Chapters 15 and 16: Ye Olde Direwolfe Incidente
Sansa I
Sansa Stark. Oh my sweet summer child. She has a direwolf (awesome!) named Lady (lame) that she feeds at the table (awesome!) while she thinks judgmental thoughts about her totally awesomer younger sister (lame).
Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for the first use of the word "aurochs." I still don't know exactly what those are. Or why it's a singular noun even though it has an s at the end. Or how to pronounce it because HBO has singularly failed to mention them at all.
But anyway, I can point you to the exact sentence where I decided that Sansa was my least favorite POV character in the books. Here it is.
"Sansa did not really know Joffrey yet, but she was already in love with him."
Oh my sweet summer child.
Show-watchers might be interested to note that we meet both Renly Baratheon and Ser Barristan Selmy waaaaaaaaaay before we get to King's Landing (KL in 'net-lingo). They've apparently come up on business so important that nice Queen Cersei has to call off her breakfast date with Sansa. This is interesting. Did they also come up with word of Dany's movements? I doubt it. There's no reason Cersei would be involved in that plot. You know what? I'm going to fixate on this: why were two members of the small council so eager to confer with the Queen? I mean yeah, it's "until the King returns" with Lord Stark, but still.
Trying to put on my author cap and figure out why George decided to introduce these two characters in a Sansa chapter. To pad it out? To give her something to do? I mean, it is pretty cool how she can figure out who Renly is and that she knows enough about Barristan... Sansa is very much an observer throughout the series. I think she takes an active role in all of two chapters, or close enough to that.
Okay, vague ruminations over. Sansa fawns over the way Joffrey "rescued" Sansa from Ser Ilyn and the Hound - oh my sweet summer child - and compares him to random historical figures. I love this technique. "Someone must have told them about my little maneuver at the Battle of Tannab." We don't need to know who Ser Morgil was (although let's face it, with a name like that, he's obviously evil) or that he even existed, but these offhand references really help with the world-building.
That said, there is no way that an eleven-year-old girl knows the word "adroitly." This is a little bit annoying: one moment she's a near-vapid airhead who can't see what a terrible human being Joffrey is, and the next she can remember lots of details about Barristan Selmy and House Baratheon and use fancy words. So, basically, she's booksmart. Again, she's an observer. This makes sense, but I still find it a tad unrealistic.
Yes, that's right, the guy who's reading a series with ice-zombies, dragons, not-ringwraiths-honest, etc, is knocking it for being unrealistic.
They have a picnic and Joffrey gets her drunk. Given what his mother and her brother are up to, I wouldn't have been surprised if Joff tried to behave very inappropriately. Instead he just takes her to where Robert killed Rhaegar, and then he... oh gods, Joff, put the sword down... no, Joff, what are you doing? Holy crap, Nymeria to the rescue! And Arya again is awesome and throws his sword in the river!
Okay, sweetling, you've figured out that Joff is bad news by now, right?
...right?
Eddard III
It is four freaking days later. Arya is awesome. Either that, or Eddard and Cersei are both incompetent.
Oh.
On a separate thought, I thought the Hound was supposed to be a good tracker.
So Sansa lies about what happens because even though Joff just showed her a glimpse of the evil little sh*t he really is, she's caught up in castles and fairy tales. And then Joff's mother orders her pet killed.
De-freaking-licious.
Now if only that were a wake-up call for the poor girl...
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