to the perpetually plain, the incurably inane

OK. So. The episode of Game of Thrones that follows the fabulous weird intimate-as-fuck emo melodrama of “Blackwater” is “Valar Morghulis.” And in this episode, which follows the epic SanSan intimacy of “I’ll keep you safe. Do you want to go home? etc etc” there are not one, not two, but three couples basically making commitments and pledging to each other.

I THINK THE SHOW IS TELLING US SOMETHING ABOUT SANSAN AND MARRIAGE GENERALLY THROUGH THESE COUPLES ALL OF WHOM ARE DOOOOOOOOOMED in different ways. (Five of the six people involved have since been murdered.)

I’ll circle back to the couples in a minute, but first I must quote problematic Cat Stark from this ep, because I think if there is a message here, rather than some broken models of what not to do, she’s the one delivering it.

Cat to Robb about his feelings for Talisa and their agreement with the Freys: 

“Your father didn’t love me when we married. He hardly knew me. Or I him. Love didn’t just happen to us. We built it slowly. Stone by stone, over the years. For you, your brothers and sisters, for all of us. It’s not as exciting as secret passion in the woods, but it is stronger. It lasts longer… You agreed to it. Treat your oaths recklessly and your people will do the same. If your father lived his life for one thing…”

(1) I gotta appreciate the “over the years” in this because god knows that SanSan has been years in the making. 

They’ve been completely apart for many of those years, but dear god the personal growth! She’s a wolf now; he’s no longer an emotionally crippled thug with a serious drinking problem.

If they are cosmically linked soulmates who have been bound by some inexplicable tie for a long time, they have used the intervening years relatively well. Sansa learned how to survive and make her own justice, and Sandor built a very strong relationship with the only other surviving true-born Stark (by my account Bran is dead) and went to rehab and therapy, etc.

Mistakes were made, to be sure, but they are both better, healthier and stronger people after the fact.

Source: http://devilsbastion.tumblr.com/image/168855312743

(2) “It’s not as exciting as secret passion in the woods, but it is stronger. It lasts longer.” 

This line makes me feel like the writers have read all the Blackwater AUs where Sansa and Sandor run off together and despite best-laid plans end up fucking inside a month. In fanfic they usually end up happily ever after (usually), but in George’s world, Sansa probably ends up married to a Frey, Sandor ends up dying at the hand of god knows who, and without the Hound, Arya ends up raped and dead in a ditch and certainly not the killer she is today.

(Of course, Robb and Talisa do go the forbidden love route and we all know how that turns out.)

(3) “You agreed to it. Treat your oaths recklessly and your people will do the same. If your father lived his life for one thing…” 

I will say this: Sansa tried valiantly to keep her promises and the promises her family made. She agreed to marry Joffrey, arranged thought it was, and she keeps to that agreement.

In the same episode, Theon is whining: “Yes my captors were so very kind to me…Do you know what it’s like to be told how lucky you are to be someone’s prisoner?” but at this point in the story, Sansa is being held prisoner by awful people and being beaten and stripped and threatened with rape at every turn.  So Theon can just shut up. 

And in re Robb, Sansa was bound to marry a much worse prospective spouse than a Frey girl, and yet she stuck with it, even if out of sheer cluelessness. She was offered a “get out of jail free” card by Sandor Clegane, and she refused it. 

As horrible as it is, and as patriarchal and un-woke, Westeros custom says that Sansa was Joffrey’s—to torment or treat any way he saw fit. And, for better or worse, Sansa and Sandor have both internalized the patriarchy in a way that Arya never does.

In season four, Arya asks the Hound, “Didn’t you steal anything from Joffrey before you left?” He says no, he’s not a thief, and then says “a man’s got to have a code.” 

Arya’s talking about gold or other treasure but in the same conversation he calls Arya “the only thing of value I’ve got in the world,” which tells us as clear as day what really matters to him—even though he wants us and Arya to believe the issue is her exchange value in gold.

Sansa is the only thing Sandor wanted to steal, but she belonged to the king and if she didn’t want to go of her own volition—if she didn’t think she needed to be rescued—he wasn’t going to abduct her. 

He probably should have, for her sake, but I suspect he was too hurt when she turned him down to face her fighting him and being disappointed and teary. Sansa’s recrimination and distress was not something he was equipped to cope with at that point. Now Arya he could manhandle, but Sansa, for reasons (SEX REASONS PEOPLE), he could not, would not and did not.

ANYWAY MARRIAGE

He cloaked her in the throne room. She accepted the cloak. 

Did it mean something to them? Did it mean something to the gods? 

We have no idea. It has never been addressed.

But…the line in the Westerosi marriage vows is “You may now cloak the bride and bring her under your protection.” And within weeks he’s saving her from being gang raped (and he’s secretly pretty fucking pleased with himself), and he risks beheading (or much much worse) by attempting to smuggle away Tywin’s prize hostage and get her through the entire war-torn country to Winterfell. 

If that’s not protection, I don’t know what is.

Tyrion’s speech at the Blackwater (after the Hound has already deserted) about defending Your City rings false for the Hound because he literally cares only about one thing in the whole place (maybe two if you count Stranger). Hound figures why not take the girl out of the city rather than trying to save the whole shit city to protect her?

But it doesn’t work, and Sansa and Sandor break up.

Next episode. Sandor does not appear. Sansa does. And three separate couples—all doomed in different ways—make promises.

MARRIAGE PLEDGE #1: JOFFREY BARATHEON TO MARGERY TYRELL

Joffrey: “It would be an honor to return your love. But I am promised to another. A king must keep his word…I took a holy vow.”

Pycelle: “The gods do indeed hold betrothal solemn.”

Joff: “The gods are good. I am free to heed my heart…you will be my queen, and I will love you from this day until my last day.”

OK so mostly this is foreshadowing for Robb getting whacked and Joffrey getting poisoned at his wedding. But it’s also amazing extra-level bullshit. Every single person in the scene is lying through his or her teeth and putting on a show for the court, except for Sansa who is genuinely delighted to be relieved of Joffrey. 

Well, the situation also thrills Littlefinger who pounces on her literally moments after Joff sets her aside. If the Hound had waited maybe one more day he and Sansa would have been so much freer to figure themselves out together–but then it wouldn’t be a heartbreaking romantic separation would it?

But there are a couple of lines I want to highlight as possibly important for SanSan.

“The gods do indeed hold betrothal solemn.”

What if this is true on some level and the gods have considered SanSan to be pledged to one another in some spiritual way? Could the gods actually have been intervening in their favor in some way? Probably not but…maybe.

“I am free to heed my heart.”

So so so few people in Westeros are free to heed their hearts. That’s why the freefolk call themselves that—they aren’t bound by the feudal system and the arranged marriages and the taxes and high-maintenance castles and all that. 

But come season eight, guess who is free as hell to heed her heart? Sansa Stark. She’s even finally rid of Littlefinger. Nobody except maybe Jon Snow can tell her what to do, and I feel strongly that he DGAF who she marries so long as he’s a good man. 

MARRIAGE PLEDGE #2: SHAE DA FUNNY HOAR TO TYRION LANNISTER

Tyrion: “I’m a monster, as well as a dwarf. You should charge me double.”

Shae: “You think I’m here for money?”

Tyrion: “That was the arrangement we made. I pay you and you lie to me.”

Shae: “You have a shit memory. I am yours and you are mine.”

I don’t understand these two. I think Tyrion did love her, but “I pay you and you lie to me” was the truth of it. Their relationship was built on a shaky foundation of business and lies.

In the end she testified at his trial for capital crimes and he strangled her to death. So…as the Hound said to Tyrion in the series premiere, “It’s not hunting if you pay for it.”

You can buy a wife with an army or gold, or you can buy the girlfriend experience from a prostitute, but you can’t buy a healthy, happy and loving marriage, not for any price.

I am a crazy person, admittedly, but I think George’s endgame is two well-deserved happy marriages: Jon & Dany, and Sansa & Sandor. (I wouldn’t mind Brienne & Jaime, Missandei & Grey Worm, and Sam & Gilly also living happily ever after but WE WILL SEE.)

MARRIAGE PLEDGE #3: ROBB STARK AND TALISA MAEGYR

Secret love in the woods!

The theme to this scene is “I Am Yours and You Are Mine,” a lushly romantic love theme by Ramin Djawdi. These are good people, and they are madly in love, and they are doomed as fuck.

As a wise man once said, “What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms…or the memory of a brother’s smile?”

I wish I could tell you that the series is consistent about punishing oathbreakers, but I can’t. The best I can offer is that the story does seem to treat marriage (and the children of marriage, i.e. trueborns versus bastards) as a special and very important kind of oath. 

The camera focuses on Lady Oleanna Tyrell at Joffrey and Marge’s wedding just as the High Septon says, “…one heart, one flesh, one soul. Cursed be he who would seek to tear them asunder.” And of course, House Tyrell is eventually exterminated. 

George, if not the gods, does seem to value fidelity in marriage and not running around “stabbing” girls you don’t plan to marry. Ned Stark is a saint who never cheated. Cersei and Bobby are both unfaithful, but Cersei went a step further and aborted all of her trueborns and cuckholded Bobby with Jaime’s bastards. Stannis is a cheater. Renly is a cheater–he’s married to Marge but sexes up Loras. Rhaegar was a bigamist maybe–timeline unclear but undoubtably problematic. Ramsay Snow was fucking Myranda while married to Sansa. Theon is a jackass for whoring and banging captain’s daughters whereas Jon Snow doesn’t want to make bastards on Ros. Daario wants to come to Westeros as Dany’s fuckboi even if she’s going to marry someone else but Dany is all “hard pass” because Dany ain’t like that. Brandon Stark (Ned’s murdered brother) was a bit of a fuckboi. Littlefinger gets married and murders his wife within the space of a…day? No bueno!

Tyrion gives Shae a heartbreaking speech when he’s breaking up with her for her own safety about “you are not fit to bear my children, and Sansa is.” Bastards! So much talk about legitimacy or not and what that equips you for, or not, in Westeros. Blah blah thousand-year dynasty.

These are not always our contemporary morals, at least in popular media, but they do seem pretty solidly founded in Westeros: 

Marriage matters. Fidelity matters. 

I do think it is important that we never ever see Sandor interact with other women on the show besides Sansa and Arya (and the farmer’s daughter Sally). 

Not Cersei. Not Myrcella. Not Melisandre. Not whores. He isn’t even shown talking to Dany after she saves him on Drogon. Sansa is his woman. Period. 

Sansa takes marriage very seriously, but she is never in a position to choose her husband or control the circumstances of her marriage. Marriage to Sansa is suggested or arranged, canonically, to Joffrey Baratheon, Tyrion Lannister, Littlefinger, Robin Arryn and Ramsay Snow, and that’s not even including all the fan-made pairings like Sansa-Marge, Sansa-Tywin, Sansa-Stannis, Sansa-Edd, Sansa-Jon, Sansa-Pod, Sansa-Bronn, etc. 

Tyrion is by far the best of the lot of Sansa’s canonical consorts, a list that includes two psychopaths, one sociopath and one disabled child. 

By Ned Stark’s standard of “brave, gentle and strong,” again, Tyrion might qualify as brave and gentle, but the other four fail to have even one of those qualities. Ugh. Sandor is all three, to my mind, although the show de-emphasizes “gentle” in favor of sassy, but we all know that he’s a very different kind of brute from Joffrey or Ramsay.

Three more tidbits and then shutting up. 

** The episode ends with Dany’s vision in the House of the Undying. Drogo says: “Or maybe it is a dream. My dream, your dream. I do not know. These are questions for wise men with skinny arms. You are the moon of my life and if this is a dream, I will kill the man who tries to wake me.”

If Sansa’s dreams are as important as I think they will turn out to be, this line may feel more evocative of SanSan in the future. I mean, LOL, “These are questions for wise men with skinny arms” is a total Sandor POV thing to say, although Sandor does have a rough-hewn wisdom of his own.

** The next episode is the season three premiere, “Valar Dohaeris (All Men Must Serve)” and in that we get:

Littlefinger telling Sansa that “stealing you is treason”

Sansa telling Shae that it’s better to use your imagination and dream than think about the truth, because “the truth is always terrible or boring.”

Ros telling Shae that Sansa is a very important person and reminding us of her connection to Winterfell

And Marge telling little kids that knights “protect the weak and uphold the good”

** And then finally, in the second episode of season three, Sandor reappears and it’s clear that he’s been drunk non-stop since he left Sansa behind. He gets captured while unconscious and when he comes to, the first thing he sees is Arya (he recognizes her instantly) and the first words of out his mouth are “What in seven hells are you doing with the Stark bitch?” It’s clear to me that he determines on the spot to watch over her. He has not been granted the status of protector of Sansa, but Arya is fair game.

Was it divine justice or the hand of the gods, putting Sandor together with his wife’s little sister who needs to be protected? We shall see. We shall see.