Show Sansa <<< The 4 complex female characters who’s titles/plotlines were stolen and watered down to give to Sansa
Show!Sansa Stark may be among my most disliked characters in fictional media. This is one big reason why.
And not only were aspects of fleshed-out female characters watered down, massacred, and given to Sansa, some of those female characters (Dany) were vilified to prop Sansa as the "good" queen/"leader" or turned into a Stansa!groupie (Arya). It's like D&D expected us to discard all series history and characterization (including their own interviews) to be a good little sheep and mindlessly root for their fave Sansa, accept Arya's reduced role as Sansa's backup, and last-minute root against Dany (who is the reason why Jon, Sansa, et. al are still alive at all) as the "baddie".
None of "she's the smartest person I ever met" Sansa's decisions or actions made any kind of sense. Worse, they'd realistically contribute significantly to making situations more dire. a) Sansa sets Jon up for death twice (the LF/Knights of the Vale dumbassery, placing a target on Jon's back for Dany's supporters when Sansa attempts to get a claimant war going for a claim Jon clearly doesn't want and abdicated in Dany's favour).
b) Sansa seems to think the Northern lords would just accept bastardborn Jon doing absolutely nothing as he watches Ned Stark's trueborn son and heir get murdered right in front of him.
c) Sansa publicly picking fights with Jon while Jon was a brand new king with a tenuous hold on the Northern lords as he (and the North and the entire world) faced a literal apocalypse.
d) Sansa thanks the Northern lords for being "very kind" (in the name of "diplomacy" of course) when they propose a coup against Jon in Sansa's favour to get the Northern lords on her side.
e) Sansa is hostile to Dany on site -- you know, the queen with three dragons and two full armies coming to save their asses (so much for "diplomacy"). She even goes on to bitch about Dany while Dany's outside fighting an actual zombie apocalypse right in front of two of Dany's trusted advisors (Tyrion and Missandei).
f) Sansa invites a third war against a broken, struggling North facing food insecurity, major damage, significant military & defence losses by using Jon's unwanted claim when they all have just finished the war against the dead (remember Sansa's lecture to Dany just hours earlier about not jumping into another war when one was just fought...?)
g) Sansa is manipulated post-s5 how many times by Littlefinger again...? And LF's season 7 manipulations of Sansa were after Sansa says one would have to be a fool to trust Littlefinger in 6x10... And Sansa is the "smartest person" Arya's "ever met".
Sansa's storylines leeched from the carefully plotted stories of book protagonists, turning the concerned book characters into idiots about essentials when key (and important!) elements from Jon and Dany's individual ADWD storylines dealt with food management, rationing, and feeding/sheltering various factions in conflict. The closest Sansa gets to "food management" in the books is when she's planning a lavish 64-course meal feast in the middle of a continent-wide famine. But alas, these food & defence management features were ripped from Jon and Dany's ADWD storylines to give to Sansa in the form of two lines.
Oh, and then Sansa's "love" for her family -- the same family who GoT costume designer Michele Clapton says is represented in Sansa's QitN coronation dress:
a) Setting up Jon to be killed twice -- already covered :) BONUS: Even Kit Harington complains how Sansa nearly gets Jon killed.
b) Frequently berates Jon, betrays a godswood-sworn vow to him, and disrespects/overrides his choices for queen (publicly & privately) and what to do with his own claim/parentage by doing whatever the fuck she wants to do with that instead.
As an aside, remember that time Sansa compares Jon to Joffrey because Jon had the gall to take issue with Sansa publicly questioning his decisions as king? Well, Jonsas have turned even that asshole moment of Sansa's -- as well as Jon's upset -- into pro-Jonsa and all about Sansa (because Jon can't hate Joffrey for killing his father, nope, it's got to be all. about. Sansa. Stark.)
c) Rickon! Sansa uses Rickon to rope a recently-betrayed, murdered, newly-resurrected, and freshly traumatized Jon into a battle he doesn't want to fight... before telling Jon to write Rickon off for dead the night before battle. Rickon. Jon's entire reason for joining this battle in the first place.
d) Sansa nearly has Arya executed after she is manipulated by LF again with LF convincing Sansa that Arya wants her position as Lady of Winterfell.
Then Sansa ends the series with a crown after simply demanding her newly crowned-king-of-the-7K Bran grant her Northern independence.... from a Stark king.
And D&D wanted us to root for this character.
