‘Game of Thrones’ Sansa Stark: She Grows A Pair & We Have to Cheer

Sansa Stark proved that the naive Joffrey-stricken teen is gone forever in last night’s epic episode. Reconquering Winterfell and facing down Ramsay Bolton as he dies, makes her the north’s new fearless warrior queen.
All hail, Queen Sansa, the new savior of the north. Ned and Caitlyn Stark would be proud of their battle-scarred daughter. Westeros is not a place for wimps of either sex in these dark days. And Sansa has survived a series of brutal, soul-destroying life experiences since the carefree days when she first became engaged to Joffrey Baratheon.

Brutal rapes and physical and mental abuse at the hands of her second husband Ramsay Bolton on top of the vicious emotional abuse inflicted by her late fiancé Joffrey, have hardened Sansa. And in this cruel Westeros world with enemies everywhere, and White Walkers bearing down from beyond the Wall, there is no other way to survive.

Sansa has chosen to become a survivor and it looks good, though terrifying, on her.

When she watched her as husband Ramsay Bolton is devoured alive by his starving, vicious dogs, she didn’t flinch for a second. Her revenge was complete. She needed her monster torturer to know she was savoring his suffering. It’s what he deserved. Plus, she needed Bolton and all of his wretched followers and the houses of the north, who betrayed her family, to know that she had ordered his grisly death.

Bolton’s backers must know that Ned Stark’s son, Jon Snow and daughter,are no pushovers. In a world where fear and greed are the only motivators, Sansa has made both a major personal and political statement. “I’m Sansa Stark, and fear me roar,” will be heard loud and clear by all those who need to stop resisting and fall in line behind Ned Stark’s daughter and son.

On a personal level, it’s beyond tragic what Sansa has had to endure: forced to watch her beloved father, Ned, beheaded by her fiancé, forced to remain a prisoner of his abuse and beatings, forced to marry Tyrion Lannister, forced to wed sadistic Ramsay Bolton, who brutally raped, beat and threatened her and forced to watch her youngest brother, Rickon, murdered by her husband. It’s no wonder that she has toughened to the point of concocting a suitably gruesome death for Ramsay.

But, let’s not forget that her revenge is as much for Rickon, for wise Maester Luwin of Winterfell, for Rickon’s protector, the wildling girl Osha and for Theon Greyjoy, as it is for herself. If, as Ramsey implies, Sansa is indeed pregnant – “I’m part of you now” -he tells her, she will need every ounce of strength she has. But, no doubt, that child will be raised only as a Stark, not a Bolton: “Your words will disappear. Your house will disappear. Your name will disappear. All memory of you will disappear,” she assured him. And we are cheering!