Ugh. Sansa. Who would have thought a 11-13 year old fictional character could elicit such a maelstrom of fan-anger, blame-the-victim comments and, self-righteous shadenfreude?
The Good Little Girl. Teacher's pet. Little Miss Perfect. Homecoming Queen. Miss Universe.
She sews well; she embroiders perfectly; she paints like Picasso; she plays the harp and the bells and sings like a bird; she's a graceful dancer; she writes poetry about courtly love. She eats daintily and makes sure her hands never get sticky, she nibbles rather than bites, she sips and never gulps. She blushes prettily at some topics, looks tragic when she cries. Even when she belches it's pretty. She farts on key and when she goes to the privy she leaves nothing but a pile of rose petals shaped like a heart behind her.
He daddy thinks she's just a perfect little girl, her mother praises her, she makes the Septa feel like a genius , all the men in the castle smile at her and give her presents and lemon cakes.
And to make it worse she never does anything really mean to her sister, the hyperactive tomboy whose always underfoot, always screwing up, so boyish and naughty and...disharmonious. But it would be unladylike to point it out to her. IN fact she's NICEto her sister.She's got everybody else in the castle doing it for her.
--A Game of Thrones
This is how we're introduced to Sansa.
She got Arya in trouble! What a....goody miss two shoes!
Except she didn't.
What she did do is include Arya in her dumb 11 year old boy-conversation and ARYA called attention to herself because Sansa said that Poor Jon was jealous due to his bastardy.
Jon Snow! The closest thing to a hero the whole series has. Who wouldn't object? That poor guy! Can't even sit with the family when the King visits! can't even practice at swords with the Crown Prince! Treated with a cold eye by her Lady Mother.
Always left out.
But it's true.
Jon IS jealous; and in fact has a secret core of rage about his bastardy, one that causes him to go berserk in A Storm of Swords when he flashes back to his youth and Robb Stark telling him he could never be Lord of Winterfell; he gets so angry he blacks out, and when he comes back he's beaten Iron Emmett of Eastwatch black and blue.
So right off the bat we are introduced to Sansa this way. Through Arya's resentful, jealous eyes.
Does Arya have a point?
She's right that underneath the blemish free surface there is a smugness to Sansa. The smugness of the good little girl.
And it's a sibling rivalry has been magnified by the Septa and perhaps the rest of the castle.
But, like Jon, poor Arya is mostly jealous. Sansa doesn't do anything to her. Arya hangs herself on her own rope and blames Sansa.
But for readers, introduced to the character of Sansa this way...yeah, Sansa seems like a smug little brat.
And it's easy to overlook, at this early point in the story that Arya's point of view is limited and actually unfair.
Death of a Lady
But it would be unfair of us to really characterize it as all unfair. Because as Game of Thrones goes on, Sansa does reveal herself as dishonest.
A lie is a lie. We can't deny that. But what a lot of readers don't see is why she lied.
Amory Lorch and the sword that killed Rhaenys Targaryen
I think readers assume that Sansa lies because of her stupid crush on Joffrey. It's true that Sansa willfully seems to block the reality of Joffrey's character out of her mind and unfairly pins the blame on Arya and Mycah.
But Sansa is an eleven year old girl betrothed to marry a prince.
A prince whose family's rather dark history has been soft-soaped for her.
She knows that Jaime is the Kingslayer.
What she doesn't know is that:
She knows none of this. We know it. She's been sold a sanitized bit of history.
All eleven-year-olds are.
(rant to follow)
People criticise the Starks for not teaching Sansa (and the rest of the Stark children) the harsh realities of history. I mean, in a world as violent as the world of Westeros, the violent reality should be taught from kids from the cradle. Right?
It's dumb.
Westeros is no more violent than our world. Are you kidding me?
(graphic stuff here--please skip if squeamish)
Two world wars, the Holocaust, genocide....Look into the details of atrocities in any conflict in the last hundred years.
You'll be having nightmares.
German children with tongues nailed to tables by Russian soldiers.
Mass rapes and murder in China by the Japanese.
Japanese POW's drawn and quartered by New Zealanders.
Depleted uranium bombs...why?
Fetuses ripped out of mothers and chopped up 'like sausage'.
Piles of dead bodies shoved aside by bulldozers...
I'm 45 and I'm sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
(graphic stuff ends)
Gregor Clegane may not be the NORM, but he's far more common than most people consider.
. As JRR Tolkien said, real-life Orcs are on BOTH sides.
And who taught you all that when you were eleven?
If you're American, who taught you about the My Lai massacre or the killing squads of Viet Nam, carpet bombing of Cambodia, tacit approval of genocide in Pakistan, atrocities against Native Americans and Phillipinos, illegally overthrowing governments, soldiers firing on striking workers?
If you're English, who taught you at eleven about concentration camps in Africa, willful starvation in the colonies or Ireland, atrocities in the Wars, the slave trade?
If you're Russian, who taught you about pogroms and gulags and tens of millions sacrificed on the altar of the New Society, forced starvation and cannibalism in Ukraine?
You get the picture.
Eleven year olds never hear that stuff. Why should Sansa or Arya? Or Bran? To them they are taught the same thing as you were: whatever happened in the past, it was for a noble reason, and soldiers are there to protect you from evil.
Hating Sansa's eleven year old naivete is, frankly, just plain stupid.
(End of rant)
Now we know all these things that Sansa doesn't. We know the Lannister's and Joffrey are BAD with a capital B. We know that Robert is a neglectful corrupt man drinking himself into an early grave while his kingdom falls apart.
Sansa doesn't. She thinks they're the GOOD GUYS. Just like you probably would.
And so Sansa is caught: she doesn't want to lie; but she doesn't want to face the truth. And so she clams up. She doesn't actually lie about what happened. She claims that she doesn't remember.
And she pays for it, in one of the most hideously unfair crimes of the book...with Lady, the living representation of her unconscious instincts.
And people want to say: it's her fault! She didn't corroborate Arya's story! AS if the murder of her pet was a natural or foreseeable outcome of her silence.
Again, that's plain stupid.
Let me tell you something. CERSEI ordered that murder. Not Sansa. And it was a completely, totally, mind-boggingly unpredictable and irrational thing to do!
Sansa's silence, in the face of a very uncomfortable situation with the family she thinks she's going to be spending the rest of her life with, is RATIONAL..
An attempt at harmony. Constructive. The best thing she could do with the knowledge she had.
Tattling on her father--the fans collectively raise a howl
If she hadn't told Cersei, Ned would have escaped! None of it would have happened!
Uh. No. That makes no sense whatsoever.
NED told Cersei of his plans to tell Robert about the Baratheon children's bastardy.
Let me repeat that.
Ned told Cersei of his plans to disinherit and endanger his children.
And again: Ned told Cersei to leave the country because Robert was going to murder her and her children because of Ned's information.
Flat-out, straight-up, kid gloves off.
The only thing Sansa's informing to the queen did was prevent her and Arya from escaping. Maybe.
And, yeah, it was wrong. Tragic consequences. For sure.
It was the act of a wilful girl at the blossom of adolescent; that period of time when children begin to question their parents' infallibility. Adolescents are, frankly, stupid sometimes.
I know I was. But hey, that's how we grow in life: by making mistakes.
I blame Sansa like I blame my own bad decisions or my 16 year old stepson's
. Luckily my family wasnt and isn't in the situation hers was in.
And Sansa didn't even know she was in that situation, anyway.
You can disagree with Ned Stark for not being explicit about it. But even that is understandable. Ned Stark was working to protect his children but, let's face it: when you play the Game of Thrones you take some risks.
At the end of the day it all boils down to the fact that Eddard Stark inaccurately assessed those risks.
And man did Sansa, and Arya, pay for it.
The Little Bird in the cage
But why doesn't she break free? If I were her, I'd get out of there!I'd Arya wouldn't let herself suffer like that. Where is Sansa's agency?
Ugh, I've heard that so many times.
To that I say:
You're locked in a room for days. You have a friend. Your friend tells you 'they're killing everyone.' You hear fighting, screams, pleadings for mercy, howls of anguish. Your friend is taken from you. You never see her again.
You are in shock. You stop eating. YOu lose weight. You seriously consider suicide. An old man comes and touches you all over.
You take all the lady-like training you have at your disposal; all the courtesy and charm at your command. You take the good little girl persona and turn it into a tool; you plead for your father's life, pinning your hopes on the boy you think loved you, who you spent such a beautiful night with under the stars at the Hand's Tourney. You've trained all your life for this, and you do it.
And, of course it works. How could it not?
But then it doesn't.
And your see your father knocked down and beheaded in front of your eyes.
And the veil is lifted from your eyes. And you understand that you are in a cage and the the boy you thought you loved is a monster. He shows you your father's head, your Septa's. And you look at it. IN an act of defiance. And you refuse to break And the courtesy is dropped when you say: Maybe my brother will have your head.
--A Clash of Kings
Blaming the victim. Readers do it. As if she could escape. The whole court is snickering at her being sexually humiliated and beaten. What is she supposed to do, magic up a killing wish genie like Arya and get out?
The closest things she has to allies, Tyrion and the Hound are actually her captors, too. But she hasn't just meekly accepted her position. She is trying to escape.
IN fact this is one of the thing that really burns me up. How can you blame a child when grown men beat her? It's ridiculous.
Agency through empathy--I know why the little bird sings
Sansa is not a warrior. Sansa's agency, and this is unique in fantasy literature as far as I know. Her agency displays itself through empathy.
When she sees the hapless Dontos about to die a horrible death from being forced to drink wine until his belly ruptures, she intervenes. Not only does she speak against it to Joffrey, whose vicious cruelty knows no bounds and who could have her head on a whim, but she uses her lady-like training to actually manipulate the King into making Ser Dontos his fool instead of murdering him.
And it's this act that ultimately leads to her freedom. It's a long meandering course that she takes but she pursues eagerly, meeting with Dontos and plotting her escape at every opportunity. And when the opportunity to fly comes...she takes it, without hesitation.
So stop saying she does nothing. She does.
By the way, empathy is a GOOD quality, a human quality. Only a person who falls for the gloominess of the show would scorn empathy.
Soothing the angry hound
Sansa's initial reacton to the Hound is shallow. She looks at him with profound horror and revulsion at his ugliness. He's everything that she stands against: rude, foul-mouthed, cocky, murderous, un-courtly, without a shred of politese; harshly abrasive... He looks like he is.
But when he tells him the story behind his hideous burns in a gleeful attempt to frighten her into his vision of reality she reacts with kindess. Instinctively. Her fear disappears andshe comforts him.
Think of the amount of people who comfort others emotions in A Song of Ice and Fire. Arya comforts the little ones in Clash of Kings; Jon comforts Sam; Tyrion comforts Sansa; Penny comforts Tyrion; Meera comforts Bran.
Did I miss anyone?
But Sansa does so in the face of hte overwhelming force of Sandor Clegane's damaged rage? Rather than quailing or crying, she reaches out and touches his face.
Because she sees the truth in Sandor that he himself doesn't see. She sees the boy playing with his wooden knights and dreaming.
And later, in several conversations in which Sandor tries to intimidate her into understanding harsh realities she reacts appropriately: not with fear or revulsion: with understanding. She flat-out tells him he's horrible. He's awful.
Because his philosophy is a choice. And it's an easy choice. And it's the wrong choice. In that world, just like this one.
And she, like Ned Stark realizes it.
Who else has shown him these truths? Who else has stood up against Sandor about the very nature of his reality? Only Sansa.
And in that is weird sort of strength. Because through it all, depressed though she may get, she still refuses to believe that EVERYBODY is bad. Because it's not true after all. Not in our world. And not in her world, either.
In Maegor's Holdfast, in the thick of a battle that they think she will lose, it's Sansa who stands up and soothes the frightened women, children and elderly awaiting their bloody fate, leading them in hymns, lying to them of hope and protection. Even though she knows that Ilyn Payne's been ordered to murder her if Stannis gains the city.
And when, in a Feast For Crows, it's necessary for little Robert Arryn to cross the Bridge of Stone in the midst of an epileptic fit, it is Sansa with her innate empathy that soothes his shaking enough to cross. This is another feat of agency-through-empathy that goes remarkably un-noticed by her critics.
And in all that is weird sort of strength. It's not a Brienne-style strength, the strength of the sword. It's not the furtive strength of the assassin, or the magical strength of the Greenseer. It's a strength of the feminine power to sooth. And it is a very, very real thing.
Because through it all, depressed though she may get, she still refuses to believe that EVERYBODY is bad. Because it's not true.
She's no warrior. She's not an assassin, or a wizard or a great thinker. But there's something indomitable about her strength.
A gentle side to her that never ever breaks.
Sansa is awesome as far as I'm concerned.
my skin has turned to porcelain to ivory to steel--Sansa, A Storm of Swords
Once the veil of her adolescence is ripped from her eyes, Sansa becomes a keen observer of human nature. She does so in order to survive.
I'm looking for a maid of three and ten...
But she's still being molded. She's in control of a man who had her father murdered; whose keen-ness of mind is balanced by his psychopathic lack of true empathy. Whose poisoning his young ward towards his own political ends.
Will Sansa, trained in the ways of feudal politics by Littlefinger, become Littlefinger? Will she be complicit in the death of Sweetrobin? Is the scene where she 'betrays' Arya and dooms Lady foreshadowing for worse deeds to come? Is the steel in her nature being warped by the pressure and stress she's been under? Do her 'mis-memories' signify something unwholesome? Is she going mad?
I think it's fair to say that, like Arya, like Bran, like Tyrion, there is a war going on in her soul. A struggle between a gentler reality and a more savage reality. And she may not pass that test.
But I hope that she does and that she slays the savage giant and gets back to Winterfell.
Her character is still developing. But thus far, I do not believe that she deserves the hate she gets from some quarters. Thus far, I think she's one of the most subtly drawn and shockingly realistic characters of A Song of Ice and Fire and indeed in the whole genre of fantasy.
. WE'll just have to keep reading.
Thanks for the A2a.!
She sews well; she embroiders perfectly; she paints like Picasso; she plays the harp and the bells and sings like a bird; she's a graceful dancer; she writes poetry about courtly love. She eats daintily and makes sure her hands never get sticky, she nibbles rather than bites, she sips and never gulps. She blushes prettily at some topics, looks tragic when she cries. Even when she belches it's pretty. She farts on key and when she goes to the privy she leaves nothing but a pile of rose petals shaped like a heart behind her.
He daddy thinks she's just a perfect little girl, her mother praises her, she makes the Septa feel like a genius , all the men in the castle smile at her and give her presents and lemon cakes.
And to make it worse she never does anything really mean to her sister, the hyperactive tomboy whose always underfoot, always screwing up, so boyish and naughty and...disharmonious. But it would be unladylike to point it out to her. IN fact she's NICEto her sister.She's got everybody else in the castle doing it for her.
Sansa was chatting happily aasaa she worked. Beth Cassel...was sitting by her feet, listening to every word she said, and Jeyne Poole was leaning over to whisper something in her ear."What are you talking about?" Arya asked suddenly.Jeyne gave her a startled look, then giggled. Sansa looked abashed. Beth blushed. No one answered. "Tell me," Arya said."We were talking about the prince,"Sansa said, her voice soft as a kiss....'JOn says he looks like a girl,"Arya said. Sansa sighed as she stitched. "Poor Jon", she said. "He gets jealous because he's a bastard." "He's our brother," Arya said, much too loudly.Septa Mordane raised her eyes...."Our half brother," Sansa corrected, soft and precise. She smiled for the septa. "Arya and I were remarking on how pleased we were to have the princess with us today," she said...."Arya, why aren't you at work,' the septa asked. "Let me see your stitches. Arya wanted to scream. It was just like Sansa to go and attract the septa's attention.The septa examined the fabric. "Arya, Arya, Arya", she said. "This will not do. This will not do at all."
--A Game of Thrones
This is how we're introduced to Sansa.
She got Arya in trouble! What a....goody miss two shoes!
Except she didn't.
What she did do is include Arya in her dumb 11 year old boy-conversation and ARYA called attention to herself because Sansa said that Poor Jon was jealous due to his bastardy.
Jon Snow! The closest thing to a hero the whole series has. Who wouldn't object? That poor guy! Can't even sit with the family when the King visits! can't even practice at swords with the Crown Prince! Treated with a cold eye by her Lady Mother.
Always left out.
But it's true.
Jon IS jealous; and in fact has a secret core of rage about his bastardy, one that causes him to go berserk in A Storm of Swords when he flashes back to his youth and Robb Stark telling him he could never be Lord of Winterfell; he gets so angry he blacks out, and when he comes back he's beaten Iron Emmett of Eastwatch black and blue.
So right off the bat we are introduced to Sansa this way. Through Arya's resentful, jealous eyes.
Does Arya have a point?
She's right that underneath the blemish free surface there is a smugness to Sansa. The smugness of the good little girl.
And it's a sibling rivalry has been magnified by the Septa and perhaps the rest of the castle.
But, like Jon, poor Arya is mostly jealous. Sansa doesn't do anything to her. Arya hangs herself on her own rope and blames Sansa.
But for readers, introduced to the character of Sansa this way...yeah, Sansa seems like a smug little brat.
And it's easy to overlook, at this early point in the story that Arya's point of view is limited and actually unfair.
Death of a Lady
But it would be unfair of us to really characterize it as all unfair. Because as Game of Thrones goes on, Sansa does reveal herself as dishonest.
A lie is a lie. We can't deny that. But what a lot of readers don't see is why she lied.
Amory Lorch and the sword that killed Rhaenys Targaryen
I think readers assume that Sansa lies because of her stupid crush on Joffrey. It's true that Sansa willfully seems to block the reality of Joffrey's character out of her mind and unfairly pins the blame on Arya and Mycah.
But Sansa is an eleven year old girl betrothed to marry a prince.
A prince whose family's rather dark history has been soft-soaped for her.
She knows that Jaime is the Kingslayer.
What she doesn't know is that:
- Cersei has had babies murdered and their mothers sold into slavery;
- Joffrey has ripped open his little brother's pregant cat and pulled the kittens from her
- Rhaenys Targaryen was ripped from hiding under her bed and stabbed dozens of times under Lannister orders
- Aegon Targaryen's little head was smashed against the wall under Lannister orders
- the murder and rape of Elia Martell was perpetrated by a man whose gigantic hands were stained with the bloody remnants of her own infant son's head under Lannister oders;
- the rape of King's Landing was ordered by a vengeful, triumphant Tywin Lannister eager to please the new King
- her own brother has been casually hurled out a window by Jaime Lannister
She knows none of this. We know it. She's been sold a sanitized bit of history.
All eleven-year-olds are.
(rant to follow)
People criticise the Starks for not teaching Sansa (and the rest of the Stark children) the harsh realities of history. I mean, in a world as violent as the world of Westeros, the violent reality should be taught from kids from the cradle. Right?
It's dumb.
Westeros is no more violent than our world. Are you kidding me?
(graphic stuff here--please skip if squeamish)
Two world wars, the Holocaust, genocide....Look into the details of atrocities in any conflict in the last hundred years.
You'll be having nightmares.
German children with tongues nailed to tables by Russian soldiers.
Mass rapes and murder in China by the Japanese.
Japanese POW's drawn and quartered by New Zealanders.
Depleted uranium bombs...why?
Fetuses ripped out of mothers and chopped up 'like sausage'.
Piles of dead bodies shoved aside by bulldozers...
I'm 45 and I'm sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
(graphic stuff ends)
Gregor Clegane may not be the NORM, but he's far more common than most people consider.
. As JRR Tolkien said, real-life Orcs are on BOTH sides.
And who taught you all that when you were eleven?
If you're American, who taught you about the My Lai massacre or the killing squads of Viet Nam, carpet bombing of Cambodia, tacit approval of genocide in Pakistan, atrocities against Native Americans and Phillipinos, illegally overthrowing governments, soldiers firing on striking workers?
If you're English, who taught you at eleven about concentration camps in Africa, willful starvation in the colonies or Ireland, atrocities in the Wars, the slave trade?
If you're Russian, who taught you about pogroms and gulags and tens of millions sacrificed on the altar of the New Society, forced starvation and cannibalism in Ukraine?
You get the picture.
Eleven year olds never hear that stuff. Why should Sansa or Arya? Or Bran? To them they are taught the same thing as you were: whatever happened in the past, it was for a noble reason, and soldiers are there to protect you from evil.
Hating Sansa's eleven year old naivete is, frankly, just plain stupid.
(End of rant)
Now we know all these things that Sansa doesn't. We know the Lannister's and Joffrey are BAD with a capital B. We know that Robert is a neglectful corrupt man drinking himself into an early grave while his kingdom falls apart.
Sansa doesn't. She thinks they're the GOOD GUYS. Just like you probably would.
And so Sansa is caught: she doesn't want to lie; but she doesn't want to face the truth. And so she clams up. She doesn't actually lie about what happened. She claims that she doesn't remember.
And she pays for it, in one of the most hideously unfair crimes of the book...with Lady, the living representation of her unconscious instincts.
And people want to say: it's her fault! She didn't corroborate Arya's story! AS if the murder of her pet was a natural or foreseeable outcome of her silence.
Again, that's plain stupid.
Let me tell you something. CERSEI ordered that murder. Not Sansa. And it was a completely, totally, mind-boggingly unpredictable and irrational thing to do!
Sansa's silence, in the face of a very uncomfortable situation with the family she thinks she's going to be spending the rest of her life with, is RATIONAL..
An attempt at harmony. Constructive. The best thing she could do with the knowledge she had.
Tattling on her father--the fans collectively raise a howl
If she hadn't told Cersei, Ned would have escaped! None of it would have happened!
Uh. No. That makes no sense whatsoever.
NED told Cersei of his plans to tell Robert about the Baratheon children's bastardy.
Let me repeat that.
Ned told Cersei of his plans to disinherit and endanger his children.
And again: Ned told Cersei to leave the country because Robert was going to murder her and her children because of Ned's information.
Flat-out, straight-up, kid gloves off.
The only thing Sansa's informing to the queen did was prevent her and Arya from escaping. Maybe.
And, yeah, it was wrong. Tragic consequences. For sure.
It was the act of a wilful girl at the blossom of adolescent; that period of time when children begin to question their parents' infallibility. Adolescents are, frankly, stupid sometimes.
I know I was. But hey, that's how we grow in life: by making mistakes.
I blame Sansa like I blame my own bad decisions or my 16 year old stepson's
. Luckily my family wasnt and isn't in the situation hers was in.
And Sansa didn't even know she was in that situation, anyway.
You can disagree with Ned Stark for not being explicit about it. But even that is understandable. Ned Stark was working to protect his children but, let's face it: when you play the Game of Thrones you take some risks.
At the end of the day it all boils down to the fact that Eddard Stark inaccurately assessed those risks.
And man did Sansa, and Arya, pay for it.
The Little Bird in the cage
But why doesn't she break free? If I were her, I'd get out of there!I'd Arya wouldn't let herself suffer like that. Where is Sansa's agency?
Ugh, I've heard that so many times.
To that I say:
- she does break free.
- She does get out of there and you probably wouldn'nt.
- Arya sees worse atrocities for months before she breaks free, too.
- Sansa's agency isn't in sliced throats and badassery. But she sure as hell has agency.
You're locked in a room for days. You have a friend. Your friend tells you 'they're killing everyone.' You hear fighting, screams, pleadings for mercy, howls of anguish. Your friend is taken from you. You never see her again.
You are in shock. You stop eating. YOu lose weight. You seriously consider suicide. An old man comes and touches you all over.
You take all the lady-like training you have at your disposal; all the courtesy and charm at your command. You take the good little girl persona and turn it into a tool; you plead for your father's life, pinning your hopes on the boy you think loved you, who you spent such a beautiful night with under the stars at the Hand's Tourney. You've trained all your life for this, and you do it.
And, of course it works. How could it not?
But then it doesn't.
And your see your father knocked down and beheaded in front of your eyes.
And the veil is lifted from your eyes. And you understand that you are in a cage and the the boy you thought you loved is a monster. He shows you your father's head, your Septa's. And you look at it. IN an act of defiance. And you refuse to break And the courtesy is dropped when you say: Maybe my brother will have your head.
Boros slammed a fist into Sansa's belly, driving the air out of her. When she doubled over, the knight grabbed her hair and drew his sword, and for one hideous instant she was certain he meant to open her throat. As he laid the flat of the blade across her thighs, she thought her legs might break from the force of the blow. Sansa screamed....It will be over soon. She soon lost count of the blows...."Boros[said the king.] make her naked."Boros shoved a meaty hand down the front of Sansa's bodice and gave a hard yank. The silk came tearing away, baring her to the waist. Sansa covered her breasts with her hands. She could hear sniggers, far off and cruel. "Beat her bloody," Joffrey said....
--A Clash of Kings
Blaming the victim. Readers do it. As if she could escape. The whole court is snickering at her being sexually humiliated and beaten. What is she supposed to do, magic up a killing wish genie like Arya and get out?
The closest things she has to allies, Tyrion and the Hound are actually her captors, too. But she hasn't just meekly accepted her position. She is trying to escape.
IN fact this is one of the thing that really burns me up. How can you blame a child when grown men beat her? It's ridiculous.
Agency through empathy--I know why the little bird sings
Sansa is not a warrior. Sansa's agency, and this is unique in fantasy literature as far as I know. Her agency displays itself through empathy.
When she sees the hapless Dontos about to die a horrible death from being forced to drink wine until his belly ruptures, she intervenes. Not only does she speak against it to Joffrey, whose vicious cruelty knows no bounds and who could have her head on a whim, but she uses her lady-like training to actually manipulate the King into making Ser Dontos his fool instead of murdering him.
And it's this act that ultimately leads to her freedom. It's a long meandering course that she takes but she pursues eagerly, meeting with Dontos and plotting her escape at every opportunity. And when the opportunity to fly comes...she takes it, without hesitation.
So stop saying she does nothing. She does.
By the way, empathy is a GOOD quality, a human quality. Only a person who falls for the gloominess of the show would scorn empathy.
Soothing the angry hound
Sansa's initial reacton to the Hound is shallow. She looks at him with profound horror and revulsion at his ugliness. He's everything that she stands against: rude, foul-mouthed, cocky, murderous, un-courtly, without a shred of politese; harshly abrasive... He looks like he is.
But when he tells him the story behind his hideous burns in a gleeful attempt to frighten her into his vision of reality she reacts with kindess. Instinctively. Her fear disappears andshe comforts him.
Think of the amount of people who comfort others emotions in A Song of Ice and Fire. Arya comforts the little ones in Clash of Kings; Jon comforts Sam; Tyrion comforts Sansa; Penny comforts Tyrion; Meera comforts Bran.
Did I miss anyone?
But Sansa does so in the face of hte overwhelming force of Sandor Clegane's damaged rage? Rather than quailing or crying, she reaches out and touches his face.
Because she sees the truth in Sandor that he himself doesn't see. She sees the boy playing with his wooden knights and dreaming.
And later, in several conversations in which Sandor tries to intimidate her into understanding harsh realities she reacts appropriately: not with fear or revulsion: with understanding. She flat-out tells him he's horrible. He's awful.
Because his philosophy is a choice. And it's an easy choice. And it's the wrong choice. In that world, just like this one.
And she, like Ned Stark realizes it.
Who else has shown him these truths? Who else has stood up against Sandor about the very nature of his reality? Only Sansa.
And in that is weird sort of strength. Because through it all, depressed though she may get, she still refuses to believe that EVERYBODY is bad. Because it's not true after all. Not in our world. And not in her world, either.
In Maegor's Holdfast, in the thick of a battle that they think she will lose, it's Sansa who stands up and soothes the frightened women, children and elderly awaiting their bloody fate, leading them in hymns, lying to them of hope and protection. Even though she knows that Ilyn Payne's been ordered to murder her if Stannis gains the city.
And when, in a Feast For Crows, it's necessary for little Robert Arryn to cross the Bridge of Stone in the midst of an epileptic fit, it is Sansa with her innate empathy that soothes his shaking enough to cross. This is another feat of agency-through-empathy that goes remarkably un-noticed by her critics.
And in all that is weird sort of strength. It's not a Brienne-style strength, the strength of the sword. It's not the furtive strength of the assassin, or the magical strength of the Greenseer. It's a strength of the feminine power to sooth. And it is a very, very real thing.
Because through it all, depressed though she may get, she still refuses to believe that EVERYBODY is bad. Because it's not true.
She's no warrior. She's not an assassin, or a wizard or a great thinker. But there's something indomitable about her strength.
A gentle side to her that never ever breaks.
Sansa is awesome as far as I'm concerned.
my skin has turned to porcelain to ivory to steel--Sansa, A Storm of Swords
Once the veil of her adolescence is ripped from her eyes, Sansa becomes a keen observer of human nature. She does so in order to survive.
I'm looking for a maid of three and ten...
But she's still being molded. She's in control of a man who had her father murdered; whose keen-ness of mind is balanced by his psychopathic lack of true empathy. Whose poisoning his young ward towards his own political ends.
Will Sansa, trained in the ways of feudal politics by Littlefinger, become Littlefinger? Will she be complicit in the death of Sweetrobin? Is the scene where she 'betrays' Arya and dooms Lady foreshadowing for worse deeds to come? Is the steel in her nature being warped by the pressure and stress she's been under? Do her 'mis-memories' signify something unwholesome? Is she going mad?
I think it's fair to say that, like Arya, like Bran, like Tyrion, there is a war going on in her soul. A struggle between a gentler reality and a more savage reality. And she may not pass that test.
But I hope that she does and that she slays the savage giant and gets back to Winterfell.
Her character is still developing. But thus far, I do not believe that she deserves the hate she gets from some quarters. Thus far, I think she's one of the most subtly drawn and shockingly realistic characters of A Song of Ice and Fire and indeed in the whole genre of fantasy.
. WE'll just have to keep reading.
Thanks for the A2a.!
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