The season eight premiere of Game of Thrones has left many people asking the same question: is Queen Cersei Lannister really pregnant with Jaime Lannister’s baby? 

Her brother, Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), certainly thinks so. In fact, he’s gone so far as to state that this is why the Lords and Ladies of Winterfell should trust her, stating that she will send her armies northwards because she now has something to “live for”. However, when Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbæk) vowed to put a prince in Cersei’s belly in the same episode, she tearfully and deliberately swigged at her glass of wine… suggesting that she isn’t pregnant, after all. 

So what’s really going on?

Well, we know why Tyrion believes his sister to be pregnant, of course. Back in the seventh season, when Cersei (Lena Headey) found herself alone with Tyrion for the first time in forever, shewas able to confront him over the role he played in the downfall of the Lannisters. By murdering their father, Tywin (Charles Dance), her little brother made it easier for “the vultures” to attack. This, in turn, left Myrcella (Nell Tiger-Free) and Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman) – Cersei’s beloved golden-haired children – vulnerable, and resulted in their untimely deaths.

Shocked to anger by Cersei’s accusations, Tyrion fired back: “You love your family, and I have destroyed it. And I will always be a threat, so put an end to me.”

He continued: “If it weren’t for me, you’d have a mother. If it weren’t for me, you’d have a father. If it weren’t for me, you’d have beautiful children. I’ve thought about killing you more times than I can count. Do it!”

As one, Game of Thrones fans held their breath – was Cersei about to do the unthinkable and order the zombified Mountain to murder Tyrion?

Thankfully not.

“That thing you dragged here, I know what it is, I know what it means,” she told her little brother, referring to the White Walker that he, Jon Snow (Kit Harington), and the rest of their group had brought for her to see. “And when it came at me, I didn’t think about the world, not at all. As soon as it opened its mouth, the world disappeared for me right down its black throat. All I could think about was keeping those gnashing teeth away from the ones that matter most, away from my family.”

A shaken Cersei fearfully clutched at her belly, and Tyrion suddenly understood why his sister had declined to join him for a glass of wine (aka her favourite ever drink).

“You’re pregnant,” he said, voice filled with wonder. And, at that moment, we cut away to see more of Dany (Emilia Clarke) and Jon’s flirtations in the Dragon Pit, which meant that we didn’t get to hear the end of Cersei and Tyrion’s conversation. Did he congratulate her? Or did he (as many people have speculated) vow to protect his unborn niece/nephew from harm, in a bid to make up for the deaths of Myrcella and Tommen?

The scripts for season seven, obtained by Vanity Fair, certainly seem to indicate that Cersei was, at one point, carrying Jaime’s baby. When Cersei first tells Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) about her pregnancy, the script reads: “She nods, it’s true […] Her happiness is contagious. They get another chance at family. This time with no one standing in their way.” And when Tyrion later deduces her secret, the script makes it clear that Cersei is caught off guard. 

Him finding out was apparently not part of some master plot: “Tyrion sees what he sees and knows what it means. He can hardly believe it, but knows it to be true […] She stays silent for too long, long enough to tell him that he’s right. And once she knows he knows, she can think of nothing else to say.”

Could it be that the youngest of Tywin Lannister’s children has, therefore, vowed to help his sister and her unborn child by any means possible? It’s not so ridiculous an idea, considering that Tyrion loved all of her late children (barring Joffrey) with every last piece of his heart and soul.

However, this is a fact which Cersei knows all too well. Could she be faking her pregnancy to manipulate those around her into doing exactly what she wants?

At the time, fans of the show certainly seemed to think so.

From the very first moment Cersei told Jaime that she was pregnant, everything felt… well, a little off. Not least of all because she dropped her baby bombshell on him in the middle of an embittered argument about Tyrion, the impossible war and loyalty.

“Whose will you say it is?” Jaime asked, knowing all too well that the people of Westeros frown upon incest (well, twincest, anyway).

“Yours,” she promised. And, when Jaime noted that the public wouldn’t be fans of that idea, Cersei reminded him of their late father’s maxim: “The lion does not concern himself with the opinions of the sheep”.

As Jaime hugged her tightly, though, Cersei told him to never betray her again – and we saw his eyes widen as he registered her not-so-subtle threat.

Cersei needed something, anything, to restore Jaime’s faith in her. And the one thing that will tie him to her is another baby – especially when they’ve lost all of their other children.

“Whatever stands in our way, we will defeat it,” she told him. “For ourselves, for our house, for this.” That was the moment she gestured toward her belly.

Everything about Cersei’s choice of language emphasised that she and Jaime are in this together and have a responsibility to keep it that way. Her words were fine-tuned to induce guilt if Jaime strays from her on any level. And her comments about the opinions of “the sheep”? Well, let's just say that a woman who has walked naked through King's Landing with the public crying “shame, shame, shame” at her for hours knows all too well that the sheep outnumber the lion a thousand to one. And their opinions do matter, a surprisingly amount.

Since that announcement, everything about Cersei’s pregnancy felt too rehearsed. Too perfect.

With Tyrion, for example, Cersei openly showed vulnerability – something which she has never done before. This is a woman who has always been in control of a situation, who has never unwittingly betray herself, and who would likely never grab at her stomach when thinking about her unborn child – even accidentally. And doesn’t it seem jarring that she’d one moment be feeling tearful and vulnerable, the next calling for the betrayal of Jon and Dany’s armies? She seems more than willing to use her pregnancy as a bargaining chip – and this has led many to believe that she’s 100% faking it.

Maggy the Frog’s prophecy supports this theory. As we learned in George RR Martin’s books, a young Cersei sought out fortune teller Maggy and asked her to look into her future for her. And the future that Maggy saw for her was grim indeed: she revealed that Cersei’s husband, Robert, would become a father 20 times over by bedding a number of mistresses – but that she would only ever have three.

“Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds,” she said, and her words have since come true. Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen have all been killed. Horribly. Which means that the prophecy has been fulfilled, and Cersei will not have any more children.

Does this mean that she’s faking it, though? New photos for HBO’s Game of Thrones suggest otherwise: indeed, the season eight promo shots of Cersei (as seen in the lead of this article) seem to hint at a growing bump. So does this mean that her pregnancy – which she has apparently been so callous about using for her own gain – is a) 100% real, and b) 100% doomed?

With Jaime having finally seen through Cersei’s villainy, and ridden off to join #TeamDaenerys in the battle against the undead, Cersei is alone in King’s Landing. Her allies have all fallen away from her (barring her creepy Maester and her zombie pal) and she is vulnerable.

Plus, there is the final part of the aforementioned prophecy to consider: when Maggy ended her reading with Cersei, she informed the future Queen that she will be murdered by the valonquar (which is High Valyrian for “little brother”).

“And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.”

Tyrion seems to be working with Cersei again, for now, but their relationship is notoriously fraught: perhaps he will kill off his sister if he learns that her pregnancy was another of her cunning ploys. Jaime, likewise, has turned his back on his twin and is all too aware of the evils she can do: he may be her twin, but he was born grasping her heel and so is, like Tyrion, her younger brother and a possible suspect.  And there’s Arya Stark (Maisie Williams), a skilled assassin who has the ability to don the face of anyone she chooses – and who has long dreamed of killing Cersei as payback for what she did to the Stark family. 

In short, it seems safe to predict that Cersei will die long before welcoming a fourth child into the world. It just remains to be seen as to how much trouble she can cause before she finally bites the big one. Will she unleash more wildfire upon the world? Will she drive a wedge between Tyrion and his Northern allies? Will she continue to torment Jaime, as she has for so long? 

In a behind-the-scenes interview last season, showrunner D.B. Weiss said: “All that’s ever mattered to Cersei is her children and, in relatively short order, Cersei has lost all of her children. She now is in a very dark place, and all she really has left is power for the sake of power.” 

Showrunner David Benioff went even further, explaining that, from their point of view, Cersei’s entire humanity was bound to her motherhood: “What is Cersei without her children? What prevents her from being a monster? The answer is nothing.”

But what if Cersei does have a child to live for? And what if said child isn’t growing in her belly, but walking around Winterfell with a (literal) axe to grind.

Oh yes, we’re talking about the little “black-haired beauty” which Cersei spoke of way back in season one. The only true child she bore of her late husband, King Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy). The child believed by fans everywhere to have been smuggled to safety by the late Ned Stark (Sean Bean) and raised outside the castle walls.

Yup, it seems Joe Dempsie’s character Gendry might just have a stronger claim to the Iron Throne than many first thought. 

Roll on episode two, already. Another week is far too long to have to wait to find out…

Images: HBO