Trigger warning: Frank discussion of domestic abuse, rape, self-harm, and recovery from trauma.

Article title courtesy of this Tumblr post.

Once upon a time, I did not like Sansa Stark.

My disinterest in her didn’t last long. I started watching Game of Thrones four-odd years ago, when I was a fresh college grad who, despite the strong feminist streak I’d picked up during the course of my higher education, was still sorting through a lot of internalized misogyny. What can I say? It takes more than four years on a liberal arts campus to unlearn a lifetime of problematic mentalities.

Truth be told, I didn’t even take the full four years to embark on this journey of self-exploration and discovery, because half of that time was spent under the thumb of a man who I called my boyfriend, but who I would later come to realize was my abuser.

I began to empathize with Sansa as soon as Joffrey showed his true colors to her, when he attacked Mycah and Arya while on the Kingsroad. Sansa didn’t recognize his cruelty then, as he had been nothing but kind and courteous to her. He was her prince, and nothing could change her mind about that. Really, Joffrey was a walking red flag, but to someone as idealistic and romantic as Sansa once was, there’s no such thing. Having made countless excuses for my abuser while we were together, I connected with Sansa as soon as she lied to save Joffrey from punishment.

For all of her efforts to prove that she would be loyal and obedient to her betrothed, Sansa’s reward was the death of her direwolf, Lady. This loss was the first stab in the slow death of Sansa’s personhood. Joffrey was the only one who could have convinced his parents that it had been him, and not Arya, who instigated the fight. That would have saved Sansa’s wolf, but he chose silence. Displacing blame is a favorite course of action for an abuser, but Joffrey covers his tracks by giving Sansa a necklace and some pretty words so his behavior will be excused and she’ll trust him again. What’s more, he was coerced into doing this by Cersei—Joffrey didn’t want to comfort Sansa, but did so because he eventually realized it would suit him.

The transference of blame is an effective way for an abuser to initiate control over a victim, because the act is so insidious. While Joffrey’s refusal to take responsibility for his actions ended dramatically in Lady’s death, in my case the tactic was more subtle. The first time I recall it happening was perhaps a month before my abuser and I became a couple. We’d smoked in his car and, since it was raining, he said we could ash in the car instead of rolling down the windows. The next night he sought me out to tell me, “You made a mess in my car. It took me a half hour to clean up all the ashes from your cigarettes. But it’s okay, I got to think about you while I did it.”

I felt guilty and stupid for making a mess in his car, even though he’d initially told me not to worry about it. It was perhaps the most confusing encounter I’ve ever had with a crush, and I agonized over it. But, like Sansa, I let it go because it was my fault, really, and he’d said something sweet to make up for it.

It wasn’t until Ned’s death that Sansa truly becomes a prisoner in King’s Landing and a plaything for Joffrey to practice his sadism on. It was an easy enough risk for Joffrey to take—he was the king by then, and “The king can do as he likes.” Abusing his future queen was like taking candy from a baby, so much so that he could commanded Ser Meryn Trant to strip and beat Sansa in a roomful of spectators without worrying that anyone would interfere.

I’m not sure exactly how or when my abuser knew he could do what he liked to me and I would take it, but he had the power and he abused it thoroughly. He performed my public humiliation on a smaller scale than Joffrey, but it stripped me of my self-worth all the same. One incident I remember was when, in front of a mutual friend, my abuser talked about what might happen if we had children. “If there’s anything wrong with it, I’ll kill it and I’ll leave you,” he said.

At the time, I was more shocked that he would say that in front of another person than I was that he would say it at all, and I was embarrassed—not of him, but of myself. I didn’t even have the desire to be a mother, but he made me feel guilty that I would prove to be an unfit one, and I was humiliated that my friend was privy to this fault in me.

It’s no wonder that such events can shatter our perceptions of love and healthy relationships. For example, after their engagement, Sansa rejects Tyrion’s kindness, both because he’s a Lannister and because she doesn’t know what it means to be treated well by a man, or perhaps she doesn’t believe herself worthy of kindness. She no longer believes in the romantic notion of a knight in shining armor. I was much the same way, and continue to be skeptical of potential romantic partners. I flinch or grow stiff when touched, am endlessly apologizing for things I have no control over, and am so surprised when they have a nice word to say about me that I often brush off their compliments or outright accuse them of lying. My abuser tricked me into believing that kindness comes at a price, and it’s a misconception not easily shaken.

Despite the atrocities Joffrey committed against her, perhaps the most obviously abusive act visited upon Sansa—or at least the most talked-about—is her rape by Ramsay in Season 5, which I have discussed before. I still disagree with the showrunners’ decision to exacerbate Sansa’s suffering—once the camera cut to Theon, her rape is hardly about her at all, and more about shock value. I caution fans against defending the scene because it’s “realistic” and “reflective of actual crimes committed against medieval women,” because those who oppose the scene already know that. Rape victims don’t need to be told that rape is realistic—it’s our reality. Statistics estimate that one in every five or six women are victims of attempted or completed rape in their lifetimes, and that’s in America alone.

I remember mine, as well as I can under the circumstances. It was the middle of an afternoon in the middle of November. I thought we were just kidding around until he put his pillow over my mouth—it was an old pillow, flat, and the pillowcase was black and white and gray and I couldn’t breathe or muster the words to ask him to stop. I’ve tried so hard not to think about it that when I look back, it feels like I blacked out. The next thing I knew, he was tossing the pillow aside and laughing at me: “I don’t know what you were so scared for. I wouldn’t rape you, Katie.” But he did; he’d done it just moments ago. In a similar vein, Ramsay told Littlefinger, “I’ll never hurt [Sansa],” and afterwards he did nothing but.

Part of the reason why Sansa’s rape is so upsetting is because we, the audience, had been led to believe that no harm would befall her now that she was out of Joffrey’s clutches. Sansa had been mistreated and abused by one man already; surely her story wouldn’t repeat itself. The idea of Dark Sansa was hyped up, and we were all clamoring to see her transition from pawn to player in the game of thrones.

That phrase in and of itself has, however, given me pause. We often call Sansa a pawn rather than a player, perhaps because she’s cleverer than we give her credit for. We have to ask ourselves why “pawn to player” doesn’t apply to other characters when it rightfully could: Daenerys was certainly a pawn when the story began, traded to a stranger in exchange for an army that wasn’t even intended for her. Arya has played the part, handed off from captor to captor, all of whom take care of her in order to meet their own ends. Even Tyrion, cunning as he is, has been used as a piece in someone else’s game—namely his father’s, who pretty much played the sadistic matchmaker in all of his son’s personal affairs.

Maybe the phrase applies to Sansa because she is never in a position to speak her mind the way others are—Daenerys as Khaleesi, Arya because she’s regarded as a headstrong but harmless child, and Tyrion as a member of a noble and powerful family. Victims of abuse are not permitted to speak so openly, but our timidness is both a result of our abuse and a survival tactic. Sansa has to choose her battles in order to stay alive, so she’s patient, calculating, and can be subtly cruel. This Season 2 scene is a prime example, where she tries to manipulate Joffrey into going where the fighting is thickest during Stannis’ attack on King’s Landing, knowing he very well might be killed.

This is also the first time we experience Sansa’s apt judgment of character: she knows Joffrey was a sadist, but a stupid and cowardly one, and she tries to use that to her advantage. Later, Ramsay proves himself to be a sadist of a much more intelligent kind, and Sansa adjusts her behavior accordingly by choosing her words more carefully. In Season 5, despite the damage Ramsay has done to her, she abandons subtlety and uses her wits to undermine his claim as the eventual Warden of the North.

Victims of abuse often have nothing but our words, and those are just as likely to get us into trouble as anything else; as far as the abuser is concerned, everything about us can justify punishment. Sansa measures her words and picks her battles, and in these moments she is powerful; it’s how we know she hasn’t lost herself or her self-worth. It’s how we know she’s still fighting, that not only is she determined to survive, but she will.

This is especially poignant to me, because I was already in a state of low self-esteem when my abuser sought me out. I was unsure about my decision to go away to school, I was shy and no great shakes at making friends. I walked with my head down and always had a book with me so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. I was noticeably vulnerable, and therefore an easy target. I had very little self-worth left for him to strip away before I was totally compliant. He was smart and perceptive, so he saw right through me, and whatever he saw in me apparently didn’t deserve to be treated like a human being.

As we saw with Theon, Ramsay is an expert in stripping away his victims’ personhood. But Sansa escaped Joffrey, and it’s her past experience that gets her through her ordeal with Ramsay. She remembers who she is, even when there’s no one left to remind her. Victims of abuse are often isolated by their abusers, cut off from family and friends, so we have to be our own hero. While more than half of abused women do just that by leaving the relationship, they are 70 times more likely to be killed by their abuser during that process than at any other point in the relationship.

While we don’t yet know what Ramsay will do to hunt down his bride next season, I certainly didn’t have a life-saving escape in mind when I made the move to end my relationship. I broke up with my boyfriend not because I consciously realized who he really was, but because I couldn’t be in a relationship anymore. Maybe I was more alert than I give myself credit for, but all I remember from the time is that I couldn’t stand to be touched by him, that I wanted to be alone, and that I didn’t want the responsibility of a relationship because I simply wasn’t ready for it. I was tired of him, and whatever love I had for him wasn’t enough.

In retrospect, I was too scared to overtly end things with him, so instead I told him I didn’t want to have sex anymore, and he took it from there. It hurt that I’d be tossed aside over something as trivial as sex when we’d been in love, but then again, I’m not sure there was really any love to lose between us. It took several months after the end of our relationship for him to leave me alone for good, and longer still for me to begin my recovery.

When Sansa says to Myranda, “If I’m going to die, let it happen while there’s still some of me left,” her defiance took me back to when I was at my lowest point, when I had no idea who I was anymore, all because of what my abuser had taken away from me. It took me a year to acknowledge what that relationship really was. I had to admit to myself that he hurt me on purpose, both physically and emotionally, and although that admission should have been a moment of clarity that began my healing, all it did was make me feel like he had once again gotten the best of me. He’d beaten yet another time; it was almost like he came back into my life and started the cycle all over again.

No, he wasn’t physically around to hurt me anymore, but my memories of him were so present that I started hurting myself. I couldn’t handle the emotional pain, the nightmares when I could sleep or the paranoia when I couldn’t, so I channeled it all into something physical that I could control—my self-harm was a coping mechanism and my scars a reminder that I was in control of myself, my mind, and my body, and that he couldn’t take that away from me ever again. As soon as I realized this, I jumped off my own Winterfell rampart by chucking my scissors and letting my scars fade.

It’s been six years, but I’m still healing; I suffer from insomnia and can be easily triggered, and it can take days for me to recover from a triggering incident. I’m not sure what sort of person I’d be if this hadn’t happened to me, and while I’m proud of who I am now, I will never say I’m grateful for the path that led me here. I’m stronger now, healthier, but my abuser didn’t give that to me; he tried to take that away, and I made myself better in spite of him. One of the last things he said to me was “I ruined you. Who’s going to want you now that I’m done with you?” At the time, I didn’t know the answer to that. Now I know that it doesn’t matter, because he didn’t ruin me—he broke me, yes, but I put myself back together.

Sansa Stark helped me see that I am in control of myself, no matter what others do to beat me down, and that I will continue to survive and thrive. Words are powerful weapons we can utilize to realize what we’re made of, and characters are windows into self-discovery, which is why we admire those who are so fleshed out, flawed, and gray. Sansa is a fictional woman who has suffered through real, modern-day tragedies that continue to be misunderstood, underestimated, and too often dismissed.

To my fellow survivors, I hope that no one ever makes you feel that your pain is invalid and that your suffering has been in vain. I hope that you find peace and recovery, and that you discover the confidence within you that’s helped you to survive and move on. I hope that you take Sansa Stark’s words to heart, that you remember who you are, and that who you are is strong, important, and, above all, a person worth fighting for.

To learn more about domestic violence, its effects on victims/survivors, and what you can do to help, visit Safe Horizon, RAINN, and Helpguide.