#sansamonth

[kitnjon]

I love your gifs but the sansamonth gifset to jenny of oldstones especially it's so haunting and made me so sad.. 😭🫶

Thank you so much 😭❤

That song is written for Sansa. I refuse to believe otherwise. The lyrics fit her show arc so perfectly.

[arcadianambivalence]

Origins of Sansa’s Name

I’ve seen a lot of tumblr posts over the years that attribute Sansa’s name to meaning “charm or praise” or a play on the French sans a Stark (“without a Stark”), and occassionally, I’ve seen her name compared to a thumb piano, but not one of these theories has ever sat right with me.

ASOIAF is based on history and draws from literature and mythology, after all.  So why not look there for the origins of an usual name?

I’ll start with the obvious.  The series is called A Song of Ice and Fire.  Her sister is named Arya, pronounced like “are ya?” but suspiciously reminiscent of the musical term aria (air) for a solo in a larger work.  Sansa, then, could be traced to poetic terms.  Her name sounds like a softer version of the Italian stanza (literally: “room”), a structured set of lines akin to a prose paragraph or a song verse.  If we think of a poem as a body of work in the way that an opera consists of airs and a series consists of books, then Sansa’s perspective is one piece of the narrative.

The purported original plan for Sansa was for her to marry Joffrey as expected, have a child, and bitterly regret her choices.  So we could ask ourselves if Sansa shares a name with an actual person.  

Well...yes.

In 1494, one Sancha of Aragon married Goffredo, the youngest son of Rodrigo Borgia and Vannozza dei Cattanei.  Borgia, the powerful family infamous for accusations of murder, adultury, and incest that would shock a Lannister.  In fact, Jaime and Cersei have been compared to siblings Cesare and Lucrezia, given his status as a skilled knight and her history of using poison when charm fails (as Lucrezia was rumored to do).  It’s a nice enough comparison, but here’s the real kicker: Goffredo was also referred to by another name, Jofré.

But Sansa’s arc has changed from GRRM’s original idea, so what could the name mean for her story?

Let’s look at her character: courteous, eager to please, and wanting a world as romantic as oral tradition would have it.  You could say she waxes quixotic about how life “was just like the songs” and how Joffrey was her dulcet prince...until bitter reality destroys her dreams for the future.  Then she tries to resign herseslf to the worst (“in life, the monsters win”) and make practical decisions in order to survive. Her journey from romance to realism mirrors that of Cervantes’s titular Don Quixote.  Any variation on Quijote would be too obvious, though, so why not refer to his sidekick Sancho?

Sancho is Quixote’s foil, the realist to his romantic, the peasant to his nobility, and eventually, the two begin to rub off on each other.  By the end of the novel, Don Quixote is a depressed man, but Sancho has risen to adopt his optimistic and romantic dreams for them.  Could this mean that Sansa will eventually return home with a song in her heart?

Yes.  How could it end any other way?

#Sansamonth2022

[sansacherie]

Sansa Stark Appreciation Month - Day 19 Power

[reginarubie]

Sansa month 2022, day 19 ~ power

If I ever am queen, I'll make them love me ~ Sansa Stark

Sansa of House Stark, the definition of soft power through all the series.

She is good at this, he thought, as he watched her tell Lord Gyles that his cough was sounding better, compliment Elinor Tyrell on her gown, and question Jalabhar Xho about wedding customs in the Summer Isles. His cousin Ser Lancel had been brought down by Ser Kevan, the first time he'd left his sickbed since the battle. He looks ghastly. Lancel's hair had turned white and brittle, and he was thin as a stick. Without his father beside him holding him up, he wouldsurely have collapsed. Yet when Sansa praised his valor and said how good it was to see him getting strong again, both Lancel and Ser Kevan beamed. She would have made Joffrey a good queen and a better wife if he'd had the sense to love her. He wondered if his nephew was capable of loving anyone. — Tyrion VIII, ASOS

For Sansamonth 2022, day 19 ~ power

[undeadlilies]

No sansamonth post today. Was pretty tired from work yesterday so I couldn't get the chance to make a edit. I will make one for tomorrow tho!

[reginarubie]

Sansa appreciation month 2022, day 6 ~ Vale

Sansa Stark — Alayne Stone — as the hidden dagger (the hidden heiress to the North, hidden in the Vale)

Lord Petyr dismissed him with a wave, and returned to the pomegranate again as Oswell shuffled down the steps. “Tell me, Alayne—which is more dangerous, the dagger brandished by an enemy, or the hidden one pressed to your back by someone you never even see?”

“The hidden dagger.”

— Sansa VI, ASOS

Sansa will harness thanks to her connections, her diplomacy and political skills and her morals as a Stark, the might of the Vale to play the game and make sure Winterfell, the North and House Stark survive.

Sansamonth 2022, day 6~ the Vale (and Sansa's arcs while there)

Day 7

[reginarubie]

Sansa month 2022, day 24 ~ prayer

The world was made partly that there may be prayer; partly that our prayer might be answered. — C.S. Lewis

Sansa V, ACOK

She sang along with grizzled old serving men and anxious young wives, with serving girls and soldiers, cooks and falconers, knights and knaves, squires and spit boys and nursing mothers. She sang with those inside the castle walls and those without, sang with all the city. She sang for mercy, for the living and the dead alike, for Bran and Rickon and Robb, for her sister Arya and her bastard brother Jon Snow, away off on the Wall. She sang for her mother and her father, for her grandfather Lord Hoster and her uncle Edmure Tully, for her friend Jeyne Poole, for old drunken King Robert, for Septa Mordane and Ser Dontos and Jory Cassel and Maester Luwin, for all the brave knights and soldiers who would die today, and for the children and the wives who would mourn them, and finally, toward the end, she even sang for Tyrion the Imp and for the Hound. He is no true knight but he saved me all the same, she told the Mother. Save him if you can, and gentle the rage inside him.

— Sansa V, ACOK

Gentle Mother, font of mercy, Save our sons from war, we pray. Stay the swords and stay the arrows, Let them know a better day. Gentle Mother, strength of women, Help our daughters through this fray. Soothe the wrath and tame the fury, Teach us all a kinder way. — the hymn of the Mother

Sansa is — at a first look — connected to the Maiden, yet the prayer she says for sure, the one deeply connected with her — the hymn to which is given relevance — is that of the Mother (which she sings to the Hound to gentle his wrath and save her own life “sing for your little life”) and in that same chapter we see Sansa's prayers, for all of her family, for the living and the dead, for the soldiers who might die and those they will leave behind if they do — like a mother she prays.

In the sept they sing for the Mother's mercy but on the walls it's the Warrior they pray to, and all in silence. She remembered how Septa Mordane used to tell them that the Warrior and the Mother were only two faces of the same great god. — Sansa V, ACOK

And the hymn of the Mother asks to protect the sons from war and teach the girls a gentler way, to soothe the fury of mothers and their wrath. Sansa's prayers are usually positive — she prays for mercy and for victory, for peace — but at times they are vengeful and when they are delivered she is aghast and wonders if the Gods have heard her vengeful prayer.

Prayer is deeply connected with Sansa, she's the only one of the main characters who is showed praying and so often. She prays even when she thinks the Gods are silent. She prays of safety and for a saviour, but as septa Mordane said the Mother and the Warrior are but one face of the same God and she's learning to be her own saviour — in the same way as she ignored Tyrion's attempt at manipulating her in Sansa III, ACOK, when he tells her that as soon as Robb bends the knee he'll send her home, and she still engineers her own escape from KL. Prayer is soothing for her. Prayer is belief. And belief makes thing happen.

for Sansamonth 2022, day 24 ~ prayer

[reginarubie]

"He crossed the room, pulled back the heavy tapestries, and threw open the high narrow windows one by one, letting the night air into the chamber."-Cat(AGOT II). "Alayne padded barefoot across the room and slipped outside. The stone was cold beneath her feet, and the wind was blowing fiercely, as it always did up here, but the view made her forget all that for half a heartbeat."-Alayne(AFFC I). Ned and Sansa enjoying cold weather not caring about freezing.

ciao anon!,

sorry for the delay!, and would you look at that? Another Ned/Sansa parallel.

And this magnificent parallel goes well with this as well:

Catelyn's bath was always hot and steaming, and her walls warm to the touch. The warmth reminded her of Riverrun, of days in the sun with Lysa and Edmure, but Ned could never abide the heat. The Starks were made for the cold, he would tell her, and she would laugh and tell him in that case they had certainly built their castle in the wrong place. — Catelyn II, AGOT

Also... may I point out another parallel as well?

"I should have thought that heat ill suits you Starks," Littlefinger said. "Here in the south, they say you are all made of ice, and melt when you ride below the Neck." "I do not plan on melting soon, Lord Baelish. You may count on it." Ned moved to the council table and said, "Maester Pycelle, I trust you are well." — Eddard IV, AGOT

Ned snarking at LF and being all courteous a moment after, it's just...such a Sansa thing to do. And in fact, Sansa cannot outright snark to anyone in KL, but man, does she snark at them in her thoughts when her snark doesn't get the better of her and she snarks at them publicly.

"My new blade, Hearteater." He'd owned a sword named Lion's Tooth once, Sansa remembered. Arya had taken it from him and thrown it in a river. I hope Stannis does the same with this one. "It is beautifully wrought, Your Grace." — Sansa V, ACOK

“Lady never hurt you, but you killed her anyway.” (...) “My love for His Grace is greater than it has ever been” The Imp laughed aloud “Well, someone has taught you to lie well. You may be grateful for that one day, child” — Sansa III, ACOK

So, yeah...parallels keep piling up in the Ned/Sansa sphere. I said this before and I will say it again, Sansa is Ned's narrative heir (as I've analysed visually and textually even if not in super detail during day 10 of Sansamonth, x), also she's the second child who went South in young age, spent time in the Vale, the second born who, after the death of her older brother — a brother who looks exactly like Brandon Stark, her father's older brother — finds herself as the heir to Winterfell.

Thank you for pointing out this parallel as well!, as always I wish you a very nice day!