255 replies to this topic

[Fearsome Fred]

brashcandy, on 06 March 2012 - 02:52 PM, said:

That's perfect. I'm ready for him as a lover.

Barf.

[Christina Ceriddwynn]

Sandor:  I'm a lover not a fighter...but I will fight for what I love

[Lyanna Stark]

brashcandy, on 06 March 2012 - 02:52 PM, said:

That's perfect. I'm ready for him as a lover.

Even though a lot of people would like to see him sail off on a Sansa-ship, the real foreshadowing is that he will in some capacity be her bodyguard. Robert tells Ned after Lady is killed to get Sansa...a dog. There's also the chapter where Sansa is trying to sleep at the Fingers and cuddles the old dog and she thinks of Sandor.

Unfortunately there is nothing that indicates that Sansa plays any other role than to maybe symbolise Sandors wish, and subsequent failing as a knight, both as a Kingsguard for Joffrey and then later on when he can't whisk her away and save her from Kings Landing.

I have been sailing the proud Sandor/Sansa ship since January 2001, (together with Stranger (the poster, not the horse))  but I am also realistic to know that this is a very unlikely ending, but I do believe they will be reunited in some capacity. There are too many hints for it not to at least get some sort of resolution.

Edited by Lyanna Stark, 06 March 2012 - 03:12 PM.

[Christina Ceriddwynn]

I'd agree if she didn't spend so much time dreaming about smooching him

so if nothing else he still lives even if its just to further her plot

Edited by Christina Ceriddwynn, 06 March 2012 - 03:41 PM.

[Maroucia]

I' m sure if they meet again, there's gonna be a lot of TENSION in the room ( or whatever place they are at )! Hehehehe!
There's no way he would be her protector and nothing else, at least for a long time!

[Yvonesan]

Independent George, on 06 March 2012 - 11:37 AM, said:

If Gregor Clegane is to face justice as opposed to simple revenge, it won't be at the hands of his brother.

That might depend on the type of justice Gregor is to be served, if any (considering he is now beyond the living). I therefore have mixed feelings as to whether Sandor should tackle his brother since he is now unGregor and not just the unbearably cruel living brother he once had. I won't have any issues however if he does have the opportunity to get rid of his undead sibling once and for all. I agree that he may have been able to leave his anger behind after a spell on the Quiet Isle and this may result in being able to move on from his brother's brutality without the need to seek retribution, but I can also imagine that stopping the horror of UnGregor will not come under the heading of anything but defence of everyone in his vicinity.

It's one of my most sincere hopes in this story that Sandor Clegane is still alive and soon to resurface to the rest of us. If he is the Gravedigger and has found peace, I think that we won't see him until nearer the end of the story but I guess we'll see him before that if he still has more of a purpose ...which I believe he may have as his story does not yet feel complete with his name still being mentioned regularly since our last encounter with him.

[childofsummer]

Lyanna Stark, on 06 March 2012 - 03:10 PM, said:

Even though a lot of people would like to see him sail off on a Sansa-ship, the real foreshadowing is that he will in some capacity be her bodyguard. Robert tells Ned after Lady is killed to get Sansa...a dog. There's also the chapter where Sansa is trying to sleep at the Fingers and cuddles the old dog and she thinks of Sandor.

Unfortunately there is nothing that indicates that Sansa plays any other role than to maybe symbolise Sandors wish, and subsequent failing as a knight, both as a Kingsguard for Joffrey and then later on when he can't whisk her away and save her from Kings Landing.

I have been sailing the proud Sandor/Sansa ship since January 2001, (together with Stranger (the poster, not the horse))  but I am also realistic to know that this is a very unlikely ending, but I do believe they will be reunited in some capacity. There are too many hints for it not to at least get some sort of resolution.

But in Westeros, one of the primary duties of a husband to his wife is protection.  We see this from Catelyn, when she thinks about her mother telling her not to worry about having to fight.  We also see it from Tyrion when he thinks of cloaking Sansa with his protection (regardless of how little she wanted it).  I don't see the foreshadowing of Sandor as Sansa's protector as excluding the possibility of a romance between them.    On the contrary, the deliberate foreshadowing when Sansa twice(!) wraps herself in Sandor's cloak indicates that they will have a marital, or something like a marital, relationship in the future.

And about Sandor's knightly skills... they were very much in evidence at the tourney, during the riot when he saved Sansa from a bloodthirsty, raging mob ...on foot... that killed two mounted, armed KG knights.  I don't think he failed as a "knight" when he refused to go out a third time into the fiery battle, bloody, injured, and exhausted, while Moore was still fresh as a daisy.

Finally, IMO it was the MOST knightly thing Sandor could have done to accept that Sansa was not ready to go with him that night, and quietly leave.  Sure, he acted like a jerk about the song, but when it counted, he didn't rape her or kidnap her.  He left.  [coming off my soapbox... no rant intended, Lyanna, just feel strongly about the textual clues   ]

I think we will see him again once he finishes his QI rehab, and I look forward to seeing how his arc (and Sansa's) plays out.

[Lyanna Stark]

childofsummer, on 06 March 2012 - 11:58 PM, said:

But in Westeros, one of the primary duties of a husband to his wife is protection.  We see this from Catelyn, when she thinks about her mother telling her not to worry about having to fight.  We also see it from Tyrion when he thinks of cloaking Sansa with his protection (regardless of how little she wanted it).  I don't see the foreshadowing of Sandor as Sansa's protector as excluding the possibility of a romance between them. On the contrary, the deliberate foreshadowing when Sansa twice(!) wraps herself in Sandor's cloak indicates that they will have a marital, or something like a marital, relationship in the future.

And about Sandor's knightly skills... they were very much in evidence at the tourney, during the riot when he saved Sansa from a bloodthirsty, raging mob ...on foot... that killed two mounted, armed KG knights.  I don't think he failed as a "knight" when he refused to go out a third time into the fiery battle, bloody, injured, and exhausted, while Moore was still fresh as a daisy.

Finally, IMO it was the MOST knightly thing Sandor could have done to accept that Sansa was not ready to go with him that night, and quietly leave.  Sure, he acted like a jerk about the song, but when it counted, he didn't rape her or kidnap her.  He left.  [coming off my soapbox... no rant intended, Lyanna, just feel strongly about the textual clues   ]

I think we will see him again once he finishes his QI rehab, and I look forward to seeing how his arc (and Sansa's) plays out.

Oh hai, this one got drowned in the deluge of posts, but I did find it!!

What I mean with Sandor "failing as a knight" is that he wished he could be a proper knight and help the maiden in distress etc etc but due to his station as Joffrey's sworn shield and in Lannister employ, he can't. In that regard, he is almost in the same position as Jamie Lannister was with mad king Aerys and Queen Rhaella. Deathbed Sandor admits as much: he stood there in his white cloak and let them beat Sansa. He also mentions that he wanted to take her away. In his mind, HE has failed as a knight and he has failed Sansa.

Despite, as we know, doing more for her than almost anyone, apart from maybe Tyrion and he respects her wishes after the Battle of the Blackwater too. In his mind, he seems to have failed, although in reality, he did what he could (and even offered what he couldn't really pull through: he offered Sansa a way out of KL since he thought it was the right thing to do.)
I don't know if it's right to get hung up on him as knightly though, but more as "honourable". Since we see that this was a characteristic valued in Ned Stark (and in the north), but all but forgotten in the mire of Kings Landing. (So I more or less agree with you here, I just failed at being clear. )


Anyways, regarding the QI, I reread the Brienne/Jamie chapters during the weekend and not only does it seem clear that Sandor is the Gravedigger, but I was fairly certain he was nearby when they are talking about Brienne's quest, which means Sandor knows Sansa and Arya have not been found and people are still looking.

I'm also almost certain that what he needs to do is drop his rage and his wish to destroy Gregor, but I just cannot see him becoming some religous nutjob a la Lancel. It would destroy his character completely. It's more likely that he is resting, healing, biding his time and contemplating what to do next. There's also the added complication of him being blamed for the massacre at Saltpans, so he can't show his face anywhere near Randyll Tarly or the Freys and I think he knows that.

Another interesting thing is that Sandor Clegane is not a stupid man. He had an amazing knowledge of all the Stark siblings and relations. He knew about Lysa Tully, about her little sickly son Robert, he knew that Sansa and Arya were related to the Tullys and he knew the general layout of that house too. He also analyses Joffrey succintly already in AGOT and twice does he lie to save Sansa without batting an eyelid. When he travels with Arya, he also makes some pretty accurate comments about how nobody sees the smallfolk/farmers so he obviously has reflected on this at some point. Most of the time he comes across as just rough and uncouth. He's pretty often drunk and he seems to be suffering from a bit of the omg pretty girl silliness around Sansa. However, despite this, he manages to know a fair bit and make some really accurate judgements. I doubt Gregor would care that Lysa had a sickly son, or that nobody cares about the smallfolk, he would just be like "rape, smash, grab, mutilate".

The way Sandor has been placed and the context (Brienne's quest) suggest that his future plot involvement will be centred on Sansa, UnCat or Arya in some way. While the brothers on the QI are of the faith, they don't really seem to be anywhere near aligned with the Faith Militant, or what goes on in KL. A lot of them seems to have been soldiers or similar before, and they've given that up for a quiet life. Not likely they will be volunteering their own for some fanatic fighting. It's also likely that while Sandor may heal, he also may not be able to fully get back into full swing the way he was, in the same way that Jamie is maimed.

Further, if Sandor needs a purpose in life other than killing Gregorstein (bleah), it seems most likely with his history with Sansa and Arya that he could find protecing/serving them a worthwhile thing to do. It's also interesting that the Elder Brother waxes on how he served, but never found anything good in it and then takes out the big hammer and adds that he never loved anyone and nobody ever loved him (at which point I disagree with the EB: He SO had a thing for Sansa). But anyway, the things listed, that he served without joy, drank to find peace but never found it and totally lacked for love just seems to indicate that he needs those things, or a purpose where he can find those things.


Also, reading Jamie's chapters, he compares Brienne to Sandor more than once, which is a bit amusing as the Sansa/Sandor, Brienne/Jamie can be seen as typical Beauty and the Beast storylines (altho Jamie sort of fails at his role   I love AFfC Jamie tho, I can't help it.), and also because it doesn't always seem to be 100% negative, but to denote that she is strong, brave and capable in dangerous situations.

Edited by Lyanna Stark, 19 March 2012 - 04:49 AM.

[bgona]

brashcandy, on 06 March 2012 - 02:52 PM, said:

That's perfect. I'm ready for him as a lover.

Or as a lord lol

[bgona]

I see Sandor redeemption arc thru fighting the Freys, with The Twins burning and collapsing as Sansa saw in the clouds. That it is just my owm crackpot. It is away of reparing "his failure" (to say it as a way) helping Cat at the Red Wedding, and also Arya.

[childofsummer]

Lyanna Stark, on 19 March 2012 - 04:15 AM, said:

I'm also almost certain that what he needs to do is drop his rage and his wish to destroy Gregor, but I just cannot see him becoming some religous nutjob a la Lancel. It would destroy his character completely. It's more likely that he is resting, healing, biding his time and contemplating what to do next. There's also the added complication of him being blamed for the massacre at Saltpans, so he can't show his face anywhere near Randyll Tarly or the Freys and I think he knows that.

<snipped for space>

The way Sandor has been placed and the context (Brienne's quest) suggest that his future plot involvement will be centred on Sansa, UnCat or Arya in some way. While the brothers on the QI are of the faith, they don't really seem to be anywhere near aligned with the Faith Militant, or what goes on in KL. A lot of them seems to have been soldiers or similar before, and they've given that up for a quiet life. Not likely they will be volunteering their own for some fanatic fighting. It's also likely that while Sandor may heal, he also may not be able to fully get back into full swing the way he was, in the same way that Jamie is maimed.

  Having Sandor kill Gregorstein would be horrible for his redemptive arc, IMO.  Even in the context of "righteous" killing and putting demons to rest, it would only make him revisit the time he spent living in anger and blocking out the good in the world.  I think you are right that GRRM has set him up as a protector for the Stark girls, whether he fulfils that role as a master at arms for the Queen in the North, as a consort or lover, as an advisor (Lord Martial?), or as something else entirely.

Edited by childofsummer, 19 March 2012 - 11:09 AM.

[Lord Littlefinger's Lash]

bgona, on 19 March 2012 - 04:53 AM, said:

I see Sandor redeemption arc thru fighting the Freys, with The Twins burning and collapsing as Sansa saw in the clouds. That it is just my owm crackpot. It is away of reparing "his failure" (to say it as a way) helping Cat at the Red Wedding, and also Arya.

Why would Sandor possibly need redemption.

[Pellaeon]

wouldn't brienne recognition the scars?

[brashcandy]

Pellaeon, on 26 March 2012 - 12:27 PM, said:

wouldn't brienne recognition the scars?

He was wearing a large hood that covered his face.

[childofsummer]

@LLL re: the need for redemption (because my quote function is not working):

To show that bad circumstances do not have to make someone into a monster.  To show that people can change.  To show that people have choices about how they view the world, and about how they react to events in their lives.  To show that compassion can have a profound effect on even a person most people might have assumed was irredeemable.  To do what good literature is supposed to do: make us think about ourselves and how we view the world, and make us remember that our choices, not our backgrounds, determine who we are.

[Woman of War]

Why do we want a character "redeemed"? Because we sympathize with him or her and we want our favorite to earn himself a somewhat satisfying ending, assuming that a development seen as positive will be rewarded by fhe author. But it is obvious that not every more or less "grey" character can be redeemed. A good story needs evil antagonists to challenge  the other  characters.  So a character can maybe only be redeemed at the expense of others, by villanizing them or establishing them as permanently  evil. If everybody gets reborn and reformed and goes over to the light side of force everything gets cheesy and we have no story anymore.
So our story will  simply not work like a positive utopia where everybody sees reason and agrees to a common contract of society, holding hands and singing a song together.
This means that not every character we wish to see turning away from evil can have a positive arc for the sake of the story, some, maybe even those who have quite a few fans, will end as evil personae and some who are seen as villainous by most will do the right thing and save the day.

But does this mean that the darker characters with flaws and shades cannot get a satisfying ending?
Will Martin open an account of good and bad deeds for his protagonists, evaluate them and grant them their fate  according to that balance? No he won't, these books are not establishing a firm and undisputable set of morality, they are always about idividual moral choices. You are confronted with decisionmaking in every new situation, no character can feel safe to be the good guy. Martin is not preaching moral relativism but even the worst character will be free to make morally positive choices until the very end and the good guys and girls  may do something horrible with best intentions. There will be no way to make an easy summing up of good and bad in the end for any character.
So there might be a huge gap in the end between what some of us perceive as just outcome for a character and the more or less happy or unhappy ending Martin simply HAS to give a character for the sake of the storyline. It will be the story that counts in the end, not the fate of a single character we may like or we want to have an ending that we perceive as "happy". We even cannot count on the cleansing catharsis of seeing the bad guys suffer.
No character will be doomed in the end,  every protagonist has it in him or her to surprise us, by becoming the unexpected ultimate hero or bringing horrible disaster with best intentions,  turning from being perceived as good to being evil in a flash of one wrong decision. This may seem merciless but in fact it is a very humanist look at people.
Apart from the simple fact that different posters have different concepts of what is especially ugly and villainous. I for example see a murder committed because the killer was ordered to do so as more immoral than a murder committed out of rage. Blindly and coldly following orders to kill a child is about the worst crime in my eyes.
But, as I explained, like every very dark grey character Sandor will not necessarily be "punished" by Martin even if there won't be the important good deed to do for him. And even if he is granted the great deed this means in no way that he may survive the end of the books or finds something close to happiness.
Actually I personally hope for him to find peace at the Quiet Isle.

[Patchface12]

I think I've said it before, but It would be totally badass if the Hound came forward as the Faith's champion against Ser Robert Strong.

[childofsummer]

@WOW: You are correct in that some, even many, stories rely on a conflict between a protagonist and one or more antagonists to function.  However, I've found many works of literature and film that focus on a character's response to a problem (environmental, emotional, or otherwise) extremely interesting.  "My Neighbor Totoro" is a great example of this in the kids' movie genre.  In Emma, Emma creates her own drama and then has to fix it.  While Austen pokes fun at the Eltons, they're certainly not villains out for Emma's blood, and if they annoy her, they're not really able to thwart her in any significant way.  And yet, I've read and reread the book more times than I care to count, simply because Emma's journey is so fascinating.

I don't think one character's elevation necessarily depends on another's descent into evil, or that a "good" character must have a nemesis.  Certainly, we all want satisfying endings for the characters we like, whether that's peace, or a happy relationship, or something else.  But I don't think a desire for a satisfying ending is the sole reason for a redemptive arc.  I stand by what I said earlier, that one of the wonderful things about redemptive stories in literature is that they, by example, help us to remember that we can choose to be good people.

Edited by childofsummer, 27 March 2012 - 11:39 PM.

[Lyanna Stark]

childofsummer, on 27 March 2012 - 11:38 PM, said:

I don't think one character's elevation necessarily depends on another's descent into evil, or that a "good" character must have a nemesis.  Certainly, we all want satisfying endings for the characters we like, whether that's peace, or a happy relationship, or something else.  But I don't think a desire for a satisfying ending is the sole reason for a redemptive arc.  I stand by what I said earlier, that one of the wonderful things about redemptive stories in literature is that they, by example, help us to remember that we can choose to be good people.

I think GRRM has stated before in interviews that he doesn't think of his characters as black and white, but that choices are important: "the human heart in conflict" and all that.

There are several characters like that in ASOIAF, where their choices made them who they are today. Take Jorah Mormont for instance. What if he hadn't sold off those poachers into slavery? Maybe he would have died at the Twins instead. If Jamie hadn't joined the Kingsguard because Cersei asked him? One regicide less and and a whole lot of burnt people in King's Landing and maybe no children with Cersei.

Sandor Clegane has a pretty shitty childhood from what we can tell, with his older brother scaring him and tormenting him. He seems to have lost all other family apart from Gregor (by Gregor's own hand from what we know) and left as soon as possible to become a Lannister retainer at age 12, probably partly hanging out with great examples of humanity like Polliver and the Tickler etc. I can't imagine that he could survive that without suppressing almost anything that wasn't focused on survival and being good at killing whatever the Lannister in charge pointed him at. Since he's around 27 at the time of AGOT, that means he's been in that type of environment for 15 years.

It's no wonder he's not finding it simple of straightforward to reacquaint himself whatever humanity, empathy and honour he has hidden away so well, but he still does it to shield Sansa best he can, even though he is actually going against his employer/boss in doing so, most of the time. I don't think a lot of people appreciate that he's walking a pretty thin line in ACOK. He's Joffrey's guard and should never take Sansa's part in a conflict between the two, yet he does at almost every opportunity he can. Compare it to Jamie Lannister "going away inside" when Aerys was brutalising Rhaella. Not saying Jamie ought to have rushed in there or something, just to point out the conflict of interest and to highlight that both Jamie and Sandor are presented as monsters, they are capable of monstrous actions, but they are also capable of other, better things and that none of them wished to become a monster, nor do they like being a monster.

Edited by Lyanna Stark, 28 March 2012 - 02:51 AM.

[Errant Bard]

Lyanna Stark, on 28 March 2012 - 02:42 AM, said:

He's Joffrey's guard and should never take Sansa's part in a conflict between the two, yet he does at almost every opportunity he can. Compare it to Jamie Lannister "going away inside" when Aerys was brutalising Rhaella.

To be fair, Sandor never stopped Joffrey abusing Sansa, or Tyrion for that matters, he just refused to participate, which is fairly the same as what jaime did.

Edited by Errant Bard, 28 March 2012 - 02:53 AM.