WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Castlevania Season 4, available now on Netflix.
The kingdoms of Game of Thrones may seem like a far cry from the demonic Hell beasts jam-packed into every episode of Castlevania, but the two series actually have their stark similarities. Case in point: Carmilla is Wallachia's Cersei Lannister.
The power-hungry queens have interesting parallels which may just make each character all the more fascinating in light of each other.
In the wake of Dracula's death in the Season 2 finale of Castlevania, the power vacuum created opportunities for his underlings that they never knew before. And chief among those opportunists was Carmilla, ready to head an empire the likes of which the world had never seen before. Alongside her Council of Sisters made up of Lenore, Morana and Striga, the four oversaw an expansion of their own slice of Hell on Earth that grew larger by the night. And for Carmilla, it was simply never enough.
The same could be said for Cersei Lannister, whose ambitions only grew all the more voracious as Game of Thrones wore on. She was by no means powerless at the start of the series; born into the privileged position of one of Westeros' wealthiest families, and ruling over Westeros alongside Robert Baratheon. But following Baratheon's death, Cersei plotted and conspired not only to retain her influence, but ultimately to replace him on the throne herself. But even beyond their bottomless ambition, Cersei and Carmilla share other similarities.
What stands out the most are their mutual motivations in lashing out against the victimhood that threatens them. Carmilla and Cersei are both acutely aware that they rose to power in a man's world and that they need to fight and scramble harder against it. While it'd be easy to reduce both women to being heartless villains, they both offer some level of sympathy, both in their perceived injustices and in the tenderness with which they treat their families. For Carmilla it's her Council of Sisters, and for Cersei it's her twin brother Jaime and their children. Both queens surround themselves with the select few they care about while damning the rest of the world.
And of course both women reach the same tragic ends, their ambitions ultimately pushing them to overreach beyond what they possibly could have survived with. Carmilla poured over her maps determined to rule the entire world, reducing the surviving human population to pen animals kept only for vampiric feeding. Cersei explained the danger of her world in an elegant manner that rings true for both Castlevania and her own realm: "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die."
Unfortunately for both, it was the latter. For Cersei, that death came in the arms of Jaime as their kingdom literally collapsed around them. For Carmilla, it came with a defiant suicide as a last-ditch effort to kill the Forgemaster Isaac as he sought to replace her. Both series had their strengths and their own diverse casts of characters, but these two eerily similar villainesses stand out as the perfect parallels to show just how dangerous ambition can become.
Castlevania stars Richard Armitage as Trevor Belmont, Alejandra Reynoso as Sypha Belnades, James Callis as Alucard, Theo James as Hector, Adetokumboh M'Cormack as Isaac, Jaime Murray as Carmilla, Jessica Brown Findlay as Lenore, Bill Nighy as St. Germain, Jason Isaacs as The Judge and Rila Fukushima as Sumi. The entire series is available now on Netflix.