sansa and dany are two sides of the same coin, or rather, are cut from the same cloth - as not to imply that they are drastically different in a sense in which they complete each other, more like they’re each other’s foil in a much more subtler way than arya and sansa are.
they are both pre-teens that are introduced in the game as pawns who gradually gained knowledge and agency just enough to make them players. daenerys was a pawn to a whole bunch of people - to varys and illyrio for the biggest part as they both seem to harbor plans for her that i would not be surprised to learn are different at their core, and to doran martell. these three are high-ranking players, and dany was a tool for them. to viserys in a lesser extent, since he thought he was a player but has been a pawn all along, and died for it.
sansa initially wasn’t part of the game. ned going to the capital and joining the game automatically included her though, and again, unlike arya, who escaped and still managed to stay an ambivalent bystander, sansa had to partake in it. she was childish and she was naive and she immediately made herself one of cersei’s pawns, and with it subscribed to littlefinger’s agenda, who is a much bigger fish in the game than cersei herself. i wager that using sansa has been on littlefinger’s mind since day one, and seeing that he smashed the tyrell engagement plan and most probably was the one to plant the idea of marrying sansa off to tyrion in tywin’s head is foreshadowing to when he formally introduces sansa to the game and tries to feed her the illusion that, by including her, he decided to make her a player - which she doesn’t buy, but becomes one nevertheless.
anyway they both start off as clueless children, sansa aged 11 and dany aged 13. they were both born in nobility, though have drastically different fates; sansa has been pampered her entire life, living in comfort and love and safety, while daenerys spent all her life on the go. from her own words, she knew what it was like to be homeless, cold and hungry. however, they’re both idealists, but while for sansa this is a result of her soft and pandering childhood, for daenerys it’s an innate trait. they were both fed tales of high valor and lies.
viserys would tell daenerys exaggerated tales about the nobility of their deranged house, while sansa would read stories about knights and ladies. bottom point is that they both, being children, are introduced having inflicted ideals from the outside world, because they didn’t have the means to gain their own themselves (daenerys living in exile with only a delusional brother to teach her about the world, and sansa being highly sheltered). with time and with trauma sansa’s idealism weakens and she becomes more pragmatic, while dany’s idealism becomes stronger. this is where their paths, as children, divide. they mature in opposite ways, seeing that dany grows gaining her own agency and power and security, while sansa lives in perpetual abuse while being a hostage.
fast-forward to when they witness their first murder. daenerys, a child bride, sees a man being murdered at her wedding, and is genuinely horrified. sansa sees a man die during a tourney and thinks to herself how weird it is that she doesn’t care about his death at all. later on they’re both cold soft, but they maintain the same attitude towards murder. none of them condone it, and neither of them are inherently cruel, and while they both pray for the death of their enemies, they’re accepting actual deaths differently.
while marching on meeren, dany sees a trail of corpses of child slaves, and upon establishing her rule, she avenges them - which we see she feels faulty about it; even if in her case murders were justified, she is still guilt-driven. sansa is devastated at ned’s death because it took her completely unawares, but for the rest she doesn’t care - joffrey, ser dontos, lysa tully, robert arryn (implied), as long as they’re murdered for her own sake and safety, she doesn’t feel guilt or grief over them.
she’s still not cruel, though. during the battle of the blackwater we have perhaps some of the most introspective sansa povs. “do you want to be loved, sansa?”, “everyone wants to be loved”.
then sansa gets forcibly married at age 12, a year younger than dany. unlike daenerys, who learnt to cope and developed stockholm syndrome towards her husband, she was utterly miserable in her marriage. eventually she fled, never thinking about her husband again, while daenerys thinks about drogo up to her last pov. however considering littlefinger’s plans for marrying sansa to harry, that would land them both with two political marriages neither of them wanted. “who would dare to love a dragon?”, dany wonders. “nobody will marry me for love”, sansa broods. they both share a fear of not being loved.
and they both want to give that love back. “if i’m ever queen, i’ll make them love me”, thinks sansa during the battle outside her walls, a girl who has NOT grown with the idea that one day she will be a queen (unlike cersei, for example), while in one of her povs daenerys thinks, “ i want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way viserys said they smiled for my father”. they both want to live in peace and prosperity, and this is where their idealistic sides show.
they both are also nothing short of dutiful. they yearn for home. “i don’t want to marry him, i want to go home”, daenerys tells her brother in her first pov. she is consumed with dreams about her house with the red door and the lemon tree under her window constantly. at the end of the day, she just wants to go somewhere where she knows she’s safe - a sentiment that sansa shares. at first she was thrilled to leave winterfell, but after everything she’s been through, she realizes that she’s the strongest within the walls of winterfell. home gives her solace, it gives her courage and a sense of safety. but alas, home is not a destiny for either of them. dany is loyal to her queenship, and always puts the needs of her people over her own desires: “it’s time to don my floppy ears”. sansa also has more tully in her than her looks alone, as she does everything required of her despite her personal wishes. they value their sense of duty over their sense of self.
they also both lost everyone they loved, at some point. “ If Lady was here, I would not be afraid. Lady was dead, though; Robb, Bran, Rickon, Arya, her father, her mother, even Septa Mordane. All of them are dead but me. She was alone in the world now” sansa thinks wistfully. “He’s gone, then. My father and my mother, my brothers, Ser Willem Darry, Drogo who was my sun-and-stars, his son who died inside me, and now Ser Jorah”, dany thinks upon jorah’s banishment. they are both alone in the world. the only difference is that sansa had lost lady forever - and considering that it is implied that the direwolves are literally part of the stark children, bound to them by fate - a piece of her soul with her. dany still has drogon by the end of book 5. otherwise they’re both surrendered by enemies.
i don’t watch the show and don’t care what they did to their characters in there. i’m sure they threw in more parallels and such but i don’t care about those. the only thing i’ve picked up is that they are at odds with each other, and this is what leaves me utterly baffled. they would work together fantastically, and would grow fond of each other, because they have more things in common than it should be allowed for two characters who live on opposite sides of the world.
i really wish they met in canon. i wonder how their relationship would be handled by their actual creator.
gamechangershow
vaporwave
kianamaiart
dailybridgerton
