“There are gods, she told herself, and there are true knights too. All the stories can’t be lies.”
Sansa Stark (Sansa IV, ACoK)
Two of the most pervasive themes/motifs in Sansa’s narrative are “stories” and “lies.” And so far in the series, they have been tied together in such a cruel and tragic way. Sansa has been told time and time again that she’s a stupid girl; that she is naive and silly and shallow and wrong. She’s been told she needs to learn that “life is not a song.” That she is only lying to herself and that instead she needs to learn to lie to others.
She has been told she was wrong and silly to see the good in others, to have dreams, to want good things for herself, to believe she can have a happy ending, to want things to be beautiful like in the songs, to want to be loved. Truly that is what Sansa is being punished for: for wanting to be loved and give love in return.
She’s been told this so many times; so much so that she has come around to believing it for herself (“Is it all lies, forever and ever, everyone and everything?”) (But a voice inside her whispered, “There are no heroes, in life the monsters win.”) (”No one will ever marry me for love… They only want me for my claim.”) But in the end, it’s the biggest lie of all. It’s a lie she has been told to hurt her, to manipulate her, to make her loose hope, to control her, to break her down. And I hope that by the end of the series, Martin will use Sansa to expose this lie for what it is and prove it wrong.
