Sansa and birds: a false lead?

[Roose on the Loose]

BR likes to spy with black animals like balerion or Mormont's raven. But 2 people having a private conversation might shoo a crow or an alley cat out of repulsion. I think a dove or a sparrow could get a lot closer.

[lady jellybean]

Has sansa had any warging dreams like bran, jon or arya? I ask cuz I rush through her chapters and I would like to know if I missed them.

[Mithras]

There is no evidence of Sansa having warg dreams or consciously embracing her gift. She was deprived of Lady for a long time.

[EatCrow]

The wiki tells us that the bond between warg and wolf is like a marriage: »[...]one has to forge a lasting bond, much like a marriage. A man might befriend a wolf, even break a wolf, but no man could truly tame a wolf.« http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Warg (This is referenced to Haggon in the ADWD Prologue but I can't look it up atm.) I've always suspected that Sansa had quite a strong bond with Lady as Lady mimicked Sansa's behaviour to an almost unnatural degree (unnatural for direwolves) and Sansa fell in love with a "beast" which was very surprising for her character. Based on this assumption it must have hurt Sansa fundamentally when Ned killed Lady. She was too much of a Lady herself to let all the hurt show (and what we see could be a stubborn, spoiled child) but I would assume that there's a lot more lingering beneath the surface.

Birds not only resemble freedom they usually have the "fly away from pain/bad things" component associated to them. For Bran, warging ravens and being able to fly provides relief from his crippled status and the wiki says: »Birds are very tempting, but a warg may soon lose contact to the mundane things of earth, and want only to fly.« So there is an inherent temptation to warg a bird and for the caged and hurt Sansa it may offer a lot of relief to warg birds.

You make a very interesting point about the marriage. I know this is off topic maybe, maybe not. But Sandor is always referring to her as little bird, he gave her his cloak twice, which symbolizes marriage. So it could be possible that she did warg him o the night of BW. We don't know the extent of her powers. Everyone says "no one can warg people; only Bran, but Arya has warged a cat and wargs into nymeria from another continent. I don't have a defined theory on this but there's something there.

[chrisdaw]

Sandor's reasoning for calling her a little bird is the crux of the label. She watches, listens, learns and repeats. She never asked to play, but they made her watch and listen and she learnt, now she will do what is her nature, repeat.

Her arc ends in escaping the cycle, not in the ultimate victory she will achieve playing the game, but by escaping the game.

[Facebookless Man]

hey I have a crackpot: Sansa wargs a bird and stays there, escaping reality once and for all.

[Grail King]

hey I have a crackpot: Sansa wargs a bird and stays there, escaping reality once and for all.

Not so crackpot, it's been said in the book that if in a bird you want to stay there because of the feeling of freedom it gives.

[Facebookless Man]

Well yeah that's where I got the idea. Some think Varamyr's chapter was to prepare us to jon living on in ghost but it might have been about Sansa. It's also pretty fitting for her character.

But I don't really believe it.

[Isobel Harper]

Outside of the wolf connection from her Stark blood, Sansa has been associated with (through books and show) quite a few winged creatures.

After Ned's death, we see a lot of dragonfly imagery with Sansa. She wears them as jewelry constantly, and it's fitting considering that dragonflies symbolize the following:

• The opening of one's eyes - Sansa had a very rude awakening to how the world (and the Lannisters) operate

Defeat of self-created illusions - Sansa's ideas of knights and chivalry, her "beloved" Joffrey, etc. are all put down

Maturity and depth of character - Sansa took a lesson in growing up the hard way, and after GoT, we're presented with a far more mature and changing Sansa

Power and Poise - Courtesy is a Lady's armor, and "my skin has changed from porcelain, to ivory, to steel". Sansa is earning her black belt it politeness judo.

Good point. The importance of Sansa's arc consists of her as growing from passive to a pacifist. "If I'm ever queen, I will make them love me."

• Focus on living 'in' the moment - Which is what Sansa has to do to survive, both in the Vale and in KL.

As Zunni commented on in his essay on Sansa and Harrenhal, Sansa's flight from KL leads the smallfolk to comment that she turned into a wolf with bat wings and flew away. Now, this could just be interesting imagery with no other meaning, but it still alludes to Sansa's ties to Harrenhal and house Whent through her mother's side. House Whent's "totem" is the bat, and the bat imagery was specifically used in reference to Sansa fleeing with LF and arriving in the Vale.

• Journeying - Well, that's pretty self-explanatory

Rebirth - Again, self-explanatory, with Sansa going from a Stark to a Stone. Also with her going from a person with no power or agency to someone practically running the day-to-day of the Vale

Illusion - Sansa becomes Alayne

Inner Depth - I think we can argue that Sansa's internal growth and her growing understanding of politicking is kicked into a much higher degree here

Intuition - Again, her flight and following stay at the Vale shows her intuition growing to a large degree. "Lies and arbor gold."

Then there's the biggest comparison, which is Sansa constantly being compared to "little bird" or, I believe in some examples, "little dove." It's already been covered above that birds stand for freedom, and I still think a large part of Sansa's arc is her move toward freedom. House Arryn's "totem" is an eagle. Harrold Hardyng has his prized birds. Most of the birds associated with the Vale, that we've seen, are associated with powerful birds and freedom. We have a "caged bird" essentially moved from a lion's nest of thorns to a territory associated with flight and freedom. I'd say that's a pretty powerful hint, at the least, that Sansa's journey is going to be of her escaping her cage.

Just a (very) little add, but also during her time in KL, Sansa often seems to be wearing "dove gray," another symbolism that I found to be rather stark (pun not intended).

Even if she's a "little bird" and not a hawk or an eagle, that doesn't mean she can't be deadly. Look at the shrike (conveniently House Stark colored at that).

As for skin-changing, unless she manages to warg Nymeria over in the Riverlands, if Sansa's going to come into her abilities at all, it would about have to be something with wings. She's simply surrounded by too much winged creature imagery for me to buy it being something else.

[LongRider]

oh, I don't know bumps, I think neither the uselessnes nor the tartiness of Sansa has been fully explored on the forum. I know this from an extensive search query that I performed, which I named "glancing at the first page of the general forum".

I definitely think there needs to be a rethinking Sansa the tart thread, without it, I find the forum insufficiently informative.

anyhooo.... agree on the bird analysis; I guess my addition would be that the Eyrie itself, and the sigil of house Arryn (it's a falcon, not an eagle, I checked) is a symbol, if not a more obvious/hamhanded one than her sentiment toward birds of prey she observes, of where Sansa's transformation is headed.

In the high nest of the falcon, little birds become predators.

Falcons prey on other birds. Like mockingbirds.

:excl:

[LongRider]

Sandor's reasoning for calling her a little bird is the crux of the label. She watches, listens, learns and repeats. She never asked to play, but they made her watch and listen and she learnt, now she will do what is her nature, repeat.

Her arc ends in escaping the cycle, not in the ultimate victory she will achieve playing the game, but by escaping the game.

:agree: