Episode 67: A GAME OF THRONES, SANSA VI: "Paradise Lost" featuring Special Guest Michal Schick SHOW NOTES!

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish. 

And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn. 

Welcome to the sixty-seventh episode of the Not A Cast, entitled: “Paradise Lost: An Analysis of AGOT, Sansa VI,” in which Sansa Stark, reeling from witnessing her father’s execution, is forced to stand strong against Joffrey (who is the worst), Meryn Trant (also the worst), and Sandor Clegane (not entirely the worst??)

Michal intro

Michal says hi  - Hi! I’m super excited to be on this episode that I low-key badgered you guys to be on for months :D

This episode is brought to you by our Small Council: 

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack 
• Grand Maester Timbob
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N. 
• Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
• Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
• Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
• Jancy O, Lady Commander of the Night’s Watch
• Lord Gene Master of Coin
• Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
• Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
• Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
• Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
• Lord Baby the Onion Baby
• Lord Blackheart the Defiant, Master of Zorse 
• Lord Micah Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
• Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
• The High Bearded Priest
• The Blue-Ringed Octoling
• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
• Lady Xena Valyrian

Thank you councillors very much!

Spoiler warning: All published books - 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!

Question

Lady Xena Valyrian, one of our brand new Small Council members, asks:

Did you guys ever have a chance to see my message about the significance of Sansa’s direwolf name: Shirley Jackson's The Renegade?

If you're not familiar, basically it's about an outcast woman who moved from her city life into a very rural area. Her dog is accused of killing her neighbor’s chicken. The town then goes into a somewhat pack mentality (very much like Jackson's other short story, The Lottery) and proceeds to taunt and torment the dog describing how they're going to chop off the dog's head! THE DOG'S NAME IS LADY!!!!! Coincidence????…..I think not. Goodness he's such an amazing writer, well done George. What do you think? 

Reminder about the next patreon episode entitled: “Whitewashed: The Adaptation of Dany, Jon and Tyrion in GoT”

Synopsis

Fair warning: there are descriptions of sexual assault and physical abuse against minors in the summary. 

High atop Maegor’s holdfast, curtains drawn, sleeping, weeping, sleeping, laying under blankets in cold grief and sleeping yet again, Sansa Stark embraces the darkness.

Sometimes her sleep was dreamless but other times, she dreamed of Ned. She saw him wherever she went, saw him thrown to the ground by the gold cloaks, saw Ilyn Payne coming forward, unsheathing ice and she saw the moment when … 

She wanted to look away, she wanted to, her legs had gone out from under, and she had fallen to her knees, yet somehow, she could not turn her head, and all the people were screaming and shouting, and her prince had smiled at her, he’d smiled, and she’d felt safe, but only for a heartbeat, until he said those words, and her father’s legs … that was what she remembered, his legs, the way they’d jerked when Ser Ilyn … when the sword …

Sansa thinks she’s about to die, and that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe she could toss herself from the window and end her pain. Maybe then the singers would sing of her grief.

Her body would lie on the stones below, broken and innocent, shaming all those who had betrayed her.

Once, she’d even gotten all the way to the window, threw open the shutters and prepared to jump. Instead, she “lost her courage” and ran back to her bed, crying. Damn, Sansa. That’s some powerfully sad shit. 

Servant girls try to talk with Sansa, but she refuses to answer them. And then that piece of shit Grand Maester Pycelle who BTW is going to be killed quite appropriately by children in ADWD I am comes to Sansa’s bedchamber. And listeners, beware. This is a bit disturbing what Pycelle does. He brings a box of “medicines”, feels her brow, forces her to undress and then touches her all over while a bedmaid holds her down. When he’s done being an utterly vile human being, Pycelle gives her honeywater and herbs, tells her to take a swallow every night. Sansa drinks it all right then and there and passes out.

She dreams of Ser Ilyn Payne coming up the stairs for her, Ice in hand. She couldn’t run or hide. He just stood outside her door in her dreams, and Sansa was naked. She tried covering herself, but the door began to open, the swordpoint of Ice poking through.

She woke murmuring, “Please, please, I’ll be good, I’ll be good, please don’t.” But there was no one to hear.

When they finally came for her, it wasn’t Ilyn at all. It was Joffrey, Sandor Clegane, Ser Arys Oakheart and Ser Meryn Trant who came into her room. He walks in, slams the doors, yanks back her blankets and orders her to attend him at court. But Sansa doesn’t want to go. 

No, please, leave me be.

So, Joffrey kindly sees that Sansa is in an emotionally fraught state and backs off, right? Noooooope.

If you won’t rise and dress yourself, My Hound will do it for you.

Sansa begs more, but Joffrey orders Sandor Clegane to get Sansa out of bed. And weirdly, so weirdly, the Hound kind of gently pulls her out of bed and tells her to Do as you’re bid, child. He then pushes her almost gently toward her wardrobe.

Behind the wardrobe, Sansa states that she did everything that was asked of her. She wrote letters, and Joffrey, you bitch, you promised that you’d be merciful. 

Please let me go home. I won’t do any treason. I’ll be good, I swear it. I don’t have traitor’s blood. I don’t. I only want to go home. As it please you.

Of course, this doesn’t please Joffrey. He’s still to marry Sansa. Well, Sansa doesn’t want to marry some psychopathic king. It’s the whole, you know, CHOPPING OFF HER DAD’S HEAD, JOFFREY, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE. 

But according to Joffrey, he was quite merciful to that traitor Ned. He could have had Ned torn apart or flayed Bolton-style. But instead, he gave Ned mercy. He gave him a clean death. 

Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was wearing a padded crimson doublet patterned with lions and a cloth-of-gold cape with a high collar that framed his face. She wondered how she could ever have thought him handsome. His lips were as soft and red as the worms you found after a rain, and his eyes were vein and cruel. “I hate you,” she whispered.

Get him, Sansa. Get. Him. 

Joffrey’s face hardens, and he states how mama Cersei said it’s not fitting for a king to hit his wife, which, y’know, Cersei is right on that count. So, Joffrey, being that evil little shit that he is, orders Meryn Trant into action. The “knight” steps up and backhands her with a gloved fist. Sansa falls to the ground.

Will you obey now, or shall I have him chastise you again? Joffrey says like an idiot.

Sansa’s ear rings, and she reaches up and feels it wet with blood.

“I … as … as you command, my lord.”

“Your Grace,” Joffrey corrects. “I shall look for you in court.” 

Joffrey stomps off like a brat with moron knights Meryn and Arys in tow, but Sandor Clegane stays behind. He urges Sansa to spare herself pain and give Joffrey what he wants. And what does he want exactly? Well, he wants Sansa to smile, smell sweet, be his lady love, recite pretty little words, love him and fear him. Not exactly the worst advice given the horrible situation Sansa is in now.

Sandor departs, and Sansa calls for a bath and powder to hide the bruise on her aching, swollen face. The hot bath makes her think of Winterfell. Her handmaids wash her, wash her hair and brush her hair until it springs back in thick auburn curls. Sansa dresses in a green silk gown -- the same one she wore to the Hand’s tourney. Sansa hopes this will remind Joffrey not to be such a little shit. Sadly, this will not be the case.

Sansa eats a little finally, and “Ser” Meryn Trant comes striding in at noon to retrieve Sansa, wearing his best whites, and Sansa notes that his face is dour with pouchy bags under his eyes, a wide sour mouth with rusty hair spotted with gray. He calls Sansa “my lady” and bows like a douche who had hit her just a few hours before. I hate him. Can’t wait for him to get eaten by field mice come TWOW.

Meryn tells Sansa that he’s come to fetch her for Joffrey’s audience hall, and Sansa asks what he would do if she refuses. He asks her if she’s refusing. Sansa looks him over.

He did not hate her, Sansa realized; neither did he love her. He felt nothing for her at all. She was only a … a thing to him.

She’s not refusing this psychopath. She stands, wanting to rage and hit him back, to warn him that when she was queen, Meryn would get his ass exiled if he ever hit her again. But she remembers Sandor’s warning, and she says she’s coming. But Sansa decides to get brave, and I love it:

You are no true knight, Ser Meryn.

Fuck yeah, Sansa. 

But Meryn doesn’t care. Sandor might have laughed. But Meryn is, as stated previously, a true psychopath. 

Sansa arrives at an empty balcony overlooking the throne room. Joffrey sits atop the Iron Throne with the small council at the table below. Joffrey is mostly bored by 90% of the cases presented to him; so, he delegates the small council to decide those particular cases. 

The ones Joffrey seemed most interested in were the ones where he inflicts violence on people. A thief had his hand chopped off by Ilyn Payne. Two knights who had a dispute over land were ordered to duel to death. A woman who came to beg to bury a man accused of treason was dragged off to the dungeons as she “must be a traitor too.” 

And of course, Lord Janos Slynt the Fuckboy is there to nod his frog-faced head along every time Joffrey was up there doing injustice. Sansa stares at him, remembering how he threw Ned down to the ground.

She wished she could hurt him, wished that some hero would throw him down and cut his head off. But a voice inside her whispered, “There are no heroes,” and she remember what Lord Petry had said to her , here in this very hall. “Life is not a song sweetling. You may learn that one day to your sorrow.” In life, the monsters win, she told herself.

She hears Sandor’s voice in her head, telling her to save herself some pain. 

The final case Joffrey hears is that of a singer who had sung a song ridiculing Joffrey’s “father” Robert. So, Joffrey orders a harp brought forward and the singer to perform the song. The singer tries to say that he won’t sing it again, but Joffrey tells him to sing it. So, he sings the song about Robert fighting a pig. Sansa notes that some verses of the song sound like the pig is Cersei. When the singer is done, Joffrey asks whether the singer would like to keep his tongue or his fingers. He has a day to decide.

And so Joffrey concludes the business of the court for the day. Sansa tries to flee immediately. But unfortunately, Joffrey’s not done with Sansa. He meets her at the bottom of the balcony, commenting about how she looks much better. Sansa says “Thanks,” thinking about how she could say hollow words if she had to. Joffrey orders her to walk with him, and Sansa has no choice but to follow.

Sansa follows Joffrey, and we get more lovely Joffrey stuff like him saying that she’s stupid, just like Cersei says she is. Sansa finds this surprising. Cersei says this? She was always nice to her. But yes, Cersei says this, and she’s worried af about the children will be just as stupid as Sansa is which … goddamn, Cersei. You’re a real piece of work. But Sansa doesn’t comment on any of that.

The Hound was right, she thought, I am only a little bird, repeating the words they taught me.

As they get outside, the sun is setting turning the stones of the Red Keep into a dark blood red color, because of course. And Joffrey says that he’ll get Sansa with child soon enough, and if that child is stupid, he’ll have Sansa’s head cut off, because of course he would. He asks when Sansa will be ready to have children, and Sansa says that she’ll be ready when she’s 12 or 13. 

Joffrey nods and tells Sansa they’re going out of the gatehouse and on up to the battlements, but Sansa starts to panic, realizing where she’s being taken.

Please, no, don’t make me, I beg of you.

But Joffrey is here to show Sansa what happens to traitors. And Sansa won’t like it, but she better obey Joffrey. Joff reaches for Sansa’s hand, and Sandor urges her to obey Joffrey. She doesn’t really have a choice in the matter. So, she takes Joffrey’s hand, and they climb up “12,000 stairs with horror waiting on the ramparts.” 

When they reach the top of the high battlements, the world opens up below them. Sansa looks out to Baelor’s Sept atop Visenya’s hill, the Street of Sisters and the ruins of the Dragonpit is over to the east, the setting sun falls over the Gate of the Gods. The Narrow Sea was at Sansa’s back, the fish market to her south with the docks and the turbulent currents of the Blackwater Rush. And to the north …

She turned that way, and saw only the city, streets and alleys and hills and bottoms and more streets and more alleys and the stone of distant walls. Yet she knew that beyond them was open country, farms and fields and forests, and beyond that, north and north and north again stood Winterfell.

Joffrey, though, is all like, “What are you looking at? I want you to see these heads mounted to spikes,” because Joffrey is not a crazy fucking child who needs to be sent to his room for a long, long time. Joffrey points to the heads, pointing out which one is Ned’s. Good King Joffrey orders Sandor to twist that heads around, so she can see more fully. Sandor complies, and Sansa thinks it really doesn’t look much like Ned at all.

“How long do I have to look?”

Joffrey seemed disappointed. “Do you want to see the rest?”

Sansa’s all like, “Sure, whatever,” and Joffrey proceeds over to two empty spikes and says they’re for Stannis and Renly. Sure, kid. Sure. Joff points to another utterly unrecognizable head and says that this was Septa Mordane’s head. Sansa was curious about what happened to Mordane. But she thinks she probably knew all along what would happen.

Why did you kill her? She was god sworn …

She was a traitor. Joffrey says. 

Then Joffrey repeats his question about what Sansa will give him for his birthday and says maybe he’ll give her something instead: like her brother’s head. And Sandor, didn’t you call Robb Stark the lord of the wooden sword? Ah, well, Sandor can’t quite recall. But Joffrey brings Sansa some new information. Robb Stark defeated Joffrey’s dad, ahem, uncle in battle with treachery and deceit. Cersei cried -- which to Joffrey means that she’s weak. 

So, Joffrey’s going to raise a host to take on Robb Stark, which lol, go get ‘em tiger. And he’ll bring Sansa a present: her brother’s head.

A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, “Maybe my brother will give me your head.”

Joffrey scowls like an idiot and then orders brave Ser Meryn Trant to hit Sansa, and of course, this shit-knight grabs Sansa’s chin and hits her twice like the brave knight he is. Sansa’s lip splits open, and blood runs down her chin. She feels tears on her face, and Joffrey tells her to stop crying and start smiling. Sansa complies. And then Joffrey tells Sansa to wipe off the blood from her face. 

But then Sansa realizes that the parapet wall is high, but the bailey was unwalled. If she could come up to Joffrey and shove him over, he’d fall some 70 or 80 feet. 

He was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with those fat worm lips. You could do it, she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn’t even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn’t matter at all.

Instead, Sandor Clegane kneels before her and between her and Joffrey and dabs the blood from her lip. The moment and opportunity to push Joffrey over the side was gone, and Sansa lowers her eyes thanking Sandor.

She was a good girl and always remembered her courtesies.

And that is AGOT, Sansa VI: our final Sansa chapter, and I have to say: my FAVORITE Sansa chapter in this book. I get that everyone loves the Hand’s tourney, but this chapter just runs the gamut of emotions, and I find myself liking Sansa. Yes, you heard that right. Me, I find myself liking Sansa.

What did you all think?

Depth

In a way, we’ve been talking about this chapter all along. Whenever we’ve brought up the perfect structure of Sansa’s downfall in this book, or talked about the book’s central theme of the fall from grace, or even discussed the deconstruction of fantasy imagery more broadly, it’s always been with Sansa VI in mind. This is where George tips his hand in the most devastatingly effective manner imaginable. Sansa’s dreams about courtesy and chivalry (and the underlying assumptions about how the world works) were a too-perfect stained glass window. Now that window has shattered, and even as she recoils, the shards left behind are all she has to defend herself. There might be more exciting chapters in book one, but there is no more thematically significant one than Sansa VI. Upon reread, I think this is where George lays out what not only Sansa’s story but the whole story is about. What did you think, Michal?

I agree, and the more I reread, the more I’m impressed by how human George’s deconstruction is. I always loved this chapter for bringing us to the real, Level One Sansa - before this point, I see her as functioning at zero, the childhood level where you just don’t need to question or change anything. Sansa levels up to consciousness in one of the most traumatic ways possible, and through that action, Martin’s misunderstood reputation as sadistic, grim-dark Slayer of Fantasies is itself deconstructed. Sansa is in no way the hero here. She is classically a pure victim. If the story was following predictable beats, I think she really should have died in Ned’s place, which I’ll talk about later. 

And yet her psychology and her fear and her grief and her pain matters here. Martin cares about the quality of her dreams, the powder she uses to cover her bruised face, about the internal alchemy of her only love transforming into her only hate, to misuse Shakespeare for a second. The deconstruction here is not just of the role of the pretty princess. He’s shattering the idea that the pretty princess, who in many ways remains surrounded and enjoying the comforts of her station, can’t have depth and development and pain that is worth Martin’s time to write, and our time to read. You could skip this chapter on a plot level, but on a character and thematic level, you would pull a major pin out of the thematic structure and the real empathy for innocents that runs through George’s work. I think that’s why this chapter is so important to me.

I love how this chapter opens to Sansa in complete physical and spiritual darkness. Waking, sleeping, whatever. It’s all darkness at the open. I want to believe that Sansa’s chapter open is a metaphor for the Long Night and what it does to people. Consider/contrast the darkness imagery compared to what Old Nan says about the Long Night:

Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness

You can almost see Sansa VI as a microcosm for the story of the Long Night and the Last Hero. Sansa and the Last Hero shiver in cold and grief. One by one, their friends and family die, even the Last Hero’s dog dies (Lady, anyone!?) and “they” or the Others come for them. But much like that Long Night seemed hopeless and Sansa in King’s Landing seems hopeless, George ain’t a nihilist. And neither is Sansa thankfully. The children will save the Last Hero, and the child Sansa Stark will save everyone else maybe, hopefully.

But before we get there, ansa has to process a shitload of grief before she can see the light emanating from the North.

• The impact of trauma
  • Arya and Bran were only dealing directly with Ned’s death at the end of their last chapters. Devastating for sure, but Sansa VI is where GRRM really explores it
  • Sansa isn’t eating, considers suicide, and is haunted by flashbacks to her father’s execution and nightmares of Ilyn Payne (the avatar of death) coming for her next
  • To say the least, this is a significant change from the tone of previous Sansa chapters! Horrible things were happening, but the bubble overall held secure
  • Now it has burst, and George is so keyed into the emotional and thematic reverberations of that in this chapter
  • Sansa is giving herself to the darkness, as he puts it: grief, horror, suicidal ideation, utter alienation from others and oneself
  • This chapter is designed to guide the audience in how to interpret and feel about the death of Ned Stark--a shattering breakdown that marks an end to innocence
  • So much of Sansa’s story going forward will be about trying to recover from what happens in Sansa VI, even as the ripple effects of it continue and get worse
  • The contrast with previous Sansa chapters is what makes it work so well; we’re seeing the other side of disillusionment, as we did when Bran woke up 
  • In that way, I would up Sansa VI as not only a thematic lens through which to look at the series as a whole, but also an exemplary close to a single-book arc
  • Hold up this chapter side by side with Sansa I, and you will see both how everything has changed and how it hasn’t. Our daughter has gone from heaven to hell, but hell was nestled inside heaven waiting for her all along. 
  • I also think it’s important that in spite of the tremendous change Sansa’s character and worldview that this chapter represents, her journey is not perfectly linear. 
  • It takes her a minute to recognize that Joffrey is the wormy-lipped moron that he is. She reverts often to the words “I’ll be good, I’ll be good” as if that is her passport to safety, even though the smarter part of her knows that that is absolutely meaningless. She is hurt when Joffrey reveals that Cersei thinks she’s an idiot. 
  • Trauma has leveled her up, made her wiser, but this is only one experience. Throughout Sansa’s arc, she’ll continue to grapple with the gap between the ways she knows things are and the ways she wishes they would be. 
  • Which is part of why her character works so well as an agent for fantasy deconstruction. She doesn’t lose her connection to the world of songs and stories, not completely. Sometimes it’s beautiful and sometimes it’s foolish, but she retains a degree of the romantic idealism. She’s not the Hound; she’s actually a lot like George. 
• Birth imagery as informing how pivotal this chapter is for Sansa -- it’s her hatching.
  • She begins the chapter in a womb-like darkness (or if you want to stick with the bird metaphor, an egg) of her bed “at the heart” of the holdfast. 
    • “She was in bed, curled up tight, her curtains drawn, and she could not have said if it was noon or midnight.”
  • Through the chapter, she is literally brought into the world with blood and pain.
  • If you want to look at it a certain way, which tbh I definitely do, the Hound scooping her out of bed is the action of a midwife to this new incarnation of Sansa. It’s also something that the actual Maester Creepy notably does not do.
  • As you say, it’s not a linear progression, and it’s not meant to be. On the one hand, the fantasy world of Sansa’s previous chapters has been ripped apart
  • On the other, the signifiers of those stories remain, and while some have turned on her, others remain Sansa’s only recourse and only method of attaining control
  • Moreover, the image of paradise doesn’t fade from her POV. It’s always reborn.
  • The Tyrells take over for it, and are then replaced by the nobility of the Vale
  • Each represents a new shining face of the stories, each season giving way to the next: Lannister spring, Tyrell summer, Vale autumn. And now winter is coming. 
  • Sansa’s arc is brutal and helpless and (deliberately) stagnant for long portions, but there is change and a sense of a journey in how this element evolves
  • She’s always being reborn--the Blackwater and the Eyrie are crucibles in the same way. Porcelain, ivory, steel. An arc of transformation. So what’s left behind?
• The deconstruction of fantasy imagery and chivalry
  • Throughout Sansa’s story in AGOT, she more than anyone else in the book has believed in chivalry, courtesy, and the wonder and splendor of court life
  • This is rooted in her premodern media consumption (“it is better than the songs”) and provides the foundation for her worldview--as in, Joffrey and Cersei are good because they look and talk (mostly…) like the good guys in the stories
  • Now we have arrived at George’s argument about that imagery--while it is lush and vivid and enjoyable in its own right, it often serves to cover up horrors
  • In-universe, the power and pageantry of the Kingsguard allows them to get away with crimes. IRL, bad Tolkien ripoffs (as George has said) have muddled the clarity of his vision and fallen back on shorthand that doesn’t reflect reality
  • We are not seeing George abandon this imagery, but weaponize it. It would be in some way easier if Sansa had been stolen away from this world; what gives this chapter its sting is that world has turned on her
  • The gallant prince
    • Sansa I: She gazed at Joffrey worshipfully. He was so gallant, she thought. The way he had rescued her from Ser Ilyn and the Hound, why, it was almost like the songs, like the time Serwyn of the Mirror Shield saved the Princess Daeryssa from the giants, or Prince Aemon the Dragonknight championing Queen Naerys's honor against evil Ser Morgil's slanders.
      • GRRM signals that Sansa’s filtering of Joffrey through fantasy lenses isn’t accurate as Joffrey tortures Mycah later on.
    • Sansa II: And Joffrey was the soul of courtesy. He talked to Sansa all night, showering her with compliments, making her laugh, sharing little bits of court gossip, explaining Moon Boy's japes. Sansa was so captivated that she quite forgot all her courtesies and ignored Septa Mordane, seated to her left.
      • Deconstructed after Joffrey doesn’t walk her back, instead ordering Sandor Clegane to escort her back to the Red Keep
    • Sansa III: "I had a dream that Joffrey would be the one to take the white hart," she said. It had been more of a wish, actually, but it sounded better to call it a dream. Everyone knew that dreams were prophetic. White harts were supposed to be very rare and magical, and in her heart she knew her gallant prince was worthier than his drunken father.
      
      "A dream? Truly? Did Prince Joffrey just go up to it and touch it with his bare hand and do it no harm?"
      
      "No," Sansa said. "He shot it with a golden arrow and brought it back for me." In the songs, the knights never killed magical beasts, they just went up to them and touched them and did them no harm, but she knew Joffrey liked hunting, especially the killing part.
      • Like we said back in Episode 44, it ain’t an arc unless Sansa is getting signals - albeit subconscious ones - that Joff ain’t the gallant prince Sansa makes him out to be.
    • Sansa IV: The king! Sansa blinked back her tears. Joffrey was the king now, she thought. Her gallant prince would never hurt her father, no matter what he might have done. If she went to him and pleaded for mercy, she was certain he'd listen. He had to listen, he loved her, even the queen said so. Joff would need to punish Father, the lords would expect it, but perhaps he could send him back to Winterfell, or exile him to one of the Free Cities across the narrow sea. It would only have to be for a few years. By then she and Joffrey would be married. Once she was queen, she could persuade Joff to bring Father back and grant him a pardon.
      • Joffrey won’t listen.
    • Sansa V: "Only … that as you love me, you do me this kindness, my prince," Sansa said.
      
      King Joffrey looked her up and down. "Your sweet words have moved me," he said gallantly, nodding, as if to say all would be well. "I shall do as you ask … but first your father has to confess. He has to confess and say that I'm the king, or there will be no mercy for him."
      
      "He will," Sansa said, heart soaring. "Oh, I know he will."
      • As we discover in Sansa VI: Joffrey’s mercy is apparently not tearing Ned apart or having him flayed. 
    • Sansa VI: Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was wearing a padded crimson doublet patterned with lions and a cloth-of-gold cape with a high collar that framed his face. She wondered how she could ever have thought him handsome. His lips were as soft and red as the worms you found after a rain, and his eyes were vein and cruel. “I hate you,” she whispered.
      • Finally, we’re at the point where the deconstruction is complete. Sansa discovers Joffrey to be the monster that readers have sensed all along. Devastating for Sansa.
  • He’s a monster, but he’s also a petulant child always talking about what his Mommy says, and it’s that contrast that makes Joffrey so terrifying
  • He’s still naive in the way Sansa or young Sandor were, but that naivete is filtered through sadism, the terrible lessons he’s internalized from both Cersei and Robert, and now unlimited power over those around him
  • Not sure where to put this, but I want to note that another one of Joffrey’s dispensations of justice involves perverting what should be a very mundane issue -- two knights with a presumably minor land dispute -- with the demands of a fairytale. 
  • Joffrey rules that they must FIGHT TO THE DEATH, because yeah, he loves violence, but also because these people aren’t people to him. They’re characters, playing out whatever badass story he wants to see, and now he wants to see the one where the two knights meet grandly on the battlefield and die for their stupid, stupid cause.
• Not that kind of song, sweetling.
  • It’s notable that in this last Sansa chapter, there are no stories and only one song. 
  • This is the first time Sansa internalizing LF’s message that “life is not a song, sweetling,” and she does not compare herself or any of the characters around her to fairytales.
  • She is on utterly unfamiliar territory now, and has no moral lessons or dreamy happy endings to guide her way.
  • The only song sung in this chapter is the tavern singer’s satirical ditty about Robert and the pig, aka Cersei.
  • It is sung under duress, in terror, as the singer begs forgiveness.
  • Of course, he’s given the very literary choice of losing his fingers or his tongue, which means that the whole affair does not end with music, but with blood.
  • Thanks Joffery.
  • He has quite literally silenced the song! That’s Euron’s role in the overall narrative--his ship is the Silence and he’s here to silence the song of ice and fire (plug for upcoming essay), but here it epitomizes how Joffrey, once the object of Sansa’s song-fueled desires, has brutally destroyed those desires
  • And yet he himself is still so naive at some level and so drunk on his own image
• The Hound v. the knights
  • The closest thing to a positive influence in this chapter, front to back, is Sandor Clegane. Which...says a lot!
    • Yeah it does 😏
  • Sandor reminds me of Stannis (ding) in that George encapsulates the best and worst of his world in a single person, and does it at the slight remove of non-POV
  • That comes through so strongly here, in which he’s still an agent of a sadistic child monarch, but is the only one who attends at all to Sansa’s safety
    • He is the opposite of the “blood on the white silk glove” that defines Trant.
    • Also what fucking imagery man.
  • Moreover, he’s the only one who seems to get who she is as a person at all and how what she’s going through relates to who she was Before
  • That builds on the fantasy imagery: Sandor is a former believer (he got those burns playing with a toy knight) whose hopes/dreams/values were scorched away, and he clearly sees Sansa and her predicament through that filter
  • This will repeat itself over the course of ACOK, during Joffrey’s attack on her in the throne room and again during the bread riots…
  • ...but the Blackwater complicates things significantly, because while Sandor promises to rescue and protect Sansa, he’s also holding a knife to her throat
  • He also swears and yells at her a lot, and is permanently drunk, etc
  • And yet, the idea of him gives her strength: the cloak, the unkiss
  • So it’s not so much that the Hound is her true pure savior in disguise, but that what support he did give was one step in her long walk out of the abyss
  • In this chapter specifically, Sandor is pretty blatantly positioned as a counterpoint to Meryn Trant, who is honestly even more frightening than Joffrey on reread
  • “She was just a thing to him” is such a chilling thing for Sansa to recognize, especially in context of her story so far (contrast it with Barry’s beautiful KG armor taking her breath away in her first chapter)
  • He could’ve killed her with that initial blow! Joff didn’t even have to give a specific order! He’s like a wight, armored in snow white, killing on his king’s whims
  • The sight of this grown man, a sworn knight, armed and armored, beating a helpless traumatized child sets the tone for Joffrey’s blessedly short-lived reign
  • There’s really no end to what could be said about Sansa and Sandor Clegane’s relationship, but for this chapter specifically, this is -- in my reading -- the start of a mutual shattering of both characters’ worldview by the other. This becomes a defining element of both their stories. They change each other tremendously through the proximity and the divergence of their experiences.
  • Sansa internalizes Sandor’s brutally practical message, she even hears his voice in her head. Accordingly, he scales of songs and stories begin to fall from her eyes.
  • But at the same time, seeing Sansa confronted with these awful truths doesn’t harden Sandor’s heart. It allows for a creeping-in of those old values. She inspires him to be almost gentle with her, and to very VERY SLOWLY BEGIN TO RECOGNIZE that there may be a difference between rejecting hypocritical social markers of power and true nihilism, of the kind that Meryn Trant exhibits.
  • Obviously, this is a very long journey for both Sansa and Sandor Clegane. It’s not linear, it does involve regression and naivity and cruelty and very, very questionable decisions. 
  • But for me, this is where the true root of connection between the characters begins. There is a magnetism in the similarity that exists in spite of such tremendous differences. However you want to interpret that connection, it’s an extremely powerful force that changes both characters enormously.
  • And also I kind of hope they kiss eventually when Sansa is a grown-up, consent-capable person SHUT UP JEFF
• The role of gender
  • Nakedness in her dream -- big honking theme for Sansa
  • Cersei tells Sansa in book two about how upon the onset of puberty, she began to notice how differently she was treated from Jaime, and this is that moment for Sansa
  • We’ve already seen Littlefinger staring at her like she’s naked, now we have a gauntlet of violence--actual and threatened--rooted in her gender
  • Sansa’s society and worldview have conditioned her not to defend herself, because there are men who will do that for her
  • This is what Catelyn lays out to Brienne in book two: my father, my brother, my uncle, my husband, they are to keep me safe as I am to keep my children safe
  • Now Sansa sees the flipside of that promise of overlapping protections
  • What if your husband (to be) kills your father? What if the knights sworn to protect you instead beat you on his orders?
  • What Sansa now realizes is that the songs and stories have provided a cover for sadists to infiltrate positions of power; they have helpless women to attack and far from condemning them, the crown urges them on
  • Women not being given the tools and training to defend themselves reflects not an idealized vision of chivalry wherein no one would dare harm them, but a deliberate vulnerability baked into the system forcing women to depend on men
  • And when those men prove undependable or worse, women are left with the void
  • Even Cersei’s attempts to make Joffrey different after she went through this fail, because the only thing he took away is to have others do his beating for him
  • Sansa is being beaten not only for disobedience, but failure to fit the ideal in Joffrey’s mind
  • That neither he nor his Kingsguard have to live up to the ideal in Sansa’s mind gets at the gendered power dynamics at work here. Only one side has to live up to the song.
  • The unmooring of Sansa’s reality is absolute in this chapter. It’s not just the loss of her family and friends. She has never had her own body used against her before, and this will become a defining characteristic of her experience. 
  • Not only in KL but with Littlefinger/Daddy Dearest as well -- it’s innocuous in contrast to all this, but the fact is that her own hair can endanger her in the Vale. What she is physically becomes a threat to her, which culminates in the mattress-burning scene next book.
  • It’s also poignant to read how humiliated Sansa is by Joffrey’s plans to get her pregnant once she flowers. The subject is unbearable to her, she can’t even look at him when he says this, but the subject of her sexual value and fertility for the benefit of others will become a regular subject in the dialogue of her life very soon.
• The last stand atop the walls
  • “He can make me look at the heads, she told herself, but he can’t make me see them.” 
    • This is Sansa’s version of Syrio’s lesson to Arya -- “Look with your eyes.” 
    • Sansa never had a Syrio, and so she is here on the ramparts, alone among her enemies and dead protectors, teaching herself not to see, rather than to absorb the meaning of what she is seeing.
  • How do you guys interpret the last line of the chapter?
  • “The moment was gone. Sansa lowered her eyes. “Thank you,” she said when he was done. She was a good girl, and always remembered her courtesies.”
  • I’ve always found it slightly dissatisfying, as though Sansa is doomed to revert to her training. 
  • But of course, Sansa’s training becomes her lifeline.
  • And it’s not like Arya and Bran’s chapters end on big character uppers either.
  • For me, it’s a powerful moment that works well in combination with what comes right before it: Sansa considering killing Joffrey at cost of her own life, and Sandor stopping her from doing so
  • I think it’s fair to feel disgruntled at the reversion/regression, and you can make an argument that the overall “revenge is bad” theme conflates genuinely monstrous attempts at payback with more righteous fights against abusers/oppressors
  • If we asked George, he’d probably say that his point isn’t so much that you shouldn’t strike back, but that making striking back the core of your identity won’t make you happy and healthy in the long run. 
  • That’s what makes Sandor’s presence so powerful. He wants above all to kill Gregor, and maybe he will yet as in the show. But he got the chance at the Hand’s Tourney, and chose not to:
  • In this moment, he steps between Sansa and her abuser, directly protecting him, but also at some level protecting her from herself
  • At this moment, dabbing at her wounds, he seems the very image of chivalry
  • But of course, all that leaves Sansa with is her courtesy. It’s a knockout of a closing line because she initially saw courtesy and chivalry as her path to the good life, and now they’ve become a cage...and yet they’re the only tools available to her 
  • The idea of Sansa being a good girl and knowing her courtesies has just changed so much over the course of the story
  • So while I’m ultimately glad that Sandor steps in, some frustration at this line makes sense to me because I think it reflects Sansa’s powerlessness
  • She has no good options, so her story becomes about what you do with no good options, how she finds scraps of freedom wherever she can
  • She can’t escape, she can’t kill Joff, so she defies him whenever she can

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Retcon-foreshadowing: “Sansa wished that some hero would throw [Janos Slynt] down and cut his head off.” A lot of people think this was foreshadowing of Lord Commander Jon Snow ordering Dolorous Edd to fetch him a block, but this isn’t precisely the case. Instead, in an early reading of ADWD, Jon II, originally, Janos Slynt died this way:

'Take him to the wall,' Jon says, 'and hang him.' 

Slynt freaks, yelling, struggling, kicking as they throw him into the cage and start lifting. 'I have friends, if Tywin Lannister were alive you would never...' His voice fades away as he is lifted to the top. The rope they found was a hundred feet long but the wall is seven hundred feet tall. They hear his neck crack as he hits the end of the rope.

However, fans told George that Jon would act more like Ned and behead Janos, and George rightfully edited this to have Jon behead Janos Slynt. So, I call Sansa’s thought about Janos “retcon-foreshadowing”, because it was not written with the intent to foreshadow what happens to Janos come ADWD. However, come the publication of ADWD and “Edd, fetch me a block”, it can now be read as foreshadowing -- retconned foreshadowing, of course!

Joffrey mentions about how if a child born between him and Joffrey is stupid, that he’ll behead her and find a smarter wife. Thankfully, this is never realized. However, the “finding a new wife” angle seems intended as foreshadowing for Sansa being set aside in favor of Margaery Tyrell as Joffrey’s wife come ASOS.

Sansa being hit by Kingsguard knights such as “Ser” Meryn Trant is something we’re going to see more of come ACOK -- and with even more disturbing overtones -- such as Sansa being punched in the stomach by Ser Boros Blount and hit with the flat side of his sword. And though we give Jaime Lannister a lot of shade for his wrongdoing, one of the highlights of Jaime Lannister is him telling Meryn Trant off in ASOS over his conduct towards Sansa:

"Ser Meryn." Jaime smiled at the sour knight with the rust-red hair and the pouches under his eyes. "I have heard it said that Joffrey made use of you to chastise Sansa Stark." He turned the White Book around one-handed. "Here, show me where it is in our vows that we swear to beat women and children." (ASOS, Jaime VIII)

Sandor Clegane as noir anti hero type both warning Sansa about how to act/behave towards Joffrey as well as sort-of helping Sansa by offering elements of his clothing to her (here, dabbing her bust lip, later in ACOK, throwing his white cloak at her after Joffrey has her stripped naked in the throne room and after Tyrion orders her clothed is a motif. And at the end of everything, there’s the terrific theory by our friend Lady Gwynhyfvar that Sansa retains Sandor’s cloak signals that they’ll meet again. 

Another bit of retroactive irony in the passage where Sansa contemplates suicide. “...in the years to come the singers would write songs of her grief. Her body would lie on the stones below, broken and innocent, shaming all those who had betrayed her.”

But we’ve seen this same thing happen twice just in the context of Fire & Blood, with the suicides/probably murders of Helaena Targaryen and later her daughter Jaehaera. Both of these young women throw themselves (allegedly) from the window of their chambers in Maegor’s Holdfast (tinfoil hat -- could it be the same room??) and die on the spikes set in the surrounding moat. They are horrific deaths (and it’s worth noting that Jaehaera is rumored to have been murdered by Ser Mervyn Flowers, the kingsguard knight who was “guarding” her at the time.) But neither has songs sung about their tragic lives or their deaths. Sansa has probably never heard of Helaena and Jaehaera. (Putting aside the fact that George probably didn’t either in 1996.) The fact is that most women in this world are, as Sansa realizes, merely things to be used, and there is no guarantee at all that even the most righteous victim will be immortalized in song, or even make the slightest impact on the lives of the people who hurt her.

It’s super bittersweet that Sansa unknowingly thinks that she can reenact the sad movements of women who came before her, when the reality is that those actions made hardly a dent in practical or mythologized history.

So TL;DR: Sansa can’t renact the tales that came before her, whether she knows about them or not. She has to write her own story.

Also there is an interesting contrast between Sansa’s ascent to the battlements here and her climb down from the cliffs of King’s Landing in Sansa V, A Storm of Swords. The passage here:

The climb was something out of a nightmare; every step was a struggle, as if she were pulling her feet out of ankle-deep mud, and there were more steps than she would have believed, a thousand thousand steps, and horror waiting on the ramparts.

And the passage as she escapes, another nightmarish climb toward apparent salvation...

Sansa dared not look down. She kept her eyes on the face of the cliff, making certain of each step before reaching for the next. The stone was rough and cold. Sometimes she could feel her fingers slipping, and the handholds were not as evenly spaced as she would have liked. The bells would not stop ringing. Before she was halfway down her arms were trembling and she knew that she was going to fall. One more step, she told herself, one more step. She had to keep moving. If she stopped, she would never start again, and dawn would find her still clinging to the cliff, frozen in fear. One more step, and one more step.

Both times, whether it’s for further torment accompanied by a king, or for deliverance from her captivity at the hands of a drunken knight turned fool, Sansa is forced to take this difficult, metaphorical journey. Could be a coincidence, but I like the idea that, in the chapters of a character who remains largely physically stuck in place, her time at Kings Landing is framed by these two painful exertions that she conquers in spite of herself.

Theory/Discussion

Sansa as Queen in the North!

When we did our patreon episode on Jon Snow and Young Griff, we talked about how Jon receives inadvertent royal training at the hands of various tutors while Young Griff received explicit king-training at the hands of his minders. For Sansa Stark, her training to be a Queen is a bit more explicit, yet there’s a key, excellent difference: Sansa is expecting to be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms -- even here at this dark juncture of the story. But the story is instead moving Sansa to be Queen in the North. And it’s foreshadowed in an interesting way here in this very early chapter in AGOT:

Yet she knew that beyond them was open country, farms and fields and forests, and beyond that, north and north and north again, stood Winterfell.

That’s where Sansa’s heart and future lie: in the North. And in GoT, S08, the final endstate for Sansa Stark is as Queen of the North: an independent kingdom divided from the other six kingdoms. Is this going to be a similar book endstate for Sansa Stark and what evidence do we see for or against this proposition in the books?

• The storybook image of the queen → the brutal deconstruction of that image → the hard-earned real thing
• That’s Sansa’s arc, with Cersei and Littlefinger as cautionary tales
• Cersei is the worst kind of queen, dedicated to ruling through fear, not even nourishing the children for whom she’s ostensibly doing all of it
• Sansa sees through it, and decides “if I am ever queen, I’ll make them love me”
• Littlefinger allowed the death of his dreams to destroy his empathy and humanity
• Look no further than Jeyne Poole, Sansa’s own friend
• Sansa, instead, has to cut to the core of the values embedded in the songs and stories she loves
• The key realization is that those values weren’t naive. The naivete is the assumption that the world around her does and would uphold them
• But that the world should uphold them? That is an ideal to hold onto
• Sansa is “behind” Jon and Dany in terms of leadership arcs--she’s younger and hasn’t actually been in charge yet
• However, I think that structurally sets her up to be in a position of power at the end, instead of in the middle like them

(You guys tell me if this should go here or somewhere else but) Michal Has A Theory That Sansa Was Supposed To Die Instead of Ned, Sort Of

• It’s my feeling that Sansa and Ned’s arcs in A Game of Thrones logically lead to the tragedy that Ned attempts to divert - Sansa’s death in place of his own.
• Look at Ned’s acquiescence to killing Lady, an act he performs with Ice, Chechov’s Valeryian Steel Greatgun of this book.
• Ned killing Lady feels like a massive thematic action that has… virtually no practical fallout.
• But that act is so powerful that I posit that Ned killing Lady with Ice leads very naturally into a different version of this story, where Ned is the cause of Sansa’s death, her death coming with that same sword. 
• Consider other moments of unrealized foreshadowing, including Sansa’s visceral, long-running terror of Ilyn Payne, and the fact that Cersei was the instigator of Lady’s death, and would likely have had to play a similar role in killing Sansa.
• There’s also the fact that most of Sansa’s chapters in A Game of Thrones are directly adjacent to Ned’s chapters. Sansa I comes before Eddard III, Sansa II precedes Eddard VII, Eddard XI is just before Sansa III. Only Arya IV separates Eddard XIV and Sansa IV, and Sansa V is just before Ned’s final chapter.
• Okay, so why is this important?
• A few reasons.
• I see this as a further and very subtle deconstruction of who exactly can and should be sacrificed in a story like this, who is disposable. It’s not really supposed to be the strong male hero; literature is paved with tragically lost young women whose deaths motivate the men around them.
• I also think the intense proximity between Ned and Sansa’s stories, and the interchangeability of their fates, acts to anchor Sansa to Ned, and therefore to her Stark identity. 
• Yes, Sansa has a lot of the south in her, but I know that a lot of commentators have made really smart observations as to how a lot of her traits -- a tendency toward naivete and optimism, empathy and a lack of ruthlessness -- come more from Ned than from Catelyn.
• This chapter very much represents the bond between Ned and Sansa, both theoretically and more importantly, as deeply connected family. 
• This is a bond that doesn’t get much exercise while Ned is alive, sadly, but Sansa’s very survival attests to its strength. 
• In many ways, she takes over for him functionally in the narrative, as our set of Stark eyes in Kings Landing. Eyes that, bless them, don’t always see or understand everything they should.
• And ultimately, if the books follow the show in this way, Sansa may wind up holding Ned’s seat herself. She may fully taking his place, whether as Lady of Winterfell or Queen of the North, bringing Ned’s legacy home in a way no one expected.

Conclusion

• Thank Michal for coming on
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• Join us next week for Daenerys IX, in which Dany faces the consequences of indulging in blood magic, and we will be joined by another guest: Eliana aka arhythmetric from Girls Gone Canon and glass table girl from the ASOIAF subreddit! 
• Yessss queen!
• We had her on for Daenerys II way back when our podcast was young, but we’re even more excited for this one because she’s written an excellent essay about Dany between now and then which will be very relevant to our discussion.