#this scene is part of why I have s*ns*n blocked. ship what y'all want but i don't have to look at it

[althaeaofficinalis]

got to Sansa II in AGOT and one of the noticeable themes here isn't just sansa determined to see the beautiful song that she was promised and deliberately trying her hardest not to see the monstrous reality she glimpsed on the kingsroad - there's also the theme that every male presence that directly interacts with sansa in this chapter isn't really interacting with her herself. they're projecting their own internal images on her.

joffrey is treating her with courtesy and impressing her, but it's clear after his parents' public fight that he's doing this because he's supposed to. sansa is even afraid of him at first, and the fear comes back after that. joffrey will treat His Betrothed well, but when he's reminded that it's sansa, it sours.

petyr is thrown right back into his childhood, his humbert-esque excuse of his lost annabelle catelyn, and he's clearly projecting that all over sansa.

loras is overcompensating heterosexuality so hard, he names a twelve year old girl the most beautiful maiden!! and this is a lie, it's a performance, and sansa doesn't know this yet.

and sandor clegane is projecting his anger, his hurt, his trauma, all over a twelve year old girl who is scared and nervous, because she won't look at his face. he's determined to make her hurt for the way she reminded him of his own reality.

all four of these figures have power over sansa. they have the ability to make her hurt if they want to or to be benevolent kind figures, but that's just it - the choice isn't sansa's, it's theirs. sansa's safety is in jeyne and septa mordane, and it's only upon losing them that she is terrorized fully. two of the figures are grown ass men just having a blast creeping out a twelve year old girl (extra props to clegane for intentionally making her cry, what a good person)!!

sansa is already tangled up in this web and she's barely arrived. it isn't her fault, and no twelve year old on the planet could have capably extricated themselves from this (I'm not entirely sure I could have when I was twenty-two), but it's so heartbreaking to watch.