The source of all Sansa-hate

[ghosts in winterfell]

I disliked her because she was final nail in the coffin for ned ( she tells cersi she is leaving giving the Lannisters time to plan). It could be that she is young but she seems not to realize she is the cause of her fathers death. But I like her now she seems to be getting smarter.

After King Robert's mortal wounding and his subsequent naming of Eddard as Regent and Lord Protector, Baelish advises Ned that despite their knowledge that Queen Cersei's children are illegitimate and that Stannis Baratheon is the legal heir, the wisest course of action is to ensure Joffrey's succession, a maneuver calculated to avoid all-out war and maximize their own power. Eddard refuses the suggestion and enlists Petyr's help in securing the allegiance of the city watch to ensure its loyalty when he moves against Cersei.[8] Baelish agrees, but betrays Ned, bribing the City Watch to support the Queen. This leads to Stark's arrest and eventual execution for treason.[9]

[Arya Rules!]

He who opposeth the Needle, obtaineth wrath.

[Cas Stark]

After King Robert's mortal wounding and his subsequent naming of Eddard as Regent and Lord Protector, Baelish advises Ned that despite their knowledge that Queen Cersei's children are illegitimate and that Stannis Baratheon is the legal heir, the wisest course of action is to ensure Joffrey's succession, a maneuver calculated to avoid all-out war and maximize their own power. Eddard refuses the suggestion and enlists Petyr's help in securing the allegiance of the city watch to ensure its loyalty when he moves against Cersei.[8] Baelish agrees, but betrays Ned, bribing the City Watch to support the Queen. This leads to Stark's arrest and eventual execution for treason.[9]

We know this.

I also know that if Sansa had not gone to the Queen chances are,overwhelmingly, that she and Arya would have sailed for Winterfell.

With his daughters safely out of KL...Eddard Stark would never confess to treason. If he doesn't confess he certainly is not going to be publicly executed. If he doesn't confess, anything could have happened. He might still have been killed, or not. But he would never have been killed as a publicly confessed traitor, this is on Sansa.

[Heidrun]

As far as Sansa being passive goes, she's doing what I would try to do in the same situation, had I been essentially a prisoner at the Red Keep. She's trying to stay quiet, fly below the radar, don't say anything that could come back to haunt her (she learned this the hard way!), don't trust anyone (although she does let her guard down with the Tyrells) and basically be quiet, polite and unobtrusive. At that point, mouthing off to Cersei or even Tyrion may have had lethal consequences. Being passive, quiet, and monosyllabic is what allowed her to survive.

[ghosts in winterfell]

We know this.

I also know that if Sansa had not gone to the Queen chances are,overwhelmingly, that she and Arya would have sailed for Winterfell.

With his daughters safely out of KL...Eddard Stark would never confess to treason. If he doesn't confess he certainly is not going to be publicly executed. If he doesn't confess, anything could have happened. He might still have been killed, or not. But he would never have been killed as a publicly confessed traitor, this is on Sansa.

He would never have been killed as a publicly confessed traitor if Joffrey hadn't deviated from the agreement of sending him to the Wall.

[juanml82]

Again, you're characterising the situation in your preferred way and using that to set up straw man arguments. Clearly, Sansa does not perceive the situation in those terms: she simply didn't see Joffrey as 'getting off on giving pain to others'. She will have ignored or downplayed the evidence that leads you to that conclusion (if she ever saw it). It's likely that she simply has a different story for that situation than you do, and as long as you insist on arguing as if your story was the only possible interpretation of events (not just the right one - the only one possible), we'll get nowhere.

You're arguing with blinkers on, and it's doing nothing for your position at all, I'm afraid.

We have Sansa's account of the events, not Arya's. Sansa saw exactly what happened and saw, rather clearly, how Joffrey was cutting an innocent and was only going to hurt him more if her sister hadn't put herself in the line.

And once she finally gets out of her infatuation with him, she falls for the guy who killed that innocent. Do we deny it to whitewash her character? Or do we understand that she's turned on by violent men, as long as they don't exert violence against her)?

That's fine, but I think the poster's point was, why doesn't Sansa ever think about this, she never in her POV reflects on her actions that day, feels guilty or anything. It's strange.

Her sister felt massive guilt over Mycah's death. In constrast, Sansa never express even in her innermost thoughts, any guilt over having gone to the Queen, so either she remains so clueless she doesn't put it together or so in denial she doesn't want to, I don't see another answer. It would be normal, actually, for her to feel massive, huge amounts of debilitating guilt...more guilt than was deserved even, which is often how guilt works. She seems to feel zero guilt.

Sansa does show the remorse and regret of trusting Cersei. She does blame on herself, but in order to survive, she can't spend days reminiscing how she "killed" her father. That would have destroyed her. The only way to cope with her loss is to acknowledge the mistake she made and to move on. Saying she never felt any guilt is a bit overreaching.

There are people who are able to crash their car into a tree and blame the tree. Sansa is that way. She never acknowledges her mistakes. The farthest she goes to acknowledge that she did anything wrong is, when posing as Alayne, to think of Sansa as "that stupid girl". She never thinks of Jeyne Poole again. She never wonders if a different testimony at the Trident could have saved Lady. She blames Cersei for betraying her trust, but doesn't blame herself for trusting her.

Daennerys has her share of mistakes. And, indisputably, she had brought more pain and suffering to other people that Sansa ever did. And she also doesn't want to reflect on them, probably because the guilt would overwhelm her. That's her "If I look back I'm lost" mantra. And, at least, she acknowledges she did things wrong. Sansa, instead, lives in denial.

Speak for yourself. No one here was ever a dumb teenager. Ohhhhhhhh no, not a single soul.

One thing is to be dumb teenager. The other is to trust the person who ordered to have your loved pet killed. She may or may not have grown for that, we'll see that during her TWOW interactions with Baelish.

One thing that strikes me about Sansa & Joffrey at the trident that she is well aware at that moment that this boy is deeply unpleasant, she is scared and tells Arya to be quite and back off, precisely because she does not want Joffrey's violence to turn towards her sister. Arya of course does not listen to Sansa who is imo doing exactly what Sansa does all through ACOK & ASOS and that is keep her head down and try to avoid the aggressor's attention. Which is a shrewd play BTW.

After Arya and Mycah and Nyrmeria go she turns to Joffrey and is extremely pacifying to him, it seems to me to be to prevent the boy from turning his anger on her. she says she will go for help at that point. IE she gets away ASAP.

Imagine from Sansa's perspective the story she must now tell her father, she has to tell him that this boy his best friends son whom he has betrothed her too is a monster, but Ned does not say "OMG we must break this betrothal you girls are going straight back to Winterfell, I am having words with Robert about this". Nope he does.....nothing. I honestly think he told her to feign amnesia for the sake of her future marriage. He has not broken the engagement. and as we know he went along with Cersei's sentence and killed Lady.

People say Sansa loved Joffrey but I honestly think she has told herself she loves him, because she has no choice as she is going to wed him,so he's cute but you don't just say ok I have to marry this guy, well then I love him. unless you are being a good little Lady and fulfilling the role in life you've been groomed for.

Sansa weaves all manor of falsehoods and truth bends in her mind in order to be OK with marrying him, in the end she believes it herself. After all since that incident he has been a delight towards her, she has re worked events to put her sister in the wrong... a safe villain in the scenario as Arya is her sister, her family, and will never be a real threat to her, unlike Joffrey who is a definite threat to her and whom her father has condemned her to spending her entire life tied to. By the time she goes to Cersei she has completely convinced herself she loves him and everything will be rainbows and buttercups and Cersei is in fact a lovely regal queen and not a selfish cruel bitch.

I won't pretend that her going to Cersei did not contribute to the fall of her household but its far from the cause of it. And she as an uninformed 11 year old does not in my view hold the majority of the fault. Ned being the head of the household and the grown up and the parent ought to have turned that caravan around at the Trident......But wait then we wouldn't have a story...Woops.

Now you can call my reasoning on Sansa's actions and her mind acrobatics is me reading what I want into the tale if you like, but unless you have ever lived in a violent, abusive, and terrifying situation in which adults have tried to kill you perhaps YOU just don't understand what the mind is capable of doing to protect itself.. I have btw so I have a lot of empathy for Sansa here and I think if you read the text closely and apply understanding of being in a life threatening situation and of being a powerless kid then you see what I do.

Well, we have both Sansa and Ned POVs and they never reflect on Ned asking Sansa to lie

[Cas Stark]

He would never have been killed as a publicly confessed traitor if Joffrey hadn't deviated from the agreement of sending him to the Wall.

He never would have confessed to treason if not for Sansa.

[Dicer]

I find it quite believable that a naive 11 year old, with a highly romanticised view of the world, would behave as Sansa did.

Yeah, but you described her as a typical 11 year old and that's where I disagree. Sansa was written as being extremely naive and shallow. Maybe there are girls as foolish and silly as her in today's world, but that's certainly not typical.She's about as realistic as all the other characters in this fantasy novel.

In today's world I think children grow up much faster and are actually quite perceptive and smart. My 8 year old niece knows so much about the ways of the world that it's scary. There's an understanding there that surprises me sometimes.

Which is why I think it is rather insulting to call Sansa's behavior in AGoT as being a realistic version of a typical 11 year old girl. It's not.

I don't agree that even an 11 year old of average intelligence would not connect the dots to her own actions of going to the queen and the resulting mayhem.

But apparently that's how the minds of typical 11 yr old girls work. Their brains work differently and hides the unpleasant truths from them.

[ghosts in winterfell]

He never would have confessed to treason if not for Sansa.

And Ned might have been successful in overriding Cersei if Littlefinger hadn't betrayed him.

[juanml82]

As far as Sansa being passive goes, she's doing what I would try to do in the same situation, had I been essentially a prisoner at the Red Keep. She's trying to stay quiet, fly below the radar, don't say anything that could come back to haunt her (she learned this the hard way!), don't trust anyone (although she does let her guard down with the Tyrells) and basically be quiet, polite and unobtrusive. At that point, mouthing off to Cersei or even Tyrion may have had lethal consequences. Being passive, quiet, and monosyllabic is what allowed her to survive.

"Allowing her to survive" is a bit too much. Neither Cersei nor Tyrion would have allowed her to die because that would risk Jaime's life. Avoiding further beatings, yes, I'll grant you that.

And while her actions make sense and are even somewhat smart, they don't make for many people, the kind of interesting character they expect to find in a fantasy book. Such a character is an important character to add depth and background to the world, but not the kind of character you (well not you, but many people) want to be reading the mind. Imagine the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, suddenly cut to a female cousin of Denethor comforting the wives of the captains doing all the fighting.

Now, this could be offset by an interesting character development. But through ACOK and ASOS (AFFC is a different beast regarding Sansa) she hardly develops. She's thinking about true knights during the battle of Blackwater by R'Hollor's sake!

[Cas Stark]

Yeah, but you described her as a typical 11 year old and that's where I disagree. Sansa was written as being extremely naive and shallow. Maybe there are girls as foolish and silly as her in today's world, but that's certainly not typical.She's about as realistic as all the other characters in this fantasy novel.

In today's world I think children grow up much faster and are actually quite perceptive and smart. My 8 year old niece know so much about the ways of the world that it's scary. There's an understanding there that surprises me sometimes.

Which is why I think it is rather insulting to call Sansa's behavior in AGoT as being a realistic version of a typical 11 year old girl. It's not.

But apparently that's how the minds of typical 11 yr old girls work. Their brains work differently and hides the unpleasant truths from them.

LOL. I think she is written as a realistic, shallow, superficial "mean girl" who creates her own truth because it's what she wants it to be. The world is full of people like this, who are like this all the way through adulthood.

The problem is when Sansa's age is made into an excuse for Sansa's personality.

We know that age alone isn't the issue, since her two younger siblings exhibit significantly better and more accurate perceptions than she does, and the books are full of children of Sansa's age who are perceptive and realistic. So, the problem with Sansa isn't her age, it's her personality and her values.

[The Abominable SnowOther]

If Ned wouldve just fucked Cersei in The goodswood all would have been fine also? Am, i correct? YES. Why? cuz im awesome...

Point im making is that people have opinions, people should let it rest.

[David Selig]

He never would have confessed to treason if not for Sansa.

Sure, and what was stopping them from just lying to him that they had her captured? Nothing.

Or they could've just tortured him until he confessed.

[Cas Stark]

Sure, and what was stopping them from just lying to him that they had her captured? Nothing.

Or they could've just tortured him until he confessed.

He may have demanded proof if he knew the ship had sailed, people like to say he was stupid, but he wasn't really.

Me, I don't think Eddard Stark was the type to confess under torture, most do, some don't. I put him the category of don't.

[Lee-Sensei]

He may have demanded proof if he knew the ship had sailed, people like to say he was stupid, but he wasn't really.

Me, I don't think Eddard Stark was the type to confess under torture, most do, some don't. I put him the category of don't.

You think he'd take the chance with his daughters lives? I don't think he'd risk it. I think he'd confess if there was even the slightest chance they had his daughters.

[Cas Stark]

You think he'd take the chance with his daughters lives?

What chance? If the ship sails, his daughters are safe and he won't confess.

[Dreams and Prophecies]

Wow! After reading this thread, i am really starting to wonder if Sansa is more hated than Joffrey and Ramsay combined. She probably suffers more on this thread than in the book itself.

So in the end did Sansa get her punishment? Or should she be punished with...i don't know...walk of shame? Maybe let's do that and then maybe some of the readers might be happy. Or how about Martin just kill her? Maybe THAT will soothe the hatred that she is currently or always has faced since the novel first came out in 1996.

[Lee-Sensei]

What chance? If the ship sails, his daughters are safe and he won't confess.

No. The Lannisters have ships too. There's no way he can no that they weren't intercepted.

[juanml82]

If Ned wouldve just fucked Cersei in The goodswood all would have been fine also? Am, i correct? YES. Why? cuz im awesome...

Point im making is that people have opinions, people should let it rest.

As far as he knows, probably. He realize his mistake in telling her about the incests, he lulls her into a false sense of security and then strikes.

Unfortunately, Sansa would go spill the beans and Cersei will realize something is wrong :stunned:

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

:dunno: I love Sansa.