[book spoilers] Is Sansa that stupid

[Colonel Green]

I'm not a fan of Book Sansa and I don't think Show Sansa is generally much dumber than she is depicted in the books, but it is beyond idiotic that she would think her family would be coming to her wedding...that's just lazy/bad attention to detail on the part of the writers. Joff has been telling her he's going to put her brother's head on a spike since he killed her father, she's been apologizing for her 'traitor brother' who is still AT WAR agains the Lannisters so neither Book Sansa or Show Sansa should realistically be so stupid as to think for a second that her remaining family would be invited to the wedding or even want them there because she would know that if they set foot in LK Joff and Cersei would have them clapped in irons and executed.

I think she was imagining her wedding in Highgarden, so they wouldn't be going to King's Landing, though that's still enemy territory (I suppose it would be theoretically possible to arrange a diplomatic truce or something like that, though I'm not sure why they'd bother).

It's a very stupid line, all the same. Sansa in the books was sheltered, and taken in by the image of the Tyrells a bit (though given the circumstances, I think most people would), but she was never that off-base at that stage in the game. If they're trying to convey that she'd very giddy about the idea of escaping King's Landing to Highgarden (which we was in the books), there are a million better ways to write that line.

[Cas Stark]

I think she was imagining her wedding in Highgarden, so they wouldn't be going to King's Landing, though that's still enemy territory (I suppose it would be theoretically possible to arrange a diplomatic truce or something like that, though I'm not sure why they'd bother).

It's a very stupid line, all the same. Sansa in the books was sheltered, and taken in by the image of the Tyrells a bit (though given the circumstances, I think most people would), but she was never that off-base at that stage in the game. If they're trying to convey that she'd very giddy about the idea of escaping King's Landing to Highgarden (which we was in the books), there are a million better ways to write that line.

Okay, yes, I stand corrected, her wedding would have been in Highgarden, making it a little less stupid to think her family would be allowed to come...but it would have been a lot better if they had written the line that way to remind the audience of same...and very simple...'do you think they'll let my family come to Highgarden for the wedding' would have been much better and its a single word change, a little further reworking of the line and it could have even appeared she was using some strategic thinking.

[WardenOfTheNerds]

Yeah that's true actually, if she said "Since the wedding is in Highgarden, do you think they will arrange for my family to come" or sthg like that it would be plausible.

[Ser Cookie Monster]

I think it would've been better if she said "Oh, I wish my family could come to my wedding". With a very sad look and maybe her voice cracking up a little. God that would've broken my heart :bawl: . But "Will they let me invite my family?" *facepalm*

[WardenOfTheNerds]

I think it would've been better if she said "Oh, I wish my family could come to my wedding". With a very sad look and maybe her voice cracking up a little. God that would've broken my heart :bawl: . But "Will they let me invite my family?" *facepalm*

Actually Shae looked at her in a way that suggested she was about to facepalm :D

[Cas Stark]

or they could have had her sort of ask and then answer herself....sort of catch herself w/ the realization it wouldnt happen. that would have shown both sides---dreamy sansa and more realistic sansa. asking twice...dumb

[Master Forel's Fro]

Sansa is prettier than Lollys so people want to overlook how "dumb" she it.

[TheKitttenGuard]

Since Ned got his head cut-off Sansa already has to state her family are traitors. No matter the circumstance she has to state her family are traitors.

She now see there could be a way out of KL. The scenes was the first time she spoke of her family without a need to follow-up with a denouncement, an important part of the scene that does not seem to register here. It was a wishful hope that could be clinging to her ideas before coming to KL.

[I love Cersei]

It's not dumbness.

I don't get why people come down so hard on characters like Sansa, or as someone upthread mentioned, Andrea from The Walking Dead. They are girls in horrific situations who maybe don't have the psychological capacity to deal with all the utter crap going on around them. But as human beings, we were designed to survive, both psychically and mentally, through every means necessary. When you get a cut, your body reacts so that a scab forms and you don't get an infection and die, or bleed out. How weird and random is that? The mind works in the same way. When your mind is hurt, it will do anything possible to repair itself, even if it has to remove you from the situation you are in to protect you from harm. This is also how Dissosiative Identity Disorder (aka, multiple personalities) develops. Your mind will do anything to protect you from mental harm. Including denial.

Here's an example: I daydream all day. It's not a hobby and it's not something I do on purpose. But I have to deal with a lot of nasty stuff in my life (abusive family, depression, poverty, lack of a future and friends) and daydreaming is my mind's way of protecting me from all those nasty things.

Just like Arya is dealing with her situation by being completely angry at everyone, Sansa is dealing with hers by disappearing into a world where she can find comfort in the idea, or daydream, that she can still have a pretty life, where there are no monsters and there's no abuse and everything is perfect. She's away from her family, she's being abused by Joffrey, she's being manipulated by everyone, she's a hostage, she watched her father get beheaded, and then she was forced to look at her father's head on a pike, she could die any day, she has no idea if she'll ever even see another sunset. And she knows all these things. But if she stops and sits down and starts to think about them, she'll completely collapse. So it's healthier for her if she just falls in love with the idea of Highgarden, better days, a handsome husband like Loras, pretty dresses and flowers, and yes, the thought that maybe, just maybe, she'll see her family again and they'll all be happy.

That is NOT stupidity. Sansa is not stupid. Nor was Andrea. People like them are real and they're not stupid or weak. They just have different defense and coping mechanisms.

Personally, I find Sansa rather fascinating. If I was a therapist I'd rather have her as a patient than, say, Jon Snow. Most of the other characters are pretty straight forward or seem able to deal with their problems straight on. Sansa, on the other hand, I find utterly magnificent in the way she deals with trauma. She doesn't become a killer. She deals with her traumas by making herself believe that the world around her can still be a fairy tale. Andrea did the same thing on The Walking Dead. It's not stupid. It shows a survivalist personality, intelligence, and extreme creativity. It's also both fascinating and really sad.

I love Sansa. I just wanna give her a big hug. And people who call her stupid are maybe stupid themselves, because they are completely missing the depth of her character.

Thank you for that high value post. It expresses what I thought as well. Given all that happened to Sansa, it's a wonder she's still sane.

People tend to forget she's still a child, and grew up protected.

[white wolfpack]

It seems to me that people tend to read things into all the book characters that they want to see, and Sansa especially. I've never been a fan, and after reading a 2nd time and trying to see what other people see, I probably liked her less. The problem I have with her is that in the writing we are given very little of her own internal dialogue so you do have to read more into what she's thinking. Other characters will sit there and think "I really messed that up, I'm going to be smarter next time", but we don't get much of that with Sansa.

So it's been interesting to me that they seem to be portraying her as dumb in the show. "Lemon cakes are my favorite" was just a classic line. I feel like in the show they need to be a little less subtle and hit you over the head with stuff a bit more. I'm pretty convinced that she's just not the sharpest tack in the drawer. Not that being smart is everything in life or that it would make her a bad person (if she was a real person). But she's just not going to be a character I'm that into. Marrying her to Tyrion is the most delicious sort of irony. Looking forward to watching that play out.

[Janicia]

Sansa was having an unguarded moment with somebody she considers a friend. She's dreamed about her wedding to a dashing lord for years. The Tyrells have treated Sansa with dignity, as if she wasn't a prisoner. and have talked about her family with respect. The wedding would be off in Highgarden. The Tyrells presented her with the illusion of a choice about the wedding. It is entirely reasonable for Sansa to be daydreaming that her family would be allowed to come.

[Ser Cookie Monster]

It's not dumbness.

I don't get why people come down so hard on characters like Sansa, or as someone upthread mentioned, Andrea from The Walking Dead. They are girls in horrific situations who maybe don't have the psychological capacity to deal with all the utter crap going on around them. But as human beings, we were designed to survive, both psychically and mentally, through every means necessary. When you get a cut, your body reacts so that a scab forms and you don't get an infection and die, or bleed out. How weird and random is that? The mind works in the same way. When your mind is hurt, it will do anything possible to repair itself, even if it has to remove you from the situation you are in to protect you from harm. This is also how Dissosiative Identity Disorder (aka, multiple personalities) develops. Your mind will do anything to protect you from mental harm. Including denial.

Here's an example: I daydream all day. It's not a hobby and it's not something I do on purpose. But I have to deal with a lot of nasty stuff in my life (abusive family, depression, poverty, lack of a future and friends) and daydreaming is my mind's way of protecting me from all those nasty things.

Just like Arya is dealing with her situation by being completely angry at everyone, Sansa is dealing with hers by disappearing into a world where she can find comfort in the idea, or daydream, that she can still have a pretty life, where there are no monsters and there's no abuse and everything is perfect. She's away from her family, she's being abused by Joffrey, she's being manipulated by everyone, she's a hostage, she watched her father get beheaded, and then she was forced to look at her father's head on a pike, she could die any day, she has no idea if she'll ever even see another sunset. And she knows all these things. But if she stops and sits down and starts to think about them, she'll completely collapse. So it's healthier for her if she just falls in love with the idea of Highgarden, better days, a handsome husband like Loras, pretty dresses and flowers, and yes, the thought that maybe, just maybe, she'll see her family again and they'll all be happy.

That is NOT stupidity. Sansa is not stupid. Nor was Andrea. People like them are real and they're not stupid or weak. They just have different defense and coping mechanisms.

Personally, I find Sansa rather fascinating. If I was a therapist I'd rather have her as a patient than, say, Jon Snow. Most of the other characters are pretty straight forward or seem able to deal with their problems straight on. Sansa, on the other hand, I find utterly magnificent in the way she deals with trauma. She doesn't become a killer. She deals with her traumas by making herself believe that the world around her can still be a fairy tale. Andrea did the same thing on The Walking Dead. It's not stupid. It shows a survivalist personality, intelligence, and extreme creativity. It's also both fascinating and really sad.

I love Sansa. I just wanna give her a big hug. And people who call her stupid are maybe stupid themselves, because they are completely missing the depth of her character.

I agree with you about Sansa. She is one of my favorite characters. I think her character is very deep, and I find her completely fascinating. Yes, Sansa many times sings songs, daydreams, denies things, and changes her reality because her life sucks. Who can blame her? But even she knows that there are things she CANNOT change, or deny, and she HAS to accept. She knows the situation (war). She wishes she could see her family, but she never asks. Even she knows some things are not possible. I don't think she is stupid or dumb, she is actually very smart, she is just naive.

My problem is that she has been dumbed down in the show IMO, and this line in particular was the worst. I don't like that at all.

[Colonel Green]

So it's been interesting to me that they seem to be portraying her as dumb in the show.

I don't think that's really what they're going for, in general. Other characters this season get similar moments (Talisa not knowing Winterfell's location on map last episode, for instance; or Tyrion's seeming to think that Sansa was just going to get to marry whoever she wanted).

Part of the problem is that without internal dialogue you don't get the same sense of characters' evaluating their surroundings, which, particularly in books 2 and 3, is most of what Sansa does. Ned had the same problem in season 1, I think -- the "stupid Ned Stark" meme developed in part because you don't get to see that Ned's assessments of the other King's Landing political actors weren't as naively trusting as it comes across on screen.

This season, for instance, the scene in episode 2 where Sansa contemplates speaking openly about Joffrey to the Tyrells was pretty well-done, but the process by which Sansa brought herself to the point of saying anything was much harder than it came across onscreen (likewise, the concept of King's Landing as a kind of Orwellian police state where every conversation might be overheard has been seriously relaxed on the show to allow for more dialogue, which also detracts).

[Mammothsbane]

It's not dumbness.

I don't get why people come down so hard on characters like Sansa, or as someone upthread mentioned, Andrea from The Walking Dead. They are girls in horrific situations who maybe don't have the psychological capacity to deal with all the utter crap going on around them. But as human beings, we were designed to survive, both psychically and mentally, through every means necessary. When you get a cut, your body reacts so that a scab forms and you don't get an infection and die, or bleed out. How weird and random is that? The mind works in the same way. When your mind is hurt, it will do anything possible to repair itself, even if it has to remove you from the situation you are in to protect you from harm. This is also how Dissosiative Identity Disorder (aka, multiple personalities) develops. Your mind will do anything to protect you from mental harm. Including denial.

Here's an example: I daydream all day. It's not a hobby and it's not something I do on purpose. But I have to deal with a lot of nasty stuff in my life (abusive family, depression, poverty, lack of a future and friends) and daydreaming is my mind's way of protecting me from all those nasty things.

Just like Arya is dealing with her situation by being completely angry at everyone, Sansa is dealing with hers by disappearing into a world where she can find comfort in the idea, or daydream, that she can still have a pretty life, where there are no monsters and there's no abuse and everything is perfect. She's away from her family, she's being abused by Joffrey, she's being manipulated by everyone, she's a hostage, she watched her father get beheaded, and then she was forced to look at her father's head on a pike, she could die any day, she has no idea if she'll ever even see another sunset. And she knows all these things. But if she stops and sits down and starts to think about them, she'll completely collapse. So it's healthier for her if she just falls in love with the idea of Highgarden, better days, a handsome husband like Loras, pretty dresses and flowers, and yes, the thought that maybe, just maybe, she'll see her family again and they'll all be happy.

That is NOT stupidity. Sansa is not stupid. Nor was Andrea. People like them are real and they're not stupid or weak. They just have different defense and coping mechanisms.

Personally, I find Sansa rather fascinating. If I was a therapist I'd rather have her as a patient than, say, Jon Snow. Most of the other characters are pretty straight forward or seem able to deal with their problems straight on. Sansa, on the other hand, I find utterly magnificent in the way she deals with trauma. She doesn't become a killer. She deals with her traumas by making herself believe that the world around her can still be a fairy tale. Andrea did the same thing on The Walking Dead. It's not stupid. It shows a survivalist personality, intelligence, and extreme creativity. It's also both fascinating and really sad.

I love Sansa. I just wanna give her a big hug. And people who call her stupid are maybe stupid themselves, because they are completely missing the depth of her character.

I agree with most of this, however her asking if her family will be at the wedding was one of the silliest lines of dialogue on the entire show.

[Minsc]

I don't think that's really what they're going for, in general. Other characters this season get similar moments (Talisa not knowing Winterfell's location on map last episode, for instance; or Tyrion's seeming to think that Sansa was just going to get to marry whoever she wanted).

That is fair almost everyone is an idiot on the show, LF plans are so out in the open that even a prostitute can figure he is up to something, Varys cannot see a listing for two beds on a ship's manifesto, the QOT needs to be told of the political worth of Sansa, Tywin openly threatens his only ally, Catelyn releases Jaime just because not out of grief, Robb breaks his word just because not out sacrificing his honor for another, etc.

[Silverx2]

Sansa's not stupid at all, but the writers have a lot to answer for this season. That line about her family coming to the wedding just made me cringe. Honestly writers, nobody can be that dumb.

Really?

sansa told cersei they were leaving the capital in secret, because she didnt want to leave joffrey. Rating on the stupid scale 10 out of 10

during the battle of the blackwater the hound offers to take her to winterfel and get the hell out of kings landing. up until this point the only person who has truely gone out of their way to prevent her from being abused. She said uhh nah, ill take my chances with some dude i've never met. Rating on the stupid scale 9 out of 10

Sansa allowed herself to be married to tyrion, thus making him Lord of winterfel once robb is killed rating on the stupid scale 9 out of 10

After littlefinger killed her insane aunt and lord regent of the vale, she lied to the other lords in order to give littlefinger control of the entire vale instead of telling the truth, and using her friendship with sweet robin. stupid scale survey sayssssssssss 8 out of 10

Its amazing sansa is still alive, but most of that has to do with her still having some use as a pawn, which people have learned how easy of a piece she is to move.

[Colonel Green]

sansa told cersei they were leaving the capital in secret, because she didnt want to leave joffrey. Rating on the stupid scale 10 out of 10

Having no idea what was going on, she sought the help of somebody she thought (and was allowed by others, including her father, to think) was her friend.

during the battle of the blackwater the hound offers to take her to winterfel and get the hell out of kings landing. up until this point the only person who has truely gone out of their way to prevent her from being abused. She said uhh nah, ill take my chances with some dude i've never met. Rating on the stupid scale 9 out of 10

Er, actually, the Hound mostly just stands around while she gets abused. All the same, taking her chances with Stannis, who was clearly winning when she declined to leave, over running off with one guy of questionable trustworthiness to cross hundreds of miles of war zone, is not that stupid (in the books, her reasoning was better still, since she had her own escape plan and the Hound was much more violent and creepy towards her).

Sansa allowed herself to be married to tyrion, thus making him Lord of winterfel once robb is killed rating on the stupid scale 9 out of 10

Stupid in what sense? It's not stupid at all from the perspective of her trying to survive, since the Lannisters would just abuse her until she did what they said, or else kill her.

After littlefinger killed her insane aunt and lord regent of the vale, she lied to the other lords in order to give littlefinger control of the entire vale instead of telling the truth, and using her friendship with sweet robin. stupid scale survey sayssssssssss 8 out of 10

Said aunt having just tried to kill her, for starters. Why would she reveal herself to the lords declarant, which would immediately put them in the position of either championing her against the Iron Throne (at the height of its power) or turning her over to the Iron Throne to buy the peace, when she has no idea what they would do?

[Cas Stark]

There is no excuse for Sansa going to to Cersei, after Cersei had ordered her wolf killed other than pure stupidity, never mind she should also by that time have figured out...like her sister had...that Joff was a jerk. It should have been obvious to even the dumbest girl in Westeros that the Queen was no friend to her or your family. She can't be given a pass on this like it made any sense.

[Colonel Green]

I do actually think that that's one of Martin's few characterization choices that doesn't completely work. But Sansa evidently had been brought up to believe in the idea of the queen (by virtue of office) as inherently good (which I don't quite get either, since her parents both hate the Lannisters; you would think they'd have passed on convictions like that).

[Mav Of The Canals]

Sansa allowed herself to be married to tyrion, thus making him Lord of winterfel once robb is killed rating on the stupid scale 9 out of 10

Really? Out of all the examples to point out Sansa's stupidity you chose this? Come on, she was forced and was threaten to get beaten so what could she do? If she refused, the Lannisters would just make sure she would marry Tyrion anyway, in less than pleasant methods.