Sansa's Sense of Family

[Sansa_Stark]

At that point she tended not to judge people as a group and saw Jaime as the wicked Uncle. She had a ridiculous crush on Joff, but that can be a blinding emotion at that age.

As for disobeying her father, her siblings disobeyed their parents repeatedly. Bran was told not to climb, Arya was not meant to go off and play with Mycah etc. There was no punishment for disobedience on down the Kings Road or in KL. Sansa was actually covering for Arya on the day of the Trident incident because Arya had decided she wasn't going to bother with an invite from the Queen. Ned and Cat prepared neither daughter well for the change in lifestyle they were to experience.

The first point is just Sansa justifying a bad idea. Jaime is the queen's twin brother, of course they are loyal to each other. I'm sure we've seen this in WF right? How Jaime and Cersei stayed behind together during the hunt. She should know they are close. Also, she knows Cersei is awful because she tries to justify Joff and that it was Cersei and Arya who killed Lady or something.

The second point? Those are completely different and you know it. It wasn't just a child disobeying their parent. That's just simplifying things.

When people say things like "Ned killed himself" are they deliberately ignoring the fact that Cersei and Varys wanted him alive and he didn't die until he confessed in front of thousands of people?

My reasoning for asking if Sansa could have escaped is that Ned probably would not have died if she did.

Joff clearly wanted a confession, he says as much to Sansa and Cersei had a hard time calling off Ned's execution in front of like, thousands of people.

And I genuinely want an answer to this question. You seem well spoken, but I disagree with your logic.

[1234567]

Nope, she sure doesnt. The reason why...

This. Defense mechanism in her own head. If Sansa continuously thought of all the shit thats happened to her in the course of the last 2 or so years, she'd go barking. Sansa was so depressed at one point, she thought of killing herself.

Its a very real flaw she has (and i think its stupid to ignore it) but its also one that helped her carry on. Just like Arya's anger and lust for vengeance is a flaw but also aided her in her own quest.

This stupid dance around the maypole time and again is getting old..

In fact she has arguably thought of suicide twice: once after her father's death and after her marriage to Tyrion, when wondering if the escape plan will work she does think that her torment will end one way or another. Not a certain reference, but it is certainly there as an adaptation. Also spot on about going barking. Both Arya and Sansa have been through so much, that they are having to shut down emotionally to an extent, just to stay sane.

The first point is just Sansa justifying a bad idea. Jaime is the queen's twin brother, of course they are loyal to each other. I'm sure we've seen this in WF right? How Jaime and Cersei stayed behind together during the hunt. She should know they are close. Also, she knows Cersei is awful because she tries to justify Joff and that it was Cersei and Arya who killed Lady or something.

The second point? Those are completely different and you know it. It wasn't just a child disobeying their parent. That's just simplifying things.

And I genuinely want an answer to this question. You seem well spoken, but I disagree with your logic.

I don't know how much Sansa would have been aware of the Queen and Jaime's relationship to be honest. We know about it, but would she have seen?

Personally I do think they are they same. We know the situation was more dangerous because of the plot. Sansa did not. Also the ramifications of Bran disobeying were being defenestrated, nearly assasinated, Tyrion being captured by Cat etc, Arya disobeying has the chain effect of Mycah and Lady's Death and Sansa disobeying led to her being captured. None of the children forsaw the terrible consequences of disobediance and in each case it was a trigger to a terrible event, but it is not their fault. At no point did they intend for anything bad to happen. Children disobey their parents.

[The Sleeper]

I acknowledge that detachment can be very problematic when it becomes the default condition-- dulling emotion to inhuman levels or failing to ever acknowledge culpability is not a good thing. Just for clarification, though, are you seeing her failure to connect her actions in going to Cersei to Ned's demise, and the resultant lack of guilt over this as a negative?

While I've noticed Sansa's compartmentalization, I haven't yet found it troublesome or disproportionate. I think all of the Stark kids have been swallowing a lot emotion and detaching variously, and I tend to read this as coping. I don't find her extraordinary from her siblings in this-- is there something specific that's already happened to put your hackles up?

I think it is the same "force" that makes her remember Sandor kissed her. In a sense it is the opposite of what Syrio taught Arya. Sansa shapes her perceptions and even her memories to her expectations, And I mentioned Ned's case as an example. I see it pretty much everywhere. Currently on her thoughts on LF and Robert Arryn. Bran exhibits it to a degree, he convinces himself that Hodor doesn't midn warging him. Arya isn't like that. She just accepts what is happening and grows harder. It will be interesting to see her reaction to LF's gift. Her expressed desire as of AFFC is to be left in peace, which is both understandable and indicative.

Whether it is good or bad depends on the context. It has helped her survive and kept her wits about her and if she is to become a player this is the best sign. In my experience good manipulators, deceive themselves first. If you consider it in terms of character traits, no, it's not one I appreciate.

[The Sleeper]

Given the fact he gave Cersei the option of running when he found out it was Jaime who was responsible for trying to kill Bran, it would have been unlikely to have erupted into war. Ned would at most have gone home. Just like he did when Robert did nothing when the Targ children were murdered.

He worshipped Robert and would not have lifted a finger against him. Even after Robert is injured, but still in a position to do something about Cersei etc, Ned doesn't tell him the truth to spare his feelings. Ned seemed to care more about Robert this own children.

All this is speculative of course.

Everything has it limits. If Robert did nothing while he knew Ned's children were being attacked or harmed, that would have been it. If anything Ned would have felt more betrayed by Robert. Ned found out about what really happened with Bran much later. When asked to make peace with the Lannnisters the reason he gives for refusing is what they did to his son. And Arya (or Sansa for that matter) being hurt right in front of his face? I don't see it. Ned would go berserk.

[Annara Snow]

2) Sansa's unwillingness to stand up and tell the truth after the incident in which Joffrey attacked Arya, instead copping out and saying "it all happened so fast", got both Lady and Mycah killed.

As others have already pointed out, it had nothing to do with Mycah being killed.

3) I'm not saying she never thinks about family. She occasionally thinks about her mother, Robb, Bran and Rickon. She doesn't think about her father and what happened to him.

A Game of Thrones:

"In the tower room at the heart of Maegor’s Holdfast, Sansa

gave herself to the darkness.

She drew the curtains around her bed, slept, woke weeping,

and slept again. When she could not sleep she lay under her

blankets shivering with grief. Servants came and went,

bringing meals, but the sight of food was more than she

could bear. The dishes piled up on the table beneath her

window, untouched and spoiling, until the servants took them

away again.

Sometimes her sleep was leaden and dreamless, and she

woke from it more tired than when she had closed her eyes.

Yet those were the best times, for when she dreamed, she

dreamed of Father. Waking or sleeping, she saw him, saw

the gold cloaks fling him down, saw Ser Ilyn striding forward,

unsheathing Ice from the scabbard on his back, saw the

moment... the moment when... she had wanted to look away,

she had wanted to, her legs had gone out from under her and

she had fallen to her knees, yet somehow she could not turn

her head, and al the people were screaming and shouting,

and her prince had smiled at her, he’d smiled and she’d felt

safe, but only for a heartbeat, until he said those words, and

her father’s legs... that was what she remembered, his legs,

the way they’d jerked when Ser Ilyn... when the sword...

--------------------------------------

“I don’t want to marry you,” Sansa wailed. “You chopped off

my father’s head!”

“He was a traitor. I never promised to spare him, only that I’d

be merciful, and I was. If he hadn’t been your father, I would

have had him torn or flayed, but I gave him a clean death.”

Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was

wearing a padded crimson doublet patterned with lions and

a cloth-of-gold cape with a high col ar that framed his face.

She wondered how she could ever have thought him

handsome. His lips were as soft and red as the worms you

found after a rain, and his eyes were vain and cruel. “I hate

you,” she whispered.

----------------------------------------------------------

The hot water made her think of Winterfell, and she took

strength from that. She had not washed since the day her

father died, and she was startled at how filthy the water

became. Her maids sluiced the blood off her face, scrubbed

the dirt from her back, washed her hair and brushed it out

until it sprang back in thick auburn curls. Sansa did not

speak to them, except to give them commands; they were

Lannister servants, not her own, and she did not trust them.

---------------------------------

Frog-faced Lord Slynt sat at the end of the council table

wearing a black velvet doublet and a shiny cloth-of-gold

cape, nodding with approval every time the king pronounced

a sentence.

Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had

thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she

could hurt him, wishing that some hero would throw him down

and cut off his head.

----------------------------

From the high battlements of the gatehouse, the whole world

spread out below them. Sansa could see the Great Sept of

Baelor on Visenya’s hill, where her father had died. At the

other end of the Street of the Sisters stood the fireblackened

ruins of the Dragonpit. To the west, the swol en

red sun was half-hidden behind the Gate of the Gods. The

salt sea was at her back, and to the south was the fish

market and the docks and the swirling torrent of the

Blackwater Rush.

And to the north...

She turned that way, and saw only the city, streets and alleys

and hills and bottoms and more streets and more al eys and

the stone of distant wal s. Yet she knew that beyond them

was open country, farms and fields and forests, and beyond

that, north and north and north again, stood Winterfell.

---------------------------

A Clash of Kings:

“King Joffrey sits where Aegon the Dragon once sat, in the castle built by his son,” Ser Arys said. “He is the dragon’s heir—and crimson is the color of House Lannister, another sign. This comet is sent to herald Joffrey’s ascent to the throne, I have no doubt. It means that he will triumph over

his enemies.”

Is it true? she wondered. Would the gods be so cruel? Her mother was one of Joffrey’s enemies now, her brother Robb another. Her father had died by the king’s command. Must Robb and her lady mother die next? The comet was red, but Joffrey was Baratheon as much as Lannister, and their sigil was a black stag on a golden field. Shouldn’t the gods have sent Joff a golden comet?

-----------------------------

The last tourney had been different, Sansa reflected. King Robert had staged it in her father’s honor. High lords and fabled champions had come from all over the realm to compete, and the whole city had turned out to watch. She remembered the splendor of it: the field of pavilions along the

river with a knight’s shield hung before each door, the long rows of silken pennants waving in the wind, the gleam of sunlight on bright steel and gilded spurs. The days had rung to the sounds of trumpets and pounding hooves, and the nights had been full of feasts and song. Those had been

the most magical days of her life, but they seemed a memory from another age now. Robert Baratheon was dead, and her father as well, beheaded for a traitor on the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor. Now there were three kings in the land, and war raged beyond the Trident while the city filled with desperate men. Small wonder that they had to hold Joff’s tournament behind the thick stone walls of the Red Keep.

----------------

The king frowned. “My lady mother said it was not fitting, since the tourney is in my honor. Otherwise I would have been champion. Isn’t that so, dog?”

The Hound’s mouth twitched. “Against this lot? Why not?”

He had been the champion in her father’s tourney, Sansa remembered. “Will you joust today, my lord?” she asked him.

Clegane’s voice was thick with contempt. “Wouldn’t be worth the bother of arming myself. This is a tournament of gnats.”

The king laughed. “My dog has a fierce bark. Perhaps I should command him to fight the day’s champion. To the death.” Joffrey was fond of making men fight to the death

“You’d be one knight the poorer.” The Hound had never taken a knight’s vows. His brother was a knight, and he hated his brother.

A blare of trumpets sounded. The king settled back in his seat and took Sansa’s hand. Once that would have set her heart to pounding, but that was before he had answered her plea for mercy by presenting her with her father’s head. His touch filled her with revulsion now, but she knew better

than to show it. She made herself sit very still.

------------------------------

“Look at that upjumped oaf,” Joff hooted, loud enough for half the yard to hear. Morros, a mere squire and a new-made squire at that, was having difficulty managing lance and shield. The lance was a knight’s weapon, Sansa knew, the Slynts lowborn. Lord Janos had been no more than

commander of the City Watch before Joffrey had raised him to Harrenhal and the council.

I hope he falls and shames himself, she thought bitterly. I hope Ser Balon kills him. When Joffrey proclaimed her father’s death, it had been Janos Slynt who seized Lord Eddard’s severed head by the hair and raised it on high for king and crowd to behold, while Sansa wept and

screamed.

-------------------------------

Sansa watched him walk off, his body swaying heavily from side to side with every step, like something from a grotesquerie. He speaks more gently than Joffrey, she thought, but the queen spoke to me gently too. He’s still a Lannister, her brother and Joff’s uncle, and no friend. Once she

had loved Prince Joffrey with all her heart, and admired and trusted his mother, the queen. They had repaid that love and trust with her father’s head. Sansa would never make that mistake again.

--------------------------------------

Come to the godswood tonight, if you want to go home.

What if it was some cruel jape of Joffrey’s, like the day he had taken her up to the battlements to show her Father’s head?

--------------------------------

Sansa moved as if in a dream. She thought the Imp’s men would take her back to her bedchamber in Maegor’s Holdfast, but instead they conducted her to the Tower of the Hand. She had not set foot inside that place since the day her father fell from grace, and it made her feel faint to climb those steps again.

--------------------------------

Meekly, Sansa dropped her eyes and retreated back inside. She realized suddenly why this place seemed so familiar. They’ve put me in Arya’s old bedchamber, from when Father was the Hand of the King. All her things are gone and the furnishings have been moved around, but it’s the same . . .

---------------------------------------------------------

When Sansa had first beheld the Great Sept with its marble walls and seven crystal towers, she’d thought it was the most beautifulbuilding in the world, but that had been before Joffrey beheaded her father on its steps. “I want it burned.”

---------------------

That night Sansa dreamed of the riot again. The mob surged around her, shrieking, a maddened beast with a thousand faces. Everywhere she turned she saw faces twisted into monstrous inhuman masks. She wept and told them she had never done them hurt, yet they dragged her from her

horse all the same. “No,” she cried, “no, please, don’t, don’t,” but no one paid her any heed. She shouted for Ser Dontos, for her brothers, for her dead father and her dead wolf, for gallant Ser Loras who had given her a red rose once, but none of them came. She called for the heroes from the

songs, for Florian and Ser Ryam Redwyne and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, but no one heard. Women swarmed over her like weasels, pinching her legs and kicking her in the belly, and someone hit her in the face and she felt her teeth shatter. Then she saw the bright glimmer of

steel. The knife plunged into her belly and tore and tore and tore, until there was nothing left of her down there but shiny wet ribbons.

-----------------------------

Across the city, thousands had jammed into the Great Sept of Baelor on Visenya’s Hill, and they would be singing too, their voices swelling out over the city, across the river, and up into the sky. Surely the gods must hear us, she thought.

Sansa knew most of the hymns, and followed along on those she did not know as best she could. She sang along with grizzled old serving men and anxious young wives, with serving girls and soldiers, cooks and falconers, knights and knaves, squires and spit boys and nursing mothers. She

sang with those inside the castle walls and those without, sang with all the city. She sang for mercy, for the living and the dead alike, for Bran and Rickon and Robb, for her sister Arya and her bastard brother Jon Snow, away off on the Wall. She sang for her mother and her father, for her

grandfather Lord Hoster and her uncle Edmure Tully, for her friend Jeyne Poole, for old drunken King Robert, for Septa Mordane and Ser Dontos and Jory Cassel and Maester Luwin, for all the brave knights and soldiers who would die today, and for the children and the wives who would mourn

them, and finally, toward the end, she even sang for Tyrion the Imp and for the Hound. He is no true knight but he saved me all the same, she told the Mother. Save him if you can, and gentle the rage inside him.

-----------

A Storm of Swords:

“The cheese will be served when I want it served, and I want

it served now.” The old woman turned back to Sansa. “Are

you frightened, child? No need for that, we’re only women

here. Tell me the truth, no harm will come to you.”

“My father always told the truth.” Sansa spoke quietly, but

even so, it was hard to get the words out.

“Lord Eddard, yes, he had that reputation, but they named

him traitor and took his head off even so.” The old woman’s

eyes bore into her, sharp and bright as the points of swords.

“Joffrey,” Sansa said. “Joffrey did that. He promised me he

would be merciful, and cut my father’s head off. He said that

was mercy, and he took me up on the wal s and made me

look at it. The head. He wanted me to weep, but. .” She

stopped abruptly, and covered her mouth. I’ve said too much,

oh gods be good, they’ll know, they’l hear, someone will tell

on me.

--------------------------------

They are children, Sansa thought. They are silly little girls,

even Elinor. They’ve never seen a battle, they’ve never seen

a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were ful of

songs and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut

her father’s head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them.

------------------------------------------

Afterward, she could not remember leaving the room or

descending the steps or crossing the yard. It seemed to take

all her attention just to put one foot down in front of the other.

Ser Meryn and Ser Osmund walked beside her, in cloaks as

pale as her own, lacking only the pearls and the direwolf that

had been her father’s. Joffrey himself was waiting for her on

the steps of the castle sept. The king was resplendent in

crimson and gold, his crown on his head. “I’m your father

today,” he announced.

“You’re not,” she flared. “You’ll never be.”

-------------------------------------------

Thankfully no one seemed to notice that she was crying as she stood

there, wrapped in her father’s colors; or if they did, they

pretended not to. In what seemed no time at all, they came to

the changing of the cloaks.

-----------------------------

That was such a sweet dream, Sansa thought drowsily. She

had been back in Winterfell, running through the godswood

with her Lady. Her father had been there, and her brothers, all

of them warm and safe. If only dreaming could make it so...

She threw back the coverlets. I must be brave. Her torments

would soon be ended, one way or the other. If Lady was

here, I would not be afraid. Lady was dead, though; Robb,

Bran, Rickon, Arya, her father, her mother, even Septa

Mordane. All of them are dead but me. She was alone in the

world now.

------------------------------------------------

“Tyrion poisoned him?”

Her dwarf husband had hated his nephew, she knew. Could

he truly have killed him? Did he know about my hair net,

about the black amethysts? He brought Joff wine. How could

you make someone choke by putting an amethyst in their

wine? If Tyrion did it, they will think I was part of it as well, she

realized with a start of fear. How not? They were man and

wife, and Joff had killed her father and mocked her with her

brother’s death. One flesh, one heart, one soul.

------------------------

She awoke al at once, every nerve atingle. For a moment

she did not remember where she was. She had dreamt that

she was little, still sharing a bedchamber with her sister Arya.

But it was her maid she heard tossing in sleep, not her sister,

and this was not Winterfell, but the Eyrie. And I am Alayne

Stone, a bastard girl. The room was cold and black, though

she was warm beneath the blankets. Dawn had not yet

come. Sometimes she dreamed of Ser Ilyn Payne and woke

with her heart thumping, but this dream had not been like

that. Home. It was a dream of home.

The Eyrie was no home. It was no bigger than Maegor’s

Holdfast, and outside its sheer white walls was only the

mountain and the long treacherous descent past Sky and

Snow and Stone to the Gates of the Moon on the valley floor.

There was no place to go and little to do. The older servants

said these halls rang with laughter when her father and

Robert Baratheon had been Jon Arryn’s wards, but those

days were many years gone.

--------------------

The snow drifted down and down, al in ghostly silence, and

lay thick and unbroken on the ground. All color had fled the

world outside. It was a place of whites and blacks and greys.

White towers and white snow and white statues, black

shadows and black trees, the dark grey sky above. A pure

world, Sansa thought. I do not belong here.

Yet she stepped out all the same. Her boots tore ankle-deep

holes into the smooth white surface of the snow, yet made no

sound. Sansa drifted past frosted shrubs and thin dark trees,

and wondered if she were stil dreaming. Drifting snowflakes

brushed her face as light as lover’s kisses, and melted on

her cheeks. At the center of the garden, beside the statue of

the weeping woman that lay broken and half-buried on the

ground, she turned her face up to the sky and closed her

eyes. She could feel the snow on her lashes, taste it on her

lips. It was the taste of Winterfell. The taste of innocence. The

taste of dreams.

When Sansa opened her eyes again, she was on her knees.

She did not remember falling. it seemed to her that the sky

was a lighter shade of grey. Dawn, she thought. Another day.

Another new day. It was the old days she hungered for.

Prayed for. But who could she pray to? The garden had been

meant for a godswood once, she knew, but the soil was too

thin and stony for a weirwood to take root. A godswood

without gods, as empty as me.

She scooped up a handful of snow and squeezed it between

her fingers. Heavy and wet, the snow packed easily. Sansa

began to make snowballs, shaping and smoothing them until

they were round and white and perfect. She remembered a

summer’s snow in Winterfell when Arya and Bran had

ambushed her as she emerged from the keep one morning.

They’d each had a dozen snowballs to hand, and she’d had

none. Bran had been perched on the roof of the covered

bridge, out of reach, but Sansa had chased Arya through the

stables and around the kitchen until both of them were

breathless. She might even have caught her, but she’d

slipped on some ice.

Her sister came back to see if she was hurt. When she said

she wasn’t, Arya hit her in the face with another snowball, but

Sansa grabbed her leg and pulled her down and was

rubbing snow in her hair when Jory came along and pul ed

them apart, laughing.

What do I want with snowballs? She looked at her sad little

arsenal. There’s no one to throw them at. She let the one she

was making drop from her hand. I could build a snow knight

instead, she thought. Or even...

She pushed two of her snowballs together, added a third,

packed more snow in around them, and patted the whole

thing into the shape of a cylinder. When it was done, she

stood it on end and used the tip of her little finger to poke

holes in it for windows. The crenellations around the top took

a little more care, but when they were done she had a tower. I

need some wal s now, Sansa thought, and then a keep. She

set to work.

And all the while the snow kept falling, piling up in drifts

around her buildings as fast as she raised them. She was

patting down the pitched roof of the Great Hal when she

heard a voice, and looked up to see her maid calling from

her window. Was my lady well? Did she wish to break her

fast? Sansa shook her head, and went back to shaping

snow, adding a chimney to one end of the Great Hall, where

the hearth would stand inside.

Dawn stole into her garden like a thief. The grey of the sky

grew lighter still, and the trees and shrubs turned a dark

green beneath their stoles of snow. A few servants came out

and watched her for a time, but she paid them no mind and

they soon went back inside where it was warmer.

---------------------

A Feast for Crows:

“What if Lord Nestor values honor more than profit?” Petyr put his arm around her. “What if it is truth he wants, and justice for his murdered lady?”

He smiled. “I know Lord Nestor, sweetling. Do you imagine I’d ever let him harm my daughter?”

I am not your daughter, she thought. I am Sansa Stark, Lord Eddard’s daughter and Lady Catelyn’s, the blood of Winterfell.

------------------------------------------------------

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.”

------------------

Last of all came the Royces, Lord Nestor and Bronze Yohn. The Lord of Runestone stood as tall as the Hound. Though his hair was grey and his face lined, Lord Yohn still looked as though he could break most younger men like twigs in those huge gnarled hands. His seamed and solemn face

brought back all of Sansa’s memories of his time at Winterfell. She remembered him at table, speaking quietly with her mother. She heard his voice booming off the walls when he rode back from a hunt with a buck behind his saddle. She could see him in the yard, a practice sword in hand,

hammering her father to the ground and turning to defeat Ser Rodrik as well. He will know me. How could he not? She considered throwing herselfat his feet to beg for his protection. He never fought for Robb, why should he fight for me? The war is finished and Winterfell is fallen. “Lord Royce,” she asked timidly, “will you have a cup of wine, to take the chill off?”

----------------

“Easily remedied.” Candlelight rippled along the smoke-grey steel of Corbray’s blade, so dark that it put Sansa in mind of Ice, her father’s greatsword. “Your apple-eater holds a blade. Tell him to give it to you, or draw that dagger.”

[Stubby]

[MOD]

As this thread had degenerated into yet another bout of Sansa love/hate it is being closed.

There are any number of threads where this ssue can be debated should you so wish.

[/MOD]