#also interesting that she kind of idealizes rhaegar like how robert did lyanna in some sense

[ilynpilled]

cersei believes in the one soul in two bodies thing only if there are no purple eyed men available she’s hilarious tbh. like this is her raison d’etre…for the most part

i find her love of rhaegar pretty interesting. like i think she fixates on him specifically for a lot of reasons. i think she did kind of turn him into an idealized robert anti-thesis for herself, which makes sense. this is something she is reconjuring, rhaegar is not really real and grounded for her, never was, like she doesnt know him as a person, but it is much deeper than just her being drawn to a very beautiful surface. he is more of an idea and dream, a childhood crush that she clings onto now bc he does embody a lot of things that she deeply desires and was promised (and she is also losing a lot of her previous crutches atp, being particularly frustrated with jaime, and the whole jc divorce era kicking in full force in general). the idea of rhaegar represents a lot of things that she wants and was stripped of (things that she does ultimately desire more than jaime as a lover and individual): the romanticized queen position and status, the throne and power, a “perfect prince” that only exists as a memory now so she cannot be disillusioned by him, and even a potential source of love that was ofc absent within her abusive marriage. but yeah, i also believe that it further deconstructs the jaime and cersei destined lovers narrative, especially when she uses the same narrative with rhaegar when she frames it as something “the gods intended”. but also shes a bishonen enjoyer

[my-arya-underfoot]

Debunking the Sansa-Lyanna Parallels

For whatever reason, the Lyanna = Sansa interpretation has been getting increasingly popular in the fandom. There’s this growing theory that Sansa and Arya are both equally like Lyanna and represent the different sides of her. In the extreme, there’s arguments Sansa is actually more like Lyanna than Arya.

“Arya and Sansa represent two faces of Lyanna.” “Denying one is actually denying Lyanna’s story in complete.” “Sansa’s romantic soul and Arya’s wild nature.”

Which, honestly drives me crazy – because you have to twist all three women out of character to justify the parallels.

There are way too many Lyanna/Arya parallels to explain here. If anyone wants a summary here are some good ones. But tbh, it’s not even something you need meta for – the books are incredibly explicit about the parallels, from their personalities (“wilful”), Stark-ness (wolf blooded), skills/interests (sword fighting and riding) and appearance (Northern beauties). Ned, Harwin and Bran all compare them outright.

Meanwhile, here’s the one explicit Lyanna/Sansa comparison: “He could still hear Sansa pleading, as Lyanna had pleaded once.” – Ned, AGoT.

Btw, this is not an anti-Sansa meta. Sansa has multiple parallels to other characters and inherits traits from many family members. (Ned, Catelyn, Jon, Sandor, Dany, Lysa, Cersei, Littlefinger, Brienne etc.) And there’s obviously overlap in characters she and Arya share connections with. But Lyanna Stark is not one of them. This is a debunking of the general Lyanna = Sansa evidence (book based).

Sansa/Joffrey = Lyanna/Rhaegar 

1. Sansa was blinded by love for Joffrey, Lyanna was blinded by love for Rhaegar

A. Don’t know how anyone missed this but – we don’t know the full Lyanna/Rhaegar story. The whole point of the event is how murky it is. We can't assume it was as simple as Lyanna being blinded by "love" Rhaegar and losing all common sense like Sansa did around Joffrey. That’s one of many interpretations. It could have been about the prophecy, closer to a straight kidnapping, Rhaegar being the one blinded by love, Lyanna running away by herself initially. Using the most unreliable story in the entire series as a basis for this theory is headscratching.

B. Lyanna is presented as perceptive and realistic about men, not idealistic. From actual quotes: Lyanna “Robert will never keep to one bed.” Lyanna “love is sweet dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man’s nature”?? That girl was blinded by infatuation for Rhaegar? Blinded in the way Sansa you-literally-tried-to-kill-my-sister-in-front-of-me -but-I-repressed-it-to-keep-my-fairytale-alive, was by Joffrey? Doesn’t line up.

C. A far better comparison to Sansa/Joffrey is Lyanna/Robert. Both Sansa and Lyanna were faced with marrying a young, handsome noble who was friends with the family and would give them status and a comfortable life. Sansa was overjoyed and Lyanna was unhappy. Both were faced with unpleasant truths about their betrothed: Joffrey was a monster and Robert was unfaithful. Sansa, the romantic rewrote events, idealized Joffrey and convinced herself he was wonderful and she loved him. Lyanna was clear-eyed, cynical and stated the facts. Completely opposite reactions.

D. Fun fact. What character saw Joffrey for what he was, is good at reading people's true character and isn't blinded by looks or status? Arya.

2: Both Sansa and Lyanna fell in love/had romances with Princes

We’ll put aside the question marks over R/L. Let’s say it’s a straight love story. It’s still starkly different from Joffrey and Sansa.

A. Sansa/Joffrey was an arranged marriage – Rhaegar/Lyanna was a forbidden affair. For most of the time Sansa was “in love” with him, Sansa’s relationship with Joffrey was fulfilling expectations of what she should be doing. Only at the eleventh hour did Joffrey become "forbidden.” Meanwhile, Lyanna and Rhaegar fell in love while they were both betrothed/married. It was always a rebellion against acceptable behaviour. Again, Lyanna/Robert is a much better parallel to understand the characters.

B. Even if R/L was a love story…then the argument is Rhaegar did love Lyanna and it was mutual. Sansa and Joffrey wasn’t mutual because he certainly never loved her.

C. Apart from being Princes I’m still waiting on similarities between Joffrey and Rhaegar. Aerys? Sure.

3: Lyanna and Sansa both betrayed their families for love/infatuation and started a war

A. We still don’t know what went down between Rhaegar and Lyanna. Certainly, not enough to parallel Lyanna running off with him to Sansa betraying Ned to Cersei.

B. Again, Sansa’s “betrayal” of her family was to uphold her arranged marriage. Lyanna’s “betrayal” was to turn her back on society and arranged match, and vanish for months with a married man. Vastly different circumstances.

C. Sansa going to Cersei was notably out of character for "eager to please since she was 3" Sansa vs. "wilful, wild" Lyanna and Arya. In the same book (chapter?) Sansa even compares her disobedience to feeling "almost as wicked as Arya."

D. The causes of both wars were complex and Sansa at least played a pretty minor role in hers. Her actions in contributing to the War of the Five Kings aren’t given nearly the same weight as Lyanna’s disappearance.

4: Sansa is more likely to run away for love than Arya

A. Um. No. Sansa is repeatedly characterised as dutiful and living by society's standards. Her causing the scandal of the century by running off with a married guy/someone unsuitable? No way. Not if she was in Lyanna's situation with a comfortable future before her. We see Sansa persuade herself her situation/match is fine –  rather than flee from it – with Joffrey.

B. You know who is known for running off? Arya. In her first chapter, she runs away from being a lady, she runs off after the Trident incident, she fantasies about running home while in KL, she’s literally on the run for ACoK-ASoS, she runs from Harrenhal, the Brotherhood, Westeros itself. If one of the Stark girls has a *screw all this, I’m outta here* attitude, it’s Arya. And a teenage Arya running away from an arranged marriage? 100% plausible.

C. Also, falling for someone unsuitable? How about that infamously wilful younger Stark daughter? Arya falling in love with someone forbidden - *cough* bastard blacksmith *cough* -  would be totally in character.

5: Both Lyanna and Sansa were held prisoner in the South during war

A. This parallel undermines the previous basis for Lyanna being a romantic. (I.e. The argument that she wasn’t a prisoner but went willingly with Rhaegar).

B. Let’s say Lyanna was kidnapped – still starkly different from Sansa. Sansa was held as a political pawn and on show. Lyanna was kidnapped for unknown, possibly personal reasons and hidden away from society. Sansa has more parallels with Elia’s role in the war than Lyanna’s.

C. If we start making a list of every character who is held prisoner during wars – Jaime, Tyrion, Ned, oh look Arya! – we’ll be here forever. Very weak parallel.

Lyanna and Sansa are romantics – Arya is a realist/cynic

To reiterate, everything we see of Lyanna’s reaction to Robert indicates she’s a practical realistic, not a romantic. But let’s break down the evidence.

1: Lyanna cried over Rhaegar’s song so she’s sentimental like Sansa not Arya (“The dragon prince sang a song so sad it made the wolf maid sniffle…”)

A. Yes, Sansa's more sentimental and loves songs. But interpreting the scene as a Lyanna/Sansa parallel, blatantly discounts the rest of the sentence: “…but when her pup brother teased her [Lyanna] for crying she poured wine over his head.” NEVER in a million years would Sansa do that. Not at a public Southern tourney and feast. Man though, you know a Stark girl who would do that? Who is far more wild and playful with her brothers? Arya. The Sansa parallel lasts Iess than a sentence before we’re back to Lyanna/Arya.

B. The fact Benjen bothered to tease Lyanna at all suggests it was out of character for her. I can't see the Stark boys teasing Sansa for crying, as it's the kind of thing she'd be likely to do all the time and wouldn't be ashamed of it. No point in teasing her. Teasing gutsy, sighing-over-songs-is-stupid Arya for crying though? Sure.

C. "Sang a song SO sad it made the wolf maid sniffle." The point is the song was exceptional in being able to make Lyanna cry. It’s “man, that’s unusual” not “oh, typical Lyanna sniffling away”. That comment is more about the Lyanna/Rhaegar relationship, not Lyanna’s allegedly sentimental personality.

D. Arya likes songs and Arya cries. That’s not exclusive to Sansa and Lyanna. This great meta goes into more detail both about the significance of songs for all characters in Asoiaf and how emotional Arya can be. But enough to say, Arya may not love songs as much as Sansa does, but she likes them and has favourites – Nymeria, Wenda the White Fawn etc. For all we know Rhaegar was singing a Nymeria/Wenda fanfic. And Arya cries a lot throughout the books, right from her first chapter over messing up her needlework.

2: Sansa and Lyanna both loved flowers. Lyanna was crowned Queen of Love and Beauty at the tourney at Harranhal = Sansa was given a rose by Loras at the Hand’s tourney.

A. News to me that “flowers” are a motif exclusive to Sansa’s character. Not only are flowers sprinkled all over the series, they’re more present in Arya’s story. In Sansa’s first chapter, Arya brings Ned purple flowers (Ned who brings Lyanna's statue flowers) and is excitedly discovering new plants while Sansa is sitting in her carriage. Not to mention the heck ton of nature imagery in Arya’s chapters. This is a weak link.

B. Lyanna gets a crown from a prince who spurns his wife? Sansa gets a rose from an implied gay guy? Much love. Much romance. Much parallels. If GRRM wanted that parallel, he’d have actually crowned Sansa QoLaB. There are hundreds of tourneys in the series, both of them attending doesn’t mean anything.

C. This is the same tourney where Lyanna first beat up a bunch of squires and may have gone on to dress up a knight and compete in the joust. Go ahead anyone who wants to argue that’s a Sansa not Arya move.

3: Arya has no interest in romance, Sansa and Lyanna do. Arya thinks love is stupid and Sansa is silly for liking it

A. Still very little evidence of Lyanna being some diehard romantic.

B. We cannot compare a 9/10yo Arya to a 15/16yo Lyanna. That’s skipping Arya’s entire puberty a.k.a when girls start to explore romance, love and sex. You can't take a few lines from a child as a blanket statement of Arya's views for love forever. It’s also comparing a Lyanna who grew up in a secure environment until she hit her teens vs. Arya who was thrust into a warzone as a child. Sorry Arya isn’t thinking about romance while starving on the run.  

C. Arya’s dismissal of romance is entwined with her own insecurities about failing as a lady, her ‘ugliness’ and being inferior to her sister. It’s a defence mechanism for something she worries she can never have. Also, she rejects Sansa’s versions of idealised love and conventional expectations of romance – not love full stop. Lyanna didn’t seem sold on the conventional marriage set up either.

D. Despite her age and circumstances, Arya still manages to have a ship tease with Gendry – a relationship more genuine and straightforwardly romantic than anything Sansa’s had. (Not discounting her complex dynamics with Sandor, Joffrey, Willas, Harry and Tyrion).

E. For the record, in the same conversation Arya told Ned Dayne "love is stupid" that people like to cite, she was mortally offended by the suggestion that her father loved anyone else ever other than her mother.

Sansa represents Lyanna’s “beautiful and feminine side” and Arya her “wildness and rebellion”

These aspects are not exclusionary and there's no indication Lyanna had these two opposing sides. In the same conversation that Ned tells Arya that she's like Lyanna, he refers to Sansa and Arya as "different as the sun and moon." (Not “two sides of the same coin” as is commonly quoted - that’s about the Targs).

So really. "Arya, you're the opposite of your sister! And almost exactly like Lyanna!" = "Sansa is like Lyanna". But let’s go through.

1: Lyanna and Sansa the beauties  

A. Arya is beautiful as well. For more detail go here – she’s growing into her looks. She doesn’t think she’s beautiful but other characters are commenting on it. Trying to imply Arya is “too ugly” to parallel Lyanna, so Sansa has to fill that part is gross on multiple levels.

B. Arya is explicitly describe as looking like Lyanna. By Ned. Lyanna’s brother and Arya’s father. If Arya isn’t beautiful, then Lyanna isn’t either.

C. Lyanna wasn’t a conventional Southern beauty. She was a “wild” beauty, Northern looking and even boyish. None of which matches with Sansa’s appearance – but all of which tallies with Arya.

2: People saw Lyanna and Sansa’s beauty but not “the iron underneath”

A. Ned's comment about Robert not seeing Lyanna's iron seemed far more about Robert’s blindness than Lyanna hiding her iron. The conversation was about Robert’s version of Lyanna, not how Lyanna herself behaved.

B. Nothing suggests Lyanna “hid” her iron. She publicly tipped wine over Benjen, she beat up the squires in the open. There's little indication she hid her strength under courtesy and ladylike behaviour like Sansa did.

3: Lyanna and Sansa were feminine

This may be the argument that raises my hackles the most. For a start this bizarre use of ‘feminine’ gets thrown around without defining what it means. So, just what.

A. Let’s assume ‘feminine’ refers to Westerosi ideal of the perfect lady that Sansa embodies: Girly, concerned with appearances, gracious, a submissive wife etc. Then…everything tells us Lyanna was the opposite to that. She was off wanting to carry swords, squabbling with her brothers, resisting marriage proposals and possibly entering jousts. None of that is traditionally “feminine.”

B. If we take a wider view of feminine as women owning their gender, femininity and role as a woman – Arya isn’t a genderless blob. Her being disguised as a boy and Faceless Men training is about how desperately she clings to her true identity…including her gender. She constantly corrects people about being a girl, takes on a caring and even maternal role (Weasel) and has female heroes.

C. Suggesting Arya is less “female” than Sansa – and thus unworthy of paralleling Lyanna – because she has traditionally boyish interests and fails the Westerosi ideal is pretty appalling tbh.

Random Parallels

1: Lyanna and Sansa were betrothed to a Baratheon

A. Not sure how anyone missed this – it was kinda a major plot point way back – but Joffrey wasn’t a Baratheon. He didn’t act or look like a Baratheon. He was a Lannister through and through.

B. You know who did have a major connection to a Baratheon? You know a Stark girl, Robert’s son legitimately fell for? Oh whoops, Arya. While Robert and Gendry are very different and the Arya/Gendry relationship is more genuine than Robert’s infatuation with Lyanna, it’s a more concrete parallel than Sansa/Joffrey.

C. Don’t know how many times I can say this, but the Joffrey/Sansa vs. Robert/Lyanna parallels highlight Sansa and Lyanna’s differences not their similarities.

2: Lyanna and Sansa Defend the Weak (Howland Reed and Dontas)

A. Yes, Sansa does defend Dontas, that was a great moment. But "defending the weak" is a recurring theme for Arya, while it’s a one off for Sansa. Arya has Mycah, Weasel, going back for Gendry, saving the Northernmen, hanging out with the defenders-of-the-helpless Brotherhood without Banners, saving Sam in Braavos, "they should have killed the masters not the slaves" etc. Arya's story is entwined with defending/befriending the oppressed and downtrodden. Sansa's is not.

B. Arya and Lyanna had much more similar approaches to defending Mycah/Howland scenes in physically beating off the attacker. Sansa's approach differed in using diplomacy and flattery. And "saved someone once" is a pretty loose thematic parallel.

3: Lyanna rejected Robert = Sansa rejected Tyrion

A. Sansa was horrified at marrying a dwarf old enough to be her father after she'd been a prisoner of his abusive family for months. Lyanna didn't want to marry a young, handsome lord who was a good match and arranged by her family.

B. Sansa resisted Tyrion yes, but she didn't reject him and she didn't run away. She endured. Again, going with the Lyanna-went-willingly-with-Rhaegar/ran away version of events – Lyanna rebelled in a much more blatant way.

C. Sansa/Joffrey is a much better parallel to Lyanna/Robert, than Sansa/Tyrion. How Sansa reacted to that situation – an ideal, arranged match – is an accurate point to compare her character to Lyanna. (Man, people really hate these Sansa/Joffrey vs. Lyanna/Robert parallels).

This Ended Up Very Long and I’m Sorry

Ultimately, the problem with framing Sansa as an equal half of Lyanna is you have to mischaracterize all three characters to get there –  Claiming Sansa is more likely to rebel, that Arya has no soft side and Lyanna was a blind romantic. Until we get more book details on the Rhaegar/Lyanna relationship, the main argument falls apart.

If we're talking parallels, it's less that "Sansa was one half of Lyanna" and more "Sansa was the inverse of Lyanna." One was dutiful and one rebelled, one went for her arranged marriage, one rejected it. Which makes sense as Sansa is a foil to Arya…a character who, as the books made clear from the start, does parallel Lyanna.

There are plenty of characters who connect to both Arya and Sansa. Ned and Catelyn reflect different aspects of their daughters. Brienne has two sides that reflect the two of them – both a romantic idealistic and unconventional woman. Let’s talk about those parallels instead.