Episode 132: A CLASH OF KINGS, SANSA IV: "Smoke on the Water" SHOW NOTES! (Patreon)

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.

And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.

Welcome to the one hundred and thirty-second episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Smoke on the Water: An Analysis of ACOK, Sansa IV,” in which everything is on fire and all Sansa wants is someone trustworthy to talk to, but instead she has Dontos, Sandor, and Cersei. Oh, and in case all that wasn’t enough, she just got her first period.

This episode is brought to you by our NotASmallCouncil:

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack
• Grandmaester Timbob, troubleshooter of systems and designer of circuit boards
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N.
• Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves, Captain of the war galley NIGHT WOLF, the ship that stalks the Seven Seas, and Wielder of the Valyrian Steel trident SUMMONER, the blade that brings the Deep Ones
• Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
• Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
• Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
• Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
• Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
• Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
• Lord Micah, the Quilled Lion, Warden of the West, Herald of the Golden Tooth, Master of the Banefort and the Kraken’s Bane
• Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
• The High Bearded Priest
• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
• Lady Xena Valyrian
• Ser Jack, Lord of Ser Arthur Dayne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen's Sad Prophecy Boys Club
• His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
• Ser Jasper the Cruel, the King’s Justice
• Laurence, Prince of Dorne
• Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of (Old) Bay of Crabs
• Steven the Steadfast, Master of Hounds
• The Blue Winter Rose Knight of Highgarden
• Lady Stephanie
• Lord Anonymous
• Lord Carlos
• Lord Andrew the Restless, a Priest of the Drowned God
• The King's Cook, Nolly (No-lee) Olly (Oh-lee), Master of Cannoli
• Ser Sourcedelica
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• Lord Penchant for Nostalgia
• Queer Alex, Beyonce's Favorite Stan and Bastard of Chromatica, Rainbow Commander of the Theydes and Gentlethems
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• Lord Adam T
• Lady Alexandra of Tarth
• Ser Kristoph Logas, Bloody Scorpion of the Red Field, Defender of the Letter of Kin, and the Wolverine of house Qorgyle
• Lady Elizabeth, Mistress of Horse (Faced Lesbians)
• Ser Josh Snow Bastard Bounty Hunter of the North
• Ser Veyor, Chief of Parties in the Frozen Wastes
• Lord Peter
• Lady Ashley
• The Dead Sheppard Reborn, Preacher of the Poor Fellows
• Marshall Harrison—Absent, shipwrecked in the Jade Sea
• Grave-Robb Stark, the Cadaver King and Horror of Harrenhal
• Olaf, proponent of establishing a feudal, pseudodemocratic system of Great Councils, wherein every count votes
• Ser Tim: The Knight Who Was Guided By Voices
• Lord Nick
• Thucydides, Lord of Plagues
• Ser Jack, Lord of Ser Arthur Dayne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen’s Sad Prophecy Boys Club
• Lord Gene the Splendid, Master of Coin, Warden of Tampa Bay
• Lady Anna, The Lovely Castellan
• Pat Yronwood, the bloodroyal and guardian of the Boneway
• Lord Charles Tyrell of Highgarden, Lord Paramount of the Mander, Defender of the Marches, High Marshal of the Reach, Warden of the South, and The Heir of House Tyrell
• Luke, Lord of Lone Leaf & The Pillar of Autumn
• Squid Pro Quo
• Master of Zorse
• Joe Snow “King of the Metro North and protector of the Tri-State”
• Hedrigal, Captain of the Airship Arrogance
• Squire Matt S, future Ser Matt S, the one who will bring balance to the Kingdoms
• BWord, Queen Beyond the Wall
• Lord Kyle
• And our newest member of the small council: Lord Samuel Seaworth

Spoiler warning: All published books, 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!

Question

Ser Mystery Knight, a Kingsguard patron, asks:

Hi guys, I have decided your re-read of ASOIAF is worth supporting because you are one of the best. I am very new in this fandom, I listened to GoT for the first time in January 2020 and I fell in love! I watched all the 8 seasons in less than 2 weeks. And Now I am re reading the books with you!! :) Emmett you are so sweet and I love the depth you give in your analysis of each chapter. And Jeff dude you are hilarious, and sweet your heart is in the right place. I agree with you most of the time, not always but that is only because I am totally biased towards some characters :) But there is one thing I really want to know: why do you hate Renly so much? And which one do you hate more Sandor Clegane or Renly?

So, thank you Ser Mystery Knight for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher level patreon over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can get show notes, merch and bonus episode like our upcoming episode on Kingdom of Heaven entitled “The New World” with LukeIsAmazing of the People’s History of the Old Republic podcast!

Absolutely. Can’t wait to unpack that movie with you, ser and with Luke too!! But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Sansa Stark, she had just barely survived the riot in King’s Landing, having been saved by Sandor Clegane. Maybe she can thank him for saving her? Maybe. Let’s find out what happens with Sansa in this synopsis of ACOK, Sansa IV!

Synopsis

The southern sky was black with smoke. It rose swirling off a hundred distant fires, its sooty fingers smudging out the stars. Across the Blackwater Rush, a line of flame burned nightly from horizon to horizon, while on this side the Imp had fired the whole riverfront: docks and warehouses, homes and brothels, everything outside the city walls.

Within the Red Keep, Sansa could taste the ash as she makes her way to the godswood. There, she finds Dontos Hollard who asks if she’s been crying. She has. Totally the ash in the air, she lies. Dontos tells her that the reason there’s ash is that Stannis is trying to smoke the mountain clansmen out of the kingswood as they’d been killing Stannis’ scouts and raiding his supplies. But enough war shit. Dontos Hollard needs to do some gossip. As a fool he hears all sorts of things he’s not supposed to hear. And Varys is paying. Moon Boy is Varys’ agent, probably has been for years.

He is drunk again. My poor Florian he names himself, and so he is. But he is all I have. "Is it true Lord Stannis burned the godswood at Storm's End?"

Dontos nodded. "He made a great pyre of the trees as an offering to his new god. The red priestess made him do it. They say she rules him now, body and soul. He's vowed to burn the Great Sept of Baelor too, if he takes the city."

From a political standpoint, Tyrion’s deception about Stannis is already paying propaganda dividends. I’ll give him that. But Sansa thinks that it’s fine if Stannis burns the Great Sept of Baelor. It was where they murdered her father after all. When Dontos warns her that the gods might hear her, Sansa is all like, no. The gods aren’t listening to her prayers. But Dontos counterpoints that the gods heard her prayers as they sent him to her.

Sansa picked at the bark of a tree. She felt light-headed, almost feverish. "They sent you, but what good have you done? You promised you would take me home, but I'm still here."

Dontos patted her arm. "I've spoken to a certain man I know, a good friend to me . . . and you, my lady. He will hire a swift ship to take us to safety, when the time is right."

Who could this certain man be? Or is it a man? Is it Quaithe?

Regardless, Sansa thinks they need to get the hell out of dodge before the battle begins as they’ve forgotten about her, but Dontos says they might make it out of the castle, but they’d never make it out of the city given that the gates are guarded and the river is closed. Sansa realizes that this is true as the Blackwater was empty save for war galleys going up and down the river exchanging arrow fire with Stannis’ archers.

As for Stannis, let’s catch up with where he and his army are, shall we?

Lord Stannis himself was still on the march, but his vanguard had appeared two nights ago during the black of the moon. King's Landing had woken to the sight of their tents and banners. They were five thousand, Sansa had heard, near as many as all the gold cloaks in the city. They flew the red or green apples of House Fossoway, the turtle of Estermont, and the fox-and-flowers of Florent, and their commander was Ser Guyard Morrigen, a famous southron knight who men now called Guyard the Green. His standard showed a crow in flight, its black wings spread wide against a storm-green sky. But it was the pale yellow banners that worried the city. Long ragged tails streamed behind them like flickering flames, and in place of a lord's sigil they bore the device of a god: the burning heart of the Lord of Light.

Sansa thinks that Stannis will have ten times the numbers as Joffrey has, but Dontos says that doesn’t matter so long as they’re south of the Blackwater. Sansa says Stannis has a lot of ships. He’ll cross, but Dontos thinks the gods might send a storm to sweep Stannis’ fleet from the sea. Hm.

Anyhow, his friend will return, and then they’ll take a ship from King’s Landing. In the original lyrics written by Fred Durst, you gotta have FAAAAAAAIIIIIITH … ahem, in Sansa’s Florian and don’t be scared. But Sansa is afraid. And the nightmares from the riot in King’s Landing had been a nightly occurrence.

She could hear the people screaming at her, screaming without words, like animals. They had hemmed her in and thrown filth at her and tried to pull her off her horse, and would have done worse if the Hound had not cut his way to her side. They had torn the High Septon to pieces and smashed in Ser Aron's head with a rock. Try not to be afraid! he said.

The whole city was afraid. Sansa could see it from the castle walls. The smallfolk were hiding themselves behind closed shutters and barred doors as if that would keep them safe. The last time King's Landing had fallen, the Lannisters looted and raped as they pleased and put hundreds to the sword, even though the city had opened its gates. This time the Imp meant to fight, and a city that fought could expect no mercy at all.

Dontos decides to do his Dontos thing about how if he were a knight, he’d have to put armor on and man the walls. Maybe he should thank Joffrey for making him a fool? No, dumbass. Joffrey would make Dontos a fool again if he thanked the king for making him a fool. Dontos says that Sansa is clever, but Sansa retorts that Cersei and Joffrey say she’s a big dum-dum. Aw, Sansa. I’m sorry for all the mean things I said about you on twitter. You’re very smart. Much love. But Dontos decides to reassure her by telling her that playing dumb is fine. No one will pay attention to you that way. Is that reassuring? I don’t think so. He then stifles a burp and attempts creepiness:

"Gods preserve you, my little Jonquil." He was growing weepy. The wine did that to him. "Give your Florian a little kiss now. A kiss for luck." He swayed toward her.

Sansa dodged the wet groping lips, kissed him lightly on an unshaven cheek, and bid him good night. It took all her strength not to weep. She had been weeping too much of late. It was unseemly, she knew, but she could not seem to help herself; the tears would come, sometimes over a trifle, and nothing she did could hold them back.

It’s okay, Sansa. You’ve been through some traumatic shit. It’s not a trifle.

Sansa then walks back to Maegor's Holdfast, using a drawbridge that was unguarded since all the knights and gold cloaks were involved in the city’s defenses. Since the Red Keep was mostly empty, she had real freedom of the castle and could go anywhere, but she didn’t want to go anywhere.

She makes it to the stairway and starts climbing, noticing how the smoke viled the stars and moon. But from this vantage point she could see the city all around her: the Red Keep, the city streets, the river, smoke and fires, fires everywhere. Soldiers moved across the city walls with torches in hand, and catapults were down by the Mud Gate. She thinks she shouldn’t be afraid given all the city’s defenses, but she can’t shake the feeling of fear.

A stab went through her, so sharp that Sansa sobbed and clutched at her belly. She might have fallen, but a shadow moved suddenly, and strong fingers grabbed her arm and steadied her.

She grabbed a merlon for support, her fingers scrabbling at the rough stone. "Let go of me," she cried. "Let go."

"The little bird thinks she has wings, does she? Or do you mean to end up crippled like that brother of yours?"

Sansa twisted in his grasp. "I wasn't going to fall. It was only . . . you startled me, that's all."

"You mean I scared you. And still do."

Sansa takes a deep breath and realizes that it’s Mr. Sandor Clegane. She looks away, and Sandor does that thing where he mocks her for not being able to look at his scars. But she was awful glad to see his burned face when the mob was about, WEREN’T YOU?

Sansa did remember that time, how everyone was howling at her, the feel of the man’s fingers as it grasped around her arm, his breath smelling like garlic. She figured she was about to die, but then the fingers twitched, and the man was screaming and then laying on the ground with blood spurting out of the stump of his arm. Others were around, but then Sandor Clegane leaped at them, sword-in-hand and painted with red as he laughed at everyone, his face somehow transforming for a moment.

She forces herself to do the courteous thing and look into Sandor’s face, and a lady must never forget her courtesies. The thing of it, though, was that the scars weren’t the worst thing about his face. It was his eyes. How they were full of hate. She says that she should have come to Sandor to thank him for saving her and being brave.

But to Sandor, he wasn’t being brave. He chased off rats. And none of those rats dared to face him. And then we get some iconic dialogue in ASOIAF that I’ll read in full:

She hated the way he talked, always so harsh and angry. "Does it give you joy to scare people?"

"No, it gives me joy to kill people." His mouth twitched. "Wrinkle up your face all you like, but spare me this false piety. You were a high lord's get. Don't tell me Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell never killed a man."

"That was his duty. He never liked it."

"Is that what he told you?" Clegane laughed again. "Your father lied. Killing is the sweetest thing there is." He drew his longsword. "Here's your truth. Your precious father found that out on Baelor's steps. Lord of Winterfell, Hand of the King, Warden of the North, the mighty Eddard Stark, of a line eight thousand years old . . . but Ilyn Payne's blade went through his neck all the same, didn't it? Do you remember the dance he did when his head came off his shoulders?"

Sansa hugged herself, suddenly cold. "Why are you always so hateful? I was thanking you . . . "

"Just as if I was one of those true knights you love so well, yes. What do you think a knight is for, girl? You think it's all taking favors from ladies and looking fine in gold plate? Knights are for killing." He laid the edge of his longsword against her neck, just under her ear. Sansa could feel the sharpness of the steel. "I killed my first man at twelve. I've lost count of how many I've killed since then. High lords with old names, fat rich men dressed in velvet, knights puffed up like bladders with their honors, yes, and women and children too-they're all meat, and I'm the butcher. Let them have their lands and their gods and their gold. Let them have their sers." Sandor Clegane spat at her feet to show what he thought of that. "So long as I have this," he said, lifting the sword from her throat, "there's no man on earth I need fear."

But Sansa, who is smart BTW, thinks that Sandor is afraid of his brother Gregor. She thinks he’s a wild, mean dog that bites. She asks if he’s afraid of Stannis’ men south of the Blackwater. As to that, well, he’s a big brave boy. He’s only y’know not fond of the fire. That’s a coward’s weapon. When Sansa retorts that Stannis isn’t a coward, Sandor argues back that Stannis isn’t Robert either. Robert wouldn’t let a river stop him.

"What will you do when he crosses?"

"Fight. Kill. Die, maybe."

"Aren't you afraid? The gods might send you down to some terrible hell for all the evil you've done."

"What evil?" He laughed. "What gods?"

"The gods who made us all."

And then Sandor Clegane, YouTube atheist, starts vigorously tipping his fedora at the thought that the gods don’t exist, because then why is there human suffering and physical deformities? The gods, if they exist, are only in it to make sure that the weak exist for the strong to prey upon. But Sansa, who is brave BTW, says that true knights protect the weak.

He snorted. "There are no true knights, no more than there are gods. If you can't protect yourself, die and get out of the way of those who can. Sharp steel and strong arms rule this world, don't ever believe any different."

Sansa backed away from him. "You're awful."

"I'm honest. It's the world that's awful. Now fly away, little bird, I'm sick of you peeping at me."

Wordless, she fled. She was afraid of Sandor Clegane . . . and yet, some part of her wished that Ser Dontos had a little of the Hound's ferocity. There are gods, she told herself, and there are true knights too. All the stories can't be lies.

Ain’t “All the stories can’t be lies” the summation of Sansa’s thematic arc!

That night, she dreams of the riot, the faces screaming at her. She cries, begging the inhuman monster faces not to drag her away. But no one cares. She shouts for anyone who might help: Dontoros, her brothers, Lady the Direwolf, Ned, but no one comes. Not even the storied heroes of song like Florian, Ryam Redwyne and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight don’t respond. Sansa feels women swarming over her, pinching her legs, kicking her stomach. Someone hits her face. Her teeth shatter. And then she sees a steel knife plunging into her stomach, and it tears and tears and tears until her body is bloody ribbons.

When she woke, the pale light of morning was slanting through her window, yet she felt as sick and achy as if she had not slept at all. There was something sticky on her thighs. When she threw back the blanket and saw the blood, all she could think was that her dream had somehow come true. She remembered the knives inside her, twisting and ripping. She squirmed away in horror, kicking at the sheets and falling to the floor, breathing raggedly, naked, bloodied, and afraid.

But as she crouched there, on her hands and knees, understanding came. "No, please," Sansa whimpered, "please, no." She didn't want this happening to her, not now, not here, not now, not now, not now, not now.

Sansa feels a madness overtaking her, and she pulls herself up, washes between her legs, but then the water turns pink from the blood. She knows the maids would know. But then she remembers her bedclothes, rushes back to the bed and find the sheets red with a dark stain. She knows she has to get rid of sheets, or they’d force her to marry Joffrey. So, she gets a knife, hacks the sheets off, cuts out the stain and realizes that they would know something is amiss. So, she tears off all the sheets and tries burning them in the fireplace. But then she realizes that the blood had gone into the bed too. She tries bundling up the bed to stuff into the fire, but then a maid bursts through the door and gasps.

In the end it took three of them to pull her away. And it was all for nothing. The bedclothes were burnt, but by the time they carried her off her thighs were bloody again. It was as if her own body had betrayed her to Joffrey, unfurling a banner of Lannister crimson for all the world to see.

That’s so sad.

When the fire is put out, they carried the bed away and brought a tub for Sansa. They wash her in scalding water, put her into new clothes, give her a cloth for her period and usher her into an audience with a Cersei who is eating her breakfast. Cersei asks if Sansa is hungry, but Sansa is still feeling sick to her stomach, and she declines.

Cersei doesn’t blame Sansa for feeling sick with all the Tyrion and Stannis setting everything on fire chicanery about, but why did Sansa burn her bed? Sansa lies and says that the blood scared her. But Cersei responds that getting her first period is the “seal of your womanhood.” Why didn’t Catelyn prepare you for this? She did, according to Sansa. But she thought it would be different: less messy and more magical.

Queen Cersei laughed. "Wait until you birth a child, Sansa. A woman's life is nine parts mess to one part magic, you'll learn that soon enough . . . and the parts that look like magic often turn out to be messiest of all." She took a sip of milk. "So now you are a woman. Do you have the least idea of what that means?"

"It means that I am now fit to be wedded and bedded," said Sansa, "and to bear children for the king."

The queen gave a wry smile. "A prospect that no longer entices you as it once did, I can see. I will not fault you for that. Joffrey has always been difficult. Even his birth . . . I labored a day and a half to bring him forth. You cannot imagine the pain, Sansa. I screamed so loudly that I fancied Robert might hear me in the kingswood."

Surprised, Sansa asks whether Robert was with her. He was not. He was out hunting, and when Robert would return, he’d give Cersei a pelt, and she’d give him a baby. Still, Cersei didn’t want Robert there anyways. Pycelle and her midwives were there. And also Jaime. He was there too, refusing to not be allowed into the birthing room. Sadly, Sansa won’t find that devotion from Joffrey as he blames Sansa for what Arya and her wolf did to him on the Trident. That’s why Joffrey shames her, but in Cersei’s perhaps most human moment, she tells Sansa that she’s stronger than that, and she’ll survive humiliation. Cersei did anyhow.

"You may never love the king, but you'll love his children."

"I love His Grace with all my heart," Sansa said.

The queen sighed. "You had best learn some new lies, and quickly. Lord Stannis will not like that one, I promise you."

Sansa responds that the High Septon is reporting that Stannis will not win since Joffrey is the rightful king, and this causes Cersei to practically bite off the lower part of her face to keep from laughing. She tells Sansa that Joff is so totally Robert’s trueborn son and heir, but it’s so weird. Joffrey would always cry when Robert picked him up, unlike all the bastards who would smile and gurgle at him.

"Robert wanted smiles and cheers, always, so he went where he found them, to his friends and his whores. Robert wanted to be loved. My brother Tyrion has the same disease. Do you want to be loved, Sansa?"

"Everyone wants to be loved."

"I see flowering hasn't made you any brighter," said Cersei. "Sansa, permit me to share a bit of womanly wisdom with you on this very special day. Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same."

And that is ACOK, Sansa IV! This chapter. Man. This chapter. It’s a fantastic chapter. What did you think, ser?

Depth

Sansa’s chapters in the book so far have been beautifully written and attended well to her character arc. However, there haven’t been many of them (fewer than any POV in the book other than Davos), and by necessity she’s been overshadowed by Tyrion, who occupies the same setting and gets more attention as the book’s protagonist.

Yet by the end of ACOK, she’ll have more chapters than Bran, Dany, Theon, and Catelyn, and as many as Jon. George focuses more on Sansa during this climactic stretch of ACOK than anyone else. Despite being a noncombatant, she is the primary lens through which we see the Battle of Blackwater, arguably more than Tyrion and certainly more than Davos. It’s an interesting choice on George’s part, and one we’ll be exploring for the rest of the book. Sansa IV is our introduction to this important part of her story, and it sets the fiery and feverish tone perfectly. This chapter refamiliarizes us with Sansa as a POV through the lens of her first period, but also finds her negotiating her context through dense dialogue scenes with Dontos, Cersei, and above all Sandor, literally looming over her as a figure of both fear and freedom. By the end of Sansa IV, the reader is prepared to see the biggest battle of the series through her eyes.

George hasn’t really dwelled on the aftermath of the Riot in King’s Landing all that much. In the preceding two Tyrion chapters, Tyrion is so damn busy that he barely considers that he and the entire royal family nearly got killed by the smallfolk. And this makes this particular Sansa chapter compelling. Because Sansa isn’t so damn busy. She doesn’t have the affairs to state to keep her mind off the trauma she experienced.

As she thinks about in this chapter, Sansa was left mostly alone in the Red Keep with only her thoughts to keep her company. And that’s why Sansa can’t shake her traumatic memories consciously or in her subconscious when she dreams. She’s been living a nightmare within the Red Keep: memories and dreams of her father’s murder, her near-brush with rape and murder in King’s Landing and the threat of marrying Joffrey hanging above her. That threat grows only more immediate by chapter’s end.

It’s a terrifying spectacle for Sansa, and it’s to her credit that she keeps on, hoping that trusting Dontos somehow pays off, even as the prospects of that gamble appear more and more remote with Stannis and war approaching the city.

• The spreading fires of war
  • The major plot event of Sansa IV is the first contact made between the Lannister and Baratheon forces in the buildup to the Battle of Blackwater
  • Stannis’ vanguard has arrived, setting up shop on the other side of the river and trading arrows with Lannister ships holding the river against them
  • They are led by Guyard Morrigen, formerly Guyard the Green of Renly’s Rainbow Guard. Sansa describes his green banner and the colorful banners of his followers, like the imagery in the stories she used to love
  • But it’s one banner in particular gripping the city with fear. The fiery banner of R’hllor, its yellow-orange trails like flames, consuming Stannis’ red heart
  • George juxtaposes this banner with the literal fires raging on both sides of the water, as if to suggest that fire itself is a combatant in the war, one that does not truly serve Stannis but preys on all sides, including civilians
  • Fire in this chapter embodies dread, a promise of violence to come, leaving Sansa (and the city as a whole) feeling powerless to escape
  • Across the river waits Stannis’ fury, given form by Melisandre and her red god. His men are burning their way through the kingswood. What happens when they get inside the city? How many fires will they light?
  • On this side of the Blackwater, Tyrion has set the riverfront ablaze, and it’s his men who started the fires in the kingswood to deny Stannis resources
  • Here, it feels like George is engaging in some Return of the King pastiche particularly with the Battle of Minas Tirith, particularly the lead-up to that battle in the form of the preceding Battle of Osgiliath.
  • There, orcs and orc-aligned humans take the eastern bank of Osgiliath from Gondor and then launch an assault on the west bank with their vanguard, driving Faramir and his small army out of the city while awaiting corsair ships sailing with reinforcements
  • George redresses the lead-up to his battle with Ser Guyard Morrigen playing the role of the orc vanguard and fighting to clear out the southern bank of the Blackwater Rush as Tyrion’s mountain clansmen are wreaking havoc in Stannis’ lines.
  • That line of thought leads to an uncomfortable direction for us here on the NotACast pod-cast: does this make Stannis the dark lord Sauron figure hailing from his volcano castle for our upcoming Battle of the Blackwater?
  • What I’m saying is that the optics match, and we have been talking about Stannis occupying the antagonist role to Tyrion’s protagonist role in King’s Landing.
  • But in George’s more ambiguous world, the face-value optics are not necessarily the objective truth.
  • As George said:
    • “I admire Tolkien greatly. His books had enormous influence on me. And the trope that he sort of established—the idea of the Dark Lord and his Evil Minions—in the hands of lesser writers over the years and decades has not served the genre well. It has been beaten to death. The battle of good and evil is a great subject for any book and certainly for a fantasy book, but I think ultimately the battle between good and evil is weighed within the individual human heart and not necessarily between an army of people dressed in white and an army of people dressed in black. When I look at the world, I see that most real living breathing human beings are grey.”
      
  • This is not to say that there are no distinctions to be made, nor that no one on either side has any good reason to be doing what they’re doing
  • Stannis and Tyrion are following their incentives. Yet when you filter those incentives through the power structure of Westeros and their own specific emotional damage, what you get is a race to see who can burn it all down
  • As Sansa thinks, the city suffered immensely during the last war, and that was when they opened their gates. This time, Tyrion means to fight, and a city that fights can expect no mercy at all. It is not one side or the other that has wholly created this situation for the city, but the combo of both
  • Sansa offers us the perspective of someone who feels trapped between these two fires, forced to wait to see which side burns her first
  • Sansa is not exactly a commoner, of course. This chapter reminds us of that with her dream about the King’s Landing riot back in Tyrion IX
  • She does, however, give us a sense of the war not as a partisan conflict, but rather an all-consuming nightmare emerging from the elements
  • The smoke is blotting out the stars. Even within the Red Keep, the air tastes of ash. Death, decay, corruption: they follow the fires to claim us
  • And the battle proper hasn’t even begun! What’s more hellish than waiting to die? Even death itself seems preferable to this extended agony
  • The political backstory and military tactics fall away, leaving a more existential and free-floating sense of doom as a deliverance of the gods
  • People talk about Sansa as a passive character, but not every arc has to subscribe to the Screenwriting 101 rules of empowerment through action
  • Sansa’s struggle at this point is about powerlessness, about the inability to affect one’s situation. What does it feel like when all you can do is watch?
  • Part of her problem is that it’s just not clear where the greatest threat is coming from, nor is it clear exactly where her potential deliverance may lie
  • Will Stannis’ arrival cue her liberation from the Lannisters, or her death in the sack? Will Dontos free her or keep her pinned in place? What about Sandor? Since we don’t have a POV directly among the people of King’s Landing, Sansa is our way into their desperate sense that there is no exit
  • She will sing among them in her next chapter, a sense of destinies aligning and asserting their brief existence before those fires close in
  • Sansa’s not the protagonist of the Battle of Blackwater in direct plot action terms (that would be Tyrion), but she is the keeper of the flame in terms of what it all means emotionally, spiritually, and that’s equally important
  • Much like George has talked about how he wrote Catelyn as a take on writing about an uncharted topic in fantasy (Arthur’s mom), George is going to take a different approach to the Battle of the Blackwater.
  • We’ll hear from Davos and Tyrion for the actual warfighting, but as you were saying in your opening comments, Sansa is the primary POV for the battle as she allows George to explore the effects of war on non-combatants, on women.
  • For women, children and non-combatants, war isn’t “politics by other means”, a grand game of strategies and tactics.
  • It’s the difference between life and death.
  • This is why Sansa is a crucial POV. She’s not non-partisan as she would much rather that Stannis kills Joffrey and tosses his new-made sword into the river.
  • But she knows that Stannis hasn’t come to liberate King’s Landing or her from her captivity. As she’ll think in her next chapter:
    • For what was Stannis Baratheon, if not the Stranger come to judge them?
  • But beyond Stannis, Sansa is well-aware that the people of King’s Landing - the people who have played no part in the war - will be targeted by the soldiers under Stannis’ command.
  • There are a lot of men in Stannis’ army who wouldn’t balk at murder and rape. A lot of Godry Farrings, Clayton Suggs, etc.
  • But there are a lot of regular soldiers in Stannis’ army, men who are brutal or evil. What I’m saying is that there are a lot of Steelshanks Waltons in Stannis’ army.
  • But what does Jaime think about Steelshanks Walton in ASOS?
    • Steelshanks Walton commanded Jaime's escort; blunt, brusque, brutal, at heart a simple soldier. Jaime had served with his sort all his life. Men like Walton would kill at their lord's command, rape when their blood was up after battle, and plunder wherever they could.
  • Stannis may be anti-rape and anti-murder (mostly) and he may punish his soldiers after the fact as we discussed in Theon IV, but that doesn’t stop the rapes and murders from occurring in the first place.
  • And Sansa knows this, and Cersei will make it explicit in two Sansa chapters:
    • "If I'm not betrayed by my own guards, I may be able to hold here for a time. Then I can go to the walls and offer to yield to Lord Stannis in person. That will spare us the worst. But if Maegor's Holdfast should fall before Stannis can come up, why then, most of my guests are in for a bit of rape, I'd say. And you should never rule out mutilation, torture, and murder at times like these."
• Notaknight #1: Dontos Hollard
  • Sansa is facing down both possibilities and pitfalls, the opportunity of escape contrasted with the threat of death; this duality is embodied by her two potential guardians, her two not-a-knights, Dontos and Sandor
  • Sansa IV has a similar structure to Sansa II, in which Dontos puts forward a thesis and Sandor counters with an antithesis. Their dialogue touches on all the themes and images that define Sansa’s story, and she must engage with their arguments in order to arrive at her own truth
  • Sansa’s conversation with Dontos in this chapter starts with him asking if she’s been crying. She lies and says it’s only the smoke messing with her
  • Right away, we see the image of the noble lady, whose job it is to be beautiful and serene, contrasted with the raw emotions behind the surface
  • Just as Jeyne Poole’s tears disturb the fragile peace of Winterfell in ADWD, Sansa’s private tears do not line up with her enforced public role
  • Men like Joffrey “cannot abide the wailing of women,” who are permitted emotional displays only in grief for the men they have lost
  • Sansa has internalized this role so deeply that she lies to Dontos, even though they’re in private, even though he wouldn’t judge her for it
  • This is the liminal in-between space in which Sansa is caught. She knows enough to realize that her public role is a trap, not a dream come true
  • Yet she can’t find another role to play. This is in part because she’s a prisoner of a sadistic king and a hateful queen who do not care about her sense of alienation, but also because she was never taught another role
  • So we find Sansa struggling to bridge the gap, to use the tools she has to make sense of a world that those tools did not prepare her to handle
  • This is fantastic both in being fantastic literary analysis as well as involving the heart at Sansa’s character arc post-Ned Stark’s murder.
  • Sansa was always intended by Ned and Catelyn to play the role of consort to a great lord or even a royal, and she was groomed to adhere to gender norms and practice courtesy expected of a highborn lady.
  • And in a gentler time, this may have resulted in some happiness for Sansa. Consider how Catelyn’s life wasn’t so bad as Lady Stark and running the Stark household.
  • But these are different times, and Sansa’s training as a high lady or queen is running up against the hard constraint of Joffrey and Cersei and their enablers.
  • The irony is that Sansa’s training is what keeps her alive. She refashions her courtesy into dishonesty to Dontos, to Sandor, to Cersei and eventually to Littlefinger and the Lords Declarant -- all to stay breathing.
  • That struggle is reflected back at her by Dontos. He was playing the role of a knight before, and failed miserably at it. Now he’s a fool, and prefers it, but if he ever let Joffrey find that out, he’d forced to be a knight again
  • Dontos claims that ironically, he’s more knightly than ever now that his official knighthood has been taken away from him. He has lost the surface, but found the substance, allowing him to embody Florian from the songs. I was a foolish knight; I find redemption in being your knightly fool
  • That’s what he says, anyway. Through Sansa’s eyes, we realize that Dontos’ arc has not been quite that clean. His alcoholism is a constant
  • We can guess that Dontos turned to booze to drown the trauma and anger from the Mad King wiping out his family. That’s sympathetic and relatable
  • Dontos, however, is not our POV. Sansa is. And from Sansa’s POV, Dontos’ alcoholism makes him disappointing, unreliable, and creepy
  • She has to endure his winey breath as he gropes towards her for a kiss. She watches him sway and ramble, wondering if she can count on him
  • There are multiple layers of fantasy and reality at work here. Dontos is a fool on the outside but a knight on the inside, or so he says, yet George suggests that his knight identity is just another performance, a mask
  • His bright multicolored fool’s garb is covered in wine stains: the innocent fun of childhood literally stained by the trials and tumults of adulthood
  • Dontos’ status as fool, an identity he literally and figuratively wears, is what allows him to act as a spy. As he tells Sansa, in the viper’s nest of royal politics, it’s actually good to be dismissed and despised
  • That way, he says, they won’t take you seriously, and they only threaten those they take seriously, ignoring everyone else. He’s such an effective spy because no one thinks about him enough to get suspicious of him
  • This is true...to an extent. Dontos has a point that keeping your head down is the best way to survive, and also the best way to function as a spy. Littlefinger doesn’t take Sansa seriously; this will be his downfall
  • But keeping your head down isn’t a guarantee of safety. Look at Sansa’s story in ACOK so far. Dontos is only alive because she refused to keep her head down, yet she escaped punishment for defying Joffrey, precisely because Sandor stuck his neck out for her as she had done for Dontos
  • What did Joffrey hurt her for? Robb’s victory at Oxcross, something over which she had no power. Keeping her head down didn’t help her then; neither did Dontos’ antics as a fool. Joffrey had power, she had none
  • Same logic applies during the Battle of Blackwater. Sansa’s passivity doesn’t save her from a potential execution by Ilyn Payne, and when she does take charge of things at Maegor’s, she doesn’t suffer for it
  • There is no silver bullet to surviving this situation, no hard and fast rule Sansa can use to navigate the labyrinth of power, and she knows it
  • As we’ve been talking about in previous Sansa chapters, part of George’s character development for Sansa here is for Sansa to take off the rose-colored glasses and step into adulthood.
  • Sansa is learning how to navigate her words to stay alive, but there’s still no telling who Sansa will encounter by the day or what Joffrey’s mood might be or what other plot event will endanger her.
  • Overall, the lesson is as you were saying that there’s no silver bullet to parry a blow away, but using one particular defense every time won’t save her.
  • Subtextually, Sansa is learning when to stand up for herself, when to appear passive and how to use a mix of both of these strategies.
  • That she does this in a position of powerlessness is a great touch on George and parallels a bit of what George was doing with Bran as the Stark of Winterfell before Theon interrupted by stumblefucking his way into Winterfell
  • Sansa has not been born in the purple and hasn’t had a maester to train her in the political arts, but she’s learning. Unfortunately, she’s learning at the hands of a massive amount of abuse she’s suffering, and I would not want to make the mistake the show made by having Sansa say her abuses made her “wiser”.
  • It’s rather to say, in the words of a 2013 National Center for Biotechnical Information white paper that: the experience of a childhood trauma increases a person’s ability to take the perspective of another and to understand their mental and emotional states, and that this impact is long-standing.
  • Sansa is subconsciously learning strategies by having to be a little bird in King’s Landing and sometimes a Stark of Winterfell too. She’s becoming empathetic too: a trait necessary to rule the North come the end of the series.
  • Dontos is speaking the language of redemption, transformation, and security. You saved me, I’ll save you, the city will be safe, do not fear
  • Sansa can’t help but see through the image as it blurs and burns around the edges. Try not to be afraid? How can she not be afraid right now?
  • In Sansa’s mind, her nightmares about the riot keep blurring into the daylight realities of the battle. It’s all one threat, one fire, one fear
  • Wherever she turns, someone is waiting to kill her, be they the people on the streets or the soldiers outside the walls. Dontos’ appeal to courage seems absurd, as does his fantasy about the gods smashing Stannis’ fleet
  • We are seeing the limits of hope. The material realities of Sansa’s situation are bad, it looks like they’re about to get worse, and there is nothing she can do about it. Dontos’ tropes are useless and insulting
  • At every turn, she pokes holes in his projected fictions. Dontos says that Stannis can’t cross without ships; Sansa points out that he has ships, more than Joffrey. Dontos says the gods sent him to help her; Sansa wonders what good are the gods to send such a flawed guardian
  • Sansa’s beginning to wonder if he even intends to help her at all. What good are his promises if he can’t back them up? They’re worth no more than the songs and stories it turned out lied to her. Can she trust him?
  • Dontos says she’s clever, and he’s right. The problem is, again, that there’s no way for Sansa to put her cleverness into useful action
  • When she tries, saying they could slip away now because no one’s watching, Dontos reminds her the city gates are shut and locked
  • Tyrion’s not locked up with them, they’re locked up with him, and he’s not letting them go. Keeping your head down won’t save you; no one is safe
  • In this purgatorial state, stranded on the lip of a volcano about to burst, Sansa contemplates letting go of it all and surrendering to the fire
  • Stannis has threatened to burn the Great Sept, as Dontos has heard. A radical transformation: the gods brought low, the order of nature inverted
  • It’s not true, of course, but Dontos is lying to Sansa the whole time. Even when he thinks he’s telling her the truth, he’s passing on a lie. This is just another shadow on a wall, another convenient fiction being deployed
  • And despite it being propaganda, it has an effect on Sansa, as stories have on us. Fiction cracks us open, revealing us; same for Sansa here
  • Yet it has the opposite effect that Tyrion intended. Far from recoiling at the idea of the Great Sept defiled and destroyed, Sansa longs for it
  • The Great Sept is no longer sacred to her, because it’s where she had to watch her father die. It has already been defiled by Ned Stark’s blood
  • If it is indeed the house of the gods, then those gods are either neglectful or monstrous, and Sansa will not mourn their symbolic downfall. She only wishes it were literal, as shown by her plucking at the godswood trees
  • The image of the sept burning is cathartic for Sansa because it reflects her own grief, despair, and submerged rage. It would make the Great Sept look the way it makes her feel. It would bring her internal and external worlds into cohesion, if only in destruction. It’s her own inner fire burning
  • In part, this reflects Sansa’s own unique journey in relation to the stories and songs. As she thinks, she used to think of the Great Sept as the heart of beauty and meaning, living proof that you could live inside the stories
  • Now the meaning of that story has changed to horror, and so she finds that beauty hypocritical, so false as to be practically intolerable for her
  • This is what it feels like to lose your religion, both literally and figuratively at the same time. Sansa is turning her back on what she used to believe
  • Sansa the Faith Smasher works as great setup for the next confrontation between her and Sandor Clegane.
  • Sansa may be losing her religion here, but she has not rejected the gods fully. She strikes me as angry that the world is the way that it is with, and if the gods were watching and doing nothing, what good were they?
  • And she has a right to be angry at the world and at the unlistening gods.
  • But the truth is that Sansa, like George, is not so nihilistic. They’re just disappointed romantics.
  • Because when we meet Sandor in a minute, Sansa switches to the Dontos role and becomes a defender of the gods. There is a lot more nuance to that conversation and here as well.
  • But this also reflects a deep-seated need that cuts across every character in ASOIAF and also, I would argue, every human being in real life
  • The desire to destroy that which reminds us of our mortality, our powerlessness before death, comes from many different places
  • You can credit it to evolution, or to spiritual decay, or to the cultural processes that warp our understanding of life and death, or all of them
  • We are all clocks counting down, and no one is good at dealing with that because we don’t know what it actually means. As I was saying in our HOTU episodes, Dany always confronts the forces of time and death
  • And she loses those confrontations, because everyone does. I think when she sets the fires that burn the Great Sept (and the rest), it will be in part out of despair that she simply cannot get back everything she lost
  • Sansa expresses that same sentiment here, yet we don’t call her mad for it, because she can’t act on it. In her next chapter, she joins the singers in a sept at the Red Keep, feeling herself swept up in community
  • These desires do not define us, because every human experiences them. Gregors and Ramsays exist, but not very many of them. Most monstrous actions come from the combination of fleeting thoughts like Sansa’s with the power to put them into action. What if she had a dragon in this moment? As with the many faces of Dontos Hollard, George is showing us the full range of human expression; we have to think about it holistically
  • We are made to understand Sansa’s wish for the Sept to burn, to connect it to Stannis’ own furious desire to tear down the neglectful beauty of his brothers, and to see it fulfilled in Dany’s need for home literally exploding
  • Oh, but we wouldn’t carry out such dark desires, we tell ourselves! We have buried them deeply because they frighten us so much, dragons caged away in the darkness. Yet that only makes them more powerful when they rise, the return of the repressed written in fire and blood
  • There but for the grace of god go you and I. Sansa avoids acting on her desires not out of goodness, but lack of power. Power can corrupt anyone
  • Excellent point. Power can corrupt even the best of people (Daenerys, Sansa, Jon) with the best of intentions.
  • For Sansa, she looks at all the things that thrilled her young romantic heart and feels sickened by it.
  • Here, it’s Baelor’s Sept. Back in her first chapter, it was Joffrey and tourneys:
    • A blare of trumpets sounded. The king settled back in his seat and took Sansa's hand. Once that would have set her heart to pounding, but that was before he had answered her plea for mercy by presenting her with her father's head.
  • The surface-level beauty of knights in shining armor, great buildings, noble handsome princes have all come crashing down around Sansa, and she reacts with impotent rage at her inability to tear down all the lies around her.
  • GRRM has embedded this great idea into ASOIAF that beautiful surfaces conceal hidden ugliness:
    • Renly was the handsome, charming king but under that surface lay casual violence and usurpation of his brother’s throne
    • Dany saw the Undying as beautiful at first, but when she went through the door, she saw them as they truly were: barely-breathing corpses.
    • Jaqen H’ghar changes his face in front of Arya, assuming a different identity altogether. It’s not his real face, however. That one remains unknown but perhaps it’s similar to the Kindly Man’s corpse-face from AFFC
    • Melisandre wears a glamour that retains her red beauty, but underneath is a woman who is “hundreds of years old” according to GRRM.
  • And now Sansa is seeing under the face of Baelor’s Sept and the Red Keep. The beautiful buildings of the realm on the surface, but the blood of her father’s men at the Red Keep and the blood of her father at Baelor’s Sept have shown the true face under the skin.
  • So, it’s stellar writing for all of these thoughts to then come into contact with someone whose literal skin is exposed and who views his mission in life as to expose the ugly truth under the surface both in description and in action.
• Notaknight #2: Sandor Clegane
  • Dontos’ ultimate message for Sansa underneath the lecherous booze-swilling and rambling appeals to romanticism is to stay put
  • But Sansa is feeling that fiery itch under the skin familiar to anyone whose freedoms have been suddenly and radically curtailed
  • She’s allowed to wander the castle at will. So what? There’s nowhere here she wants to be. Even her room, the closest thing to her own intimate space, is intolerable to her now. The walls are closing in, war drawing nigh
  • Instead, she climbs to the top of the tower like Bran before her. He discovered the dirty little secret of royal power; Sansa beholds the full unveiled armaments of that power, securing the Lannister coup
  • Everywhere she looks, she sees Tyrion’s works, readying King’s Landing to bear the brunt of Stannis’ fury. Yet none of it makes her less fearful
  • Why is that? It’s in part fear of Stannis and his army. But as George writes it, it’s more the smoke in the air, the fires raging across the horizon, a cinematic master shot that Tyrion will mirror during the battle itself
  • It’s a sickening spiritual dread made all the worse by Sansa’s desire for the flames to come and cleanse all her sorrow. She hates it and loves it
  • Is the enemy on the outside or the inside? This question applies to the personal struggles as much as the political ones; they interweave
  • It is a sudden stab of pain within Sansa that almost gets her killed, her body betraying her; one of the fearful shadows springs to life in order to save her, the opposite of the murderous shadows in the Stormlands
  • Sansa begs Sandor to let her go. This moment echoes the moment in book one in which she was about to go murder-suicide on Joffrey until Sandor intervened like an agent of mercy, a knight out of the songs
  • Does Sansa want Sandor to let her go because she’s frightened of him, as she says? Or does part of her want to fall, to end her suffering and fear?
  • Sandor asks whether she wants to end up like Bran, or if she thinks she’d fly away. Realism v. romanticism, the cycle of misery v. transcendence
  • Yet Bran is the Winged Wolf: disabled on one plane, all-powerful on another, a fusion of worlds, and in a literary sense, a fusion of tones
  • Sansa’s story exists along a similar frontier, one foot in storybook romanticism and one foot in bitter cynical power politics
  • That duality is embodied by Sandor. That frontier runs right down the middle of his face, cutting his soul in two. He has lived this alienation
  • He is both Sansa’s savior and a constant threat to her, challenging her perspective not only on him but on the multiple worldviews he represents
  • He will put himself between her and Stannis’ army, but none of them ever get close enough to put a blade to her throat. He does here and will again
  • So Sansa doesn’t know how to treat him, any more than she knew how to interpret Dontos’ woven web of words. What kind of story is this? What roles are we playing? Who am I to you? What do we owe to each other?
  • Even as Sandor reminds Sansa that he saved her life during the King’s Landing riot, it’s in the same breath that he acknowledges she still can’t stand to look at him. For him, this is proof of the failure of goodness
  • I acted like your perfect knightly guardian, and you still can’t do me the most basic courtesy of eye contact, because on the surface, I don’t fit the image of the perfect knightly guardian. You’re just another hypocrite
  • Sandor’s alienation is certainly sympathetic given what started it, and no one before Sansa has even bothered to get this far with him
  • But these mind games he plays with Sansa are cruel and unfair. The situation from which he saved her was a violent and terrifying one, and the means by which he saved her was itself violent and terrifying
  • That’s not going to be a happy memory no matter how Sandor slices it, and his attitude toward her compounds her fear. As she thinks, what really makes her afraid isn’t the burns. It’s the pure anger in his eyes
  • There’s no telling where that anger might be directed. Like wildfire, it goes where it will once you let it loose. It could hurt Sansa as easily as help her
  • Sansa can sense Sandor’s pain at some level and connect it to her own. But her tools for doing so are broken pieces of a world he despises
  • When Sansa thanks him for saving her, he does not interpret it as her trying to cross that gap between them. Sandor is so used to the flavor of alienation that it’s the only taste he can accept, rejecting all others
  • Instead, Sandor mocks her word choices. Don’t call me brave. I wasn’t brave, the rioters had no realistic chance against me and my sword
  • This is Sandor scraping away the surface hypocrisy of societal niceties, as he always does. What he fails to understand (or just refuses to understand) is that Sansa is being sincere with him, unlike everyone else
  • She calls him brave not because he actually was brave, but because “brave” is the word all her education in courtesies taught her to use
  • It’s like how people reflexively use “coward” to describe any military foe they particularly dislike, even if it’s objectively an untrue description, or use “unconstitutional” to describe any law they hate, regardless of whether it is
  • We cloak ourselves in words. They stand in not only for their literal meanings, but also the web of associations and values behind them
  • This is one of the few spots where Sansa voices her honest opinion in this chapter; so, you’re right to highlight it.
  • But the only reason Sansa says it is because it usually plays well with the people who hear it in King’s Landing, or perhaps better-worded: keeps her alive.
  • The problem is that Sandor zeroes in on the “words to keep me alive” part of why Sansa tells him that he’s brave, rather than it being Sansa’s honest statement.
  • Because Sandor has seen the way Sansa performs courtly virtue in King’s Landing and knows it’s a lie, because how could it not be a lie that Sansa loves Joffrey with all her heart and considers her brother to be a traitor deserving of death?
  • Cersei allows Sansa to lie through it all as part of her low-cunning theater she’s running of having the sister of Robb Stark continue to openly call him a traitor. But Sandor knows the truth behind those words, and I think I favor the fails to understand interpretation of Sansa rather than the refuses to understand interpretation.
  • Moreover, Sansa continues to keep most of her honest thoughts to herself. It’s all part of her forced interiority. Not that she’d want to tell Sandor that he fears Gregor Clegane in the best of times, mind you.
  • Sandor’s actions during the riot line up partially with Sansa’s understanding of those values, but only partway. The world around them does not support those values, because the people threatening Sansa were not conveniently overpowered supervillains. They were starving peasants, and so Sandor really didn’t risk anything, deflating the heroism
  • Sandor in her eyes keeps blurring the border between the world she used to know and the world she knows. To which does he belong, and to which should she belong? It’s the threshold between childhood and adulthood
  • In the world of her childhood, joy and death were at the opposing ends of the spectrum. Sandor argues that in the world of adulthood, the only joy is in killing people. And you may hate that, but don’t you dare deny it!
  • As we’ll see with the Brotherhood, what Sandor fears most is that there may, in fact, be reasons to live and love in even this hateful fallen world
  • If that’s the case, then he missed out on the happier life he could’ve had. He can’t do anything about what Gregor did, but he can do something about his own misery...unless the entire world really is that awful
  • If that’s the case, then there’s nothing Sandor can do, so all there is for him is the law of the sword. Might makes right; that’s the way of things
  • Sandor insists that Eddard lied when he told Sansa he took no joy in killing. If Ned was telling the truth, then it means Ned found something worth living for, despite being part of a system built on fire and blood
  • What Ned was living for is still a little beyond Sansa, and she’ll never be able to talk to him about it now. What Ned lived for was love, love as it’s experienced in adulthood: a beautiful fragile dance with death
  • Ned lost his sister, but still loved her. Ned lost Robert in more ways than one, but still loved him. Ned was ready to put it all on the line for Jon
  • Sandor, of course, suffered far more physically than Ned ever did, and unlike Ned, was alone in his mourning for the world he lost
  • The decision to abandon any link to life and love, however, was still Sandor’s to make, and he has suffered for the decision he made
  • He can’t even accept Sansa’s gratitude! He has to deconstruct even the simple act of thanking, because that’s too much decency for him to bear
  • There is an absurdity to this not dissimilar to the literal folly of Dontos’ performance. It’s the same self-deception with the tone flipped
  • Dontos told Sansa to hold onto hope. Sandor shreds that hope, telling Sansa that strong arms and steel swords run this world
  • Beneath the projection and over-the-top gruffness, there is a real thesis statement to Sandor’s argument, and it’s the same as Jaime’s argument to Catelyn a few chapters from now: it is impossible to be a good person
  • If you embrace violence, you destroy yourself along with others. If you reject violence, you die for it, and can do no good to anyone any more
  • Even diagnosing the problem does us no good, because we’ve heaped far too much power and psychology on top of it to erase it. Awareness of our original sin does not deliver us. It makes clear that we are forsaken
  • Sandor says that Eddard Stark had all the societal niceties on his side, and yet died all the same. Why? Because knights are for killing; the societal niceties pretend otherwise so everyone doesn’t have to go around as depressed as Sandor Clegane, but they all know it deep down
  • It is again the precise inverse of Dontos’ argument. He said the key to survival was to keep your head down and stay out of the way; only those who pop their heads up attract the lethal attention of the powerful
  • Sandor says that Dontos’ path leads only to submissive death, because any expression of humanity will expose you to the lethal attention of the powerful. All you can do is be ready to fight back when that happens
  • This extends beyond political power to the magical/religious side of things. If there are gods, they made things this way. They made Tyrion a dwarf in a world that hates him for it; same goes for Lollys Stokeworth
  • Why should Sandor fear them and their judgement, when they’re just cosmic versions of Gregor and Joffrey? The only hell is this one, kid!
  • Because Sandor has seen through the lies, he can burn through societal niceties, using the only truth--that of the sword--to kill every kind of person up and down the ladder of society. He, and he alone, is not afraid
  • It’s interesting how the subject of Lollys comes up in Sansa’s conversations with both Dontos and Sandor.
  • According to Dontos, everyone plays their game of thrones but with Lollys, it’s different:
    • They all watch each other keen as hawks, and pay this one and that one to spy out what the others are doing, but no one ever troubles themselves about Lady Tanda's daughter, do they?
  • So, to Dontos, Lollys is safe because she’s seen as a lackwit and left alone by the nobles who prefer to conspire against each other.
  • But to Sandor, he sees Lollys in disturbingly different terms:
    • "Tell me, little bird, what kind of god makes a monster like the Imp, or a halfwit like Lady Tanda's daughter? If there are gods, they made sheep so wolves could eat mutton, and they made the weak for the strong to play with."
  • Lollys is meat for the strong to play with. So, which perspective is the correct one? Terrifyingly, it’s both.
  • In one of Jorah’s two fine moments in the story, he tells Daenerys that the smallfolk just want to be left alone, but that’s not the implication with Lollys.
  • Here, the implication is that no one cares about Lollys, because of her mental impairment. They have more important things to do than to care about Lollys when there are more important matters.
  • Remember that awful scene from the riot in King’s Landing when Lady Tanda is shrieking for Lollys and everyone ignores her and wonders about Joffrey, Cersei, Sandor Clegane, Sansa, Preston Greenfield and the High Septon.
  • Is it preferable to be ignored then? No.
  • Meanwhile, Sandor’s perspective is proof that god don’t real, because then why is there human suffering? But anyways, now that she exists, she can be preyed upon by the strong.
  • Lollys’ treatment by the high lords is awful in and of itself, and I think it stands in for how the high lords treat the smallfolk in the game of thrones.
  • Ignore them since they’re inconvenient, prey upon them when you need their blood, property or sweat.
  • On the inside, Sansa immediately punctures this philosophy. Sandor is afraid of Gregor, as she knows full well. Gregor is the embodiment of rapacious power that took notice of young innocent Sandor
  • Sandor is also afraid of fire, which Stannis is bringing across the river with him. Sandor says he’s prepared to die in that battle, dodging any weakness that might crack him open to genuine empathy for Sansa
  • Sandor’s social critique has teeth. The flaw in his argument is his refusal to admit his own vulnerability and culpability--and the two are linked
  • Sandor will be as violent as it takes to never be helpless again. No one will ever be able to put him in that position; he’s the Hound, he can kill anyone
  • In the process, he’s become that which he hates: an avatar of unthinking unreasoning violence looming over innocent story-loving children
  • Sansa forces him into a complicated corner. Part of Sandor wants to shield her from the world, part of him wants to beat the world into her
  • He can’t separate the violence he has learned from the romanticism shattered by that violence. He sees both in Sansa’s story
  • She offers him hope. She enrages him. She terrifies him. He needs to save her, but he also needs to doom her, to make her just like him
  • Is Sansa his ladder up to heaven, or is Sandor her ladder down to hell? He can’t even decide what he wants, let alone what to do about it
  • All of which makes it impossible for Sansa to entirely embrace or reject him, and I think George wanted the reader to end up in the same place
  • On one hand, Sandor encourages Sansa to look beyond him to the system at work. I’m not awful; I am an honest reflection of an awful world
  • That is an important part of Sansa’s development, as both a politician and  a person. It’s not all about good and bad individuals; far more often, it’s about individuals crushed in different ways by larger forces around them
  • On the other hand, Sandor is neatly excusing any responsibility he might have for ameliorating suffering, even just between himself and Sansa
  • If the world is as bad as Sandor says it is, then all we have is each other; rejecting that bridge is immaturity, not wisdom, and Sandor gradually painfully struggles towards the realization that what he does still matters
  • So Sansa is caught in between in terms of how to think about Sandor. Part of her thinks of him as an angry dog growling at any kindness
  • But another part of her wishes Dontos had his ferocity. They each showed her half the world, half the story, so both of them seem incomplete to her
  • Sansa retains her queasy fascination with the Hound because of this liminal in-between status. She recalls him saving her during the riot, a moment in which his face transformed. I love that George cuts it off there
  • We don’t know if Sandor looked handsome, or happy, or relieved of fear. All we know is that for a moment, he looked different. There was the possibility of something else, a hint of life amidst all this death
  • That’s what draws Sansa on in her own life, and it’s a key part of the complex and turbulent empathy growing between herself and Sandor
  • When talking to Dontos, she makes Sandor’s argument. When talking to Sandor, she makes Dontos’ argument! Somewhere in there is the truth
  • Dontos Hollard and Sandor Clegane represent two extremes: it’s shrinking obsequiousness to power vs furious rage at the system. It’s ice and fire.
  • When Sansa talks about wishing that Dontos had some of Sandor’s ferocity, she’s asking that her narrative reflect the chivalric stories she grew up around.
  • Ryam Redwyne and Serwyn of the Mirror Shield represented the pinnacle of chivalry: they protected the weak, the innocent, women from the horrors of the world around them.
  • But they used their training as knights to do so. Loras Tyrell’s hand which offered her a flower at the Hand’s Tourney was the same one that brought down the Mountain in that same tourney.
  • Sandor, though, has a different perspective. To him: chivalry is a pretty ribbon tied around a sword that inflicts violence on the world.
  • In other words, it’s a perfume to cover up the horrible smell. Knights are killers, and Sansa better get on the same page as him.
  • But there’s an even deeper layer as you were pointing out: Sandor the boy loved his toy knights and loved the same chivalric stories that Sansa loved.
  • And that was all brought to a sudden and horrifying end by Gregor Clegane, and Sandor wants Sansa to see the truth and reality, because her stories came to a sudden and horrifying end when her father was murdered on the steps of Baelor’s Sept.
  • The thing is that, like Sansa and her feelings regarding the gods, it’s much more complicated for Sandor too.
  • And that complication will be felt most strongly when Sandor Clegane comes to Sansa’s room demanding the song she promised him at threat to her life.
  • But after Sansa sings “Gentle Mother, Font of Mercy”, the reader may expect another snarling mockery of Sansa’s beliefs, or gods forbid, Sandor to run Sansa through with his sword.
  • Instead, Sandor weeps. He weeps at what he’s become, and he weeps for the boy he was, not the man he’s become.
• Becoming A Woman™
  • That night, after her conversations with her Notaknights, Sansa dreams of the riot again. Her assailants are an inhuman swarm, as Theon saw the people of Winterfell. Sansa cries out for all the heroes of the songs she loved to save her; she cries out for Dontos, Loras, Lady, Ned, to no avail
  • It seems that Sandor was right and the world is awful; Dontos was wrong, keeping her head down didn’t help Sansa. It isn’t even rapacious men attacking her in the dream, but other women, betraying her like Cersei
  • They plunge the knife into her and cut her into ribbons...and then Sansa wakes up feeling sick and achy to find that the blood is real
  • For a sickening moment, it’s as if the dreamworld has stepped into the light of day. The fear of violence bubbling just under the surface for Sansa has erupted, as it did in the riot, as it will soon in the Battle of Blackwater
  • Yet understanding what has actually happened does not bring Sansa any comfort. If anything, it’s worse. George does such a good job capturing Sansa’s frantic state of mind, repeating “not now” no less than five times
  • As I’ve been saying throughout this episode, the enemy is within as well as without. The call is coming from inside the house
  • This dynamic applies to the personal physical struggles every bit as much as the collective political struggles. Just as Tyrion lights fires on this side of the river to match Stannis’ banner on the other side, Sansa’s fear of external violence is ironically realized by blood coming from inside her
  • George emphasizes this parallel by having Sansa compare her menstrual blood to a banner of Lannister crimson, her own body betraying her like the women who attacked her in her dream. The concept of Woman, a role Sansa has been preparing for her whole life, has become her enemy
  • What a perfect way of capturing Sansa’s alienation! The natural maturation of her body has been weaponized by the political context
  • Sansa knows that now that she is menstruating, she can be wed to Joffrey and forced into bed with him. Hence the blood resembling Lannister crimson to her; it is the mechanism by which she will be made a Lannister
  • This also reads as Sansa looking at a natural occurrence and embedding her own meaning into it.
  • This is similar to everyone staring up at the great comet in the sky early in ACOK and believing it to mean Tully victory, Lannister crimson, the red god unfurling his banner across the sky.
  • But the comet and menstruation are naturally occurring phenomena. Do they actually mean something?
  • Well, yes. They do! The comet does appear to herald a change in the world in the form of the birth of the dragons.
  • For Sansa, her first period is her body’s entry into adulthood, mirroring how psychologically, Sansa has not so much shed childish things as had them ripped away from her.
  • And yet, the comet and Sansa’s menstruation are natural, common. But that does not strip away the meaning characters embed into them.
  • Menstruating for the first time is an inherently stressful experience even in the best of circumstances. Contemplating marrying Joffrey was an inherently stressful experience even when it remained hypothetical
  • Now Sansa has to deal with the stress of battle, imprisonment, menstruation, and the prospect of marrying her abuser at the same time
  • So naturally, she freaks the fuck out. Who wouldn’t? She cuts through her sheet and then attempts to burn her entire mattress, all to hide her blood
  • Rationally, of course, this makes no sense. Even if she was able to burn her mattress, it would be clear why she had done it. And even if it wasn’t, there’s no hiding the menstrual blood itself once the flow resumes
  • But Sansa isn’t thinking rationally. She’s all alone in the world, more than ever, and desperate for an escape from her situation and her own self
  • Obviously, George cannot draw from personal experience here, and neither can we. Nevertheless, I think George does a good job of grounding us in Sansa’s head. It was wise of him to emphasize not the specifically gendered aspects that are foreign to him, but the sense of political desperation, the need to avoid an even worse form of imprisonment
  • As with her desire to see the Great Sept in flames, Sansa is literally trying to burn down a world that lied to her about its true nature
  • That’s something that I think any reader can understand, whether we’ve menstruated or not; an act of empathy like between Sansa and Sandor
  • We empathize with Sansa in this moment, because not only is this a terrifying moment for her physically, it signals something far worse: she can be coerced into wedding and bedding Joffrey.
  • Fortunately, the Tyrells arrive just in time to save Sansa from the fate of having to marry Joffrey and have sex with him, right?
  • Not so much as Dontos tells Sansa at the end of ACOK:
    • "The queen will never let you go, never. You are too valuable a hostage. And Joffrey . . . sweetling, he is still king. If he wants you in his bed, he will have you, only now it will be bastards he plants in your womb instead of trueborn sons."
  • Sansa is trapped in a living nightmare, created by a patriarchal society which values Sansa only in her ability to produce an heir if she’s the king’s consort or a sex object to be used or not used by powerful men, because they can.
• Brunching with Cersei
  • After Sansa calms down and is given new clothes to wear, she is dispatched to see Cersei, who has the responsibility of dealing with this
  • Why is that? Why not send Sansa to, say, Tyrion? In part, it’s because of gender. Cersei has been through menstruation herself, and so she can offer more empathy and information than someone who has not
  • Menstruation is women’s work; it is the obligation of the mother to explain it to the daughter. But Sansa is separated from her mother, so Cersei must fill in. She alludes to this surrogate mother role when she tells Sansa that Catelyn ought to have prepared her for menstruation. Now I have to do it!
  • Cersei, however, also has the responsibility of addressing Sansa’s menstruation because she is Queen Regent and Sansa is betrothed to her son, the King. So this is both a personal and political conversation
  • Those two dynamics contradict each other. Even if Cersei personally had Sansa’s best interests at heart (which she very much does not), she is ultimately here to assess Sansa’s status as brood mare to her son
  • She cannot truly offer comfort to Sansa even if she felt like it, no more than Tyrion can, because no matter if they play good cop or bad cop, they’re still keeping Sansa trapped in this nightmare scenario
  • Cersei, too, is an enemy calling from inside the house, and she brings up the inside-outside dynamic of this chapter right away to Sansa
  • Cersei displays some tasty tempting food, and then admits that it all tastes like ash thanks to both Stannis and Tyrion’s fires. The stuff of life, the rewards of power, have been corrupted by the furious forces of war
  • The god of fire and blood is already inside the walls, inside the food, inside Sansa’s own body, frightening her like the fires looming outside
  • As Cersei says, this fear has led Sansa to start her own fire. At every level of society, from the intimacy of puberty to the intricacy of the game of thrones, everyone is ultimately trying to burn the whole damn thing down
  • The conscious strategies are giving way to transformative impulses seeping up from under deep tectonic layers, and the two are intermixing
  • You can see that in how Cersei handles Sansa, a poisonous-valentine approach that anticipates the rose thorns of the Tyrells, if more bluntly
  • On one level, Cersei is still acting like the Good Queen who so enchanted Sansa back in book one. The forms of courtesy are observed: Cersei offers Sansa both food and advice, even complimenting her strength
  • One can imagine that this is how Cersei would handle Myrcella’s first period. Not exactly warm, but a steady practical handle on the situation
  • On another level, though, this isn’t a conversation about Sansa at all. Rather, it is a conversation about Joffrey. Sansa leaves him out of her explanation for why she started the fire. She’s trying to keep her performance going, the lady’s face already dissolving into tears at the start of the chapter. Cersei sees through it, knowing that face so well herself
  • It’s remarkable to observe how coolly she condemns Sansa to a lifetime of abuse, even worse than that which she suffered at Robert’s hands
  • She connects the violence Joffrey inflicts on Sansa to the pain she suffered giving birth to him, a comparison most revealing for her character
  • For Cersei, the role of woman that Sansa is so viscerally confronting is a gauntlet of humiliation that she has uniquely mastered, as Best Woman
  • She sees herself reflected in Sansa, and says so: I survived, and so will you. But remember, she later plans to kill Sansa at the Blackwater!
  • The seed of empathy withers in Cersei’s psychological soil, because all she’s got in there is paranoia and resentment that she’s still not really in charge. Sansa must suffer for the pain inflicted upon Cersei. Joffrey hurt me coming into the world, and so you’re next in line to take his blows
  • George still does unearth pathos in Cersei, reminding us that she has been abandoned by Robert and indeed every man but Jaime
  • She hates men for having power, and other women for not having power. There is no relationship to power that can satisfy Cersei, which is a problem because power is pretty much the only thing she cares about!
  • Sansa confesses that she thought this part of her life would be magical, not so messy. It is the messiness of life that molded Cersei
  • As at the Battle of Blackwater, you can sense Cersei relishing the opportunity to say what she thinks, with Sansa as a captive audience
  • Sansa has no such luxury and must maintain her mask, like Dontos and Sandor at court, playing their opposing roles. She claims to love Joffrey
  • Cersei tells her she’s going to have to learn some new lies for Stannis. Stannis is an ambiguous figure for Sansa. Is he coming to liberate her, or will she just have to learn a new set of lies to appease the new boss?
  • Sansa passes on the performative mantra of the new High Septon: Stannis will lose the battle because Joffrey is Robert’s true heir
  • Cersei smiles, thinking of the truth and the success of Lannister propaganda. But then she shares something intimate with Sansa
  • Joffrey cried when Robert picked him up. So what? Babies cry! But it’s hard for Cersei not to read into it, like the comet or Sansa and her period
  • It felt to her like a rejection, a recognition that Robert was not in fact Joffrey’s father. This was her revenge on Robert, on the life she had to live, the life she says Sansa will now have to live
  • So Robert went to where he was loved: friends, brothels, and bastards. Cersei calls it a disease, and diagnoses Tyrion with the same affliction
  • What about Sansa? As she stands on the threshold of fire and blood, entering adulthood in a world at war, does she want to be loved?
  • Sansa says that everyone wants to be loved. It’s a universal truth shining naively from her cherished stories and songs, filtered now through the desperate adult need for connection, the lack of which produced Dontos, Sandor, and Cersei as they currently exist. This is what Sansa takes away, a pearl of wisdom forged by the forces grinding away all around her
  • It is beyond Cersei’s grasp. She rejects it as childish, like an overly cynical reader. She offers a counterargument: love is but the sweetest of poisons
  • This, too, is a poetic idea with ancient roots. Love is the noblest of passions, but is not immune to the corruption threatening all passions
  • Passion is life, and so is the counterforce to death. Each passion loses its battle against the grim reaper in its own unique way, becoming part of death. Love, as Cersei argues, joins forces with death by becoming poison
  • Love has poisoned Tyrion like it poisoned Robert. They couldn’t get what they wanted, and the depth of their need invalidated the rest of their lives
  • Cersei is making a similar argument to Sandor. There is no way to resolve the human heart in conflict with itself. Love is death; alienation is life
  • And just as Sandor elided his own vulnerability and culpability in the cycle of violence, Cersei is only pretending to be immune to love’s poison
  • She said earlier in the conversation that she loves Joffrey in spite of everything, and that Sansa will love Joffrey’s children despite him
  • Is that not a poison that will bring her low? Does Cersei herself not suffer greatly because of her paranoid possessive love of her children?
  • Cersei wants to set her heart on fire like Stannis’ banner, another way in which the two opposing sides at the Battle of Blackwater come together
  • In both cases, not only is purging humanity objectionable in its own right, it doesn’t even achieve their stated goals. Stannis is more sorrowful than ever, and Cersei winds up clinging to the tether of her children too tightly
  • Even Jaime will walk away from her, and no matter how much she denies it, living this way has made her miserable, along with everyone around her
  • She projects it all onto Sansa because like Sandor, to see the glimpse of another way terrifies her. She turns on Sansa like the women in her dream
  • Cersei is not wrong that love hurts, just like Sandor is not wrong that the world runs on fire and blood. But they’ve drawn the wrong conclusions
  • Sansa gradually reaches the right one: to live for love without shame, and to govern with that principle in mind. It’s her only escape from the fire
  • Cersei’s closing statement about how love is poison must have been the vantage point which George used to write Cersei’s chapters in AFFC.
  • Throughout those chapters, Cersei repeatedly pushes aside the love of the commons, castigating Margaery for her attempts to win the love of the common folk and always reminding herself to show no fear, to maximize fear in others and rule as ice queen.
  • The Stannis parallels are quite clear as you were saying.
  • Ultimately, Cersei (and Stannis) forget the full extent of Machiavelli’s wisdom:
    • “it is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
      
  • Moreover, Chapters XV through XVII of The Prince are exhortations to the prince not to indulge in either too much love or too much cruelty.
  • Or in a ASOIAF context: not to be Tytos Lannisters or Tywin Lannister.
  • You gotta be Ned Stark. And that’s where I think Sansa’s story is ultimately heading: thematically back to Winterfell and back to her father.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Dontos’ “good friend” who will spirit Sansa out of King’s Landing is Littlefinger, as we learn in ASOS. George does give us a hint when Dontos says his friend isn’t in the city…

Dontos says that Stannis’ men cannot cross the Blackwater without ships, which, okay, how about if the army crosses the river atop a burning bridge of ships during the battle instead!?

The gods seem to answer Dontos’ prayer to send a storm after Stannis’ fleet, as we learn in Davos III. It’s not enough to destroy the fleet, but it slows the ships down long enough for Tywin and the Tyrells to triumph over Stannis at the Battle of Blackwater.

Fires, fires everywhere is what Sansa sees when she climbs the steps to the Red Keep. This exact wording is used again in Quentyn’s second ADWD chapter “The Windblown” as he reflects back on the Battle of Astapor and remembers the brutality of the slaughter, summing it all up as Fires, fires everywhere.

Theory/Discussion

How would Lord Jeff Hartline, Esquire, run the battle from the Lannister side? (We can do the Baratheon side for Davos III!)

Conclusion

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  • Red Rahloo Himself who has renounced his allegiance to the Squishers
  • Lady of a Thousand Words
  • Septon Eastwood of Introvert Isle
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  • Sister Winter - Lady of the Wolfswood
  • Nessie the Elusive, warden of the Neck, Defender of the North and Keeper of Secrets
  • Sandie the Dragon, Blood of Queen Daenerys & Lady of Jameson
  • Lady Britt, Bastard Mistress of Harrenhal
  • Ser Thomas the Raven Knight, Lord of Blackwood
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  • Wisdom Benjicot, Alchemist of Sets and Quanta, Mage of the Arts of Boole and DeMorgan
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  • Lord J Manderly, Baker of the Frey Pies
  • Septon Merifullheadofhair
  • Lady Silverwing
  • Joe Snow “King of the Metro North and protector of the Tri-State”
  • Kaboth the Unfrozen, Lord of the Bricks and Castle Crimson Light
  • Ser Keith of House Corbray, wielder of Lady Forlorn
  • Lord Andrew - Warden of the Dubai Sands
  • Ryan Noye forger of the mighty hammer and keeper of the kings anvil
  • Lord Young of the Ghost Woods
  • Lady Meera Reed, Wielder of Dark Sister, slayer of tinfoil
  • Lady of Rainy Afternoons
  • Ser Will of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune
  • Lord Clay
  • Ser Small Paul, Guardian of the Stone Haven, Defender of Dunnottar Castle
  • Septon T-Bone
  • Refined Wrangler of Icy Arachnids
  • Lady Veronica, Caretaker at the Inn at the Crossroads
  • Lady Danielle of House Lannister
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• Join us next week for ACOK Jon VII, in which Jon gets some practical education from Qhorin Halfhand and some...weird education from his brother Bran. And sorry to say next week we will not livestream Jon VII, BUT, it’s for good reason as we’ll be joined by a brand new guest: Stefan Sasse of the famed Boiled Leather Audio Hour!