Twincest, Self-Love, and the Jungian Shadow

[azdaema]

(This is me comparing and contrasting two of my OTPs. You have been warned.)

One—Cersei and Jaime Lannister for A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin—you may know. The other, 99% of the world is unfamiliar with—Jane Priest's-bane and Torisen Blacklord from P. C. Hodgell's Kencyrath series.

These two ships are as different as night and day—which is to say, not actually all that different after all. Inverse parallels, perhaps.

"What is love, Jamie? What is honor?"

Tirandys, Dark of the Moon

Jaime and Cersei's is—to put it most simply—the story of two twins coming to realize you're not as much like me as I thought you were, and that's discomfiting and unsettling and makes me question things I thought were true. Conversely, Jame and Torisen's is—at least from Torisen's side of things—a story of twins coming to realize you're more like me than I thought you were, and that's discomfiting and unsettling and makes me question things I thought were true.

The Twin and the Self

In the real world, twins are individual humans; they are not designed to be metaphorical mirrors to one another. But in fiction they are. Their being twins is never accidental or incidental: the author chose to make them twins for a reason.

What does it mean, then, to love someone who is so like oneself? This is something I've already touched on in a previous essay, but it's a question that twincest—when examined on anything other than a completely superficial level—always has to reckon with. With the Lannisters it is linked with narcissism, while with Torisen it is linked with self-acceptance.

And your Shanir twin, your darker half. Why do you think I drove her out, boy? Now she returns, to rival, to destroy you.

Ganth, Dark of the Moon

These are the words of Jame and Torisen's father, which consistently come to Torisen in the form of intrusive thoughts. This touches on the idea of the "dark twin." Not an evil twin in the trope sense—not a doppelgänger seeking to pass themselves off as you. By "dark twin," I mean something akin to the Jungian Shadow.

(As an English teacher of mine once said, "We take defunct psychology and make it literature." She was pretty on point there.)

In Jungian psychology, the "Shadow" is a person's dark side—or more accurately, their disowned side. It is the parts of the self that a person represses. This usually includes aggression, anxieties, prejudices, and—not uncommonly—sexuality. The Shadow isn't necessarily all negative traits, but they are always parts of the self that the individual is uncomfortable with or has been taught to shun.

How are we most similar and how does that scare you?

The Skin Deep, YouTube

Twincest that is—I wouldn't go so far as to say "love-hate," but fraught, perhaps?—is the perfect metaphor for the Jungian Shadow: It is seductive and calls to you, but also you resent and fear it, but also it's part of you.

Fraught these duos most definitely are. It is Cersei who says, "Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same." Going far beyond Tywin's, "You cannot eat love, nor buy a horse with it, nor warm your halls on a cold night," it is Jame and Torisen's father who taught them, "Destruction begins with love," and they quote that far too often not to have internalized it. The following—a dream Torisen has—is the embodiment of his attraction to his sister warring with his very-real fear of her:

"It's always the same: I'm in bed, on the edge of sleep, when she comes in. [...] My sister. Jame. Who else? She undresses by the fire. Trinity, but she's beautiful. When she's naked, though, I see that her body is covered with red lines almost like writing, but they're blood, not paint. Then, just as calmly, she starts to peel off her skin in long strips and hang them from the bed frame. I can't move. When she's completely naked, down to red veins, blue arteries and long, white muscles, she parts the red ribbons¹ of her own skin and climbs into bed with me."

Torisen, Bound In Blood

^{1. [In their culture, a lord's bed is hung with red ribbons on his wedding night.]}

In both of these pairs, the twin embodies the parts of the self they are most uncomfortable with, the parts they most deny. When they hate, fear, or reject their twin, it isn't really about the twin: it's about those shared traits in themselves. And those traits are always both weakness and power.

This theme is more explicit in the Kencyrath, but it is certainly present in A Song of Ice and Fire as well. For example, in A Feast for Crows, both Lannisters accuse each other of being reckless, of acting without thinking. In both cases this is a fair criticism, but neither is self-reflective enough to see that they themselves are no better. They can plainly see it—and resent it—in each other. But they fail to—or perhaps more accurately refuse to—acknowledge it in themselves.

Meanwhile in the Kencyrath, Jame and Torisen most obviously model this dynamic in regards to being Shanir. (Shanir is the word for the dangerous, culturally stigmatized magical powers which they both possess, though Torisen denies having.) But the Kencyrath is a slightly kinder story than A Song of Ice and Fire, and—more importantly—these twins are given a more fortuitous role within the narrative. While the Lannisters resent each other for their shared traits, each flatly denying it in themselves, Jame and Torisen—slowly, painfully—learn from it.

Loving your twin is easier than loving yourself. Accepting them—even the parts you hate, the parts you fear—is easier than accepting yourself. But how then can you accept those things in them while still holding on to your hatred of those same things in yourself? This concept is beautifully illustrated in this comic by Kimchi Cuddles:

Both Jaime and Torisen have tried the "growing a beard because highlighting your secondary sex characteristics makes you look less like your twin sister who you love but also hate a little" thing. Jaime—my darling dumbass—learn from those who have already tried that and who are further along in their character arcs: Running from your twin is futile. You cannot outrun your own shadow. No matter how far you go, you still carry her reflection in yourself. And as for deliberately trying to close yourself off from her, that is no better and no less doomed. You need to sit down and get called out by Trishien:

"Sweet Trinity, do you want to think badly of your sister? If she were a monster, how much easier things would be; but she isn't, and they aren't. Instead, you are two complicated people bound by blood and love. Trying to hide from that fact in ignorance doesn't become you, and it's dangerous."

Trishien, Bound In Blood

You may not yet be experiencing twin telepathy shared dreams yet, Jaime, but you are prone to weird symbolic dreams in general, so I wouldn't count that out just yet. And let me tell you: twin telepathy dreams make avoiding your twin really difficult. And even without them, you cannot avoid your sister in the space of your own mind; we know this.

The Lover as Destruction

Let's take about the personification of destruction as a woman. Creation is often personified as a woman, in the vein of Mother Earth. Destruction as a woman is less common.

These personifications of destruction are difficult to love, but just as difficult not to love. Loving them may be hard, and painful, and it might destroy you in the end, but what's the alternative? Love does not have an opt-out.

She sensed, however, that it also had something to do with love. That was where destruction began, according to Father. Was this how it ended, with speckles of dried blood on a stone wall? If so, she would do without it, except for Winter. And Tori. Whether he liked it or not, she would go on loving her brother—even if, right now, she felt more like hitting him.

7-year-old Jame, "Among the Dead," Blood and Ivory

Jame and Cersei are both metaphorically destruction, but in very different contexts.

Jame is very explicitly a metaphor for destruction, in the context of a narrative that hinges on the Hindu idea of creation, preservation, and destruction as the three-faced nature of god. Theirs is a narrative which does not shy away from the idea that destruction is difficult, painful, or dangerous, but also rejects the idea that destruction is quintessentially bad.

Cersei, on the other hand, is a much looser metaphor for destruction, and set within a narrative that is rather less concerned with taking a deep philosophical look at what destruction is or can be.

Torisen is creation. To love destruction as creation is hard, but there is also an ebb and flow to it, a balance. Destroying things that need to be destroyed, making space to create anew. One of the big questions their series asks is, "Can there be any happy union between creation and destruction?" While that question is yet to be answered, I think it has to be. Balance between creation, preservation, and destruction is the only way.

Conversely, Jaime is—if anything—destruction as well. Killing Aerys is a classic example of "destroying things that really fucking need to be destroyed." So here we have destruction and more destruction, and that is an very caustic combination.