“Sansa tried to run, but Cersei’s handmaid caught her before she’d gone a yard.”

Synopsis: a pre-teen girl is forced into marriage with an enemy of her family and for some reason people think she is the bad guy.

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.

Political Analysis:

And so we go from controversy to controversy, with a chapter that pits issues of gender and disability against one another, as well as the partisans of both Sansa and Tyrion. Given the events of the chapter, a good deal of delicacy is required, but so to is an equal amount of precision and clarity to unpick this knot of competing impulses and allegiances.

The Princess and the Evil Queen

To begin with, I want to talk about why George R.R Martin chose to have Sansa be the POV for a chapter that involves a major life choice for two main characters. (As I’ll discuss in detail later, events in this chapter would be viewed in a very different way if we weren’t seeing them through her eyes.) In my opinion, the reason why he chose Sansa comes down to a question of empathy, because it’s quite clear that GRRM intends to enlist the reader’s empathy on behalf of a character who isn’t often extended that courtesy:

On the morning her new gown was to be ready, the serving girls filled Sansa’s tub with steaming hot water and scrubbed her head to toe until she glowed pink. Cersei’s own bedmaid trimmed her nails and brushed and curled her auburn hair so it fell down her back in soft ringlets. She brought a dozen of the queen’s favorite scents as well. Sansa chose a sharp sweet fragrance with a hint of lemon in it under the smell of flowers. The maid dabbed some on her finger and touched Sansa behind each ear, and under her chin, and then lightly on her nipples. Cersei herself arrived with the seamstress, and watched as they dressed Sansa in her new clothes. The smallclothes were all silk, but the gown itself was ivory samite and cloth-of-silver, and lined with silvery satin. The points of the long dagged sleeves almost touched the ground when she lowered her arms. And it was a woman’s gown, not a little girl’s, there was no doubt of that. The bodice was slashed in front almost to her belly, the deep vee covered over with a panel of ornate Myrish lace in dove-grey. The skirts were long and full, the waist so tight that Sansa had to hold her breath as they laced her into it. They brought her new shoes as well, slippers of soft grey doeskin that hugged her feet like lovers.

From the off, Sansa is an innocent in a nest of vipers, as femininity itself is being weaponized against her. As in Sansa II, fashion has meaning, and in this case it’s a metatextual one; wedding dresses being white is not a custom in Westeros, but it’s one that his readers would definitely be familiar with, and because the reader can see its meaning but Sansa cannot, the dress takes on a horror movie-style of tension. Moreover, the contrast between the subtextual purity of the “ivory samite” and the “dove-grey” and the frank sexuality of the “woman’s gown, not a little girl’s” with the silk underwear, the “deep vee” and the slippers that “hugged her feet like lovers” suggests a madonna/whore complex being thrust upon a pre-teen girl.

And lurking in the background is Cersei – even before she enters the room, Sansa is surrounded by her serving girls, her favorite perfume – who is in full Evil Queen in Snow White mode here, trying to impose her will on a younger woman. Cersei being Cersei, she does so with a particularly nasty sadism, choosing the precise moment at which Sansa first takes pleasure in being a woman, something that’s previously been nothing but a source of fear, to strike:

“You are very beautiful, my lady,” the seamstress said when she was dressed. “I am, aren’t I?” Sansa giggled, and spun, her skirts swirling around her. “Oh, I am.” She could not wait for Willas to see her like this. He will love me, he will, he must…he will forget Winterfell when he sees me, I’ll see that he does. “Yes. The gods have been kind to you, Sansa. You are a lovely girl. It seems almost obscene to squander such sweet innocence on that gargoyle.” “What gargoyle?” Sansa did not understand. Did she mean Willas? How could she know? No one knew, but her and Margaery and the Queen of Thorns…oh, and Dontos, but he didn’t count.

In this moment, it is clear that Cersei in her mind is preventing Sansa from ever becoming the “younger and more beautiful” queen: as the sister of Robb Stark, Sansa is a princess, and if her brother should have no heirs, she might become Queen in the North and the Riverlands, and if she were married to Willas in Highgarden and thus made an independent political actor, might be able to turn the Tyrells against the Lannisters. With Maggy’s voice echoing in her ears, Cersei chooses this moment where Sansa’s beauty is acknowledged to spring her trap:

Cersei Lannister ignored the question. “The cloak,” she commanded, and the women brought it out: a long cloak of white velvet heavy with pearls. A fierce direwolf was embroidered upon it in silver thread. Sansa looked at it with sudden dread. “Your father’s colors,” said Cersei, as they fastened it about her neck with a slender silver chain. A maiden’s cloak. Sansa’s hand went to her throat. She would have torn the thing away if she had dared. “You’re prettier with your mouth closed, Sansa,” Cersei told her. “Come along now, the septon is waiting. And the wedding guests as well.” “No,” Sansa blurted. “No.” “Yes. You are a ward of the crown. The king stands in your father’s place, since your brother is an attainted traitor. That means he has every right to dispose of your hand. You are to marry my brother Tyrion.”

What I find so fascinating and horrible in this moment is the way that Cersei is replicating patterns of gendered oppression – does she not hear Robert’s voice when she tells Sansa that she is “prettier with your mouth closed” – so closely to what she experienced, being thrust into an unwanted marriage for the good of House Lannister. It feels as if Cersei is attempting to come to grips with her past by stepping into the position of the abuser (which we’ll see her do much more explicitly in AFFC). Indeed, when Sansa attempts to fight back, she uses the opportunity to draw a line between herself as a woman of strength (who suffered abuse for over a decade before putting paid to her husband) and Sansa as the weak one – hence “in your place, I would likely rip my hair out.”

Marriage and Consent in Westeros

At the same time, I want to take a moment to note that, while Sansa draws a lot of criticism from the fandom for falling for Cersei’s scheming in AGOT, which in some people’s eyes makes her complicit in Cersei’s actions, this chapter is written almost as an explicit rebuttal of these claims:

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… “I understand your reluctance. Cry if you must. In your place, I would likely rip my hair out. He’s a loathsome little imp, no doubt of it, but marry him you shall.” “You can’t make me.” “Of course we can. You may come along quietly and say your vows as befits a lady, or you may struggle and scream and make a spectacle for the stableboys to titter over, but you will end up wedded and bedded all the same.” The queen opened the door. Ser Meryn Trant and Ser Osmund Kettleblack were waiting without, in the white scale armor of the Kingsguard. “Escort Lady Sansa to the sept,” she told them. “Carry her if you must, but try not to tear the gown, it was very costly.” Sansa tried to run, but Cersei’s handmaid caught her before she’d gone a yard. Ser Meryn Trant gave her a look that made her cringe, but Kettleblack touched her almost gently and said, “Do as you’re told, sweetling, it won’t be so bad. Wolves are supposed to be brave, aren’t they?”

The reason why I picked this passage is that Sansa is often critiqued as a passive or even complicit figure in these events, but here we clearly see her resisting to the limits of her ability as a twelve-year-old. She refuses verbally, she tries to run, but up against hostile adults in a hostile environment without any real allies or support structure, the odds of escaping aren’t good outside of YA dystopian fiction.

At the same time, this passage also raises the question about how consent works within the Westerosi laws around marriage, and whether Cersei is telling her the truth about forcing her through the process or whether she’s gaslighting her in order to gain compliance. (Whichever the case, I do feel like this is a case similar to Cersei letting Ser Barristan go in which she is pushing precedent beyond the bounds of custom and law, setting up a situation in which hardcore Lannister partisans would pretend that all is well, but word would get out that Sansa Stark refused consent at the altar.)

In terms of evidence, the Hornwood marriage’s legality was very much questioned, although that involved a situation in which, in addition to both the use of force to abduct the bride and to gain her consent, a widow’s decision of who to marry was taken out of the hands of the king. Likewise, the black marriages of Maegor are clearly dubious at best, but it’s unclear whether that was due to their being polygamous or whether marriage by abduction is illegal south of the Wall. Certainly, the fact that consent is asked of the bride at the ceremony and that we have cases of women successfully thwarting engagements through various means, I think there is at least a minimal conception of consent as necessary for marriage – if not quite to the same extent as Medieval canon law, influenced as it was by the competing institutional incentives of nunnerys staffed by high-ranking women who had resisted marriage in favor of a spiritual calling.

This in turn raises the tricky question as to how Littlefinger intends to make the upcoming wedding with Harry the Heir legitimate in the eyes of the honor-obssessed lords of the Vale. Will he be making a case that Tyrion was already married, given that Sansa will learn about Tysha in this chapter? Will he be arguing that this was a marriage made under duress, and therefore legimate? Or is there some other line of argument that we’ve yet to see?

An Impossible Union

And in this context, Sansa and Tyrion meet for the first time, and its clear from the off that their relationship was never going to work, even if Sansa had been willing (which she clearly is not):

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… 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. “You are very beautiful, Sansa,” he told her. “It is good of you to say so, my lord.” She did not know what else to say. Should I tell him he is handsome? He’ll think me a fool or a liar. She lowered her gaze and held her tongue. “My lady, this is no way to bring you to your wedding. I am sorry for that. And for making this so sudden, and so secret. My lord father felt it necessary, for reasons of state. Else I would have come to you sooner, as I wished.” He waddled closer. “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.”

Sansa’s feelings toward Tyrion personally could be charitably described as mixed – “not so bad as the rest of them” is hardly the foundation for a loving relationship. And more fundamentally, Sansa doesn’t “want any Lannister,” and whatever else you can say about Tyrion in this moment he is very much acting as a Lannister. While he’s trying to be sympathetic in the circumstances (and is, to be fair, in a similar although distinct situation from Sansa’s own), he’s still ultimately going through with it for his own reasons and the alternative that Tyrion offers is simply for Sansa to marry a different Lannister for aesthetic reasons.

An even bigger obstacle to their having any meeting of the mind is the fact that all of this is happening in the context of Joffrey’s sadism, which rightfully colors Sansa’s perceptions of House Lannister as a whole:

The king was resplendent in crimson and gold, his crown on his head. “I’m your father today,” he announced. “You’re not,” she flared. “You’ll never be.” His face darkened. “I am. I’m your father, and I can marry you to whoever I like. To anyone. You’ll marry the pig boy if I say so, and bed down with him in the sty.” His green eyes glittered with amusement. “Or maybe I should give you to Ilyn Payne, would you like him better?” …None of the Tyrells are here, she realized suddenly. But there were other witnesses aplenty… The ceremony passed as in a dream. Sansa did all that was required of her. There were prayers and vows and singing, and tall candles burning, a hundred dancing lights that the tears in her eyes transformed into a thousand. Thankfully no one seemed to notice that she was crying as she stood there, wrapped in her father’s colors; or if they did, they pretended not to. In what seemed no time at all, they came to the changing of the cloaks. As father of the realm, Joffrey took the place of Lord Eddard Stark. Sansa stood stiff as a lance as his hands came over her shoulders to fumble with the clasp of her cloak. One of them brushed her breast and lingered to give it a little squeeze. Then the clasp opened, and Joff swept her maiden’s cloak away with a kingly flourish and a grin.

While the Tyrells’ boycotting of the ceremony is only the most minor of silent protests, this passage is another example of how Sansa’s POV becomes crucial to how we interpret what happens next. While Tyrion might or might have noticed that Sansa was crying throughout the ceremony – hardly the portrait of a happy bride or a willing participant – he would not have been witness to Joffrey’s omnipresent sadism and constant threat of sexual assault. And it is this as much as anything else that obliterates the possibility of a connection between the two of them – however sympathetic we might find Tyrion as an individual, he is directly complicit in keeping Joffrey in a position of power over Sansa,

The Kneeling Controversy

Probably the biggest controversy in the entire chapter comes right at the end of the ceremony, when Sansa refuses to kneel to allow Tyrion to place the “cloak of protection” around her shoulders; how do we interpet this action, as an unforgivable act of ableist humiliation, or an entirely ustified act of resistance against the patriarchy?

The bride’s cloak he held was huge and heavy, crimson velvet richly worked with lions and bordered with gold satin and rubies. No one had thought to bring a stool, however, and Tyrion stood a foot and a half shorter than his bride. As he moved behind her, Sansa felt a sharp tug on her skirt. He wants me to kneel, she realized, blushing. She was mortified. It was not supposed to be this way. She had dreamed of her wedding a thousand times, and always she had pictured how her betrothed would stand behind her tall and strong, sweep the cloak of his protection over her shoulders, and tenderly kiss her cheek as he leaned forward to fasten the clasp. She felt another tug at her skirt, more insistent. I won’t. Why should I spare his feelings, when no one cares about mine? …And so it was that her lord husband cloaked her in the colors of House Lannister whilst standing on the back of a fool.

Here, I think intersectional theory can help us disentangle the gnarled threads of arguments from both sides: it is simultaneously true that Sansa is being oppressed on the basis of her gender and that Tyrion is uniquely open to humiliation on the basis of his disability. It is also simultaneously true that, after being threatened by both physical violence and sexual assault, Sansa’s silent (or rather still) protest is the only avenue for protest open to her, which makes the conflict between her protest and Tyrion’s humiliation an inescapable one. The ultimate problem here is that Sansa and Tyrion have been placed into a zero-sum game by Tywin and Cersei, where dignity for the one can only come at the expense of the other.

At the same time, Sansa is as imperfect as any other character in ASOIAF, and it is true that in the moment, her rebellion is motivated in part because Tyrion doesn’t fit the model of male beauty standards that she’s been raised to believe in. But once again, this is where the issue of empathy and POVs come in. If this moment had happened in a Tyrion chapter, Sansa’s actions would have come across as a complete surprise and unprovoked act of hostility in the face of his gentle treatment. But because it’s Sansa’s POV, we not only see what she is thinking in the moment for good and ill, but also the broader context which explains why she’s lashing out at the only person she’s allowed to lash out at. And as if to underline that Sansa is a genuinely kind and empathetic person, the next moment shows that she’s not genuinely malicious towards Tyrion:

When Sansa turned, the little man was gazing up at her, his mouth tight, his face as red as her cloak. Suddenly she was ashamed of her stubbornness. She smoothed her skirts and knelt in front of him, so their heads were on the same level. “With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lord and husband.” …He is so ugly, Sansa thought when his face was close to hers. He is even uglier than the Hound.

And for you SanSan fans, former Beauty and the Beast writer even throws in a pointed comparison which may or may not be foreshadowing…

The Dance, For Good and Ill

After the awkwardness of the ceremony, the dance offers Sansa (and the reader) a temporary reprieve from the tension, as Sansa attempts to salvage something of her former dreams on what is supposed to be her big day:

When the musicians began to play, she timidly laid her hand on Tyrion’s and said, “My lord, should we lead the dance?” His mouth twisted. “I think we have already given them sufficent amusement for one day, don’t you?” “As you say, my lord.” She pulled her hand back. “…Lady Sansa.” Ser Garlan Tyrell stood beside the dais. “Would you honor me? If your lord consents?” The Imp’s mismatched eyes narrowed. “My lady can dance with whomever she pleases.” Perhaps she ought to have remained beside her husband, but she wanted to dance so badly….and Ser Garlan was brother to Margaery, to Willas, to her Knight of Flowers. “I see why they name you Garlan the Gallant, ser,” she said, as she took his hand. “My lady is gracious to say so. My brother Willas gave me that name, as it happens. To protect me.” “To protect you?” She gave him a puzzled look. Ser Garlan laughed. “I was a plump little boy, I fear, and we do have an uncle called Garth the Gross. So Willas struck first, though not before threatening me with Garlan the Greensick, Garlan the Galling, and Garlan the Gargoyle.”

In the whirl of the dance, Sansa is paired off against several partners, but few are as interesting to talk about as Garlan Tyrell. We’ve already seen Garlan in action before as a top-level swordsman who hides his skill by avoiding tourneys, and we’ve seen that he’s gotten a significant promotion from being a second son to a lord in his own right. Here we see the side of Garlan that most exemplifies the Tyrell penchant for concealing themselves behind a facade of chivalric romance, as he charms his way through Tyrion and Sansa both:

It was so sweet and silly that Sansa had to laugh, despite everything. Afterward she was absurdly grateful. Somehow the laughter made her hopeful again, if only for a little while. Smiling, she let the music take her, losing herself in the steps, in the sound of flute and pipes and harp, in the rhythm of the drum . . . and from time to time in Ser Garlan’s arms, when the dance brought them together. “My lady wife is most concerned for you,” he said quietly, one such time. “Lady Leonette is too sweet. Tell her I am well.” “A bride at her wedding should be more than well.” His voice was not unkind. “You seemed close to tears.” “Tears of joy, ser.” “Your eyes give the lie to your tongue.” Ser Garlan turned her, drew her close to his side. “My lady, I have seen how you look at my brother. Loras is valiant and handsome, and we all love him dearly…but your Imp will make a better husband. He is a bigger man than he seems, I think.”

Here we see Garlan as a not-unkind man, who seeks to console Sansa and even offer a veiled explanation that her dreamed-of marriage to Loras Tyrell wouldn’t have been happy. In this act of mild decency, we can see Tyrell ethos of pursuing the House’s interest as gracefully as possible, and in a way that makes the most number of people happy about the Tyrells, so long as the House’s interests are still pursued. Which makes his utility to Sansa, his ability to ber her shining knight, somewhat limited; he’s not about to stop the marriage and rescue Sansa, the most he can do is to hint about his brother’s sexuality and try to talk up Tyrion. While his degree of involvement in espionage is a subject that we’ll have to save for a future day, there is an odd parallel here between Garlan and Varys – both of them incredibly talented professionals in their own sphere, given to hiding their light under a bushel for the sake of a common enterprise, and willing to be as kind as they may be but no more than they can be.

But just as continued existence in the King’s Landing court brings with it much less pleasant company than Ser Garlan, so too does the dance immediately remind Sansa that she is never, ever safe:

And then the dance brought her face-to-face with Joffrey. Sansa stiffened as his hand touched hers, but the king tightened his grip and drew her closer. “You shouldn’t look so sad. My uncle is an ugly little thing, but you’ll still have me.” “You’re to marry Margaery!” “A king can have other women. Whores. My father did. One of the Aegons did too. The third one, or the fourth. He had lots of whores and lots of bastards.” As they whirled to the music, Joff gave her a moist kiss. “My uncle will bring you to my bed whenever I command it.” Sansa shook her head. “He won’t.” “He will, or I’ll have his head. That King Aegon, he had any woman he wanted, whether they were married or no.”

On a thematic level, Joffrey’s threat here peels back the myth of “reformative marriage” to reveal the ugly truth of marriage-by-abduction: custom and taboo that supposedly protect highborn women are a paper tiger at best. Even being married into House Lannister can’t protect her from the Lannisters, if the Lannisters so desire it. On a character level, it’s instructive to note how quickly Joffrey lunges past even his own father’s example to go straight for Aegon IV, the black tar heroin of bad kings. This doesn’t seem a case, however, where we can blame Cersei for this particular development. (Not that her willing blindness is much help; more on that later.) Rather, as other people have argued, this seems more of a case where Joffrey is trying to triangulate in on his father from a sociopath’s perspective.

It’s also a moment that speaks to some of the discourse around Joffrey’s sexuality; here even more so than last time, Joffrey’s definitely expressing sexual desire, but it’s completely bound up in the desire to humiliate and terrify. The problem for Sansa, and indeed everyone around Joffrey, is that GRRM’s thumb on the scales of fate have put him into the world in the worst possible place for a sadistic sociopath to inhabit:

Her relief was short-lived. No sooner had the music died than she heard Joffrey say, “It’s time to bed them! Let’s get the clothes off her, and have a look at what the she-wolf’s got to give my uncle!” Other men took up the cry, loudly. Her dwarf husband lifted his eyes slowly from his wine cup. “I’ll have no bedding.” Joffrey seized Sansa’s arm. “You will if I command it.” The Imp slammed his dagger down in the table, where it stood quivering. “Then you’ll service your own bride with a wooden prick. I’ll geld you, I swear it.” A shocked silence fell. Sansa pulled away from Joffrey, but he had a grip on her, and her sleeve ripped. No one even seemed to hear. Queen Cersei turned to her father. “Did you hear him?” Lord Tywin rose from his seat. “I believe we can dispense with the bedding. Tyrion, I am certain you did not mean to threaten the king’s royal person.” Sansa saw a spasm of rage pass across her husband’s face. “I misspoke,” he said. “It was a bad jape, sire.”

This scene too, speaks to essential instability of any relationship that Sansa and Tyrion might have had – Tyrion intercedes, but as we’ll see later it’s less about Sansa than it is about him experiencing the wedding through the lens of Tysha…yet another way in which POV choices shape empathy in this chapter, since his motivations have to be assumed by observant readers. Unfortunately for both bride and groom here, Tyrion’s position is incredibly liminal, relying almost entirely on Tywin’s forebearance to gain even the slightest hearing.

Indeed, even when Tywin does (however tactitly) acknowledge Tyrion’s right to object, it remains the case that Tyrion’s only recourse is to retreat into minstrelsy:

“You threatened to geld me!” Joffrey said shrilly. “I did, Your Grace,” said Tyrion, “but only because I envied your royal manhood. Mine own is so small and stunted.” His face twisted into a leer. “And if you take my tongue, you will leave me no way at all to pleasure this sweet wife you gave me.” Laughter burst from the lips of Ser Osmund Kettleblack. Someone else sniggered. But Joff did not laugh, nor Lord Tywin. “Your Grace,” he said, “my son is drunk, you can see that.” “I am,” the Imp confessed, “but not so drunk that I cannot attend to my own bedding.” He hopped down from the dais and grabbed Sansa roughly. “Come, wife, time to smash your portcullis. I want to play come-into-the-castle.”

Devoutly To Be Wished

It is in the wake of this incident that Sansa ansd Tyrion are supposed to consummate their wedding, as if there were ever any hope that these two people could come together. First, in what’s only a good move in Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee plays, Tyrion decides to start off this most delicate moment by trying to get as drunk as he possibly can:

For their wedding night, they had been granted the use of an airy bedchamber high in the Tower of the Hand. Tyrion kicked the door shut behind them. “There is a flagon of good Arbor gold on the sideboard, Sansa. Will you be so kind as to pour me a cup?” “Is that wise, my lord?” “Nothing was ever wiser. I am not truly drunk, you see. But I mean to be.” Sansa filled a goblet for each of them. It will be easier if I am drunk as well.

And because in vino (and ianua clausa) veritas, Tyrion begins to express himself somewhat more here – which is where we get back to the discussion of POV and empathy. Because this is a Sansa chapter and not a Tyrion chapter, Tyrion’s discussion of Tysha seems to come out of nowhere:

“The first time I wed, there was us and a drunken septon, and some pigs to bear witness. We ate one of our witnesses at our wedding feast. Tysha fed me crackling and I licked the grease off her fingers, and we were laughing when we fell into bed.” “You were wed before? I . . . I had forgotten.” “You did not forget. You never knew.” “Who was she, my lord?” Sansa was curious despite herself. “Lady Tysha.” His mouth twisted. “Of House Silverfist. Their arms have one gold coin and a hundred silver, upon a bloody sheet. Ours was a very short marriage…as befits a very short man, I suppose.”

On the face of it, this is a moment of extreme (although unintended) vulnerability on Tyrion’s part, and it could have been the thin end of the wedge in terms of creating a basis for a relationship between him and Sansa, at least in so far as it presents Tyrion as very much a victim of the Lannister regime (especially when it comes to marriages and how House Lannister foists or ends them against the desires of the couple in question). However, Sansa lacks any context that the reader has to understand what Tyrion is really talking about, and thus Tyrion’s comment comes across as merely a drunken non-sequitur. And to me, this is really the chapter’s thesis, and the only way to resolve the competeing claims of both Sansa and Tyrion fans: because of a lack of context, because these are two strangers forced into intimacy against their will, rather than a moment of understanding, we have two ships passing in the night.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that the marriage was doomed, given that it was being entered into it from the start by one participant who’s wholly unwilling and another who is a fundamentally broken man;

“How old are you, Sansa?” asked Tyrion, after a moment. “Thirteen,” she said, “when the moon turns.” “Gods have mercy.” The dwarf took another swallow of wine. “Well, talk won’t make you older. Shall we get on with this, my lady? If it please you?” “It will please me to please my lord husband.” That seemed to anger him. “You hide behind courtesy as if it were a castle wall.” “Courtesy is a lady’s armor,” Sansa said. Her septa had always told her that.

And here is where I begin to choose my words with more care than usual, because we start to get into some very rocky ground indeed. Because unlike in the show (more on this when I get to Book vs. Show), while Tyrion definitely feels a pang of conscience, he’s still intending to follow through with the consummation, whereas Sansa is desperately trying to avoid consummation:

She kept her eyes on the floor, too shy to look at him, but when she was done she glanced up and found him staring. There was hunger in his green eye, it seemed to her, and fury in the black. Sansa did not know which scared her more. “You’re a child,” he said. She covered her breasts with her hands. “I’ve flowered.” “A child,” he repeated, “but I want you. Does that frighten you, Sansa?” “Yes.” “Me as well. I know I am ugly…Don’t lie, Sansa. I am malformed, scarred, and small, but…” she could see him groping “…abed, when the candles are blown out, I am made no worse than other men. In the dark, I am the Knight of Flowers.” He took a draught of wine. “I am generous. Loyal to those who are loyal to me. I’ve proven I’m no craven. And I am cleverer than most, surely wits count for something. I can even be kind. Kindness is not a habit with us Lannisters, I fear, but I know I have some somewhere. I could be…I could be good to you.” He is as frightened as I am, Sansa realized. Perhaps that should have made her feel more kindly toward him, but it did not. All she felt was pity, and pity was death to desire. He was looking at her, waiting for her to say something, but all her words had withered. She could only stand there trembling.

When it comes to Tyrion’s character, his dark turn (particularly on sexual matters) in ADWD seems to have created a controversy because it seems to come out of nowhere, but here I think we can see a sign of that later darkness here when he admits that he feels sexual desire for a very underage girl. Compounding this shadow is the way in which Tyrion’s sexuality is inextricably tied to his crippling self-esteem issues, so that he can’t see a distinction between his body and its disabilities (“ugly…malformed, scarred, and small”) and being a Lannister as to why Sansa would reject him. At the end of the day, I’m more surprised that anyone was surprised that their marriage went any other way than the way it did.

At the same time, because she is also a flawed but decent person, we also have to balance the fact that Sansa doesn’t want him sexually – which really ought to be the end of discussion – against the fact that her rejection does in some part have to do with the ableism that is just as much a part of Westerosi society as sexism:

She had promised to obey; she opened her eyes. He was sitting by her feet, naked. Where his legs joined, his man’s staff poked up stiff and hard from a thicket of coarse yellow hair, but it was the only thing about him that was straight. “My lady,” Tyrion said, “you are lovely, make no mistake, but…I cannot do this. My father be damned. We will wait. The turn of a moon, a year, a season, however long it takes. Until you have come to know me better, and perhaps to trust me a little.” His smile might have been meant to be reassuring, but without a nose it only made him look more grotesque and sinister. Look at him, Sansa told herself, look at your husband, at all of him, Septa Mordane said all men are beautiful, find his beauty, try. She stared at the stunted legs, the swollen brutish brow, the green eye and the black one, the raw stump of his nose and crooked pink scar, the coarse tangle of black and gold hair that passed for his beard. Even his manhood was ugly, thick and veined, with a bulbous purple head. This is not right, this is not fair, how have I sinned that the gods would do this to me, how?

It is important to note, though, that Tyrion’s forebearance here is somewhat limited. In the end, what he is offering is a pause “until you have come to know me better,” closer to trying to soothe a spooked animal than a full acceptance of the principle of consent. Whether you view that as a sign of Tyrion’s basic decency or, in the words of Made in Dagenham, “that’s as it should be,” I leave up to you. It is an important opening, however, because in this moment Sansa hits the wall of gendered social conditioning and uses the opening to reclaim the smallest scrap of personal autonomy:

“On my honor as a Lannister,” the Imp said, “I will not touch you until you want me to.” It took all the courage that was in her to look in those mismatched eyes and say, “And if I never want you to, my lord?” His mouth jerked as if she had slapped him. “Never?” Her neck was so tight she could scarcely nod. “Why,” he said, “that is why the gods made whores for imps like me.” He closed his short blunt fingers into a fist, and climbed down off the bed.

The shame is not that Sansa rejects Tyrion, or that Tyrion should take her rejection in such personal terms (because it’s hard to imagine many people in his shoes not taking such an intimate rejection personally), but rather than the powers that be has constructed society such that there can be no other end than this, no way out than at the expense of one of these two people.

Historical Analysis:

As I suggested above, one of the reasons why I am skeptical of Cersei’s arguments about whether Sansa can be outright forced into marriage, is that if the Faith of the Seven is in any way based on the medieval Catholic church on this point, mutual consent is very much necessary for a marriage to be considered binding.

For complicated reasons of its own – partially from institutional incentives of wanting to uphold the ability of devout women (especially devout women of property) to refuse marriage in favor of enter into a nunnery, and partially from its own desire to assert control over who could get married and when from the hands of an aggressive warrior caste which wasn’t above kidnapping and rape as a means of property acquisition (or from young people secretly marrying one another without telling their families), and in part out of theological ideas of the nature of the soul in neo-Aristotleian philosophy – the Catholic Church took the position that “without personal consent there can be no marriage” and constructed an elaborate set of rules as to when consent would be considered present.

That being said, as Angeliki Laiou says in the introduction to Consent and Coercision to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies:

Every society, including our own, addresses in some way the question of free and circumscribed consent: all societies place limits on individual consent, and some value it less than others…what varies, and is therefore historically significant, is the weight that each society places on individual consent…

In a society in which marriage was inextricably linked to the exchange of land between aristocratic dynasties, limits were definitely placed on the ability of noblewomen to refuse to consent to marriages that their families wanted them to carry out, and pressure would and could be placed on women to bring them into compliance. At the same time, that pressure was counter-balanced by the possibility that the lady in question might abscond to a nunnery, which would mean bringing the powerful Catholic Church in on her side (if only because a nun’s inheritance rights could easily turn into donations to a nunnery or archbishopric).

Thus, my suspicion is that Cersei is actually trying to paper over a potential pitfall in her scheme, by preventing Sansa from making a public declaration of her unwillingness, and potentially forcing a confrontation which would diminish the legitimacy of House Lannister’s claims to the North.

What If?

Let me say from the outset that I’m not going to deal with the hypothetical scenarios in which Sansa ends up having to go to bed with either Joffrey or Tyrion; consider it a point of personal privilege, out of a desire to avoid discussing the truly repellant.

Instead, I want to talk about two interesting alternative scenarios:

Sansa had refused at the ceremony? As I’ve discussed above, if Sansa refuses consent at the altar, this creates a lot of potential complications for House Lannister. While Tywin and Cersei will no doubt attempt to coerce Sansa into accepting the marriage – probably through close confinement, brow-beating, withholding comforts and the like, setting up an unpleasant war of wills between them – I think they’d have a difficult time confining the story over-much to the Red Keep, if only because there are too many conspirators in the royal court who would want word that the Lannisters tried to force Sansa Stark to wed them to spread. Moreover, given that the very attempt is already pushing up against the bounds of legitimacy – Sansa is a prisoner in Lannister custody who’s being actively discussed for transfer, and it’s not like the North would be likely to view the marriage as a willing one – I think any public display of disharmony might wreck the whole enterprise from a political perspective.

As I’ve discussed above, if Sansa refuses consent at the altar, this creates a lot of potential complications for House Lannister. While Tywin and Cersei will no doubt attempt to coerce Sansa into accepting the marriage – probably through close confinement, brow-beating, withholding comforts and the like, setting up an unpleasant war of wills between them – I think they’d have a difficult time confining the story over-much to the Red Keep, if only because there are too many conspirators in the royal court who would want word that the Lannisters tried to force Sansa Stark to wed them to spread. Moreover, given that the very attempt is already pushing up against the bounds of legitimacy – Sansa is a prisoner in Lannister custody who’s being actively discussed for transfer, and it’s not like the North would be likely to view the marriage as a willing one – I think any public display of disharmony might wreck the whole enterprise from a political perspective. However, that still leaves Sansa in a horribly vulnerable position, and arguably make it much harder for her to make her escape from King’s Landing. Although it would make it easier for Littlefinger to establish her freedom to marry Harry the Heir; indeed, I would imagine the legend of a beautiful young heiress who faced down the lions would only lend luster to her marriage to the Vale.

Sansa married Lancel instead? This one mostly differs from Tyrion when it comes to what’s happening/will happen with Lancel. Namely, his physical infirmity might well bring up the issue of non-consummation, and that’s before Lancel gets religion, which would particularly make things easier for Sansa if her infirm husband publicly renounces his wedding and his titles in AFFC.

This one mostly differs from Tyrion when it comes to what’s happening/will happen with Lancel. Namely, his physical infirmity might well bring up the issue of non-consummation, and that’s before Lancel gets religion, which would particularly make things easier for Sansa if her infirm husband publicly renounces his wedding and his titles in AFFC. Moreover, I would imagine this would complicate the aftermath of the Purple Wedding, because while Sansa’s escape from King’s Landing would still be noted and responded to, it wouldn’t be relevant to Tyrion’s trial and counted against him.

Book vs. Show:

When it comes to close-in analysis of the show, it’s hard to do better than turtle-paced’s analysis of how Benioff and Weiss reshaped the Tyrion and Sansa storyline in Season 3, Episode 8. While my critique of D&D’s character work usually is in the direction of over-telegraphing later changes in character, this is a rare counter-example. As we saw from Season 5 onwards, Benioff and Weiss went to great lengths to avoid Tyrion doing anything too dark, excerpting a good deal of his ADWD storyline in the process. In the wedding episode, this takes the form of changes in body language and costuming, so that Sophie Turner and Peter Dinklage are never naked together and that Tyrion never expresses the same open physical desire as he does in the book.

That being said, I really can’t say enough good things about the amazing staging of the wedding and feast scenes, so I’ll let the very much missed SEK take that one away.