[Winds Spoilers] How Does Alayne I Affect Your Opinion of Sansa's Intelligence?

[The Holy Goat]

The Umbers tell Rodrick and Bran that their harvest is going to seed for want of men to reap. Alys Karstark tells Jon that their granaries are low because of the war. I'm pretty sure there are other examples. Robb will be remembered as the first Stark to not realize winter was comming.

And if he had refused to march he might've been known as the Stark who let the Lannisters dictate the future of the continent while he was covering in the North and the Lannisters were holding his father, sisters and uncle hostage, had his grandfather penned up in a castle, and were slaughtering his grandfathers people.

Usig that strike against him is hardly something worth classifying him as foolish for. Or do you consider Tywin Lannister, Renly Baratheon, Mace Tyrell, Stannis Baratheon, and Doran Martell just as foolish for gathering their men into armies as well? It's the tradeoff required when gather soldiers to a cause. Doesn't make one stupid.

I'd say Robb "Jeynegate" Stark ranks among the stupidest people in Westeros, and that includes examples like Ned "Let's tell Cersei I know her secret" Stark and Cersei "let's revive the Faith Militant" Lannister.

The same could be said for Sansa "fell in love with Joffrey due to looks, lied about Arya and Joffrey's fight, told Cersei about fathers plans" Stark. All characters have moments of folly.

[Anima]

All the Stark children have very different personnalities and skillsets. All are however still very young children remember the oldest at the beginning are 14. And it is said several times that they are children of Summer which seems to imply that they grew up in an easier time and thus matured less than other children born during Winter.

Jon is a military leader, he can lead and inspire his troops. Remember that in his very last chapter the Steward says "sorry" while crying even as he plants the knife in his back. All the men of the NW have come to grant Jon a degree of respect I think except for Ser Aliser Thorne but he's a bitter and stubborn old knight who's been humiliated by Jon for good reasons so... Jon is certainly the most mature of all the Stark children though it can be argued that he he still very immature in some respects.

Robb was similar to Jon in that respect. They just didn't play in the same circles. But Robb had a definitely different personality compared to Jon due to his different background. Robb assumes he deserves to be obeyed while Jon has a hard time believing he can lead (though in practice he leads to the end). They are both honorable and follow the Old Ways.

Sansa IS clever from the start but intelligence isn't a simple concept. It can be divided in many sub families and all of us have different proficiencies for each. Sansa is socially clever and has an excellent memory. She's studied the workings of "noble and proper" society from a very young age. As a captive she is still very naîve due to her sheltered background and thus tends to take everything at face value. But when people approach her she displays her understanding of society everytime, she just cannot imagine yet that the beautiful Cersei is a very cruel and bitter woman, that handsome Jeoffrey is a monster or that ugly little Tyrion is a compasionnate man. As a bastard under Littlefinger's tutelage after her "awakening" in captivity, she is know learning that this knowledge can be useful for more than not behaving shamefully in front of guests of some note. She is learning to scheme and to discern the schemes of others and I have no doubts that the most important scheme she is about to discover is Littlefinger's including his part in her father's demise.

Aria doesn't understand society as Sansa does but she is an accute judge of character. She can tell who to trust and who to distrust and how far she can trust people better than any of the others. We've all seen she's headed on a rather dark path and unfortunately I don't see her getting out of it anytime soon. Aria isn't a schemer like Sansa, she's adept at deception because she understands people not society. She's a master manipulator.

Rickon is completely out, we have barely seen him so far except to see a possible foreshadowing that he has the Wolf's blood of the Starks which means he's quite wild tempered. And he is just too young to have the beggining of a fully formed personnality.

Bran... is no leader, nor is he a schemer or a manipulator. Bran seems set to be the wise guy of the lot. So far he's mostly been a child but is becoming a Greenseer will change him forever. With access to millenia of knowledge Bran is sure to mature at a lightning quick pace, if he doesn't go mad that is. However it is still too soon to tell exactly what his new personnality will be like and neither do we know the full extent of a Greenseer's abilities.

Thay all have different kinds of intelligence and they are all young and inexperienced leading to everything we've seen so far. Wisdom, Social intelligence, Insight, or tactics and leadership all have their specific kind of cleverness. At some point "Eddard Stark makes an analogy about wolves staying together and watching each other's back in Winter" and it seems indeed that if they were all together they would fare much better not only because they would be more numerous but because they all have complementary personalities and skillsets.

[juanml82]

The same could be said for Sansa "fell in love with Joffrey due to looks, lied about Arya and Joffrey's fight, told Cersei about fathers plans" Stark. All characters have moments of folly.

Yes, but there is a matter of degrees of folly. One thing is "Renly just mocked the guy I'll be married all my life and if I tell the truth everyone will laugh at him" followed "I'll go to the woman who had my wolf killed because she's the only one who can help me become a Queen (that I'm not scared about)". Another one is "My home is taken, so my prestige is ruined and I've just slept with an enemy chick. So I will totally marry her, insulting 4,000 of my men and once they desert me, I'll let them go unschated in order to set a precedent. What can possibly go wrong, except losing the war?"

[Wouter]

Sansa has mutch to figure out yet. It is amazing how she whitnessed Littlefinger kill Lysa and how she knows how Jon Arryn died because of Littlefinger and she must have already known how important Jon Arryn was to her father, Ned.

I don't think Sansa knows that Jon Arryn died because of LF, unless I don't recall it right. Sansa heard Lysa saying "you told me to give the tears to Jon" but I doubt she knows that "the tears" is referring to a poison. If she doesn't, the sentence would make little to no sense for her.

She also heard that Lysa wrote a letter accusing the Lannisters, based on LF's urging, but if she didn't realise what "the tears" are she may not have concluded that the letter was actually a lie. For all she know, LF "discovered" that Lannisters did it and convinced Lysa to write about it.

[Roose on the Loose]

I thought the way Sansa saved Dantos's life was clever.

[Lord Damian]

I don't think Sansa knows that Jon Arryn died because of LF, unless I don't recall it right. Sansa heard Lysa saying "you told me to give the tears to Jon" but I doubt she knows that "the tears" is referring to a poison. If she doesn't, the sentence would make little to no sense for her.

She also heard that Lysa wrote a letter accusing the Lannisters, based on LF's urging, but if she didn't realise what "the tears" are she may not have concluded that the letter was actually a lie. For all she know, LF "discovered" that Lannisters did it and convinced Lysa to write about it.

Sansa is being kept in the dark by Littlefinger to the best of his ability. She though, needs a little more time. I bet she gets a lot of chapters in Winds.

[raziel.r]

Her interaction with Harry at the dance comes across really polished, judging the situation and coming every response on the spot without help from anyone.

There is the witty jape on spices, the ease in the way she plays off her looks, how effortlessly she brushes off everything Harry could come back with.

Even more impressive was how she could be charming and commanding at the same time over an alpha male, telling him she would not tolerate him sleeping around.

The thing that might undo her appears to be how she lets her guard down with Myranda. Especially given how she slipped up in Dance, mentioning Jon Snow given no reasonable way Alayne would be familiar with him. Myranda didn't seem to make note of that, though with the right cue, it would surely come back to her.

[euron crows eye greyjoy]

I gotta say, i'm a bit confused by the way most of the posts in this topic ignore the role that LF plays in sansa's life right now. i see her life being pretty much dependend on how much LF needs her to be alive.
you can never trust LF. that being said, he played a major role behind the scenes of pretty much every major event that has been going on in the five kingdoms lately, and he obviously has deep knowledge of how to play "the game" (of thrones).

i appreciate the fact that as alayne, sansa has finally begun to think on her own, at least a little bit. she clearly is a bright girl. however i am pretty certain that LF does not tell her half of what he is planning, and i'm also pretty certain he has his reasons for that.

somewhere (in this thread) i read that sansa "of course" will have to kill LF at some point. that would imply that she is in a dominant position over him. as of now though, i see that being completely the other way around.

is that only me?

[JonSnow4President]

If sansa had done one thing differently she would be long dead. She's been able to swallow her pride and survive under very dangerous situations. For that she's earned my respect. But I don't consider her intelligent, she's not dumb but she's not anything special. She thinks and acts on what other people have told her, this chapter didn't exactly change my opinion. When Harry didn't immediately warm to her like she expected because she had been told he would, sansa immediately went to LF asking him what she should do. Next time she see's him sansa does exactly what she's been told. Sansa's very easily manipulated, the minute she starts acting on her own thoughts and idea's then I'll reconsider

I know I'm two days late responding to this, but if she had done one thing differently, Ned and Rob are still alive.

I'm not going to pretend everything is her fault for going to Cersei. She was a sheltered girl, too caught up in her own fantasy to see reality. But she was too valuable for the Lannisters to kill, at least until Robb's death. She doesn't show any signs of more than mediocre intelligence throughout Kings Landing. She's showing some signs as she's becoming Alayne, but still nothing that puts her above Jon or Robb (who to be fair, are older, and themselves grew up). I'd even put Arya above her.

Unless Sansa is hiding a lot from us in her own thoughts, she is still being mostly carried by Littlefinger, with him bringing her in at the absolute lowest level of his plans.

Can we please not exaggerate her shown intelligence, either up or down?

[Lady Winter Rose]

I gotta say, i'm a bit confused by the way most of the posts in this topic ignore the role that LF plays in sansa's life right now. i see her life being pretty much dependend on how much LF needs her to be alive.

you can never trust LF. that being said, he played a major role behind the scenes of pretty much every major event that has been going on in the five kingdoms lately, and he obviously has deep knowledge of how to play "the game" (of thrones).

i appreciate the fact that as alayne, sansa has finally begun to think on her own, at least a little bit. she clearly is a bright girl. however i am pretty certain that LF does not tell her half of what he is planning, and i'm also pretty certain he has his reasons for that.

somewhere (in this thread) i read that sansa "of course" will have to kill LF at some point. that would imply that she is in a dominant position over him. as of now though, i see that being completely the other way around.

is that only me?

No, it's not.

[Lady Winter Rose]

I know I'm two days late responding to this, but if she had done one thing differently, Ned and Rob are still alive.

...

Can we please not exaggerate her shown intelligence, either up or down?

Well said. I agree with you on many points. I don't write much, because I have trouble with my thoughts and opinions. I always imagine her like any regular girl who has lots of friends and is lovable, but smart like any other girl.

[Esa1996]

Sansa is more intelligent than Jon & Robb because she is still alive.

Bran is the most intelligent Stark because he is basically a tree god.

Jon's not dead. Even GRRM has said as much.

On topic: Sansa proved herself far more intelligent than I ever thought her to be. While I didn't view her as a complete idiot anymore in AFFC, I didn't all that much of her. The tourney was actually a pretty good plan, and the entire chapter gave off a very different image of Sansa, compared to what I have in my head.

[JonSnow4President]

Well said. I agree with you on many points. I don't write much, because I have trouble with my thoughts and opinions. I always imagine her like any regular girl who has lots of friends and is lovable, but smart like any other girl.

Yup. I want to clarify. She's probably in the upper quartile of her peers. But she hasn't reached the level to be on the same tier as Jon/Robb respectively, and not clearly ahead of Arya.

I call myself the dumb one of my family. I had a 3.7 undergrad GPA, a 3.9 grad GPA, had a job line up 1.5 years before graduating, and have been consistently ahead of my (also bright) peers in reviews.

My middle brother just got rejected from Princeton (after they flew him up for an interview with one of their Nobel Prize Winners), so he's "settling" for a PhD researching cancer biology at MD Anderson (generally top 3 in that field).

The baby brother is 21, has had his pilot's license for 4 years, is doing Mechanical engineering a top flight engineering school, and ruined his 4.0 GPA with a landscape design elective because he "wasn't creative enough."

It doesn't mean I'm dumb. I'm just up against some good competition. Same with Sansa.

[juanml82]

I know I'm two days late responding to this, but if she had done one thing differently, Ned and Rob are still alive.

I'm not going to pretend everything is her fault for going to Cersei. She was a sheltered girl, too caught up in her own fantasy to see reality. But she was too valuable for the Lannisters to kill, at least until Robb's death. She doesn't show any signs of more than mediocre intelligence throughout Kings Landing. She's showing some signs as she's becoming Alayne, but still nothing that puts her above Jon or Robb (who to be fair, are older, and themselves grew up). I'd even put Arya above her.

Unless Sansa is hiding a lot from us in her own thoughts, she is still being mostly carried by Littlefinger, with him bringing her in at the absolute lowest level of his plans.

Can we please not exaggerate her shown intelligence, either up or down?

Arya had three wishes from a death genie and wasted two of them in irrelevant characters, with only the third one being useful (as far as she knew). If we're going to compare wits, none is safe.

As for Sansa being carried by Littlefinger, we don't know her motivations. She may very well be meekly following LF's plans, or she may be following them so she's in a position to turn on him. We just don't know because, through the entire chapter, GRRM never has her thinking about her reasons to want the betrothal to work, despite being against it in her previous chapter (back in AFFC)

[JonSnow4President]

Arya had three wishes from a death genie and wasted two of them in irrelevant characters, with only the third one being useful (as far as she knew). If we're going to compare wits, none is safe.

As for Sansa being carried by Littlefinger, we don't know her motivations. She may very well be meekly following LF's plans, or she may be following them so she's in a position to turn on him. We just don't know because, through the entire chapter, GRRM never has her thinking about her reasons to want the betrothal to work, despite being against it in her previous chapter (back in AFFC)

There's also no indication (that I recall. I'll admit it if proven wrong) of her plotting anything. Even when we don't have details, we know that Jon is making plans for how to deal with his enemies, because it's vaguely referred to. So far, the best we have is that she suggested a tourney to LF.

[lancerman]

Sansa's biggest crime was being a little to naïve in the beginning and trusting Cersei way too much. That's said, Ned did the same thing (and he wasn't a little girl) and the results were far more catastrophic.

Everything else Sansa did was playing her hand the right way.

[JonSnow4President]

Sansa's biggest crime was being a little to naïve in the beginning and trusting Cersei way too much. That's said, Ned did the same thing (and he wasn't a little girl) and the results were far more catastrophic.

Everything else Sansa did was playing her hand the right way.

Ned didn't trust Cersei. He trusted a childhood friend of his wife's. If Ned has the city guard, everything turns out fine for Ned, at least until Tywin raises an army.

And don't you even dare blame Robert's death on Ned. That "murder" is so stupidly conceived, I refuse to believe it was more than an accident.

[Maia]

Ned didn't trust Cersei. He trusted a childhood friend of his wife's.

No, he didn't trust LF, but he did underestimate Cersei and never considered that her just going away with the children, Jaime and Tywin (?) could have never been a workable option for her. Neither she nor her kids could have ever been safe if she did do it, as Ned himself pointed out. He just failed to think through what this fact meant re: Cersei's reaction.

Not to mention that he really, really should have ensured the safety of his daughters first. He did know very well that the Lannisters weren't above harming children.

If Ned has the city guard, everything turns out fine for Ned, at least until Tywin raises an army.

But he could have never had the city guard, given how Stannis wanted their commander and his trusted lieutenants executed for corruption. Again, something that Ned should have researched and taken into account.

Sansa, unfortunately, doesn't yet have all the pieces to figure out LF's true role in her family's tragedy and the civil war. Ned never explaining anything to her strikes again. Which is why some agent of Varys feeding to her the information she lacks is such an attractive option.

But no, it doesn't change my opinion of Sansa's intelligence and no, she doesn't do anything amazing here yet.

But she is clearly on the right path to detecting wheels within wheels and successfully manipulating people.

I have always thought that Sansa was reasonably smart for her age - and also, that people tend to forget how horrendiously naive and stupid Tyrion and LF had been at 13 and 15 respectively.

Sansa looks good compared to them in adolescence, so there is every reason to hope that she'd become comparably astute eventually.

[juanml82]

There's also no indication (that I recall. I'll admit it if proven wrong) of her plotting anything. Even when we don't have details, we know that Jon is making plans for how to deal with his enemies, because it's vaguely referred to. So far, the best we have is that she suggested a tourney to LF.

There is no indication of her plotting anything outside LF's instructions, that is true. But there is no indication of her reasons to do follow those instructions, specifically since about a month earlier, she did not want to get married. What happened in her head?

We just don't know. She could have submitted to LF. She could be planning to move against him and wants to use Harry for that (say, marry Harry, murder SR, show LF the door). She could be bidding her time, gambling in Tyrion's plot armor. Or it may be something else. It's just that we shouldn't jump to conclusions and assume she has submitted to LF. It may be the case, but we don't know.

[JonSnow4President]

There is no indication of her plotting anything outside LF's instructions, that is true. But there is no indication of her reasons to do follow those instructions, specifically since about a month earlier, she did not want to get married. What happened in her head?

We just don't know. She could have submitted to LF. She could be planning to move against him and wants to use Harry for that (say, marry Harry, murder SR, show LF the door). She could be bidding her time, gambling in Tyrion's plot armor. Or it may be something else. It's just that we shouldn't jump to conclusions and assume she has submitted to LF. It may be the case, but we don't know.

I'm in the no evidence = not happening/not worth trying to predict camp, not the no evidence = free roam to speculate.

Different strokes for different folks I guess.