#it’s even if king robb appeared later it’s not a progression from one to another as much as a back and forth

[the-amazing-spider-bi]

bran in acok thinking of robb as “the king in the north, who used to be his brother robb”. mr george rr martin i am in your walls

[astradrifting]

While Tyland seems to mirror Tyrion, the latter has already experienced all that in the book, hasn't he? Serving the wrong regime, being hated by the people, being badly disfigured etc. But now he's bringing an enemy with dragons to Westeros. Isn't that far beyond Tyland? I keep thinking the Lannister in the service of a rotten regime and for the wrong reasons (Cersei) might be Jamie. He too is disfigured. Is there a parallel for him in DoD?

(referencing this post)

Well, Tyland was sent across the Narrow Sea to Pentos to get sellswords for the Greens but failed, so maybe Tyrion bringing Dany across is meant to be him succeeding where Tyland failed. But you’re right, the foreshadowing events have already happened for Tyrion and it seems repetitive for his story to progress in exactly that way again. The show seemed to indicate that this was his endgame, but I could see D&D giving him this ‘happy ending’ purely because he’s their favourite, maybe swapping his ending with another character’s to facilitate it. The removal of the Tysha reveal so completely stagnated Tyrion’s character arc, which might be why D&D seemed to have no idea what to do with him post s4 aside from get him sucked into the Dany-cult.

There’s definitely meant to be a link between Ser Criston Cole and Jaime, though more of a mirror reflection than parallels. Cole was known as the Kingmaker, for his crucial role in playing Aegon II and Rhaenyra against each other at the start of the Dance, and was later made Aegon’s Hand. He was once Rhaenyra’s loyal sworn sword, until one of them spurned the other before her wedding to Laenor Velaryon. Either he asked her to run away with him to the Free Cities and she rejected him, or she tried to seduce him (for a second time) in the White Sword Tower and he rejected her. Either way, they clearly had a falling out, after which Rhaenyra turned to Ser Harwin Strong and Cole became a supporter of the Greens and Queen Alicent’s new sworn sword. This is similar to Jaime turning away from Cersei for her infidelity, though he doesn’t go so far as supporting the younger brother that will kill her and keeping her from the throne just yet.

Cole’s death is clearly a reference to the Red Wedding - at the Red Wedding, Robb was hit by three crossbow bolts, before Roose Bolton killed him while saying “Jaime Lannister sends his regards.” Criston Cole died at the Butcher’s Ball, a battle in the riverlands near the God’s Eye, killed by three arrows. The man in charge of the archers, and one of the men who killed him, was called Red Robb Rivers. His head was later put upon a spear and marched to another battle. But considering this is already a reversal of Robb’s exact fate in the books, I don’t know if Cole’s death is meant to provide foreshadowing for Jaime’s ending. He seems to be more of Jaime’s foil than a true parallel - Cole appeared to truly hate Rhaenyra in the end and worked to destroy everything she had, but I think Jaime is going to find it harder to give up on Cersei no matter what he says.

Some of Tyland and Tyrion’s parallels could actually apply to Jaime too, in some ways mapping closer to Jaime:

- Tyland was the younger twin of Lord Jason Lannister, as Jaime is Cersei’s younger twin.

- both were tortured and disfigured by the opposite side in war.

- Tyland’s policies benefitted lords, but made him hated by the smallfolk - similarly, Jaime’s slaying of Aerys actually benefitted the nobility, since it was they that Aerys tended to target, but has made him reviled by the smallfolk as the Kingslayer.

- Tyland advised Aegon II to kill his nephew Aegon the Younger instead of just gelding him or sending him to the Wall, because he would always be a threat to his reign. Tyrion has never threatened Bran (yet, at least), but Jaime has already tried to kill him, and later said that he should be killed, ostensibly for mercy but really because Bran was a threat to his and Cersei’s secret.

I’m still more inclined to think that Jaime and Cersei’s endings are linked in some way. But there’s also a lot of possible foreshadowing for Jaime being Hand within the books - @fedonciadale wrote a meta about Jaime possibly becoming Hand before s8. He also spends much of Feast riding around the Riverlands trying to clean up the war, during which he dreams of becoming known as Goldenhand the Just, instead of the Kingslayer. Of course, right now it’s incomprehensible why exactly either Bran or his council of regents would choose to make Jaime his Hand, aside from possibly appeasing supporters of the old Lannister regime, but Tyrion becoming Hand is pretty baffling too. I’d think that either of them would be especially insulting to both Sansa personally and the Martells, but if both the North and Dorne go independent at the end they probably wouldn’t have a say in who becomes Hand in the remaining kingdoms.

I don’t know why it would happen politically, but I could see why it might happen thematically. It might be a bitter, full circle of sorts for Jaime to end up loyally serving a king he’s already wronged.

In Jaime’s last AFFC chapter, he makes plans to eventually return to KL, but not for Cersei. He intends to separate Cersei from Tommen and find him a new small council, considering a slew of lords who could become the new Hand (even Baelish, bizarrely enough), but conspiciously not including himself, even though he’s already planning political manouevres and there have been previous Lord Commanders of the Kingsguard who have served as the Hand e.g. Ser Ryam Redwyne, and Ser Criston Cole during the Dance. He even wants to tell Tommen that he’s his father.

And he had done his own part here at Riverrun without actually ever taking up arms against the Starks or Tullys. Once he found the Blackfish, he would be free to return to King's Landing, where he belonged. My place is with my king. With my son. Would Tommen want to know that? The truth could cost the boy his throne. Would you sooner have a father or a chair, lad? Jaime wished he knew the answer. 

(AFFC, Jaime VII)

He seems to want a second chance, with Tommen after years of not truly acknowledging him as his son, and as a knight of the Kingsguard. The last king he truly served, he ended up stabbing in front of the Iron Throne. Robert barely even counts, because Jaime never had any real loyalty to him. Now he has grand plans to guide Tommen as king that will ultimately be disrupted, first by Lady Stoneheart, then likely by Aegon coming out of the woodwork and taking the crown from either Cersei or Tommen. If Jaime survives to the end of the series, he might end up serving a final king.

Bran and Tommen have often been linked to each other and contrasted throughout the series. They’re the same age, both second sons, and Sansa thinks explicitly that Tommen reminds her of Bran in ACOK. At the very beginning of AGOT, they have a sparring match, in which Bran knocks Tommen down:

There was a shout from the courtyard below. Prince Tommen was rolling in the dust, trying to get up and failing. All the padding made him look like a turtle on its back. Bran was standing over him with upraised wooden sword, ready to whack him again once he regained his feet.

(AGOT, Arya I)

There’s a more oblique link made when the Lannisters are discussing Bran’s fall:

“[...] There is nothing Lord Eddard can do for the boy in any case."

"He could end his torment," Jaime said. "I would, if it were my son. It would be a mercy."

"I advise against putting that suggestion to Lord Eddard, sweet brother," Tyrion said. "He would not take it kindly."

(AGOT, Tyrion I)

In AFFC/ADWD, Jon bitterly remembers the spar between Bran and Tommen:

"At Winterfell, Tommen fought my brother Bran with wooden swords," Jon said, remembering. "He wore so much padding he looked like a stuffed goose. Bran knocked him to the ground." He went to the window and threw the shutters open. The air outside was cold and bracing, though the sky was a dull grey. "Yet Bran's dead, and pudgy pink-faced Tommen is sitting on the Iron Throne, with a crown nestled amongst his golden curls."

(ADWD, Jon II)

Except Bran isn’t dead, and it’s Tommen’s prospects that aren’t looking good. By the end of the series, their positions will likely have reversed entirely from Jon’s statement - Bran will be the boy with a crown in his curly hair, while Tommen might be the one tragically killed in his home.

There would be something bitter and darkly ironic in it, if the boy-king Jaime gets a second chance with isn’t the son he desperately wants to know, but the boy he threw out of a window.

[7deadlycinderellas]

The Ghost of the Red Keep, ch8

A03 link

It’s six years before the war ends and Arya sees any of her family again.

Winter’s in it’s fullest glory by the time it ends. The inn is off the beaten path, and in winter, few travelers come to stay. The ice makes the roads treacherous and the soft snow drifts blanket the open land and lessens the ability of even a single traveler to approach quietly.

From the relative safety of the inn, Arya pieces together the truth. Of Littlefinger’s having managed to convince multiple people in the Red Keep to trust him. She turns it over and over in her head, trying to figure out how he managed it. After Jon Arryn- something must have let it slip that he had found several of Robert’s bastards, and he hatched his scheme to use them to bait Cersei and eventually play her and Robert against each other.

They learn from the scarce travelers before winter sets in that Robb has gone to war over Ned’s execution. It makes Arya proud, though she is terrified for her brothers. They learn that the Tully’s of Riverrun have come to his side, which makes her feel safe, but the Riverlands are pressed right up against the Westerlands and the Lannisters remain loyal to their king. Lannister soldiers have already begun making incursions, and any journey away from the inn carries the fear of their banners

Though Arya has a hard time being truly frightened when she knows Nymeria is keeping so close. As winter creeps in, she begins to have to hurt further and further away to find game big enough to sustain her.

Within the inn though, life goes on.

There’s a dozen or so orphans sheltering under the same roof as the Heddle sisters, ranging from still awkwardly toddling to nearly grown. They have an unusual array of skills.

They have among them, three very simple bows. None of them have much skill shooting them.

Arya plucks the bowstring with a finger. She thinks back hard to those nights stolen in the Godswood with Bran. The bow had seemed so much less attractive than the sword.

“I can teach any of them who want,” she tells Jeyne in the last year of autumn.

And that’s how Arya ended up in the little patch of land beside the garden, surrounded by a gaggle of children. Jeyne and Willow are off to the side, digging up the last of the season’s potatoes and turnips to freeze in the cellar, as they watch.

The oldest two, Teo and Thea, the children of a deceased hunter and trapper, pick it up with ease. The others are a mixed bag.

When Madge, a girl of eleven, lets her arrow slip for the fourth time in a row, Arya sees the tears prick at her eyes and silently pulls her aside.

“Deep breath. Remember you can’t get worse than yesterday.”

Madge follows her lead, and this time the arrow flies free, though it does not hit.

Once the children all tire, and Arya is pleased with their progress, Jeyne stands and calls them in for supper.

“Have you seen Gendry?” Arya asks Willow while she gathers the dug up veggies to store in the root cellar.

Willow raises an eyebrow.

“Hardly ever see him at all except with you. Probably out in the forge like always.”

The inn had a small forge that once housed a blacksmith, who Jeyne told them had gotten married and left for better pastures at the end of summer. Gendry had thrown himself into getting it back into shape, and as the cold crept in, spent nearly all his days clearing it out and getting things working again. Arya feels like he might even sleep out here if she let him.

Today, he’s got the forge lit and is pounding something on the anvil. Arya stands back at the door, and just watches him work for a bit, the muscles in his arms playing under his skin, and the look of deep concentration on his face.

Doing this lets her pretend this is all normal. That she’s just a wife come to fetch her blacksmith husband for supper.

Then he notices her, and his face falters slightly, and the fantasy breaks.

“Suppertime,” she tells him, moving to sit on the bench where he’s working. He ducks his head, and makes a noncommital noise.

She looks him up and down while he towels himself off and pulls his shirt back on.

“I’m taking Teo and Thea on a hunt tomorrow,” she says, carefully, “Would you like to come?”

“I shouldn’t.”

Arya steps closer to him, and lays one hand on his shoulder.

“I know it’s hard. But you’re not going to wake up in that cellar again. Come with us tomorrow, it’s only four people. As long as you eat meals with us in the inn, I won’t bother you about it too much.”

She leans in a little closer, smelling the soot and sweat on his neck. It’s nice, strangely so.

“And if you stay all through supper and clean up, I’ll let you sneak me back out here after.”

A smile quirks on the corner of Gendry’s mouth.

“We have our own rooms, why not just sneak me upstairs?”

Arya chuckles, and presses a kiss to that corner.

“Have some sense of adventure.”

He does stay in through supper, even plays a card game or two. And later, they go out to put out the forge, and spend quite a long time putting their kissing to practice. They walk back to the inn hand in hand, not even to any questions

The hunt the next day goes smoothly. The last of the red and gold leaves are still clinging to the trees, but the wind comes from the north and Arya can tell it won’t last long.

Teo and Thea are both good at the walking-in-silence thing, and have a few improvements on Arya’s simple snares. They plan to leave the close ones up, and check every few days. It takes less effort than having to have a proper hunt.

The sun is high in the sky when Arya sees Teo still, she grasps Gendry’s hand, and they turn their heads as a young buck makes it’s way in to the clearing.

It’s large, it’s antlers fully grown, and it sniffs at the ground like it doesn’t even see them. Arya sees Teo move to pull his bowstring, and she stops him with a hand on the elbow.

“I don’t know how to field dress a deer, and I don’t think even the four of us could carry it back.”

It’s good they’d seen it though. A buck wandering about the wood meant there was plenty of game still.

They net a few fat hares, that they string up and carry back. They’re close to the inn, when Arya’s ears perk up, hearing a howl.

“Wolves howl to call to others,” Arya quietly tells Gendry, “Maybe Nymeria’s found herself a friend.”

Or a mate, she thinks with a pang in her heart. She’s glad they left the buck, she would not want her friend to hunger in the woods.

“What did you think of your first hunt?” she asks Gendry.

He shrugs, “Seemed just like a bunch of walking around to me.”

Arya remembers the journey south from Winterfell, remembers how King Robert nearly doubled their travel time by constantly wanting to stop and hunt. It seems nearly a life time ago.

The hares are an excellent haul though, making a fabulous stew for supper, and the skins will be taken the next time Mya goes into the village to trade.

And the next morning, a disemboweled and mostly eaten buck appears in front of the inn. Maerie, the youngest of the orphans, goes green and starts crying when she sees it, and Arya tries to remove it as quickly as possible. There’s enough bits of meat left for Jeyne to make some sausages at least.  Teo tries to help her Arya it, but they still make a mess of it.

“I’ll still take it with me,” Mya tells them, “Might still fetch a few coins.”

That night, Arya stares out the window of the inn during supper.

“She’s still trying to take care of me,” she comments to Gendry.

“This must seem wonderful to her,” is his response, “This whole big open wood, after being cooped up within the Red Keep.”

She’s not sure he’s still talking about Nymeria.

The chill stays in the air, and eventually, the snow begins to fall. It blankets the ground and piles onto the roof. The younger children hardly have time for mischief making after spending the mornings clearing what needs to be cleared.

Sometimes in the mornings or in the dark nights, Arya will hear Nymeria howling again.

It’s during another hunt, that Arya spots Nymeria across a long meadow, two smaller wolves behind her. Arya stares, and smiles.

At supper that night, Thea demands she tell the story. One by one, all of the orphans, and Willow even, turn to her at the table. Arya’s unused to having even one eye on her. And with a deep breath, she starts.

“My father and my brothers went hunting one day. They found a mother direwolf who had died, in a fight with a stag. Both of the animals had died, but the mother wolf had six pups. My father thought it might be better to put them out of their misery-”

Her heart squeezes at the symbolism of that.

“But my younger brother Bran pleaded with out father, and he relented and let my brother take the pups home. Six of them, one for each of us. Grey Wind, Ghost, Lady, Summer, Shaggydog…”

She waits, and listens, maybe even imagines that she hears another howl.

“...and Nymeria. They’ve been by our sides ever since, though they are now much too large to live inside. I used to let her sleep at the foot of my bed, until she got too big. When we ran, she followed us the whole way. She will not harm anyone who is not a threat to me, and no one will harm me if she is near.”

“The buck-” Madge remembers, “That was her?”

Arya nods,

“I think she was pleased we left her her meal.”

All of orphans’ are now looking out the window in near silence, as though hoping for a glimpse. Gendry remains in his spot, but he’s looking at her with something in his face she can’t place.

Afterwards, In the cold night, Arya walks back with Gendry to put out the forge. He holds her hand tightly the whole way, their boots scraping against the gathering snow.

“I used to wonder,” he nearly whispers, breath going cloudy from the cold, “if the way I felt about you was just because I went so many years barely even seeing other women...but watching you with the orphans, teaching them things, telling them stories...you really are incredible you know that.”

Arya flushes a deep crimson.

“They’re pack,” she suddenly realizes, “Maybe not the same one I used to think of, with Jon and my family and our household..and you. But they’re their own pack, and they’ve let us in.”

They’ve made it back to the forge, and Gendry’s cleaned out the ashes while she tells him this. Once he finishes, he sits at his workbench, fishing around for something wrapped in a flannel.

“I made you this,” he says, offering it to her. Arya unwraps it slowly, revealing a hunting knife.

“It’s not flowers, but-”

Arya swallows, remembering the flowers that wilted in her braid until they flew free in the wind.

“There aren’t many flowers now. And not much need for them in winter.”

She moves beside him on the bench, raised up on her knees, carefully setting the knife down before she wraps her arms around his neck and rests her forehead on his.

“I love it. And I guess I should thank Mya for her advice.”

He laughs bashfully.

“I had to ask someone. I told you before I don’t know anything about girls.”

Arya holds him a little tighter.

“Well it seems you know enough about Arya.”

The snow keeps falling, and a routine establishes.

Everyone wakes to break their fast, usually porridge now that the mills can’t turn anymore and flour jumps in price. Chores are divied up, and argued over. Mya often rides one of the horses into the nearest village for supplies and news. Gendry still spends most of his day in the forge, making small repairs to things around that always seem to need mending, or else shoveling and fetching and climbing and hauling. Sometimes Arya hunts with Teo and Thea, sometimes she checks her traps, sometimes she helps Jeyne and Willow keep up the inn.

She’s never done much in the way of cooking or cleaning, but she’s good at watching, and imitating.

It’s during one of these days, watching Jeyne press out cheese, when Willow asks her,

“How come you haven’t married the blacksmith, since the two of you like making moony eyes at each other so much?”

Arya sputters a bit. They’ve done their best not to share too many details of their background with anyone here, for their own safety as much as their privacy. She’s pretty sure Jeyne and Willow at least recognize her as a highborn, even though she doesn’t often act the role. She smiles roughly before answering.

“I’d like to, never thought I’d say that. Not sure I could convince him to. Still thinks someone will pop out from behind a tree to behead him for so much as holding my hand.”

“You should say something,” Jeyne tells her, with a wry grin, “Man who looks like him wouldn’t be lonely long if he tried, if he wanted to try. Not to mention that a blacksmith in spring could find work wherever he chose. The way he looks at you though, you can’t just find that anywhere.”

It’s practical advice, which is apparently Jeyne’s specialty. Arya doesn’t say anything else while they rub the cheese with ash and stack them to carry to the cellar. Her words are on her mind for several months though.

It’s on Mya’s journeys into the village that they hear any news at all of the war. Most of the news is grim, tales of Lannister raids further north. She brings a story or two of Robb Stark, the young wolf, who some said could turn into a wolf himself. Arya wishes it were true.

Mya spends much of her day in the stables, as Gendry does the forge, though her solitude is more practical. The stables have been empty for so long that they must be constantly kept up. She tries to insulate the best she can, so that the horses (nicknamed Nettle and Briar by her) will be comfortable. Both have grown their winter coats in, and are quite happy to be sure, frolicking outside and being ridden in turn. When the snow doesn’t fall, they still dig through the blanket, seeking grass.

One day, nearly a year or so into winter, Arya sits in the stable on the top rung of the ladder to the hayloft. Gendry sticks his head in.

“Thought you were going to town with Mya today?”

Arya shakes her head, and Gendry climbs the ladder to join her, and she takes his hand. The hayloft is warm enough, dry and sweet smelling.

“Just thinking about...stuff,” she admits. They’re both quiet for quite a long time, Arya holding his hand in her lap. He wraps an arm around her, and she twists so she can crawl into his lap and kiss him. His lips are as warm as his hands.

It’s after several long, blissful, moments, that Arya’s hands wind in the fabric of his tunic, and her eyes meet his. Their hands have explored each other, often and extensively, but they’ve always gone over or under, never taken off.

“I love you,” she murmurs, her hands still holding still.

Gendry is quiet for a time, before responding,

“I love you too, for as long as you’ll have me.”

Arya’s face sprouts a huge grin, and she lifts her hands and pulls the tunic over his head.

“For as long as we have.”

And no one but the horse was there to see their winter-pale bodies, moving against each other in the dark of the hayloft, shivering and grasping, soft moans carried on the wind.

The next morning, Arya privately asks Jeyne if she has the ingredients for moon tea. Jeyne sighs, long and resigned, and makes Arya keep close eye when she pulls out and measures the herbs from her medicine stash.

“Mint, wormwood, tansy, pennyroyal, honey. No more than a few leaves of the tansy or the pennyroyal or you will become quite ill. You don’t actually need the honey, but it tastes vile otherwise. Go with Mya when she goes to the village next week, or I’ll have run out of mint. I suggest restraining yourself until then.”

Arya hadn’t really expected things to change because of it, but somehow they still do. Good changes though. The butterflies that would flutter in her stomach have settled, now they just rise in her chest like the sun when he touches her. Gendry slips so easily into her bed it’s like he was meant to be there.

Arya loves the little life they’ve dug out here. Even through the coughs and fevers, the weeks where they can’t even catch a squirrel and have nothing but broth and thin porridge to eat, through the tantrums and fights the children somehow manage to find even in the coldest days.

But she hates it too.

One night, Gendry rolls to one side and wakes to hear Arya, laying flat on her back, reciting a series of names.

“Whattryou doing?”

Arya squeezes her eyes.

“When I can’t sleep, I recite names. Names of people I don’t want to forget.”

“Where were you at?”

“Jon, Robb, Sansa, Bran, Rickon,” she recites, then leaves her family and moves past, “Mycah, Harwin, Tommen…”

She eventually runs out of names and falls asleep.

It might be easy out here, to forget her life before this, in Winterfell. With a start, Arya realizes she’s past twenty and hasn’t been to Winterfell in nearly half her life.

It wouldn’t be safe to try and go home though. The further into winter, the more stories Mya’s trips bring them. Some say that the Lannisters briefly took Harrenhal, which is far too close for comfort. There are stories of the destruction reaped by the Mountain as he rode the countryside.

The stories are frightening enough, that the handful of times a rider approaches the inn, Arya, Gendry, Mya and the youngest children make themselves scarce, upstairs, in the smallest bedroom with the largest window.

Arya shushes the children during these times.

“You have to be quiet, even your feet could give you away. Imagine you are ghosts, “

Yet in every case, the traveler is simply seeking ale or a meal and leaves after.

It’s nearly her twenty-first year, during a long walk in the snow, when her and Gendry make the discovery. It’s one of those rare winter days, the entire land blanketed in snow, but bright and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. A day you could nearly mistake for summer until the cold nipped at your nose.

It had come after a week’s blizzard had kept everyone inside and driven nearly all of them, even ever good-natured Willow, insane. So when Arya announced she needed to take a walk in the woods, Gendry was quick to join her.

They’re walking through what was once a meadow, when Arya stops short.

“Oh,” Arya exclaims, nearly with tears in her eyes, “I didn’t know they grew this far south. I’ve never heard of a weirwood south of the Neck.”

The tree is small, dwarfed even by the leafless skeletons of the forest around it, but it’s white bark and few red leaves are unmistakable. It has no face, but Arya still falls to her knees to pray.

After a moment, she reaches for Gendry’s hand and pulls him down into the snow beside her.

“I told you,” she starts, “About how we perform weddings in the north?”

His eyes flicker up the trunk and back to hers, wanting, but unwilling to be fooled.

“If you’re certain.”

“I am,” she had once feared that this was all her life was leading up to, but she could never imagined it could look like this.

“We don’t need anyone else?”

Arya shakes her head, letting herself get lost in the blue of his eyes.

“The Gods will see what they need to.”

Gendry nods. She hopes these years have been as good for him as they have for her. He’s got color to his face now, he talks to the children when she is not near. He has lost some of his hunch, and stands tall.

She tells him the words, and he repeats them. There might be some blending of traditions, but she’s always liked the sound of “I am hers and she is mine.” His cloak swamps her, and strictly speaking, she thinks you’re not supposed to giggle while praying.

Gendry reaches forward to lift her with sudden ferocity.

“I’m sorry I have no name to give you,” he says, a breath away from her lips.

She shrugs him off.

“Out here neither of us have names. We live as ghosts.”

They kiss, and Arya smiles and whispers to him about the last part of the marriage tradition. It’s worth risking frostbite for, the two of them pressed together, bare, between both of their cloaks. Afterwards, he scoops her up and carries her until they are out of eyesight of that strange, southern weirwood.

They pass Nymeria from afar near the inn on their way back, with a litter of pups behind her.

Winter continues. Maerie stops knocking into everything when she walks, Pen gains his last few consonants. Teo and Thea are full grown now, and will likely leave the inn come spring to forge their own path.

Mya spends more and more time in the village. Willow suspects she’s found a sweetheart there, though she insists it’s just to make sure she doesn’t overwork Nettle and Briar.

Crocuses come up through the snow. Lya squeals when she sees them, but Arya warns her not to get too excited, for they bloom in winter too.

It’s sometime past Arya’s twenty and second name day, that Lya runs through the front door of the inn, saying riders are approaching.

Arya’s voice catches in her throat, but she has enough presence of mind to grab Gendry and Mya and head upstairs.

She peers through the window. It’s a clear day, another clear day. When the riders approach, Arya is shocked to see that there are three of them.

“They don’t look like soldiers,” Gendry assures her.

Arya squints. Something about them looks familiar.

Eventually, one of the rider’s turns their head, and a bit of hair escapes from under their cloak.

Arya’s breath is stolen away. She jerks violently, and pulls Gendry’s arm.

“That’s my sister,” she says in shock, “That’s Sansa.”

The tiny little glimpse, a bit of bright red hair on the head of a tall, poised, young woman, is all she needs.

Willow has gone out to greet them, and Arya finds she still has more air to be taken away.

One of the figures is Harwin, more lines in his face, more gray in his hair. The other is a mop of red curls Arya can’t quite place until it hits her.

“Rickon,” she breathes. He had been just a little boy the last time she’d seen him, would he even remember her?

She turns to Gendry, and pleads him with her eyes.

“You don’t have to come with me,”

“No,” he replies, nearly harshly. “We agreed before, I go where you go. We’ll find out what’s happened together.”

She nods, and with an unsteady gait, stands, and they both turn to descend the Inn’s stairs and face the future.

[beautifultypewriter]

Stark Girl ~ Podrick Payne

Requested: yes / by @wikii555

Warnings: Mentions of death, spoilers for season 1 and the red wedding

Word Count:1968

Pairing: Podrick Payne x fem!stark!reader

Summary: After escaping from King’s Landing, reader is left on her own, trying to find her family again. While traveling the King’s Road, she meets Brienne of Tarth and her squire, Podrick Payne, and learns of the vow Brienne swore to her mother, Lady Catelyn. Reader is more than willing to join Brienne and Podrick as they travel to find the other Stark girls. She wasn’t counting on being drawn to the young squire though.

A/N: I really need to stop giving time frames for when things are going to be published. I am so sorry that this is later than I said it was going to be. I hope you enjoy it though.

Things had not been easy for you since your escape from King’s Landing. After Joffrey had chopped off your father’s head, you fell further into the crowd, trying to stay out of view of any soldiers or guards. You remember catching sight of Arya and following her out of the city. Unfortunately, you had lost your little sister and you were left alone. After searching for her and coming up empty, you thought about returning to the Red Keep to be with Sansa, but you had ultimately decided to try to find your brother, knowing that Sansa’s best hope was Robb. That’s what you had continued to tell yourself as you traveled along the King’s Road until one night when you overheard some men in a tavern. The Freys had betrayed your brother and now he and your mother were gone. That was the first night since your father had died that you let yourself cry. You cried for your brother, for your mother and your sisters, but you cried for yourself too because now you had no idea what you were going to do. Things were difficult enough as it was, but now you had no goal in mind and no one who could help you.

 That’s how you found yourself curled up in the corner of a tavern, trying to get warm by the fire while also trying to stay hidden. You weren’t sure how long you had been on your own or even how long it’s been since you learned of your mother and brother’s deaths. The whispers of the Red Wedding had died down though and they were replaced with new whispers. Whispers about Joffrey Baratheon being poisoned at his own wedding. Whispers about how his uncle had killed him and about how your sister had been involved with his murder. You weren’t sure what to believe, but you hoped that the whispers of her escape were true. You knew that you should search for her. You didn’t know where to begin, but you knew that you needed to find her, so you grabbed what little you had been able to gather during your travels and set out. Sansa would probably be looking for home if she was in control of her route, so you decided to head North.

 Your journey brought you to another tavern, this one not too crowded, and you told yourself that you would stop for an hour at the most, just to rest your legs. You felt as if you had made very little progress in your journey to find your sister and it was beginning to frustrate you. You didn’t even know if you were heading in the right direction or if this was all for nothing. You slumped into your chair and fell forward, letting your head rest on the wooden table in front of you.

 “Yes, what can I get for you?” You lifted your head, ready to ask the barmaid for water, but you realized that she was addressing the people at the table next to yours. You watched what was probably the largest woman you’ve ever seen, and a young man ask for ale. Once the barmaid had left them, they leaned in to whisper quietly to each other. You moved closer, wondering what was so secretive that they felt the need to whisper, and strained your ears to hear them. You caught a few words, but the ones that stood out to you were Sansa and Lady Catelyn. You froze as your eyes widened, your mind running into overdrive. Why would these people be discussing your family? You looked closer at their faces, trying to see if you recognized them, but you had never seen them before.

 The woman leaned back, defeat clear on her face, “What are we doing?” The man only stared at her as she continued, “Neither Sansa nor Arya wanted my help and we haven’t even found Y/N.” You sunk lower in your chair. How did she know you and your sisters? Had she seen them? Were they alive? Your attention snapped back to her as she sighed, “Perhaps Lady Catelyn should have never put her trust in me to protect her daughters.” You couldn’t stand to hear anymore. This woman knew your mother and was supposed to be protecting you, though you had never seen her before. The chair you sat in squeaked as you pushed it back and got to your feet. You knew that what you were about to do was very risky, but you didn’t know how much longer you would make it on your own and if they were sent to kill you then so be it.

 You stepped over to their table, “Excuse me.” They looked up at you and you took the chance to study them further. The woman looked tired and you could see the wariness in her eyes undoubtedly caused by your sudden appearance. The young man looked at you curiously and when your eyes met you found it difficult to pull your attention away. The air was getting thicker and you quickly cleared your throat, turning back to the woman, “May I ask your name?” The two exchanged a look before turning back to you.

 The woman spoke, “Who is asking?” You gulped. It was now or never. You hoped that everything you had overheard was the truth and they were looking to help you.

 You looked around quickly, making sure no other prying ears were listening, “I am Y/N Stark.” In an instant the woman was kneeled before you, her head bowed.

 She spoke softly, “My lady, before your mother died, I was her sworn sword and I made a vow to her that I would find you and your sisters and protect you. My name is Brienne of Tarth.” She opened her mouth again and you knew she was going to recite vows, but you had no interest in hearing them. You wanted to know about your sisters.

 “You’ve seen my sisters? You’ve seen Arya and Sansa?” The woman looked up, startled and a little confused. You laid your hands on her shoulders and gently pulled her to her feet, “My sisters? You know where they are?” She nodded and told you about how she had found Arya, but lost her when the Hound tried to kill her and then how she had found Sansa with Littlefinger.

 “We’re following Sansa now.” Brienne looked down before meeting your eyes again, “We don’t believe she is safe with him.”

 You nodded, “Then I will go with you.” Brienne would have smiled if she thought it becoming of her vows, but you were just glad to have someone to help you find Sansa. “When will we be ready to leave?”

 Brienne looked to the young man behind her, “Podrick, ready the horses.” He nodded and left the tavern. Brienne turned back to you, “Shouldn’t be too long.”

 You, Brienne, and Podrick had been following Sansa and Littlefinger for almost a week now and it was becoming clear that they were heading to Winterfell. You weren’t sure why though, as last you heard the Boltons had control of your home and Littlefinger held no allegiance to them. You tightened your grip on the reins and looked down to Podrick, who was walking beside your horse. Brienne rode in front of the two of you, keeping a watchful eye out. Podrick must have felt your stare because he turned to look at you. You smiled at him and he smiled back quickly before turning away, the tips of his ears turning red. You giggled quietly to yourself. That happened almost every time you showed him any kind of attention and it never ceased to amuse you. Though you did wonder if it was because of your status as a lady of Westeros or if it was because he found you as attractive as you found him. You had hoped it was the latter, but you tried not to get too carried away in those thoughts. Though he did often stare at you. It was getting to the point where Brienne had noticed too and would scold him when she caught him. You never minded because you would stare at him too. “Podrick!” You looked forward to see that Brienne had stopped and turned to face you and her squire. She tilted her head towards him, “Ready a fire.” He nodded and went about his business, his ears burning brightly still. Brienne looked to you, “We’ll rest here for a bit, Lady Y/N.”

 You nodded, “Of course. Thank you, Lady Brienne.” She gave you a tightlipped smile and you shook your head, “Sorry…Brienne.”

 She shook her head back at you, “No need to apologize.” She looked more relaxed as she went about her duties. As you started to dismount your horse, you felt Podrick stand next to you and hold the horse still.

 When you were on the ground, you smiled at him, “Thank you, Podrick.”

 He smiled back, “Of course, my lady.”

 Brienne watched you two before clearing her throat, “I’m going to scout the area. Will you be alright here?”

 You nodded, “Of course.” You looked over at Podrick, “I have Pod here to protect me.” His whole face went red and he ducked to avoid any further attention, tending to your horse. Brienne nodded, but she didn’t say anything as she walked along the path and down into the trees. When you were sure that she wasn’t within earshot, you turned to the young man, “Do I embarrass you, Podrick?”

 He glanced at you for a moment, shaking his head, “No, my lady.”

 “Then why do you blush when we speak?”

 He gulped, “I don’t know what you mean.” You looked at him with raised eyebrows, but he refused to meet your gaze.

 “I quite like you, Podrick.”

 His head snapped up and he stared at you before speaking slowly, “I like you too, my lady.”

 “Do you?” Licking his lips, he nodded. You chose your next words carefully, “Would you want to kiss me, Podrick?” You moved closer to him and he stiffened, so you backed off a bit. He noticed your retreat, so he released some of the tension in his shoulders.

 He nodded again, “Yes, my lady.” Your breath caught in your throat and though he took a step closer to you, he shook his head, “But I shouldn’t.” He stepped back again, but you weren’t going to just drop the subject.

 “And why not?”

 Sighing, he motioned to you, “Because you’re… and,” he motioned to himself then, “I’m…” He shook his head again and went to walk away, but you laid your hand on his shoulder.

 He turned to you and you smiled, “I’m the fugitive daughter of a traitor to the crown and you are a noble squire.” You saw the tips of his ears going red again and you smiled, tilting your head to catch his eyes.

 Instead, he looked at your hand, which was still on his shoulder, “Forgive me, but you’re wrong. That’s not what you are.”

 You spoke in a whisper, “What am I then?”

 His eyes moved to your face, taking in every detail before stopping on your own eyes, “You are my lady.”

 You sighed, your eyes slipping shut for only a moment before you were staring into Pod’s brown eyes again, “And will you give your lady a kiss?” His arm moved around your waist and he hesitantly pulled you closer, staring into your eyes the entire time. He glanced at your lips quickly and you smiled at him, noticing that for the first time since you met him, his ears didn’t change color. He only smiled back before leaning down and placing his lips over your own.

[bighound-littlebird]

The Alarm that Never Sounded: GOT's treatment of the SanSan Romance

by Miodrag Zarkovic

Originally posted here.

When adapting female characters from ASOIAF into the TV show "Game of thrones", David Benioff and Dan Weiss aren't unlike Robert Baratheon: if they can't disrobe it, they're bored with it. Their rendition of Melisandre, for example, isn't an intimidating and imposing practitioner of dark and supernatural powers, but rather a seductress who's able to make people obey her only if she rewards them with sex (Stannis, Gendry) or gold (Brotherhood without Banners). One more example would be their rendition of Margaery Tyrell, who was turned from a teenage girl with a perfect facade and somewhat mysterious foundation, into a promiscuous lady willing to do anything – even have sex with both her brother and her husband simultaneously, as she proposes to the latter in Season 2 – in order to achieve her personal political ambitions that are literally limitless.

With that in mind, Sansa Stark never had a chance to be properly adapted in the show created by D&D. Now, the word 'properly' has a rather wide range of possible meanings, and this essay will attempt to examine at least some of them, but, for now, let's say that the most obvious aspect in which TV Sansa was shorthanded is her screen time. In "A Clash of Kings", the book that was the basis for the Season 2 of GoT, Sansa's POV chapters, along with Tyrion's, are the only ones that depict what's happening in King's Landing, the capital of The Seven Kingdoms and the center of political power in the story. This goes for the first two thirds of "A Storm of Swords" as well, e.g. until the moment Sansa escapes from King's Landing. In short, her chapters couldn't help but be of paramount importance in the narrative sense. In the show, however, Sansa's significance is greatly decreased, and not only because the show doesn't follow the "POV structure" of the novels, but because she's reduced to nothing but a prized captive for the Lannisters.

Yes, TV Sansa is a minor, and she's played by a minor, named Sophie Turner. Her age, due to the laws that forbid the usage of underage children in explicit sex scenes, prevented D&D from using Sansa in a way they adore. And her age couldn't be drastically changed without drastic consequences on her overall arc which is, in ACOK at least, built around her first period. That's why, for example, D&D couldn't cast Natalie Dormer – one of their favorite ASOIAF characters, by the way, because they did alter Margaery to suit the actress, instead of the other way around – in the role of Sansa, because Dormer, while certainly looking younger than she is, could never pass as a minor.

And that would probably be the only thing that makes Sansa off-limits for Natalie Dormer, or some other actress D&D adore, to play her in D&D's adaptation. Everything else would've been doable. Had George R. R. Martin not put her first period in the books, Sansa's age, promiscuity, vocabulary, even wardrobe, would've been changed accordingly to suit D&D's vision of a progressive Westerosi woman, which means the first three would've been amplified, while the fourth one – wardrobe – would definitely be reduced and freed from all the unnecessary parts. She'd probably even hook up with some rogue brute at some point; when she'd find the time for him, that is; after she's done with Joff, Tyrion, Lancel, and god knows who else, she'd certainly figure out cynical killers can occupy her bed just as good as other available men can.

Speaking of cynical killers – enter Sandor Clegane. One more character that, alas, couldn't be played by Natalie Dormer, and therefore not of particular interest to D&D. Sandor in the novels is a truly memorable fellow, who slowly but steadily grows in readers' eyes as the story progresses. At the beginning, he's nothing more than a merciless brute used only for killing people Lannisters want dead. Very soon, however, a reader finds out there might be some traces of soul under that rough surface. More and more we find out about Sandor, more and more intriguing and understandable he gets. Even – more likable.

Now, what makes him likable? The stories Littlefinger tells to Sansa?! Of course not. The stories Sandor himself keeps telling to Sansa are what fleshes him to the extent that was probably impossible to predict at the beginning of the series. Through his conversations with Sansa, we find out every important thing there is to know about him. Later on, when he hangs up with Arya, Sandor is already a fully developed character, whom we aren't discovering any more, but rather following. And he became like that precisely through his exchanges with Sansa.

The show went the other way, and a pretty odd way, at that. D&D decided it was better for Littlefinger to deliver the story of how Sandor's face got burned, and that decision carries some very serious consequences in regards to characterization. For example, Littlefinger appears as someone who does know the secrets of King's Landing, but, at the same time, as someone who doesn't hesitate to share those secrets with persons he doesn't have any control over. Yes, he warns Sansa not to tell anyone about the story; but, he warns her because, and here comes the funny part – Sandor is going to kill her.

Now, why isn't Littlefinger afraid Sandor's going to kill him? After all, isn't that the logical question because it's Littlefinger who offers Sandor's secrets to others? It seems there are only two possible answers: 1) Sandor is not that scary and dangerous as Littlefinger claims, or 2) Sandor is a dangerous fellow, but Littlefinger is the bravest individual alive, because he goes around telling the secrets of people that physically can literally eat him for breakfast; and he isn't shy even, because he doesn't fail to warn Sansa how dangerous is the situation he himself dares so boldly.

Whatever conclusion a viewer draws from there, something is going to be radically changed from the source material. Quite possibly, in fact, a lot of things are going to be altered. After the said scene, both Littlefinger and Sandor are drastically different than their book origins. And the characters we ended up with in the show, are not nearly as complex and intriguing as their book counterparts. This is especially true for Sandor, who's nothing if not scary and dangerous. He is supposed to frighten the living hell out of everyone who isn't his older brother. If you take that away from Sandor, you're only left with his tender side.

But, even his tender side was almost entirely removed from the show. This time, not only by Littlefinger, but also by Tyrion: in the throne room, when Joff orders Kingsguards to undress Sansa, Sandor stands there silently. His face expression suggests he isn't pleased with what he sees, but that's it. He doesn't stand up to his king with firm "That's enough" as in the book. It is therefore on Tyrion exclusively to deny Joffrey the pleasure of torturing the girl whose only crime was that she saw him in a moment of unflattering weakness. As in the books, TV Tyrion enters the room with his sellsword and he defends Sansa from Joff, but the important difference is that in the show it looks like Tyrion is the only one both willing to oppose Joffrey and capable of doing it. In the novel, we can sense that Sandor is ready to do the same thing, only, in his case, it comes with a much bigger risk, which is not without importance.

So, in this particular case, Sandor was sacrificed for the sake of TV Tyrion. TV Littlefinger, however, wasn't forgotten in that regard, because, once again, he's fed with lines that originally belong to Sandor. In the finale of the second season, it is Littlefinger who tells Sansa to look around and see how much better than her all those liars are. Just as the last time around, this change serves neither Littlefinger nor Sandor: the former's creepy-mentoring side is exposed much earlier than it would be logical, while the latter is robbed of yet another moment in which he shows how much he cares for Sansa and how protective he is toward her.

Sansa is a case on its own, as far as wrong adaptations are concerned. She's in the league with her mother Catelyn Stark, as two Stark women that were literally butchered in the show. The thing two of them have in common is the nature of their complexity: opposite to other female characters in ASOIAF, like Dany or Arya or Asha or Brienne or Cersei, Cat and Sansa aren't interested in hurting their enemies with their own hands, or, in the case of Dany, with her own dragons (this goes for Cersei, too, even though she's the one ordering the suffering of others, not committing it: her aggression is always personal, as we can sense in the first three novels). And, what's more, Sansa isn't interested in hurting anyone, actually. Cat does have an aggressive side in her; it's female aggression all the way, but aggression it is. Sansa, on the other hand, almost never desires other people to suffer in any way. There's only one noticeable exception: Joffrey. She does think on one or two occasions how nice it would be if Robb put a sword in Joff, and, by extension, she wishes Lannisters are defeated in the war against her family. However, we have to consider the situation she finds herself in at those moments – imprisoned by the Lannisters and at Joff's 'mercy' all the time; small miracle she wishes them ill. I've never been a girl arrested by the grave enemies of my family, but if I was, I'd definitely pray for their most horrible deaths every single night. And, we have to remember that, after Joff's death, she fails to feel happy over it, even though she tries to a little.

Therefore, it maybe isn't a stretch to say Sansa is probably the one character that is most unlike the author himself. Other major characters, especially POV ones, do resemble Martin at least partially. For males, it's obvious: even though GRRM never fought in a war, nor had any military training whatsoever, men are men; even in our day and age, no male is a complete stranger to war; while depicting all those dramatic battles and duels was quite an achievement (which no personal experience would make any easier, truth be told, because in ASOIAF the combat as a phenomenon is illustrated from any number of angles, each among them presented with an abundance of details), ultimately it was in himself where Martin could find a lot of answers about his male characters, whose position in a society is never independent from their combat prowess or lack of it. Female characters, on the other hand, had to be trickier, just like they always are for male authors – let's admit it, they are not that good in creating great females, just like women writers usually don't produce male characters that are a match to their female characters nor to the male heroes created by male authors. In our day and age, these "gender rules" are rarely spoken of, but they continue to exist, due to gender predispositions that are nowhere as strong as in the mind of an individual. There are exceptions, as in good male characters created by women and vice versa, but they are in a clear minority compared to underdeveloped or unrealistic characters whose only "fault" was that they didn't share the sex with an author. And in that regard, ASOIAF could very well be unparalleled: it is perhaps impossible to find any other story that features nearly as many memorable male and female characters both, as ASOIAF does (truth be told, that fact alone should be enough to inspire analysts and scholars to look at ASOIAF at a different, more demanding light, and not as a genre piece).

Martin's girls, however, aren't completely unlike the man who came up with them. Most of them are willingly participating in "men games", e.g. power-plays and/or wars, which makes for a precious connection to a male mindset of the author. They are thinking and behaving as women (or, in the case of Arya, and Dany to an extent, as girls), but all of them are interacting with something that, in all its glory and misery, can roughly be called "a man's world". Some of the most beautifully written chapters in the series are delivered from female POVs – The Red Wedding and Cersei's "Walk of Shame" come to mind right away; but, in a thematic sense, those and other female chapters don't differ too much from male POVs.

Except for Sansa's chapters, which unmistakably belong to something we can roughly call "a woman's world". Chapters of both male and female POVs in ASOIAF are often rich with testosterone, but Sansa’s ones are almost entirely driven by estrogen: look no further than her captivity in King's Landing, that actually is, as already said, focused around her first period – that decision solely should bring a lot of respect for Martin, because he had to know going that road is never easy for a male writer.

And the funniest thing is, it all fits. Sansa's storyline is distinctive in tone, but not odd. It is a legitimate part of the general plot of ASOIAF. In fact, as her story progresses, Sansa becomes more and more important for The Game, even though she showed no clear inclination to participate in it so far, but at the same time, Martin keeps Sansa away from all those "male" aspects he decorated other female characters of his saga.

And on top of everything, we're presented with her love story, a romance with no other than the man who, prior to discovering some delicate feelings for Sansa, could pose for an ideal brute of Westeros. At the beginning of the story, Sandor Clegane could be perceived as the exact opposite of Sansa. As someone who has no business whatsoever in her world, just like she has none in his. But, with some craft wording and master subtlety, Martin succeeds in illustrating the flood of emotions that go both ways in their relationship. Those emotions are never easy, nor appropriate, let alone allowed – even by Sansa and Sandor themselves! – but they're hard to be denied.

The complexity of their multilayered characters, of their respective positions in a society and in an ongoing war, and of their relationship that resists all known clichés, represent some of the strongest evidence that ASOIAF is much more than a genre piece. There's a lot in these novels that escapes genre boundaries, but nothing more evidently than SanSan. Stuff like that is not your usual fantasy element, no matter how flattering fantasy can be as a label (Homer, Shakespeare, Tolkien – to name just a few all-time greats that created unforgettable stories with supernatural aspects in them). Any author who comes up with that kind of love story involving those kind of characters – and with a legion of other characters, and with no less than four different religions, and with themes of honor, redemption, identity, bravery, equality, ancestry, legacy, freedom, revolution... – deserves to be analyzed not as a genre writer.

Now, one can only imagine what kind of enigma Sansa and Sandor were for Benioff and Weiss. And it pretty much remained unsolved, because, when faced with all the complexity of these two characters, Benioff and Weiss decided to remove it almost entirely, along with their relationship that is reduced to occasional and odd mentioning of 'little bird'. TV Sandor was simplified to a one-note brute that goes around TV Westeros and lectures people about the pleasures of killing, a one-note brute he never was in the novels, not even in the beginning of the saga. TV Sansa, on the other hand, was denied her book complexity by shutting down all her layers, one by one. For example, Benioff and Weiss completely removed her decision to go behind her father's back and inform Cersei of his plan. They simply refused to go down that road. They did something similar to Catelyn, whose infamous line to Jon they didn't remove entirely, but did replace it with a much softer one. It is pretty safe to assume that Cat's and Sansa's complexity did bother Benioff and Weiss from the get-go.

What's also removed from the show is Sansa's agency, primarily represented in the novels by her secret meetings with Dontos, a disgraced knight she herself saved from Joffrey. In the show, we got only the saving scene; it was filmed and executed clumsily, but it was there at least. However, until recently, nobody could be sure Sansa did save Dontos, because the man disappeared afterwards (he was briefly seen as joggling balls in "Blackwater" episode, in the scene in Cersei's chambers, but he was unrecognizable for the vast majority of audience). It is reported, though, that Dontos will be returning in Season 4, so yes, Sansa did save his life after all. But, even when he returns, Sansa's attempts at escaping will be two seasons younger than they should've been at that point, and it's hard to see a way D&D can remedy that neglect.

Show-lovers often defend D&D in regards to Sansa, by saying her personality is a difficult and tricky one for portraying on screen, because even in the books she's introverted. Now, maybe she isn't the most extroverted character ever, but she's pretty far from reclusive, as she does communicate with the outside world a lot at the beginning of the series, before she's imprisoned. And even while in captivity, she can't help but communicate with Sandor and Dontos. What's more, around two of them she is her true self, which provides a wide array of possibilities for a good and informative dialogue that, in an adaptation, could compensate for the lack of inner thoughts. With Dontos, she's open not only because she saved him, but also because he explicitly offers his help (and, truth be told, it is he who enabled her to leave King's Landing eventually, so, even though he wasn't exactly honest with her concerning his motivations, her trust wasn't as misplaced as it may seem at first). And with Sandor, she's open for no particular reason – other than those subtle, emotional forces, that both of them can't help but follow and eventually become the closest and most intimate beings to each other.

The way Martin incepted and developed the barely visible, but undeniable romance, between Sansa and Sandor, is nothing short of literary brilliance. With so few words and interactions, he managed so much. The vast majority of readers are aware of restrained attraction they mutually feel, even though they didn't share a single physical aspect of the romantic relationship.

Martin is indeed a master of subtlety, as evidenced by what looks like the endless amount of carefully hidden clues that point to any number of narrative puzzles, realization of which do make an entire story much richer than if taken at face value. And he's never more subtle than with two romances: Rhaegar/Lyanna and Sandor/Sansa. Now, the respective nature of subtlety of those two romances is rather different. With Rhaegar and Lyanna, a reader is – through Robert's retelling – offered a version that is actually the very opposite of what probably happened, and only later a reader can pick up clues here and there, and finally figure out the story of a fatal attraction between the two. But, the clues are presented throughout the text, so much that, even if you don't decipher everything after the first read, at the end of "A Game of Thrones" – the first book of the series – you'll probably sense that Robert's view on events wasn't exactly accurate.

The story of Sansa and Sandor is a very different one. Their relationship is never as much as addressed, even by themselves. Sandor isn't a POV character, and he's not exactly open to people, so his silence on the matter isn't unexpected. But, Martin didn't address their romance even in Sansa's chapters, which are typically packed with inner thoughts of the POV character. It looks like Martin decided to do it the harder way and make their romance somewhat a mystery even for Sansa, which, in hindsight, does seem to be the most logical way: what teenage girl would be fully aware of a romance that "inappropriate", and experienced in those dire circumstances?! As a result of that decision, the readers got a completely fascinating depiction of a romance, that can be described as a train you hear from miles away: at first, you can't even tell is it a train or some similar sound, but slowly, with every second, you're more and more certain that your ears didn't trick you, and very soon the train is so loud that it is the only thing you can hear at all. In the novels, a reader may find something strange at first, when Sandor shares the secret of his burned face with Sansa. Some alarm may be turned on deep inside. And it becomes more apparent each time two of them share a page, with a culmination during the Battle of the Blackwater Bay, when Sandor, after he decides to desert the Lannisters, visits Sansa in her room and offers to take her home to Winterfell.

It might be the only instance in the entire series where Sandor did ask anyone's approval, which does speak volumes about his feelings for Sansa. Considering the manner in which Martin described this romance, Sandor's actions on that day was as good as a confession of his deep attraction to her. Sansa, on the other hand, doesn't have a single moment which could be pointed at as a prime evidence of her undeniable love for The Hound, but this doesn't mean her feelings toward Sandor aren't palpable. It's one more mastery of the writer: through her frequent (and skewed, but in a telling way) memories on the last time she saw Sandor, he was able to show her feelings resonating more and more inside her.

In the show, Martin was denied a chance to do the same thing, even though he wrote the "Blackwater" episode in Season 2. Thanks to the already destroyed storyline, and to god knows how many changes, and to D&D's decision to remove from the final cut some scenes Martin referred to with his scenes, the one between Sansa and Sandor near the end of that episode, served more as a greeting to book-fans who like SanSan in the source material, than as a goodbye between two not unlike souls who shared much, and could have shared a lot more, and maybe are going to if they meet again. In that scene, Rory McCann was visibly better than usual as Sandor, and Sophie Turner was as good as usual, but, just like with anything ASOIAF, the scene doesn't have nearly the same impact and importance if taken out of context.

The exact context of their SanSan is yet to be fully revealed in the books, too. Because of the already mentioned subtlety – a quality that seems to intimidate showrunners Benioff and Weiss, who, in their turn, do retaliate with their on-screen war on subtlety (just recall what they turned other romances into; for example, the romance between TV Jon "Not The Brightest Kid In The Block" Snow and TV "I Know Everything And Therefore I Can't Stop Talking" Ygritte) – Sansa's and Sandor's love story is by no means an open book. Their romance has its own share of mystery, one of which may be: what inspired those two persons to feel so strongly for each other? Personally, I always thought their mutual attraction isn't only based on a "beauty and the beast" model. There is that, but in their case it goes deeper. If that was the engine behind his emotions, Sandor had more than enough opportunities to find a beauty for his beast long before Sansa entered his life. With Sansa, I'd say their mutual attraction is rooted in their personalities. For example, if you take away Sandor's aggression, he also isn't interested in hurting others. He's naturally talented for violence, and he lives in a society that respects that kind of talent, and that is why he's violent for a living, but at the end of the day, the suffering of others isn't any kind of reward for him. Possibly, because he isn't interested in other people that much. Though, when he is interested in someone, the interest is as strong as they come.

(We don't know at this point, but it's not a stretch to imagine that his reaction to the news that his hated brother was killed wasn't unlike Sansa's reaction to Joff's death. "Am I glad he's dead? Well, not exactly, even though I wanted him killed.")

Sansa may very well be like that, too. That would be one of the possible explanations of her AGOT actions. Like the rest of the Starks, Sansa is a complex character that has some issues of her own, without which neither she nor the other Starks would be such memorable characters as they obviously are; it is the fact that they are both willing and strong enough to fight those issues, that Starks stand out for. Without going into details (as if I could!), I expect that in the remaining novels Sansa is going to face the reasons that made her go to Cersei that damned night and with the consequences of that action. And whatever comes out of that soul-searching will be inevitably combined with her claim to Winterfell that Littlefinger brought up in AFFC. And that combination is going to elevate Sansa's arc to even bigger and more important levels than so far, even though so far she was the one Stark that was most engaged – unwittingly, but still – in the bloody dynastic war for the Iron Throne.

And she'll have to cross paths with Sandor Clegane, one way or another. Their relationship was so meticulously built up, it simply has to get some sort of a closure. What that closure is going to be is impossible to predict, because we are talking of one George R. R. Martin, a writer who managed to shock us as he pleased more than a few times.

What is also impossible, is to take anything that did or didn't happen in the show as any indication at what the closer may or may not be. There isn't a storyline in GoT that wasn't drastically changed, and weakened in the process, but Sansa's arc, along with her relationship with Sandor, is among the biggest victims of D&D's inability to adapt.

Whether you happen to like what Benioff and Weiss put in the show, or don't, you'd be advised not to recognize any significance in their decisions for further developments in ASOIAF. Just like show-lovers tend to remind everyone else, GoT and ASOIAF are two entirely separate beasts. And book Sansa and book Sandor, along with everything Martin has in his store for them, can be really glad about it.

[fortunatelylori]

When Jon and Sansa think about each other

Book dabbles

 I debated a lot before writing this because to be honest I’m no book expert and also the topic of Jon and Sansa thinking about each other in the A Song of Ice and Fire series has been covered so extensively in our corner of the fandom and by some truly fantastic meta writers.

But some thoughts did occur to me and I thought I might as well share them … :)

The main thing that has always struck me about Jon and Sansa’s thoughts on each other is not only just how rarely they occur. In Jon’s case, in particular, it’s quite strange to say the least because he doesn’t think about her even in moments where it’s practically impossible for him not to even spare her a thought.

However, sparse as they are, what I find truly moving about their thoughts about one another is that they concern two important aspects.

In Jon’s case, his thoughts on Sansa are centered around her romanticism, her wonderment at beauty and her love of songs.

He thought of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself

This is a particularly idyllic memory he’s picked there. Almost intimate I dare say. This is speculation, of course, but it does conjure up that image of watching someone you admire from afar, so to speak.

Sansa would call this an enchantment, and tears would fill her eyes at the wonder of it

This is one of my favorite quotes from the books because it feels so true to Sansa’s character and her desire to see the best in the world, to be filled with wonder at it and be moved to tears by beauty. The fact that, for some reason, Jon knows this about her always manages to surprise me.

There’s also a pretty stark contrast between his imaginings on Sansa’s reactions and Arya’s reactions.

“Sansa’s eyes filled with tears at the wonder of it” is very much an image he will be struck by later on when he meets Ygritte whom he starts falling for partly because she would cry when she talked about giants or sang songs.

Of Arya, he says this:

but Arya would run out laughing and shouting, wanting to touch it all

Clearly this is not the kind of reaction Jon is having at the moment. He’s pensive and blown away by the view (“there was magic beyond the wall after all”). His reaction is much closer to his imagined Sansa than his imagined Arya who, here, is placed in the role of the noisy, cheerful child, who is running around happily while the two “adults” look on.

But what is the most interesting thing about these quotes is that Jon, out of all the Stark children, is the only one to think of those characteristics of Sansa in a positive way. Bran also makes mention of Sansa’s love for songs but he calls the songs she likes “stupid”. Arya thinks most of what Sansa does and says is stupid. And we never get access to Robb’s thoughts but he doesn’t appear to spare Sansa much thought at all. Jon alone seems to be the one to value these aspects of Sansa that are so integral to her character.

Also noteworthy that while in the beginning Jon’s thoughts on Arya and Sansa are conflagrated:

He missed the girls too, even Sansa, who never called him anything but “my half brother” since she was old enough to understand what bastard meant.

The girls do not even have that much, he thought. Their wolves might have kept them safe, but Lady is dead and Nymeria’s lost, they’re all alone.

As the story progresses, his thoughts on the two split more and more and are often given in contrast to one another, as Jon begins to reflect on the two as individuals instead of “the girls”. This is far more important for Sansa than it is for Arya since Jon and Arya’s relationship is much more prominent in Jon’s thoughts so far, in the story.

The other important aspect here is that just as Jon begins to reveal his appreciation of Sansa’s romanticism, her qualities as a lady and her love for songs, Sansa is slowly beginning to lose those things. First she loses Lady, a loss Jon comprehends on a level that even Ned ignores. She also begins to say things like:

I thought my song was beginning that day. But it was almost done.

There were no heroes. In real life, monsters always win.

There is even a contrasting image of what Jon conjured up on the Wall, when Sansa enters the gardens of the Eeryie. But while she is struck by the beauty of it all just like Jon imagined, she also thinks this:

A pure world. I do not belong here.

This is often taken as Sansa saying that her place was in Winterfell but I also think this is Sansa internalizing her abuse to such a degree that she no longer feels worthy or “pure”. *cue me ugly crying here*

In order for her to regain those aspects of herself that abuse and isolation have stripped away from her, she’s going to need someone who knew just how important those characteristics were as well as have a true appreciation for them. Need I say more …

In Sansa’s case, the most moving aspect of her thoughts on Jon is that she considers things that others don’t, for whatever reason. All the Stark children think fondly on Jon when they think of him but Sansa finds herself wondering about his actual, current situation. 

This quote here in particular is immensely interesting:

If this was what the Night's Watch was truly like, she felt sorry for her bastard half brother, Jon.

Faced with the reality of what the Night’s Watch actually is, instead of the brave and heroic Black Knights she was lead to believe protected the realm from unknown “invaders”, Sansa feels sorry for Jon. The reason why this is so moving to me is because it encapsulates Jon’s entire Night’s Watch drama. He goes to the wall thinking he’s going to join this illustrious and respectable Brotherhood of honorable Knights only to be faced with the reality of a group of thieves and rapists or simple, poor boys forced to go to a place where they’ll likely starve, freeze to death or be murdered because they had no other choice. Talk about a rude awakening! And Sansa of all people is the one that acknowledges this and empathizes with Jon’s plight.

And then there’s the famous:

She had not thought of Jon in ages. He was only her half brother, but still . . . with Robb and Bran and Rickon dead, Jon Snow was the only brother that remained to her. I am a bastard too now, just like him. Oh, it would be so sweet, to see him once again.

This is quite the leap Sansa made from this:

It would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard, like their half brother Jon. She even looked like Jon, with the long face and brown hair of the Starks, and nothing of their lady mother in her face or her coloring. And Jon's mother had been common, or so people whispered.

Every anti-Sansa commentary circles back to her derision of Jon as a bastard. And you can clearly see in the second quote just how low an opinion she had of the position to begin with. She even thinks Jon’s mother must have been common, because how else would he have ended up a bastard? Also Arya’s attitude disturbs her to such a degree that she thinks it would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard as well.

But easier how? I think the answer is that if Arya had been a bastard, Sansa would have been able to find a more suitable place for her in her world view. She’s been trained to think that bastards by nature are lacking in some way, are less suitable for respectable society than legally born children and because Arya’s behavior is so out of the spectrum of what she’s been led to believe is “normal”, bastardhood would have offered an explanation.

And so I must ask, is it a coincidence that Sansa finds herself in the position of becoming a bastard herself? Of suffering people’s suspicions of her nature, their insults and humiliations? Is it GRRM punishing her for the thoughts that her society put in her head since she was old enough to speak? Or is it perhaps a way for her to understand Jon’s situation and his frustrations in a way that she could never do before? Is it likely she’ll think the same of him, after her own experiences? And after conveniently spending part of her Eeryie arc around two other bastards?

There’s already a marked difference between the Alayne quote and the Night’s Watch quote in terms of how she refers to him. In the Night’s watch quote she calls him “her bastard half brother” which feels like overkill, like she has to clearly state his exact position to keep it straight in her head, lest she slip and think of him in a more affectionate way. In the Alayne quote she abandons the “bastard” before “half brother” all together and then brings it up as a way for her to breach the divide she most assuredly knows is there.

It would be easy to imagine Sansa saying to Jon: “I was a bastard just like you. I understand now.” in order to try and forge a relationship with him, once they’re reunited.

On love:

These quotes are obviously not Jon and Sansa thinking about each other but I do think there’s something interesting about how they connect.

When Sansa is dealing with the Tyrells and thinking about a possible marriage to Willas Tyrell, this is the image that she comes up with of her married life:

She pictured the two of them sitting together in a garden with puppies in their laps, or listening to a singer strum upon a lute while they floated down the Mander on a pleasure barge.

On the other hand, Jon has started a relationship with Ygritte, he just had sex for the first time and is a very young man. This is the time he should probably work on perfecting his first imagined porno flick. However, this is what he thinks about:

If I could show her Winterfell…give her a flower from the glass gardens, feast her in the Great Hall, and show her the stone kings on their thrones. We could bathe in the hot pools, and love beneath the heart tree while the old gods watched over us.  

Both of these quotes have very little to do with their respective partners. Sansa has never met Willas. He might be allergic to puppies for all she knows. On the other hand, Jon knows that him doing any of the things he wants to do with Ygritte would be impossible because she��s not the type of woman to be gifted flowers, be dined in the Great Hall or appreciate the stone kings that are probably responsible for keeping her people beyond the wall for centuries.

However, looking at both those quotes, what stands out is just how similar they are. Both Jon and Sansa conjure images of domestic bliss, filled with romance and tranquility. Also, for some strange reason, both Jon and Sansa think of being with their respective partners in water … Granted, Sansa also wants puppies and she doesn’t think about making love beneath the stars but she’s a sheltered and very young girl who thinks kissing is about the most risqué thing you can do.

You can kind of see just how easily both their fantasies could fit together in a way that wouldn’t rob one or the other of what they want.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this:

If I could show her Winterfell…give her a flower from the glass gardens …

One of the main reasons why Sansa became romantically interested in Loras Tyrell was because he gifted her a rose at the joust. Jon wants to woo his lady love with flowers from the glass gardens. I say they should just skip the middle man. Also, Jon should get a hold of some puppies to seal the deal … And maybe some kittens too … It’s important to be original, after all.

*gifs do not belong to me!

[samwpmarleau]

Can you please do a Aegon and Rhaenys vs Jon fic about them hating, tolerating and then growing fond of each other as siblings? I love your fics, they're amazing.

Another anon asked: You’re an amazing writer! I love all your AU’s with rhaenys. Could you do one with Jon Snow and rhaenys? Kinda angsty but not too sad

His whole life, the fact that he has half-siblings is little more than a nebulous idea to to him. That those half-siblings are royals, that one of them sits the Iron Throne while he’s a bastard in Winterfell is nearly impossible to wrap his head around. He knows who his parents were, and he knows that he shares one of them with the king and princess, and he knows that there must be thousands of people with royal blood in Westeros, yet still he thinks surely there must be a mistake. Lyanna Stark being his mother he can comprehend; he has her look, Uncle Ned says so all the time. Crown Prince Rhaegar Targaryen being his father, however…

For fourteen years, he more or less tries to pretend they don’t exist. It’s easier that way. And then one day Ned tells them all that he received a letter, one sealed with a three-headed dragon.

“King Aegon will be making a progress to the North,” he says. Normally stoic, Jon can see the uncertainty in his uncle’s face and knows he’s remembering the war he so rarely talks about. “He says he has made progresses elsewhere in the realm but as he reaches his age of majority a year hence, he wishes to have seen every kingdom before he becomes sovereign over them all. Princess Rhaenys will be accompanying him.”

“The queen?” Aunt Catelyn asks.

Ned skims the text again and shakes his head. “It makes no mention of her.”

Jon can’t tell whether Catelyn is relieved or disappointed. Queen Elia had allowed Ned to live, but she had also executed Catelyn’s father. Though Jon does not doubt she would have been the pinnacle of politeness had the queen chosen to come along, he wonders what her internal feelings would have been.

Sansa begins effusing about how exciting it will all be, and then the rest of his cousins chime in with comments of their own, but Jon stays silent. Will he be expected to keep himself out of sight during their visit? Probably. He’s still a bastard, after all, never mind who his kin are. He wonders if this is how the illegitimate children of previous kings had felt. Caught between wanting to be included, and wanting to be ignored.

He ultimately refrains from being in the crowd that greets them, but it turns out not to matter. After the feast, Princess Rhaenys corners him in the yard, appraising him much like she might a pebble in her shoe.

“So you’re the bastard,” she sneers. “You don’t look like much.”

It’s true enough. He’s no Robb or, so he’s heard, his uncle Brandon who’d died before he was born. He searches his half-sister for any resemblance, but there is little to be found. Not in her Martell coloring nor her undeniable beauty, nor the imperious way she holds herself, not even the slope of her nose or the thickness of her hair. They are as different as the earth from the sky. Not that he’d resembles King Aegon either.

“It’s said I have Lord Eddard’s look.”

“Your mother’s, you mean,” says the princess. “Hard to believe my father set off a civil war for you.”

The anger in him rises enough to want to fire off a retort, but then he notices something in her voice that he hadn’t before. There isn’t just disdain for him, although that’s there too, but hurt. It’s not Jon she’s furious with. It’s a revelation that nearly knocks him off his feet. He could never say it to her face, of course, but realizing that he’s the primary object of her resentment not only because of his existence but because their sire is long dead, it’s a heady feeling.

“Yes, Your Grace,” he answers. “I could not say why.”

“I know why,” she says, but she doesn’t elaborate. Honestly, he doesn’t much care. If she knew anything about his mother, he would beg her for information, no matter how cruelly she said it, but Prince Rhaegar he would rather forget. She looks him up and down once more, scoffs, then strides off with a swish of her skirts. She doesn’t say another word to him for the rest of the trip.

The wedding is in King’s Landing, though he’s heard there would be another, much smaller, ceremony in the godswood later as well. He had almost decided to stay behind–he has little interest in the capital–but Robb has been as close as a brother their entire lives, and he can’t miss something like this.

And…well. Rhaenys may despise him, but she’s still his sister, and is about to become his good-cousin on top of that.

Uncle Ned initially wants to do the same as Jon, as he had when they went south for King Aegon’s wedding (the others, that is; Jon had elected to not darken their doorsteps), but both Robb and Aunt Catelyn had coerced him out of that decision. He doesn’t speak much on the way down, and so it is Aunt Catelyn who takes control.

(Robb is a nervous bundle of energy the entire way, but a happy one.)

The capital is expansive, and the architecture much different from the North’s, but the smell is awful and altogether it’s about what he expected. It is Ser Jaime Lannister of the Kingsguard who greets them at the gates; he’s unequivocally the most handsome man Jon’s ever seen, and beside him he hears Sansa breathe in an audible gasp. Bran stares up at him in awe, not for his appearance but for his position, and Jon’s reminded of how much his cousin has always desired to be a member of the realm’s most prestigious order of knights.

“Come,” says Ser Jaime genially.

As Robb’s family, they’ve been given rooms in Maegor’s Holdfast–even Jon. He wonders whose decision that had been. Probably Robb’s. Perhaps even the king’s, who has been neutrally cordial to him.

It’s a beautiful ceremony, he has to admit, and he is pleased to see Rhaenys giddy, something she certainly hadn’t been the last time he saw her. It is surprising to all when Robb is approached with a golden coronet not by the High Septon, but by the queen.

“This was my father’s crown,” she says. “You will be not only the consort to a princess of the realm, but a princess of Dorne. So long as you treat my daughter with the same regard as my father did for my mother, it is yours.”

Robb swears to do just that, and Queen Elia reverently places the crown on his head. It is bizarre to see Robb with such an adornment, but he knows that Rhaenys’s status matters not to him.

Afterwards, they stand on the marble plaza of the Great Sept to accept congratulations from all the courtiers, and although Jon is hesitant, the voice in his head convinces him to join them. Robb is your blood, and so is Rhaenys.

Robb hugs him like a brother, and Jon next moves to Rhaenys. “I wish you both well.”

He had thought they’d turned over a new leaf at the tourney a few years back when he’d crowned Queen Elia, but her face falls nonetheless. He starts to move on, figuring she intends to say nothing, but then she touches his arm, ever so briefly. “Thank you,” she says. She glances at Robb and her smile reappears. “I have found happiness.”

“I am pleased to hear it, Your Grace.”

She pauses a moment, then replies, “Rhaenys. It seems we are cousins now, you may as well call me by my name.”

We’re siblings, too, he almost says, but doesn’t. The concession–for he knows that’s what it is–is what he has longed for since he was a child. “Yes, it seems we are.”

They never become…close, exactly, but between her own softening and Robb being their shared kin, there grows a tenuous truce between them. He has been on good terms with Aegon for a long while now, but Rhaenys had always been a tougher nut to crack, she who still remembers having sole possession of their father’s attention before everything went wrong. Before Jon.

She even reluctantly allows him to hold her first child when they visit Winterfell, a girl who is the very image of a Martell, save for the eyes that, while darker than Robb’s, are unmistakably blue. His niece, though Jon doesn’t say that. He had held Aegon’s babes, too, yet somehow it is Rhaenys’s approval that remains the thing he most desires.

The Ironborn mount a rebellion not long after Aegon passes reform that would severely limit the ability for their raiding parties, and the North sends troops to aid the crown’s forces, troops that Jon joins in part to fight at Robb’s side. Robb’s, and Aegon’s. Many had discouraged the king from participating, but he had declared that a sovereign should not send his people to fight battles he is unwilling to fight himself, and if he should fall he has an heir who could succeed him.

Somehow, they all survive the war, though not without casualties; fortunately, far more for the Ironborn than for the crown. It isn’t conscious thought on Jon’s part to take a blow to the chest for Aegon, yet take it he does. Later, after Aegon himself bestows a knighthood upon him and they return to the capital, Rhaenys pulls him aside.

“You saved my brother’s life. Thank you.”

“He’s my brother, too,” Jon points out, “and the king.”

He expects her to qualify his words, but she doesn’t; instead, she bites her lip then kisses him on the cheek, so quickly he has to convince himself it happened at all.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” she says. “I—I’d never thought how it would feel to…to lose two brothers.”

She runs off after that without looking back, and it takes a week for Jon to stop smiling.

[bighound-littlebird]

The Alarm that Never Sounded: GOT's treatment of the SanSan Romance

Originally posted here: https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/88073-from-pawn-to-player-rethinking-sansa-xx/&do=findComment&comment=4865409

When adapting female characters from ASOIAF into the TV show "Game of thrones", David Benioff and Dan Weiss aren't unlike Robert Baratheon: if they can't disrobe it, they're bored with it. Their rendition of Melisandre, for example, isn't an intimidating and imposing practitioner of dark and supernatural powers, but rather a seductress who's able to make people obey her only if she rewards them with sex (Stannis, Gendry) or gold (Brotherhood without Banners). One more example would be their rendition of Margaery Tyrell, who was turned from a teenage girl with a perfect facade and somewhat mysterious foundation, into a promiscuous lady willing to do anything – even have sex with both her brother and her husband simultaneously, as she proposes to the latter in Season 2 – in order to achieve her personal political ambitions that are literally limitless.

With that in mind, Sansa Stark never had a chance to be properly adapted in the show created by D&D. Now, the word 'properly' has a rather wide range of possible meanings, and this essay will attempt to examine at least some of them, but, for now, let's say that the most obvious aspect in which TV Sansa was shorthanded is her screen time. In "A Clash of Kings", the book that was the basis for the Season 2 of GoT, Sansa's POV chapters, along with Tyrion's, are the only ones that depict what's happening in King's Landing, the capital of The Seven Kingdoms and the center of political power in the story. This goes for the first two thirds of "A Storm of Swords" as well, e.g. until the moment Sansa escapes from King's Landing. In short, her chapters couldn't help but be of paramount importance in the narrative sense. In the show, however, Sansa's significance is greatly decreased, and not only because the show doesn't follow the "POV structure" of the novels, but because she's reduced to nothing but a prized captive for the Lannisters.

Yes, TV Sansa is a minor, and she's played by a minor, named Sophie Turner. Her age, due to the laws that forbid the usage of underage children in explicit sex scenes, prevented D&D from using Sansa in a way they adore. And her age couldn't be drastically changed without drastic consequences on her overall arc which is, in ACOK at least, built around her first period. That's why, for example, D&D couldn't cast Natalie Dormer – one of their favorite ASOIAF characters, by the way, because they did alter Margaery to suit the actress, instead of the other way around – in the role of Sansa, because Dormer, while certainly looking younger than she is, could never pass as a minor.

And that would probably be the only thing that makes Sansa off-limits for Natalie Dormer, or some other actress D&D adore, to play her in D&D's adaptation. Everything else would've been doable. Had George R. R. Martin not put her first period in the books, Sansa's age, promiscuity, vocabulary, even wardrobe, would've been changed accordingly to suit D&D's vision of a progressive Westerosi woman, which means the first three would've been amplified, while the fourth one – wardrobe – would definitely be reduced and freed from all the unnecessary parts. She'd probably even hook up with some rogue brute at some point; when she'd find the time for him, that is; after she's done with Joff, Tyrion, Lancel, and god knows who else, she'd certainly figure out cynical killers can occupy her bed just as good as other available men can.

Speaking of cynical killers – enter Sandor Clegane. One more character that, alas, couldn't be played by Natalie Dormer, and therefore not of particular interest to D&D. Sandor in the novels is a truly memorable fellow, who slowly but steadily grows in readers' eyes as the story progresses. At the beginning, he's nothing more than a merciless brute used only for killing people Lannisters want dead. Very soon, however, a reader finds out there might be some traces of soul under that rough surface. More and more we find out about Sandor, more and more intriguing and understandable he gets. Even – more likable.

Now, what makes him likable? The stories Littlefinger tells to Sansa?! Of course not. The stories Sandor himself keeps telling to Sansa are what fleshes him to the extent that was probably impossible to predict at the beginning of the series. Through his conversations with Sansa, we find out every important thing there is to know about him. Later on, when he hangs up with Arya, Sandor is already a fully developed character, whom we aren't discovering any more, but rather following. And he became like that precisely through his exchanges with Sansa.

The show went the other way, and a pretty odd way, at that. D&D decided it was better for Littlefinger to deliver the story of how Sandor's face got burned, and that decision carries some very serious consequences in regards to characterization. For example, Littlefinger appears as someone who does know the secrets of King's Landing, but, at the same time, as someone who doesn't hesitate to share those secrets with persons he doesn't have any control over. Yes, he warns Sansa not to tell anyone about the story; but, he warns her because, and here comes the funny part – Sandor is going to kill her.

Now, why isn't Littlefinger afraid Sandor's going to kill him? After all, isn't that the logical question because it's Littlefinger who offers Sandor's secrets to others? It seems there are only two possible answers: 1) Sandor is not that scary and dangerous as Littlefinger claims, or 2) Sandor is a dangerous fellow, but Littlefinger is the bravest individual alive, because he goes around telling the secrets of people that physically can literally eat him for breakfast; and he isn't shy even, because he doesn't fail to warn Sansa how dangerous is the situation he himself dares so boldly.

Whatever conclusion a viewer draws from there, something is going to be radically changed from the source material. Quite possibly, in fact, a lot of things are going to be altered. After the said scene, both Littlefinger and Sandor are drastically different than their book origins. And the characters we ended up with in the show, are not nearly as complex and intriguing as their book counterparts. This is especially true for Sandor, who's nothing if not scary and dangerous. He is supposed to frighten the living hell out of everyone who isn't his older brother. If you take that away from Sandor, you're only left with his tender side.

But, even his tender side was almost entirely removed from the show. This time, not only by Littlefinger, but also by Tyrion: in the throne room, when Joff orders Kingsguards to undress Sansa, Sandor stands there silently. His face expression suggests he isn't pleased with what he sees, but that's it. He doesn't stand up to his king with firm "That's enough" as in the book. It is therefore on Tyrion exclusively to deny Joffrey the pleasure of torturing the girl whose only crime was that she saw him in a moment of unflattering weakness. As in the books, TV Tyrion enters the room with his sellsword and he defends Sansa from Joff, but the important difference is that in the show it looks like Tyrion is the only one both willing to oppose Joffrey and capable of doing it. In the novel, we can sense that Sandor is ready to do the same thing, only, in his case, it comes with a much bigger risk, which is not without importance.

So, in this particular case, Sandor was sacrificed for the sake of TV Tyrion. TV Littlefinger, however, wasn't forgotten in that regard, because, once again, he's fed with lines that originally belong to Sandor. In the finale of the second season, it is Littlefinger who tells Sansa to look around and see how much better than her all those liars are. Just as the last time around, this change serves neither Littlefinger nor Sandor: the former's creepy-mentoring side is exposed much earlier than it would be logical, while the latter is robbed of yet another moment in which he shows how much he cares for Sansa and how protective he is toward her.

Sansa is a case on its own, as far as wrong adaptations are concerned. She's in the league with her mother Catelyn Stark, as two Stark women that were literally butchered in the show. The thing two of them have in common is the nature of their complexity: opposite to other female characters in ASOIAF, like Dany or Arya or Asha or Brienne or Cersei, Cat and Sansa aren't interested in hurting their enemies with their own hands, or, in the case of Dany, with her own dragons (this goes for Cersei, too, even though she's the one ordering the suffering of others, not committing it: her aggression is always personal, as we can sense in the first three novels). And, what's more, Sansa isn't interested in hurting anyone, actually. Cat does have an aggressive side in her; it's female aggression all the way, but aggression it is. Sansa, on the other hand, almost never desires other people to suffer in any way. There's only one noticeable exception: Joffrey. She does think on one or two occasions how nice it would be if Robb put a sword in Joff, and, by extension, she wishes Lannisters are defeated in the war against her family. However, we have to consider the situation she finds herself in at those moments – imprisoned by the Lannisters and at Joff's 'mercy' all the time; small miracle she wishes them ill. I've never been a girl arrested by the grave enemies of my family, but if I was, I'd definitely pray for their most horrible deaths every single night. And, we have to remember that, after Joff's death, she fails to feel happy over it, even though she tries to a little.

Therefore, it maybe isn't a stretch to say Sansa is probably the one character that is most unlike the author himself. Other major characters, especially POV ones, do resemble Martin at least partially. For males, it's obvious: even though GRRM never fought in a war, nor had any military training whatsoever, men are men; even in our day and age, no male is a complete stranger to war; while depicting all those dramatic battles and duels was quite an achievement (which no personal experience would make any easier, truth be told, because in ASOIAF the combat as a phenomenon is illustrated from any number of angles, each among them presented with an abundance of details), ultimately it was in himself where Martin could find a lot of answers about his male characters, whose position in a society is never independent from their combat prowess or lack of it. Female characters, on the other hand, had to be trickier, just like they always are for male authors – let's admit it, they are not that good in creating great females, just like women writers usually don't produce male characters that are a match to their female characters nor to the male heroes created by male authors. In our day and age, these "gender rules" are rarely spoken of, but they continue to exist, due to gender predispositions that are nowhere as strong as in the mind of an individual. There are exceptions, as in good male characters created by women and vice versa, but they are in a clear minority compared to underdeveloped or unrealistic characters whose only "fault" was that they didn't share the sex with an author. And in that regard, ASOIAF could very well be unparalleled: it is perhaps impossible to find any other story that features nearly as many memorable male and female characters both, as ASOIAF does (truth be told, that fact alone should be enough to inspire analysts and scholars to look at ASOIAF at a different, more demanding light, and not as a genre piece).

Martin's girls, however, aren't completely unlike the man who came up with them. Most of them are willingly participating in "men games", e.g. power-plays and/or wars, which makes for a precious connection to a male mindset of the author. They are thinking and behaving as women (or, in the case of Arya, and Dany to an extent, as girls), but all of them are interacting with something that, in all its glory and misery, can roughly be called "a man's world". Some of the most beautifully written chapters in the series are delivered from female POVs – The Red Wedding and Cersei's "Walk of Shame" come to mind right away; but, in a thematic sense, those and other female chapters don't differ too much from male POVs.

Except for Sansa's chapters, which unmistakably belong to something we can roughly call "a woman's world". Chapters of both male and female POVs in ASOIAF are often rich with testosterone, but Sansa’s ones are almost entirely driven by estrogen: look no further than her captivity in King's Landing, that actually is, as already said, focused around her first period – that decision solely should bring a lot of respect for Martin, because he had to know going that road is never easy for a male writer.

And the funniest thing is, it all fits. Sansa's storyline is distinctive in tone, but not odd. It is a legitimate part of the general plot of ASOIAF. In fact, as her story progresses, Sansa becomes more and more important for The Game, even though she showed no clear inclination to participate in it so far, but at the same time, Martin keeps Sansa away from all those "male" aspects he decorated other female characters of his saga.

And on top of everything, we're presented with her love story, a romance with no other than the man who, prior to discovering some delicate feelings for Sansa, could pose for an ideal brute of Westeros. At the beginning of the story, Sandor Clegane could be perceived as the exact opposite of Sansa. As someone who has no business whatsoever in her world, just like she has none in his. But, with some craft wording and master subtlety, Martin succeeds in illustrating the flood of emotions that go both ways in their relationship. Those emotions are never easy, nor appropriate, let alone allowed – even by Sansa and Sandor themselves! – but they're hard to be denied.

The complexity of their multilayered characters, of their respective positions in a society and in an ongoing war, and of their relationship that resists all known clichés, represent some of the strongest evidence that ASOIAF is much more than a genre piece. There's a lot in these novels that escapes genre boundaries, but nothing more evidently than SanSan. Stuff like that is not your usual fantasy element, no matter how flattering fantasy can be as a label (Homer, Shakespeare, Tolkien – to name just a few all-time greats that created unforgettable stories with supernatural aspects in them). Any author who comes up with that kind of love story involving those kind of characters – and with a legion of other characters, and with no less than four different religions, and with themes of honor, redemption, identity, bravery, equality, ancestry, legacy, freedom, revolution... – deserves to be analyzed not as a genre writer.

Now, one can only imagine what kind of enigma Sansa and Sandor were for Benioff and Weiss. And it pretty much remained unsolved, because, when faced with all the complexity of these two characters, Benioff and Weiss decided to remove it almost entirely, along with their relationship that is reduced to occasional and odd mentioning of 'little bird'. TV Sandor was simplified to a one-note brute that goes around TV Westeros and lectures people about the pleasures of killing, a one-note brute he never was in the novels, not even in the beginning of the saga. TV Sansa, on the other hand, was denied her book complexity by shutting down all her layers, one by one. For example, Benioff and Weiss completely removed her decision to go behind her father's back and inform Cersei of his plan. They simply refused to go down that road. They did something similar to Catelyn, whose infamous line to Jon they didn't remove entirely, but did replace it with a much softer one. It is pretty safe to assume that Cat's and Sansa's complexity did bother Benioff and Weiss from the get-go.

What's also removed from the show is Sansa's agency, primarily represented in the novels by her secret meetings with Dontos, a disgraced knight she herself saved from Joffrey. In the show, we got only the saving scene; it was filmed and executed clumsily, but it was there at least. However, until recently, nobody could be sure Sansa did save Dontos, because the man disappeared afterwards (he was briefly seen as joggling balls in "Blackwater" episode, in the scene in Cersei's chambers, but he was unrecognizable for the vast majority of audience). It is reported, though, that Dontos will be returning in Season 4, so yes, Sansa did save his life after all. But, even when he returns, Sansa's attempts at escaping will be two seasons younger than they should've been at that point, and it's hard to see a way D&D can remedy that neglect.

Show-lovers often defend D&D in regards to Sansa, by saying her personality is a difficult and tricky one for portraying on screen, because even in the books she's introverted. Now, maybe she isn't the most extroverted character ever, but she's pretty far from reclusive, as she does communicate with the outside world a lot at the beginning of the series, before she's imprisoned. And even while in captivity, she can't help but communicate with Sandor and Dontos. What's more, around two of them she is her true self, which provides a wide array of possibilities for a good and informative dialogue that, in an adaptation, could compensate for the lack of inner thoughts. With Dontos, she's open not only because she saved him, but also because he explicitly offers his help (and, truth be told, it is he who enabled her to leave King's Landing eventually, so, even though he wasn't exactly honest with her concerning his motivations, her trust wasn't as misplaced as it may seem at first). And with Sandor, she's open for no particular reason – other than those subtle, emotional forces, that both of them can't help but follow and eventually become the closest and most intimate beings to each other.

The way Martin incepted and developed the barely visible, but undeniable romance, between Sansa and Sandor, is nothing short of literary brilliance. With so few words and interactions, he managed so much. The vast majority of readers are aware of restrained attraction they mutually feel, even though they didn't share a single physical aspect of the romantic relationship.

Martin is indeed a master of subtlety, as evidenced by what looks like the endless amount of carefully hidden clues that point to any number of narrative puzzles, realization of which do make an entire story much richer than if taken at face value. And he's never more subtle than with two romances: Rhaegar/Lyanna and Sandor/Sansa. Now, the respective nature of subtlety of those two romances is rather different. With Rhaegar and Lyanna, a reader is – through Robert's retelling – offered a version that is actually the very opposite of what probably happened, and only later a reader can pick up clues here and there, and finally figure out the story of a fatal attraction between the two. But, the clues are presented throughout the text, so much that, even if you don't decipher everything after the first read, at the end of "A Game of Thrones" – the first book of the series – you'll probably sense that Robert's view on events wasn't exactly accurate.

The story of Sansa and Sandor is a very different one. Their relationship is never as much as addressed, even by themselves. Sandor isn't a POV character, and he's not exactly open to people, so his silence on the matter isn't unexpected. But, Martin didn't address their romance even in Sansa's chapters, which are typically packed with inner thoughts of the POV character. It looks like Martin decided to do it the harder way and make their romance somewhat a mystery even for Sansa, which, in hindsight, does seem to be the most logical way: what teenage girl would be fully aware of a romance that "inappropriate", and experienced in those dire circumstances?! As a result of that decision, the readers got a completely fascinating depiction of a romance, that can be described as a train you hear from miles away: at first, you can't even tell is it a train or some similar sound, but slowly, with every second, you're more and more certain that your ears didn't trick you, and very soon the train is so loud that it is the only thing you can hear at all. In the novels, a reader may find something strange at first, when Sandor shares the secret of his burned face with Sansa. Some alarm may be turned on deep inside. And it becomes more apparent each time two of them share a page, with a culmination during the Battle of the Blackwater Bay, when Sandor, after he decides to desert the Lannisters, visits Sansa in her room and offers to take her home to Winterfell.

It might be the only instance in the entire series where Sandor did ask anyone's approval, which does speak volumes about his feelings for Sansa. Considering the manner in which Martin described this romance, Sandor's actions on that day was as good as a confession of his deep attraction to her. Sansa, on the other hand, doesn't have a single moment which could be pointed at as a prime evidence of her undeniable love for The Hound, but this doesn't mean her feelings toward Sandor aren't palpable. It's one more mastery of the writer: through her frequent (and skewed, but in a telling way) memories on the last time she saw Sandor, he was able to show her feelings resonating more and more inside her.

In the show, Martin was denied a chance to do the same thing, even though he wrote the "Blackwater" episode in Season 2. Thanks to the already destroyed storyline, and to god knows how many changes, and to D&D's decision to remove from the final cut some scenes Martin referred to with his scenes, the one between Sansa and Sandor near the end of that episode, served more as a greeting to book-fans who like SanSan in the source material, than as a goodbye between two not unlike souls who shared much, and could have shared a lot more, and maybe are going to if they meet again. In that scene, Rory McCann was visibly better than usual as Sandor, and Sophie Turner was as good as usual, but, just like with anything ASOIAF, the scene doesn't have nearly the same impact and importance if taken out of context.

The exact context of their SanSan is yet to be fully revealed in the books, too. Because of the already mentioned subtlety – a quality that seems to intimidate showrunners Benioff and Weiss, who, in their turn, do retaliate with their on-screen war on subtlety (just recall what they turned other romances into; for example, the romance between TV Jon "Not The Brightest Kid In The Block" Snow and TV "I Know Everything And Therefore I Can't Stop Talking" Ygritte) – Sansa's and Sandor's love story is by no means an open book. Their romance has its own share of mystery, one of which may be: what inspired those two persons to feel so strongly for each other? Personally, I always thought their mutual attraction isn't only based on a "beauty and the beast" model. There is that, but in their case it goes deeper. If that was the engine behind his emotions, Sandor had more than enough opportunities to find a beauty for his beast long before Sansa entered his life. With Sansa, I'd say their mutual attraction is rooted in their personalities. For example, if you take away Sandor's aggression, he also isn't interested in hurting others. He's naturally talented for violence, and he lives in a society that respects that kind of talent, and that is why he's violent for a living, but at the end of the day, the suffering of others isn't any kind of reward for him. Possibly, because he isn't interested in other people that much. Though, when he is interested in someone, the interest is as strong as they come.

(We don't know at this point, but it's not a stretch to imagine that his reaction to the news that his hated brother was killed wasn't unlike Sansa's reaction to Joff's death. "Am I glad he's dead? Well, not exactly, even though I wanted him killed.")

Sansa may very well be like that, too. That would be one of the possible explanations of her AGOT actions. Like the rest of the Starks, Sansa is a complex character that has some issues of her own, without which neither she nor the other Starks would be such memorable characters as they obviously are; it is the fact that they are both willing and strong enough to fight those issues, that Starks stand out for. Without going into details (as if I could!), I expect that in the remaining novels Sansa is going to face the reasons that made her go to Cersei that damned night and with the consequences of that action. And whatever comes out of that soul-searching will be inevitably combined with her claim to Winterfell that Littlefinger brought up in AFFC. And that combination is going to elevate Sansa's arc to even bigger and more important levels than so far, even though so far she was the one Stark that was most engaged – unwittingly, but still – in the bloody dynastic war for the Iron Throne.

And she'll have to cross paths with Sandor Clegane, one way or another. Their relationship was so meticulously built up, it simply has to get some sort of a closure. What that closure is going to be is impossible to predict, because we are talking of one George R. R. Martin, a writer who managed to shock us as he pleased more than a few times.

What is also impossible, is to take anything that did or didn't happen in the show as any indication at what the closer may or may not be. There isn't a storyline in GoT that wasn't drastically changed, and weakened in the process, but Sansa's arc, along with her relationship with Sandor, is among the biggest victims of D&D's inability to adapt.

Whether you happen to like what Benioff and Weiss put in the show, or don't, you'd be advised not to recognize any significance in their decisions for further developments in ASOIAF. Just like show-lovers tend to remind everyone else, GoT and ASOIAF are two entirely separate beasts. And book Sansa and book Sandor, along with everything Martin has in his store for them, can be really glad about it.

[pyramidofmice]

OP's tags:

#the phrasing of this. #if we go back to the first book #it’s about bran constantly thinking of king in the north/lord robb and his brother robb as two different entities #whereas catelyn thinks her baby boy robb is turning into king robb #does that make sense. to catelyn one is fading into the other and she tries to claw at him. to bran they are two faces his brother can have #it’s even if king robb appeared later it’s not a progression from one to another as much as a back and forth #but now to bran too it feels as if his brother was disappearing

bran in acok thinking of robb as “the king in the north, who used to be his brother robb”. mr george rr martin i am in your walls