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Is Sansa still legally married and if so, to whom?


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There you go: http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Customs#Legality_and_Annulment

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Legality and Annulment

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In the Faith of the Seven, a marriage that has not been consummated can be set aside by the High Septon or a Council of Faith. An annulment granted by the High Septon requires no witnesses and must be requested by at least one of the wedded pair.

She's still married to Tyrion.

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She's not in the show. Could be she's not in the books, either.

Books: The Tysha marriage could have not been annulled. And the vows to Tyrion were said at swordpoint. Same link as above: "Vows said at swordpoint are not held to be valid."

Show: "Tyrion never consumated the marriage. By the law of the land, she's no man's wife." And they made sure the Ramsay marriage was consummated with a witness, but now he's dead. So she's single.

The HBO viewer's guide:

http://viewers-guide.hbo.com/game-of-thrones/season-6/episode-10/houses/15/house-bolton

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1 hour ago, Le Cygne said:

She's not in the show. Could be she's not in the books, either.

Books: The Tysha marriage could have not been annulled. And the vows to Tyrion were said at swordpoint. Same link as above: "Vows said at swordpoint are not held to be valid."

Show: "Tyrion never consumated the marriage. By the law of the land, she's no man's wife." And they made sure the Ramsay marriage was consummated with a witness, but now he's dead. So she's single.

The HBO viewer's guide:

http://viewers-guide.hbo.com/game-of-thrones/season-6/episode-10/houses/15/house-bolton

Yes, she was forced to marry Tyrion, that's true.  But there will still have to be a procedure to annul.  Nothing just happens.  There needs to be a decree to that effect.

Show nonsense is show nonsense.  I trust GRRM not to be so shoddy.

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If a marriage is invalid, it's invalid. It could be argued that it was invalid due to force or due to a prior marriage, and that's that. No need to annul an invalid marriage.

And ultimately, Robb's solution was to just chop off Tyrion's head. That's what he was going to do. There's no "procedure" for that, either. It's just not that clear cut.

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Now technically, if we have to stay at the few info we were given, she is legally married to Tyrion.

What we know:  

- we know that in Westeros, in the Faith of the Seven, a marriage that has not been consummated is annullable, it can be set aside by the High Septon or a Council of Faith

- we know that a marriage is annullable if it's later discovered that one or both the parts were already married (bigamy)

- we know that an annulment granted by the High Septon requires no witnesses and must be requested by at least one of the wedded pair 

- we know that a vidow can marry again, but we don't know - as far as I know, GRRM never clarified this detail - exactly how long it takes for somebody to be declared dead in absentia. In my country, it takes an official procedure and you need to wait years after the person has vanished.  

What does annullable mean?

Null = void, invalid 

Annullable = voidable = it can be nullified but it's valid until you annull it => the lack of consummation gives you the chance to set aside the marriage, makes the marriage precarious, but not automatically null: if you don’t annull it, it’s still valid.

So we have that:

- Tyrion and Sansa's marriage was celebrated before the Septon;

- it was never annulled (Sansa never asked for it; Tyrion never asked for it);

On this premise, the marriage is still valid, whether it was consummated or not.

Is Sansa's marriage to Ramsay (show only) going to change this conclusion?

No, it's not.

The show seems to make things easier than in the books, but we don't know whether it means they're truly easier in the GoT universe (compared to the ASOIAF universe) or it's just Littlefinger deciding to ignore the technicalities and go on with his plans (Lysa seemed convinced Sansa had to be a widow to marry Robyn).

She was married off to Ramsay and he raped her (consummation), but the former marriage (unconsummated) was never formally and properly annulled by the competent authorities before she was given to Ramsay.

This means that the second marriage is illegitimate because the first one was never annulled and therefore Ramsay raped and took as a wife a woman who was in fact still married with another man.

Bigamous marriages are forbidden and if it is later discovered that one of the two was already married, the marriage is annullable (exactly as for unconsummated marriages): this means Sansa in the show could ask for annulment, even if, being he dead, she is free to marry again in any case and she must consider if an anullment is profitable (as his wife, maybe she's inheriting something)

Is Tyrion's marriage with Tysha able to change this conclusion?

No, because that marriage was likely null to begin with and in any case either Tywin Lannister is a fool or he had it annulled.

Tyrion and Tysha were able to marry because they found a drunk septon wishing to marry them in exhange for a bribe. They had pigs as witnesses. When the septon sobered up, he run to Tywin and confessed the truth.

So the marriage:

- was likely null since the start (the septon was mentally unable to celebrate because he was drunk, they had pigs as witnesses instead of human beings, so they were lacking witnesses (marriages usually require witnesses and if it wasn't so, they wouldn't bring in the pigs to 'fake' witnesses) and the Septon accepted a bribe to celebrate the irregular marriage. Now it's hard to say this could be considered binding under any law.

- even if we supposed it wasn't null it was certainly annulled, unless we assume that Tywin Lannister was an idiot and I would call him many things BUT an idiot. The annullment doesn't require both parties to be present, so they could ask for it in Tysha's absence.

Tywin would never be careless with something potentially endangering his legacy, he would make sure to have the marriage annulled after she sent Tysha away, otherwise it would be a liablilty in too many ways:

- what if she got pregnant after he sent her away, for example? .. if she was still technically married to Tyrion, that would be a huge problem because the child wouldn't be a bastard, but a heir;

- he wanted to be free to use Tyrion as a marriage-weapon, as his other childs; after the Tysha affair, he offered Tyrion as Lysa Tully's husband.. he wouldn't do that without taking care of the previous marriage, for otherwise the new marriage would be annullable if anyone found out and the Lannister's claim over the Vale precarious and subject to possible blackmail; 

- he had his father Tytos and the lowborn mistress on the forefront of his head so he would act accordingly.

When the Septon run to Tywin, he confessed about being drunk, about the bribe, about the whole thing: Tywin then organized that whole 'trap' with Jamie telling Tyrion that Tysha was a whore who never loved him, specifically with the intent of having the marriage annulled without Tyrion objecting; therefore, there is no reason to suppose that he didn't follow through: Tywin would drag Tyrion along to the High Septon and make Tyrion ask for the annullment / ask for it at Tyrion's presence without him opposing him. He would probably say it needed to be annulled because Tysha was a prostitute who made the vows under false pretenses and/or that the Septon was drunk and/or that there were no witnesses, only pigs. Chances that the High Septon refused the annulment are like 0, because the marriage was clearly 'problematic' (pigs as witnesses? drunk septon? a vanished prostitute marrying a Lannister?) and because Tywin was the second most powerful man in Westeros. 

Further evidence is that Tyrion always refers to his marriage as a past event.. he always says that he was married, that Tysha was his wife, even when he's alone with Tywin; granted how much he idealized Tysha, if there was a chance that the marriage was still valid (he is well-read and high born, he knows how marriages work in Westeros), he would definitely still call her his wife (he would say something like 'I am married, though she's lost to me'), especially in front of Tywin and he would never disrespect Tysha with bigamy marrying Sansa. Tywin himself wouldn't offer Tyrion to Lysa Tully (or Sansa) if has didn't have the previous marriage annulled, because the consequent allegiance would be precarious.

Does this mean that Sansa and Tyrion's marriage is iron-clad?

Technically, the marriage is valid until one of them asks for annulment and the High Septon grants it. 

Generally speaking, tho, it's not iron-clad because:

- I don’t know if the tv show, being a tv show, will appreciate the difference between 'null' and 'annullable' (an easy way out to resume the Tyrion-Sansa marriage after they married her to Ramsay would be claming that she was married to RBolton because Tyrion was presumed dead… so once they find out he's not, the marriage can be resumed, if there is need for it to be resumed).

- both the books and the show will adjust the whole thing according to their 'narrative needs'. If it turns out it's necessary, in terms of plot development, for the marriage to be declared null or annulled, or whatever, or for the Tysha marriage to be resumed, then they will overlook what needs to be overlooked, make the characters act out of character... and it will happen. 

 

 

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On ‎02‎/‎07‎/‎2016 at 9:32 PM, Le Cygne said:

If a marriage is invalid, it's invalid. It could be argued that it was invalid due to force or due to a prior marriage, and that's that. No need to annul an invalid marriage.

And ultimately, Robb's solution was to just chop off Tyrion's head. That's what he was going to do. There's no "procedure" for that, either. It's just not that clear cut.

That's a procedure all by itself, surely!  :lol: He chops off Tyrion's head - Sansa is a widow and free of him!

Sansa may prefer to have the marriage annulled so the stain of the marriage she never wanted is removed from her.

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  • 2 weeks later...
33 minutes ago, AshesOfWesteros said:

@Elisabetta Duò Thanks for a detailed explaination! Now Sansa's marriage situation a mess, both in the show and in the books.

But in the books LF plans to marry Sansa/Alayane to Harold Harding. Would he plan it if he wasn't 100% sure Sansa isn't legally married?

  From AFFC:

 
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"A marriage . . ." Her throat tightened. She did not want to wed again, not now, perhaps not ever. "I do not . . . I cannot marry. Father, I . . ." Alayne looked to the door, to make certain it was closed. "I am married," she whispered. "You know."
 
Petyr put a finger to her lips to silence her. "The dwarf wed Ned Stark's daughter, not mine. Be that as it may. This is only a betrothal. The marriage must needs wait until Cersei is done and Sansa's safely widowed. And you must meet the boy and win his approval. Lady Waynwood will not make him marry against his will, she was quite firm on that."

 

 
The problem LF has here is that he can't make Sansa ask for the annullment (which she would be entitled to), because she couldn't request it as Alayne, she would have to request it as Sansa Stark, so she would be obliged to reveal herself (her whereabouts, her being alive, etc. - and LF would lose his hold on her.. without counting she's still accused of plotting Jeoffrey's murder with Tyrion). Being impossible to ask for the annullment in this context, LF need to haveTyrion killed or at least be sure he died before he marries Sansa to H.
 
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