Latest Posts by sansa-lover - Page 3

SANSA STARK WEEK 2024: Day 6 - Heritage.

weird wild wolf children

@sansastarkmonth2024 sansa stark appreciation week 2024: day 3 - friends & foes

"What do you think it means? she asked him. "Glory to your betrothed." -A Clash of Kings, Sansa I

robb and sansa

save a little bird

from rain

sansa protects the poor bird and robb protects her.

it's them

Jasper: We all have our demons.

Jasper: *picks Alice up*

Jasper: This one is mine.

Hey! @sonyawix

This is an interesting take and I had to consult with the Holder of the Jalice Braincells (@volturialice) to really break this down.

It sounds like the author of that take is kind of more interested in perfect, idealized relationships and might not be a fan of Alice, honestly. Plus SMeyer made a lot of the relationship dynamics in canon a really odd thing - we see all three Cullen relationships as very one-dimensional because of the relationship triptych I've ranted about before.

Because of Alice's backstory and her gift, we know that she's going to be a bit of a weirdo. She's essentially bet everything she has that the pictures in her brain are a path to happiness, that Jasper will make her happy. She has no reference point to interpersonal relationships beyond her visions, she has no memories of humanity; we really aren't shown exactly what level she was functioning at when she woke up. Those 28 missing years would be fascinating in how she built herself into a functional individual, honestly.

She bets everything on Jasper, and I think that shows what an optimistic, determined person she is. She could have gone to the Cullens straight away and probably would have been welcomed warmly - there's nothing in canon indicating that wasn't an option. But for whatever reason, Alice commits to waiting for Jasper. That's loyalty and dedication and love.

Just because their meeting was fated/planned doesn't mean it isn't meaningful.

So Alice seeing Jasper for all those years is not going to necessarily match up with him in real life. It's one thing to know a person has trauma, it's entirely another to meet that traumatized, depressed person. It's one thing to get the greatest hits of the relationship pumped straight into the brain, it's another to have all those small moments, those in-between times.

We know from Jasper's time with Maria that he tends to deify the women he's involved with. He put both Maria and Alice on a pedestal. That's just how he loves and commits - fully and totally. His 'hyperfocus' on Alice is a sign of how much he loves and treasures her. I honestly don't think it would have mattered how or when they met, Jasper would have treated her the same - the most precious thing he has.

We also know that Jasper has spent the best part of one hundred years in a high-stress environment where nothing was guaranteed. He didn't trust Maria at the end. So being introduced to someone who could tell him which path would be safe? Where there was no risk or fighting? I think that would be an incredible support for Jasper. I imagine in the early days, he'd probably ask Alice to check the future more than necessary because of his PTSD. And I can imagine Alice checking every time he asked, and going over all the details with love and patience.

And we know that Jasper does go against her wishes - he disagreed with her decision to return to Forks when Alice thought she had died, and Alice went alone (side note, if Jasper had gone with her, there was an opportunity for a lot of Eclipse set up right there.)

As for dehumanizing all her relationships, Alice is very distinctively trying to help throughout the series. It might be over the top, and it might not go to plan, but all of her visions and guidance are meant to help the people she loves. Alice has never known life without her sixth sense, so of course she uses it like we use our five senses. Does it give her a God-complex? Yes. Do I think it's meant to be more of a nod to Meyer's insistence on calling her a 'pixie' and utilizing fae imagery since fairies in lore are supported to love helping? Absolutely.

I think it's pretty disingenuous to say that people are 'ideas' to Alice when she was changed and abandoned. It's more likely that Alice is more intensely aware of what makes them happy so that they all stay together and she's not left alone again. If she didn't see people as people, but as chess pieces, then she wouldn't have go to see Charlie when she thought Bella was dead; she wouldn't have gone to Volterra to save Edward; she wouldn't have taken Jasper with her to find the hybrid.

So yeah, I disagree pretty strongly with this because it feels more like a way to minimize and dismiss Alice and her relationship with Jasper. But this is just my take on the character, and I'm sure there are dozens of different readings and interpretations out there!

The thing I love about Alice and Jasper is that while they 100% fit the mold of 'cute quirky character and her gloomy protector with a traumatic past' that dynamic also goes the other way. It isn't just Jasper being overprotective of her but them being overprotective of each other.

Alice is just as, if not more, protective over Jasper than he is over her, she constantly looks out for him and he arguably needs her in his life more than she needs him. This is not just a tall, proficient fighter with a difficult past watching over his tiny salvation. It's also a tiny clairvoyant fiercely protective over her slightly-emo mate. And I love that for them.

Alice and Jasper (Philadelphia, 1948)

"I was in Philadelphia. There was a storm, and I was out during the day - something I was not completely comfortable with yet. I knew standing in the rain would attract attention, so I ducked into a little half-empty diner. My eyes were dark enough that no one would notice them, though this meant I was thirsty, and that worried me a little."

"She was there - expecting me, naturally."

tonight's vibes

Canon Alice lying on the couch in Jasper's studying, listening to him talk about some insanely obscure philosophy lecture he's just watched. He's enthusiastic, gesturing during it, referring to other books and papers...

Alice follows perfectly because Jasper's been talking philosophy for decades which is long enough for her to learn everything she needs to know, and she loves how passionate he is about it, how he frames it about vampirism, and honestly, she's interested - just not as passionate as her husband is.

And she just loves seeing how far he's come since he walked into that diner and took her hand.

☽ jasper hale ☽

some pictures by @/vasguett on pinterest

for more follow

- pinterest: jasperhale_

- instagram: aesthetictw

☽ jasper and alice ☽

pictures from pinterest :)

Sansa Stark Month 2023 - Day 22 - TWOW Speculations

Jon Snow was the only brother that remained to her. I am a bastard too now, just like him. Oh, it would be so sweet, to see him once again.

Sophie's filmography

2011 - 2019 : Game of Thrones as Sansa Stark - Drama & Fantasy

2020 : Survive as Jane - Drama & Thriller

2020 : Home movie : The Princess Bride as Westley - Comedy & Fantasy

2022 : The Staircase as Margaret Rattlif - True Crime, Drama & Thriller

2022 : Story Bots : Answer Time as Lady Eleonore - Animation, Comedy & Family

2024 : Joan as Joan Hannington - Crime & Drama (post production)

2013 : Another Me as Fay - Teen Drama & Thriller

2013 : The Thirteenth Tale as Young Adeline/Vida - Drama & Mystery

2015 : Secret Agency as Heather - Comedy & Action

2016 : X-men : Apocalypse as Jean Grey - Superhero, action & Sci-Fi

2018 : Josie as Josie - Drama & Thriller

2018 : Time Freak as Debbie - Comedy & Romance

2019 : Dark Phoenix as Jean Grey - Superhero, action & Sci-Fi

2019 : Heavy as Madeline - Drama

2022 : Every Last Secret as Penelope - Drama & Thriller

2022 : Do revenge as Erica - Teen Comedy & Dark Comedy

2014 : Bastille - Oblivion

2019 : Sucker - Jonas Brothers

2020 : What a man gotta do - Jonas Brothers

2013 : ‘The Girl in the Mirror’ - Narrator (audiobook)

2014 : City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare - Narrator (audiobook)

2016 : The Night Before - Mr Burberry & QG

2016 : Powershift- Documentary

2017 : Game of Thrones Conquest and Rebellion as Sansa Stark

2019 : Our Journey connected - Louis Vuitton

The Dreadful as Anne - Gothic Horror (preproduction)

Trust - Thriller (post production)

All the pictures are edited by myself.

You know, I’d love to work with Sophie [Turner] on something, but are people only going to see Jon and Sansa? It’s gonna be hard to get away from that.

—Kit Harington

*sighs* give it me!

Jon protecting Sansa

So instead of Sansa marrying the prince who turns out to be a bastard, she is going to marry the bastard who turns out to be a prince. And I think that's poetic justice!

Favourite Jon x Sansa Endgame Foreshadowing

Another day of quarantine, and I’m back on my Jonsa bullshit.

Got bored and decided to gather and rank my favourite Jon x Sansa book foreshadowing. Decided to leave parallels, chapter orders, and when they think of each other out of it. Just the good old juicy foreshadowing. The hidden text within the text.

Important to note, I discovered… none of these. I’m just a regular consumer of much smarter people. If you’re bored and want to read more, I went ahead and linked some of my favourite metas to accompany most entries.

If you have an interesting meta or think piece to share regarding any of the text, feel free to link and I’ll add.

21. Dragonflies

Another dragonfly was moving across the water, or perhaps it was the same one. What shall it be, Dunk? he asked himself. Dragonflies or dragons? – The Hedge Knight

Jenny of Oldstones and the Prince of Dragonflies (@butterflies-dragons)

20. A Tale of Two Vals

Then Ghost emerged from between two trees, with Val beside him. They look as though they belong together. Val was clad all in white; white woolen breeches tucked into high boots of bleached white leather, white bearskin cloak pinned at the shoulder with a carved weirwood face, white tunic with bone fastenings. Her breath was white as well… but her eyes were blue, her long braid the color of dark honey, her cheeks flushed red from the cold. It had been a long while since Jon Snow had seen a sight so lovely. – ADWD, Jon XI

Beyond, the haunted forest waited, dark and silent. The light of the half-moon turned Val’s honey-blond hair a pale silver and left her cheeks as white as snow. She took a deep breath. “The air tastes sweet.” “My tongue is too numb to tell. All I can taste is cold.” – ADWD, Jon VIII

“OH, SWEET SHE WAS, AND PURE, AND FAIR! THE MAID WITH HONEY IN HER HAIR!” “You will love Highgarden as I do, I know it.” Margaery brushed back a loose strand of Sansa’s hair. – ASOS, Sansa I

Ser Jorah spent most of his waking hours pacing the forecastle or leaning on the rail, gazing out to sea. Looking for his silver queen. Looking for Daenerys, willing the ship to sail faster. – ADWD, Tyrion VIII

Val: A Subversion of BATB in Jon’s arc? (@lostlittlesatellites)

Keep reading

Some thoughts on Sansa and Jon, by Tze

Sansa and Jon are, as far as I can tell, the only two Starks we never actually see interact in “present” time, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence from a literary standpoint. Everything we know of their past interactions comes via someone’s reminiscences, so each is present in the other’s life, but only in the past, never in the present. If Jon and Sansa meet in the future, it will doubtless come across to readers, in a very real way, as their very first meeting. Given the changes they’ve both undergone since their last meeting, that type of dynamic makes a certain amount of literary sense.

At the beginning of the series, Jon and Sansa seemed to sit at two opposite ends of the “Stark” children’s cultural spectrum: Sansa is viewed by other characters as the most culturally “southern” of the children, (and she did initially seem to value “southern” courtly culture more than Northern culture), while Jon is viewed as the most culturally “Northern” of the Starks because he does not associate with southern-based institutions. Sansa was the Stark child most heavily and explicitly associated with the Faith of the Seven (she was always with her septa and she’s the Stark child we see actually worshiping in the sept the most), while Jon was, at the beginning of the series, the most heavily associated with the Old Gods (given that he’s the only one of the children who does not keep the Faith at all, not to mention Ghost’s physical resemblance to a weirwood tree). Of the boys, Jon looks the most like Ned, while Sansa looks the most (out of the girls) like Catelyn—superficially, readers were encouraged, in the beginning, to associate Sansa and Jon with two different “regions”, one with the South and one with the North.

In AGOT, Sansa and Jon occupied two very different, inherently non-overlapping worlds, and each person’s understanding of how “the world” worked implicitly contained no real “place” for the other. By that I mean: Jon loved to fight, occupied a world in which fighting was the primary activity, and at the beginning had a great deal of difficulty interacting with people incapable of fighting. Look at his initial attitude toward Tyrion as well as the other Watch recruits, for example. Sansa is the one Stark child inherently incapable of fighting. She loved knitting, dancing, listening to singers, things that Jon had no use for—there was no room for Sansa in Jon’s “world”.

And Sansa’s “world” contained no real “place” for Jon. She believed that knighthood and its accompanying (southern) chivalric code were the celebrated foundations of the world, and interpreted everything she saw through that cultural lens. Sansa knew her “world of chivalry” clearly viewed a bastard like Jon with suspicion, and because of that, I think Sansa probably had difficulty holding what seemed like two contradictory notions in her head: on the one hand, Jon was her brother, raised along with her and someone she never seemed to have any open conflicts with (unlike Arya, for example), and on the other hand, as the occupier of a “place” (bastard) that her social code condemned.

Now, I think it’s worth noting that, although bastards have far lesser status in Westerosi society, there are “places” that can be carved out for them nonetheless, especially for paternally-acknowledged highborn bastards like Jon: we’re told that bastards have served in the Kingsguard, a bastard (Sam Stone) serves as Master-At-Arms for House Royce of Runestone, a bastard ends up on Cersei’s Small Council, at least one bastard served as Hand of the King, bastards freely join the Citadel and the Faith, etc., etc. But the issue with Jon is that Sansa, during AGOT, pretty clearly viewed knighthood as the central aspect of a man’s worth. To “properly” occupy an honored place in “Sansa’s world”, Jon would have to first be a knight—not just a fighter, but an actual anointed knight, with all of the accompanying chivalric duties and responsibilities. (Look at how she thinks about Jory vs. how she thinks of Alyn in AGOT for an illustration of this.) Jon clearly had the fighting ability to attain knighthood, but unlike the other Starks, he has never kept the Seven at all. Knighthood was never a real possibility for him, as it was for Robb/Bran/Rickon, and presumably Sansa recognized that. I think it was difficult for her, especially early on, to really find a positive place for Jon in her understanding of the world, because he obviously couldn’t be a septon, he couldn’t join the Citadel (she would have recognized Jon wasn’t exactly a bookworm), he was not in line for lordship, and he wasn’t going to be a knight … but deep down she loved him nonetheless. So what was he? Where did he fit? How could she believe that knighthood and chivalry were the cornerstones of her society while simultaneously having a relationship with her non-knight bastard brother? I think this is why Sansa was, in the beginning, so very, very keen on pointing out Jon’s exact relationship to her: her half-brother, a bastard. I think deep down Jon really confused her, and this was her way of repeatedly clarifying to herself exactly who Jon was, of seeking a measure of control over a relationship that must have confuzzled her greatly, because its very existence contradicted her understanding of how the world was supposed to work.

Because while Jon and Sansa seemed to have the most “distant” relationship of the Stark children, it’s pretty clear that Jon and Sansa did always love each other deep down. At the Wall, Jon mentioned that he missed Sansa. In ADWD, when he thinks of his lost siblings, right before he starts making plans to head to Winterfell, an image of Sansa brushing Lady’s coat and singing is included. And even in AGOT, though Sansa rarely thought about Jon, when he did enter her thoughts we saw her seem to subconsciously want Jon to occupy a “positive” position in her understanding of the world order. We know from Jon that Sansa tried to teach him how to talk to girls, and though he mentions that she always called him her “half”-brother, there’s no indication she tried to ignore or insult him, as other trueborn children might have done to a bastard. Her love for him was clearly not as “free” as Arya’s love for him was—Sansa’s world of chivalry and knighthood was a stumbling block to such a relationship, so it’s easy for readers to overlook that she did love him. But even in AGOT, look at her reaction to Yoren:

She had always imagined the Night’s Watch to be men like Uncle Benjen. In the songs, they were called the black knights of the Wall. But this man had been crookbacked and hideous, and he looked as though he might have lice. If this was what the Night’s Watch was truly like, she felt sorry for her bastard half brother, Jon.

It’s easy for readers to focus on her calling Jon her “bastard half brother” here, but if we look a little deeper, we notice how she also thinks to herself that the singers called the Watch “the black knights of the Wall”. This is important because we know what a huge premium Sansa was putting on the idea of knighthood. Though religion seemingly prevents Jon from attaining knighthood, Sansa seemed to subconsciously look for a loophole there, and found one in the songs: her beloved singers could “grant” Jon a sort of honorary knighthood as a member of the Watch, so that is the route her thoughts took.

(And here we also see that Jon and Sansa, though superficially incredibly divergent, actually did look at the world in somewhat similar ways: each believed in the stories and songs, in honor—just different stories and different methods of honor. Each believed Benjen Stark was the prototypical Watchman. Jon believed all Watchmen were true and honorable, Sansa believed all knights were true and honorable. They each had specific ideas about how a specific place was supposed to be (the Wall and the South), and each of them had those ideas dashed by reality.)

As ASOIAF has progressed, we’ve seen Jon and Sansa slip into each other’s roles, into each other’s shoes. Jon becomes a Lord in ASOS, the same book in which Sansa ceases “being” a Lady. Robb disinherited Sansa at the same time (if the will says what many suspect it does) that he declared he wanted Jon to inherit. Becoming Alayne meant Sansa became a bastard, just like Jon, (and Jon could very well have been declared trueborn by Robb’s will, which would mean that Sansa “became” a bastard and Jon “became” a trueborn Stark). Sansa began her story by loving singers, and has progressed toward disliking them (Marillion), while Jon initially seemed to have no use for singers … until he met the singer Mance Rayder. The Littlefinger/Lysa/Sansa dynamic played out almost as a vicious, over-the-top caricature of the Ned/Catelyn/Jon dynamic, with Sansa forced to literally stand in a (heavily skewed and sensationalized) version of Jon’s shoes: Catelyn saw Jon as a living representation of another woman that she feared Ned loved more than her, and Lysa saw Sansa as a living representation of Catelyn, the woman that Lysa (rightly) feared Littlefinger loved more than her. Sansa seemed to have a much closer relationship with her mother than with her father (the exact opposite of Jon), but “Alayne” had a much “closer” relationship with Littlefinger than with Lysa—Sansa takes on with Littlefinger (a much skeevier version of) the relatively close father/child relationship that Jon had with Ned.

In her final chapter of AFFC, Sansa thinks to herself:

She had not thought of Jon in ages.

Or so Sansa tells herself. But I think there’s a pretty good chance Sansa had actually been subconsciously thinking about Jon ever since she took on the Alayne Stone identity, because Sansa seems to be subconsciously patterning her “Alayne Stone” persona around Jon Snow. Sansa wants “Alayne” to be 14 years old, because “She had decided that Alayne Stone should be older than Sansa Stark”. How old was Jon the last time Sansa saw him? 14 years old. She becomes worried at the prospect of dancing, because she seems to think that, for some unexplained reason, Alayne Stone might not enjoy dancing:

What would she do when the music began to play? It was a vexing question, to which her heart and head gave different answers. Sansa loved to dance, but Alayne…

Dancing is a pretty popular activity among women of all social classes and we know it’s an activity very close to Sansa’s heart, given that she was able to dance even at her own terrible wedding. But then in ADWD we discover that Jon does not appear to enjoy dancing—he refuses to dance with Alys, and Alys teases him about it when she brings up previous dances they were forced to dance together at Winterfell. If Sansa is subconsciously patterning “Alayne” on Jon Snow, then the fact that she’s concerned that Alayne might not enjoy dancing makes quite a bit of sense, given that Jon’s apparent dislike of dancing seems like the sort of thing Sansa would have picked up on. (In other words, if “Alayne” is patterned after Jon Snow, then the “real” reason Sansa fears Alayne won’t like dancing is because Sansa knows Jon, on whom Alayne is molded, dislikes dancing.) Sansa thinks of Alayne as “bastard-brave”, and since she barely knows Mya, what bastard does Sansa want Alayne to be as brave as? The obvious answer is Jon. And we see “Alayne” take on the type of caregiver role with Sweetrobin that the other Stark children (Bran and Arya, especially) seem to have associated with Jon, a role that Sansa herself seemed to take on with people like Beth Cassel and Jeyne Poole in Winterfell, but not with her own younger siblings.

He was only her half brother, but still… with Robb and Bran and Rickon dead, Jon Snow was the only brother that remained to her. I am a bastard too now, just like him. Oh, it would be so sweet, to see him once again.

This is Sansa’s thought process once Myranda Royce tells her about Jon’s new position as Lord Commander of the Watch. If I’m correct and she’s had Jon on the brain throughout AFFC, then this right here actually serves as a breakthrough for her, because Sansa goes from subconsciously longing for Jon to explicitly longing for Jon. And her thought process here is a pretty useful distillation of how far Sansa’s come from AGOT, a semi-culmination of her ideological journey thus far: the main issues she once had with Jon—that he was a bastard, that he didn’t “fit” the world of knights and chivalry that Sansa loved—have been essentially nullified. She starts out with the “old” Sansa’s thought patterns (“He was only her half-brother”), but then she immediately (and pretty substantially) switches gears and starts openly longing to see Jon again, expressly thinking about how she’s now a bastard too. The ideological barriers between them are basically gone.

Indeed, Sansa’s entire arc had been bringing her closer and closer, ideologically, to the forces (winter, the North, and the Old Gods) represented by Jon. Sansa started out in AGOT preferring the Faith of the Seven, loving knighthood, loving the south, and losing her direwolf. By AFFC, we see her (far) more heavily associated with the Old Gods, favoring a non-knight (the Hound), and in an overall sense, switching gears from the epitomization of a “summer’s child” to (IMO) someone on the path to becoming a “winter’s child”. Jon and Sansa become the Starks who we see most heavily drawing their inner strength from the cold and the snow: Jon mentions on more than one occasion that Ghost loves the snow, we see Jon frequently seeking out the cold (not the heat) at the Wall. We see Sansa literally drawing strength from the snow and the cold at the Eyrie. In the beginning of AGOT, Sansa wanted only to be a queen in the hot south. By AFFC, we see her building a scale model of Winterfell and drawing spiritual strength from the forces of winter.

Given the way Sansa seems to have been sliding more and more “toward” Jon as her arc has progressed—given the way her arc has been bringing her closer to him both ideologically and thematically—I wonder what implications Jon’s stabbing (and the potential future that stabbing could bring for him) have for Sansa’s future. Because the myth of Persephone looms large over both Jon and Sansa, and given what happened to Jon at the end of ADWD, I’m very, very curious what GRRM has in store for Sansa’s arc, especially now that winter has come.

Both Jon and Sansa encounter “the pomegranate”: Sansa is offered a literal pomegranate by Littlefinger, while Jon’s rulership arc in ADWD was confronted at every turn by the Old Pomegranate, Bowen Marsh. The pomegranate, in Greek mythology, is what causes Persephone to become Queen of the Dead in perpetuity, and it’s the reason winter comes in the first place—winter, in Greek mythology, being viewed as Demeter’s grief at her separation from her daughter when Persephone descends every year to rule in the Underworld. The pomegrante causes Persephone to undertake two disparate roles, to become a creature of two separate worlds: she is both the Goddess of Spring and the Queen of the Underworld simultaneously (and concurrently), she rules in both the sunlight and the darkness. That idea—of a person moving between two contradictory spheres of existence, of a person gaining strength by a capacity to move between the darkness and the light—is a theme GRRM has played around with in other works, so there’s an excellent chance he’s exploring it in ASOIAF as well.

Both Jon and Sansa choose to reject “the pomegranate”: Jon rejects the Old Pomegranate’s demands for the future of the Watch, Sansa rejects Littlefinger’s attempt to have her eat an actual pomegranate. But look at what happened to Jon in ADWD: he refused to acquiese to the Old Pomegranate’s wishes, but the Old Pomegranate would not quietly accept rejection, choosing to physically attack him: there’s been a lot of speculation on these boards that the attack on Jon will lead to some death-based transformation, that he (like Persephone) might find himself transformed (and possibly occupying a new leadership role) because of the Old Pomegranate. GRRM apparently had some Sansa chapters prepared for ADWD, but he pushed them back to TWOW. I’m very curious about what those chapters contained.

Because winter has now come, and in winter, Persephone rules over the dead. Sansa’s arc has tracked Persephone in some pretty substantial ways: at the beginning of AGOT, when summer was in swing, she was the Stark most heavily associated with the warmth and frivolity of the South, just as Persephone was the flower-loving Goddess of Spring; Sansa was forced to marry, against her will, a man heavily associated with worldly wealth (in Greek mythology, Hades is associated with wealth because gold, silver, and jewels are drawn from beneath the ground, and Hades of course rules the Underworld). As winter approaches, Sansa loses her childlike innocence and naivete. And winter has now hit Westeros, and will presumably hit with a vengeance during TWOW—so what will Sansa become in the winter? Where winter is a time of imprisonment for Persephone, with spring/summer freeing her to walk the warm world above, it seems that summer was a time of imprisonment for Sansa, and winter might end up freeing her. And the story of Persephone ends with Persephone holding dominion over the dead during the winter. This might be a hint toward our pomegranate-associated characters’ future, especially given the heavy associations both Jon and Sansa have with the living dead. (With Jon, those associations are obvious—he’s a living man who wears black, his direwolf is named Ghost, he’s fighting wights. With Sansa, the associations are less obvious but no less profound: Sansa’s direwolf is dead (and since the Starks “are” their direwolves, Sansa is both alive and dead simultaneously because part of her is dead while part of her lives on), Littlefinger associates her with Catelyn reborn (and Catelyn has literally become the walking dead), not to mention the Hound: “The Hound is dead” we are told, and this “dead man” of course hated fire—I doubt it’s a coincidence that this description of the Hound, as a walking dead man who hates fire, sounds quite a bit like a wight.)

And then there’s this bit from AFFC:

All around was empty air and sky, the ground falling away sharply to either side. There was ice underfoot, and broken stones just waiting to turn an ankle, and the wind was howling fiercely. It sounds like a wolf, thought Sansa. A ghost wolf, big as mountains.

It’s easy to forget sometimes that AFFC and ADWD were originally meant to be one super-book. Could Sansa have been “sensing” Jon’s “death” here? Is the “ghost wolf” Ghost? Or is there a hint here for Sansa herself? She’s become a Stone, and she’s been told that a stone is a mountain’s daughter. The cold winds are howling, and she thinks the cold winds are becoming a ghost wolf—is Sansa, she of the dead direwolf, en route to her own eventual death and resurrection?

*

A Time for Wolves - The Case for Jon and Sansa

The idea of Jon and Sansa as a romantic pairing might sound absurd but I think it is actually far from unlikely.

The heart of it is quite simple to explain: ASOIAF is not and never will be easy on the readers. So even a positive resolution will eschew looking like a happy ending at every cost. And Jon/Sansa as the endgame will be everything but easy to the readers.

*

Working on the assumption here that most of the readers wish these two characters well - wishing them the best possible happy ending that their world can realistically provide, perhaps even wishing that they’ll get what they desire in life - I’ve come to believe that Jon/Sansa has the potential to provide everyone with everything they want, except the “best” possible happy ending. But given a not even particularly specific set of circumstances it could be very easily be the “least terrible.”

And that is why I think Jon/Sansa stands a pretty good chance of happening.

There are some pre-conditions for Jon/Sansa (the aforementioned circumstances) all of them super-obvious, all of them ultimately speculative - like them being alive. It would also help for them to be single, available, in the same place at the same time - and the second greatest conjecture of all (after them being alive) - R+L=J not just being true but also being known around Westeros. 

But once that’s the case, Jon/Sansa will look like a great idea to nearly everyone in the story while being a completely unforeseen turn of events to the readers. It’s surprising yet obvious - the definition of a good plot twist. 

*

But then surprising but obvious is very much the modus operandi for Jon and Sansa in relation to each other.

Because, just as surprisingly, they are fairly similar characters. Disguised by the fact that they face vastly different challenges, these challenges reveal similar character arcs, similar characteristics and even similar wants and desires. They are in many ways two sides of the same coin. 

They start out in the same place, not just geographically, but psychologically. They both believe in the songs, in the heroes of those songs, and that life is just waiting to make Aemon the Dragonknight (Jon) or his lady love, Queen Naerys, (in the case of Sansa) out of them.

And as they go in opposite directions geographically, they undergo the same disillusioning journey as they are soon forced to face the same harsh reality. And from there on their journeys partially become the mirror images of each other: Sansa goes from Lady Stark to Lady Lannister to bastard (which she models to some degree after Jon) while simultaneously Jon goes from Jon Snow to Jon Stark (according to Robb‘s will, even if Jon doesn‘t know it yet) to Lord Commander. 

But other parts of those journeys aren’t even mirrored but completely similar. Sansa has to pretend she wants nothing to do with her previous life while being a prisoner in King’s Landing and Jon has to do exactly the same while being with the wildlings. “Fake it ‘till you make it” seems also the motto that accompanies them on their journeys with Jon being tempted to stay with the wildlings and Sansa trying to actively forget that she isn’t Alayne Stone.

But as all of this happens, as they are both forced to lose their idealism to deal with choices that puts them between rocks and hard places, as they have to grieve for their family, as they even try to become other people, they both still cling to the concept of justice, of fairness, of doing the right thing, of erring on the side of compassion. They both try and sometimes fail to remain decent people.

Jon’s acts of decency are active and often easily supported by rational argument, like letting the wildlings in and saving Gilly’s child.

Sansa, being condemned to passivity by her situation, cannot often be active with whatever she is doing (saving Dontos is the rare exception) and thus the generosity of her passive actions seems to want to make up for it. In a seemingly self-negating, saintly way she even prays for her enemies:

Sansa knew most of the hymns, and followed along on those she did not know as best she could. 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. 

(Compare that prayer to one of Arya’s lists which are all about who she’s gonna murder and you get an idea of how outrageous hers is.)

But Sansa’s list of people she prays for during the Battle of Blackwater isn’t as super-forgiving as it looks. Suspiciously missing are Cersei, Joffrey, most of the Kingsguard, and other assorted, certified douchebags. Because Sansa is sensible enough to not forgive those who have harmed her. Her generous compassion becomes a problem for her because she isn’t very often correct in her assessment of people. Just like Jon (Bowen Marsh being a case in point.)

That doesn’t mean they are saints by any stretch of imagination. They are both flawed, naive, still, to some degree, selfish, short-sighted and selectively blind. 

Both have repeatedly trusted the wrong people and probably for the same reason - life has killed their idealism but not their predisposition to see the good in people. Or to just passively accepting the bad and getting hurt for it. 

It’s not necessarily that they’re overly trusting, it’s just that they have been both wrong on memorable occasions to believe that certain people wouldn’t actively harm them.  (They also have been right on that account though.) But that baseline trust/selective blindness is the reason why Sansa is wanted for regicide, Tyrion‘s wife, and Littlefinger‘s bastard daughter instead of chilling with Willas Tyrell in Highgarden, while Jon is chilling with a few knives in his back.

*

Of course, being similar people doesn’t make them likely to happen or anything. It’s an interesting factoid that makes it easier to explain why them being with each other might not be worst of ideas, character-wise, but it’s not decisive. What is decisive is that is the perfect ironic twist, that it’s “be careful what you wish for” for Sansa, for Jon, for the audience.

*

“Everything you want, in the worst possible way.” This is an extremely important element of good storytelling, and I find myself surprised I haven’t talked about it before. Giving the audience everything they want, while stabbing them in the eyes at the same time, […is] one of our storytelling staples…“ - Jane Espenson

*

Sansa, the eleven-year old dreamer, who wished to be part of a song, wished for a valiant knight to make her his lady love, idealized Aemon the Dragonknight’s love affair with Queen Naerys (making it a fairy tale when it very likely wasn’t) wished for all that and defined all these idealized men as heroes.

What Jon will be like near the end of the series - if R+L=J is real and merely a quarter of the fandom’s predictions regarding Jon’s fate come true - is absolutely everything eleven-year old Sansa wanted. And Jon’s “song” will make Aemon the Dragonknight’s look like child’s play. He will literally the hero from the song.

We, the audience, know the dirty, depressing reality behind that song and so will every character in the books, but this “song” removed from that reality as it will be in Westeros a few generations down the line, has all the markings of a fairy tale - Cinderella and King Arthur all rolled up in one.

So Jon could be absolutely everything eleven-year old Sansa once wanted. Valiant knight, hero, and even in a way the prince from a fairy tale.

And then he wouldn’t just fit naive Sansa’s idea of a hero but also disillusioned Sansa’s (the one she thinks leaves the world without heroes.) And there is not and never will be a single other character in ASOIAF who can do the same: 

Frog-faced Lord Slynt sat at the end of the council table wearing a black velvet doublet and a shiny cloth-of-gold cape, nodding with approval every time the king pronounced a sentence. Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him, wishing that some hero would throw him down and cut off his head. But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes…

—-

“I will not hang him,” said Jon. “Bring him here.” “Oh, Seven save us,” he heard Bowen Marsh cry out. The smile that Lord Janos Slynt smiled then had all the sweetness of rancid butter. Until Jon said, “Edd, fetch me a block,” and unsheathed Longclaw.

(I’m not saying that Sansa cannot adjust her definition of hero again. But right now, Jon is Sansa’s only hero.)

But just like getting that pony when you’re 80 that you wished for when you were 8 is completely not what you want anymore, getting Jon, despite being all Sansa has ever wished for in a husband, might not going to be a dream come true for Sansa. 

First of all, she has moved beyond fairy tales. Second, even more obviously - what will look like a fairy tale a few generations down the line, is ugly, drenched in blood and takes place on a continent that will be ruined by an endless war and The Others. The reader might be aware that Sansa’s childish dreams have come true but Sansa won’t probably even remember what being a child was like.

Same goes for Jon’s not-so-childish dreams. Of course, on the surface, the only thing that Sansa has that he has ever shown interest in is red hair, but a closer look at his fantasy about Val and lording over Winterfell, is pretty revealing:

I would need to steal her if I wanted her love, but she might give me children. I might someday hold a son of my own blood in my arms. A son was something Jon Snow had never dared dream of, since he decided to live his life on the Wall. I could name him Robb. Val would want to keep her sister’s son, but we could foster him at Winterfell, and Gilly’s boy as well. Sam would never need to tell his lie. We’d find a place for Gilly too, and Sam could come visit her once a year or so. Mance’s son and Craster’s would grow up brothers, as I once did with Robb.

He wanted it, Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. 

It’s a pretty picture he paints here but what doesn’t really feature is Val, as we and Jon know her. Jon dreams pretty blatantly about recreating the Winterfell of his childhood, with the wildling children taking his place, his son taking Robb’s place and he himself becoming Ned. But he doesn’t dream about a wildling princess who walks 500 miles uphill through Other-infested territory, a warrior queen, or even a mother of dragons here. The space for the imaginary Mrs. Snow is entirely shaped by Catelyn (the only mother Jon has ever known), and how he wishes Catelyn would have been.

He imagines Val primarily as a mother and caregiver. Romantic love is a side-effect and not one Jon even appears to desire, describing stealing Val to be loved by her in a way that seems like it is too much of an effort. Her heroics, her independence, her qualities as anything but a mother never get a place in Jon’s fantasies.

And ironically, as Jon disregards Val’s personality in order to make his fantasy work, his fantasy is shared by hardly any female character whose point of view we have seen. (Westerosi girls are action girls.) The dream of quiet domesticity is something that we’ve seen only one character seriously fantasizing about as a possible and desirable future:

She pictured the two of them sitting together in a garden with puppies in their laps, or listening to a singer strum upon a lute while they floated down the Mander on a pleasure barge. If I give him sons, he may come to love me. She would name them Eddard and Brandon and Rickon, and raise them all to be as valiant as Ser Loras. And to hate Lannisters, too. In Sansa’s dreams, her children looked just like the brothers she had lost. Sometimes there was even a girl who looked like Arya.

Sansa’s fantasy about Willas Tyrell is truly the missing half of Jon’s fantasy. They both want sons, they both think that love is secondary to marriage itself and requires effort. (I guess Ned and Catelyn’s relationship might have planted that idea.) And between Jon and Sansa’s fantasies they have the whole set of imaginary sons and daughters to replace their dead and missing siblings. There’s Robb, Arya, Bran, Rickon, and even a Ned. Interestingly enough only they themselves are missing.

And it’s with those children Sansa’s dream reveals itself to be Jon’s (plus puppies and a boat (but she’s thirteen, so what?)) - that it’s about Winterfell and their family just like they used to be. Replacing their parents with themselves to recreate their childhood. 

The thing about Jon wanting this, having always wanted it, is that there is only one girl who knows what the Winterfell of his childhood was like and who honestly wants the same thing and is not yearning for adventure, vengeance, a throne, or power above all.

And just like Jon is the only hero left for Sansa, Sansa is the only person who fits that bill. (And if Sansa’s interactions with the problem-child known as Sweetrobin are anything to go by, then she has real potential to be a great mother one day and as such would be indeed the sort of mother Jon always wished Catelyn would have been.)

*

As for the reader, the readership will be largely fine with R+L=J. After all Jon is the closest thing the series has to a traditional hero. Regardless of his heritage, fandom expects dragon riding and Others-defeating and getting the Iron Throne or something. And the ones who don’t “because GRRM is always subverting expectations and tropes - or should be” are usually so well-versed in those tropes that they know and accept Jon as a secret Targaryen as a real possibility. The former type of reader will easily and happily swallow R+L=J if it is revealed and the latter will complain that it’s lame because they have guessed it all along. 

But what the readers have in common is that they think it inevitable that Jon is going to be special because the narrative has done everything to convince them that he will be. Anything else would be an epic letdown. For that reason alone, him being a Targaryen would probably please a lot of people.

But here’s a fun idea - what if Jon is a Targaryen not just in the way that pleases (dragon-riding, special snowflake-yness, “I predicted this since the Stone Age”) but also in the way that doesn’t? 

Because there are some fun facts about the Targaryens, about the things that are unique to them: It’s not just dragon-riding, it’s not just sporadically-appearing madness, it’s also voluntary sibling incest. (Yes, let’s talk about that.)

In at least three cases, that we know of, Targaryen sibling incest has been not just voluntary but also politically absolutely pointless (Aemon the Dragonknight/Queen Naerys, Aegon IV and Daena, Bloodraven/Shiera Seastar/Bittersteel). These people didn’t bang each other (Or just indulged in some legendary public yearning. Same difference.) because it kept the blood pure. They banged each other because they wanted to bang each other and no one else would do.

These cases illustrate that Targaryens didn’t just commit incest because it was convenient or because they lacked the biological impulse not to do it. (Although they clearly lacked it in general.) They also committed incest because they were actually attracted to their siblings. 

And yet Targaryen sibling incest has served barely any purpose in the story so far. If it existed to explain an obsession with keeping the blood pure or congenital madness, cousin marriage Habsburg-style would have sufficed. (But actual Targaryen cousin marriage gets so little mention that there is only one time it is featured with characters of note. Although calling Rhaegar/Elia cousins is actually somewhat of a stretch.) Backstory-wise it has never been important. So far the only purpose it has served in the narrative is “the Targaryens are weird and that makes Jaime and Cersei less weird.” Which is not a lot, considering it’s a big, pink elephant that comes up over and over again.

Targaryen sibling incest might have been just the Chekov’s Gun for Jaime and Cersei but it’s an extremely well-developed gun, which continues to hang prominently on the wall. Perhaps too much for it to be irrelevant now. But if Jaime/Cersei was just a warning shot - the first one instead of the first and the last one - so the audience will feel safe seeing it on the wall… now that would explain why we are still getting stories and references galore to the incestuous Targaryen marriages and relationships five books and three prequel novellas later when Jaime and Cersei aren’t even a thing anymore.

If Jon/Sansa happens, GRRM can just rest on his patented troll-face and point out every single time he mentioned the Targaryen’s fondness for sibling incest as foreshadowing. And suddenly it would have a point because it narratively legitimizes Jon/Sansa. 

It also paves the way for making Jon/Sansa potentially a lot less strange to Jon and more acceptable to Westeros in general. And it would also further legitimize Jon’s claim to be a Targaryen. Jon Snow/Stark would never marry his (ex-)sister. But to Westeros, that Jon Targaryen does, goes a long way of proving that he is who he claims to be.

*

And if Jon is going to get released from the NW (a major requirement for his Targaryen-ness to matter in the first place) and marry -  his marriage will need to work on three levels in order to feel well-rounded to the audience. A personal one (it would be weird if Jon married someone he doesn’t know at all), a narrative one (the audience would need to know that character and consider them important enough), and a political one (so there would be a narrative reason for them to marry other than pulling a Game of Thrones-Talisa “let’s just do it because we feel like that” situation.)

Westeros has not many female characters who are simultaneously relevant on all three levels right now. Yet, Sansa’s relevance on every of these levels is off the charts. As a POV character, she is narratively relevant, as Jon’s family she is important on a personal level to Jon and politically, her relevance to Jon is probably even larger than they both could currently comprehend.

She is high up in line to inherit the North, the Riverlands, and Harrenhal and will be for as long either Rickon, Bran, and Edmure’s kid have not children of their own. That Sansa has potentially so much power in Westeros makes her hand in marriage literally worth killing for. And not just random people but those with a stronger claim to the North and the Riverlands. Her mere existence puts her family in danger.

Yes, we all like to imagine she’s gonna be Westeros’ Elizabeth I: Independent, Single Woman, Queen in the North and perhaps even Sansa Stark, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord (Lady?) of the Seven Kingdoms and  Protector of the Realm …. but I don’t think Sansa will be Elizabeth I. If anyone she could parallel Elizabeth of York. (At least the murdered younger brothers fit.)

I mean, I love the idea of her winning the Iron Throne in the end but I have serious doubts that it will happen. And anything less than ruling over all of Westeros would be really dangerous for Sansa and even more dangerous for anyone preceding her in the line of succession.

Just look at Littlefinger attempting to murder an easily-led child just speculating on Sansa’s claim, even though she has been disinherited, is wanted for murder and married. Unmarried Sansa would be catnip to every murderous, ambitious jerk in the realm. 

And to Jon as the guy in charge of any place where the North matters, Sansa being married to a Tywin, a Ramsay, a Victarion Greyjoy type of person would be a political problem.

I know that Dany with her three dragons/weapons of mass destruction looks like the better political option for Jon, marriage-wise. But gaining dragons is nice but not vital if Jon manages to not make enemies out of Dany or her dragons. (In which case, marriage would not be in the cards anyway.)

Not losing influence in the North, however, is vital. And every potential husband of Sansa’s would have the opportunity and motive to fuck over Jon politically. To kill whatever is left of Jon’s family. To make a second Lady Hornwood out of Sansa.

That’s why it’s so important that Sansa marries someone who isn’t a creep and who she can trust that he cares about her for a reason other than her potential inheritance. Anyone else could be deadly to her and her family. (And she’s been there, done that already.) But who can and would Sansa trust to be that person? Probably someone who she knows cared about her before she became an heiress to all that potential power. 

So actually, Jon  whether he is king or simply an landless, poor ex-Lord Commander, is her ideal political match.

Of course, if Jon survives and people know he’s Rhaegar’s son, it would give him a pretty good shot at the Iron Throne. And a more certain shot at gaining a “little” kingdom, so he (with his legitimate claim) would leave whoever actually sits on the Iron Throne alone.

But it’s not just the idea of R+L=J that makes people believe he will be king. Or that he “accidentally” gets called “king” repeatedly. 

For example by Mormont’s raven:

“King,” croaked the raven. The bird flapped across the air to land on Mormont’s shoulder. “King,” it said again, strutting back and forth.

“He likes that word,” Jon said, smiling.

“An easy word to say. An easy word to like.”

“King,” the bird said again.

“I think he means for you to have a crown, my lord.”

“The realm has three kings already, and that’s two too many for my liking.” Mormont stroked the raven under the beak with his finger, but all the while his eyes never left Jon Snow. 

and also by Robert:

“Kings are a rare sight in the north.” 

  Robert snorted. “More likely they were hiding under the snow. Snow, Ned!” 

No, one major piece of evidence for everyone who believes R+L=J is the Kingsguard hanging around the Tower of Joy after learning of Aerys, Rhaegar and Aegon’s death. They should have gone to Viserys. But if Jon is Rhaegar’s legitimate son, they would have stayed to protect him - as he would be the legitimate king of Westeros.

So if you are like Dany or any other Targaryen loyalist (or Stannis, actually) and reject the idea of the “right of conquest/might makes right” claim to the throne (because that is a free-for-all) he already is king.

(But then if you reject the right of conquest, Robb’s disappeared will and the fact that Bran and Rickon aren’t dead, (so basically everything) Sansa is also already Queen in the North.)

But it’s not that Sansa is kind of Queen if you squint reality away.  She gets repeatedly foreshadowed as queen and it is a lot less subtle considering that was the point of her engagement with Joffrey. Sansa even had plans to be the sort of queen that people would love. But even after that falls through, people don’t entirely stop thinking about her in those terms.

Like Tyrion:

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. 

And perhaps Littlefinger:

“….What little peace and order the five kings left us will not long survive the three queens, I fear.”

Cersei, however, despite fearing a prophesied younger, more beautiful queen never seems to suspect Sansa of being the one in her POVs. Fandom, as it does with everything else, disagrees with Cersei’s assessment.

So here’s the one million dollar question: If all that foreshadowing and claims pan out and Sansa is gonna be (someone’s) queen and Jon’s gonna be king for real… isn’t the most likely scenario that it’s gonna be the same throne? 

Especially, if we are talking about the throne in the North? If Jon is Rhaegar’s son the chances of him becoming King of the North, replacing the Starks, are pretty dim. As long as one of Ned’s children is alive, Jon will not be widely seen as the better option… unless his children are also Ned Stark’s grandchildren, legitimizing him as a “Stark” through marriage. There is more than enough precedent for that. Like Mance’s favorite story of Bael the Bard. People seem to think that the story is a way to foreshadow the R+L=J reveal but what if it is foreshadowing for an actual future event?

It is also hardly the only potential foreshadowing for Jon/Sansa. People who believe in Jon/Dany put a lot of faith in Dany seeing a blue rose growing from a wall in the House of the Undying and hearing a howling wolf while being in the Dothraki Sea (her last chapter in ADWD.) 

In Jon’s last chapter in ADWD, he gets stabbed. Jon calls out for Ghost in the same way Robb calls out for Grey Wind before he dies. But we never learn if Ghost howls when Jon gets stabbed the way Grey Wind howled when Robb was hit by multiple arrows. It stands to reason though because not only Dany hears a howling wolf in the distance around that time but also Sansa. In her last chapter in AFFC (which shares ADWD’s timeline (and is most definitely after Jon became Lord Commander) and therefore could fit the timeframe of Jon’s assassination extremely well) she hears something that sounds like a howling “ghost wolf, big as mountains” while coming down the Eyrie.

That far away-carrying sound of a person in need reeks of magic, of fate, and of a high-brow literary reference: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The interesting thing here is that not only does Sansa’s location support the reference to Brontë’s romance, the sound she hears is described pretty precisely as Ghost and it’s so loud and all-encompassing that she thinks it’s the wind. The howling wolf Dany hears, on the other hand, is far off in the distance.

But Jon does more than just getting stabbed in his last ADWD chapter. His stream of consciousness about his siblings in the same chapter earlier also has him associating Sansa with Ygritte:

Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow.

Which is spectacular (even if you disregard it as romantic foreshadowing), since the two rarely think about each other at all. Sansa’s POV shows her only consciously thinking of Jon when she prays at the Battle of Blackwater and when she is told he was made Lord Commander (again in her last AFFC chapter, which is with some degree of likelihood is around the same time Jon thinks about her):

She had not thought of Jon in ages. He was only her half brother, but still … with Robb and Bran and Rickon dead, Jon Snow was the only brother that remained to her. I am a bastard too now, just like him. Oh, it would be so sweet, to see him once again. But of course that could never be. Alayne Stone had no brothers, baseborn or otherwise.

Jon’s conscious thoughts of Sansa are nearly equally rare. He says that Winterfell is hers to Stannis and remembers that she told him to always compliment a girl’s name. But there is no conscious reflection of her being Tyrion’s wife, for example, which seems like the thing that should be at least worth a thought. Or that she is wanted for the murder of the guy who had their father executed, succeeding where Robb and half of Westeros failed. But nothing.

If one believes in dramatic irony, it is that thoughtlessness in regards to each other (and possibly Sansa’s anvilicious “that could never be” when thinking about seeing him again) that gives them the best chances of being the first (if not only) Starks to reunite.

Especially since they have never interacted on any of these nearly 6,000 pages. Which in combination with so little thought about each other, reeks of authorial intent rather than GRRM missing the opportunity to do so.

Because that way, any reunion between them will be fresh and new - the first time we see them interact and not merely passing each other by, like it briefly happens in AGOT. (Jon describes Sansa as “radiant” there, which is a weird nearly-Targaryen-like description for a sister.)

But even if Jon is that weird, he is still a step up from Sansa’s usual "suitors”: a collection of old creepers, murderers and kin-slayers. Maybe one day someone like Willas Tyrell or Harry the Heir or the Great Other will turn up to be a good man to Sansa. But considering how important marriage has been to Sansa’s storyline, resolving it with a last minute white-knight-type character addition is so much of a narrative cop-out that it’s practically deus ex machina.

(I know some people like to imagine Sansa as the prize a male character gets after he stops being a creeper and becomes a “good guy” (although that’s rarely how they put it.) Personally, I find the idea of Sansa becoming a reward, even it is just a partial purpose of her character, creepy.)

Of course, other people find Jon/Sansa just as creepy because of their (pseudo-)incest. Ironically, it’s exactly this sort of repulsion which makes me believe in Jon/Sansa as a real possibility. 

See, without the incest, Jon/Sansa is a tired, tired trope about a damsel in distress and a dragon-riding/slaying hero. Two puzzle pieces that fit in the way they are similar and yet complimentary opposites. Boring.

But with the pseudo-incest it becomes the most outrageous and surprising plot twist. No one in the fandom, not even the people who ship it have any money on it happening. I don’t have have any money on it and I am writing a 6,000 words essay about it. 

It is ultimately one of the most surprising plot developments in terms of “love/marriage” that can possibly happen. ASOIAF lives from its plot twists. To discount this one solely because we won’t see a “positive” portrayal of pseudo-sibling incest is premature.

*

But the ultimate irony for the audience here though is not that Jon gets to be a “real” Targaryen with all that this entails or that of all “smart” political matches he can and should make, Sansa is the best one, but what I mentioned in the beginning - that the average reader wishes these two characters well and gets stabbed in the eyes for that.

We don’t want Jon and Sansa to die or suffer in the end. We want them to get what they want, we want them to be happy. But we also expect better from GRRM than a happy ending. Our perception of the world of ASOIAF is that it’s a crapsack world where happiness cannot exist without being tainted, that wishes and wants only come true at a high price.

And Jon wanted to be important, he wanted to be Stark, he wanted a loving family, he wanted Winterfell, he wanted legitimacy, he wanted to be a hero, he wanted to be Ned. 

Sansa wanted to be queen, to be important, to be loved for herself, wanted revenge, wanted to survive, to have her family (or what’s left of it (which to her knowledge the last time we’ve seen her is just Jon)) back, wanted to marry a good man, a kind man, a hero, a prince. 

And the readers, the majority of them, who don’t actively hate either of them, would like their wishes to come true after all what they went through. 

Jon/Sansa, especially as king and queen will give everyone everything they wish or wished for. Every single thing. And half of that Jon and Sansa won’t want anymore (because they are so gonna be over fairy tales, heroism, and thrones by the end of the series) and the other half they won’t want because the idea of pairing up won’t come to them naturally either.

I know it’s super-speculative of me to say that they will marry without being in love with each other. But I don’t think that Jon/Sansa makes sense in a scenario in which they end up together because they fell in love first - which is the other way Jon/Sansa could happen.

I don’t see that happening because 1 - it’s anti-climactic as far as story-telling is concerned, 2 - it’s too happy, 3 - nothing good ever happens to people in ASOIAF who fall in love with each other without good reason, 4 - that Jon/Sansa is an ideal political match should matter and if they are majorly into each other it won’t matter very much at all.

*

So here we have two characters we wish well and in a way they both get everything they wanted in life at some point in their lives. They get what we wanted them to get. 

And maybe some day that the timeline of the books certainly won’t cover, they might be able to arrange themselves with that. After all, they are similar people with similar dreams and their marriage will be the closest simulacrum to the childhood they both have began to idealize and idolize. 

And Jon might just have inherited the Targaryen gene to find a sister attractive in that way and Sansa, having been portrayed as super-distant from Jon and at least sibling-like in everyone’s recollection and the audience’s perception of their relationship might get over the ex-sibling thing. One day, they might circle all the way to the beginning and become the family they’ve lost and be happy.

And maybe there will be some twisted poetry and romanticism in Jon/Sansa as Ned and Catelyn 2.0. The two had after all one of the healthiest, happiest, and because of that perhaps even most romantic relationships in ASIOAF (to be fair, the bar is low and the competition practically non-existent.) So even the romantics might get something they wished for and yet didn’t. But no one, not the characters, not the readers, would consider the far away possibility of happiness a happy ending. It might be everything they want or wanted in a way, it might make them happy one day, but if it is the rational decision that I presume it would be, it would be merely the least terrible of all choices. No one’s gonna be happy with that - not even people who would actually like the idea of Jon/Sansa.

GRRM, in his trolling glory, promised a bittersweet ending. Giving us something that we want but in a way we don’t, with happiness as something that might occur - but only after we won’t be able to read about it anymore, is most certainly bittersweet.

But then, unlike Jon/Sansa itself, that is my one certain prediction about the series - that no matter who lives and dies, who marries whom or who’s gonna be sad, and forever alone in the end - that all we get in the end is the hope for happiness, not happiness itself.

* original illlustrations by James Jean

Brave. Sansa took a deep breath. I am a Stark, yes, I can be brave.

but the same blood flows through both your hearts. you need her, as she needs you…

JONSAS!!!!!!!!! JONSAS!!!!!!!!!!! HOEMYGODDDDDDDD

Jonsa Halloween 2023: Day 01— Resurrection

—sansa discovers something going on with her newly resurrected brother

@jonsa-halloween