Tony Black counts down to Game of Thrones season 7…
Of the two Stark girls to have their family torn apart in Game of Thrones, Lady Sansa has arguably suffered the least, but unlike her sister Arya’s exhausting, rough and ready journey across Westeros and beyond, Sansa’s has been traumatising in a different way. Sansa has had to grow out of being an entitled princess to vengeful Machiavelli in numerous brutal, psychological ways.
The eldest daughter of Eddard & Catelyn Stark of Winterfell, Sansa always dreamed of being a Princess, and maybe even a Queen. The Royal Court was a beautiful place in her mind, filled with dashing heroes, courtiers, troubadours, elegant ladies and noble houses. A world of tourneys and banquets and flowers. The crushing, dark reality of the Iron Throne and what surrounded it took a long time to land in Sansa’s minds eye. She is sullen to her honest, Northern father. She rebukes her tomboyish sister Arya for her lack of deportment. She desperately wants to see King’s Landing and falls in love with Prince Joffrey Baratheon, heir to the Iron Throne, or perhaps more in love with the *idea* of the Prince.
After defending Joffrey when his skirmish with Arya and her friends leads to the murder of a young boy and the death of her direwolf, Sansa accompanies father Ned to King’s Landing, hoping her natural beauty and rapport with Joffrey may allow her to marry him when the time comes. The dark truth soon begins to dawn.
Sansa is forced to watch as Ned, having been branded a traitor by the Crown and locked up after King Robert Baratheon’s death, is executed on the order of Joffrey and his mother, Queen Cersei. Joffrey, displaying his cruelty toward Sansa and his delight in tormenting the young woman, forces her to look at Ned’s severed head as he impales it on a spike in the ramparts around King’s Landing.
Essentially now a political prisoner in the capital, as her brother Robb Stark marches south as the War of the Five Kings begins, Sansa is allowed within the Royal Court but is taunted by Joffrey, especially as he prepares to marry Margaery Tyrell, and toyed with by Cersei. Her only supporters are her loyal handmaid Shae, Sandor ‘the Hound’ Clegane who saves her from proletariat rapists, and the enigmatic Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish, a childhood friend of Catelyn who will play a major role in Sansa’s future.
Sansa faces the ultimate ignominy when Tywin Lannister, the returning Hand of the King after the War of Five Kings reaches its Lannister-favouring conclusion, decrees that she will marry his son Tyrion Lannister. Sansa remains largely unaware of her political power but with Robb dead, killed with Catelyn at the Twins, technically Sansa becomes heir to Winterfell and is described as “the key to the North”.
Marrying Tyrion gives the Lannister’s a hold on former Stark territory but Sansa remains purely a scared young woman – treated however with kindness from Tyrion when everyone else goads them. Sansa does find a friend in Margaery and briefly is courted by her grandmother, the cunning Olenna Tyrell aka the ‘Queen of Thorns’, who Sansa is brave enough to admit Joffrey, Margaery’s future husband, is “a monster”. Sansa has no idea at the time but her honest declaration sets in motion enormous geo-political repercussions for the future of Westeros.
Soon after, you see, Joffrey is murdered at his wedding to Margaery, the wine in his cup poisoned. Tyrion takes the blame from a rage filled Cersei but Sansa too is considered an accomplice, given her motivation after Ned’s murder. Luckily, via Ser Dontos–a kindly former knight cum fool–Sansa is spirited out of King’s Landing as the murder goes down where Littlefinger awaits. He tells her a necklace Dontos, who Baelish quickly murders, gave Sansa contained the poison that killed Joffrey hidden inside, and that Sansa must trust in Littlefinger’s support to protect her from Lannister forces who will be looking for her.
Free of King’s Landing, and her marriage to Tyrion, Littlefinger takes Sansa to the Vale, where her aunt Lysa Arryn swears to protect her on Littlefinger’s guidance. Lysa is besotted by Littlefinger and as Sansa has to deal with her barking mad son Robyn, Lord of the Vale, she also finds Littlefinger’s intentions to be a creeping mix of fatherly and a lot less fatherly, if you get my drift. Lysa sees him kiss Sansa on the lips and she attacks her niece, threatening out of crazed jealousy to push her through the Moon Door–a lovely open pit to a thousand foot open air mountain drop.
In the end, it’s Lysa who goes through the Moon Door, Sansa watching as Littlefinger convinces his ‘beloved’ not to hurt Sansa before pushing her to her death. When questioned by the suspicious Lords of the Vale, Sansa lies and protects Littlefinger, allowing him to consolidate his position as Warden of Robyn and the effective power in the Vale. Dying her hair black, it begins a change in Sansa from willowy, passive flower to sterner, much more calculating young woman.
Consequently, when Littlefinger’s eyes turn to the North and alliances, he convinces Sansa that in order to regain her ancestral home of Winterfell, she must marry Ramsay Bolton, son of Roose Bolton the current Warden of the North, whose family took Winterfell very swiftly after it was sacked by Theon Greyjoy in a fit of egocentric pique. On the way to Moat Cailin to meet the Bolton’s, Sansa encounters Brienne of Tarth in a tavern – a knight pledged to Catelyn, she claims she has a sworn duty to protect Sansa and not trusting Littlefinger, she pleads with Sansa to come with her. Believing that Littlefinger wants to help her, Sansa refuses Brienne’s help and presses on to the Bolton’s – which she soon realises was a terrible mistake.
Once she marries Ramsey, and returning to Winterfell, Sansa is sexually violated by her new husband and psychologically tormented by him and his psychotic mistress Miranda. Only the emasculated, terrified, cowering Theon–filled with guilt for betraying her family–attempts to help her, as does a watching Brienne from forests outside Winterfell.
With Littlefinger having abandoned her after being summoned to King’s Landing, and Stannis Baratheon’s army on approach to try and take Winterfell, Sansa bands with Theon, watches as he kills Miranda, and they leap from the castle walls and escape into the cold forests, Ramsey’s men and dogs on their tail. Thankfully Sansa is soon rescued by Brienne and her squire Podrick Payne and she intends to take her to Castle Black, to be protected by her bastard brother Jon Snow, now Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, but Theon elects to return to the Iron Islands now he knows Sansa is safe, unable to face the shame of his crimes.
Reaching Castle Black, Sansa has an emotional reunion with Jon, just as he abandons his role as Lord Commander after having been murdered by his own men and resurrected via Melisandre’s dark magic. Sansa is determined they must take back Winterfell from the Bolton’s and partly helps convince Jon, even though they have only the surviving Wildlings from beyond the Wall and several small northern houses pledged, to raise an army and attack Winterfell. Knowing that they don’t have the forces to defeat Ramsey, Sansa makes a deal with the devil – she secretly makes contact with Littlefinger and asks for his support, which is another decisive moment.
Just when Jon looks defeated at the Battle of the Bastards outside of Winterfell, Sansa and Littlefinger arrive with a huge army from the Vale and crush the surviving Bolton forces. Sansa takes delight soon after in feeding a captured, beaten Ramsey to his own dogs, declaring his name and house will disappear from history. She goes on to watch her brother Jon be crowned King in the North, even as Littlefinger openly wonders in Sansa’s ear whether he has the true, rightful claim on the Stark legacy.
Sansa now lies at a crossroads. Her home of Winterfell restored, the Stark name regained, and her position as Lady of Winterfell set. What path will Sansa choose? Will she support Jon, even marry him as some have suggested, to solidify a Stark future in the North as Jon prepares to fight the real White Walker enemy beyond the Wall? Or will she be corrupted by Littlefinger’s whispers, amd become drunk on the idea the North should be hers and hers alone?
SEE ALSO: Check out our other Game of Thrones fact files on Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister, Arya Stark, Daenerys Targaryen and Cersei Lannister
Game of Thrones Season 7 begins Sunday 16th July.
Tony Black
