#(been thinking about feral KL a lot lately)

[knight-lizard]

You guys ever think about King Lizard having been muzzled a few times by prison guards because he kept biting people?

No? Just me?

[him-e]

I think claiming Sansa has had her "Starkness" put to the test more is a misread of all the Stark kids. They have all had their identities tested- all in different ways. Arya's story deals with her personal Stark identity whilst Sansa's has reflected a more political Stark identity. After all, Alayne is her first identity apart from Sansa Stark. Arya & the faceless men up this identity theme to 11. I understand the quote is about all the Stark kids but there's a reason it originated in Arya.

I said “questioned”, not tested. 

Of course all the Starklings had their identities tested in significant ways! (that tend to parallel each other, especially in the girls’ arcs). 

But when I say “questioned” I mean “considered to be dubious by the characters inside the story, the narrative AND the fandom alike”. When fandom sees Sansa as the ~least Stark~, as annoying as it is, it’s NOT unfounded. All the other Starklings had their personal Stark identity established very early, before the narrative starts testing them:

Arya & Jon have the LOOK and PERSONALITY of True Starks. They’re both underdog-coded, which is very Stark as well given the narrative arc of their house. 

Arya looks like Lyanna, is wild, rebellious and altruistic; she is described as having the wolf blood. 

Jon sulks because he’s not a True Stark but he desperately wants to be, and soon gets an intensely northern narrative within an institution whose history is strictly connected to house Stark.

Robb is the king in the north, the Young Wolf, he fights alongside his monstrous direwolf in battle. 

Bran is named after Ned’s late brother and the legendary founder of house Stark! He knows Winterfell better than everyone else and, for all he wanted to go to KL and become a knight (which btw is a masculine and therefore Okay thing to want, not something vain and frivolous like Sansa’s dreams of the south), the story immediately takes a different turn with him. Bran gets to be /the Stark in Winterfell/ and later embark, like Jon, on a typically Northern hero’s journey.

Rickon is half a wolf pup himself, and just as feral as Shaggydog is.

...and then there’s Sansa. 

Sansa always stood out like a sore thumb in this lot. Look at how she was originally conceived (as a foil to Arya, i.e. as a less important character who exists to highlight, mostly by contrast, the primary character’s qualities). Look at why she was conceived like that (”the Starks were going along too well”). Remember how she was supposed to end up (betraying her family, siding with the Lannisters, having Joffrey’s child). Her fascination for the sophisticated southron culture is at odds with the gruff practicality of the Northerners. She’s the most removed from northern magic. She favors the Seven over the Old Gods. She looks like Catelyn’s spitting image and nothing like Ned. Her love for Joffrey & Cersei in the first book makes the reader wonder if she’s either stupid, or prioritizing fundamentally different values than the rest of her family.

I could go on, but to keep it short, Sansa is very un-Starkly coded, and if that wasn’t clear yet, GRRM kills her direwolf just after her very first pov chapter. 

I agree with your distinction between personal and political Stark identity. Sansa always had the latter, as she always identified proudly as a Stark (it’s a huge factor in her classism & the reason why she believes she’s meant to marry a prince), but her personal identity has not been established as intrinsically linked to ~~starkness~~ the way her siblings’ have. While the others must defend or rediscover their personal Stark identity from external forces trying to overwrite it with their own narratives and agendas, Sansa is in the process of creating one (almost) from scratch. It’s not that it wasn’t there before, but it was dormant, more than in the others. And this process is complicated and not straightforward at all, because she lost her wolf. This almost carnal connection to house Stark, that fate or some other divine intervention sent to the kids to *save their souls*, is forever precluded to Sansa. It wasn’t taken away from her—it was never allowed to exist in the first place. The fact that she’s emerging as a Stark at all is in itself a miracle. 

This is not to say that Arya’s identity was tested LESS. I agree that the theme of (true, false)identity is central to her storyline from her various aliases in the Riverlands to the faceless men, while Sansa’s has been more involved with true/false reality. But in terms of the audience’s perception, Arya’s *stark identity* is not questionable in the way Sansa’s is. You can argue that Arya is “losing herself”, “becoming no one”, making poor Ned’s heart weep with all the blood she stained her hands with, or whatever bullshit fandom is shrieking these days, but is there anyone who says “Arya never felt like a True Stark anyway”?

of course, it’s important that the pack quote originated in Arya. GRRM gave it to her because it’s her who needed it the most (in relation to her upcoming plot) and the one who could make the most out of it. AGOT Arya is a natural receiver of Ned’s wisdom, her eyes and heart are open while Sansa is recalcitrant and otherwise preoccupied. Post-AGOT Arya is thrown into an hellish journey across the riverlands where Ned’s words prevent her from becoming a /lone wolf/ and remind her the importance of solidarity and compassion. So instead of just surviving, she forges connections and saves lives, which in turn saves her. Sansa also does this (several characters in rather key positions are invested in her survival), but the context is very different. Imagine Sansa being given the pack line, what would she do with it in her narrative? The only pack available is the Lannisters’ and she is their captive. She needs to learn to be brave and compassionate within the boundaries of her isolation. So she gets things like “I am a Stark, yes, I can be brave” (again, what I said about Sansa’s starkness being a work in progress, and how this line reads as if she’s just discovering that she has this in herself).

with that said, I can never stress enough that the show characters are currently in different places and their evolution has PROGRESSED compared to the book ones. 

The pack line does not apply to book!Sansa, but it CAN fit show!Sansa’s current narrative to a T, given that she’s much ahead of book!Sansa in terms of (re)constructing her Stark identity, and is now struggling with learning how to interact with other Starks (read: Jon and soon Arya) i.e. be part of a pack without losing her agency & individuality, versus being a lone wolf which is what LF is banking on to keep her under his influence. If you think of Sansa saying that line to herself FIRST, it makes a lot of sense in my opinion.