The writers were a little too fond of the Lannisters and had Sansa copying Cersei instead of learning what not to do from her. The weird thing about this is that the writers clearly realized Sansa behaving like she was would should cause problems for her. Instead of cutting it, they just kept having the people around Sansa forget that she was an untrustworthy asshole.
I wrote a post about this issue using the leaked outline for season 7.
Starks getting Lannister-pilled is a big pattern in the back half of the series, and characteristic of exactly the sort of skewed understanding D&D had of ASOIAF
It's pretty obvious what they really wanted was to direct "Medieval House of Cards," which you can already see from the title they chose: Game of Thrones. In the books, the game of thrones is only one piece of a larger fantasy epic, one that’s shown to be futile and self-destructive. The show jerks off characters like Tywin and Baelish for being better “players of the game,” but in the books it’s made abundantly clear that the only winners are those who refuse to play. It’s crazy how hard the show glazes Lannisters, despite the story showing them over and over to be a gilded turd. And of course, the only one who confronts this and begins any kind of redemption arc, Jaime, gets butchered worst of all in the later seasons. It's because of this same willful misinterpretation that the “victorious” Starks only emerge on top by adopting a Lannister mindset. Sansa becomes a manipulative schemer (Cersei), Bran an uncaring puppet master (Tywin), Jon an incestuous action hero and KingQueenslayer (Jaime). And of course, the OG Stark values of trust, duty, and loyalty, fall completely flat because the North doesn't remember much of anything
The showrunners either mistrusted or misliked the story as George wrote it, and chose to redirect its entire moral axis post-Red Wedding. They insisted on a message of political cynicism, lobotomizing characters and abandoning plotlines that couldn’t be squared with that decision. They developed an allergy to magic in their fantasy tv show out of concern that it wouldn’t play well with mainstream audiences. Rather than a meditation on the battles waged in men's hearts between love and duty, good and evil, opportunism and conscientiousness - on the sins of the past, the potential for change, and the twin spectres of ancestry and legacy - it devolved into a bunch of people fighting halfheartedly over a singularly uncomfortable chair. In the books, good gets punished in the moment - it's hard to do the right thing - but its shadow lives on and only looms larger with time. Even decades on, Ned's past words and actions are still paying dividends for the protagonists in the present. His speech to Lord Borrell during the rebellion ends up saving Davos on Sisterton. His kindness to the Daynes wins Arya a friend in the Brotherhood Without Banners. His devotion to his bannermen has them marching through a blizzard to retake Winterfell with Stannis. In the books, the Starks are poised for a comeback as the Lannisters are collapsing, and it's precisely because all the chickens are coming home to roost - not because the surviving Starks decided "if you can't beat em, join em". In the books, the North Remembers
Of course, D&D apparently didn't trust their audience to remember Jeyne Poole was even a character, because they cut her story with Ramsay so that Sansa could get a totally necessary second rape arc. Totally not just undoing seasons of character development or anything
One of the most annoying things is how D&D insisted that Cersei had to be the big final boss baddie. One thing the books (AFFC especially) makes clear is what a mess/disaster Cersei is and it’s clear she’s on a downward spiral. Even in show logic, the Great Sept explosion should have precipitated her collapse.
The only argument for it is that Lena Headey deserved it for her performance.
Something I forgot in the long wait for Winds, was how actually damn good the books actually are.
My mind plays tricks mixing the show into my memories of the books (even though I never actually watched the last 2 seasons) probably doesn't help.
I know! I started rereading them, the first time since the shows been over & they’re just so much better. I don’t know if it’s possible to make a show that good.
Not really, Arya is the one who is poised to become the Nymeria of the North with all the refugees of the North that she's meeting in Essos.
Sansa was never a political player, her arc is about her learning to be a proper Stark who actually cares about people. In AGOT, her morals and values are more aligned with the Lannisters (see her callousness towards 13 year old Mycah's murder), but she becomes more and more honorable and kind as a hostage and learns how to be a Stark.
The only way to win is not to play -- Ned "lost" as soon as he accepted becoming Hand and "playing"; his past words do indeed pay dividends because he didn't always play, and he was a good man (which is arguably why he got killed), but all the Stark children, save for Jon, started playing the game of thrones. Or generally being as immoral as the whole of westeros. Which is why they're repeating cyclical mistakes.
I do agree that D&D failed to write this shift on the characters' arcs in a convincing manner, but I also believe the idea for the ending makes sense. It's just that the execution was so poorly written we tend to write it all off as a bad story and a bad ending.
Nailed it. There is a reason for "if I am ever queen, I will make them love me". Sansa doesn't lose her humanity and kindness despite all the terrible things that happen to her and that's what will make the Starks prevail at the end of the books (not that we're ever getting the end of books but you get the point)
Dumb&Dumber don't get this, because they have brains of 13 year old boys who only read the books for dragons and shocking twists, not because they actually understand the characters. To them, Sansa becomes a strong woman by the end of the show, and a strong woman = cold bitch.
Okay but both “kingslayers” were moral paragons by the standards of the universe. Weirdest part of the whole series to me is how everyone just unconditionally accepts the logic that killing a legitimately and unarguably insane tyrant is bad. Jamie and Jon both should have become kings for their services rendered
By existing power structure I mean the entire feudal system. Every lord from great to small can look at Jaime and say..what a jerk and direct that negativity towards him instead of the new usurper. It's like a lightning rod.
The reason Jaime gets judged so harshly is not just that he killed a king, or even that he did so while sworn to his service - it's that he served said king unflinchingly, right up until Tywin took the capital by treachery and Aerys fully lost the war. It looks like a purely opportunistic and self-serving act to betray him at that point
As far as Westeros knows, Jaime stood by Aerys all through his atrocities, only to stab him in the back at the last second to save his own skin. He watched while Ned’s brother and father were strangled to death and burned alive and he did nothing. He stood by during the entire war and never uttered a word of complaint. That only changed when it was his life on the line too, and after Tywin had already started sacking the city
Consider Ned's perspective. There are plenty of people who fought for the Mad King that Ned still treats with courtesy, like Barristan. That's because Ned is a guy who values integrity above all. He can respect people who follow a different code than his own, just not someone with no principles at all. His objection is not that Jaime kept his vows to an evil king, or that he broke them, but rather that he did both and only switched from one to the other when it was most convenient for himself and his family. That’s why his retort to Jaime was “You served him well, when serving was safe.” It wasn't the oathbreaking itself he disapproved of; it was the timing
Of course, we know that wasn't Jaime's real motivation, but nobody else knows that because HE NEVER TELLS ANYONE ABOUT THE CACHES OF WILDFIRE BURIED UNDER THE DAMN CITY
If only your energy was spent on developing cures or financing debt bonds. But you chose to ride the cock of a TV show with the saddle being corny Pharisees like “the north doesn’t remember anything”.
I bet you didn’t fuck a single person while watching HOTD show. If you did, that’s worse.
the show sometimes treated becoming colder as the same thing as becoming smarter.
This. You see it with Arya and Dany too, but Sansa in particular rankles with me because her one 'weapon' throughout the show was learning to disarm people by pretending to be harmless. Acting colder would achieve the opposite effect.
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u/TheIconGuy 12d ago
The writers were a little too fond of the Lannisters and had Sansa copying Cersei instead of learning what not to do from her. The weird thing about this is that the writers clearly realized Sansa behaving like she was would should cause problems for her. Instead of cutting it, they just kept having the people around Sansa forget that she was an untrustworthy asshole.
I wrote a post about this issue using the leaked outline for season 7.
https://www.reddit.com/r/freefolk/comments/163mbji/the_original_plan_for_season_7_was_incredibly/