister. Tywin and the small council also managed the war against the other kings, while Joffrey remained unadvised and left to his little games.

In the TV series, at some point, Joffrey shows frustration with this, stating to Lord Tywin that no one ever helps him learn how to rule better and get some true credit. He also remained the only one to show concern for Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons across the Narrow Sea, like the late Robert, while the Lannisters dismissed her as powerless. After the Battle of the Blackwater, his grandfather secured him the entire south: the Westerlands, the Reach, the Stormlands, and Dorne. The North, the Iron Islands, and the Vale never bent to Joffrey and the Lannisters instead (though the North remained defeated and weakened by the houses Frey, Bolton, Greyjoy, and the Lannister-Tyrell alliance), and the riverlands never fully bent until Tommen's ascension. Joffrey remained a pawn for the nobles' games in King's Landing until one of the players, Olenna Tyrell, poisoned him during his wedding feast.

He appears to be asexual, never sleeping with his girlfriend or wife but frequently beating her for his amusement. With all these traits, it would be accurate to describe him as a psychopath. He suffers from comorbid Cluster B personality; he can be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder as a primary diagnosis while also qualifying for a secondary diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. In the TV series, he was sent two prostitutes, Ros and Daisy to placate him, but he only forced the former to beat the latter, as he found it more pleasurable. Later, Joffrey was given Ros permanently by Petyr Baelish (as a punishment for being Varys's spy) and he murdered her with a crossbow instead, after shooting her multiple times as a target practice. In the novels, during Sansa and Tyrion's wedding ceremony, Joffrey, who is 13 by then, molested Sansa by discretely touching her breast while bringing her to the altar. He also occasionally said he intended to rape Sansa whether he would marry her or not, but never did. This suggests he may not have been genuinely interested in sex and only enjoyed making Sansa uncomfortable. Even Varys never reported any sexual activity on Joffrey's part. In the TV series, during Sansa and Tyrion's wedding, he privately took Sansa aside and threatened to rape her on her wedding night, although this may have been more psychological torture, since she was one of his preferred victims of abuse, plus it'd sabotage the bedding night for his hated uncle, Tyrion.

However, for the tyrannical psychopath he was, Joffrey ultimately proved to be a cowardly weakling. He would often express fear or even break down in tears whenever faced with violence, despite frequently inflicting it on others. Joffrey strongly valued bravery and opposed opportunistic behavior, even calling out his grandfather Tywin for the latter's cravenly deeds during Robert's Rebellion. However, Joffrey did not consider it a crime and rather just despised it as weakness; this was proven when he was thankful to Lord Walder Frey for killing Robb Stark in the same despised ways. If his own cowardice was called out, he'd become defensive and denied the accusation, either threatening the "accuser" or cowering again in the case of Tywin. He always genuinely wanted to be a true strong Baratheon and fight to defend his reign from his enemies, but would eventually break down and flee when the time to face opponents comes.

He would always regret his cowardice and sometimes bitterly feel that he was nothing like a true Baratheon. Nevertheless, despite his cowardice and in addition to his lack of fighting skills or cunning intellect, Joffrey was consumed with megalomaniacal delusions of grandeur: that he believed himself to be a mighty warrior, despite being beaten in a fight by a young girl and tearfully begging for his life; that he is the greatest king Westeros has ever seen, despite having plunged his kingdom into war after executing a political prisoner on a whim (and for fun), despite his advisor's warnings and his own mother's protests, and that his people love him when in fact he was universally hated by his people for his appalling treatment of them.

Joffrey had the Lannister look of his parents, with blond, curly hair and handsome. In the novels, he has such an extremely androgynous look that Jon Snow thought he looked like a princess. He had bright green eyes, pouty lips, and an evil sneer. He always wore the finest clothing and accents, as befits a royal heir and king. He was described as tall for his age, with a strong body fit for a fighter, however, Joffrey was untrained with his sword, just like his brother Tommen, because both King Robert and Ser Jaime had neglected him to teach him how to "be a man" by Westerosi standard, which caused him to look at Sandor Clegane, Cersei's bodyguard, as a surrogate father. Eventually, Cersei noticed that Joffrey liked her "dog," Sandor, so she gave him to her son. The almost hilarious irony of Joffrey having no training is that Joffrey, despite having won no great personal victories in combat, believed himself to be a great warrior.

King Robert always despised his heir, Joffrey, and was disappointed that he grew up to be an evil child. He would admit that the only reason he didn't abdicate the Iron Throne and joined with a sellsword company was out of fear of leaving the kingdom to his wife Cersei, whispering her insane ideas to Joffrey. Joffrey instead adored Robert and always tried to make him proud in the wrong ways, such as hiring a Catspaw to kill Bran Stark after hearing his drunk father say that it would be kinder to kill the boy instead of leaving him in a coma. Even after Robert's death, Joffrey would not tolerate anyone who badmouthed his legal father or casually mutilated a singer who scorned Robert's final stand. Joffrey also took Robert as his role model, imitating his mentality and words often incorrectly or in the wrong context, much to Tywin's annoyance, who initially had the impression that Joffrey never cared for his father.

Moreover, Joffrey's younger siblings, Myrcella and Tommen, were not fond of his cruel behavior; the latter duo have always done everything together. Joffrey would sometimes torment and bully Tommen, which the boy used to hide from him, usually in the Red Keep's sept. Joffrey and Tommen would also argue about trivial things like siblings normally do, and Tommen would win by threatening to tell their mother if Joffrey would go too far in making him unhappy. Joffrey shares his mother's hatred for his uncle Tyrion, and this would only get worse when he became king and Tyrion showed too much defiance and often humiliated him in front of everyone, until eventually Joffrey lost his patience and started to torment Tyrion as an act of revenge. The only thing Joffrey and Tyrion shared in common was their fondness for Robert Baratheon.

Joffrey had an unhealthily spiteful relationship with his uncle, Lord Renly Baratheon, due to the man being an arrogant, supercilious, and strong-looking smiler who always made japes about everything. Joffrey was also very mean-spirited and inconsiderate, so he never took sarcasm and mockery well from others, and even he found Renly too childish. Renly laughed at his face in front of everyone at Castle Darry, stating that Arya had the size of a rat, yet she managed to disarm Joff and throw away his sword, Lion's Tooth, in the river. Joffrey's dislike for Renly increased, and after Renly didn't even show loyalty to him and fled to take away the Stormlands and the Reach from his kingdom, Joffrey's dislike turned into hatred. Joffrey's eldest Baratheon uncle, Lord Stannis Baratheon, didn't show any interest or affection to the royal children, as he's a cold, distant man, though he preferred Tommen over Joffrey.

Having the ability to tell the parentage of children by looking at them, Stannis felt that Cersei's children were not Robert's, and one day he left King's Landing with the royal fleet to sail to Dragonstone and close it without giving the court any explanation, as well as leaving only a few ships in the capital. Later, when Joffrey and Cersei summoned Stannis to court to swear fealty to him, Stannis ignored them and their letters and declared himself the rightful king of the Iron Throne instead. Joffrey kept empty spikes for the heads of Stannis, Renly, and Robb, was disappointed that Renly died before he could face him, and remained eager to destroy Stannis instead, wanting to kill him personally until he remained intimidated by his uncle's fierceness on the battlefield. He eagerly insisted on protecting one of the gates that were attacked by Stannis, until the battle went in the enemy's favor and Cersei called him back to the Red Keep.

Joffrey was not mourned by anyone except his mother. Even his biological father, Jaime Lannister, feels that Joffrey deserved his fate and that he was never originally a person of importance to him. Tommen and Myrcella felt only a bit sad for their brother. Tyrion Lannister states that Joffrey would have become a worse king than the Mad King. Kevan Lannister had nothing good to say about Joffrey, and from what he saw in the boy, he decided that Cersei was a bad mother. When she saw Joffrey clawing his own throat, crying, and looking at everyone for help, Sansa Stark was shocked and ran away to the Red Keep's gardens in tears, until she asked herself why she was crying for Joffrey and regained a bit of self-control, reasoning that Joffrey had it coming for all the evil he caused to her, her family, and many other people. Arys Oakheart thinks the only good thing that could be said of Joffrey is that he was tall and strong for his age. His grandfather, Tywin, was indifferent to his death, although was pleased at the prospect of Tommen succeeding his brother, since the younger boy was a gentle person and far easier to control than the irrational, tantrum-tended Joffrey. Cersei, in total contrast to these people, is convinced that Joffrey was great and strong and continued to unfavorably compare Tommen with him after the Purple Wedding; she never properly recognizes the monster she raised to be king, which was one of the biggest influences on Joffrey's psychopathic personality.