#squad!

I just finished watching episode 8, which is the only episode of the season GRRM wrote, and also the only episode so far in which Sansa actually feels like a character. In every other episode so far she’s been criminally undercharacterized or willfully mischaracterized: she’s rude to Septa Mordane for no reason--this never happens in the books. She’s rude to her father when he gets her a doll as a present and she’s holding a grudge about Lady--this never happens in the books (she “cries herself to sleep” for the remainder of their trip to King’s Landing, but never takes her sadness out on Ned). In the show she’s sullen and stuck-up, and it feels so incorrect, as if we’re watching the absolute worst version of Sansa through Arya’s eyes, the whole time.

Sansa is supposed to be obsessed with wishful thinking and stories and True Knights and the way things are supposed to be. That monologue about the Hound getting scarred, which in the show is inexplicably shoved off on Petyr Baelish? In the book the Hound delivers it to Sansa, and we see her taking his side, even though she’s scared of him, and telling him, “[Gregor] was no true knight.” In the show she doesn’t get to have a reaction at all. She’s just paraded in front of horrific anecdote after horrific sequence, and it doesn’t mean anything, because she has no ideals for these moments of awakening to be juxtaposed against. This happens again and again:

In the books we see the tournament from Sansa’s POV, and it starts spectacularly, and everything is perfect and exhilarating--it’s only later that the Mountain ruins it by killing one of the knights. That moment is horrific because it’s wrong--and it’s wrong by contrast to the beautiful idea of the tourney. In the show, the tournament begins with the murder. There is no exercise in contrast: no disillusionment, because there was no illusion to begin with.

In the book, when Sansa is begging to stay in King’s Landing, she tells her father, “I love [Joffrey] as much as Queen Naerys loved Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, as much as Jonquil loved Ser Florian.” The songs and stories again, which also help to build the idea of Westeros as something with a rich, storied history! But no, the show only keeps the line right after that: “I want to be his queen and have his babies,” thereby robbing Sansa of all her whim and fancy, all her lofty dreams, all the context that actually informs her desires. And then, to add insult to injury, "I want to be his queen and have his babies” is followed by a shot of Arya looking disdainful, because we’re never allowed a single moment of hearing Sansa’s point of view as if it’s valid.

During the fight by the river, Sansa screams, “Stop, you’re ruining it!” In the books, that has resonance, because you know what Joffrey and Arya are ruining by fighting: Sansa’s ideal, the perfect walk with the perfect prince that will lead to a fairytale love. In the series it hardly means anything, because she’s had no meaningful characterization. She’s been robbed of all complexity. She’s not shown as the child dreamer, as someone who is bratty to her sister but kind and good at heart; she’s not shown as someone who loves the songs and the stories and wants nothing more than to live inside them. She’s a flattened-out idea of a mean girl. It honestly speaks volumes about these writers that they could come away from a character as well-written as book!Sansa and come up with something as dreadful as season1!Sansa.

At the beginning of A Game of Thrones, Sansa is truly Ned’s daughter. Who else besides a girl raised by Eddard Stark would believe so fully in valor and honor? But in the show, what the hell does she believe in, and how are we supposed to know? How, when Sansa never gets one of those dramatic bare-the-soul monologues that every single male character is allotted? In the book, it’s “Sansa with her dreams and Arya with her bruises.” Apparently, the showrunners only respect the bruises.

The thing is, having watched the later seasons, the show does start to take her seriously. But as I understand it, they reassigned a bunch of traumatic stuff that happened to Jeyne Poole in the books and gave it to Sansa. That’s just ... that’s such a messed up way to substitute characterization that you could have been giving to a richly defined character since the first episode. Also, the idea that a flawed female character--any character, really, but especially a female character--must be broken down and abused before becoming “relatable” is centrally repulsive.