Admit It, You Were Wrong About Sansa Stark

The Big Picture

Sansa Stark's adaptability and ability to learn from her enemies makes her a formidable character in Game of Thrones .
Sansa's character arc shows significant development as she embraces her role as a Lannister prisoner and later escapes from Ramsay Bolton.
Sansa's actions at the Battle of the Bastards prove her worth as a leader and show that she played the game of thrones and came out as a winner.

Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) is one of the most misunderstood Game of Thrones characters. Although Sansa herself attests to being guided by certain antagonists like Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) or Petyr Baelish, aka "Littlefinger" (Aidan Gillen), it would be wrong to villainize Sansa by comparing her to them. In reality, Sansa is the hero of the Battle of the Bastards and Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) obvious successor, as well as the one who shares the most in common with him out of all the Stark children.

Fiercely loyal to her family and the North, Sansa is an astute judge of character who acts with honor. Just like Ned, her adolescence is shaped by war and the loss of her father and brother, and after growing up in a court far from the North, she comes back determined to always have the North's best interest at heart, inheriting a lordship she never expected to come into. While Game of Thrones excelled at crafting morally gray characters overall, Sansa is an honorable character who skews far more toward being a heroine than a villain.

Game Of Thrones

TV-MA

Nine noble families fight for control over the lands of Westeros while an ancient enemy returns after being dormant for millennia.

Release Date April 17, 2011 Cast Peter Dinklage , Lena Headey , Nikolaj Coster-Waldau , Emilia Clarke , Kit Harington , Sophie Turner , Maisie Williams Main Genre Drama Seasons 8 Website http://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones/ Studio HBO Creator David Benioff, D.B. Weiss Expand

Sansa Stark's Greatest Strength Is Her Adaptability

In Season 1, Sansa Stark has childish ideals, desiring a fairy tale marriage to Prince Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) not because she craves power, but because of her naive faith in chivalric order. While much of Sansa's character arc in Game of Thrones focuses on her losing her innocence, one of the best examples of this occurs in Season 1 during the Hand's Tournament in Episode 4, when Sansa's expectations are shattered as she witnesses the Mountain (Conan Stevens) violently killing another knight.

After this disruption of her worldview, Sansa experiences some of the most significant character development of the Game of Thrones protagonists as she adapts to her role as a Lannister prisoner, learning all the while from Cersei Lannister, and later, when she's "freed" from King's Landing, similarly learning from Littlefinger. This same trait is also what helps her persevere and ultimately escape from her time as Ramsay Bolton's (Iwan Rheon) wife. Sansa uses what she's learned from her enemies to anticipate their moves and read when they're lying, rather than adopt their strategies.

Of All the Stark Children, Sansa Is Ned's Obvious Successor

Sansa Stark is often wrongfully characterized and treated like her goals are identical to Cersei Lannister’s thirst for power, when, in reality, the Game of Thrones character that Sansa shares the most in common with is her father Ned. The Lord of Winterfell is a character who himself was not infallible, evidenced by his initial mishandling of what he believed to be his sister Lyanna Stark’s (Aisling Franciosi) "kidnapping."

It would be easy, in a surface-level way, to assume Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and Robb Stark (Richard Madden), or even Arya (Maisie Williams), have the most in common with Ned. After all, Sansa never fights, and Ned famously wields the Valyrian steel sword "Ice." However, when Ned needs to solve something, unlike many characters in Game of Thrones, he often isn't so hasty to draw steel, a characteristic that might stem from his haste and the miscalculations that led to him killing Arthur Dayne (Luke Roberts) in an unfair duel, the truth of which is only revealed in Bran's (Isaac Hempstead Wright) Three-Eyed Raven visions. Just as Sansa is often considered weak, some have similarly characterized Ned's kindness as weakness — in particular when he warns Cersei to leave Westeros.

Ned and Sansa also share very similar backstories. Like Sansa, Ned grew up thinking his older brother would become Lord of Winterfell, and, like his eldest daughter, Ned also spent a portion of his childhood outside the North. While Sansa lived several years with the Lannisters in King's Landing, Ned Stark grew up at the Eyrie in the Vale, where he and Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) were fostered by Jon Arryn. During Robert's Rebellion, Ned's older brother and father are burned alive by Aerys Targaryen, an important formative tragedy that alters the course of his life and eventually results in Ned Stark becoming the Lord of Winterfell, just as Robb and Ned's deaths during the wars of Sansa's childhood lead to her coming into power in the North.Game of Thrones is rife with foreshadowing and important parallels, so the innumerable comparisons are likely no coincidence.

Sansa Stark Played the Game of Thrones and Won

Although Sansa never wields a sword, she triumphs at the Battle of the Bastards, rallying troops from the Vale that swoop in when it appears the battle is lost. Without her actions behind the scenes and her willingness to temporarily align with Littlefinger, Jon Snow would have died, and Winterfell and the North would have stayed under the Boltons' control. Some have criticized Sansa's "inactive" role throughout much of the series or claim that her reservations about Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) stem from jealousy or are otherwise unfounded. However, regardless of audience feelings on the ending of Game of Thrones, Sansa's reservations about Daenerys turn out to be true, as evidenced by the latter's cruelty that plays out in King's Landing.

In Season 1, Cersei Lannister tells Ned Stark, "When you play the game of thrones, you win, or you die."Although Sansa Stark gives up on aspiring to sit on the Iron Throne when she's still just a girl, she emerges from Game of Thrones as the Queen in the North — and ultimately one of the biggest winners among the series' main cast of players.

Game of Thrones is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

Watch on Max