What did you think of the Dany/Sansa feud in S8? On the one hand, I thought the distrust Sansa still nurtured for Dany after she helped the North win the Long Night was irrational and forced (by the writers). On the other hand, is it wrong of Sansa to want Northern independence and refuse to bend the knee to Dany? It's not like Dany's claim to the throne is morally superior or anything.
No one’s claim is morally superior. It’s a feudal society built on the backs of the peasantry that a bunch of nobles claim the right to rule based on bloodline rights, in dominions that were largely established through war and conquest. Yes, that applies to the Starks too. It’s not like Sansa’s argument that they should strip the Karstarks and the Umbers of their lands for their betrayal of the Starks isn’t based on said bloodline rights. If we go at the issue of feudal claims from a moral standpoint, none of them have the high ground.
But the books have a theme that clearly sets apart the good rulers and from the bad ones even in the context of feudalism. We have a thread running through multiple stories of the importance of the ruler upholding the obligation of protecting and providing for the people as the mark of a true leader which is often presented as an avenue of earning their people’s allegiance. The North harbors a deep sense of loyalty towards the Starks because they have consistently shouldered those duties that the name Stark became synonym with order in the North. Stannis has a story of turning from an unworthy king that we genuinely didn’t want on the throne for how he kept stomping his feet demanding fealty to the king who still cared, who realized that being a king lies in saving the realm instead of waiting till they bend the knee which ultimately wins him the allegiance of the Northmen. Dany outright points out that the role of monarchs is fundamentally about protecting the people. Robb is set apart from Stannis and Renly at the onset of the War of the Five Kings specifically because he is the only one doing anything to protect the people against the Lannisters and it’s his relief of the Riverlands that earns him the allegiance of the Riverlords alongside the Northmen.
The show gutted that theme though. The Northmen randomly abandoned the Starks when they were trying to take back Winterfell. Robb got dismissed as a naive idiot who made stupid decisions. Dany was triggered by bells and decided that breaking the wheel and breaking chains means killing civilian populations. Stannis burned his daughter for better weather and was abandoned by most of his men as a result. So I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when the entire plot of Dany’s dynamics with the Starks sent a message that it ultimately does not matter if you do your duty to the realm and prioritize people’s survival over your political ambitions. It does matter if you prove your mettle as a leader and a queen and refuse to abandon the North to its fate as Cersei did. You’re still going to be met with blatant hostility and zero appreciation because you’re a foreigner and people are agonizing over Northern independence. Your very presence is gonna be treated as an unwanted burden even though you’re there to save lives. Who cares about the army of the dead that’s knocking on the door, Northern independence is what we’re all should be focused on.
It’s genuinely fundamentally broken for the writers to have Sansa use the argument that thousands of Northmen have died to protect all of Westeros as a selling pitch for Northern independence when she is the same person who actively tried to undermine Dany at every turn - you know, Dany who brought her entire army to protect the North and all of Westeros, who earned Jon’s fealty by pledging herself, her dragons and her men to the cause before Jon bent the knee, whose army took the burnt of the attack of the dead from the first charge of the Dothraki to the shield wall the Unsullied formed to protect the retreat of the Northmen. Dany who Sansa was openly hostile towards from the very start and even in the middle of the attack when Dany’s army was the main reason Winterfell wasn’t overrun in minutes. And the show really expects me to be on Sansa’s side and be happy that the North got its independence? All I have to say is, way to miss the point. Which is also this season’s theme apparently.
Because if the point, as it is in the books, that a proper ruler puts the realm first and ahead of their personal power, Dany has proven herself to be a deserving ruler. If the point, as Jon has been preaching for three seasons and as the books and GRRM himself have argued, is that the threat of the Others is so grand and encompassing that the only way to encounter it is for everyone to put aside their egos, their grudges and their power plays because it doesn’t matter who is in charge if they are all dead, if the point is that everyone needs to unite for the greater good, I have to say that Dany passed that test with flying colors while Sansa failed miserably. Sansa tried her level best to undermine Dany from the start, alienated her in public and framed her much needed help as a burden because of food. That wasn’t just viable concern that was worth addressing within the confines of a war council, it was a public dig at Dany’s presence. She was salty about Dany at the same moment that Dany’s forces were in the field protecting Sansa’s own people. And that’s before she betrayed Jon’s trust and revealed his parentage specifically to mess with Dany. Meanwhile Dany, despite never forgetting her political ambitions and quest for the throne, prioritized her duty to the realm and the greater good….. and what did it get her? “She is not one of us”.
I’m not sure if the writers didn’t notice or didn’t care about how this looks, or perhaps they thought it would be moot anyway in light of Dany’s subsequent actions in King’s Landing, but that arc paints the Starks in a terrible light. They were more than fine using Dany’s forces in the War for the Dawn but they couldn’t even fathom being half way decent to the only person who bothered to show up to protect the North. They didn’t even reject her for her policies since they didn’t know her policies, they didn’t like her because she was not one of them, of the super special club that is the Starks. And I know that the North has a bias against the south in the books but this goes so far beyond it I’m honestly wondering how the writers ever expected us to go out of this arc on the side of the Starks.
When you have your main protagonists spout up sentiments that sound painfully similar to what your villains said in early seasons, you have officially lost the plot. This is the reason why an ending like Sansa’s coronation that I’d have been more than happy with in the books (if also sad for what it says about the fates of Bran and Rickon) turned to ash in my eyes. Because the show validated and rewarded Sansa’s unreasonable hostility and manipulation, Arya’s unapologetic xenophobia and Bran’s indifference (or arguably complicity since it is implied that Bran knew what Dany was going to do and kept silent). The show retrospectively validated all that the Starks did, as well as Cersei’s open racism last season, by having Dany turn ~mad~. The way it ended makes it as if Dany’s rejection of the independence of the North was part of her tyranny and power hunger, that she was unreasonable but the elected good king Bran clearly knows better. Well, if Dany was a tyrant or mentally unstable or power hungry for refusing the North its independence, I’d genuinely like to know what Sansa’s reaction would be like if one of the Northern houses didn’t want to submit to her authority.
That’s part of the reason that makes the whole thing feel hollow and forced, which isn’t made any better by the inexplicable willingness of all the other kingdoms to remain united under a Stark king who had just granted his own sister independence for reasons. Even such regions that have a long history of fighting for their independence like Dorne or that has already had a ruler claim the queenship like the Iron Islands (hey, remember that time Yara went to Mereen and called herself queen and Tyrion argued that this will make everyone demand their independence but Dany said Yara was asking and everyone else was welcome to ask? Yeah, neither do Yara or Tyrion. Or the writers).
What’s making me really upset is that I do believe the North will end up independent and that the Starks are going to be a main part of the rebuilding effort post-war. But it’s not gonna happen only for the North because the Starks are special snowflakes, it’s gonna happen everywhere because that symbolism of the Iron Throne melting isn’t as pointless as it was in the show. Gosh, the show even undermined the theme of having better people in charge after the war across the board as part of the dream of spring. We know nothing about the new unnamed Prince of Dorne, they turned Sansa into someone who thinks employing Littlefinger’s techniques is all the rage, they have Bronn as a part of the government, they even made fun of Edmure who has a lot of vices but who has always been a prime candidate for post-war Westeros because he understands that it’s all about the people under his care. The show ended on a rehash of the game of thrones and next to no change. No progress. No development. No point to most of the character arcs. We’re just supposed to cheer because the North is independent and there is a Stark king on the throne for some reason. Well, I can’t cheer and I say that as someone whose favorites are the Starks. The writers have twisted most of the characters so much to fit the plot that they are unrecognizable. The conflicts were not organic but pressed into being petty and prejudiced. The characterization took a dive off the nearest cliff. And the very heart of the series, the overarching themes running through five whole books, were no where to be found. An ending isn’t inherently bittersweet because characters survived. A lot of my favorites survived but I can’t find this ending to be anything but the bitterest of bitter.
So. tl;dr, I hate the feud. I hate what they did to Sansa. I hate what they did to Dany. And Arya…. and Jon….. and Bran. And most others too. I hate Benioff and Weiss and hope they choke at the Emmys :)
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