Lady Macbeth Vs. Queen Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones

Let's talk about insane wives and queens! Insanity in matrimony combined with the leadership of a nation is always an entertaining combination. These women are creepily similar in their callous ambition, and it comes back to haunt both of them, though in different ways.

One of their biggest commonalities is their seeming willingness to kill babies:

I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.

Lady Macbeth infers that she has possibly smashed a babies brains in, while Queen Lannister, in the first episode, lets her brother/lover throw a ten year old boy out of a tower window. You just lose a certain level of sympathy when you condone the killing of minors. For both characters the baby killing references happen early in the story. This sets these characters up as evil or mad. You never get a chance to build any sympathy for them, they start out as unlikable characters.

While you don't start with any sympathy for these characters, you do build up a sort of pity for them. For Lady Macbeth, by the time she is saying "Out Damned Spot", she has gone mad from her own guilt. This is a situation where we don't condone her actions but we do sympathize. Her madness is her redemption. Queen Lannister, isn't as lucky. She also has her choices come back to haunt her, but she doesn't get any sympathetic escape (at least at the end of season one). The Queen successfully completes her coup to have her son placed on the throne, but she can not control him. Through the last episodes, it is obvious that Queen Lannister wanted Nathan Stark removed from power, but not killed. Her young king would not have that. He is an obviously rash and reckless king, which, instead of setting up the Lannisters to rule "for a thousand years" as Tywin Lannister said, will probably end up in the House falling through Civil War with the Starks. This is a similar end to the one that befalls Macbeth's reign, but Queen Lannister does not have the scapegoat of insanity from her ruthlessness, at least not yet. It is obvious that the guilt of Stark's death haunts her from her reaction to his execution.