“Battle of the Bastards” GOT 6.9

Alrighty, I’m not usually one for this sort of Monday morning quarterbacking of my favorite shows, but I do read what other the luminaries, analysts, pseudo-intellectuals and dilettantes have to say and all with equal relish. They usually cover all the angles that need to be covered and some that shouldn’t. This time I think I have something that may different enough to be worth reading.

I have a couple of points, we’ll call them theories, about this episode and I think I’ll just jump right into this main one: Sansa Stark, previously the stupidest girl in Westeros, is about to make her bones as the most conniving and dangerous woman on any continent and she doesn’t need dragons to win the title.

How do I support that view? Sansa has become a master manipulator and unflinching pragmatist. We first knew her as a girl with a head full of romantic, simplistic, honestly selfish ideas who wept and pleaded and collapsed in the face of the real world around her. She was, in short, the classic damsel in distress and it was disgusting on various levels.

Joffrey first showed her what the real world looked like but she didn’t accept it. She clung to the idea that if she could get away from this awful person, who in her delusional mind was an aberration, she’d be safe and protected by her family because of their inherent righteousness. She was naïve. Cersei further tormented her, especially during the Battle of Blackwater and Tywin Lannister wed her to a person she thought a monster.

This was her first turning point. Amid all these glowing, beautiful Lannisters, only Tyrion, whom she found physically revolting, made any effort to treat her decently. Sansa was forced to confront the idea that the world was neither what it appeared nor what she expected. This idea of things defying expectations was further reinforced when the Hound, whom she had long feared, had the chance to do with her as he wished, but he had a change of heart and left her unmolested when he fled King’s Landing.

At this point Sansa was existing in a world she didn’t understand but somehow thought was unjust. Yet, like many abused people that sense of injustice was steadily eroded by the day to day reality that justice didn’t matter—survival did. So she could almost be forgiven for falling victim to the skeevy, silver-tongued charms of Littlefinger and seizing on Joffrey’s death to escape with him. More importantly her creepy-time with Baelish was essential to her getting through her thick skull that pretty doesn’t equal good.

To be fair to Sansa, for the bulk of her life she was raised with ideals of her parents. Ned Stark was so rigidly honorable, so stridently lawful as to incite seething resentment among bannerman like the Boltons, who had been loyal for centuries. Her mother on the other hand was committed to Sansa being the highborn, southern lady, and giving her all the skills and attitudes to walk in that world.

This was Catelyn living vicariously through her daughter, and doing her a tremendous injustice. Catelyn wanted for Sansa the life that should have been her own before she was shipped north to wed the dour second son of what is essentially a barbarian empire within the Seven Kingdoms. She traded silks for animal skins and summer wine for charred deer meat and she wanted better for Sansa.

Given who her parents were and the expectations of beauty and pure justice they drilled into her, she can almost be forgiven for being so slow to get a clue. She had to be hurt repeatedly to understand that getting hurt or hurting were the only options in this world. As Cersei once presciently observed to Oberyn Martel, “They hurt little girls everywhere.” This is not only a fact for Sansa but one of the main themes of GOT if you step back and look through the long lens. Coming to grips with that fact has been key to her evolution.

Ramsay Bolton was, of course the final straw in her conversion from naïve girl to dangerous woman. His abuse and the powerlessness she felt at his hands hardened Sansa once and for all and allowed her to overcome the training of her childhood and become a woman ready to thrive in this world, which she is now doing.

Many have wondered why Sansa would keep secret from Jon that the Knights of the Vale, their cousin’s army, one of the only forces still whole, was just down the road at Moat Cailin. The obvious answer was that this army was under the de facto command of Littlefinger and Sansa didn’t trust him.

While true, that answer is also wrong. Remember Sansa has spent the last several years of her life being led by men who failed horribly and abused by the men who beat her champions. She rejected Littlefinger’s help because it was not on her terms and because she thought she might be able to get the Blackfish to serve her directly by right of her lineage. When it became clear that the Blackfish was not coming and that Jon could not raise a large enough army she reached back to Littlefinger for lack of a better option, but she had a twist in mind.

Remember Sansa never reveals the presence of the Vale forces even after she summons them. Why not? Sansa repeatedly tells Jon that his army is too small yet he and his counselors insist they must strike. She is yet again watching powerlessly as one of the “good men” in her life races to an honorable but foolish doom that will deliver her to her death or unimaginable torment. Jon’s only answer is that he’ll protect her, to which Sansa replies, “No one can protect anyone.” But the subtext there is that she plans to protect herself. Sansa is about to seize power because she knows that’s the only chance for any sort of protection.

When they were trying to raise their army we saw tension between Sansa and Jon stemming from the murkiness of the chain of command between a male bastard and a female Stark. Ultimately Jon won that battle by virtue of his reputation as a great warrior who had also risen from the dead—that’s a tough billing to beat. Sansa has seen her options become more and more limited, but in “Battle of the Bastards” she saw a chance to shift the balance of power.

Sansa didn’t summon the Vale forces sooner because Littlefinger is dangerous and she still thought being a true Stark would allow her to lead. When she saw that she was not the leader and that Jon was going to get them killed she pulled her ace.

She didn’t tell Jon, and this is where my theory gets controversial, because she wanted to make sure his army was decimated to the point that she would ride into Winterfell at the head of a force, the Knights of the Vale, which even Jon couldn’t challenge. Sansa more or less plotted the murder of Jon’s allies and the Boltons and their allies so that she could take the North for herself. And she sacrificed her brother Rickon, whom she’d already written off as good as dead, to do it. That’s a real bastard.

Doubt me? Fair enough. But remember that Sansa has now spent years surrounded by the Lannisters, most notably Tywin, Tyrion, and Cersei, as well as Littlefinger, and Roose and Ramsay Bolton. These are the deepest game players in the series. Whatever else Sansa was at the beginning of the series, she was a sponge, always eager to learn the ways of the south, of the court, of power. She’s learned the game and she’s ready to play, and she’ll do what it takes to win because she knows what it means to lose.

Obviously this isn’t a play as deep as we might get from Littlefinger, who almost certainly planned the majority of what has happened throughout the series in Westeros before the first episode. This was almost as impressive though. She saw a fluid situation that could have gone all sorts of wrong for her and she not only salvaged it but eliminated her chief tormentor and de-clawed her chief rival on the fly. She did have to bring a dangerous element on the board to do it but Sansa, despite her faux incredulity, knows Littlefinger’s weakness and she’s betting she can exploit it.

Sansa’s entire sexual experience to date has been comprised of violence and utility (heir creation). She is thoroughly disabused of ideas of romance and glittery, flowery, soft-focused seeexxx! Sex is a burden or a tool for her now and although I doubt she’ll jump in the sack with Baelish anytime soon, I do think she’ll use the promise of it to manipulate him, to play on his one weakness—his creepy attraction for his conflated impression of Sansa and her mother.

To re-cap, Sansa is going to manipulate the cleverest man in Westeros (and possibly her nutty little cousin) in order to command a massive army, cement her seat on the throne of the north, unite the Northern, Vale, and Riverlands houses, and get revenge on her remaining tormentors, the Lannisters and as a bonus the Freys. All it required was murdering a few thousand of Jon’s loyal followers, playing Littlefinger like her harp, and letting her own brother be shot down like a dog. Beware of Sansa. She’s cold, calculating, and much, much smarter than we’ve been led to believe.