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Discussing Sansa - The Last One: Queen In The North!!!


Mladen

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4 hours ago, Gendelsdottir said:

Eh?! She isn't even the only named character in the show who's forced into sex against her will. In show!universe and book!universe, highborn women exist to consolidate family alliances and give birth to heirs. Sexual desire (or its absence) on the woman's part doesn't come into it. Lowborn women exist to give birth to the next generation of manual laborers and farmworkers, and to slake the sexual needs of any passing soldier, sailor, beggarman, or thief.

I'm remembering the scene where Littlefinger admonishes Ros in the brothel. She is grieving the horrendous murder of the infant Barra, bastard daughter to Robert Baratheon. Littlefinger says, in essence, "You're moping! It's a total buzzkill for the clients. Take the rest of the day off and come back with a happy face, or else I'll find some megarich sadistic torturer and sell you off to him." It's pretty disgusting, but totally faithful to the aSoIaF world.

Edited to add: This scene did not occur in the novels.

This aspect of worldbuilding, or sociology, or whatever you wish to call it, was abandoned in later seasons. This may have given the illusion that female characters suddenly obtained free will, independent of all context. I call BS.

This isnt about medieval realism or marriage, its about story imbalance and a basic theme - love. I'm thinking primarily of Book!Sansa here, when she says "Everyone wants to be loved." This is her expressing Aemon's idea that the "gods have fashioned us for love." The character who most wanted love never finds it, while everyone else has had multiple love interests. Sansa has never been kissed by someone she loves. Sansa has never been desired by someone she loves. While Cersei has. Dany has (multiple times). Gilly has. While her own mother did (eventually). While Brienne and Arya have both had consensual sex, while Arya is getting marriage proposals she doesn't even want, Sansa just has a rape/abuse storyline. Sexual desire is something women get to experience and get reciprocated in Martin's own novels, except for Sansa apparently. 

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8 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

This isnt about medieval realism or marriage, its about story imbalance and a basic theme - love.

I hate when people drudge out the 'medieval' excuse to make the rape of female characters on this show (or even the books) ok. The story is only slightly based on that time in human history. The humans don't even function like we do in GRRM's world. The Targs would have died out ages ago from inbreeding. The lack of birth defects from all the incest. Where are all the plagues that would happen in such a world, like it happened during ours?

When it comes to justifying all the rape of women...where is all the soldier rape that happened during our medieval times? The winning army would rape the loser side all the time. What did we have on the show? Gendry, Theon and Tommen from what I recall. Are they comparable, for example, to the Craster Mass Rape Festival or Dany in S1? I'm talking visually here. Or even how we sometimes see women randomly being abused, raped or threatened with rape?

It's interesting that they decided to put Sansa through the Ramsey nonsense despite them having ditched the patriarchy completely once we got past S4. Succession and inheritance are not a thing in order to put in all those female rulers, marriage proposals are a thing now, little girls can shame fully grown men and women have sexual agency outside of Dorne. Still gotta put the most feminine of the main cast females through a marriage alliance for no reason that made sense to anyone, complete with abuse and rape. Who also happens to be the only one at the end to not experience consensual sex or love in the entire show.

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28 minutes ago, Mystical said:

I hate when people drudge out the 'medieval' excuse to make the rape of female characters on this show (or even the books) ok. The story is only slightly based on that time in human history. The humans don't even function like we do in GRRM's world. The Targs would have died out ages ago from inbreeding. The lack of birth defects from all the incest. Where are all the plagues that would happen in such a world, like it happened during ours?

When it comes to justifying all the rape of women...where is all the soldier rape that happened during our medieval times? The winning army would rape the loser side all the time. What did we have on the show? Gendry, Theon and Tommen from what I recall. Are they comparable, for example, to the Craster Mass Rape Festival or Dany in S1? I'm talking visually here. Or even how we sometimes see women randomly being abused, raped or threatened with rape?

It's interesting that they decided to put Sansa through the Ramsey nonsense despite them having ditched the patriarchy completely once we got past S4. Succession and inheritance are not a thing in order to put in all those female rulers, marriage proposals are a thing now, little girls can shame fully grown men and women have sexual agency outside of Dorne. Still gotta put the most feminine of the main cast females through a marriage alliance for no reason that made sense to anyone, complete with abuse and rape. Who also happens to be the only one at the end to not experience consensual sex or love in the entire show.

Who has explained away or condoned rape? I hope you didn't get that impression of personal opinion off of a commentary on a piece of fiction.

The medieval setting, law and even religion all relegate women into subservience and objectification in the story. It's a fact.

And we do see specifically Sansa being instructed by Septa Mordane. The role of a Lady is to bear her Lord sons.

No where in that instruction is love mentioned.

Sansa is a romantic. She dreams of galant knights and valorous deeds of a gentle lord who would make her his lady.

Unfortunately, life is about to pull the rug out from under her.

Through a long and twisted, cruel path, multiple enemies of hers force her into a situation where she is both victim and a tool for her enemies' ambitions. 

She suffers immensely until she finally escapes.

Through more suffering, with all the means at her disposal, she reunites with her family, regaons her home and even achieves a position of power, independence. Safety?

When we see Sansa as QitN, she almost reminded me of Elisabeth I in various movie depictions.

Some around here have claimed she will not marry, others that she will marry but will be too traumatized to trust and love.

I believe now she is in a position where she is a decisor. 

Whatever her path is from what we saw forward?

She has no older male relative to decide for her. She'll negotiate, choose, decide, by herself.

I take that to be a win for a believer in love. But even more than that, in independence. Her own.

 

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27 minutes ago, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

And we do see specifically Sansa being instructed by Septa Mordane. The role of a Lady is to bear her Lord sons.

No where in that instruction is love mentioned.

 Sansa is a romantic. She dreams of galant knights and valorous deeds of a gentle lord who would make her his lady.

Unfortunately, life is about to pull the rug out from under her.

Why do you keep bringing up Septa Mordane. This has nothing to do with her. Sansa wanted love when other characters GOT IT. No one fell in love with this girl except creepy pedos. Alysanne x Jaehaerys. Joanna x Tywin, Ned x Catelyn all FOUND IT. This isn't unrealistic. This is a basic fact of life and it happens in the author's own story. People marry and love their wives. People love each other outside of wedlock. She wanted something unrealistic to start, that doesn't mean she shouldn't find what other characters get even in a fantasy medieval setting. As a Sansa fan you have no idea how frustrating it is to have to watch everyone fall head over heels for Dany but no one fall for Sansa. All we have is guesswork. You're also "girl powering!!" that final scene. She also has no family around her and just a bunch of faceless lords in the room. Independence looks lonely as fuck. 

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17 minutes ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Why do you keep bringing up Septa Mordane. This has nothing to do with her. Sansa wanted love when other characters GOT IT. No one fell in love with this girl except creepy pedos. Alysanne x Jaehaerys. Joanna x Tywin, Ned x Catelyn all FOUND IT. This isn't unrealistic. This is a basic fact of life and it happens in the author's own story. People marry and love their wives. People love each other outside of wedlock. She wanted something unrealistic to start, that doesn't mean she shouldn't find what other characters get even in a fantasy medieval setting. As a Sansa fan you have no idea how frustrating it is to have to watch everyone fall head over heels for Dany but no one fall for Sansa. All we have is guesswork. You're also "girl powering!!" that final scene. She also has no family around her and just a bunch of faceless lords in the room. Independence looks lonely as fuck. 

I believe you're molding my comment to the perception of double standard that you've also used?

I'm quite sure Sansa is not the only character who doesn't find love.

And what I'm saying is that she now has opportunities that are not available to other women in her 'verse. 

She has responsabilities, but she also has, as lots of self confessed Sansa fans have said, the respect afforded to her as Queen in the North, as leader of her people.

And yes, Septa Mordane is relevant because people grow from the education they receive.

Sansa is the result of her life history.

If you want to rail that she should have had a romantic storyline? Fine.

I prefer to believe she'll be a combination of her mother's courtesy, her father’s righteousness and even Cersei's dogged determination and the creepy pedo's fantastically ruthless political finesse. These people molded her.

I prefer to believe she'll 'make her own way' rather than wait for it to happen.

Again, if you think I'm girl powering that scenario, that's your prerrogative.

I prefer to consider a woman in power as a decisor of her own fate? Regardless of the grumpy old men she's already proven she can manage, direct and at the same time help as a ruler?

What, you think she was specifically targetted for the misery of lacking a lovelife because she was a courteous lady and the picture of femininity?

Did she too get the bittersweet choive of duty to her people over love?

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46 minutes ago, It_spelt_Magalhaes said:

 Did she too get the bittersweet choive of duty to her people over love?

Sansa never wanted to be alone and she never wanted power and she never received romantic love, so this wasn't even a choice for her. She at least wanted her family around her, and she didn't get that. It was wholly unsatisfying because home isn't a place, it's the people around you, and she doesn't have them there. She also wanted children in the books. These aren't "fairytale dreams" they are basic desires. Ruling wouldn't make Sansa happy, having her family around her would. Knowing that someone loved her besides Littlefinger would make her happy. S "In his own way he loved me" <--this is all she gets in the show. Someone who has so much love to give, doesn't get it returned. This is tragic. People bring up how it's unrealistic for Sansa to find love in a medieval era but it's somehow realistic for every man Dany who meets to fall in love with her? Give me a break. I hope GRRM course corrects because being Elizabeth I isn't what she ever wanted and duty to the people is a lonely job. Cersei got to love her children and got to rule. Cersei also told her love was a poison and Sansa rejected that viewpoint. Then Cersei died with the man who loved her. Sansa's rebuttal to Cersei that everyone wants to be loved is one of the most powerful in the series. Cersei finds it but Sansa does not. 

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Sansa has evolved in the books, and the show went to further extremes but it looks like a similar path based on where book Sansa is now. As such, it should be noted that early Sansa and later Sansa do not want the same things at all.

And as for the Stark kids not having their families around, that's what happens in that society with that social status - when they grow up, they have great distances between them. They won't all marry and stay huddled at Winterfell forever. Ned said that Jon, Bran and Rickon would go on to rule their own castles in the North and support Robb as his bannermen and Sansa and Arya would marry and also live elsewhere. The lone wolf saying about when Winter (hard times) comes, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives means they support each other in hard times, not that they get weird and move in together as adults and stay together forever. What happened with the Stark kids is the normal course of things and what was always going to happen, but if hard times come again, they'll support each other. 

 

 

Sansa used to equate love with songs. Her opinion of them has changed. 

AFFC Sansa I

Once, when she was just a little girl, a wandering singer had stayed with them at Winterfell for half a year. An old man he was, with white hair and windburnt cheeks, but he sang of knights and quests and ladies fair, and Sansa had cried bitter tears when he left them, and begged her father not to let him go. "The man has played us every song he knows thrice over," Lord Eddard told her gently. "I cannot keep him here against his will. You need not weep, though. I promise you, other singers will come."

They hadn't, though, not for a year or more. Sansa had prayed to the Seven in their sept and old gods of the heart tree, asking them to bring the old man back, or better still to send another singer, young and handsome. But the gods never answered, and the halls of Winterfell stayed silent.

But that was when she was a little girl, and foolish. She was a maiden now, three-and-ten and flowered. All her nights were full of song, and by day she prayed for silence.

 

 

 

Sansa's view of marriage has evolved. She's intrigued by the unmarried Oberyn and Ellaria and is now living happily as a bastard in the Vale.  

AFFC Alayne II

"A marriage . . ." Her throat tightened. She did not want to wed again, not now, perhaps not ever. "I do not . . . I cannot marry. Father, I . . ." Alayne looked to the door, to make certain it was closed. "I am married," she whispered. "You know."

 

ASOS Sansa IV


As they were crossing the yard, Prince Oberyn of Dorne fell in beside them, his black-haired paramour on his arm. Sansa glanced at the woman curiously. She was baseborn and unwed, and had borne two bastard daughters for the prince, but she did not fear to look even the queen in the eye. Shae had told her that this Ellaria worshiped some Lysene love goddess. "She was almost a whore when he found her, m'lady," her maid confided, "and now she's near a princess." Sansa had never been this close to the Dornishwoman before. She is not truly beautiful, she thought, but something about her draws the eye.

 

 

5 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Sansa wanted love when other characters GOT IT. No one fell in love with this girl except creepy pedos. Alysanne x Jaehaerys. Joanna x Tywin, Ned x Catelyn all FOUND IT. 

Alysanne & Jaehaerys - didn't happen in the books proper and thus didn't get full character and plot treatment. 

Joanna & Tywin - was done before the series began.

Ned & Cat - rarely saw them together on screen/page and that world brought them to a tragic end. 

Love does happen in that world. Then GRRM comes along like a wrathful God and smashes it like a mosquito. Not the series to watch/read if one's wanting any HEA story. 

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40 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

Sansa has evolved in the books, and the show went to further extremes but it looks like a similar path based on where book Sansa is now. As such, it should be noted that early Sansa and later Sansa do not want the same things at all.

And as for the Stark kids not having their families around, that's what happens in that society with that social status - when they grow up, they have great distances between them. They won't all marry and stay huddled at Winterfell forever. Ned said that Jon, Bran and Rickon would go on to rule their own castles in the North and support Robb as his bannermen and Sansa and Arya would marry and also live elsewhere. The lone wolf saying about when Winter (hard times) comes, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives means they support each other in hard times, not that they get weird and move in together as adults and stay together forever. What happened with the Stark kids is the normal course of things and what was always going to happen, but if hard times come again, they'll support each other. 

 

 

Sansa used to equate love with songs. Her opinion of them has changed. 

AFFC Sansa I

Once, when she was just a little girl, a wandering singer had stayed with them at Winterfell for half a year. An old man he was, with white hair and windburnt cheeks, but he sang of knights and quests and ladies fair, and Sansa had cried bitter tears when he left them, and begged her father not to let him go. "The man has played us every song he knows thrice over," Lord Eddard told her gently. "I cannot keep him here against his will. You need not weep, though. I promise you, other singers will come."

They hadn't, though, not for a year or more. Sansa had prayed to the Seven in their sept and old gods of the heart tree, asking them to bring the old man back, or better still to send another singer, young and handsome. But the gods never answered, and the halls of Winterfell stayed silent.

But that was when she was a little girl, and foolish. She was a maiden now, three-and-ten and flowered. All her nights were full of song, and by day she prayed for silence.

 

 

 

Sansa's view of marriage has evolved. She's intrigued by the unmarried Oberyn and Ellaria and is now living happily as a bastard in the Vale.  

AFFC Alayne II

"A marriage . . ." Her throat tightened. She did not want to wed again, not now, perhaps not ever. "I do not . . . I cannot marry. Father, I . . ." Alayne looked to the door, to make certain it was closed. "I am married," she whispered. "You know."

 

ASOS Sansa IV


As they were crossing the yard, Prince Oberyn of Dorne fell in beside them, his black-haired paramour on his arm. Sansa glanced at the woman curiously. She was baseborn and unwed, and had borne two bastard daughters for the prince, but she did not fear to look even the queen in the eye. Shae had told her that this Ellaria worshiped some Lysene love goddess. "She was almost a whore when he found her, m'lady," her maid confided, "and now she's near a princess." Sansa had never been this close to the Dornishwoman before. She is not truly beautiful, she thought, but something about her draws the eye.

 

 

Alysanne & Jaehaerys - didn't happen in the books proper and thus didn't get full character and plot treatment. 

Joanna & Tywin - was done before the series began.

Ned & Cat - rarely saw them together on screen/page and that world brought them to a tragic end. 

Love does happen in that world. Then GRRM comes along like a wrathful God and smashes it like a mosquito. Not the series to watch/read if one's wanting any HEA story. 

I know she doesnt want to marry again. Of course she still wants companionship and family. 

A lot of my displeasure is related to the idea of having almost zero Stark scenes together in the show. We waited 8 years for them to be reunited and then they were apart again. This is unsatisfying. 

A story where everything that involves love is punished with death, abuse, or tragedy is perverse. 

"love doesn't happen in this world" Tell that to Gilly and Sam. 

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Okay, take a hypothetical planet. Populate it with elements drawn from fantasy, mysticism, medieval culture, religion, politics. Add people and stir. Well done, GRRM; you've created a fictional universe - the World of Ice and Fire!

Now take this world and everything in it - the baffling biology, the fucked-up physics, the crazy chemistry. The people & castles & flaming swords & trees & oceans & strange weather & strange gods; all of it. Pile it into one of those Rube Goldberg funnel-slash-meat grinder devices, as in a Monty Python's Flying Circus animated sequence. Crank the machine and out the bottom comes - plop! - a TV show.

Some of the world's elements come through the machinery unscathed, but many more are all-but-unrecognizable. Characters' inner emotional life is a thing that got garbled. These people are increasingly opaque, unreadable, underdeveloped. The mystical elements? Pushed off to the sidelines and out of view. The magic does not cohere into a system; it evaporates and is gone.

@Rose of Red Lake, you are disappointed with the show's rendering of interpersonal relationships. I don't fault you for having this view, but my brain doesn't work that way. To the extent that characters behave in a way consistent with basic worldbuilding, it doesn't bother me. I am, however, disappointed that the extant supernatural elements are not resolved in a satisfying way.

I think we are both right. :)

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3 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

I know she doesnt want to marry again. Of course she still wants companionship and family. 

A lot of my displeasure is related to the idea of having almost zero Stark scenes together in the show. We waited 8 years for them to be reunited and then they were apart again. This is unsatisfying. 

A story where everything that involves love is punished with death, abuse, or tragedy is perverse.  

She's an adult. She'll have to make her own family and companionship. Family members in this world go on to lead their own lives. That's how that world rolls. The ending gives me every expectation that this happens for her off-screen. 

It was never a given that they would reunite and indeed we were warned that they may not reunite as Ned, Cat and Robb didn't get that. This is an assumption on the part of the reader/viewer. It's another assumption that any reunion will go well. And we've known for a number of years now that to D&D characters are only plot devices, themes are for 8th grade book reports, and things make sense creativity if only for the reason that they wanted it to happen. 

Yes, GRRM's world is perverse. He's been crystal clear about that from the very beginning. Important things get shoved aside for less important things is maybe the big theme of the series. The tragedy makes the point. The Starks had a happy life. Then the Game of Thrones happened. 

3 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

"love doesn't happen in this world" Tell that to Gilly and Sam. 

4 hours ago, Lollygag said:

Love does happen in that world. Then GRRM comes along like a wrathful God and smashes it like a mosquito. Not the series to watch/read if one's wanting any HEA story. 

Maesters don't have families. 

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1 hour ago, Lollygag said:

She's an adult. She'll have to make her own family and companionship. Family members in this world go on to lead their own lives. That's how that world rolls. The ending gives me every expectation that this happens for her off-screen. 

I didn’t get that impression in the finale, since she’s all alone with nobody but herself, and there’s practically nobody left in the North for companionship and family. Jon’s beyond the Wall, Arya’s traveling, Bran, Brienne and Podrick are in King’s Landing, and the Northern Lords are either dead or fair-weather friends.

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Just now, Angel Eyes said:

I didn’t get that impression in the finale, since she’s all alone with nobody but herself, and there’s practically nobody left in the North for companionship and family. Jon’s beyond the Wall, Arya’s traveling, Bran, Brienne and Podrick are in King’s Landing, and the Northern Lords are either dead or fair-weather friends.

She's not alone at all in the final scene and she was happy in it.

The point was that Sansa has a new beginning and she makes a new life for herself. I'm not getting why people don't understand how this works. We all start new schools, move to new neighborhoods, start new jobs, make new friends, start new relationships. I shouldn't have to explain this. 

And Southern lords are also fair-weather if you hadn't noticed ;).

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