Stop Speaking Lady, Start Speaking Warrior
How Sansa Stark is learning to unlearn her education
WARNING: THIS POST IS DARK AND FULL OF SPOILERS.
There is a small moment in the seventh episode of Game of Thrones’s Season 6 that spoke volumes about one character’s development. Sansa, Jon and Davos are canvassing the Starks’ old allies for support in their quest to reclaim Winterfell. One such visit brings them to Bear Island, where little Lyanna Mormont has succeeded her mother and grandfather as the head of House Mormont. Sansa approaches her as one does with a lady, speaking in flattering tones of the “great beauty” she will no doubt become.
Lyanna’s rebuttal is harsh: she will never be a “great beauty”, because her mother wasn’t. But she was a great warrior, she says: and by the look of it, she will be one, too. For the moment, she appears to be a stern, commanding leader, one who is unafraid to openly doubt Sansa’s allegiance to the North by calling her marriage history into question (is she a Bolton or a Lannister?) as well as the legitimacy of Jon’s claim to Winterfell as a bastard, and not a trueborn son of Ned Stark’s. Lyanna doesn’t care about pleasantries: she is the lady of her land, and she rules as one.
Sansa’s journey from Season 1 of the show has been mostly about finding out how her education would fail her in times of peril. Raised to be a proper lady, one who would counsel her husband only when called upon to do so, bear him many children and live out her days quietly in a castle, protected by the men around her, she has found herself helpless and at the mercy of people who use her as a pawn in their game. Betrothed to sadistic Joffrey Lannister, discarded, then forced into two consecutive marriages (one to Tyrion Lannister, and one to another sadist by the name of Ramsay Bolton), sexually molested by her mother’s old suitor Littlefinger, Sansa has found that her family was her only protection. With her mother, father and older brother dead, she has no right to safety: and even now that she has morphed into a much more scarred and determined version of her mother, Sansa still clings to the old rituals and language that she has been taught. That world is gone, but she hasn’t fully realised it yet.
Arya, with whom she used to bicker constantly, opted out much earlier and has so far managed to survive relatively unscathed (at least until episode 7: but nobody expects those stab wounds to kill her, now do we?) It’s not that Arya doesn’t know how to talk to a lady; at an early age, however, she felt that the ability to properly address a woman of high social standing was less important than learning how to wield a sword. Her father Ned understood this and let her follow her calling, possibly hoping that she would eventually come to her senses and yield to her mother’s demands. Her brother Jon gave her Needle, her first and only sword. Arya has always found better allies in men than women: the rebelliousness that sets her apart from other girls is a welcome trait in boys, and she was quick to exploit her ability to pass as male by disguising herself as “Arry”. Like Lyanna, Arya has no aspirations of being a great beauty: in war, beauty is a much less desirable trait than knowing how to stick them with the pointy end before they do the same to you.
The Sansa that dreamt of a charmed life of lemon cakes and singers and quiet wifehood has to stop speaking lady and learn to speak warrior. As attested by her decision to keep her meeting and subsequent correspondence with Littlefinger a secret, her learning curve might be a steep one.
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