#debbie downering

I’ve talked about House Lannister’s fate a bunch of times (most recently - 1, 2), but no worries. No, I don’t think they’ll go extinct – there’s a lot of Lannisters of Casterly Rock, not to mention the cadet House Lannister of Lannisport. But Tywin’s line, even Tytos’s line, may be wholly wiped out. Jason’s line – I suppose it depends on how many are attending Daven’s wedding (if it’s the “second Red Wedding” per theories). But I don’t think all of the Grey Lion’s descendants will be gone by the end. Most of them, sure. But not all. Though again, even if those don’t make it either, there are still more Lannisters left, reportedly. You can check out my post explaining the succession of House Lannister in the event of an apocalypse for some details.

ooooh punny. i see what u did there. lol. but seriously much of sansa's development is directly due to her NOT having lady. it's fucking sad but also necessary. and yeah, lady would not have survived book 1 no matter what.

Yeah, I mean, you can do a what if the fight at the Trident didn’t happen at all (there’s a nice time travel fix-it fic with that), and both girls kept their direwolves, and became wargs before the end of AGOT (like Bran did)... but that just makes everything with Cersei’s coup even worse. (Considering how shattered Sansa was when Lady died, how much more horrible would it have been if she’d formed a full warg bond and then her wolf was killed?)

And if you want to keep Lady and Nymeria alive through the coup somehow, you run into more logistical problems. How are two direwolves possibly escaping from the Red Keep, from King’s Landing? (Where were the direwolves even living in the first place, in the godswood?) How is Arya living on the streets accompanied by a very noticeable direwolf, or traveling with the NW recruits with a very noticeable direwolf? 

Cersei would have insisted both direwolves were too dangerous to live, sorry.

I don’t have any headcanons on the subject of Lady living and staying with Sansa, or any fics that I can recommend as anything other than wish fulfillment,* because narrative causality requires that the girls not have their direwolves in King’s Landing, because Nymeria needs to be a queen of a wolf pack to fight the Others, and Lady would have been killed during Cersei’s coup anyway (and wouldn’t that be a joy, for Sansa to see Lady’s head up on the wall next to her father’s and Septa Mordane’s). Or to be clear, Lady is one of the story’s narrative casualties.

Unknown factors that didn’t and would never happen. Cersei wanted the direwolves dead. The fact that Lady was completely innocent didn’t change her mind. The fact that Lady belonged to her son’s betrothed didn’t change her mind. The fact that her son’s betrothed was the daughter of the Hand of the King didn’t change her mind. I doubt anything would have ever changed her mind.

Cersei + wanting vengeance for her son’s injury + wanting to weaken the Starks + wanting to weaken a potential “younger and more beautiful” queen + not giving a fuck about other people’s feelings + Robert refusing to get involved = dead Lady.

I’ll let someone else reply:

@mrsjadecurtiss replied to your post “Going from sts’s Lady ask…”

Yeah, I too have a lot of hope for the ship, as you may know (see these posts for more, in case you or others don’t). And yes, I also have that hope tempered by a fear of a tragic ending… and unfortunately GRRM’s tendencies make that fear very pressing sometimes. Also, for all the foreshadowing suggesting a Sandor/Sansa reunion and potential culmination of the ship, there isn’t enough saying there must be a Happily Ever After. GRRM doesn’t really do Happily Ever Afters. He’s a romantic, yes, but not a romance novel writer. Chivalric romance very often involves relationships that can never be, through death or other tragedies. And GRRM’s most famed Beauty and the Beast romance ended with the beauty’s tragic death. :(  (Note he has a recent interview talking about that, where he says her death was the best dramatic way to handle the actress leaving the show, but continuing the show afterwards didn’t really work.)