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Sansa's betrayal consequences partly overestimated?


Greywater-Watch

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9 minutes ago, Nagini's Neville said:

In my experience I kinda disagree. The very best riders very often aren't good to their horses at all. Sure they might have a "connection" with their horse, but you can also just call it training and knowing them really well. In competitive horseback riding a lot of stuff happens that borders on animal abuse. So you don't even have to be so empathetic towards you horse at all to be a very good rider. It has a lot more to do with your overall athleticism and just knowing, what to do and what not to do towards you horse, it is a sport after all.

Your experience is probably better than mine, but I'd say knowing someone really well, so you have a good model of their mind,  is a long step towards empathy. Doesn't make you a good person, of course.

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11 minutes ago, Springwatch said:

Thanks for the quote.

It's an important point for me also - but I come at the books from a high fantasy viewpoint, so I probably have less expectation that characters will act in a strictly realistic way. I have had a go at the facts however:

Ok, the case for Sansa making no difference to the success of the coup.

She didn't know anything about 'her father's plans'. Consistently we are shown that Ned does not have deep conversations with Sansa, that he does not explain his actions, that he wants her kept away from important man-stuff like king's justice and court hearings. Therefore, we can take as a fact that he didn't share his plans to make Stannis king. Didn't share his secret meetings with Renly and Littlefinger and Cersei. Didn't share the orders to his soldiers. Anything.

Cersei has complete information already. The walls of the Red Keep have ears, and she has her own spies. And there is no sign that Ned and his household have learned much about information security (apart from protecting Sansa's innocence, which is an irony). There will be leaks.

Plus information Cersei was given as a gift. Ned straight out told her that he was going to expose and banish Joffrey - on its own, that's enough information to trigger a coup against his regency. The rest of his planning was with Littlefinger, who took it straight away to Cersei.

And then there's Varys, who says straight out that he is a weak man who must back the winning side. So - Renly and Littlefinger both correctly judged that Ned was dancing on thin ice, there's no reason Varys would think differently, and in hindsight, he did not give Ned the support he might have. Therefore, Varys was also on Cersei's side; that's game over in the information wars.

There was no time. Once Robert dies, Ned and Cersei are in a race to Iron Throne. If Cersei doesn't act immediately, Ned will be made regent. It will be him in the seat of power, accusing her of treason, instead of the other way about. The people, soldiers and kingsguard may agree with him. The Gold Cloaks may just pocket their bribes and not fight for Cersei. She has to act immediately.

There was just one hour between the Stark breakfast and Robert's death. Sansa has to first brush her hair (of course) and gain an audience with Cersei. And then pour her heart out, about how much she loves Joffrey, and what a good queen she'd make, and children proud as lions etc etc. That leaves Cersei somewhere between half an hour and ten minutes to pick out crucial new information and act on it.

So what was it, this crucial new information? Information that aided Cersei in her race to the top (it was a close thing)?

I tell you, it doesn't exist.


Part 2: the case for Sansa making no difference to the girls' escape....
(work in progress)

I didn't check the precise timeline. I think, the crucial information for Cersei provided by Sansa was Ned's plan to ship his daughters back to Winterfell, I think it was supposed to happen the evening of the day, Ned was arrested. That would have meant for Cersei two valuable hostages less. Neither Cersei nor Ned knew that Robert would die that morning. But thanks to Sansa's information, Cersei was prepared and thus could act very fast.

I assume she wouldn't have been prepared to act that fast without Sansa's information.

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1 minute ago, Springwatch said:

Your experience is probably better than mine, but I'd say knowing someone really well, so you have a good model of their mind,  is a long step towards empathy. Doesn't make you a good person, of course.

Yeah, a lot of them know their horses very well, but still treat like shit and are being very selfish. So I don't think being a good rider has to be connected to empathy at all. Sometimes even the opposite, even they know their horses so well and the horse is doing so much for them, they are still abusive towards it.

On the flip side not liking horses or riding is not a sign of being not empathetic in general.

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It seems completely insane to me that Cersei wouldn't put her spies to spy on Ned and his household after he confessed her his plans. Why wouldn't she? At very least LF, who decided to betray Ned, would, and would inform Cersei on everything. Why wouldn't Cersei leave instructions that Ned and his people aren't allowed to leave to same people she used to massacre his household eventually? Why wouldn't she order to secure Ned's children without Sansa's intel when it's in her best interests?

ETA: We could separate empathy and sympathy, perhaps? Some excellent manipulators feel your emotions and use it for their own means. Some people are bad at reading emotions yet the thought of other's suffering affects them greatly.

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9 minutes ago, Greywater-Watch said:

I didn't check the precise timeline. I think, the crucial information for Cersei provided by Sansa was Ned's plan to ship his daughters back to Winterfell, I think it was supposed to happen the evening of the day, Ned was arrested. That would have meant for Cersei two valuable hostages less. Neither Cersei nor Ned knew that Robert would die that morning. But thanks to Sansa's information, Cersei was prepared and thus could act very fast.

I assume she wouldn't have been prepared to act that fast without Sansa's information.

That's where we disagree. Robert was at point of death, and Cersei already knew she had to react first. LF had given her all the information she needed, and the Gold Cloaks had been given their orders (can't be done fast, therefore Gold Cloaks were already bribed, briefed, and standing by ready for action).

Hostages may be useful later, but would make no difference to the race to the Iron Throne, make no difference to the race being a close thing.

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1 minute ago, Agnessa Schizoid said:

It seems completely insane to me that Cersei wouldn't put her spies to spy on Ned and his household after he confessed her his plans. Why wouldn't she? At very least LF, who decided to betray Ned, would, and would inform Cersei on everything. Why wouldn't Cersei leave instructions that Ned and his people aren't allowed to leave to same people she used to massacre his household eventually? Why wouldn't she order to secure Ned's children without Sansa's intel when it's in her best interests?

The only person I see capable of spying the conversation between Ned and his daughters concerning their shipment to Winterfell would be Varys using ears in the walls. If Cersei had received the information through spies though, why would she not tell Tyrion then (see me Quote of the Cersei-Tyrion dialogue, some lines above)?

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2 hours ago, Greywater-Watch said:

The only person I see capable of spying the conversation between Ned and his daughters concerning their shipment to Winterfell would be Varys using ears in the walls. If Cersei had received the information through spies though, why would she not tell Tyrion then (see me Quote of the Cersei-Tyrion dialogue, some lines above)?

What I tried to say a bit earlier. Sansa being a traitor is a delicious narrative. And in the eyes of the world of asoiaf, it kind of justifies the savage treatment she gets at the hands of the Lannisters.

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30 minutes ago, Greywater-Watch said:

The only person I see capable of spying the conversation between Ned and his daughters concerning their shipment to Winterfell would be Varys using ears in the walls. If Cersei had received the information through spies though, why would she not tell Tyrion then (see me Quote of the Cersei-Tyrion dialogue, some lines above)?

Because she wanted to keep her affair with Jaime a secret from Tyrion. If she put all the blame on Sansa then he wouldn't question her how she came up with the idea to make a move on Ned. 

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4 minutes ago, YeniAy_Ottoman said:

GRRM said that Sansa was responsible for Ned and Lady's death(at least have a part role). I read in an interview but I do not remember where now.

This might be getting into Death of the Author a little bit, but I definitely think that it was GRRM's intention that Sansa was complicit in Ned's death, which is why he wrote that she went to Cersei in the first place, and why Cersei flat-out tells Tyrion "Yep, couldn't have stopped Ned Stark without his daughter's bungling".

So, perhaps the details about whether it logistically made a difference might matter, or it might not. Wouldn't be the first time that GRRM's intention in a story event didn't match the reader's understanding of the matter from what was on the page.

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44 minutes ago, Springwatch said:

What I tried to say a bit earlier. Sansa being a traitor is a delicious narrative. And in the eyes of the world, it kind of justifies the savage treatment she gets at the hands of the Lannisters.

It sickening if some people genuinely believe that. Wishing domestic violence on a child is disturbing as hell. People need to see the difference between fiction and reality. 

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4 minutes ago, Elegant Woes said:

It sickening if some people genuinely believe that. Wishing domestic violence on a child is disturbing as hell. People need to see the difference between fiction and reality. 

I think @Sringwatch was referring to the "eyes of the world" of asoiaf here. So basically Tyrion should view her as a traitor.

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6 minutes ago, Nagini's Neville said:

I think @Sringwatch was referring to the "eyes of the world" of asoiaf here. So basically Tyrion should view her as a traitor.

In that case I have my doubts. As neither Cersei nor Tyrion ever mention Sansa's "treason" as justification for their rude Treatment versus Sansa. And I think Cersei didn't need any justification for torturing people.

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35 minutes ago, YeniAy_Ottoman said:

GRRM said that Sansa was responsible for Ned and Lady's death(at least have a part role). I read in an interview but I do not remember where now.

I don’t recall any interviews where Martin says that. The one I do recall that touches on the subject is one from way back where he says that Sansa in AGoT is the least sympathetic Stark, and that that changes once she takes responsibility for her actions having contributed to Ned’s death. And there’s nothing about Lady’s death.

Here it is:

Amazon: You write children well. 

Martin: I don't have any but I was one once. When the series was originally conceived, it was only three volumes long and I did not know that several of the main characters were going to be stuck with being children for so much of it. The hardest chapters for me to write are the ones about Bran, just because he is the character most involved in magic, the youngest child and he is so seriously crippled--I have to write in that sense of powerlessness and it has always to convince. Sansa was the least sympathetic of the Starks in the first book; she has become more sympathetic, partly because she comes to accept responsibility for her part in her father's death. Jon Snow is the truest character--I like his sense of realism and the way he copes with his bastardy.

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25 minutes ago, Nagini's Neville said:

I think @Sringwatch was referring to the "eyes of the world" of asoiaf here. So basically Tyrion should view her as a traitor.

You are most likely right. With that said I wouldn't be surprised there were some readers who did believe that. 

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15 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Sansa was the least sympathetic of the Starks in the first book; she has become more sympathetic, partly because she comes to accept responsibility for her part in her father's death

Which I still find insane that even GRRM thinks this. Because as I said before, Sansa had no knowledge of what Ned was doing. She might never have gone to Cersei if she knew what was going on. So Sansa's action, self-serving as it may have been, was a direct result of Ned's own negligence. From his failure as a parent, allowing Arya constant disobedience and freedom which eventually would lead to Sansa, the ever obedient one, seeing what all the fuss was about. And if I remember correctly, Sansa felt wicked for misbehaving. His failure to have guards assigned to his daughters which was an absolute must after he dropped the incest bomb on Cersei. His failure to ever talk to Sansa and justify his actions, in this case cluing her in about the bigger picture. Ned's actions and inactions made it possible for Sansa to do what she did. So in the end, it's still all Ned's own fault to me.

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1 hour ago, Agnessa Schizoid said:

It seems completely insane to me that Cersei wouldn't put her spies to spy on Ned and his household after he confessed her his plans. Why wouldn't she? At very least LF, who decided to betray Ned, would, and would inform Cersei on everything. Why wouldn't Cersei leave instructions that Ned and his people aren't allowed to leave to same people she used to massacre his household eventually? Why wouldn't she order to secure Ned's children without Sansa's intel when it's in her best interests?

ETA: We could separate empathy and sympathy, perhaps? Some excellent manipulators feel your emotions and use it for their own means. Some people are bad at reading emotions yet the thought of other's suffering affects them greatly.

Cersei don't have the Golden Cloaks until LF gives them to her and  how many spies does Cersei have anyway??

@Lyanna<3Rhaegar

I thought about going on but i don't really see the point, besides both @Nagini's Neville and  @Mystical say what i wanted to say, so unless i see something that makes me do it, i'm out, my phone is not ready for the:fencing::dunno:

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