A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 44) Sansa III: He’s Not The Price, He’s Just a Very Naughty Boy

Previously on my life, my other computer couldn't be bothered to import my passwords from Firefox to Chrome like I told it to. I threw it into the sea in an act of rage.

Previously on my life, I got into all the classes I wanted next semester, and by that I mean I have a schedule that never goes past 4 p.m. and doesn't involve me setting foot on campus on Fridays. Tremble in awe, ye mortals.

Previously on my life, I got an oil change. My heavenly chariot has once again attained Asgardian standards of ludicrous awesomitude.

(Previously on my life, I saw the movie Thor, finally.  Here is my two-word review of that: "(smash) ANOTHER!")

Okay. I think I've gotten into a mindset self-centered enough to (paradoxically) empathize with Sansa here, so here we go.

(Ahem.) Previously on A Blog of Thrones, Sansa Stark had the worst Bring Your Daughter To Court Day, Like, Ever.  There wasn't even a pony or anything, just a bunch of homeless bums whining about how her dreamy prince's grandfather had pillaged and burned all that they held dear. Man, they should go get real jobs or something.


Sansa Stark, the most awesomest princess ever, is supping with Jeyne Poole, the luckiest commoner ever. Unfortunately, Jeyne lacks the wits to understand that when Sansa says "Father didn't send Loras because of his leg" (paraphrased), she means Father's leg, not Loras's.  Because of course that makes perfect sense.

There was more to that story that Sansa didn't relate to Jeyne. It doesn't have anything to do with Ned's leg, but maybe the poor child needed this extra bit of information in order to put it all together: That nice man Littleprick also thought that Ned should have sent the sooper-dreamy Ser Loras instead of those random other guys (including Lord Beric, who is waaaaaaaaaay too old at twenty-two).  He didn't bother telling Sansa why, but instead just told her that "Life is not a song."

Wait, Lord Beric is too old at twenty-two? Paging Roger Moore.

Dammit, broke character.  Well, that couldn't have lasted much longer.  It's too dim in Sansa's head to think.  Where was I?

She had a wish dream that Joffrey had killed the white hart they're all off hunting for her.

In the songs, the knights never killed magical beasts, they just went up to them and touched them and did them no harm, but she knew Joffrey liked hunting, especially the killing part.

Good grief, Sansa, that's a prophetic wishdream.

Sansa was certain her prince had no part in murdering Jory and those other poor men; that had been his wicked uncle, the Kingslayer.

Yeah, Sansa, and Joff has grown up surrounded by people like his unclefather, so why should you expect oh right you're a moron.

(Please understand that I'm not beating up on Sansa because she's a woman. If Robb were a POV character I'd sure be beating up on him just as much - well, in subsequent books, at any rate - since, like Sansa, he appears to think entirely with his genitals.)

So anyway Sansa proceeds to tell Jeyne about some other goings-on at court.

"There was a black brother," Sansa said, "begging men for the Wall, only he was kind of old and smelly."

Okay wait. That's Yoren. I know it's Yoren because two hundred and fifty-three pages from now he's going to be waiting in a crowd at the Sept of Baelor with the intention of taking Ned to the Wall, and I refuse to believe that the critically understaffed Night's Watch has two different recruiters scouring the dungeons of King's Landing.  But, hang on, Yoren first showed up in Ned's office one hundred and twenty-six pages ago.

Yoren spends three hundred and seventy-nine pages twiddling his thumbs in King's Landing.  There are two possible reasons for this: either he is a lazy bum and the Night's Watch is even more screwed than we thought, or GRRM has absolutely no concept of time, and those three hundred and seventy-nine pages encompass less than a week. Which, as I'll explain later, is basically batfrak impossible.

Sansa and Jeyne go off to steal lemon cakes (drink) from the kitchen.  The next morning, Lord Beric rides off.  Then Arya shows up, and it's about half a page before they're throwing fruit at each other. Actually Arya just threw a fruit at Sansa and got it all over her dress.  Um, so Syrio is teaching her how to chase cats and walk on her hands and all that but he's not teaching her restraint.  Ain't nobody got time for that "with great power comes great responsibility" shtick here (perhaps because every king in this series - with the possible exception of Stannis - is bloody useless, and even Daenerys goes down several notches on the awesome meter once she gets a city full of subjects).

Then... then it kind of reads like Sansa has a wolf dream, which is impossible since Lady's dead. ...right?

(Holy f*ck.  The narration skips over Lady's execution - and the show doesn't explicitly show it.  Ned supposedly sends four men north with the body, but Bran, who wakes up in the very next chapter, never registers their arrival.  WHAT.)

(Okay, later on, in ADWD, either Bran or Jon has a wolf dream that explicitly states that two direwolves are dead... can't be bothered to check and see if they mentioned the dead ones' sexes - since I guess it could be Shaggydog - but I think they did.  Still, WHAT.)

So then Ned drags them both before them and Arya gives a sickly-sweet apology.

Arya raised her eyes. "I'm sorry, Father. I was wrong and I beg my sweet sister's forgiveness."

Either Arya's acting wildly out of character in this entire chapter, or Sansa is displaying an early trait of that whole unreliable-narrator thing that pops up later on.

Ned is sending them home:

"I want you back in Winterfell for your own safety.  Three of my men were cut down like dogs not a league from where we sit..."

Hey wait your original plan was to bugger off before that happened, but then Littleprick promised to take him to a whorehouse.  No, not like that.  So... I mean, I am deliberately cutting off the part of the quote above where Ned complains that Robert doesn't give a fig about his oldest friend, but I think my point stands about how Ned was ready to leave before that went down and he realized how apathetic Robert is.

But then he got another clue about the whole Jon Arryn thing - sort of?  Kind of?  And stuck around in King's Landing for things to get worse.

Sansa insisted. "I don't want someone brave and gentle, I want him."

You... you don't seem to understand the things that come out of your own mouth, do you?

Anyway, Sansa then says that Joffrey is nothing at all like that stupid old drunken king, and Papa Stark has an epiphany. Only about two hundred pages after the rest of us. Hooray.