Always...So after having another attack of Sansan feels, I was compelled to blog about them again, and it occurred to me that these two are ALWAYS touching one another. In fact, in nearly every single Sansa chapter, from the beginning to the end of their interactions, they are making bodily contact. Here’s the proof for your shipping pleasure:
AGOT:
1. Their first encounter:
Strong hands grasped her by the shoulders, and for a moment Sansa thought it was her father, but when she turned, it was the burned face of Sandor Clegane looking down at her, his mouth twisted in a terrible mockery of a smile. “You are shaking, girl,” he said, his voice rasping. “Do I frighten you so much?”
2. After the Hand’s tourney, when he is escorting her back to her room:
Sandor Clegane put a huge hand under her chin and forced her face up. He squatted in front of her, and moved the torch close… His fingers held her jaw as hard an iron trap. His eyes watched hers. Drunken eyes, sullen with anger. She had to look…
The silence went on and on, so long that she began to grow afraid once more, but she was afraid for him now, not for herself. She found his massive shoulder with her hand. “He was no true knight,” she whispered to him…
The Hound caught her by the arm and leaned close. “The things I told you tonight,” he said, his voice sounding even rougher than usual…
3. In the aftermath of her father’s death when Joffrey comes to her:
Sandor Clegane scooped her up around the waist and lifted her off the featherbed as she struggled feebly. Her blanket fell to the floor. Underneath she had only a thin bedgown to cover her nakedness. “Do as you’re bid, child,” Clegane said. “Dress.” He pushed her toward her wardrobe, almost gently.
“Here, girl.” Sandor Clegane knelt before her, between her and Joffrey. With a delicacy surprising in such a big man, he dabbed at the blood welling from her broken lip.
ACOK:4. Returning from the godswood:
She was racing headlong down the serpentine steps when a man lurched out of a hidden doorway. Sansa caromed into him and lost her balance. Iron fingers caught her by the wrist before she could fall, and a deep voice rasped at her…
The Hound gave her a push, oddly gentle, and followed her down the steps. By the time they had reached the bottom, he had lapsed back into a brooding silence, as if he had forgotten she was there.
“That one there is nothing to fear, girl. The Hound laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Paint stripes on a toad, he does not become a tiger.”
“A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he’ll look you straight in the face.” He cupped her under her jaw, raising her chin, his fingers pinching her painfully. “And that’s more than little birds can do, isn’t it? I never got my song.”
5. After the riot:Sandor Clegane cantered briskly through the gates astride Sansa’s chestnut courser. The girl was seated behind, both arms tight around the Hound’s chest.
6. On the eve of the Blackwater battle, atop Maegor’s Holdfast:
A stab went through her, so sharp that Sansa sobbed and clutched at her belly. She might have fallen, but a shadow moved suddenly and strong fingers grabbed at her arm and steadied her.
7. Night of the battle; Sansa’s room:
“I could keep you safe,” he rasped. “They’re all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I’d kill them. He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he was going to kiss her. He was too strong to fight.
Some instinct made her hand and cup his cheek with her fingers. The room was too dark for her to see him, but she could feel the stickiness of the blood and a wetness that was not blood.
My brief, completely unnecessary analysis:Physical contact has been a hallmark of their relationship right from the start. Whether Sandor is being gentle in his touch, or roughly holding her jaw in place, he’s never been afraid of touching her in order to communicate frustration and anger, or comfort and reassurance. Sansa on the other hand, touches him mostly to confer empathy and understanding. Even in the chapters where there’s no physical contact, we still see a natural connection between the two: the name day tourney when the Hound backs up her lie to Joffrey, and later when she’s beaten in the court and he passes her his cloak. Their moments of contact can be classified in three main categories: accidental, intentional and instinctive, which happen to mirror the development of their relationship in King’s Landing, as they are gradually drawn together in a kind of perverse camaraderie. It’s fitting then that their final time together should see them reaching a climax of sorts in physical intimacy, as the dark confines of her bedroom provide the perfect setting to give vent to the emotional strains that have been building in both of them. Between his pulling her closer, and later when she cups his cheek and feels the mixture of blood and tears, they’ve each managed to communicate something that goes way beyond what they were capable of dealing with at that particular time. What is clear though, is that the familiarity they’ve achieved with one another and the desire it seems to inspire afterwards, holds within it a promise for future fulfillment (if, you know, GRRM doesn’t turn into a massive troll).
*nod* Their physical intimacy is one of the more interesting parts of the relationship. (As is the way he opens up to her, and she to him, sharing secrets and emotions they never tell anyone else.)
It’s especially interesting when you compare it to Sansa’s other relationships (note, not ship-shaming, just comparing). With Tyrion they have one passionless kiss to seal the marriage, and then afterwards nothing (IIRC! I may have missed a touch or two since it’s not a ship I focus on). And with Littlefinger, the main impression you get of his touches/kisses is how incredibly uncomfortable Sansa is made by them. Whereas with Sandor, though Sansa doesn’t like it when he grabs her firmly/painfully (not to mention the whole weirdness of the Blackwater scene), later she still thinks of him fondly (for lack of a better word) or even erotically re her dreams/false memories.
I also think it’s a sign for the future — but yes, of course GRRM could screw us over, yes.
Why does everyone want Sansa to kill Petyr?
Part of what I love about her is that she ISN’T a killer. She isn’t Arya.
Sansa is compassionate (“I would’ve given them bread if I had any”) and diplomatic, and I just feel that by murdering someone herself, she would become less herself and more Arya. Which would be disappointing because I love the two because of their differences.
In the end, I want Sansa to somehow maintain her goodness and optimism despite all the horrible things that keep happening to herself and those around her. And I think if she killed someone she’d be no better than those ‘true knights’ she now knows aren’t true at all, and it would kill the remainder of her faith in herself.
It’s her goodness that’s got her this far, and I think her goodness will keep her safe. Because no matter how hard things get, she always finds the right way around it.
Everyone compares her to Catelyn, but tbh she is much, much more Ned. She’s Ned through and through. She’s honourable, but she’ssmarter than he was. Ned barely knew what the game was, but Sansa’s been building up this strength for a long time, barely making any wrong moves and she’s already survived being at the centre of the most politically tumultuous areas of Westeros.
She *trusts* Petyr (I suppose I say that lightly), but she doesn’t trust Littlefinger. She’s been intelligent enough to recognise the distinction.
He saved Alayne, his daughter, a voice within her whispered. But she was Sansa too… and sometimes it seemed to her that the Lord Protector was two people as well. He was Petyr, her protector, warm and funny and gentle… but he was also Littlefinger, the lord she’d known at King’s Landing, smiling slyly and stroking his beard as he whispered in Queen Cersei’s ear.And Littlefinger was no friend of hers.
Unlike Ned, she *knows* how the game works - she knows that one has to wear a mask of themselves to conceal the truth. But that doesn’t mean changing who she is. And by killing, she would go against everything that is inherently Sansa.
#this is how i feel pretty much #i mean i won’t cry if she winds up killing him#especially if it’s execution style after she becomes queen or something #but honestly i don’t really want her to kill littlefucker #or let sweetrobin die #i want her to ruin littlefucker’s plans #run off to the quiet isle for sanctuary #meet the gravedigger #and then the two of them flee westeros #living happily ever after on the summer isles #which is too much to ask for but whatever
Hmm, this is a big dilemma for me. For all the reasons already written above I, too, would love to see Sansa maturing without ever losing the gentleness that makes her so different from everyone around her. What I would really like was for Sansa to find someone who can love her and who she can also love, and live like the lady she always wanted to be.
ON THE OTHER HAND… I really really would love Sansa to inherit Winterfell and become Warden of the North/ Queen in the North. And one of the points of being a political leader is also knowing when and how to deliver punishment, esp. capital punishment. It is a recurring motif that northeners believe he who passes the sentence should swing the sword (Stannis is already having to deal with thks), so, for Sansa to become Lady in Winterfell, she also has to fully understand and be ready to deliver the king’s (queen’s) justice. Even if she sends every single criminal to the Wall, there will still be situations in which she will need to condemn some more serious crimes to death, and she will have to be the executor.
And the whole problem is that to me it seems so clear that the story is building up for her to become ruler of Winterfell, all the hints are there, and yet I can’t for the love of me imagine Sansa executing anyone. So maybe killing Petyr would be a breaking point? Marilion’s execution left Sansa scared and guilty because of the wrongness of it all, and she already is a traumatized with her father’s execution.
So yes, I am very curious as to how this aspect of ruling will play out. And again, as much as I want Sansa ruling the North, I will never forget how happy both she and us were when reading her dreams about marrying wyllas tyrell. So who knows what the future holds for our true lady of love and beauty :’(
Uhg, I have the same confusion! I don’t want her to be idealized for the traditional values that have made Arya and others more “popular” characters than she is- the violent and vengeful attitudes and other characteristics, because she represents a different kind of strength, one of insane patience and control (which is why I think she would make a great queen and am confused when people say Arya would be better). But I think the Ned aspect is so well stated, she is Ned in so many ways, and Ned did have to go to war as she would have to, defend his keep as she would have to, and swing the sword (which is a HUGE sword and I know I couldn’t lift it let alone take a head off in one strike so I don’t know how they’ll get around that aspect if she is queen :P).
BUT I think there is a lot to be said about her character in her feelings (albeit unconscious) about Sandor. His hate terrifies her but his strength empowers her, and I’m not sure if that means that she sees him as a completion of herself because she could never do violence like he can but knows it’s necessary sometimes- or if she wishes she could be as ferocious herself, and if that’s the case than I think that she is ultimately fated to become a fighter, but maybe she can hold onto that Ned-like demur as well. I mean Ned does loose his temper sometimes… particularly with Littlefinger, soooo….
heart in a cage
“Here, girl.” Sandor Clegane knelt before her, between her and Joffrey. With a delicacy surprising in such a big man, he dabbed at the blood welling from her broken lip.
The moment was gone. Sansa lowered her eyes. ”Thank you,” she said when he was done. She was a good girl, and always remembered her courtesies.
So, I’m a huge Game of Thrones fan. I was inspired by seeing Kate Beaton’s ASOIAF art yesterday (Ygritte! Beric Dondarrion!), and had a nice discussion about George R.R. Martin’s awesomely varied lady characters. I haven’t drawn any ASOIAF art lately, but I thought I’d collect my previous pieces in a handy bundle right here:
- The disturbingly nondescript Leech Lord, Roose Bolton.
-Brienne of Tarth— powerhouse lady-knight!
-An early morning in King’s Landing with Sansa.
-Jon Snow & Ghost beyond the wall!
(I’ve also drawn a Khal Drogo, but it’s not my favorite, so I’m not including it!)
It’s a bummer that we’ll probably be waiting a while for the rest of the books to come out, but you can bet this isn’t the last batch of ASOIAF art you’ll be seeing from me.
Who’s excited for the start of the second season on HBO next weekend??
I love that Brienne so much - well, I love all of it.
Some of you might remember seeing this on Deviantart for OCs but I wanted to do one for ASOIAF. When I tried to find the original deviantart link it was gone, so let me know if you find it.
This was originally one long string but Tumblr doesn’t like that so much so I split it up.
Here’s a blank one if anyone else wants to play :)
I don’t have my books on hand (lent ‘em out), but the gist of it is a mercenary that’s being plied by a king, a septon, and a rich man, each ordering him to kill the other, commanding him via duty, religion, and money respectively. It’s an easy riddle (He’s a SELLsword, therefore the rich man buys it), but that’s not really the point of the exercise.
The main question is “Who has the power”, and it’s pretty clear that it’s the mercenary who has the power, the one who’s active, the supplier (But also the consumer, as he’s the one that’s exchanging something for what he can do), but he’s the one they all want, three people, all of them powerful, requesting his help.
Now, this is a fairly pessimistic outlook, that the one with the money will always win, but as the series has gone on we’ve seen that this isn’t true. To make things simpler, I’m going to remove a couple of the more loaded terms and replace the Gold with Self, the Septon with Morality, and the King with Duty. These are three abstract concepts that everybody can relate to.
Now it’s true, most people will choose Self over anything else - the Boltons, the Freys, the Lannisters, and the Tyrells are all pretty secure in wanting what’s best for themselves personally, and the Cleganes and the Bloody Mummers take this to their logical conclusion.
Ned and Brienne are the paragons of Duty - When asked to do something that outrages him morally, Ned resigns rather than fights against it, and once set on a mission, Brienne does everything humanly possible to accomplish it (Including sinking a boat by throwing a boulder at it). Ned, however, dips into this before he dies, doing what he can for his daughters to keep them alive (Which, while moral, is still to preserve an object of himself). Stannis is also as Duty as you can get, I’ve parsed that he’s not really been enjoying anything that he’s been doing through the series (Although he doesn’t really enjoy ANYTHING except probably waiting for better dentistry), but he does it because that’s what he has to do, that’s his duty, and the ends almost entirely justify the means
For Morality, I’d say that Lancel Lannister, the new Septon, and the Sparrows fit that bill - they may not have morality and ethics that we can agree with, but they’re doing what they’re doing for the reasons that what they’re doing is -right- to do. Dany feels this way very strongly when she’s in Meereen, and she can’t submit to Duty because she’s the Queen, there’s nobody for her to serve. You can see Jaime has leanings towards this at times (forsaking duty to save the people of King’s landing, going back to save Brienne, etc), but pushing Bran out the window to cover up his incestruous crime is fully in Self, so I figure he’s kind of half and half.
Davos is right along the lines of Duty and Morality. He serves and trusts and obeys Stannis unflinchingly, but when Stannis asks something of him that Davos cannot accept (And he can accept a lot), not only will he refuse, he’ll also prevent it from happening, something that Ned, who’s used to being up in his frozen northern shithole where dilemmas like this don’t come up and there’s far better things to put your energies towards, is incapable of doing. Davos is completely willing to accept the punishment for what he did, because doing this is more important to him than the aspect of his self.
But there’s some people who are in the middle!
Littlefinger comes to mind immediately - or at least he likes to project himself as being that way. I’ve got no doubt that he’s mostly concerned with Self, but in society his role is as someone who DOES things, and is essentially a medieval power broker on behalf of all sorts of people, which places him mostly in the middle. He’s managed to win both money and respect from the Crown from his actions. Once Sandor gave up Duty for Self, he discovered he had a lot more free agency, and even did a lot of fairly moral things, and Jaime’s been spinning his wheels for a while too, although he’s settling on a weird Self/Morality thing, but he has a point when he mentions all the vows he’s sworn about how impossibly difficult it is to try and stay on top of everything.
I think that what Varys was trying to get across, in the end, is that if you know which of the three a person is most devoted to, then you know how to control them. Tyrion was the Rich Man, and he was only EVER the Rich Man, and that’s ultimately why he couldn’t succeed.
Why did this post not get noticed more? It’s awesome.
Re-reblogging for reasons.
I also love how the riddle in the trailer foreshadows Sandor’s whole arch because the simple answer has him serving Tywin/Lannisters forever, but in the end he’s the one with the power, and the one who has power over him is who he chooses to serve which in the end turns out to be Sansa, who seems the weakest of all but in this instant is more powerful than every Lannister.
