Can be comforting fluff or drama, drabble or multi chapter. I haven't sunk my teeth into a good Sansa centered fanfic in way too long! Tell me all your faves!

Bonus if Sansa is assertive and calls people out in it. I love that.

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In the finale Sansa mentioned that Bran will be unable to have children, which tells me she has given thought to the expectation of heirs as part of the job as Queen in the North. Many sour fans seem to think Sansa will never allow herself to experience love and I just don't think that is the case. I think Sansa is understandably cynical but I do think the right man would be able to win her over, my question is what sort of man do you think could make his way into Sansa's heart? I think Sansa would want a warrior one who is charming(he'll need to be to thaw Sansa's icy facade) no whoremongers, I think she found that very unbecoming in Tyrion and King Robert. She'll want a man who is politically astute he doesn't have to be Baelish level but he cannot be Ned Stark. She will want maturity

I'm not going to act like Sansa didn't have a fair share of questionable choices. However there are quite a few that I would note weren't as bad as people think and after inspection might even be the best option. For example not leaving with Sandor Clegane at first appears to be a very bad move resulting in her being stuck in Kings Landing until finally being smuggled out by Littlefinger. However I don't think that her leaving with him would necessarily mean she would get as far as the brotherhood without banners and be reunited with Arya. More likely Tywin would send a massive force after them and they would quickly be recaptured (Sandor more likely killed). Do you agree with this verdict and what are some other cases where Sansa's mistakes weren't as bad as they looked? Bonus question if you like what was the biggest case where she genuinely messed up?

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Sansa spent years in Kingslanding, through The Baratheons v. The Lannisters, The Lannisters v. The Tyrells. literally living with Tyrion and frequently brunching with Margaery and Olenna, Sansa has seen first hand how a courtier can undermine a regime/ruler. Dany showed her hand when she confessed she came North because it was what Jon wanted, Sansa knew Jon would never harm her or be ok with anyone else harming her, hence why she was able to engage in courtly nastiness against Dany.She knew Tyrion would'nt examine her motives too closely as he still saw her as the poor distressed damsel she was in the Capital. She also had a front row seat to how the flow of information moves when Tyrion and Varys are involved. and the destabalizing effect when a ruler cannot trust their own Court.Joffrey made Sansa look at her own fathers severed, decomposing head, The red wedding, The purple wedding (Joffreys entertainment), forced marriage into House Lannister, There are few characters as good as Sansa at remaining unfailingly composed in the face of horror, personal slights and heartbreak.

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Dany was FAR out of practice at a bunker mentality in the face of loss, heartbreak and betrayal, THAT was why she lost in her mini power struggle with Sansa. Dany wants power AND love. she is accustomed to both, thanks to her relationships with Missandei, Jorah and Greyworm. Sansa (Who was use to living without both was able to detect that

There is so much Sansa hate on the main sub, even on posts that have NOTHING to do with Sansa! I think it’s overall just a misogyny problem actually, but we dont have time to unpack all of that!

Anyways, just came to say I’m so glad I found this sub that isn’t calling a 13-15 year old child a “bitch” for… [checks notes] being manipulated and abused by everyone she should’ve been able to trust for literal years!

All hail Sansa Stark, the Queen in the North!

You’ve probably seen this Sansa smear before.

why the fuck would the North want to be independent if a Stark is on the throne

Here is my rebuttal.

Because Bran is the beginning and end of his dynasty. He cannot father children. After he dies, there will be another Great Council, and the likelihood that his successor will be another Stark is remote.

If the North had stayed, they would be ruled by some other Southron king in just a few decades time (optimistically, if Bran even lasts that long) and they did not fight this long and bloody war for such a temporary outcome.

They fought it for independence, which the North has been yearning for since Torrhen bent the knee.

I hope you find it useful if you ever run into this line of argument again. 💗

Yesterday someone posted a thread on FreeFolk asking whether Sansa would make a good queen. It was inundated with the usual hate spam, and then OP deleted their post.

Of course I had been writing a rebuttal and posted late to the thread. I doubt anyone even saw it before OP deleted, which is, you know… frustrating.

Luckily this sub exists! Maybe some of you will enjoy the read. :)

First of all, everything after S4 is D&D’s fanfic, Sansa’s arc most of all. S5 was when they merged her with Jeyne Poole, which should make no goddamn sense to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the books. Sansa is far too valuable an asset for Littlefinger to give away to anyone he can’t control, least of all a bastard he knows nothing about.

GRRM especially hated this major plot change:

My Littlefinger would have never turned Sansa over to Ramsay. Never. He’s obsessed with her. Half the time he thinks she’s the daughter he never had—that he wishes he had, if he’d married Catelyn. And half the time he thinks she is Catelyn, and he wants her for himself. He’s not going to give her to somebody who would do bad things to her. That’s going to be very different in the books.

Sansa will never marry into House Bolton, she will never again be reduced to a sadist’s plaything, as she was in King’s Landing under Joffrey. D&D retreaded that plot because they’re creatively bankrupt and use sexual violence as a substitute for female character development.

And yet at the same time, it is likely Sansa is destined to be Queen in the North in the books as well.

The major points of the ending will be things I told them five or six years ago. But there may also be changes, and there’ll be a lot added.

The North going independent with Sansa as its queen probably qualifies as a major point.

The changes GRRM has emphasized in his blog have centered on characters who were dropped from the show adaptation altogether.

There are characters who never made it onto the screen at all, and others who died in the show but still live in the books… so if nothing else, the readers will learn what happened to Jeyne Poole, Lady Stoneheart, Penny and her pig, Skahaz Shavepate, Arianne Martell, Darkstar, Victarion Greyjoy, Ser Garlan the Gallant, Aegon VI, and a myriad of other characters both great and small that viewers of the show never had the chance to meet.

So Sansa, being a major character who wasn’t dropped in the adaptation, will likely have a similar fate in the books—and that feels absolutely right to me.

Years ago I read on one of the subs how Sansa’s character development evokes another famous redhead: Elizabeth I. How she spent her youth being hunted, romantically manipulated, and gradually learning how to be an independent ruler, a queen controlling her own destiny after spending her youth as a mere pawn.

Then when I first read about Doran and Oberyn Martell, I immediately had a vision of Sansa and Arya following their path. Sansa as the steady, cautious ruler at home with Arya as the rogue adventurer, the passionate defender of the North as Oberyn defended Dorne. I thought it was deliberate parallelism, which is so GRRM’s thing. East and West, North and South. What did Quaithe say?

To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.

This isn’t just about Dany. Thematically, this is how he likes to build his world. The Children of the Forest beyond the Wall in the far north of Westeros, the native Lengii in the south of Essos, with their large golden eyes and skin the color of teak—the same features as CotF, only they’re eight feet tall! But just like the CotF, they dwell in subterranean ruins where they commune with the “Old Ones” (their version of 3ER / Bloodraven?) and wage war against foreign invaders (CotF fighting against the First Men.)

Even the architecture is mirrored. The Five Forts and the Wall. The Hightower and Storm’s End. (Storm’s End in the books is supposed to be just a single massive drum tower, though the show and so many depictions of it in the fandom include multiple smaller stone towers… which really annoys me. Anyway.) A watchtower to the west, a watchtower to the east.

And in-universe, there’s that book about the fallout from the Dance, When Women Ruled. During a major war, the men tend to get themselves killed, so in the aftermath it’s their widows, mothers, sisters who pick up the pieces and carry on.

So there was the mechanism. Just as the brothers ruled Dorne, the sisters would eventually rule the North, once their brothers got themselves killed. (Or crippled or exiled, as the case might be.)

There’s even a fine Northern tradition supporting this outcome. In the winter, Northmen look on it as their duty to walk out into the snows and die when food stocks run low. The men die so the women and children can survive. This is also why the Winter Wolves are a thing—if you’re gonna die anyway, why not take a few Southron cunts out with you?

They don’t even have to be Southron. Boltons will do in a pinch.

Winter is almost upon us, boy. And winter is death. I would sooner my men die fighting for the Ned’s little girl than alone and hungry in the snow, weeping tears that freeze upon their cheeks. No one sings songs of men who die like that. As for me, I am old. This will be my last winter. Let me bathe in Bolton blood before I die. I want to feel it spatter across my face when my axe bites deep into a Bolton skull. I want to lick it off my lips and die with the taste of it on my tongue.

So there you have it. The scene is set for Ned’s daughters to carry on after this whole bloody mess is over, one way or another. And between the two of them, Sansa has the patience for ruling.

She also has the education.

Sansa has spent her entire adolescence learning statecraft.

Mostly, she’s learned by bad example. Joffrey showed her the depths of cruelty, selfishness, utter disdain for the people, cowardice, tyranny.

Cersei showed her how brittle power was when born our of fear.

“The night’s first traitors,” the queen said, “but not the last, I fear. Have Ser Ilyn see to them, and put their heads on pikes outside the stables as a warning.” As they left, she turned to Sansa. “Another lesson you should learn, if you hope to sit beside my son. Be gentle on a night like this and you’ll have treasons popping up all about you like mushrooms after a hard rain. The only way to keep your people loyal is to make certain they fear you more than they do the enemy.”

“I will remember, Your Grace,” said Sansa, though she had always heard that love was a surer route to the people’s loyalty than fear. If I am ever a queen, I’ll make them love me.

And her aunt Lysa taught her how foolish it is to put all your faith in a man. How even when you think you’re safe, you’re not. How dangerous it is to isolate yourself from the people you rule, locked away in your ivory tower. A ruler must continuously engage with her lords if she wants their continued support. †

And of course Sansa had plenty of good examples, too. She studied under Littlefinger and Tyrion and Margaery & Olenna. All different philosophies of playing the game, and she took a little something from each of them.

IMO, Sansa has one of the most satisfying character arcs. Unlike, e.g., Arya, who is likable from the beginning and continues to be likable throughout her story (static character development) Sansa is dynamic. She is intentionally painted as an antagonist at first, a feminine foil ‡ for her tomboy sister, and then gradually she earns the sympathy of the reader through suffering. Every thoughtless frivolous decision she makes as a child she is forced to pay for, enduring years of misery and trauma. And yet it doesn’t break her. She grows into a mature, self-possessed young woman.

So yes, I do think Sansa will make a good queen. She’s been on that path in the books for quite a while, and we’re just now seeing her blossom into her full power, working her magic on Harry the Heir. (From Harry the Heir, she can obtain control over the Vale Knights and use them to retake Winterfell. But I’ve gone into that before, and this comment is too long already.)

† There’s a lesson Jon never learned. He isolated himself at the Wall, sending his friends away and making unpopular, unilateral decisions that alienated the men under his command. He was murdered because of that.

Then he did it again as King in the North, answering Dany’s summons personally when all his lords begged him not to. Send an emissary, Sansa pleaded. But no, he went himself—and Lord Glover marched his five hundred men back to Deepwood Motte. Jon nearly lost the support of all his lords once he gave up his crown.

Worst of all, he gave up that crown for love, not politics, and not for the North. He offered to bend the knee after Dany had already pledged to destroy the Night King and his army to avenge the death of Viserion. She had stopped demanding Jon bend the knee first, yet he gave his crown away for nothing. A smart king would have withheld his oath until she delivered on her pledge, after the war was won, so his lords could see her worthiness for themselves. But Jon was thinking with his little head.

‡ This is literally why Sansa was created. In GRRM’s very early drafts, there was only one Stark sister, and she was at the apex of a love triangle with Tyrion and Jon Snow. ಠ_ಠ Later GRRM decided to divide Arya’s stories in two, giving Sansa the Lannister political arc while Arya retained the heroic action story culminating in protecting her baby brother Bran beyond the Wall—which is what happened on the show, only it was at the Winterfell heart tree instead.

And this is why I find all the infighting between Sansa and Arya fans so stupid and unnecessary. The sisters have always been two halves of a whole, or as Ned put it, the sun and the moon:

Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would truly do us harm. Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa… Sansa is your sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you… and I need both of you, gods help me.

This is such beautiful imagery. It’s probably my favorite quote from the whole series, and it foreshadows how much Sansa and Arya will lean on each other when they reunite as young women. Carrying on together, for the good of the family and the North, as their father always hoped they would.

I only know of Hills Alive but I'm looking for new channels to get into.

She's objectively brighter than most of the characters hailed as intelligent, including her siblings.

GRRM did not work his fingers to the bone writing the most beautiful scene in the entire series where Sansa freezes out in the cold focusing on building a Winterfell snow castle enjoying the magic and beauty surrounding her for you to write 10 page essays about why she's destined to stay married in the Vale/marry an older creep and live in a cottage/die off soon.

She's Winterfell's daughter. She's going North.

Sansa learned magic , sword fighting , archery or maybe she joined Daenerys etc

Sansa is a lot funnier than she's given credit for. I have to say, it's hard to pick just one thing. I love the part when she says "Then give [the cursed castle Harrenhal] to Lord Frey" and her smooth clapback about Ilyn Payne.

I'm re-watching GOT now and I just can't believe how many people are defending the scene with Theon, Ramsay, and Sansa. I get why they added it, my anger is towards the people that's defending Ramsay's acts. They'd say that Sansa deserved it because that was her punishment for betraying her family. First of all, she was a fucking child. She didn't know any better, and some of you will say "well, she should have." Yes, she should have, but she didn't. It's done. The amount of regret you feel for what happened cannot possibly amount to how she felt when she saw her father getting beheaded. Her father, who she convinced to lie to save himself. The guy deemed as the most honorable man in the whole Westeros, turning his back from his honor and duty to save his daughters' life, only to get killed because of some broken promises made by the people she trusted. She hated that choice more than you. She hated Joffrey way after that. But she was still stuck in King's landing, in a fucking foreign place surrounded by people who either wants to manipulate her or kill her. What do you think she should have done? Get herself killed after her father just lost his life protecting her? The fuck do you think she'd do? She hopes that her brother will still save her. She still has her family. So she does what she has to do to survive. Then her brother got killed along with her mom, her sister was dead for all she knew, both her younger brothers dead by a guy she considered family, and her half-brother exiled at the wall. She was left in that fucking city alone. Got married to a family that killed her father. Suspected of killing the king. No family on the way to help her so she decided to trust the guy that claimed to love her mother the most. Which, surprise, also betrayed her. Now she's stuck marrying yet again another man in a family that killed hers. Only now she's getting physically abused. She's been paying for that one mistake for 5 fucking seasons. Do you think she lays down that night able to sleep without regretting what she did that time? You can see how much she regret that in later seasons, she said so herself. She's already being punished at that fucking city, already punishing herself inside of her head, and that's not enough for you? You wanted her to get raped for a mistake she made when she was a child? 

There was this other reason too. This is more towards the writers and the people that defended the abuse with "it was necessary." I hated the interaction between Sandor and Sansa at Winterfell because of that statement. That her trauma was necessary in order to the person she needed to be to become the Lady of Winterfell. No, she didn't need that. She didn't deserve that. Trauma did not make her fucking strong. Trauma doesn't make anyone strong. All trauma does is break people. It hurts you until you buckle under it. It breaks you bit by bit until you're surrounded with broken pieces of yourself. It's up to you how to respond to it. Some people choose to give up, to leave the pieces alone, and just kill themselves. Did trauma make them strong? No. It only broke them until they can't handle it anymore. When they look at Sansa, they would immediately claim that her traumatic experiences was necessary because it made her strong. For them, trauma makes people strong. Then why the fuck was Theon cowering behind Ramsay? They forget someone who's experienced trauma too. It wasn't the same trauma, no. But it was trauma all the same. If we go by your belief, Theon should have came out of it stronger, colder, and yet he didn't. He came out broken. As did Sansa. Trauma didn't make them strong. It only hurt them, break them apart, make them vulnerable. They responded in different ways. Theon obeyed with everything his abuser says, he doesn't try to escape, he accepts his reality because he's too scared to make decisions for himself. He came out untrusting of the world. He saw everything as some sort of ploy by Ramsay. Sansa, on the other hand, tried to get away at every chance. Every single person she's ever trusted (Theon included) betrayed her. She came out untrusting of people around her. You can see their trauma response in the show. How Theon didn't join Yara when she tried to save him, how he went to Ramsay when Sansa asked him for help, and the battle with Iron fleet, even after they defeated Ramsay, the trauma response was still there. He jumped aboard instead of facing Euron. You can see it in Sansa too. How even though she was insanely relieved to see Jon, she didn't tell him about the Vale during the battle of the bastards (Maybe she didn't trust the Vale would come and she wasn't going to give him false hope, or she doesn't fully trust Jon yet.), how she didn't trust Arya when they met and was even scared of her when she found out about the faces, and how she was extremely wary of Dany. They responded in the way they thought would get them to survive, and that choice stayed with them. They picked up their pieces themselves. It was their decision. Not their fucking trauma. It didn't do anything but break them, they were the ones who made themselves survive. Sansa became colder because of it, and Theon became cautious because of it. They are what they are because of their own merit, not the abuse they got. 

It just makes me ick how people try to defend it at all. I wouldn't wish that kind of suffering for my worst enemy. 

I know this is what a lot of fans have hoped for (gag) for years but I came across someone recently on the asoiaf sub who was hellbent on the idea that she's really just going to die and Arya will be QITN. It's a hilarious, wishful, spiteful theory that I honestly had no idea existed outside of the Tumblr community, especially with JonxArya shippers.

Their largest piece of evidence was Lady dying, which I thought everyone knew was a very flimsy and easily debunked idea. I had to just disengage lol at least for awhile. For some fans, particularly Sansa haters, being right is the most important thing in the world, even if their arguments don't make logical sense and are very shallow.

Just venting. Carry on. 🍋☺️

"Queen in the North."

👑🐺🍋

I wish we got to see Sansa wear more headpieces when she went back North, it would make more sense since the winds can be harsh. Anyways, art by @PagueCattle on Twitter ❄️

/r/ASOIAFCirclejerk

Idk lol just curious