From Pawn to Player: Rethinking Sansa XVII

[Kittykatknits]

Actually, her relationship with Tyrion is where we see that rejection of sexual duty. Recall her realization that all men are not beautiful, the purple bulbous head of Tyrion's penis, etc.

I'm surprised that in all the Mrs. Lannister threads that have appeared, more discussion and awareness is not put in to just what happens to Sansa here. Her recollection of and then rejection of her Septa's teaching are pretty big. Then she nods her head no and asks what if she never wants him. Seems like a pretty clear rejection of sexual duty. I think the more accurate interpretation of the earlier part of the scene is that she's frightened of what's going to happen to her. She's been living with the knowledge that he's going to bed her, consenting or not all day long. And her concern is valid, he planned to go through with it right up until the very end.

In the recently posted GRRM interview he mentions that he like to be subtle and that he wants his readers to re-read the books so they will be able to put together these clues.

Most posters here are aware of the Sandor/ Sansa dynamic, but I it seems that it's not always noticed or just brushed over by other posters. While it seems obvious to me from the re-read that Sandor is always mentioned in Sansa chapters and he always mentions her in the Arya chapters, is it fair to say, that the Sansa and Sandor dynamic is meant to be subtle, but because we have scrutinised it in depth, it now seems glaringly obvious?

I think you're right Rapsie, especially considering her controversial experiences with Tyrion and Littlefinger, which Martin probably expected to garner the most attention and overshadow the significance of her interaction with Sandor.

I think Martin got surprised by the Internet. :) The first three books in the series were written in 2000 or earlier, well before many people were online picking apart every line of the books. The along came LJ, tumblr, and whatever else is out there. Suddenly the subtle is in your face.

I'm guessing you both saw or at least heard about the sword and laser show with the interview from him? His "I played with it a little" makes me think it was supposed to be a very subtle thing that would surprise many later.

Also, to be honest (and I hope I don't annoy anyone), there are people who refuse to acknowledge R+L=J so it doesn't surprise me that some people don't want to see the relationship between these two. I think the RomCom/Disney version of romance also skews what people are looking for too. So, it doesn't read like typical cliche, making it even less noticeable.

[Elba the Intoner]

In the recently posted GRRM interview he mentions that he like to be subtle and that he wants his readers to re-read the books so they will be able to put together these clues.

Most posters here are aware of the Sandor/ Sansa dynamic, but I it seems that it's not always noticed or just brushed over by other posters. While it seems obvious to me from the re-read that Sandor is always mentioned in Sansa chapters and he always mentions her in the Arya chapters, is it fair to say, that the Sansa and Sandor dynamic is meant to be subtle, but because we have scrutinised it in depth, it now seems glaringly obvious?

It's because of it's subtlety that I love it so much.

[brashcandy]

Familial love

The conversation between Jon and Maester Aemon seemed particularly relevant to this topic:

“Jon, did you ever wonder why the men of the Night’s Watch take no wives and father no children?” Maester Aemon asked.

Jon shrugged. “No.” He scattered more meat. The fingers of his left hand were slimy with blood, and his right throbbed from the weight of the bucket.

“So they will not love,” the old man answered, “for love is the bane of honor, the death of duty.”

That did not sound right to Jon, yet he said nothing. The maester was a hundred years old, and a high officer of the Night’s Watch; it was not his place to contradict him.

The old man seemed to sense his doubts. “Tell me, Jon, if the day should ever come when your lord father must needs choose between honor on the one hand and those he loves on the other, what would he do?”

Jon hesitated. He wanted to say that Lord Eddard would never dishonor himself, not even for love, yet inside a small sly voice whispered, He fathered a bastard, where was the honor in that? And your mother, what of his duty to her, he will not even say her name. “He would do whatever was right,” he said … ringingly, to make up for his hesitation. “No matter what.”

“Then Lord Eddard is a man in ten thousand. Most of us are not so strong. What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms … or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

Jon will come to know this all too well via his experiences at the Watch and beyond the wall, and Ned opts of course to sacrifice his honor for Sansa’s sake when he confesses to having plotted against the true heir to the Iron Throne. The conflict between love and duty is one of the central themes in Martin’s work and when it comes to love of family, as Maester Aemon notes, most men are not strong enough to resist such ties. I thought of two men whose consideration of this theme intersects at the same point as one is picked to replace the other:

Barristan Selmy: “… I was chosen for the White Swords in my twenty-third year. It was all I had ever dreamed, from the moment I took sword in hand. I gave up all claim to my ancestral keep. The girl I was to wed married my cousin in my place. I had no need of land or sons, my life would be lived for the realm.

Sandor Clegane: The Hound’s scarred face was hard to read. He took a long moment to consider. “Why not? I have no lands nor wife to forsake, and who’d care if I did? The burned side of his mouth twisted. “But I warn you, I’ll say no knight’s vows.”

[Lady Green]

Could the reason that Sansa is so infactuated with the Hound be because he is the opposite from both Tyrion and LF, and in some ways even from Joffrey. Sandor is always honest with her and his motivations always seem transparent. He knows and accepts what he is.

Its also interesting that as soon as Arya spends a concentrated amount of time with him, he disappears from her prayer subconciously, again I think this is to do with his honesty and transparent motivations.

Another way the Stark sisters actually have more in common than they think.

[Silverin]

Could the reason that Sansa is so infactuated with the Hound be because he is the opposite from both Tyrion and LF, and in some ways even from Joffrey. Sandor is always honest with her and his motivations always seem transparent. He knows and accepts what he is.

Its also interesting that as soon as Arya spends a concentrated amount of time with him, he disappears from her prayer subconciously, again I think this is to do with his honesty and transparent motivations.

Another way the Stark sisters actually have more in common than they think.

I think I do, someone should find the quote that Sandor sais about liars and dogs.

But yeah him being honest with that pit filled with liars is why I think many readers care about him as well.

[Mladen]

In the recently posted GRRM interview he mentions that he like to be subtle and that he wants his readers to re-read the books so they will be able to put together these clues.

Most posters here are aware of the Sandor/ Sansa dynamic, but I it seems that it's not always noticed or just brushed over by other posters. While it seems obvious to me from the re-read that Sandor is always mentioned in Sansa chapters and he always mentions her in the Arya chapters, is it fair to say, that the Sansa and Sandor dynamic is meant to be subtle, but because we have scrutinised it in depth, it now seems glaringly obvious?

Now it would be best, just for a second, to think of Blackwater episode, and my favourite scene ever (YOU WON`T HURT ME). This is, by far, the most exposing scene for both characters. In the midst of war, in such harsh and cruel place, there is still beauty, decency and innocence. And Sandor`s response to her is even more beautiful. So, Sansa/Sandor dynamics is for me the most beautiful love story, because they`re changing each other(in the way only love can change any person). What kind of sacrifice Sansa will have to endure during her future engagement in Game, I don`t know, but Sandor`s love is at the top of my list.

[Lord Bronn Stokeworth]

Could the reason that Sansa is so infactuated with the Hound be because he is the opposite from both Tyrion and LF, and in some ways even from Joffrey. Sandor is always honest with her and his motivations always seem transparent. He knows and accepts what he is.

Its also interesting that as soon as Arya spends a concentrated amount of time with him, he disappears from her prayer subconciously, again I think this is to do with his honesty and transparent motivations.

Another way the Stark sisters actually have more in common than they think.

Sandor's relationship with the Stark sisters is interesting. Largely because his affection (taking different forms) seems to be based off of their similarities to him. Sansa represents the innocent child he was (when he met her). Arya (when they spent the most time together) represents what he became. It goes along with your last bit. Sansa and Arya are the sides of the same coin.

Sandor is actually one of their biggest ties they both share post-GoT. This is part of the reason I think he will be a vital part in their reunion.

I think I do, someone should find the quote that Sandor sais about liars and dogs.

But yeah him being honest with that pit filled with liars is why I think many readers care about him as well.

I was watching Season 2 with my sister and her boyfriend a few nights ago, and I noticed they gave this line to Littlefinger. Why do they keep giving Sandor moments with Sansa to Littlefinger? Is it just to make it less weird when he buys her from the Tyrells?

Also: 1,000 posts!

[Lady Green]

Sandor's relationship with the Stark sisters is interesting. Largely because his affection (taking different forms) seems to be based off of their similarities to him. Sansa represents the innocent child he was (when he met her). Arya (when they spent the most time together) represents what he became. It goes along with your last bit. Sansa and Arya are the sides of the same coin.

Sandor is actually one of their biggest ties they both share post-GoT. This is part of the reason I think he will be a vital part in their reunion.

Slight crackpot but Arya will go all FM to kill Sandor, he talks about Sansa and wanting to help her and Arya and Sandor go save the day like a medieval batman and robin combo.

[brashcandy]

Why do they keep giving Sandor moments with Sansa to Littlefinger? Is it just to make it less weird when he buys her from the Tyrells?

Also: 1,000 posts!

Probably; they had already stolen so much of their interaction together, why not this line too?

And congrats! You couldn't have reached it at a better place ;)

[Silverin]

I was watching Season 2 with my sister and her boyfriend a few nights ago, and I noticed they gave this line to Littlefinger. Why do they keep giving Sandor moments with Sansa to Littlefinger? Is it just to make it less weird when he buys her from the Tyrells?

Also: 1,000 posts!

Congrats on the posts!

I think the show creators simply have an unhealthy fixation on LF, and want to have as many screentime with him as possible.

[1234567]

I was watching Season 2 with my sister and her boyfriend a few nights ago, and I noticed they gave this line to Littlefinger. Why do they keep giving Sandor moments with Sansa to Littlefinger? Is it just to make it less weird when he buys her from the Tyrells?

Also: 1,000 posts!

Well done on 1,000 posts!!!Here's to 1,000 more.

Like Brash and Silverin said above, I think they want to make more of LF. Perhaps it is because, due to the Wire, the actor is better known, but it would have been nice to have some of Sansa's actual storyline and more than one brief snippet of conversation between her and Sansa. To be honest I think they've botched Sansa and Sandor's storylines horribly in the 2nd season. However from the Arya re-read, I've also noticed how incredibly badly they've botched her character development and storyline too. It's a real shame.

[Lady Lea]

Hello gals, just checking in - haven't died yet! This is the first time I've logged in in a while so I'm a bit behind but this thread is brilliant as usual. :)

Also, to be honest (and I hope I don't annoy anyone), there are people who refuse to acknowledge R+L=J so it doesn't surprise me that some people don't want to see the relationship between these two. I think the RomCom/Disney version of romance also skews what people are looking for too. So, it doesn't read like typical cliche, making it even less noticeable.

I have to agree here, as much as SanSan might annoy people I think there is definitely something in the way. I always thought the "Harry is a horcrux" theories were insanely annoying and they turned out to be true much to my chagrin :dunno:

[brashcandy]

Hi LL :) Yeah definitely "something" there. The subtlety we've noted, and Martin's cagey answers in interviews would hint to a lot more to come with this pair.

[KittensRuleBeetsDrool]

Sandor's relationship with the Stark sisters is interesting. Largely because his affection (taking different forms) seems to be based off of their similarities to him. Sansa represents the innocent child he was (when he met her). Arya (when they spent the most time together) represents what he became. It goes along with your last bit. Sansa and Arya are the sides of the same coin.

Sandor is actually one of their biggest ties they both share post-GoT. This is part of the reason I think he will be a vital part in their reunion.

I was watching Season 2 with my sister and her boyfriend a few nights ago, and I noticed they gave this line to Littlefinger. Why do they keep giving Sandor moments with Sansa to Littlefinger? Is it just to make it less weird when he buys her from the Tyrells?

Also: 1,000 posts!

1000 posts? Yay, and cheers! :cheers:

I'm sick of all the SanSan moments being given to LF, too. It makes me hate his character more, if that is possible. Though I wonder if the motivation is just that anything smacking of romance and sex between Rory McCann and Sophie Turner would gross people out given their age difference? The age difference doesn't look so bad on paper but live and in color it might give people pause.

Hello gals, just checking in - haven't died yet! This is the first time I've logged in in a while so I'm a bit behind but this thread is brilliant as usual. :)

I have to agree here, as much as SanSan might annoy people I think there is definitely something in the way. I always thought the "Harry is a horcrux" theories were insanely annoying and they turned out to be true much to my chagrin :dunno:

I agree. No series is going to be without something annoying. (BTW I was chagrined to find out about Harry the Horcrux too. And I don't especially like Harry/Ginny - I was pulling for him to wind up with Luna. But oh well, on the whole I love the series, so I won't complain too much!)

And yes, there is something there. I also am looking forward to what will happen with these two. I will repeat what I and others have pointed out - Sandor is so far the only man at all "partnered" with Sansa that wants her for herself. Not for her claim or a resemblance to her mother, but he wants Sansa, the young woman. Whoever Sansa winds up with, or even if she winds up single like Good Queen Bess, she has had someone love her just for her. Sandor doesn't give a toot about her claim to Winterfell (as far as we know).

[Elba the Intoner]

OMG thank you KRBD. Now I know I am not the only who didn't like Harry with Ginny. On the other hand, I always knew that Ron and Hermione would get together because it was set up from the very beginning and built up as the story went along - just like with Sandor and Sansa. It's been there right from the very beginning.

And don't even get me started on the show giving all the best Hound lines to LF!! Gah! And not only that but what was the purpose of having Sansa save Dontos on the show if LF just blurts out to her in the end that he will help her?!! Anyway, the line that I think Silverin was thinking of is "Take a look around you, they're all liars here and every one better than you." It's what Sandor says to her when he walks Sansa back to her room after running into her on the Serpentine steps.

Lady Lea welcome back and congrats on 1000 posts Lord Bronn!

[Raksha the Demon]

I can only think that perhaps the TV show's producers/directors/writers think that Sansa is not a fan favorite; so they only give a bare minimum of time to her development. It annoys me no end that Ros and Talisa get any screen time while they've given Sandor's lines to Littlefinger and truncated that intense Sansa/Sandor scene during the Blackwater beyond recognition. I can't believe that TV-Sansa never touched TV-Sandor's face, because that was such a crucial moment in both characters' development....

GRRM has forecast more than one direction for Sansa - is she a wolf or a bird, is her destiny in Winterfell or in the Eyrie, will she become the younger Queen of Cersei's fears or end up happily living with a socially lesser man in obscurity? Or will she die in King's Landing by Ilyn Payne's axe? I think that Sansa will see Sandor again, and their future interaction will confound our expectations, for better or worse.

[Le Cygne]

Some book context, recent author interviews:

GRRM, 2012, after season 2:

Interviewer 1: "I'm a big fan of the Hound, myself, actually…"

GRRM: "I do know there's all these people out there, who are as they call themselves the SanSan fans, who want to see Sandor and Sansa get together in the end."

Interviewer 2: "The TV show has played with that a little, probably stoked those fires, I would think."

GRRM: "Well sure, and I've played with it in the books, there's something there, but it's still interesting to see how many people have responded to it."

Interviewer 1: "I'm not going to say that hasn't crossed my mind."

GRRM, 2011:

"One of the reasons I wanted to do this with HBO is that I wanted to keep the sex," he admitted. "We had some real problems because Dany is only 13 in the books, and that’s based on medieval history. They didn’t have this concept of adolescence or the teenage years. You were a child or you were an adult. And the onset of sexual maturity meant you were an adult. So I reflected that in the books."

But that's a problem for a TV show.

"So we ended up with a 22-year-old portraying an 18-year-old, instead of an 18-year-old portraying a 13-year-old," George said. "If we decided to lose the sex we could have kept the original ages. And once you change the age of one character you have to change the ages of all the characters, and change the date of the war [that dethroned the Mad King]."

"The fact we made all these changes indicates how important we thought sex was."

http://www.okmagazin...mes-thrones-hbo

GRRM, 2011:

The other big decision we had to make to keep all that material was the ages of the characters. In the books, Dany is 13 years old when all of this begins. And I was drawing… although my books are fantasy, not historical fiction in the strict sense, they occur in an imaginary world and imaginary kingdoms, they're very heavily based on real history. And of course, I've done a ton of research about real medieval history. And basically in the middle ages, they did not have our concept of adolescence, of this sort of these sort of teenage years in between where we're kind of adults, but not adults, and we have different ages, where we're allowed to vote at this age, and we're allowed to go to war and die at a different age, and we're allowed to drink at another age, and have sex at a different age, depending on which state we're in, all of that stuff.

They had child and adult. And the difference between them was the onset of sexual maturity.

And we still have in our cultures, remnants of this older structure in our ceremonies, the Jewish bar mitzvah, the Catholic confirmation ceremony, which I went through at 13, reaffirming as an adult the vows made for me by my godparents at baptism. The Catholics once considered 13 adulthood… These things are just remnants now, but they weren't remnants in the middle ages, and they're not in the books. They had a very different way of looking at things. So I was using that based on historical precedent.

But there was no way that was going to fly in our present environment. If we had cast a 13 year old Dany, there could have been no sexual stuff whatsoever with her. And even if we had cast a 17 year old actress playing a 13 year old, there are some really stringent laws in the UK, you can't do that, even if you have an actress who is past the age of consent playing someone who is under the age of consent, you cannot have a sexual situation... So we have a 22 year old actress playing a 17 year old Dany, instead of a 17 year old actress playing a 13 year old Dany, and we did that deliberately so we could include this material. So I think that speaks to the fact that we did think it was necessary to the story we wanted to tell...

I added a transcript...

[Raksha the Demon]

TV-Sandor did not seem much like book-Sandor to me, except in height. It's as if the TV show creators decided that the Sandor/Sansa relationship mattered so little that they could portray as little of it as possible. TV-Sansa is more chummy with TV-Shae, Seven Save Us.

Of course, the TV show creators have also been willing to mess up other characters and relationships - Robb/Talisa instead of the more credible Robb/Jeyne in the book; and Shae apparently really being in love with Tyrion. Then there's the out-of-the-blue comradeship of Tywin and Disguised Arya; which did work initially (due to two fine actors) but totally lost me when Tywin Lannister discussed his heir's childhood reading problems with a serving girl! :ack:

The "SanSan" relationship is bound to bother some people; I can see that on the board. I don't see it as a definite romantic future bond for the characters, not unless Sandor changes and grows up and loses the alcoholism, to say the very least and maybe not even then; but it's probably a lot for some readers to swallow - a bitter warrior who has killed a child (albeit on a queen's orders) having a romantic, quasi-sexual relationship with an 11-12-year-old girl? At least TV-Sansa is older. But Sansa has more abrasive, less positive relationships when she becomes entangled first with Tyrion and then Littlefinger...

[Le Cygne]

I probably shouldn't have commented... I don't see it in the same context that you do.

[1234567]

@ Rashka the Demon

The Tywin / Arya scenes were wonderfully acted, but they really hurt the development of both characters. Just doing from doing the Arya re-read, it is amazing to see how the march to Harrenhal and Arya's experiences there are some of the most terrifying and profound moments for her character arc and yet in the TV Show they made it in to, a Ooooooo will Gendry die moment and isn't Tywin actually a misunderstood guy who is buddy buddy with those beneath him and see it's not all that bad for Arya there. No Weasel Soup, is a real bloody travesty. IMHO at least.

I've read that Charles Dance won't read the books until his part in the series is over, that may work on other projects, but personally I think it's done a real disservice to Tywin in the series.