[Book Spoilers] Sansa

[Erendis]

I surely did not mean to convey the idea that I believe that Sansa is perfect. That's the very reason I like her so much. She is one of the most flawed characters in the series.

And boy, does she reflect upon the idiocy of her blind and misplaced confidence after that !

Sansa does realize that she's been foolish and naive. Look at how she thinks of Margaery's cousins- she pities them their ignorance and bliss, which she once had.

Many people have posted comments, I have read, saying that they do hate (believe it or not people do use that word to describe her, and/or many comments convey/imply that feeling) Sansa for various reasons, some frequent ones being "betraying" her family, being stupid (no one's stupid, okay. People can be foolish but that doesn't equal stupidity.), and not fighting back (what can you expect from her? Sansa's doing the right thing as a captive in King's Landing- staying silent, and waiting- because the alternative is to lose her head.). I like discussions, but when people put forward straw man arguments for their dislike of the character, I can't take them seriously. A lot of people who dislike Sansa don't back their position. They just take commonly accepted views/ideas of what a character did, and use them to defend their position, without looking at the text.

[Knight of the Teabags]

The point with Dontos is that Sansa actually manages to save somebody from Joffrey. Its a small victory (and ultimately short-lived), but a victory over her tormentor nonetheless. Actually I remember reading that scene for the first time as one of the first times I actually cheered for Sansa in the entire series. In its own small way Sansa speaking up to save Dontos is genuinely heroic because Sansa risks Joffery's wrath purely out of compassion for somebody she doesn't even know and she doesn't even expect to gain anything in return.

I think an interesting way they could bring up the Jonquil and Florian thing given the aging up of Sansa's character is actually have Dontos bring up the story in the sad rather patronizing way many adults who don't really understand kids sometimes suggest activities to older kids which they consider 'childish'.

"But my young lady I could still be your bold knight. Like Florian the fool was to fair Jonquil."

Now you can imagine how TV-Sansa of season 1 might respond to that. Probably similarly to when Ned bought her the doll.

"How old do you think I am, you sad old man? I stopped playing Jonquil and Florian when I was nine..."

Of course Sansa of season 2 is far more desperate for friends than she was earlier, she could fall into reluctantly playing along with Dontos' silly 'child's game' out of fear of not losing the only 'friend' she's got.

[Sixshells]

Many people have posted comments, I have read, saying that they do hate (believe it or not people do use that word to describe her, and/or many comments convey/imply that feeling) Sansa for various reasons, some frequent ones being "betraying" her family, being stupid (no one's stupid, okay. People can be foolish but that doesn't equal stupidity.), and not fighting back (what can you expect from her? Sansa's doing the right thing as a captive in King's Landing- staying silent, and waiting- because the alternative is to lose her head.). I like discussions, but when people put forward straw man arguments for their dislike of the character, I can't take them seriously. A lot of people who dislike Sansa don't back their position. They just take commonly accepted views/ideas of what a character did, and use them to defend their position, without looking at the text.

Stupid, foolish, we begin to play on the meaning of words I would think.

I don't care there has been (and is) much Sansa hate around here , if anything I don't see it as a valid reason not to discuss the matter. Nor do I care that in other circumstances what happened when she came to the queen would have been nothing more than a stupid familial dispute. To me, and that is after reading again that bit, there is simply a limit to the amount of self-delusion a character can afford to have before beginning to be called on that. If she had been kept ignorant of the attack that had already happened and what not, then her blind confidence in the wrong people would be understandable. But it's not like Ned had not been explaining why he was sending her back nor like she didn't know about her father attacked and Jory and other Northmen killed, it's not like if she hadn't seen Joff shamelessly lying at the Trident and Cercei have her wolf killed, so yes, I think she has been quite blind, and willingly so.

[Rangers30]

For crying out loud she was ELEVEN. Even Ned didn't see what was coming. How the heck do you expect Sansa to?

[Sixshells]

Geesh, I'm not reproaching her to be unable to do anything, I'm simply noticing she has been particularly "foolish" and blind in her perceptions. Seriously, if age explains so much, Arya is only 9 yet is less ready to trust anybody, even though she makes errors of judgement and gets fooled by people around her. So what is that supposed to say about Sansa ? that she is 7 ? Of course not.

There is a difference between seeing Cercei's big takeover coming (although while hoping she wouldn't do that Ned was somewhat expecting it, he mostly stupidly trusted he had back up... and he doesn't even have the excuse of inexperience) and being blindly confident with someone even after all that already happened that she knew (again, she saw Joffrey lie about Mycah, and Cercei asking Lady's death, she saw her father had been hurt by a member of the KG no less, and knows several of the men there to protect them have been killed). I'm not asking her to reveal Joff's lie, or to be able to do anything about Cercei's takeover. However, if the testimony of her own eyes and ears, especially about a kind of betrayal that was very personal to her (the loss of Lady), led her to blame everybody but the liar and the one asking for the head of the non-involved wolf, you can't blame that on age and inexperience alone but also on a self-deluded mind. That she blamed Ned for carrying out is understandable, but it wouldn't even tarnish a little her perfect representation of Joffrey and still make her able to run at the queen during a family squabble ? Please. Clearly she was written for a reason, to show us she is, at that point, an inconsequent and foolish ditz, and that she has been brought up in the less sensible way to prepare her as a future noblewoman.

Yeah, she is inexperienced and all. I have news for you people : before you make mistakes and learn, you are stupid, "foolish", "misguided" and whatnot. Inexperience doesn't make the sting of failure hurt less though. And I think that was it : her blind overconfidence (even against a child's level of common sense, IMO) in Cercei and Joffrey over her own senses' testimony and her father's guidance was a huge stupid mistake she had to learn the hard way. Of course, she is not the only one in the series and by far, but I thought the topic here was Sansa and not those other characters, or is it ?

Again, not that it would have changed much about her situation at the end of AGoT, but it would have changed things quite a bit as for her personal journey. This is why it was a defining moment that allowed her to grow. Maybe it gets comparatively a lot of focus when people talk about her because, frankly, after that her evolution is rather natural and few other characters experience a single turning point of that magnitude in their arc. Other characters will lose innocence and turning points too yes, but I often found it more progressive and not that brutal. To me the traumatic aspect of the experience in the character arc should not be shied away on the pretext of Sansa-hate or of her age.

[Alexia]

Geesh, I'm not reproaching her to be unable to do anything, I'm simply noticing she has been particularly "foolish" and blind in her perceptions. Seriously, if age explains so much, Arya is only 9 yet is less ready to trust anybody, even though she makes errors of judgement and gets fooled by people around her.

Arya is a much less realistic character than Sansa, though. And her actions frequently don't even make sense, because she has plot shielding. Why wouldn't she reveal herself to Roose Bolton, for example? He's one of her brother's most trusted bannermen and in charge of a huge chunk of the Northern army, after all. Because GRRM doesn't want her to, not because it is something a ten year old kid would actually do.

While Sansa's failures and mistakes are a legitimate topic for discussion, I don't think it really works to compare her to Arya this way. Arya is very much the classic fantasy character - Sansa has been imported from another genre altogether. She was very foolish and blind to trust Cersei; I agree with this. I also agree that this is an important starting point for the character - I don't think this would have worked with 13-year old Sansa (who should absolutely know better, in a way the 11 year old didn't) but I still don't entirely know how I feel about seeing it struck from the character.

And I think that was it : her blind overconfidence (even against a child's level of common sense, IMO)

I can't resist responding to this with a Mark Twain quote. "When I was 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to be around him. When I was 21, I was surprised at how much the old man had learned in 7 years." I found Sansa's blind overconfidence to be completely realistic as a child's level of common sense - children always seem to know everything. I wish I still knew everything I did when I was 11 years old and knew it all. :P

[Olenna]

Arya is a much less realistic character than Sansa, though.

Yes. The Sansa-bashing puzzles me because it suggests a bizarre intolerance for ordinary, realistic, non-heroic characters, and a tendency to hold them up to the impossible standards set by other, far less realistic characters. Sansa acts about how you would expect for a young girl whose father has just told her (with very little explanation) that she can't marry the guy she has a crush on. It was a bad decision to trust Cersei, but this supposed colossal "betrayal" in my opinion needs to be interpreted more as an act of adolescent rebellion and even a display of initiative.

[Red Sun]

I think that in the books, Sansa's narrative, especially in AGOT, has similary problems as Ned's. Some things she does or says are necessary for the development of the plot, so certain character flaws are enhanced to a level that can break the suspence of disblief. In Sansa's POVs, there is a constant contradiction between her love for pageantry, songs and fairy tales, her keen obseration of her surroundings and an almost instictive understanding/reading of people. (I don't think it's pure coincidence that she creates the lightbulb moment for Ned with her instinctive reaction to Robert and Joffrey.)

However, in order to rebel against her father (because it's necessary for the plot), her love of fairy tales has to constantly override her other insights and experiences. That's why she appears almost willfully blind towards Cersei and Joffrey, and it is difficult to believe that she could really be that stupid.

[Erendis]

Stupid, foolish, we begin to play on the meaning of words I would think.

I don't care there has been (and is) much Sansa hate around here , if anything I don't see it as a valid reason not to discuss the matter. Nor do I care that in other circumstances what happened when she came to the queen would have been nothing more than a stupid familial dispute. To me, and that is after reading again that bit, there is simply a limit to the amount of self-delusion a character can afford to have before beginning to be called on that. If she had been kept ignorant of the attack that had already happened and what not, then her blind confidence in the wrong people would be understandable. But it's not like Ned had not been explaining why he was sending her back nor like she didn't know about her father attacked and Jory and other Northmen killed, it's not like if she hadn't seen Joff shamelessly lying at the Trident and Cercei have her wolf killed, so yes, I think she has been quite blind, and willingly so.

I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss this character and her actions.

Her ignorance and self-delusion is too much, even for a fan of her, like me. It is extreme, just like Arya's maturity, or Dany's and Robb's quick rises to power. Like someone else has already said, Sansa is sort of forced by the plot to be so extremely naive and foolish. The other characters aren't because the plot wants them to look "smart". Another example, of a character like Sansa, is Edmure, when he defended the fords and stopped Tywin crossing into the Westerlands. Some people call him "stupid" on this board for that(and so did his nephew and sister), but he's forced by the plot to stop Tywin because the Red Wedding, and Robb and Cat's deaths had to happen.

We also know that Sansa isn't stupid because she is very knowledgeable about Westerosi history and other noble families, which takes a lot of memorizing. And she is musical.

I think we all need to take a step back and realize that we know things other characters don't. That could be why some characters look stupid or something.

Also, I don't think I'll get over Martin having Arya be the PoV to introduce Sansa. That was a bad move on Martin's part because it makes Sansa not very sympathetic to the reader, even after all she's been through in the later books, because her sister is automatically the reader's favored one. I sometimes think he doesn't want Sansa to be sympathetic...

[zuziako]

Also, I don't think I'll get over Martin having Arya be the PoV to introduce Sansa. That was a bad move on Martin's part because it makes Sansa not very sympathetic to the reader, even after all she's been through in the later books, because her sister is automatically the reader's favored one. I sometimes think he doesn't want Sansa to be sympathetic...

That's just it, isn't it? Sansa is always compared to quick, fierce and deadly Arya. Because of her younger sister, many think she should act similar, fight for herself, talk back to people etc. And she can't, because she's no longer 8 years old, and certain behavior is expected of her. She was trained to be a lady and she does it well. And I think that if things went differently for the Starks, at one point Arya would have to adjust to the lady decorum too (would there be another choice?).

[Asha—Not Yara!]

Also, I don't think I'll get over Martin having Arya be the PoV to introduce Sansa. That was a bad move on Martin's part because it makes Sansa not very sympathetic to the reader, even after all she's been through in the later books, because her sister is automatically the reader's favored one. I sometimes think he doesn't want Sansa to be sympathetic...

I'm just curious. Did you get over the early way we see Jaime as a creep who has sex with his sister and pushes young children out of windows? Because plenty of people seem to really like Jaime now he's undergoing a sort of redemption arc after getting his hand hacked off (I'm one of the people who like him now). It seems odd to me that the same couldn't happen with Sansa despite a poor first impression, but I guess she hasn't done anything kick-ass enough to change the minds of those who are so far disinclined to shake the first negative impressions.

[Arya The Assassin]

Just one tidbit for those who want to see more of Sansa and The Hound (I was one of those who wanted to see a bit more of the Hound in season one):

GRRM mentioned that he'd completed the first draft for the Blackwater-episode in season two, and one person asked him on his blog:

I hope it includes the Sansa & Sandor stuff :)

In which he replied:

It does.

[zuziako]

OHMYGAAWDYES.

But still a year to go!

[Erendis]

That's just it, isn't it? Sansa is always compared to quick, fierce and deadly Arya. Because of her younger sister, many think she should act similar, fight for herself, talk back to people etc. And she can't, because she's no longer 8 years old, and certain behavior is expected of her. She was trained to be a lady and she does it well. And I think that if things went differently for the Starks, at one point Arya would have to adjust to the lady decorum too (would there be another choice?).

I definitely think so. This chapter immediately has readers compare the two sisters. And since it's Arya's PoV, she comes across much better. (I'd like to mention that I find it quite ironic that most everyone loves Arya, and despises Catelyn, even though Arya is more Catelyn's daughter than Sansa, personality-wise.)

I'm just curious. Did you get over the early way we see Jaime as a creep who has sex with his sister and pushes young children out of windows? Because plenty of people seem to really like Jaime now he's undergoing a sort of redemption arc after getting his hand hacked off (I'm one of the people who like him now). It seems odd to me that the same couldn't happen with Sansa despite a poor first impression, but I guess she hasn't done anything kick-ass enough to change the minds of those who are so far disinclined to shake the first negative impressions.

Just curious, have you read my previous posts? I've been defending Sansa. Sansa is my favorite character (all you need to do is just look at a couple of my posts). And yes, I do very much like Jaime, as a fictional character.

[Asha—Not Yara!]

Just curious, have you read my previous posts? I've been defending Sansa. Sansa is my favorite character (all you need to do is just look at a couple of my posts). And yes, I do very much like Jaime, as a fictional character.

My apologies. I have trouble keeping posters' names straight sometimes and zeroed in on that particular sentence and didn't look at your other posts which I should have.

[Erendis]

My apologies. I have trouble keeping posters' names straight sometimes and zeroed in on that particular sentence and didn't look at your other posts which I should have.

It's fine. I have that problem too. I hope I didn't come off too harsh; I was just confused as to why I would get such a response after all my pro-Sansa posts.

[Asha—Not Yara!]

No, you didn't come across as to harsh, and your confusion was quite understandable. :)

[zuziako]

I think the minute Sansa kills somebody or screws somebody over people will start to love her. It's kind of funny and sad at the same time really. This whole "being kick-ass" thing. Sansa is delicate and good, she even cries after Joffrey's death (which I personally found very touching) but I kind of get the feeling everybody is waiting for her to discard these qualities and become power driven woman. Not that it can't happen, but I like Sansa who can cry for Joff even after all he's done. Is there another character like that in the series?

However I totally see her deceiving LF at one point.

Also, this was already mentioned in the 'fan-video' topic, but every Sansa-fan has to see this:

If it weren't for the flashy colors with the typography at the end, the video would be perfect.

[Erendis]

I think the minute Sansa kills somebody or screws somebody over people will start to love her. It's kind of funny and sad at the same time really. This whole "being kick-ass" thing. Sansa is delicate and good, she even cries after Joffrey's death (which I personally found very touching) but I kind of get the feeling everybody is waiting for her to discard these qualities and become power driven woman. Not that it can't happen, but I like Sansa who can cry for Joff even after all he's done. Is there another character like that in the series?

Ditto! I forgot she cries after Joffrey's death, which also shows that the screenwriters totally messed up/"misinterpreted"(aka took the lazy route out) the character. I also don't want her to be violent and turn into some kick-ass girl. That would not be Sansa. That is Arya.