ae dil-e-naadaan

oh sweet summer child 🐦‍⬛🍂🗝️

This again 😭 I've said before what the clear imagery during the Hand's tourney is: it's a metaphor for Sansa's burgeoning with fertility allusions abound (Loras rides a mare in heat), and the first clash with the truth of male violence (Gregor's sword is just a dick). Sansa's red rose given to her by Loras isn't analogous to the blue rose generally known for it's resilience blooming in dead winter either, and specifically between Rhaegar and Lyanna it symbolizes Jon the son of their consummated relationship, because the red rose is actually symbolic of heat and passion and it's quick fading. Sansa's red rose is a promise given to a flowering maiden (aka marriage) which is left unfulfilled by the end of the tourney, wherein no Queen of Love and Beauty is crowned due to Gregor's brutality and his ensuing fight with Sandor. At the end of the tourney, Sansa's seeming suitor does not crown her-- rather Sandor Clegane is the unexpected victor. And he is Sansa's unexpected romantic interest as well.

Beyond the red/blue rose non-equivalence, the rest of the color symbolism is not correct either. If we're following this logic then Loras is Sansa's LI but of course we know that's not just untrue, but entirely imagined by her as Loras later reveals he's forgotten the incident. Loras's blue flowers are revealed to not be flowers but SAPPHIRES, a stone which throughout asoiaf is used in concert with deception or hidden truths (in this case the trick is both explicit and implicit: the flowers are not flowers, and Loras isn't what he seems either). Jaime lies about sapphires to protect Brienne, Lysa Arryn the Lannister's false accuser wears sapphires at Tyrion's trial in the Vale, etc.

Sansa's association with red roses continues on with Marillion's "Roadside Rose" ballad, but also I would say her and Sandor's intertwining continues from the tourney imagery with her AFFC musing that he'd taken "a song and a kiss" and left her nothing but "a bloody cloak". The kiss never actually happened we know, but the same set-up of a maiden's ideas of romance followed by the violence of marriage (cloaking/maiden's blood) appears there, and with the same exact characters. Sansa and Sandor are pretty tethered when it comes to having had their naivety brutally destroyed so this all fits very well.