“She knows it, and you don’t, which is why you’ll never hold onto her.”
[Braavos] At the top she found a set of carved wooden doors twelve feet high. The left-hand door was made of weirwood pale as bone, the right of gleaming ebony. In their center was a carved moon face; ebony on the weirwood side, weirwood on the ebony. The look of it reminded her somehow of the heart tree in the godswood at Winterfell.
you would have been happy at Highgarden
♠ asoiaf characters + lit quotes
“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
-John Steinbeck: East of Eden
I am a Stark, I can be brave
Days before I knew I was going to be shooting Sophie, I was watching the season finale of ‘Game of Thrones’ and was thinking how I would like to photograph her. - Kristin Vicari
I knew what I was doing. I was prepared for a long dance with death.
BUGGER THAT. BUGGER HIM. BUGGER YOU.
let’s stop complaining about Sansa saying “but he’s a dwarf”, because even though in the books she never says something similar, part of her objecting to marry him is about his look, about how ugly he is.
Yes, first of all in the books she openly says she doesn’t want to marry him because he’s a Lannister! but let’s not pretend that his bad look,which includes his dwarfism, isn’t one of the reasons why she objects to marry him.
Besides, GRRM wrote the episode! basically you’re criticizing the man who created all the characters and knows their psyche more than any reader could ever understand.A few things.
1. No, Tyrion being a dwarf didn’t have much to do with Sansa objecting to marrying him. It did, however, have a lot to do with her not being sexually attracted to him. And that’s okay! People are allowed to NOT be sexually attracted to people. Peter Dinklage is an incredibly handsome man, however book!Tyrion is NOT. (Honestly I’d have trouble being attracted to ANY person COMPLETELY MISSING THEIR NOSE but I guess I’m just shallow.)
Sansa’s first thoughts on hearing that she’s to marry Tyrion:
My claim, she thought, sickened. Dontos the Fool was not so foolish after all; he had seen the truth of it. Sansa backed away from the queen. “I won’t.” I’m to marry Willas, I’m to be the lady of Highgarden, please…
It’s funny, it’s almost as if the thought of his looks don’t enter into it all. It’s almost as if she’s horrified at being tied to the Lannister family, who is going to try to use her to usurp her claim…(additionally, when Cersei first refers to Tyrion in this conversation, she merely calls him a “gargoyle,” which Sansa interprets as Cersei referring to WILLAS)
She also thinks:
It had been the Imp who saved her from a beating that day, the same man who was waiting for her now. He is not so bad as the rest of them, she told herself. “I’ll go.”
WOW IT’S ALMOST AS IF SHE’S NOT EVEN THINKING OF HIS LOOKS????
The first time she thinks of his NOT being handsome, is when she sees him face to face. And the only thing she thinks is:
Tyrion wore a doublet of black velvet covered with golden scrollwork, thigh-high boots that added three inches to his height, a chain of rubies and lions’ heads. But the gash across his face was raw and red, and his nose was a hideous scab. […]
Should I tell him he is handsome? He’ll think me a fool or a liar. She lowered her gaze and held her tongue.
So, yes. She correctly notes that Tyrion is not handsome. His facial wound is hideous to look at - which is an objective fact. That doesn’t make her shallow.
And then:
“You did not ask for this marriage, I know. No more than I did. If I had refused you, however, they would have wed you to my cousin Lancel. Perhaps you would prefer that. He is nearer your age, and fairer to look upon. If that is your wish, say so and I will end this farce.”
I don’t want any Lannister, she wanted to say. I want Willas, I want Highgarden and the puppies and the barge, and sons named Eddard and Bran and Rickon. But then she remembered what Dontos had told her in the godswood. Tyrell or Lannister, it makes no matter, it’s not me they want, only my claim. “You are kind, my lord,” she said, defeated. “I am a ward of the throne and my duty is to marry as the king commands.”
He studied her with his mismatched eyes. “I know I am not the sort of husband young girls dream of, Sansa,” he said softly, “but neither am I Joffrey.”
“No,” she said. “You were kind to me. I remember.”
During the wedding she is “mortified” that Tyrion wants her to kneel for the placing of the bridal cloak, yes. She’s embarrassed, because it’s not the way she envisioned her wedding being. But then moments later she is “ashamed of her stubbornness” and kneels to kiss him.
Wow, gee, it’s almost like she recognizes that his being a dwarf isn’t that important in the scheme of things…
She does think he is ugly. But again, when offered a handsomer husband, she remembered that Tyrion had been kind to her. His kindness was more important to her than any physical deformity.
During the wedding feast she does her best to make the situation happy. She asks Tyrion to dance, and he rebuffs her. (wow what a bitch I know)
All throughout the bedding scene, Sansa is terrified. No matter who her husband was, she would have been TERRIFIED. Because she was about to be RAPED by a man she could not consent to marry, kindness notwithstanding.
It’s not until AFTER he says that he won’t consummate the marriage that she thinks about his lack of beauty.
Look at him, Sansa told herself, look at your husband, all of him. Septa Mordane said all men are beautiful, find his beauty, try.
Does Sansa find it? No. She finds nothing in his physical person beautiful. Is part of this likely due to his dwarfism? Yes. But Tyrion’s physical appearance had nothing to do with Sansa’s objecting to marry him. That had everything to do with his being a Lannister, and her being forever tied to a family that had and would continue to abuse her. The family that killed her father.
Had Tyrion been a Tyrell, yes - she would have been disappointed in his looks. But I am positive that she would have been much happier to marry him had doing so meant that she could escape the Lannisters.
2. As for GRRM writing the episode….bullshit.
We can complain all we want, regardless of the author of the content. And we don’t know that GRRM wrote that scene. He has said before that scenes he didn’t write (like the Bronn/Sandor scene in Blackwater) have been inserted into his episodes. And we know that scenes from this episode were shuffled with scenes from another. The initial title for this episode was “Autumn Rains,” but after the scene-shuffling occurred, they re-titled it to be more appropriate.
So we absolutely do not know that GRRM wrote this scene. And even if he did, we can be upset that it seems to contradict or vastly over-simplify what was present in the books. That’s our right as viewers and readers.
If you don’t like seeing the complaining - block those who do it. Simple answer to a simple problem.
The Kill List
Illustration done for the Geek-Art Game of Thrones art show! It opened in Paris today, at the Dernier Bar Avant la Fin du Mond. Obviously, I had to do Arya Stark, because come on, it’s Arya Stark.
There will be a very limited quantity of prints on sale on site, and eventually online if there are any left.
Haven’t been online at all the past few days, but I should be back next week!
“Only Renly could vex me so with a piece of fruit. He brought his doom on himself with his treason, but I did love him, Davos. I know that now. I swear, I will go to my grave thinking of my brother’s peach.”
favourite asoiaf characters; Jaime Lannister
“It was that white cloak that soiled me, not the other way around.”
