WHAT DOES LITTLEFINGER WANT

[Starks Among Us]

He's like the mirror image of Walder Frey but with more finesse and cunning.

He dislikes that he is of humble birth and that he has always been looked down upon by noble houses. He dislikes that he loved Cat and he was deemed an inappropriate suitor due to being low class. The fact that he was looked down upon due to being of humble birth did nothing but to fuel his desire to move up in the world. After his duel with Brandon Stark and Cat marrying into the Starks - not only were the Tully's on his list, but the Starks as well. He can't stand the fact that they both looked down upon him, so now he wants to be the one looking down on them, he wants to be their downfall and cause their demise. He's doing wonderfully thus far. What better way to pay them back than to seduce Sansa and end up Lord of the Vale, and WF and (if he is able to do it) end up on the IT. The Starks, Tully's, and Arryn's would roll over in their graves and he would have the ultimate revenge and his goal would have been achieved - to gain as much power as possible while bringing down those who looked down upon him.

[Mladen]

You could begin, but you would be mistaken. All of those are secondary goals, he wants her for whose daughter she is first and for most.

If he wants her solely for Cat, he would have hidden her as Alayne and never make a plan for Sansa Stark to reclaim what is hers.

[The Mother of The Others]

Wasn't Lysa forcing him to choose between her and Sansa? the Tully he'd settled for (her) and the Tully branch he'd always wanted (Cat/Sansa)?

It's probably one of those mixed deals, with him not really caring about anybody but still wanting to imagine he's right in the head, so he says to himself, "I care about people, sure I do! I'm normal that way!" and he brings in this Sansa deal to prove it to himself. There really are feelings involved, but it's all tied back to how strongly he felt about what went down with losing the duel for Catlyn all those years ago. So the feelings that tie him to Sansa may not be the usual sort of affection you'd feel for someone you love, but it passes for that in Pete's head. She's the locus of whatever he does feel.

[Mourneblade]

He's like the mirror image of Walder Frey but with more finesse and cunning.

He dislikes that he is of humble birth and that he has always been looked down upon by noble houses. He dislikes that he loved Cat and he was deemed an inappropriate suitor due to being low class. The fact that he was looked down upon due to being of humble birth did nothing but to fuel his desire to move up in the world. After his duel with Brandon Stark and Cat marrying into the Starks - not only were the Tully's on his list, but the Starks as well. He can't stand the fact that they both looked down upon him, so now he wants to be the one looking down on them, he wants to be their downfall and cause their demise. He's doing wonderfully thus far. What better way to pay them back than to seduce Sansa and end up Lord of the Vale, and WF and (if he is able to do it) end up on the IT. The Starks, Tully's, and Arryn's would roll over in their graves and he would have the ultimate revenge and his goal would have been achieved - to gain as much power as possible while bringing down those who looked down upon him.

He does not need to confide in Sansa then nor make her a protege, he can just pull Lord's right and marry her, once Tyrion is dead. The power and advancement is, and always has been, a means to an end.

[Autumn is Arriving]

I think some men just want to watch the world burn. He strikes me as the type who thrives on chaos. Think Joker from The Dark Knight

[Mourneblade]

If he wants her solely for Cat, he would have hidden her as Alayne and never make a plan for Sansa Stark to reclaim what is hers.

No its not just Sansa, he covets Sansa for her beauty, and the whole image of who she is, its not important that she has a claim, its just a bonus. He tells her that fairy tales are silly, but she is his fairy tale and everything has to be just perfect. He is insane. Its like buffalo bill from the silence of the lambs, power is secondary, a means to an end.

Its the end game with him and Cat, substituted by Sansa, living the dream, the perfect fairy tale ending.

[John Hulboy]

Ii think Lf wants everything.sansa to be his Catelyn .Revenge for Brandon and Hoster Tully treatment ,the duel had an effect Ned fir being Ned .bhe wants to hurt his enemies I could see him ending up on throne.when he told Roz he wasn't gonna fight his enemies he was gonna f&ckhis enemies sums it up.,he is sneaky and very dangerous plater in the GOT.Interested to see his plans when he finds out about the threat of the Whitewalkers.

[Mladen]

No its not just Sansa, he covets Sansa for her beauty, and the whole image of who she is, its not important that she has a claim, its just a bonus. He tells her that fairy tales are silly, but she is his fairy tale and everything has to be just perfect. He is insane. Its like buffalo bill from the silence of the lambs, power is secondary, a means to an end.

Its the end game with him and Cat, substituted by Sansa, living the dream, the perfect fairy tale ending.

No, it's not just the bonus. It is a whole package. Cat's looks + claim of half the Kingdom... I am not saying that he doesn't lusts for Sansa, but her claim, power she has due to her last name, using that to also f*ck Lannisters for the end of that lunatic plan is something he also desires. This was never about just Sansa's beauty or her looks. This is about him wanting "everything" or as The Mother of the Others said, it is a mixed deal.

[The Mother of The Others]

Interested to see his plans when he finds out about the threat of the Whitewalkers.

Baelish could be the one guy heartless enough to make the Night King thing work. If he has to feed 1000 people to the Others each month to pay for his Craster immunity, he may be able to make himself alright with that, whereas I think unStannis would find a way to commit suicide if he became the Night King and anything of his conscience remained. Meanwhile Pete may be able to tool along as the NK without those qualms, because..... no conscience. He might just decide to include the Others as one more faction he's prepared to cut a deal with. Problem is what if they're the one faction he can't bribe because they'll have everything they want once they're in human lands, and their species may have no pressure point weakness he can take advantage of.

Came up with another way to describe the relationship with Sansa:

She reminds him of how he used to be able to feel before he turned to bitterness inside and lost his empathy.

(I agree with the Salt'n'Gravy post below, he did everything to get powerful enough to take Ned's place as Cat's next hubby. Then she croaked. So Catelyn's daughter is like a way of feeling warmth again, like his heart's fires have gone out but having her near stirs the embers of that fire so he can start to thaw out and remember what it's like to care. She's an image of what Cat looked like before his love bittered, so he's trying to use Sansa to go back to the start. Probably only to find out that "You can't go home again."

And he's grown lonely waiting. In his line of work, being without any attachments makes you a boss because nobody has leverage over you, but he's realized that he must allow someone to have special status or else there'd be no one to share his victory with, and that'd be a hollow victory when he of course wants a full victory. So, Sansa. She also probably does have back door access to his encrypted heart, like a computer hacker with a grandfathered-in access code, should she choose to use it. That's why I'd be kind of stoked to see a counter-seduction plotline with her playing him the way he plays games with everyone else.

[Lost Melnibonean]

TO CRUSH HIS ENEMIES, TO SEE THEM DRIVEN BEFORE HIM, AND TO HEAR THE LAMENTATIONS OF THEIR WOMEN.

One of the all-time greats.

[horizon]

Everything and a whole lot more.

[Salt 'n' Gravy]

Wait, LF as a secret Reyne?

Do you have links to more on this theory?

That could be a fun crackpot to read.

All Littlefinger wants is for an advisor to tell him to pass out copies of his manifesto rather than to indulge in long monologues which somehow give us little insight into his innermost motivations.

Really, I think that Littlefinger's big original game was to amass enough power to be a suitable suitor for Catelyn, after she was...unfortunately widowed. However, now she's undead, although he thinks she's just plain dead, but he has her even hotter daughter almost right where he wants her. And as he's played the game of thrones, he's found that he likes it, and would play it even when there's no point to continuing, he has little to gain and everything to lose.

[Lady of the Falls]

He wants respect, power, fame when he got dissed by the Tullys and cut by Brandon Stark, IMO I think that scarred him and he wants to be more powerful and respected than the Tullys and Stark. I also think he might have gotten Lysa pregnant when Catelyn elluded to it in ACoK I think, it was when she was with her father before he died. He wants what was taken ,Catelyn but shes gone so I think he's gonna try for Sansa not right away but eventually..you know I wonder if he knew the red wedding was gonna go down before it did, you know...if he knew Cat was going to be killed?

[Sun]

Power, wealth and autonomy.

[James Arryn]

I think some men just want to watch the world burn. He strikes me as the type who thrives on chaos. Think Joker from The Dark Knight

Generally speaking, those types of people put themselves into harm's way a lot more often than LF does, physically. I don't think you're too far off, but whether it's a rationalization or not, I think LF thinks he has an objective in mind.

Chaos is his means, not his end. I think he's a middle-short game player who relies on his ability to adapt better than others to chaotic situations. And, let's be fair, he gets seriously lucky a lot of the time too, which doesn't hurt.

[Victarion Chainbreaker]

To put his son Robert on the Iron Throne.

[Good Guy Garlan]

To unite the Vale, North and Riverlands in the name of King Harry Hardyng and his Queen Sansa Stark, with Littlefinger as Hand, and the real power behind them. As soon as Sansa gives birth to a boy and heir, LF will quietly kill Harry, marry Sansa himself, and then be stepfather and Regent to the King of the North, Vale, and Riverlands, aka The Single Most Powerful Person in Westeros.

And that's just the start. Through alliance or conquest he'll add the Westerlands, Stormlands and even the Reach to his kingdom, and his power will last until the end of time (or close enough)

[Mithras]

Just like Roose wants to be the King in the North after Tywin's death, LF wants to be the king himself.

[Skoboe]

Wait, LF as a secret Reyne?

Do you have links to more on this theory?

I could link a few threads, but they're all mine so that would be a bit narcissistic :)

As far as I know I'm the only one who's thought of LF in this way.

Then why save Sansa... Sansa offers him nothing in his quest for power. It's not love... he covets..... Like the sociopath he is, he thinks he is doing this all for love.

Sansa is his key to the armies of the North. He's taking down the Lannisters, he can knock the Lannister family off one by one, but pretty soon he's going to need an army to take what he thinks is his.

He has the Vale on toast, soon he'll have the North.

As I said above, the LF/Cat thing is a furphy. Many theories grow exponentially from just a single concept...eg. LF loves Cat, so everything he's doing is to win her (or her daughter).

How many people revise their theories and ask themselves "what if that single supposition that I've allowed everything to grow from is completely wrong?"

[Jauqin]

TO CRUSH HIS ENEMIES, TO SEE THEM DRIVEN BEFORE HIM, AND TO HEAR THE LAMENTATIONS OF THEIR WOMEN.

Oh sorry, that was Conan.

But seriously, thinking everything LF does is because he's in love with Cat is the biggest red herring GRRM has thrown out there. LF loves LF, and no one else.

What does he want? He wants his ancestral home returned (Castamere), the destroyers of his house destroyed themselves (Lannisters), and a new song to replace the Rains of Castamere

best post