I've spent way too much time scrolling through these fics, honestly. The emotion in a lot of them is strangely flat, like they're just ticking boxes—angry Cersei, manipulative Cersei, possessive Cersei. But the ones that get it right treat the son as a mirror, you know? He's not just a prop for her power fantasies; his own emotional landscape becomes this twisted garden she's trying to cultivate. Is he terrified of her? Desperately craving her approval? Starting to mirror her cruelty? The good authors don't tell you; they show it through tiny, loaded gestures—the way she might adjust his collar a little too tightly, or how he learns to lie to Jaime before he learns to read.
What's fascinating is when the emotion hinges on deviation from canon. If this son exists, what does that do to Joffrey? To her relationship with Robert? I read one where the son was actually kind and gentle, and Cersei's love for him was this frantic, smothering thing because she saw his goodness as a fatal weakness. Her emotional journey wasn't about being a mother, but about trying to armor him in her own cynicism, and watching it fail. That conflict, the love warped by her worldview, felt more true to her character than any generic villainy.
The lemon thing often gets played as a shallow symbol of their 'sour' relationship or just a cheap sensual tag, but occasionally it's woven in cleverly. One story used the scent of lemon in the gardens as a trigger for the son's memories—not of sweetness, but of the acidic taste of her backhanded compliments and the sharp, clean smell of her rooms where secrets were traded. It tied the sensory detail to a complex emotional history, which is way better than just having them share a glass of lemonwater.