Why Sansa Stark Matters by Lily Harding

Why Sansa Stark Matters

By Lily Harding

To the general public in the year 2021, the mention of Sansa Stark conjures up feelings of disappointment and bitterness associated with the wasted potential of the Game of Thrones TV series. After the infamous train wreck of the HBO show’s fi nal season, many of the characters, their arcs and the emotional connection audiences had with them, faded into a depressing obscurity. Sansa Stark, one of my favourite characters of both the books and the show, was also a victim of this fate with most fans left ambivalent on Sansa’s fi nal accession to the Northern throne. Two years since the 2019 fi nale and ten years since the show’s beginning, I want to celebrate what both versions of Sansa mean to me, and how George RR Martin, in a story so often critiqued for the exploitation of its female characters, created a relevant and deeply empathetic feminist narrative. I also want to explore how the choices the television show made in concluding Sansa’s arc detract from such a personally valuable part of A Song of Ice and Fire.

At the beginning of both the TV show and the books, Sansa is a character that is easily (though reductively) disregarded as an irritation. The eldest daughter of the Stark siblings, she is raised on the expectation that her life will revolve around who she is eventually betrothed to; societal norms she fully embraces, excelling in courtly manners, dressmaking and singing as well as being naturally pretty. It is this aptitude for the role society expects her to play that initially turns a lot of people off of Sansa, especially in comparison to her much more accessibly empathetic sister, Arya, characterised as Sansa’s polar opposite. Arya is not cut out for the lifestyle of a Westerosi Lady, where her sister dreams of being the princess in a courtly romance, Arya dreams of knighthood, even taking up sword fi ghting lessons during the Starks’ stay in King’s Landing. As a result, Arya is eminently more likeable from the outset, resembling the archetype of the rebellious young woman that has become so popular in recent young adult fi ction. Conversely, the fact that Sansa never once feels out of place and is popular among her teachers and peers removes her somewhat from the growing pains many experience in childhood, which often makes Arya’s chapters far more relatable. Further fodder for the audience’s dislike of Sansa is her involvement in the death of the innocent butcher’s boy Mycah, Arya’s friend and playmate on the road to King’s Landing. Sansa and her betrothed, the handsome but sadistic prince Joff rey, come upon Arya and Mycah playing near the ruby ford where Joff rey threatens the boy with his sword,

cutting his face and enraging Arya. Arya fi ghts back against the injustice done to her friend, sending her direwolf Nymeria to disarm the prince, wounding him. The consequences for this are expectedly harsh, with the dolling out of punishment resting solely on Sansa’s shoulders as the primary witness. She is asked by authorities as high as the queen Cersei whose story she corroborates; Joff rey who claims he was attacked unprovoked, or her sister, telling the truth of the incident. Here, an enormous pressure is put on the adolescent Sansa to choose between what she knows is the truth and the fairy tale lifestyle and marriage to Joff rey she pines after. Caught, she removes herself altogether, telling the queen she does not know what really happened. The repercussions of this are Cersei’s ordering of Mycah’s death, and, as Arya had anticipated the punishment of killing the direwolf and driven Nymeria away, the death of Sansa’s direwolf, Lady. The skirmish only drives a further wedge between the sisters, Sansa’s inaction is condemned as cowardly and stupid by Arya, and Sansa goes as far as to think that Arya should’ve been killed in Lady’s place. With the sympathies of many resting with Arya at this point in the narrative, it seems true that all Sansa is is a weakling willing to jeopardize her family’s safety for her idealistic vision of a life in the capital. She continues to overlook Joff rey’s violent mood swings for the sake of her infatuation with him and their imagined courtly romance.

Sansa proves herself again to be selfi sh on this basis when she, in a petty attempt to retaliate against her father after she is told he intends to take them back home to Winterfell, unwittingly aids Cersei’s plot to capture and execute him. The blame for Ned Stark’s arrest and beheading subsequently lies with his own daughter.

Taking these inaugural moments of Sansa’s role in the wider plot into consideration, it’s not diffi cult to understand why Sansa’s popularity amongst fans pales in comparison to the popularity of other main characters like Jon Snow. However, I would argue these character fl aws, and how grave their consequences are when coming into contact with the brutality of Westerosi politics, make Sansa all the more compelling. Sansa’s arc is one of the many coming of age plots within A Song of Ice and Fire, her sheltered childhood has left her with preconceived notions of how lords and ladies ought to act, how chivalry and manners are paramount, how knights are dashing heroes and kings and queens are benevolent to their people; over the fi rst book, those illusions are shattered. As chivalry gives way to spying and power plays, knights are exposed as murderers and rapists, kings drunkards, and queens cruel politicians, Sansa’s innocence is lost. Her attempts to cling to that innocence, even as she is mean to her sister and