Jump to content

Sansa and the Savage Giant


Chris Mormont

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, The Sleeper said:

What do you mean so what? You use the refference to another character and you say that it can be applied to LF just because?

Do you somehow fail to see the similarities between the two characters? Small figure, sharp wit, underestimated by everyone? No?

1 hour ago, The Sleeper said:

Words invoke images. You have gone entirely into metaphor of the fans' devising with no other single refference in the book. Nowhere is LF described as or refferd to in these or similar terms. Except allegedly in the vision. But that would make it a circular argument wouldn't it? 

Please, show me the rule according to which GRRM must describe a character with the same words that he uses in visions. By such logic, Sansa cannot be the maid from the vision because her hair is never described as serpenty, or what?

Besides, what exactly is fan devising for you? That the word "giant" can be used for describing a person whose influence is gigantic?

1 hour ago, The Sleeper said:

LF has power over the lives of his employees, because he pays them. He has the ear of some powerful people. He has money. Power is what the lords have where they can raise armies and pass judgement. Jon Arryn could have dismissed him and seize his assets, just because he felt like it. That is the difference.

Yet LF lives and Jon Arryn rots, and it was not coin that caused his death. So, what is the real power here?

1 hour ago, The Sleeper said:

And here is the grub of the matter. LF through some matches on dry tinder. He by no means orchestrated anything. It was beyond his power. The single event that cascaded into the war of the five kings was Bran's fall and subsequent assassination attempt. He had no control or knowledge of that. He had no involvement in the military aspect of it. He had no control over the outcome.

Then you haven't been paying attention. It was not Bran's fall but the letter from Lysa blaming the Lannisters for the death of Jon Arryn that started it all. After the assassination attempt, LF then steps in again and claims that the dagger is Tyrion's, which partly leads to Catnapping. And after the Catnapping, when Ned is about to leave KL, LF delays his departure, which results in Jaime's ambush and Ned's injury. LF originated the conflict and kept fanning it the whole time, by constantly manipulating everyone and everything.

1 hour ago, The Sleeper said:

Far from a giant LF is an opportunistic piece of shit looking after his own ass.

Oh, that he certainly is. And he is also a manipulator and schemer of gigantic proportions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It (sadly) never ceases to amaze me how much hatred Sansa can get for what happened in AGOT. Blaming her for all that befell on Arya after King's Landing is plain baffling. If you can blame Sansa for Arya's post KL fate, then you have to acknowledge Arya's responsibility in souring the Sansa/Joffrey relationship with the Trident incident, which would never have happened if Arya had behaved  like a proper lady during the trip. That would not have changed Joffrey's true nature in any way, of course, only postponed its reveal. However Mycah and Lady would logically have survived a while longer and Sansa would have been spared several beatings  as well as Joffrey's general hostility towards her (per Cersei's acknowledgement in Sansa IV, ACOK "Joffrey will show you no such devotion, I fear. You could thank your sister for that, if she weren't dead. He's never been able to forget that day on the Trident when you saw her shame him, so he shames you in turn"). In an optimistic turn of events, she could even have had some good influence on him (as seen with Dontos, her inciting him to give something to a begging mother before the riot IIRC)

 Sansa's going to Cersei did work against the Stark retinue going back to Winterfell, there is no denying it, but to put everything on her shoulders while criticizing for having no agency and being powerless is puzzling. She did give all the information she had to Cersei, but she was acting without having been given any real context by Ned as to why they really had to go. Ned failed her in not giving her a true, proper explanation, when he fully knew how important her ideal of marrying the crown prince was to her. Having had a sister like Lyanna, he should have known that teenage girls can be very headstrong. He either should have told her everything or nothing and made arrangements for any resistence from his 11 year-old besotted daughter to be a non-factor.

On the actual subject of this topic, I do believe that Sansa will orchestrate Littlefinger's death. Having him beheaded would be beautiful on a thematic level. She tends to dissociate Littlefinger, whom she dislikes, and Petyr, whom she tolerates and can find charming, but that will end when all he has done is revealed. In killing him, she will also free herself from her Alayne Stone persona, so that would that so fitting to have it done through a Stark beheading. Her height compared to his might work in her favor as the performer of the task, but her not getting her hands actually dirty would add a sweet nod to her applying his teachings against him. There just needs to be another "Sweetrobin" stand-in to mirror the Snowcastle scene and provide incentive or help in the actual task.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

And don't throw that Cersei quote at me; she is talking to Tyrion who as far as she is aware does not know what Eddard Stark had discovered or told her he was going to do in the Gods Wood. And she needs an explanation as to how she was able to pre-empt his moves so successfully. Without revealing that she's been shagging their brother and the kids are all his. Sansa is in this instance a wonderfully convenient patsy. 

Do you mean the same conversation where they discuss this?
 

Quote

 

 "...Who murdered Jon Arryn? "

Cersei yanked her hand back. "How should I know?"

"The grieving widow in the Eyrie seems to think it was me. Where did she come by that notion, I wonder?"

"I'm sure I don't know. That fool Eddard Stark accused me of the same thing. He hinted that Lord Arryn suspected or . . . well, believed

"That you were fucking our sweet Jaime?"

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

His eldest daughter stepped forward hesitantly. She was dressed in blue velvets trimmed with white, a silver chain around her neck. Her thick auburn hair had been brushed until it shone. She blinked at her sister, then at the young prince. "I don't know," she said tearfully, looking as though she wanted to bolt. "I don't remember. Everything happened so fast, I didn't see …"

"You rotten!" Arya shrieked. She flew at her sister like an arrow, knocking Sansa down to the ground, pummeling her. "Liar, liar, liar, liar."

I keep thinking about this passage. Sansa is frozen in place: blue and white, velvet winter fabric, shining (frozen) hair, frozen words and she is literally wearing a chain around her neck. She’s trapped. In contrast, Arya flies like an arrow.

Motion seems to be very important here. Sansa wants very much to bolt, but can’t as she’s chained by being damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t symbolized by the literal chain. Arya is actually the one who bolts here and carries the desired action through. Arya’s bolting like an arrow actually gets Sansa out of her predicament, which is what Sansa wanted though not as planned, and it lets Arya reveal the truth, though not in the desired fashion. Arya completes the motion Sansa wanted to take but couldn’t. Arya tells the truth that Sansa wanted to tell, but couldn’t because it would irreparably damage her relationship with Cersei and Joff with whom she’d spend the rest of her life.

A bolt (Sansa) and an arrow (Arya) are actually two parts of the same weapon. The arrowhead which is the weapon itself is mounted on the bolt or shaft, which propels and guides the arrowhead.

AGoT Eddard III

Mycah, his body covered in dried blood. He had been cut almost in half from shoulder to waist by some terrible blow struck from above.

This scene is also all about a savage giant: Sandor Clegane and how he cut down Mycah. Interestingly, Sandor is huge part of the arc of both girls. If we define the slaying as being only figurative, it was both Arya and Sansa who slayed the savagery in Sandor, though not Sandor himself. Gregor was the source of Sandor’s savagery and it was Gregor who lost his head while the "Hound" symbolically lost his head when Sandor abandoned his helm.

I don’t think the savage giant in the prophesy is Sandor because I don’t think that makes any sense at this point if the interpretation is literal slaying rather than figurative slaying, and “...in a castle built of snow” isn’t applicable as far as I can see.

But I do think Sandor may be a symbolic stand-in to link this scene to the prophesy for whatever purpose.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, The Sleeper said:

you cannot use the words "savage giant" to describe a man whose primary concern is to keep his hands clean.

Oh yes, you most definitely can.  Actually, this is one of GRRM's principal themes, so much so I even dedicated an entire thread to its multifaceted exploration, namely 'The Killing Word...', examining how words can be just as lethal as swords, beginning with events as they unfolded in the Prologue.  Verbal manipulation is Littlefinger's principal currency!

Here, in a quote courtesy of @Pain killer Jane, both savage swords and savage words are present concurrently:

Quote

 Joffrey slashed at Arya with his sword, screaming obscenities, terrible words, filthy words. Arya darted back, frightened now, but Joffrey followed, hounding her toward the woods, backing her up against a tree. Sansa didn't know what to do. She watched helplessly, almost blind from her tears.  (AGOT - Sansa I)

The 'head that speaks the words' (keeping his hands clean...) is just as savage, if not more so, than 'the hand that swings the sword'.  Tyrion makes that connection here, realizing that Oberyn realizes as he does, that Gregor Clegane is small fry next to the real giant, Tywin Lannister:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Tyrion IX

"Your father," said Prince Oberyn, "may not live forever."

Something about the way he said it made the hairs on the back of Tyrion's neck bristle. Suddenly he was mindful of Elia again, and all that Oberyn had said as they crossed the field of ashes. He wants the head that spoke the words, not just the hand that swung the sword. "

 

 

16 hours ago, Ygrain said:

I'm afraid not. "Savage" can be used in the meaning of:

vicious, merciless, unforgiving, without restraint or pity, cruel,

depending on which dictionary you check. Add to it "giant" with a bit of symbolism, and what you get is exactly LF - a man with huge power and absolutely no regard for those who suffer due to his actions. 

I'm so looking forward to his head on the pike above the gate of Winterfell!

 

In support of your 'savage inclinations' regarding poor Petyr, the victim of the nobility ;), there's already a precedent of another Baelish -- well, not '-ish' exactly; just 'Bael' -- having his head mounted on a spike at Winterfell:

Quote

"The Stark in Winterfell wanted Bael's head, but never could take him, and the taste o' failure galled him. One day in his bitterness he called Bael a craven who preyed only on the weak. When word o' that got back, Bael vowed to teach the lord a lesson. So he scaled the Wall, skipped down the kingsroad, and walked into Winterfell one winter's night with harp in hand, naming himself Sygerrik of Skagos. Sygerrik means 'deceiver' in the Old Tongue, that the First Men spoke, and the giants still speak."

...

When Lord Stark returned from the battle and his mother saw Bael's head upon his spear, she threw herself from a tower in her grief. 

(ACOK - Jon VI)

Although Baelish's head like his namesake Bael might end up on a spike, somehow I don't think Sansa will be throwing herself off any towers for grief at his passing!

Just as Viserion will accomplish what Viserys could not in life, so shall Sansa accomplish what Ned could only dream of shortly before he died:

Quote

"but he shall have a new name for this new life. I would name them all for those the gods have taken....The cream-and-gold I call Viserion....His dragon will do what he could not." (ACOK - Daenerys I)

 

Quote

 Cracks ran down his face, fissures opening in the flesh, and he reached up and ripped the mask away. It was not Robert at all; it was Littlefinger, grinning, mocking him. When he opened his mouth to speak, his lies turned to pale grey moths and took wing.  (AGOT - Eddard XV)

 

Quote

 There was a loud ripping sound as the thin cloth tore. Suddenly she had the doll's head, Robert had the legs and body, and the rag-and-sawdust stuffing was spilling in the snow. (ASOS - Sansa VII)

Ned 'ripping away the mask' is similar to Sansa ripping off the head of the doll, to reveal the savage within.  Part of the 'savagery' of which you spoke is paradoxically the banality of it all -- the everyday ordinariness of the man behind the mask -- leading some such as @The Sleeper to conclude erroneously that Baelish's ability to keep his hands clean is evidence of his lack of savagery.  When Sansa rips off the head, she finds the doll falls apart, being relatively insubstantial at its core, the 'rag-and-sawdust stuffing spilling in the snow' in a reiteration of the evanescence of the swarm of 'pale grey moths taking wing' symbolising the strange power of Littlefinger's lies in Ned's prophetic dream.  Recall that Ned was in a state of sensory-deprivation at the time in the pitch-dark of the Red Keep dungeon, facilitating an uncharacteristic sharpening or stirring of his dormant 'wolf blood,' as it were -- so all those so-called 'fever dreams' are actually Stark prophetic visions.

 

 

On 7/19/2017 at 9:13 PM, Winter's Cold said:
On 7/19/2017 at 3:35 PM, Springwatch said:

On top of that, we have to believe Ned's travel plan hadn't already leaked. If you want to keep a secret, don't tell your pre-teen daughters, their tutor, the breakfast staff, your steward, your guards and Syrio Forrell. Unbelievable.

Or perhaps just don't tell Sansa as she is the one who ran to Cersei and told her everything.

I know; Ned was a real idiot for trusting his own daughter!  :P

Even Jon Snow who knows nothing and Arya had it figured out a long time ago...

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Jon II

"I think so," Arya said.

"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."

Arya gave him a whap on the arm with the flat of her blade. The blow stung, but Jon found himself grinning like an idiot. "I know which end to use," Arya said. A doubtful look crossed her face. "Septa Mordane will take it away from me."

"Not if she doesn't know you have it," Jon said.

"Who will I practice with?"

"You'll find someone," Jon promised her. "King's Landing is a true city, a thousand times the size of Winterfell. Until you find a partner, watch how they fight in the yard. Run, and ride, make yourself strong. And whatever you do …"

Arya knew what was coming next. They said it together.

"… don't … tell … Sansa!"

 

 

On 7/19/2017 at 0:20 AM, Lollygag said:

Sansa didn’t think she could escape unscathed.

On the contrary, she did initially believe that by employing a strategy of deferral she might escape unscathed.  To elaborate, she hoped that by affecting a stance of 'neutral' non-involvement, in essence at once tacitly abandoning Arya and her father to their own devices, while at the same time granting her support to Joffrey and Cersei by default, that this would somehow ensure her own immunity -- hence her shock when this proved not to be the case, and instead of 'killing two birds with one (wordless) stone,' she lost the thing dearest to her, her wolf; proving that evasive 'weasel words' and the like are still words, and can kill.

She hoped that avoidance would be equivalent to blamelessness, being a passive spectator somehow exonerating, an attitude which is however belied by GRRM's own moral sensibility peeping through on numerous occasions in the text, not exclusive to his treatment of Sansa.  While this may be a disturbing concept to fathom for some, the author is, after all, the one who finally gets to play god, judge, jury, and executioner; hatching, matching and dispatching characters as he sees fit -- he chose for his own reasons to have Lady executed while letting Nymeria escape, which is pretty ironic considering Sansa's primary aim of escaping responsibility in the whole affair.

Reading between the lines, GRRM's 'moral of the story' in this respect is that witnesses to atrocities (even ones as seemingly 'innocent' as childhood bullying) are not let off the hook; they too have responsibilities, and he's criticizing Sansa for shirking these.  She was called to bear witness -- and she failed.  Dealing with the importance of faithfully bringing ones testimony, there's a great poem by the Polish author Zbigniew Herbert, brought to my attention by @Blue Tiger on my poetry thread, that deals with the perils of being too craven to speak up in the face of injustice and oppression.  Poets send out their moral messages to the world, no less than other authors, including George Raymond Richard Martin, who is not nearly as morally 'grey' as people generally celebrate him as being.  Herewith, an excerpt:

 
Go where those others went to the dark boundary 
for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize 
 
go upright among those who are on their knees 
among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust 
 
you were saved not in order to live 
you have little time you must give testimony 
 
be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous 
in the final account only this is important 
 
and let your helpless Anger be like the sea 
whenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beaten 
 
let your sister Scorn not leave you 
for the informers executioners cowards—they will win 
they will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of earth 
the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography 
 
and do not forgive truly it is not in your power 
to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn 
 
beware however of unnecessary pride 
keep looking at your clown’s face in the mirror 
repeat: I was called— 
...

From: The Envoy of Mr. Cogito

ZBIGNIEW HERBERT

Translation: Bogdana Carpenter

 

In spite of GRRM's postmodern presentation of multiple POVs, that should not be taken to mean he himself has no point of view or higher-order message to impart.  Thus, we might infer the author's commentary on the matter of the conflict among the children, and more specifically on how Sansa comported herself surrounding the dangerously escalating bullying which she witnessed.  It's suggested from Lady's brutal execution, at Stark hands no less, GRRM does not think the ones who 'only watch' while 'saying nothing' should get off scot-free -- at least not in his fiction!  

We see an example of this 'moral lesson' already as early as the Prologue, in which Will the treacherous 'far-eyes' gets his comeuppance at the hands of his brother for failing to shout out a warning call or come to his brother's aid in any other way, choosing to abandon Waymar to his fate on the ground, while holding the 'high ground' up in the tree (which can also be read more figuratively as seizing the 'moral high ground' as well), and keeping his peace to save his own skin, in lieu of upholding his sacred duty to his brother.  Additionally, as I've posited in my allegorical reading of the Prologue, Will's words (the 'whispered prayer' he uttered), not only his silence, contributed to the summoning of the Others against his brother, which ultimately ended up backfiring on him, in which we may glimpse a parallel in the conflict played out at the Trident.  

Similarly, there is a duel (the Other vs. Waymar being analogous to Joffrey vs. Arya respectively; Wighted Waymar and Nymeria are stand-ins for one another) with a third party off to the side who believes, as it turns out, mistakenly, that s/he can successfully avoid getting involved, and might even derive some profit from the situation (represented by Will and Sansa in the equation...after the conclusion of the duel, Will sneaks down off the tree to claim the spoils of war in the form of the magicked-up lightning-struck sword, and possibly even with the intention of taking the sable cloak off his brother, as Euron and Thoren Smallwood did in analogous circumstances; while Sansa in the aftermath of the conflict attempts to curry favour with Joffrey and Cersei at her own family's expense).  Gared like Mycah flees the scene, only to be cut down later, completing the parallel.

Here's another example of GRRM's theme of implicating the 'watchers' in that to which they bear witness, as expressed by the reflective Ser Barristan Selmy:

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - The Queensguard

The words seemed to give the girl some comfort. Words are wind, though, Ser Barristan thought. How can I protect the queen when I am not with her?

Barristan Selmy had known many kings. He had been born during the troubled reign of Aegon the Unlikely, beloved by the common folk, had received his knighthood at his hands. Aegon's son Jaehaerys had bestowed the white cloak on him when he was three-and-twenty, after he slew Maelys the Monstrous during the War of the Ninepenny Kings. In that same cloak he had stood beside the Iron Throne as madness consumed Jaehaerys's son Aerys. Stood, and saw, and heard, and yet did nothing.

But no. That was not fair. He did his duty. Some nights, Ser Barristan wondered if he had not done that duty too well. He had sworn his vows before the eyes of gods and men, he could not in honor go against them … but the keeping of those vows had grown hard in the last years of King Aerys's reign. He had seen things that it pained him to recall, and more than once he wondered how much of the blood was on his own hands. If he had not gone into Duskendale to rescue Aerys from Lord Darklyn's dungeons, the king might well have died there as Tywin Lannister sacked the town. Then Prince Rhaegar would have ascended the Iron Throne, mayhaps to heal the realm. Duskendale had been his finest hour, yet the memory tasted bitter on his tongue.

Once again, we can observe that GRRM does not let the 'bystanders' get off lightly, as evidenced in yet another example, this time involving Robb's adjudication of the crime committed by the Karstarks, by how the guards protesting that they were 'only the watchers' during the murder of the Lannister children are nevertheless punished by Robb along with the Karstarks who actually committed the murders (courtesy @Pain killer Jane for pointing out the reference).  Similarly, Sansa's defense of being 'only the watcher', together with her feigned ignorance, failed to protect her from suffering the fallout.  GRRM is posing serious questions of moral culpability, in terms of several parties all sharing various degrees of complicity, however 'proxy' or indirect.

Quote

One of the captives dropped to his knees. “Mercy, sire. I killed no one, I only stood at the door to watch for guards.”

    Robb considered that a moment. “Did you know what Lord Rickard intended? Did you see the knives drawn? Did you hear the shouts, the screams, the cries for mercy?”

    “Aye, I did, but I took no part. I was only the watcher
, I swear it . . .”

    “Lord Umber,” said Robb, “this one was only the watcher. Hang him last, so he may watch the others die. Mother, Uncle, with me, if you please.” He turned away as the Greatjon’s men closed upon the prisoners and drove them from the hall at spearpoint. Outside the thunder crashed and boomed, so loud it sounded as if the castle were coming down about their ears. Is this the sound of a kingdom falling? Catelyn wondered.  (ASOS -- Catelyn III)

 

Quote

She was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. She knew it and was terrified.

While I'm sure she hated being put on the spot, I'm not sure she found the moral quandary all that perturbing at the time.  She still thought then she could have her (lemon) cake and eat it too...;)  

7 hours ago, Lollygag said:

I keep thinking about this passage. Sansa is frozen in place: blue and white, velvet winter fabric, shining (frozen) hair, frozen words and she is literally wearing a chain around her neck. She’s trapped. In contrast, Arya flies like an arrow.

Good observations.  The relative motion of the two girls is reflected in that of their wolves, Lady chained up unknowingly awaiting death at Ned's hand :crying: and Nymeria bolting into the woods, respectively.

Quote

Motion seems to be very important here. Sansa wants very much to bolt, but can’t as she’s chained by being damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t symbolized by the literal chain.

I don't see it that way, however.  Who put her in chains?  Sansa is not the only one who is 'damned if she does, damned if she doesn't'.  Sansa is not special, nor specially taxed, nor exceptionally victimized -- ALL of GRRM's characters are caught in a dilemma and many of them suffer under conflicting obligations, values and motivations, and devastating reversals of fortune (I mean, just look at the king himself, caught in a tug of war between Cersei and Ned; or Ned trapped between his duty to the king and his love of family; or Jaime a case-in-point of someone torn between multiple divided loyalties; and Brienne with her chewed-off face mercilessly forced to choose between the 'noose' and the 'sword', etc.).  GRRM's message is that we are all damned; therefore, there is no option of doing nothing or 'passing the buck' in order to escape damnation. 

 The reason Sansa is on a chain symbolically is not because she has no choices; it's because she refuses to consciously exercise that choice.

 

Quote

A Clash of Kings - Catelyn VII

"How can you still count yourself a knight, when you have forsaken every vow you ever swore?"

Jaime reached for the flagon to refill his cup. "So many vows . . . they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other." He took a healthy swallow of wine and closed his eyes for an instant, leaning his head back against the patch of nitre on the wall. 

 

Quote

Sansa couldn’t take flight, so she froze. In contrast, Arya is fight. Fight, flight or freeze, different survival responses. Sansa is even dressed as ice in blue and white. She's in winter fabric (velvet) with a chain around her neck and her hair shining as if frozen. She stammers. Her words are frozen.

Great points.  The 'frozen words' can also be interpreted as expressing a certain cold-heartedness towards her own sister, in not coming to her aid when she most needed her support.

That reminds me, in the Prologue Will's words are also described as 'freezing in his throat', when he similarly avoids answering his brother's desperate call and goes on to make excuses to himself about what he actually saw:

Quote

Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and the words seemed to freeze in his throat. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had only been a bird, a reflection on the snow, some trick of the moonlight. What had he seen, after all?

"Will, where are you?" Ser Waymar called up. "Can you see anything?" He was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. "Answer me! Why is it so cold?"

It was cold. Shivering, Will clung more tightly to his perch...

...

They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them … four … five … Ser Waymar may have felt the cold that came with them, but he never saw them, never heard them. Will had to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the silence.

The pale sword came shivering through the air.

Will kept the silence -- and then 'the pale sword came shivering through the air'.  Similarly, Sansa kept her silence -- and then 'Jory brought him Ice...' (AGOT -- Eddard III).

A note on the 'fight, flight or freeze' response -- 'Freezing' is not necessarily antithetical to 'fleeing'; it's an attempt to escape a confrontation by striving to appear as unobtrusive and unthreatening / submissive as possible, remaining motionless, blending into the landscape, and so on, thereby hoping to escape detection, 'playing dead' as it were, just like Sansa 'choking' in the throne room, or Will clinging to the sentinel 'lost among the needles'.  In response to the perception of overwhelming trauma, there is a certain related phenomenon termed 'dissociation', which is related both to 'freezing' and 'fleeing.'  It's a way of being physically present whilst simultaneously disengaging psychologically -- relinquishing ones own mindfulness --when for example, as you've pointed out, for various reasons circumstances may prevent successful flight; in order to wall-off and protect the self from harm ('see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil').  Jaime refers to this defense mechanism as 'going away inside himself', for example as a way to cope with the atrocities he was witnessing in Aerys's court, before he finally couldn't take it any longer and acted to take out the tyrant.  He also advises Brienne and Joffrey to do the same when faced with rape, torture and other horrors.

@Lollygag, I really like your symbolic exploration of the complexity of walls by the way -- nice!  In light of our discussion surrounding the 'freeze' response, as exemplified in idioms such as 'giving someone the cold shoulder,' 'stonewalling,' or 'freezing someone out', it's fitting that the main Wall serving as the embodiment of the metaphor of self-defense and -integrity is indeed a frozen one!  In other words, the defense of the self cannot be separated from its construction, including the paradox that the self is asserted, indeed defined, with respect to others by selectively 'turning a blind eye' to certain realities.

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Jaime IV

It was the next night when they finally came, three of the worst; Shagwell, noseless Rorge, and the fat Dothraki Zollo, the one who'd cut his hand off. Zollo and Rorge were arguing about who would go first as they approached; there seemed to be no question but that the fool would be going last. Shagwell suggested that they should both go first, and take her front and rear. Zollo and Rorge liked that notion, only then they began to fight about who would get the front and who the rear.

They will leave her a cripple too, but inside, where it does not show. "Wench," he whispered as Zollo and Rorge were cursing one another, "let them have the meat, and you go far away. It will be over quicker, and they'll get less pleasure from it."

"They'll get no pleasure from what I'll give them," she whispered back, defiant.

Stupid stubborn brave bitch. She was going to get herself good and killed, he knew it. And what do I care if she does? If she hadn't been so pigheaded, I'd still have a hand. Yet he heard himself whisper, "Let them do it, and go away inside." That was what he'd done, when the Starks had died before him, Lord Rickard cooking in his armor while his son Brandon strangled himself trying to save him. "Think of Renly, if you loved him. Think of Tarth, mountains and seas, pools, waterfalls, whatever you have on your Sapphire Isle, think . . ."

 

A Feast for Crows - Jaime I

This will not do. Too many eager ears and watching eyes. "Best we go outside, Your Grace." Jaime led the boy out to where the air was as fresh and clean as King's Landing ever got. Twoscore gold cloaks had been posted around the plaza to guard the horses and the litters. He took the king off to the side, well away from everyone, and sat him down upon the marble steps. "I wasn't scared," the boy insisted. "The smell made me sick. Didn't it make you sick? How could you bear it, Uncle, ser?"

I have smelled my own hand rotting, when Vargo Hoat made me wear it for a pendant. "A man can bear most anything, if he must," Jaime told his son. I have smelled a man roasting, as King Aerys cooked him in his own armor. "The world is full of horrors, Tommen. You can fight them, or laugh at them, or look without seeing . . . go away inside."

Tommen considered that. "I . . . I used to go away inside sometimes," he confessed, "when Joffy . . ."

"Joffrey." Cersei stood over them, the wind whipping her skirts around her legs. "Your brother's name was Joffrey. He would never have shamed me so."

 

Quote

His eldest daughter stepped forward hesitantly. She was dressed in blue velvets trimmed with white, a silver chain around her neck. Her thick auburn hair had been brushed until it shone. She blinked at her sister, then at the young prince. "I don't know," she said tearfully, looking as though she wanted to bolt. "I don't remember. Everything happened so fast, I didn't see …"

 

"You rotten!" Arya shrieked. She flew at her sister like an arrow, knocking Sansa down to the ground, pummeling her. "Liar, liar, liar, liar."

 

Our choices have logical consequences but if GRRM’s dealing in more than the occasional karmic lesson, then that begs a lot of questions about the characters if their unfortunate situations are in fact a karmic consequence of their actions.

There's a lot of randomness in the mix as well (the old adage of the problem of the existence of evil and 'why bad things happen to good people', and vice versa), but in my opinion GRRM saves himself from cynicism by indulging in apportioning a bit of godlike justice in his fiction, so we can never take the 'consequences' for the characters at face value, nor assume that these consequences are entirely logical, consistent, or unprejudiced.  On the one hand, the author has his favorites for his own idiosyncratic and narrative reasons, who are accordingly granted their 'plot armor,' whereas on the other hand, he definitely passes his rather brutal judgment on several of his own characters, preferring an often-macabre ironic symmetry between crime and punishment in doling out that poetic justice, karmic retribution, call it what you will.  A few examples to demonstrate this tendency:

My favorite of all time, as astutely identified by the one-and-only @evita mgfs, Jaime's offer in bad faith to Bran, 'take my hand,' before shoving him to his death with that hand -- followed by that selfsame hand of Jaime's being literally taken from him!  He even recognises the irony himself:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Jaime V

Still, the water darkened as the caked dirt dissolved off his skin. The wench kept her back to him, the muscles in her great shoulders hunched and hard.

"Does the sight of my stump distress you so?" Jaime asked. "You ought to be pleased. I've lost the hand I killed the king with. The hand that flung the Stark boy from that tower. The hand I'd slide between my sister's thighs to make her wet." He thrust his stump at her face. "No wonder Renly died, with you guarding him."

She jerked to her feet as if he'd struck her, sending a wash of hot water across the tub. Jaime caught a glimpse of the thick blonde bush at the juncture of her thighs as she climbed out. She was much hairier than his sister. Absurdly, he felt his cock stir beneath the bathwater. Now I know I have been too long away from Cersei. He averted his eyes, troubled by his body's response. "That was unworthy," he mumbled. "I'm a maimed man, and bitter. Forgive me, wench. You protected me as well as any man could have, and better than most."

Ask yourself:  If GRRM's universe is impartial, impervious to matters of morality, why did Jaime have to lose a hand at all?  Why couldn't he just kill a king, throw Bran, and pleasure his sister, and carry on being the unapologetic big-shot without losing a hand?  If he had to 'pay' for his transgressions, why did it have to be with his sword hand?  Why couldn't he have lost something else; or if it had to be a corporeal penalty, why couldn't it have been the non-dominant (i.e. his left) hand instead of his sword hand; otherwise, why not another body part entirely?  The answer to all of these questions is the same: dramatic irony, poetic justice, karma, etc. and GRRM very much subscribes to this form of authorial reckoning with his own characters.

Other examples:  Robert Baratheon, shirking his responsibility as a ruler, indulging in his vices-- ends up dying as a consequence of those vices (drinking, hunting, whoring...it was the 'bastard' that killed him, referring to the gods having sent the boar as a 'punishment for the girl').  For the sin of turning a blind eye to the corruption in his own court -- at the end, GRRM gives him a slow, painful demise, ignominiously rotting to death in his own stinking corruption.

There's also the cruelest of all, Theon for killing the miller's boys, at least one of whom might have been his own biological offspring, the product of his raunchy frolics with the miller's wife -- loses his reproductive capacity (i.e. in return for having figuratively ground and burnt his own 'seed', making Theon an unwitting kinslayer, the 'miller' of his own biological child/ren, symbolically at least his brothers, GRRM ensures the bitter enduring irony of Theon's own proclaimed motto 'we do not sow').

I'm sure you can all think of plenty of further examples to illustrate this point.  

 

Quote

What did Dany do at that point in the narrative to deserve being a child slave/bride?

Nothing.  She inherited the transgenerational karmic legacy of her Targaryen antecedents. That's another related theme: as best epitomised by Tyrion and Oberyn reflecting together on the transgenerational tit-for-tat enmity between their two families: 'We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance on in our steads. (ASOS - Tyrion X)

Apart from the collective familial legacy, Dany's personally accrued karmic comeuppance is still coming!

Quote

 

What did Ned do to deserve his head being chopped off and his family being tossed into chaos?

He went south literally -- so things 'went south' figuratively, as sweetsunray has pointed out in her chthonic essays.  

He lost his head, in the sense of failing to use it.  Or in other words, failed to integrate the heart and the head -- whence they were separated..!

Quote

I could go on...Choices have a price and that’s logical but I really don’t see karma here. Disney and Sansa’s fairy tales and songs deal in karma. It seems very out of place in ASOIAF.

I must disagree with you here on aesthetic grounds.  GRRM can't help himself!  'It's a thing...'

Another example, seemingly minor, with shades of Cersei's walk of shame:  the lady who mocks a warlock's moth-eaten robe -- in a cruel twist of fate ends up suitably counter-mocked herself, cursed, forced to go naked, since all her clothes feel like moths against her skin:

Quote

 The wife of Mathos Mallarawan, who once mocked a warlock's drab moth-eaten robe, has gone mad and will wear no clothes at all. Even fresh-washed silks make her feel as though a thousand insects were crawling on her skin.  (ACOK  -- Daenerys V)

 

Quote

 

You’ve very nicely phrased something I’ve been chewing on for a while now with 'psychic survival' and 'physical survival'! In this series, I think these two are often in conflict.

 

I don’t disagree with AGOT's Sansa’s “splendid superiority”, but I do think there’s more going on here and it's tied to the blurring and confusion between psychic survival and physical survival.

 

Sure.  'Splendid superiority' in the sense that ones psychic and/or physical survival, especially if this is predicated on such fragile underpinnings as you later explain, by implication depends on the suppression of any other perspectives running counter to the 'survival narrative,' thus threatening to disintegrate the self.  There is an impaired capacity to entertain, process, and contain different perspectives.

There's reams of literature written on this subject (see 'psychic equivalence' and 'pretend mode'):

Quote

Psychic equivalence equates the internal with the external and there cannot be differences in perspective about the external world because it is isomorphic with the internal.  In pretend mode, the mental state is decoupled from external or physical reality but is separated from the rest of the patient’s mental world.  The result of these two modes of function is that in psychic equivalence, experience is too real and therefore overwhelming while pretend is too unreal and therefore detached and isolating.  

-- Anthony Bateman

Simply put, both of these are forms of self-deception in which a healthy balance between inner and outer reality is elusive.  In the first, 'psychic equivalence', ones internal thoughts and feelings are so vivid and all-consuming they are given enormous weight, accepted at face-value, and automatically equated with the outside world, an absolutism admitting no alternative perspectives.  In the second, 'pretend mode,' which can be interpreted in a way as a response to the unbearable experience of the first, ones internal thoughts and feelings are severed or sequestered from any reference to an outside physical reality.  Both these defense mechanisms represent an essential inflexibility and fear of ones own thoughts.  In the first, thoughts are given unwarranted substance, as a result of those fears; in the second, thoughts are deprived of substance, to protect against those fears.  Both can be thought of as different ways of putting up walls.  You'll be able to identify that Sansa oscillates at different times between both these modes of being.

Quote

Sansa has let the outer world define how her life should be: mostly fairy tales, songs, Septa Mordane, and I strongly suspect Catelyn’s own biases being a very strong influence and all to earn the of approval of the powers that be. Evidence for Sansa’s very externalized definition of herself is being deeply motivated to seek approval from authority figures and in this case, Cersei as queen and mother-in-law had superseded Ned as the authority figure to be pleased. We see during Sansa’s later bastard days when she has the opportunity to choose to become a different person that Sansa was lying to herself as much as she lied to others about who she was. 

Exactly.  In psychological parlance, she has an 'external locus of control' and in appeasing others cultivates the 'false self.'

Quote

When one lets the outer world define one overly much, and the outer world doesn’t comply with those expectations, then that person is faced not just with a conflict, but an identity crisis or worse: a complete destruction of identity. Hence why the world not being what one expects can be such a threat to some, enough of a threat to construct “walls” of lies and if the one is too defined by our outer world, then the line between our dreams and our physical safety can become extremely blurred. It’s why people may go through an identity crisis after a death, divorce or a job loss: at one point we became defined by something external and now that external thing is lost and in turn we are now lost. Sansa losing her external dreams meant becoming nothing, because she didn't have sufficient definitions for herself which were more internalized and stable. If her dreams were nothing, lies, then she lived in a world she no longer understood and could not navigate and this is where psychic threats may blur into physical ones.

Well put.  Not being able to distinguish between psychic and physical can be pathologically debilitating.  

 

Quote

 

I'm strongly inclined to agree here. And there seems to be a strong pattern between self-told lies/blindness to reality or truth/willful blindness and walls. I think their connection to each other is worth further examination. I'm tired and I haven't nailed a pattern but here's some food for thought. Whatever's going on it seems fairly complex. Maybe since walls both protect and obscure (lie?), there's a fine line between self-preservation (protective aspect of a wall or physical survival) and self-delusion (obscuring aspect of a wall or psychic survival). The Wall seems to reflect this conflict a great deal where they either want to use the Wall for physical protection, or they want to extend the Wall's role to obscure the truth by sealing it and pretending the Others aren't on the other side and hoping all goes ok. Anyhow, walls seem to often go hand-in-hand with identity changes, truth and lies.

 

Nice discussion of the pros and cons of a wall and its symbolism.

Quote

 

Jaime is not unlike Sansa as he has lived his entire life being who Twyin, Cersei, Aerys and Robert said he should be, mostly Cersei. Jaime emergences from behind the walls of Riverrun and the walls of his cell and it’s the beginning of the end of his lies about himself, those around him, and his place in the world.

 

Jaime's sword hand was the way he identified his purpose in the world as well as kept the world at arm's length (forgive the regrettable pun..!)  Without his hand, the walls came down:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Jaime IV

The days and the nights blurred together in a haze of pain. He would sleep in the saddle, pressed against Brienne, his nose full of the stink of his rotting hand, and then at night he would lie awake on the hard ground, caught in a waking nightmare. Weak as he was, they always bound him to a tree. It gave him some cold consolation to know that they feared him that much, even now.

Brienne was always bound beside him. She lay there in her bonds like a big dead cow, saying not a word. The wench has built a fortress inside herself. They will rape her soon enough, but behind her walls they cannot touch her. But Jaime's walls were gone. They had taken his hand, they had taken his sword hand, and without it he was nothing. The other was no good to him. Since the time he could walk, his left arm had been his shield arm, no more. It was his right hand that made him a knight; his right arm that made him a man.

One day, he heard Urswyck say something about Harrenhal, and remembered that was to be their destination. That made him laugh aloud, and that made Timeon slash his face with a long thin whip. The cut bled, but beside his hand he scarcely felt it. "Why did you laugh?" the wench asked him that night, in a whisper.

"Harrenhal was where they gave me the white cloak," he whispered back. "Whent's great tourney. He wanted to show us all his big castle and his fine sons. I wanted to show them too. I was only fifteen, but no one could have beaten me that day. Aerys never let me joust." He laughed again. "He sent me away. But now I'm coming back."

More karmic irony...

 

Quote

 

Perhaps it means something that Sansa is now Alayne and free of the Walls of the Eyrie and well, any walls at all for the most part.

 

Leaving the 'impregnable' castle and making the perilous descent from the Eyrie in which she had been imprisoned or entombed was immensely important, a rebirth of sorts.  She was very kind to Sweetrobin, identifying with his fears.  She actually thought of someone other than herself and was a tremendous source of strength and reassurance to that other person, her cousin.  For a moment, she became his wall, without having any herself.  Very brave.  I can't imagine her letting Littlefinger kill him.

 

Quote

Arya is learning how to lie as a FM, and now the formerly truth-loving, “free-range” Arya who roamed the Riverlands (but still had to lie when she was within Walls) is now bound by walls in Braavos as it’s described as closed in, with no open spaces and tall narrow houses which must look like walls.

 

That 'wolf blood' needed a little taming!  Arya finds her freedom in skinchanging and refusing to be confined in a 'no-one' identity.  That's the way she escapes the walls. 

Quote

 

We have Bowen Marsh who in some ways I think is a lot like AGOT Sansa (hell I'm going to get flak for this!).

 

That's an interesting association -- they're both linked to pomegranates (and perhaps assassinations)...What do you make of that?

Quote

Marsh is a traditionalist in the extreme, rule-crazed to the point of blindness. He’s a bean counter and people who deal in the minutia of numbers are noted for their need for order, structure and predictability. He’s strongly motivated by his fear of the Lannisters, but even more so, I think Bowen Marsh the bean counter, the order master, is terrified of living in a chaotic world he no longer understands. So much so that he hides behind his Wall, wants to reinforce it, seal it all up, and against all logic. The explanation for Marsh’s complete blindness to the threat at handwhich fits best is that if he loses himself if he loses his world and that this is an intolerable prospect. It plays into the larger theme of playing the Game of Thrones while turning a blind eye to the true threats out there. The security of the Wall has facilitated a lot of lies. I suspect that a lot of Westeros will be like Bowen Marsh as the threat of Others grows stronger: people will want to slay the truth-teller to save the lie of their Wall. 

Slay the truth-teller to save the lie of the wall.  That's very well put.

 

Quote

In the snowcastle scene, Sansa wants to assert herself as a Stark of Winterfell and thinks she is stronger in the Walls of Winterfell.  My read of Sansa is that Sansa (as she is constructed on the dictates of others) is the lie, but Alayne (constructed by Sansa herself) is the truth in parallel to Jaime. GRRM implies Sansa has undergone a symbolic death.

How much of the 'Alayne Stone' persona has been constructed by Littlefinger for his own purposes, and how much by Sansa herself?

Quote

Jon will probably have to be free of the Wall if his hidden RLJ heritage and/or KitN arc is to be plot-relevant.

By allowing the Wildlings to traverse the Wall, he put the first crack in it.

Quote

Perhaps it’s quite deliberate that our Giant’s head (Lies or speaker of lies) is mounted on a wall.

Great idea!  What does that make the giant head in the 'black gate' which, while not mounted on a wall per se, is mounted in a wall?

When the Wall comes down, the lies come down...

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Bran III

He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise.

Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.

Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live.

 

 

19 hours ago, Ashes Of Westeros said:

I have been on this forum for a while and noticed that any topic about Sansa ends up in a arguement if she's to blame for Starks' misfortunes:wacko:.

It's irrelevant whether she is or is not, and speculating on the technicalities of whether for example Cersei would've waylaid Arya's ship or not, even without Sansa's help, is neither here nor there.  It's also buying into Sansa's 'victim psychology' where her much-touted 'lack of agency' is used as an excuse for why she couldn't have possibly been counted upon to be a more responsible agent under the circumstances holding her back from being an agent, etc., in a pernicious circular argument. Sometimes, all it takes to be an 'agent' in ones humble way is to speak up when someone has been harmed, and your words might help set things right; or alternatively not speak when it might prove harmful to someone else, of which you've been warned.  Using the ends in hindsight to justify Sansa's means is also not an ethically-sound argument.  For example, the argument given that it was just as well Sansa spilled the beans to Cersei, given our knowledge in retrospect that the Boltons ultimately ended up at Winterfell, so had Arya succeeded in escaping to Winterfell on that very boat, she might have suffered an even worse fate at Theon's and Ramsay's hands -- so you see, it's a blessing in disguise, not a blight, that Sansa betrayed her family and potentially proved instrumental in preventing Arya from boarding that ill-fated boat (besides, she would never have met Gendry...)  ! :dunno: ...  

 As another example, should it turn out that Tywin had already been poisoned by Oberyn and was doomed, regardless of Tyrion's subsequent (in)actions, does that make Tyrion's intentions towards the person he believed to be his father and in the prime of health any less potent?

Agency begins with intention.  The fact remains, for whatever reason Sansa is repeatedly disloyal to her family.

As I've discussed above, had Will the treacherous lookout in the Prologue called out a warning call to his brother, would that have changed any of their fates?  It's debatable.  The important point is he betrayed his brother and neglected his duty; his brother perceived it as such, and Will paid with his life.  

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Savage in application to Baelish means someone who doesn't care about the fallout/consequences of their actions. Which is how the word is commonly used now. The Starks were brought into TWO5Ks, many of them died and WF was sacked because Baelish pulled them into it. He wanted a big war so he could manoeuvre in the chaos and climb the ladder of power, and he probably wanted Cat involved too so he can try and work something there, and didn't care how many people it destroyed in the process. It is pure selfishness, he cares nothing for the collateral damage in his march to power.

He is a giant in terms of his reach and influence. As giant is often used in the series, in the manner Aemon calls Tyrion a giant for example. His reach in action was having Lysa murder Jon Arryn (failed but got there with unforeseen help) and having Lysa send the letter in the lens to Catelyn. His ingenuity in pulling the Starks into the war was like a giant stepping over the walls of WF. And that's what got Sansa's home destroyed and family murdered.

Such is LF's reach, ambition and disregard for those who are an impediment, he is a savage giant.

And what do you know, Lysa just happened to spill the two moves Petyr made that explain why he is ultimately responsible for WF's destruction and how he is a savage giant,  in Sansa's hearing. Hence why Petyr pushed Lysa through the door, before she spells shit out even more for Sansa and Sansa turns on him.

It's just a matter of Sansa remembering and putting it together. You know, thinking like Petyr, not like a pawn but like a player. Which coincidentally happens to be her arc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Oh yes, you most definitely can.  Actually, this is one of GRRM's principle themes, so much so I even dedicated an entire thread to its multifaceted exploration, namely 'The Killing Word...', examining how words can be just as lethal as swords, beginning with events as they unfolded in the Prologue.  Verbal manipulation is Littlefinger's principal currency!

Here, in a quote courtesy of @Pain killer Jane, both savage swords and savage words are present concurrently:

The 'head that speaks the words' (keeping his hands clean...) is just as savage, if not more so, than 'the hand that swings the sword'.  Tyrion makes that connection here, realizing that Oberyn realizes as he does, that Gregor Clegane is small fry next to the real giant, Tywin Lannister:

 

 

In support of your 'savage inclinations' regarding poor Petyr, the victim of the nobility ;), there's already a precedent of another Baelish -- well, not '-ish' exactly; just 'Bael' -- having his head mounted on a spike at Winterfell:

Although Baelish's head like his namesake Bael might end up on a spike, somehow I don't think Sansa will be throwing herself off any towers for grief at his passing!

Just as Viserion will accomplish what Viserys could not in life, so shall Sansa accomplish what Ned could only dream of shortly before he died:

 

 

Ned 'ripping away the mask' is similar to Sansa ripping off the head of the doll, to reveal the savage within.  Part of the 'savagery' of which you spoke is paradoxically the banality of it all -- the everyday ordinariness of the man behind the mask -- leading some such as @The Sleeper to conclude erroneously that Baelish's ability to keep his hands clean is evidence of his lack of savagery.  When Sansa rips off the head, she finds the doll falls apart, being relatively insubstantial at its core, the 'rag-and-sawdust stuffing spilling in the snow' in a reiteration of the evanescence of the swarm of 'pale grey moths taking wing' symbolising the strange power of Littlefinger's lies in Ned's prophetic dream.  Recall that Ned was in a state of sensory-deprivation at the time in the pitch-dark of the Red Keep dungeon, facilitating an uncharacteristic sharpening or stirring of his dormant 'wolf blood,' as it were -- so all those so-called 'fever dreams' are actually Stark prophetic visions.

 

 

I know; Ned was a real idiot for trusting his own daughter!  :P

Even Jon Snow who knows nothing and Arya had it figured out a long time ago...

 

 

On the contrary, she did initially believe that by employing a strategy of deferral she might escape unscathed.  To elaborate, she hoped that by affecting a stance of 'neutral' non-involvement, in essence at once tacitly abandoning Arya and her father to their own devices, while at the same time granting her support to Joffrey and Cersei by default, that this would somehow ensure her own immunity -- hence her shock when this proved not to be the case, and instead of 'killing two birds with one (wordless) stone,' she lost the thing dearest to her, her wolf; proving that evasive 'weasel words' and the like are still words, and can kill.

She hoped that avoidance would be equivalent to blamelessness, being a passive spectator somehow exonerating, an attitude which is however belied by GRRM's own moral sensibility peeping through on numerous occasions in the text, not exclusive to his treatment of Sansa.  While this may be a disturbing concept to fathom for some, the author is, after all, the one who finally gets to play god, judge, jury, and executioner; hatching, matching and dispatching characters as he sees fit -- he chose for his own reasons to have Lady executed while letting Nymeria escape, which is pretty ironic considering Sansa's primary aim of escaping responsibility in the whole affair.

Reading between the lines, GRRM's 'moral of the story' in this respect is that witnesses to atrocities (even ones as seemingly 'innocent' as childhood bullying) are not let off the hook; they too have responsibilities, and he's criticizing Sansa for shirking these.  She was called to bear witness -- and she failed.  Dealing with the importance of faithfully bringing ones testimony, there's a great poem by the Polish author Zbigniew Herbert, brought to my attention by @Blue Tiger on my poetry thread, that deals with the perils of being too craven to speak up in the face of injustice and oppression.  Poets send out their moral messages to the world, no less than other authors, including George Raymond Richard Martin, who is not nearly as morally 'grey' as people generally celebrate him as being.  Herewith, an excerpt:

 
Go where those others went to the dark boundary 
for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize 
 
go upright among those who are on their knees 
among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust 
 
you were saved not in order to live 
you have little time you must give testimony 
 
be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous 
in the final account only this is important 
 
and let your helpless Anger be like the sea 
whenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beaten 
 
let your sister Scorn not leave you 
for the informers executioners cowards—they will win 
they will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of earth 
the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography 
 
and do not forgive truly it is not in your power 
to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn 
 
beware however of unnecessary pride 
keep looking at your clown’s face in the mirror 
repeat: I was called— 
...

From: The Envoy of Mr. Cogito

ZBIGNIEW HERBERT

Translation: Bogdana Carpenter

 

In spite of GRRM's postmodern presentation of multiple POVs, that should not be taken to mean he himself has no point of view or higher-order message to impart.  Thus, we might infer the author's commentary on the matter of the conflict among the children, and more specifically on how Sansa comported herself surrounding the dangerously escalating bullying which she witnessed.  It's suggested from Lady's brutal execution, at Stark hands no less, GRRM does not think the ones who 'only watch' while 'saying nothing' should get off scot-free -- at least not in his fiction!  

We see an example of this 'moral lesson' already as early as the Prologue, in which Will the treacherous 'far-eyes' gets his comeuppance at the hands of his brother for failing to shout out a warning call or come to his brother's aid in any other way, choosing to abandon Waymar to his fate on the ground, while holding the 'high ground' up in the tree (which can also be read more figuratively as seizing the 'moral high ground' as well), and keeping his peace to save his own skin, in lieu of upholding his sacred duty to his brother.  Additionally, as I've posited in my allegorical reading of the Prologue, Will's words (the 'whispered prayer' he uttered), not only his silence, contributed to the summoning of the Others against his brother, which ultimately ended up backfiring on him, in which we may glimpse a parallel in the conflict played out at the Trident.  

Similarly, there is a duel (the Other vs. Waymar being analogous to Joffrey vs. Arya respectively; Wighted Waymar and Nymeria are stand-ins for one another) with a third party off to the side who believes, as it turns out, mistakenly, that s/he can successfully avoid getting involved, and might even derive some profit from the situation (represented by Will and Sansa in the equation...after the conclusion of the duel, Will sneaks down off the tree to claim the spoils of war in the form of the magicked-up lightning-struck sword, and possibly even with the intention of taking the sable cloak off his brother, as Euron and Thoren Smallwood did in analogous circumstances; while Sansa in the aftermath of the conflict attempts to curry favour with Joffrey and Cersei at her own family's expense).  Gared like Mycah flees the scene, only to be cut down later, completing the parallel.

Here's another example of GRRM's theme of implicating the 'watchers' in that to which they bear witness, as expressed by the reflective Ser Barristan Selmy:

Once again, we can observe that GRRM does not let the 'bystanders' get off lightly, as evidenced in yet another example, this time involving Robb's adjudication of the crime committed by the Karstarks, by how the guards protesting that they were 'only the watchers' during the murder of the Lannister children are nevertheless punished by Robb along with the Karstarks who actually committed the murders (courtesy @Pain killer Jane for pointing out the reference).  Similarly, Sansa's defense of being 'only the watcher', together with her feigned ignorance, failed to protect her from suffering the fallout.  GRRM is posing serious questions of moral culpability, in terms of several parties all sharing various degrees of complicity, however 'proxy' or indirect.

 

While I'm sure she hated being put on the spot, I'm not sure she found the moral quandary all that perturbing at the time.  She still thought then she could have her (lemon) cake and eat it too...;)  

Good observations.  The relative motion of the two girls is reflected in that of their wolves, Lady chained up unknowingly awaiting death at Ned's hand :crying: and Nymeria bolting into the woods, respectively.

I don't see it that way, however.  Who put her in chains?  Sansa is not the only one who is 'damned if she does, damned if she doesn't'.  Sansa is not special, nor specially taxed, nor exceptionally victimized -- ALL of GRRM's characters are caught in a dilemma and many of them suffer under conflicting obligations, values and motivations, and devastating reversals of fortune (I mean, just look at the king himself, caught in a tug of war between Cersei and Ned; or Ned trapped between his duty to the king and his love of family; or Jaime a case-in-point of someone torn between multiple divided loyalties; and Brienne with her chewed-off face mercilessly forced to choose between the 'noose' and the 'sword', etc.).  GRRM's message is that we are all damned; therefore, there is no option of doing nothing or 'passing the buck' in order to escape damnation. 

 The reason Sansa is on a chain symbolically is not because she has no choices; it's because she refuses to consciously exercise that choice.

 

 

Great points.  The 'frozen words' can also be interpreted as expressing a certain cold-heartedness towards her own sister, in not coming to her aid when she most needed her support.

That reminds me, in the Prologue Will's words are also described as 'freezing in his throat', when he similarly avoids answering his brother's desperate call and goes on to make excuses to himself about what he actually saw:

Will kept the silence -- and then 'the pale sword came shivering through the air'.  Similarly, Sansa kept her silence -- and then 'Jory brought him Ice...' (AGOT -- Eddard III).

A note on the 'fight, flight or freeze' response -- 'Freezing' is not necessarily antithetical to 'fleeing'; it's an attempt to escape a confrontation by striving to appear as unobtrusive and unthreatening / submissive as possible, remaining motionless, blending into the landscape, and so on, thereby hoping to escape detection, 'playing dead' as it were, just like Sansa 'choking' in the throne room, or Will clinging to the sentinel 'lost among the needles'.  In response to the perception of overwhelming trauma, there is a certain related phenomenon termed 'dissociation', which is related both to 'freezing' and 'fleeing.'  It's a way of being physically present whilst simultaneously disengaging psychologically -- relinquishing ones own mindfulness --when for example, as you've pointed out, for various reasons circumstances may prevent successful flight; in order to wall-off and protect the self from harm ('see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil').  Jaime refers to this defense mechanism as 'going away inside himself', for example as a way to cope with the atrocities he was witnessing in Aerys's court, before he finally couldn't take it any longer and acted to take out the tyrant.  He also advises Brienne and Joffrey to do the same when faced with rape, torture and other horrors.

@Lollygag, I really like your symbolic exploration of the complexity of walls by the way -- nice!  In light of our discussion surrounding the 'freeze' response, as exemplified in idioms such as 'giving someone the cold shoulder,' 'stonewalling,' or 'freezing someone out', it's fitting that the main Wall serving as the embodiment of the metaphor of self-defense and -integrity is indeed a frozen one!  In other words, the defense of the self cannot be separated from its construction, including the paradox that the self is asserted, indeed defined, with respect to others by selectively 'turning a blind eye' to certain realities.

 

There's a lot of randomness in the mix as well (the old adage of the problem of the existence of evil and 'why bad things happen to good people', and vice versa), but in my opinion GRRM saves himself from cynicism by indulging in apportioning a bit of godlike justice in his fiction, so we can never take the 'consequences' for the characters at face value, nor assume that these consequences are entirely logical, consistent, or unprejudiced.  On the one hand, the author has his favorites for his own idiosyncratic and narrative reasons, who are accordingly granted their 'plot armor,' whereas on the other hand, he definitely passes his rather brutal judgment on several of his own characters, preferring an often-macabre ironic symmetry between crime and punishment in doling out that poetic justice, karmic retribution, call it what you will.  A few examples to demonstrate this tendency:

My favorite of all time, as astutely identified by the one-and-only @evita mgfs, Jaime's offer in bad faith to Bran, 'take my hand,' before shoving him to his death with that hand -- followed by that selfsame hand of Jaime's being literally taken from him!  He even recognises the irony himself:

Ask yourself:  If GRRM's universe is impartial, impervious to matters of morality, why did Jaime have to lose a hand at all?  Why couldn't he just kill a king, throw Bran, and pleasure his sister, and carry on being the unapologetic big-shot without losing a hand?  If he had to 'pay' for his transgressions, why did it have to be with his sword hand?  Why couldn't he have lost something else; or if it had to be a corporeal penalty, why couldn't it have been the non-dominant (i.e. his left) hand instead of his sword hand; otherwise, why not another body part entirely?  The answer to all of these questions is the same: dramatic irony, poetic justice, karma, etc. and GRRM very much subscribes to this form of authorial reckoning with his own characters.

Other examples:  Robert Baratheon, shirking his responsibility as a ruler, indulging in his vices-- ends up dying as a consequence of those vices (drinking, hunting, whoring...it was the 'bastard' that killed him, referring to the gods having sent the boar as a 'punishment for the girl').  For the sin of turning a blind eye to the corruption in his own court -- at the end, GRRM gives him a slow, painful demise, ignominiously rotting to death in his own stinking corruption.

There's also the cruelest of all, Theon for killing the miller's boys, at least one of whom might have been his own biological offspring, the product of his raunchy frolics with the miller's wife -- loses his reproductive capacity (i.e. in return for having figuratively ground and burnt his own 'seed', making Theon an unwitting kinslayer, the 'miller' of his own biological child/ren, symbolically at least his brothers, GRRM ensures the bitter enduring irony of Theon's own proclaimed motto 'we do not sow').

I'm sure you can all think of plenty of further examples to illustrate this point.  

 

Nothing.  She inherited the transgenerational karmic legacy of her Targaryen antecedents. That's another related theme: as best epitomised by Tyrion and Oberyn reflecting together on the transgenerational tit-for-tat enmity between their two families: 'We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance on in our steads. (ASOS - Tyrion X)

Apart from the collective familial legacy, Dany's personally accrued karmic comeuppance is still coming!

He went south literally -- so things 'went south' figuratively, as sweetsunray has pointed out in her chthonic essays.  

He lost his head, in the sense of failing to use it.  Or in other words, failed to integrate the heart and the head -- whence they were separated..!

I must disagree with you here on aesthetic grounds.  GRRM can't help himself!  'It's a thing...'

Another example, seemingly minor, with shades of Cersei's walk of shame:  the lady who mocks a warlock's moth-eaten robe -- in a cruel twist of fate ends up suitably counter-mocked herself, cursed, forced to go naked, since all her clothes feel like moths against her skin:

 

Sure.  'Splendid superiority' in the sense that ones psychic and/or physical survival, especially if this is predicated on such fragile underpinnings as you later explain, by implication depends on the suppression of any other perspectives running counter to the 'survival narrative,' thus threatening to disintegrate the self.  There is an impaired capacity to entertain, process, and contain different perspectives.

There's reams of literature written on this subject (see 'psychic equivalence' and 'pretend mode'):

Simply put, both of these are forms of self-deception in which a healthy balance between inner and outer reality is elusive.  In the first, 'psychic equivalence', ones internal thoughts and feelings are so vivid and all-consuming they are given enormous weight, accepted at face-value, and automatically equated with the outside world, an absolutism admitting no alternative perspectives.  In the second, 'pretend mode,' which can be interpreted in a way as a response to the unbearable experience of the first, ones internal thoughts and feelings are severed or sequestered from any reference to an outside physical reality.  Both these defense mechanisms represent an essential inflexibility and fear of ones own thoughts.  In the first, thoughts are given unwarranted substance, as a result of those fears; in the second, thoughts are deprived of substance, to protect against those fears.  Both can be thought of as different ways of putting up walls.  You'll be able to identify that Sansa oscillates at different times between both these modes of being.

Exactly.  In psychological parlance, she has an 'external locus of control' and in appeasing others cultivates the 'false self.'

Well put.  Not being able to distinguish between psychic and physical can be pathologically debilitating.  

 

Nice discussion of the pros and cons of a wall and its symbolism.

Jaime's sword hand was the way he identified his purpose in the world as well as kept the world at arm's length (forgive the regrettable pun..!)  Without his hand, the walls came down:

More karmic irony...

 

Leaving the 'impregnable' castle and making the perilous descent from the Eyrie in which she had been imprisoned or entombed was immensely important, a rebirth of sorts.  She was very kind to Sweetrobin, identifying with his fears.  She actually thought of someone other than herself and was a tremendous source of strength and reassurance to that other person, her cousin.  For a moment, she became his wall, without having any herself.  Very brave.  I can't imagine her letting Littlefinger kill him.

 

That 'wolf blood' needed a little taming!  Arya finds her freedom in skinchanging and refusing to be confined in a 'no-one' identity.  That's the way she escapes the walls. 

That's an interesting association -- they're both linked to pomegranates (and perhaps assassinations)...What do you make of that?

Slay the truth-teller to save the lie of the wall.  That's very well put.

 

How much of the 'Alayne Stone' persona has been constructed by Littlefinger for his own purposes, and how much by Sansa herself?

By allowing the Wildlings to traverse the Wall, he put the first crack in it.

Great idea!  What does that make the giant head in the 'black gate' which, while not mounted on a wall per se, is mounted in a wall?

When the Wall comes down, the lies come down...

 

 

It's irrelevant whether she is or is not, and speculating on the technicalities of whether for example Cersei would've waylaid Arya's ship or not, even without Sansa's help, is neither here nor there.  It's also buying into Sansa's 'victim psychology' where her much-touted 'lack of agency' is used as an excuse for why she couldn't have possibly been counted upon to be a more responsible agent under the circumstances holding her back from being an agent, etc., in a pernicious circular argument. Sometimes, all it takes to be an 'agent' in ones humble way is to speak up when someone has been harmed, and your words might help set things right; or alternatively not speak when it might prove harmful to someone else, of which you've been warned.  Using the ends in hindsight to justify Sansa's means is also not an ethically-sound argument.  For example, the argument given that it was just as well Sansa spilled the beans to Cersei, given our knowledge in retrospect that the Boltons ultimately ended up at Winterfell, so had Arya succeeded in escaping to Winterfell on that very boat, she might have suffered an even worse fate at Theon's and Ramsay's hands -- so you see, it's a blessing in disguise, not a blight, that Sansa betrayed her family and potentially proved instrumental in preventing Arya from boarding that ill-fated boat (besides, she would never have met Gendry...)  ! :dunno: ...  

 As another example, should it turn out that Tywin had already been poisoned by Oberyn and was doomed, regardless of Tyrion's subsequent (in)actions, does that make Tyrion's intentions towards the person he believed to be his father and in the prime of health any less potent?

Agency begins with intention.  The fact remains, for whatever reason Sansa is repeatedly disloyal to her family.

As I've discussed above, had Will the treacherous lookout in the Prologue called out a warning call to his brother, would that have changed any of their fates?  It's debatable.  The important point is he betrayed his brother and neglected his duty; his brother perceived it as such, and Will paid with his life.  

 

 

Man, if you can write this much about Sansa, then I cannot WAIT to hear what you have to say about Daenerys :P

As far as speaking up goes, we see Sansa start to do this in her first ACOK chapter, when she comes to Dontos' defense. I've already discussed my opinion on Sansa's character development, but I truly believe she's grown drastically from where she started off in AGOT. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Elaena Targaryen

The part of that conversation you just quoted comes well after she has claimed Sansa provided her with the means to move on Eddard. And in the interim, she and Tyrion have had a very open discussion. in which he insinuated he knows she and Jaime are lovers. But she doesn't even begin to confess here to Tyrion, she seems to be about to tell him that Jon Arryn suspected she was sleeping with their brother but that does not mean she was about to tell Tyrion it is true.  Tyrion jumps in with the accusation and Cersei slaps him in the face for saying it. I doubt she was actually about to confess...If she were then rather than a slap you would expect a tearful yes, and a confession. But he actually gets a second slap when he suggests she ought to open her legs for him too.  And  he tells her he may get angry if she does that again, which casues her to tell him why should I care if you do. Reasserting her authority over him as queen and thus trying to shift them back from their sibling relationship into the formal power structure of Queen regent and subject. He tries to pull it back by mentioning his Mountain people and they continue to tussle a bit before he leaves. 

She has no reason at all to be so open with Tyrion about her relationship with Jaime as to reveal Ned's actions in the godswood or to give weight to the accusation by showing she moved on him because of it.  Sansa is a great patsy for this. Later after much frank discussion, he lets her know he knows and she reacts violently proving she does not want him saying it out loud and is in no way prepared to admit it to him. The quote you provided does not alter anything. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

<snip>

I know; Ned was a real idiot for trusting his own daughter!  :P

@Blue TigerEven Jon Snow who knows nothing and Arya had it figured out a long time ago...

<snip>

Look at the context. Arya and Bran broke the rules all the time - running off with Mycah, climbing towers, other things no doubt. And Ned approved. He made the rules, but didn't really care to enforce them even if it put his kids in danger. When adults say one thing and mean another, some kids pick up the subtext, others go by the words ( @Elaena Targaryen explained it well upthread). Bran & Arya fall into the first category, and I bet Sansa told her parents when something forbidden or dangerous was going on. She was trying to be good.

Going to Cersei does not fit that pattern  ** She felt as wicked as Arya **  Sansa has switched to the mode of her younger siblings, confident that Ned will forgive her immediately and love her just as much as he does Arya.

Besides,

If Cersei urgently needs to know what Ned is doing, she's not going to sit on her hands for three days hoping for a last-minute volunteer. Not when she could set spies on Ned's household - a large group of people who are a bit naive about information security. That's how leaks happen.

11 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

It's irrelevant whether she is or is not, and speculating on the technicalities of whether for example Cersei would've waylaid Arya's ship or not, even without Sansa's help, is neither here nor there.  It's also buying into Sansa's 'victim psychology' where her much-touted 'lack of agency' is used as an excuse for why she couldn't have possibly been counted upon to be a more responsible agent under the circumstances holding her back from being an agent, etc., in a pernicious circular argument. Sometimes, all it takes to be an 'agent' in ones humble way is to speak up when someone has been harmed, and your words might help set things right; or alternatively not speak when it might prove harmful to someone else, of which you've been warned.  Using the ends in hindsight to justify Sansa's means is also not an ethically-sound argument.  For example, the argument given that it was just as well Sansa spilled the beans to Cersei, given our knowledge in retrospect that the Boltons ultimately ended up at Winterfell, so had Arya succeeded in escaping to Winterfell on that very boat, she might have suffered an even worse fate at Theon's and Ramsay's hands -- so you see, it's a blessing in disguise, not a blight, that Sansa betrayed her family and potentially proved instrumental in preventing Arya from boarding that ill-fated boat (besides, she would never have met Gendry...)  ! :dunno: ...  

 As another example, should it turn out that Tywin had already been poisoned by Oberyn and was doomed, regardless of Tyrion's subsequent (in)actions, does that make Tyrion's intentions towards the person he believed to be his father and in the prime of health any less potent?

Agency begins with intention.  The fact remains, for whatever reason Sansa is repeatedly disloyal to her family.

She isn't, but never mind for now.

This is a code of ethics for hollywood superheroes! Honestly, would you be quite as brave in front of a Stalin or a Hitler? Would you be quite as confident that being open and honest is all it takes to defeat evil intent? That's not the lesson we learned from Ned.

11 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

As I've discussed above, had Will the treacherous lookout in the Prologue called out a warning call to his brother, would that have changed any of their fates?  It's debatable.  The important point is he betrayed his brother and neglected his duty; his brother perceived it as such, and Will paid with his life.  

I'm not a particularly brave person myself, but this is just - wow.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

47 minutes ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

Littlefinger controls the Eyrie. What's the name of that mountain on which it's situated, again? I'm drawing a socratic blank here...

The Giant’s Lemon cake Lance.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Man, if you can write this much about Sansa, then I cannot WAIT to hear what you have to say about Daenerys :P

Ha ha.  Last I recall I was waxing lyrical on Bran 'making the dragons feel the ice..,' a sentiment which alas was not generally met with reciprocal enthusiasm.  (But, Shhhh... Do you want to get this thread shut down by the Unsullied?)  Naturally, being styled 'RR, the Poetess of the Nennymoans, the Devil's Secretary Muse, the Snark in the Ointment, the Beauty of the Snowrise, and Renowned-Dany-Hater-it-is-Known,' I have much and more to offer on that front.  If you're lucky, I will regale you with a choice few of my phenomenal insights later... B)

Quote

As far as speaking up goes, we see Sansa start to do this in her first ACOK chapter, when she comes to Dontos' defense. I've already discussed my opinion on Sansa's character development, but I truly believe she's grown drastically from where she started off in AGOT. 

That's a good point.

 

3 hours ago, Springwatch said:

This is a code of ethics for hollywood superheroes! Honestly, would you be quite as brave in front of a Stalin or a Hitler? Would you be quite as confident that being open and honest is all it takes to defeat evil intent?

This is predictably how the vicious cycle of 'Sansapology' snowballs:  her lack of agency is used as a justification for electing not to exercise her agency in a situation which it's argued categorically prevents her agency (or else it's off to the Gulag and off with her head!), so realistically -- and Sansa is if nothing else a realist, being someone insightful who realises the deck is always stacked against her and therefore wisely forgoes agency -- there was no other course open to her barring the habitual abdication of her agency, reinforcing her lack of agency...rinse and repeat!  ;)

(And now playing the 'Stalin or Hitler' card to seal her lack of agency and shut down any critics -- isn't it a bit premature in the discussion for such drastic measures ?) 

 

Quote

That's not the lesson we learned from Ned.

The lesson we learned from Ned and Jon is that 'a good deed never goes unpunished.'

On the other hand, from Sansa and Robb we learned that 'cheaters don't prosper.' 

 

So I guess it's true, as Lollygag observed, 'you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't' --  Damn, this ethics stuff is a sticky wicket...:blink: 

But we'll never learn what might have happened had Sansa done what she failed to do, because she didn't... 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/20/2017 at 8:01 PM, ravenous reader said:

A note on the 'fight, flight or freeze' response -- 'Freezing' is not necessarily antithetical to 'fleeing'; it's an attempt to escape a confrontation by striving to appear as unobtrusive and unthreatening / submissive as possible, remaining motionless, blending into the landscape, and so on, thereby hoping to escape detection, 'playing dead' as it were, just like Sansa 'choking' in the throne room, or Will clinging to the sentinel 'lost among the needles'.  In response to the perception of overwhelming trauma, there is a certain related phenomenon termed 'dissociation', which is related both to 'freezing' and 'fleeing.'  It's a way of being physically present whilst simultaneously disengaging psychologically -- relinquishing ones own mindfulness --when for example, as you've pointed out, for various reasons circumstances may prevent successful flight; in order to wall-off and protect the self from harm ('see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil').  Jaime refers to this defense mechanism as 'going away inside himself', for example as a way to cope with the atrocities he was witnessing in Aerys's court, before he finally couldn't take it any longer and acted to take out the tyrant.  He also advises Brienne and Joffrey to do the same when faced with rape, torture and other horrors.

We’re operating with different definitions of the freeze response. It’s now an apples and oranges situation,  so I can’t really reply in regards to Sansa’s thoughts beyond that Sansa wasn’t capable of any thought per below. Your definition isn’t wrong, I just see the version below as one which applies to this scene. I unfortunately know this from personal experience (turned out ok), but freezing in survival situations is often about acute cognitive dissonance. I was in a situation which completely defied my knowledge and expectations from the world around me. My instincts were telling me the correct thing, but my mind and world experience were telling me it wasn’t possible. I locked up. This is how I see Sansa’s situation when she was presented with a situation which was completely and utterly new to her and with only terrible choices for options. If Ned had sat her down and calmed her, I can’t say as Sansa would have made a different choice, but it would have been a deliberate one rather than an accidental one.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/201507/trauma-and-the-freeze-response-good-bad-or-both

So where, in what you perceive as a dire threat, is the totally disabling freeze response? By default, this reaction refers to a situation in which you’ve concluded (in a matter of seconds—if not milliseconds) that you can neither defeat the frighteningly dangerous opponent confronting you nor safely bolt from it. And ironically, this self-paralyzing response can in the moment be just as adaptive as either valiantly fighting the enemy or, more cautiously, fleeing from it.—Psychology Today

I agree that Jaime nailed the conflict from which 12 year old Sansa could neither flee nor defeat resulting in the freeze. Add high emotion, everyone watching her, the need to please two authority figures who could not be pleased at the same time, pressing her for a response NOW! and significant consequences no matter what and there’s your freeze.

Jaime reached for the flagon to refill his cup. "So many vows . . . they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other."

 

On 7/20/2017 at 8:01 PM, ravenous reader said:

Reading between the lines, GRRM's 'moral of the story' in this respect is that witnesses to atrocities (even ones as seemingly 'innocent' as childhood bullying) are not let off the hook; they too have responsibilities, and he's criticizing Sansa for shirking these.  She was called to bear witness -- and she failed.  Dealing with the importance of faithfully bringing ones testimony, there's a great poem by the Polish author Zbigniew Herbert, brought to my attention by @Blue Tiger on my poetry thread, that deals with the perils of being too craven to speak up in the face of injustice and oppression.  Poets send out their moral messages to the world, no less than other authors, including George Raymond Richard Martin, who is not nearly as morally 'grey' as people generally celebrate him as being.

This is the first time I’m hearing “morally grey” as opposed to just grey (people aren’t so easy to categorize as one would like). I agree, GRRM isn’t morally grey at all.

I’m not sure we’re disagreeing here so much as just perceiving things differently. I don’t ever want to discourage someone from seeking the moral in something, but in the case with ASOIAF, personally I just find the idea of confining a scene to a single moral as limiting as it stops me from me from seeing other truths which may also be present. Once I make a value judgement and lock it into a hard definition, I’m more likely to stop seeing it. Because the series has so many POVs and parallels and is so broad in scope, I see the series as more a set of mirrors showing various instances of a thing, taking us down various paths, and to various conclusions. The reader has likes and dislikes, agreements and disagreements this in turn becomes a mirror onto the reader! Rather than categorize a single sequence as having one moral, I’d rather follow all similar paths and just compare and contrast. Sometimes GRRM may show us a moral (or rather how complicated they are!), but sometimes scenes are just showing a logical consequence, and that consequence may be morally wrong, yet still true and still realistic and the still the smart thing to do. Yet other times, I’m not sure there’s a message at all: it may only be plot requirement or device.  Argument can be made for Lady’s death to be all of these, but I’m not comfortable assuming what GRRM intended because I just don’t know. I’ll just get what I can from it. 

 

On 7/20/2017 at 8:01 PM, ravenous reader said:

There's a lot of randomness in the mix as well (the old adage of the problem of the existence of evil and 'why bad things happen to good people', and vice versa), but in my opinion GRRM saves himself from cynicism by indulging in apportioning a bit of godlike justice in his fiction, so we can never take the 'consequences' for the characters at face value, nor assume that these consequences are entirely logical, consistent, or unprejudiced.  On the one hand, the author has his favorites for his own idiosyncratic and narrative reasons, who are accordingly granted their 'plot armor,' whereas on the other hand, he definitely passes his rather brutal judgment on several of his own characters, preferring an often-macabre ironic symmetry between crime and punishment in doling out that poetic justice, karmic retribution, call it what you will.  A few examples to demonstrate this tendency:

My favorite of all time, as astutely identified by the one-and-only @evita mgfs, Jaime's offer in bad faith to Bran, 'take my hand,' before shoving him to his death with that hand -- followed by that selfsame hand of Jaime's being literally taken from him!  He even recognises the irony himself:

Quote

A Storm of Swords - Jaime V

Still, the water darkened as the caked dirt dissolved off his skin. The wench kept her back to him, the muscles in her great shoulders hunched and hard.

"Does the sight of my stump distress you so?" Jaime asked. "You ought to be pleased. I've lost the hand I killed the king with. The hand that flung the Stark boy from that tower. The hand I'd slide between my sister's thighs to make her wet." He thrust his stump at her face. "No wonder Renly died, with you guarding him."

She jerked to her feet as if he'd struck her, sending a wash of hot water across the tub. Jaime caught a glimpse of the thick blonde bush at the juncture of her thighs as she climbed out. She was much hairier than his sister. Absurdly, he felt his cock stir beneath the bathwater. Now I know I have been too long away from Cersei. He averted his eyes, troubled by his body's response. "That was unworthy," he mumbled. "I'm a maimed man, and bitter. Forgive me, wench. You protected me as well as any man could have, and better than most."

Ask yourself:  If GRRM's universe is impartial, impervious to matters of morality, why did Jaime have to lose a hand at all?  Why couldn't he just kill a king, throw Bran, and pleasure his sister, and carry on being the unapologetic big-shot without losing a hand?  If he had to 'pay' for his transgressions, why did it have to be with his sword hand?  Why couldn't he have lost something else; or if it had to be a corporeal penalty, why couldn't it have been the non-dominant (i.e. his left) hand instead of his sword hand; otherwise, why not another body part entirely?  The answer to all of these questions is the same: dramatic irony, poetic justice, karma, etc. and GRRM very much subscribes to this form of authorial reckoning with his own characters.

Jaime’s hand is what prompted me to specify “dealing in the more than the occasional karmic lesson”. He about literally states as much. I still think the purpose is more as plot device and character development rather than a karmic statement, but  Jaime might be worth the karmic special attention: As the killer of Aerys and the almost-killer of Bran, this puts him in the cross-hairs of the two most magical god-like characters. Best part with the hand that offends and this creates an interesting scenario where we  get to see the nature of judgement, revenge, justice and forgiveness through Bran and Dany (suspect there will be a contrast—mirrors showing different aspects) Jaime is also forced to explore other aspects of his personality in the absence of his hand which was the entirety of how he defined himself: instead of fighting with swords, Jaime is a budding diplomat and peace maker, able to sweet talk wars away. Given so much revenge, this is very refreshing.

As for the other examples, I still find logical consequence. Personally, when I see logical consequence, plot device, etc., I'm going to opt for those explanations as they're more interesting and meaningful to me. If Sansa loses her wolf as a cosmic judgement for not speaking out when she had no other “good” options, what do I get from that? Emotional satisfaction sure, but beyond that nothing, really. If Sansa loses her wolf as a logic consequence of making a smart but morally bad decision and later I see her figure out a compromise with Dontos or a similar compromise through another character, what do I get from that? A lot. Just because one doesn’t acknowledge karmic judgement doesn’t mean it’s taking the universe is amoral. There’s a lot of morality. It just doesn’t fit into nice, clean categories and it must be mitigated with its conflicts (often survival). It’s messy and ugly and not easy.

A lot of plot armor I can see as necessary for character development. The bolded above is where this view of the text loses meaning for me. The consequences might not be “right”, but they are meaningful and a mirror of the possible and worth contemplating. Will they hold up to an idealized morality, no. But idealized morality is rarely encountered and can be quite unrealistic. Understanding (given understanding =/= acceptance or approval) is more interesting to me that justice. Theon loses his fertility after being reckless in his sowing and reaps his own. Justice? I guess. But it’s a justice where Theon has been put into a situation where he reflects upon this condition so he (and the reader) understand the significance on several levels. And this will affect his arc in the future. So not a random Old Testament smiting from on high, just putting characters in situations where they make mistakes in order to learn from them and better understand them.

 

Here's an example of multiple mirrors showing different circumstances and outcomes, also from the Trident.

AGOT Sansa I

"A butcher's boy who wants to be a knight, is it?" Joffrey swung down from his mount, sword in hand. "Pick up your sword, butcher's boy," he said, his eyes bright with amusement. "Let us see how good you are."

Mycah stood there, frozen with fear.

Joffrey walked toward him. "Go on, pick it up. Or do you only fight little girls?"

"She ast me to, m'lord," Mycah said. "She ast me to."

Sansa had only to glance at Arya and see the flush on her sister's face to know the boy was telling the truth, but Joffrey was in no mood to listen. The wine had made him wild. "Are you going to pick up your sword?"

Mycah shook his head. "It's only a stick, m'lord. It's not no sword, it's only a stick."

"And you're only a butcher's boy, and no knight." Joffrey lifted Lion's Tooth and laid its point on Mycah's cheek below the eye, as the butcher's boy stood trembling. "That was my lady's sister you were hitting, do you know that?" A bright bud of blood blossomed where his sword pressed into Mycah's flesh, and a slow red line trickled down the boy's cheek.

"Stop it!" Arya screamed. She grabbed up her fallen stick.

Sansa was afraid. "Arya, you stay out of this."

"I won't hurt him … much," Prince Joffrey told Arya, never taking his eyes off the butcher's boy.

 

It’s highly unlikely that Joff was going to kill Mycah. He only wanted to show off at Mycah’s expense. Did Arya make the right moral choice here? Absolutely. Did she make the smart choice? Not at all, it went badly. In contrast, Sansa not speaking up was wrong for all of the reasons most say on the matter. But it was smarter. If Sansa told the truth, she would be creating a much more hostile environment between the Starks and Lannisters. If you thought Joff was bad before, guess how he’d be after he was outed as a craven beaten by a little girl. Cersei said he beat Sansa because she saw what he really was. If she exposed him to all, it’d have been even worse. And this was the rest of her life. Mycah couldn’t be brought back from the dead, and speaking out against Joff after he turned into a craven monster looked like it might pose very significant consequences for herself and her family.

So if one is looking at this passage in the same manner as you’re looking at the Trident’s trial scene, then just as there is a consequence for not speaking out (making smart but bad moral decision), there is also a consequence for speaking out unnecessarily, at the wrong time, or in the wrong way (a moral but unwise decision): it unnecessarily and sometime disastrously escalates a conflict.

This Mycah was the worst; a butcher's boy, thirteen and wild, he slept in the meat wagon and smelled of the slaughtering block. Just the sight of him was enough to make Sansa feel sick, but Arya seemed to prefer his company to hers. Sansa felt rejected by Arya.

There is also disloyalty on the part of Arya to Sansa and her brother-in-law- and King-to-be: Arya was obligated by the rules of her society to follow along with Joff (unfortunate rules but rules nonetheless) and she also went against Sansa here in favor of Mycah. I don’t consider what either girl did as a betrayal at all. Conflicted loyalties complicate and affect both of their decisions.

Arya in turn also lost her wolf (though living) and Mycah who died. Sometimes angering the powers that be unnecessarily can have disastrous consequences.  So here we have two different paths in regards to the Policy of Truth. But both girls learn to compensate! GRRM holds a mirror showing how to mitigate these complicated circumstances. Sansa makes the right moral choice by standing up for Dontos but she does it in a smart way by framing the situation in a way which flatters Joff rather than insults him. Arya learns that she can make the moral choice in smarter non-verbal ways when speaking out isn’t a smart option.

The moral of the story for me: it’s complicated. And no matter the choice, you will pay something. Pick your poison. ASOIAF is showing you in variations upon variations how your different options might play out and what you might pay and how to compensate. And all too often in this series, I see the morality of one choice coming at the expense of the morality of other choices and often being at odds with the smart choice which better ensures survival.

I’ll take your beautiful poem by Zbigniew Herbert and raise you an 80’s goth-emo synth pop song. Telling the truth and not telling truth both sometimes have different results and we saw at the Trident, and sometimes there’s a difference between doing the moral thing and the smart thing. Lying or keeping silent is not glamorous. It’s not noble or honorable. But sometimes it’s the lesser of the evils.

The Policy of Truth—Depeche Mode

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5lIRkYKAbk

You had something to hide
Should have hidden it, shouldn't you
Now you're not satisfied
With what you're being put through

It's just time to pay the price
For not listening to advice
And deciding in your youth
On the policy of truth

Things could be so different now
It used to be so civilised
You will always wonder how
It could have been if you'd only lied

It's too late to change events
It's time to face the consequence

For delivering the proof
In the policy of truth

Never again
Is what you swore
The time before
Never again
Is what you swore
The time before

Now you're standing there tongue tied
You'd better learn your lesson well

Hide what you have to hide
And tell what you have to tell

You'll see your problems multiplied
If you continually decide
To faithfully pursue
The policy of truth

Never again
Is what you swore
The time before

On 7/20/2017 at 8:01 PM, ravenous reader said:

That 'wolf blood' needed a little taming!  Arya finds her freedom in skinchanging and refusing to be confined in a 'no-one' identity.  That's the way she escapes the walls. 

 

Neato idea! Wolf’s blood manifests as a result of a build up of unmanifested warging energy. Bran’s compulsion to climb and explore might be the same. Also Jon’s berserker rages.

 

On 7/20/2017 at 8:01 PM, ravenous reader said:

That's an interesting association -- they're both linked to pomegranates (and perhaps assassinations)...What do you make of that?

 

Started digging into that and it’s definitely it’s own OP. Still working it out.

 

On 7/20/2017 at 8:01 PM, ravenous reader said:

How much of the 'Alayne Stone' persona has been constructed by Littlefinger for his own purposes, and how much by Sansa herself?

 

Some no doubt both in the positive and the negative, hard to say as she’s a state of rapid evolution (most of the characters are right now actually) . She’s growing into her teenage rebelliousness and rebellious natures can be very easy to manipulate: forbid them to do  what you actually want them to do.

ACOK Catelyn VII

Arya was a trial, it must be said. Half a boy and half a wolf pup. Forbid her anything and it became her heart's desire.

If LF picks up on any rebelliousness and Sansa doesn’t realize, then I’d give him a heavier influence. One of Sansa’s big influencers in the negative is learning from Cersei that she did not want to be respected out of fear. I think the Hound will be an influence. Sansa has channeled Robb and Jon as influences before. In TWOW she’s doing some young Arya things (running about with her hair messy). Septa Mordane drilled the girls with the southern lady thing. Arya rebelled 100% and Sansa accepted 100% but since no one 100% fits their social roles, both girls had to repress parts of themselves to conform or rebel. I think a lot of Alayne Stone will be what Sansa squashed down to conform. 

 No idea why this pasted with randomly changing fonts. Grrr.

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Lollygag said:

Here's an example of multiple mirrors showing different circumstances and outcomes, also from the Trident.

AGOT Sansa I

"A butcher's boy who wants to be a knight, is it?" Joffrey swung down from his mount, sword in hand. "Pick up your sword, butcher's boy," he said, his eyes bright with amusement. "Let us see how good you are."

Mycah stood there, frozen with fear.

Joffrey walked toward him. "Go on, pick it up. Or do you only fight little girls?"

"She ast me to, m'lord," Mycah said. "She ast me to."

Sansa had only to glance at Arya and see the flush on her sister's face to know the boy was telling the truth, but Joffrey was in no mood to listen. The wine had made him wild. "Are you going to pick up your sword?"

Mycah shook his head. "It's only a stick, m'lord. It's not no sword, it's only a stick."

"And you're only a butcher's boy, and no knight." Joffrey lifted Lion's Tooth and laid its point on Mycah's cheek below the eye, as the butcher's boy stood trembling. "That was my lady's sister you were hitting, do you know that?" A bright bud of blood blossomed where his sword pressed into Mycah's flesh, and a slow red line trickled down the boy's cheek.

"Stop it!" Arya screamed. She grabbed up her fallen stick.

Sansa was afraid. "Arya, you stay out of this."

"I won't hurt him … much," Prince Joffrey told Arya, never taking his eyes off the butcher's boy.

 

It’s highly unlikely that Joff was going to kill Mycah. He only wanted to show off at Mycah’s expense. Did Arya make the right moral choice here? Absolutely. Did she make the smart choice? Not at all, it went badly. In contrast, Sansa not speaking up was wrong for all of the reasons most say on the matter. But it was smarter. If Sansa told the truth, she would be creating a much more hostile environment between the Starks and Lannisters. If you thought Joff was bad before, guess how he’d be after he was outed as a craven beaten by a little girl. Cersei said he beat Sansa because she saw what he really was. If she exposed him to all, it’d have been even worse. And this was the rest of her life. Mycah couldn’t be brought back from the dead, and speaking out against Joff after he turned into a craven monster looked like it might pose very significant consequences for herself and her family.

So if one is looking at this passage in the same manner as you’re looking at the Trident’s trial scene, then just as there is a consequence for not speaking out (making smart but bad moral decision), there is also a consequence for speaking out unnecessarily, at the wrong time, or in the wrong way (a moral but unwise decision): it unnecessarily and sometime disastrously escalates a conflict.

This Mycah was the worst; a butcher's boy, thirteen and wild, he slept in the meat wagon and smelled of the slaughtering block. Just the sight of him was enough to make Sansa feel sick, but Arya seemed to prefer his company to hers. Sansa felt rejected by Arya.

There is also disloyalty on the part of Arya to Sansa and her brother-in-law- and King-to-be: Arya was obligated by the rules of her society to follow along with Joff (unfortunate rules but rules nonetheless) and she also went against Sansa here in favor of Mycah. I don’t consider what either girl did as a betrayal at all. Conflicted loyalties complicate and affect both of their decisions.

Arya in turn also lost her wolf (though living) and Mycah who died. Sometimes angering the powers that be unnecessarily can have disastrous consequences. 

Arya is obligated to be loyal to no one but her family. She doesn't have to hang out with the crown prince if she doesn't want to. He might be a higher social status than her but he's not the king and she didn't swear him loyalty. Mycah is Arya's playmate. She has much higher status than him and she's the one who invited him to play. She, therefore, has an obligation to protect him especially from other nobles. When Joffrey begins to cut Mycah with his sword, Arya attempts to use words in order to get Joffrey to stop. Only when that fails does Arya use force. The choice Arya was faced was let Joffrey cut Mycah and not protect her playmate or don't let Joffrey cut Mycah and attempt to protect her playmate. She does not regret trying to protect Mycah but she does regret asking him to play with her.

Also Joffrey is untrustworthy and a psycopath. He torments his siblings. He dissected cats. He said that he would spare Ned and had him beheaded. He abuses Sansa his former betrothed. Who knows what he would to Mycah. 

Arya's wolf Nymeria may have left her physically but Arya still wargs her and Nymeria also protects her from threats. So Nymeria leaving did not break the bond that exists between them. Sansa's direwolf Lady died and that bond was severed forever. Therefore, in terms of direwolves the consequences were far worse for Sansa than for Arya. You could say that the karmic punishment for Sansa was worse than it was for Arya. Sansa's attempt to not pick a side backfired and she paid the price with her direwolf. It was not the smart nor moral decision because it obscured the truth and allowed Cersei and Joffrey to get what they wanted. Robert told her it was a great crime to lie to a king and when Sansa lied, he allowed Cersei to punish her.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Winter's Cold said:

Arya is obligated to be loyal to no one but her family. She doesn't have to hang out with the crown prince if she doesn't want to. He might be a higher social status than her but he's not the king and she didn't swear him loyalty. Mycah is Arya's playmate. She has much higher status than him and she's the one who invited him to play. She, therefore, has an obligation to protect him especially from other nobles. When Joffrey begins to cut Mycah with his sword, Arya attempts to use words in order to get Joffrey to stop. Only when that fails does Arya use force. The choice Arya was faced was let Joffrey cut Mycah and not protect her playmate or don't let Joffrey cut Mycah and attempt to protect her playmate. She does not regret trying to protect Mycah but she does regret asking him to play with her.

Also Joffrey is untrustworthy and a psycopath. He torments his siblings. He dissected cats. He said that he would spare Ned and had him beheaded. He abuses Sansa his former betrothed. Who knows what he would to Mycah. 

Arya's wolf Nymeria may have left her physically but Arya still wargs her and Nymeria also protects her from threats. So Nymeria leaving did not break the bond that exists between them. Sansa's direwolf Lady died and that bond was severed forever. Therefore, in terms of direwolves the consequences were far worse for Sansa than for Arya. You could say that the karmic punishment for Sansa was worse than it was for Arya. Sansa's attempt to not pick a side backfired and she paid the price with her direwolf. It was not the smart nor moral decision because it obscured the truth and allowed Cersei and Joffrey to get what they wanted. Robert told her it was a great crime to lie to a king and when Sansa lied, he allowed Cersei to punish her.

You've completely missed my point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Winter's Cold said:

And you've missed mine.

Oh, I get it. Everyone gets it as Arya defenses read as well-worn scripts by now.  I have a very broad view of the text and I favor arcs over characters, so my favorite characters often change according to their circumstances. We're probably not going to see eye-to-eye on much of anything.

8 hours ago, Lollygag said:

Because the series has so many POVs and parallels and is so broad in scope, I see the series as more a set of mirrors showing various instances of a thing, taking us down various paths, and to various conclusions. The reader has likes and dislikes, agreements and disagreements this in turn becomes a mirror onto the reader!

And thank you very much for the real life example of my point above!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Lollygag said:

As for the other examples, I still find logical consequence. Personally, when I see logical consequence, plot device, etc., I'm going to opt for those explanations as they're more interesting and meaningful to me. If Sansa loses her wolf as a cosmic judgement for not speaking out when she had no other “good” options, what do I get from that? Emotional satisfaction sure, but beyond that nothing, really. If Sansa loses her wolf as a logic consequence of making a smart but morally bad decision and later I see her figure out a compromise with Dontos or a similar compromise through another character, what do I get from that? A lot. Just because one doesn’t acknowledge karmic judgement doesn’t mean it’s taking the universe is amoral. There’s a lot of morality. It just doesn’t fit into nice, clean categories and it must be mitigated with its conflicts (often survival). It’s messy and ugly and not easy.

It’s highly unlikely that Joff was going to kill Mycah. He only wanted to show off at Mycah’s expense. Did Arya make the right moral choice here? Absolutely. Did she make the smart choice? Not at all, it went badly. In contrast, Sansa not speaking up was wrong for all of the reasons most say on the matter. But it was smarter. If Sansa told the truth, she would be creating a much more hostile environment between the Starks and Lannisters. If you thought Joff was bad before, guess how he’d be after he was outed as a craven beaten by a little girl. Cersei said he beat Sansa because she saw what he really was. If she exposed him to all, it’d have been even worse. And this was the rest of her life. Mycah couldn’t be brought back from the dead, and speaking out against Joff after he turned into a craven monster looked like it might pose very significant consequences for herself and her family.

Wrong.

Sansa did have a good option. Give up her dream of being Joffrey's Queen and be loyal to her family. Her dreams are not more important than her family members. Why would she want to be the wife of someone abusive like Joffrey anyway. She saw how he treated Mycah.

Sansa's decision was not smart. It was foolish and short sighted. She abandoned her family members to curry favor with Cersei and Joffrey. But as you've stated Joffrey already hates her because she saw his true face. Cersei rewarded her silence by demanding that her pet be killed. Her gambit failed because she failed to understand the true natures of the people that she was dealing with.

Sansa shows herself to be a liar and a hypocrite. She first states that she didn't know what happened. 

Quote

“I don’t know,” she said tearfully, looking as though she wanted to bolt. “I don’t remember. Everything happened so fast, I didn’t see . . . ”

Then she changes her story when Cersei demands Lady's death.

Quote

“No,” she said. “No, not Lady, Lady didn’t bite anybody, she’s good . . . ”

“Lady wasn’t there,” Arya shouted angrily. “You leave her alone!”

“Stop them,” Sansa pleaded, “don’t let them do it, please, please, it wasn’t Lady, it was Nymeria, Arya did it, you can’t, it wasn’t Lady, don’t let them hurt Lady, I’ll make her be good, I promise, I promise . . . ” She started to cry.

So now that Sansa is at risk of losing her pet, she decides to push all the fault of the incident unto Nymeria and Arya. Not a word about how Joffrey got drunk and assaulted Mycah. This shows her initial claim of not knowing what happened to be a lie. She feels that if she abandons her family even more, perhaps Cersei will take mercy on her. Of course, the end result is that her direwolf is killed and Sansa becomes the only Stark child without a direwolf, the symbol of their house. It makes sense after all. If Sansa wants to be a Lannister/Baratheon so badly, why should she have a direwolf.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since all Sansa threads must turn into a debate between Sansa fans and Arya fans, Does anybody else see the contrast between Jayne Ladybright and Elia Sand in Arianne I & II, Winds as an allusion to the contrast between Sansa and Arya? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

Since all Sansa threads must turn into a debate between Sansa fans and Arya fans, Does anybody else see the contrast between Jayne Ladybright and Elia Sand in Arianne I & II, Winds as an allusion to the contrast between Sansa and Arya? 

I haven't read those chapters in a while (can I still get them?) but off the top of my memory, there does seem to be a theme there, albeit a smaller one compared to the whole picture. 

I have been wanting to do an Arianne reread for a while now. This maybe my spark ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...