#is part of what makes her so interesting. bc she doesn't succumb to cynicism despite what she survives

[luthienne]

Also to comment on the previous asker's tirade: a very interesting thing about Sansa is that she's very genre-aware, but for the wrong genre. Like, in the books, it seems that the world-picture of a great many characters is jaded, cynical, "down-to-earth", "pragmatic". And whoever adopts this view gains power from it. Tyrion, Tywin, Littlefinger, the men of the Watch, the Knights of the Kingsguard, the Hound, the ironmen, Arya... They derive their power from their "awareness" of "how the world works" which revolves around selfishness, fear, greed, death... To an extent, Sansa's fault, to these people, is the fault of her father: thinking she lived in a better world.

She's still the girl raised on courtly love and virtuous knights, and they hate that she doesn't believe in "The Real World". They see her as too stupid to understand that world, or refusing to join it out of selfishness... In both cases denying herself power.

But it's part of what makes her a great character, 1) the tension between how she lives the world and how she wishes the world to be, something which a great many characters have all but given up on 2) the fact that she isn't really interested in power. She plays the game with Littlefinger because there's nothing else to do, but she'd rather be home with her parents at any given time. She wanted to be a queen, but now she wants something more human. And 3) that she's essentially Emma Bovary getting to live the stuff novels are made of, and she doesn't like that either.

But that makes her intolerable to men because she doesn't try to "achieve" stuff, she's not on a mission, she has no goals, not even pleasure. She's just a teenage girl trying to live after losing everything... She's "unproductive" she doesn't respond "optimally" to stuff, she doesn't care about "the grand design" of Littlefinger's schemes. These men think that if they were dropped in the world of Asoiaf they'd become rich warrior-lords from their jadedness, or change history. Sansa not "min/maxing" her life is an insult to them because she scorns their entire value system by existing as a teen girl.

To me, that makes her the most interesting character of them all, because she really is alien from all the other characters. She is watches them caught in the cycles of desire and suffering, ambition and self-destruction, and has yet to participate. Whether she ends up playing or stays removed, the journey to getting there will have been so interesting...

!!!!!! you articulated this so perfectly <3333