The Ultimate Irony: Sansa & Tyrion

[Annara Snow]

To be perfectly nitpicky about it, she doesn't. She asks what if she never wants him.

Yes, exactly, because Sansa does not claim to know in advance what she will or won't want any time in future; no one can do that.

What she does is bring up the possibility that Tyrion hadn't even considered. He was talking under the assumption that she will eventually, one day, agree to have sex with him, once she came to know him better or trust him more. It never occurred to him that she may in fact never accept it. He just assumed that, being his wife, she will relent one day.

Sansa was being perfectly honest with him, telling him that she has the option to never want him. He was telling her he was going to wait until she wants him. She told him straight away that he should not assume that this will happen; it may be never. So, he could rape her, or he could decide not to and accept the possibility that she will never accept sex with him. But he should not assume that she will some day accept sex with him willingly, just because she is officially his wife.

That was a pretty powerful statement.

[Woman of War]

Yes, exactly, because Sansa does not claim to know in advance what she will or won't want any time in future; no one can do that.

Indeed. No one. The only one who can know what his characters will want in the future is Martin.

And we make assumptions and twist the text until it supports what we like or dislike.

And yes, some nerdy girl for Tyrion please.

[Annara Snow]

@Annara

By the conditions of their wedding I was meaning the conditions of their wedding, that it was forced, not what it showed of their personnalities or possible interactions.

To resume what I see is people discarding any possible positive relations between these characters, because it would hurt their (respectable) feminist ideas.

I see far more arguments about the wedding being forced, or arguements about the supposed mysoginist agenda of Tyrion-Sansa shippers, in those threads than arguements saying their different personnalities and centers of interest can only lead to an unhappy marriage for example (which actually I'd find more pertinent, Tyrion should marry some nerdy girl if he doesn't want to be bored to death once sex with his wife lost his appeal, imo, and Sansa would have difficulties supporting Tyrion's level of cynicism and identity problems).

Actually, the arguments why a Sansa/Tyrion match is incompatible and extremely unlikely have been made several times in this thread. And nobody has refuted them. I'm going to quote my own post for the second time, where I summed up the arguments, which nobody has even tried to refute:

Since it's already been pointed out many times why the Sansa/Tyrion marriage is bad for Sansa* and why it's extremely unlikely that she'd want ever to continue, I want to comment on something else: this puzzling idea that someone who likes Tyrion should want Tyrion/Sansa and this is somehow good for Tyrion as a person or character.

* But just in case, let's sum it up again:

Pros and cons of the Sansa/Tyrion marriage for Sansa:

PRO:

- Tyrion is not a monster like Joffrey and would probably not mistreat her in particular.

CON:

- She doesn't love him.

- He doesn't love her. (Sansa wants someone to love her for herself.)

- He's not very interested in her personality, he does even understand or particularly like it.

- His main reason for wanting to marry her was to get Winterfell. (Sansa wants someone to marry her for love, not her claim.)

- She finds him incredibly sexually unattractive and was horrified by the prospect of sex with him, which would make sex with him an extremely unpleasant and unhappy experience.

- His family is responsible for the deaths of half of her family,

- He was one of her captors in King's Landing and worked for his family's interests.

- Sansa hates the idea of being married to a Lannister or her children being named Lannisters.

- She was forced to marry him and continuing that marriage would reinforce her position as a hostage and lack of choice.

- He made her see him naked and groped her and traumatized her quite a bit on their wedding night.

- She was forced to marry him as an act of aggression against her family and an attempt to wipe out their name and take over their lands.

- Being married to Tyrion would continue hurting Sansa politically, and she would never have a chance of going back home and being accepted by people in the North.

- He's a guy with massive issues regarding women, is hung up on his first wife, and he murdered his ex-lover.

Now, for Tyrion, the pros and cons of being married to Sansa:

PROS:

- She's beautiful and he would like to have sex with her (if she wasn't disgusted by him).

- She's very highborn, in addition to being beautiful, ladylike and a virgin - perfect trophy wife to parade around.

- She's the heir to Winterfell (as far as most people in Westeros know).

CONS:

- She doesn't love him.

- She finds him extremely sexually unattractive, and he knows it.

- She would never get over him being a Lannister and the circumstances of their marriage.

- He doesn't love her.

- She's not Tysha (despite his fantasies about her coming to him and accepting him, where he clearly saw her as Tysha 3.0).

- Even if he could become officially the lord of Winterfell through her, it would be an empty title, since the Northmen would never accept him.

- The perks of having a trophy wife like Sansa Stark would be offset by the fact that everyone knows the circumstances of their marriage, and most people in Westeros would consider him an asshole who got lucky because he would never had married her unless she was a hostage and his father needed to marry her to one of the Lannisters as a ruthless and blatant power grab.

Even the good things Tyrion could get out of this have their bad sides, and in the end, this marriage would not really be good for him, either.

The fantasy some fans have of Sansa falling in love with Tyrion in the future is 1) extremely unrealistic, considering everything we've seen so far, 2) seems to be a wish fulfillment, the idea that Tyrion "deserves" a reward for having treated Sansa kindly (i.e. not as badly as he could have), by getting a trophy wife, beautiful and highborn, who wants him.

The latter would not be good for the growth of Tyrion as a character or for his arc. Tyrion wanted Sansa for selfish reasons - Winterfell (if he can't get Casterly Rock), her body, his self-esteem and wanting to be loved and desired - even though he should have realized that, even if Sansa started to like him, this marriage was terrible for her because it would tie her to the Lannisters, she could never go home, and would be complicit in the destruction of her family. it showed his selfishness, neediness, insecurity, and the way he was dominated, manipulated and influenced by his father. The better part of his nature was what made him decide not to rape her - against his father's wishes (a triumph of his better nature considering the fact that Tywin once forced him to participate in his beloved wife's rape). It did not extend to giving her up completely or setting her free, or getting her away from his family, though. But he showed himself to be a better person than most people in Westeros thought he was (he has a terrible reputation, everyone would expect him to rape her and try to take over Winterfell through her and/or her child).

For Tyrion to grow as a person, let his better nature win, and triumph over the legacy of his father, the right and good thing to do would be to annul the marriage and leave Sansa alone, instead of trying to profit from what the Lannisters had done to the Starks, and Sansa personally. This is what I would want for Tyrion, as someone who likes the character (he used to be in my top 3 and is still in my top 6 or 7; even though the fandom and the show are doing their best to sour me on his character).

In addition to the text having given no support to any Sansa/Tyrion future and giving all sorts of support to the prospect of it never happening, there is also the fact, with two books remaining, Tyrion's story is clearly located in Essos - most likely for most of TWOW (what with the revelation that he will meet Dany late in TWOW) - and is about meeting Dany and getting involved in the politics of Essos, while his emotional arc is focused on his feelings for/about Tysha (and his family) while dealing with Penny's romantic interest in him; while Sansa's story is located in the Vale and is about getting involved in the politics there while wanting to get back North, being mentored by and dealing with the sexual advances of Littlefinger, dealing with Sweetrobin and another betrothal (to Harry), while her romantic and sexual interests are focused on memories of Sandor, who is actually set up as a love interest in a way that Tyrion definitely is not. Instead of developing in favor of a Sansa/Tyrion outcome, their respective storylines are moving even further away from it.

But the arguments of the other side are not that Sansa and Tyrion will end up together in spite of all this and in spite of the forced marriage; the argument is that it will happen because of the forced marriage and because Sansa did not want Tyrion. A look at this thread and its last several pages in particular makes this pretty clear.

It doesn't occur to anyone that the "ultimate irony" may in fact be that those expectations of some readers will be subverted, and that this particular version of the Beauty and the Beast story (i.e. the hostage/Stockholm Syndrome aspect of it) will not end with the female character accepting what was forced on her, in spite of what we have been conditioned to expect.

(I'm not even going to talk again about how absurd it is to compare forced and arranged marriages and, especially, the Lannisters' act of war of trying to use Sansa's body to destroy her family's legacy and take over their lands, to the mutually agreed marriage between Ned and Cat that was meant to benefit their families and that they both accepted as their duty; this has also been reiterated many times.)

[LongRider]

Even if sex with Tyrion had proceeded on their wedding night, that would not have changed the fact that Sansa knew that her forced marriage was done for the Lannister's benefit only. Forcing her to have sex and perhaps bearing a child would not have 'made' Sansa fall in love with Tyrion or want to stay with him.

The other stories of arranged marriages are not like the Tyrion/Sansa marriage at all. Cat, Cersei and even Lysa knew of there betrothals before hand unlike Sansa who found what, a couple of hours before hand that she was to be married off against her will to an enemy of her family?

Cersei and Lysa did their duty:

Unitron "It was the wife's duty to submit to it, not just because of her status as "property" of her husband, but because of the importance of birthing heirs when you're part of a highborn matrimonial unit."

and look how those marriages turned out. Neither woman 'learned to love' their husbands, in fact they hated them and both participated in their murders!

The idea that in the future Sansa will 'fall in love' with a future Tryion seems so odd to me. Sansa has thought to herself in her time with LF that she doesn't want to be married off for her claim. This would include her current forced marriage. She knows she was to become a broodmare for the Lannister's with Winterfell as the prize and she totally and permanently rejected it.

[Lord Freypie]

Completely agree about where their stories are heading at this point (was editing my post to add "where they are" and all the more likely love affairs for them arguement just when you replied).

Now with Martin you never know if some twists won't completely change the dynamics between characters. I'm just saying I see no reason to be biased against that unlikely outcome when we have no idea of how or in which context it would happen if it does.

Out of that a fun thing is that OPs and other shippers always disappear very fast in these threads and it's always people like Woman of War and me who are not especially favoring that ending who end debating with Sansa fans. :)

Should be added to boardology.

[Grail King]

I wouldn't call surviving brave, what's the alternative? She navigated by trying to decrease peril whilst avoiding any risky moves, even when they were presented as opportunity to her.

Suicide which could be looked at as cowardly or brave.

The other side of that coin though is smart, she used her intelligence to navigate out of a situation that try as she might using what she was trained with ( courtesy ) found Tyrion lacking, brave doesn't mean she needed to be mean about it so instead of verbalize it she thought it and got Tyrion to realize the fact she didn't want to share his bed.

Being brave doesn't have to be physical, she stood up to him and that's what matters and did it without verbally insulting him.

GRRM said Sansa isn't brave or strong like her siblings, she isn't going to sword fight anyone but what she has is her wits and she used them here, the girl is navigating a treacherous sea better than her dad did.

The number 1 job of any POW is to survive and escape which is bravery, and Sansa is doing what she can to meet that end, trying to keep some humanity intact, really; what more could you ask for?

[unitron]

Yes, exactly, because Sansa does not claim to know in advance what she will or won't want any time in future; no one can do that.

What she does is bring up the possibility that Tyrion hadn't even considered. He was talking under the assumption that she will eventually, one day, agree to have sex with him, once she came to know him better or trust him more. It never occurred to him that she may in fact never accept it. He just assumed that, being his wife, she will relent one day.

Sansa was being perfectly honest with him, telling him that she has the option to never want him. He was telling her he was going to wait until she wants him. She told him straight away that he should not assume that this will happen; it may be never. So, he could rape her, or he could decide not to and accept the possibility that she will never accept sex with him. But he should not assume that she will some day accept sex with him willingly, just because she is officially his wife.

That was a pretty powerful statement.

Except that in that world it would not be considered rape.

Even Tyrion, though uncomfortable with the circumstances, wouldn't consider it rape, he would consider it duty, both on her part and his.

It's not just about "the wife has to put out for her husband's pleasure", it's about producing an heir.

If producing traceable bloodline heirs wasn't important, marriage would likely be a lot less so as well in that world.

Tyrion has Shae, who acts like she enjoys doing it with him, and he enjoys doing it with her. He's not going to expect it to be better with Sansa, and he's not going to expect it to be like it was with Tysha just because both came to him as virgins. So he's not going to have sex with her just because he likes doing it with someone who doesn't want to.

Tyrion himself refers to both the wedding and the bedding as their duty.

[ummester]

Suicide which could be looked at as cowardly or brave.

The other side of that coin though is smart, she used her intelligence to navigate out of a situation that try as she might using what she was trained with ( courtesy ) found Tyrion lacking, brave doesn't mean she needed to be mean about it so instead of verbalize it she thought it and got Tyrion to realize the fact she didn't want to share his bed.

Being brave doesn't have to be physical, she stood up to him and that's what matters and did it without verbally insulting him.

GRRM said Sansa isn't brave or strong like her siblings, she isn't going to sword fight anyone but what she has is her wits and she used them here, the girl is navigating a treacherous sea better than her dad did.

The number 1 job of any POW is to survive and escape which is bravery, and Sansa is doing what she can to meet that end, trying to keep some humanity intact, really; what more could you ask for?

Survival, in itself, is not bravery Grail King. I did discuss this earlier.

A person can be relatively brave if they confront an irrational risk that exists in their own mind. A person must be considered brave if they risk their safety or show courage against a rational danger.

The only way Sansa surviving can be considered brave is if she was suicidal and doesn't want to live. I don't think she is suicidal. I just think she is a very timid character. Depending on how timid she is, some things she does could be considered brave for her but not brave in a rational sense.

Besides, if GRRM said it - she isn't brave :D Readers should like her, if they like her. They shouldn't paint her as something she is not - such as brave. There is nothing wrong with liking people who are not brave but I think there is something wrong with lying to yourself about what the people are.

[Le Cygne]

Cersei and Lysa did their duty:

and look how those marriages turned out. Neither woman 'learned to love' their husbands, in fact they hated them and both participated in their murders!

So true. :lol: And Lyanna left Robert in the dust. She wanted the Rhae Man D.

She knows she was to become a broodmare for the Lannister's with Winterfell as the prize and she totally and permanently rejected it.

Yep, and he got the message, he picks up the relevant word, like she slapped him. His mouth jerked as if she had slapped him. "Never?" and she nods. GRRM was giving Sansa props (as in R-E-S-P-E-C-T) throughout that scene. She was awesome.

[unitron]

Even if sex with Tyrion had proceeded on their wedding night, that would not have changed the fact that Sansa knew that her forced marriage was done for the Lannister's benefit only. Forcing her to have sex and perhaps bearing a child would not have 'made' Sansa fall in love with Tyrion or want to stay with him.

The other stories of arranged marriages are not like the Tyrion/Sansa marriage at all. Cat, Cersei and even Lysa knew of there betrothals before hand unlike Sansa who found what, a couple of hours before hand that she was to be married off against her will to an enemy of her family?

Cersei and Lysa did their duty:

and look how those marriages turned out. Neither woman 'learned to love' their husbands, in fact they hated them and both participated in their murders!

The idea that in the future Sansa will 'fall in love' with a future Tryion seems so odd to me. Sansa has thought to herself in her time with LF that she doesn't want to be married off for her claim. This would include her current forced marriage. She knows she was to become a broodmare for the Lannister's with Winterfell as the prize and she totally and permanently rejected it.

Ned and Cat did their duty, and eventually developed a pretty good marriage, from what we can tell, so it's not a guarantee of disaster.

And I seem to recall mention of some pre-Baratheon royalty who married for love, with dire consequences ensuing.

But both are really beside the point. Arranged marriages for political gain amongst the highborn is the way they rolled back then, regardless of modern attitudes, and both Sansa and Tyrion were, regardless of their own wishes in the matter, unless they committed suicide, going to be married off to *somebody* chosen by Tywin for the political benefit, even if it wasn't to each other.

What relationship, if any, there is between Tyrion and Sansa in the rest of the books is going to be determined in very large part by what happens in those books, not the five already published.

Although I don't expect it, I don't think the idea of a 30 or so year old Sansa who's been married and widowed and matured considerably winding up with Tyrion is entirely out of the question, although George would have to lay an awful lot of groundwork for it.

[LongRider]

Survival, in itself, is not bravery Grail King. I did discuss this earlier.

~~~snip~~~

Good grief! Read a few true life survival stories and come back and tell me those people weren't brave. Survival in a situation such as Sansa's took courage to learn how to protect herself and her mind as best she could and which she did. Also, she plotted with Ser Dontos to escape KL. That took bravery and much of that happened after her marriage, which was treason for both parties. Slamming a sword around is not the only way to show bravery and Sansa's arc in KL shows us that.

[unitron]

Fate put a young attractive female who may well have been pumping out "Get me pregnant" pheremones at the time into Tyrion's bed under circumstances where he was expected, as duty to sovereign and family, to have sex with her, and she with him, again as a duty performed, and his body "stood up and took notice".

This does not make him a rapist, a child molester, or a monster.

(especially considering that he did not force himself on her)

It makes him human and male.

Being a dwarf and/or having an unattractive face does not mean he can't be those two things, or that he should be ashamed of being those two things, nor does it mean he's a terrible person for expecting sex to be part of marriage at some point.

[LongRider]

Also, suicide is not necessarily brave, it's an act of depression and of one feeling utterly hopeless. Please, as person who has had a suicide in the family, don't go there.

:crying: :crying: :crying: :crying:

[ummester]

Except that in that world it would not be considered rape.

Even Tyrion, though uncomfortable with the circumstances, wouldn't consider it rape, he would consider it duty, both on her part and his.

It's not just about "the wife has to put out for her husband's pleasure", it's about producing an heir.

If producing traceable bloodline heirs wasn't important, marriage would likely be a lot less so as well in that world.

Tyrion has Shae, who acts like she enjoys doing it with him, and he enjoys doing it with her. He's not going to expect it to be better with Sansa, and he's not going to expect it to be like it was with Tysha just because both came to him as virgins. So he's not going to have sex with her just because he likes doing it with someone who doesn't want to.

Tyrion himself refers to both the wedding and the bedding as their duty.

I would agree with this pretty much entirely. Tyrion was uncomfortable with bedding Sansa because he felt sympathy for her, due to her age and the sadness she had experienced in her life. Tyrion's sympathy was in line with where any decent human being's would be, there is a lot about Sansa to feel sorry for and for anyone who knew her it would be pretty hard to miss, even in that world.

Sansa is totally timid and tragic. It does make her POVs quite boring, for me because they are mostly full of her trying to justify the things that happen around her rather than doing something about them. But she has to lead somewhere, right? Her character must have a purpose in the larger narrative?

[LongRider]

It would have been forced sex w/o Sansa's consent, ie; rape.

[ummester]

Good grief! Read a few true life survival stories and come back and tell me those people weren't brave. Survival in a situation such as Sansa's took courage to learn how to protect herself and her mind as best she could and which she did. Also, she plotted with Ser Dontos to escape KL. That took bravery and much of that happened after her marriage, which was treason for both parties. Slamming a sword around is not the only way to show bravery and Sansa's arc in KL shows us that.

I didn't invent the word bravery, or define its's meaning - you can try and apply it in a way that is inconsistent if you want, it doesn't change what the word means.

[LongRider]

I didn't invent the word bravery, or define its's meaning - you can try and apply it in a way that is inconsistent if you want, it doesn't change what the word means.

Surviving in a hostile world takes bravery, and bravery can come in many forms, even from timid people.

[ummester]

Surviving in a hostile world takes bravery, and bravery can come in many forms, even from timid people.

You are totally missing what I am saying - look the word up, apply the definition to different situations - work it out for yourself.

[Le Cygne]

Good grief! Read a few true life survival stories and come back and tell me those people weren't brave. Survival in a situation such as Sansa's took courage to learn how to protect herself and her mind as best she could and which she did. Also, she plotted with Ser Dontos to escape KL. That took bravery and much of that happened after her marriage, which was treason for both parties. Slamming a sword around is not the only way to show bravery and Sansa's arc in KL shows us that.

You are right. GRRM said the same thing in the books (Sansa's daddy):

"Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?" "That is the only time a man can be brave," his father told him.

and GRRM said recently:

"She's not a warrior like Robb or Jon Snow, she's not even a wild child like Arya, she can't fight with swords or axes, she can't raise armies, but she has her wits."

[LongRider]

You are totally missing what I am saying - look the word up, apply the definition to different situations - work it out for yourself.

I have 'worked it out', haven't you noticed?