All Men Must Fall in Love: Top 23 couples from Game of Thrones

20. Cersei Lannister and Robert Baratheon

This relationship ends with one partner arranging the death of the other, so you know it’s not going to be high on the list.

Cersei Lannister was married off to Robert Baratheon at a young age, in order to secure peace after the reign of the Targaryens on the Iron Throne came to an end. Political marriages are already prone in instability, but even by the standards of Westeros, this relationship was rough. As willing as Cersei was to forge a connection with Robert at the beginning, he never got over the late Lyanna Stark. “I felt something for you once, you know,” she tells him in an early episode of Game of Thrones. “For quite a while actually. Was it ever possible for us? Was there ever a time, ever a moment?” Robert’s answer says it all: “No.”

Could things have been different had Robert allowed himself to love Cersei? Maybe. What we know is that the two grew bitter towards each other over the years, and Cersei eventually had her husband murdered to make way for her son to ascend the throne. It was a loveless union that ended in blood, and the fact that it didn’t have to be that way gives it an air of tragedy.