The problem I have with book theonsa is that the ship is entirely about Theon and his redemption, meanwhile Sansa is going to end up with someone who once fantasised using her (in the truest sense of the word) for her claim?
I mean yeah but that's a problem for most Sansa ships. Whether its Tyrion, Sandor, Petyr, Sansa is always the one comforting emotionally damaged guys who don't really gaf about her feelings. Sansa is kind of the litmus test for how evil an asoiaf man is: Sandor deciding at the last minute not to hurt her and runs away in shame instead, Tyrion doesn't go through with their wedding night (again, at the LAST possible moment), vs Petyr who continually abuses and assaults her. And then Theon, Tyrion, Petyr, arguably Willas/House Tyrell, also want her to get to Winterfell. Ironically the only man she's interacted with who hasn't done any of this is Harry, but he's just a straight up asshole :( This all goes back to grrm's love for beauty and the beast/gothic lit, and no one exemplifies that more than Sansa as a redemptory figure interacting with monstrous men. Point being, while yes Theon's initial attitude towards Sansa was very gross, his redemptory figure in the books was Jeyne, not Sansa. So really any book Theonsa would happen with post-Reek Theon, and that's a very different character. It also has like a zero percent chance of happening. People like speculating on potential dynamics and book Theonsa could have a really interesting one. What I'm trying to say is the whole 'Sansa will end up with a guy who wanted to use her' doesn't bother me because shipping isn't just 'I think these two characters will end up together in canon and here's why' it can also just be 'here are two characters I like, what might a relationship between them look like'.
A raven came from Winterfell. A Theonsa raven.
Soupversary is here!
On April 21st, 2019, Theon and Sansa spent what they thought would be the last night of their lives together, staring into each others eyes and eating soup. For the past few years Theonsas on tumblr have created fanworks to commemorate this soup date for our soupmates. If you would like to participate this year, create any Theonsa fanwork and post it on April 21st under the tag #soupversary2025. This year’s prompts are a choice between traditional props and soup prompts from A Song of Ice and Fire. You can absolutely use the literal soup in your fanwork or you can let the name of the soup inspire you symbolically. You can also use prompts from any past Soupversaries or you can also ignore the prompts altogether. Anything goes as long as it's Theonsa. Platonic Theonsa and Book Theonsa are also very welcome as well as mixtures of the show and book canons. If you are writing fic, please post to the AO3 Theonsa Soupversary Collection.
Hi I really like your appreciation for Theon and I see you ship sansa x theon and I would like to ask you if you really think there is some kind of foreshadowing between these two characters (and what would that foreshadowing be) or just ship them for fun because I am really starting to like theon x sansa and I would like to know is it possible that this happens in the books 😭
sorry to bother you <3
Thank you so much for the question anon! You are not bothering me at all! I’m just so sorry it takes me forever to respond! Well, the short answer to your question is that yes, I ship them both in the show and in the books. Basically all the shipping I do is for fun. To me, it really doesn’t matter if it happens in canon or not. But I wouldn’t be opposed to it certainly! And yes, although I think the chance of it actually happening is incredibly slim, there are definitely interesting similarities and parallels in book canon that could build to a future ship in my opinion.
This got long, so the rest is under the cut:
One thing I like so much about both show Theonsa and book Theonsa is how incredibly DIFFERENT they are and yet their core, I think, is the same. I saw the show before I read the books and even though I feel like the show fumbled the potential of Theonsa in many ways (and I’m not even talking about romantically- but just the potential exploration of their characters, their abuse narratives, and their parallels.) I absolutely loved their dynamic so much that you will have to tear show Theonsa from my cold dead heart because I will never stop shipping it. In fact, I will probably write a defense of show Theonsa that literally no one asked for at some point, but getting back to your actual question: I do think that show Theonsa succeeds, in spite of the chaotic writing around it, because of Theon and Sansa’s personality similarities and narrative parallels in the books (and also because of Alfie and Sophie’s amazing acting, of course!)
I do think there are definitely seeds for a possible ship planted in the books. This mostly comes from Theon’s POV chapters where he mentions wanting to marry Sansa when he was a boy:
He remembered a time when he had thought that Lord Eddard Stark might marry him to Sansa and claim him for a son, but that had only been a child's fancy.
~A Dance with Dragons, Reek I
His statement is indicative of his deep, deep desire to find belonging as opposed to actual romantic feelings towards Sansa- especially since they were both children at the time and she is much younger than he is. I think he saw marrying her as a way of truly becoming Ned’s son and part of the family. Now from Sansa’s perspective, she definitely doesn’t want to be loved for her Stark name. She wants to be loved for herself. This is shown both in the hopeful way she talks about Willas Tyrell and in the mournful way she thinks about her Aunt Lysa arranging her marriage to Sweetrobin:
She wanted to look beautiful for Willas Tyrell. Even if Dontos was right, and it is Winterfell he wants and not me, he still may come to love me for myself.
~ A Storm of Swords, Sansa II
It is not me she wants her son to marry, it is my claim. No one will ever marry me for love.
~ A Storm of Swords, Sansa VI
And then, unlike Theon, who mentions Sansa a number of times in his POV, she only mentions him once- and that is to tell Tyrion that he killed Bran. So I must admit that’s not very compelling when it comes to foreshadowing a ship lol.
However, I don’t think the way they thought of each other as children really matters that much for a potential future ship, because what would bond them together are the experiences that they have had since they last saw each other. And I do think that if their paths should cross again, the reunion would be incredibly interesting based on what they have both been through. Hopefully Sansa will learn the truth about Bran and Rickon and also find out that Theon saved Jeyne Poole- her “truest friend”- and that he actually became the kind of hero that both she and Jeyne use to dream about. Sansa has been forced to see that “life is not a song,” and “in life, the monsters win,” yet she is also still desperate to believe that the songs are still true:
There are gods, she told herself, and there are true knights too. All the stories can't be lies.
~ A Storm of Swords, Sansa IV
And what Theon did for Jeyne is truly worthy of a song. So if Sansa meets him again, she may feel kindly toward him based on what he did for her friend. And if they spent any time together, I do believe that they could form a strong bond. Especially since they have been through such similar situations.
I find the idea of their parallel hostage narratives particularly compelling. Especially the idea of them both being seen as traitors to their families and to their captors. Sansa’s hostage arc is an interesting juxtaposition to Theon’s because, as a member of the Stark family, hers is generally seen as a true hostage situation- whereas the Stark POV chapters tended to “gentle” the idea of Theon as a hostage. Calling him a “ward” instead. This coupled with Theon’s own complex feelings towards the Starks often lead readers to push the narrative that he is an “adopted brother” to the Stark family instead of a hostage, erasing his trauma in order to paint the protagonist Stark family in the best light. It is incredibly interesting to have Sansa’s hostage arc occur in the same book that Theon’s POV begins to challenge the Stark narrative about his own situation. But it is also interesting to view Sansa’s hostage arc through the lens of the patriarchal society in which they live. Because, there is a very fine line between arranged marriages and hostages. Especially in a society where peace and alliances are formed through the offering of girls’ and womens’ bodies in marriage- much like a hostage, they are putting their bodies on the line to keep the peace or to forge an alliance. Theon and Sansa’s identity and abuse narratives are also extremely similar. As soon as their hostage narratives end- when their identities have already been incredibly shaken from that experience- they are thrust into a situation where they are forced to take new identities- Theon with Reek and Sansa with Alayne.
I also think they are both building toward a “becoming their own hero” narrative. Theon has already done this when he realized even though he kept saying, “there are no heroes here,” he had to become the hero himself and save Jeyne. And through saving Jeyne, he saves himself. And I think that Sansa, who has been seeking “a true knight” and hero throughout her own arc, will come to the same conclusion based on the Ghost of High Heart’s prophecy, “And later, I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow.”
I do think at the very least they could establish a significant bond based on their similar journeys. Here are some posts that highlight those: one, two. I also think that Sansa and Theon’s personalities are very compatible both pre canon and post canon. The way they describe things in their POV are incredibly similar: one, two (who can ever forget worm lips?), three, four, five. I mean, both Theon and Sansa have a similar way of looking at the world in the beginning of the novels. With both of them, I found myself stopping during their POV chapters often to be like- Did they really just SAY/THINK that? lmao. But they are also both growing beyond the views they’ve internalized from living in a patriarchal feudalistic society in ways that are very interesting to see.
So I just rambled forever and I feel like I still didn’t express all that I think and feel about this ship! lol. I also want to say that I also ship them as purely friends just as much as I do a potential romantic relationship. I would just love for them to have some future interaction in the books. I am not sure if it will happen but I would absolutely love it if it did!
This is also a good book theonsa post that makes a great case for the ship far more succinctly than I just did lol. And here is some lovely book theonsa art: shebsart, keptrefler.
Could you elaborate on Sansa recognising her complicity in playing a role in Theon's captivity and how does that correlate with her captivity in hands of the Lannister regime?
Ya!
I did like a little graphic here sort of focusing on the hostage aspect with the point being they often parallel each other in How They Cope and that there are obvious parallels between how the two are treated as hostages.
So for example - that devastating "she was a good girl and always remembered her courtesies." I contrast that with the line about Theon smiling too much because in both cases, they're wearing a mask. Theon acts the way he does because of the situation he has grown up in. He is made to carry Ice, and he reflects on how much it freaked him out-
Lord Eddard had tried to play the father from time to time, but to Theon he had always remained the man who'd brought blood and fire to Pyke and taken him from his home. As a boy, he had lived in fear of Stark's stern face and great dark sword. His wife was, if anything, even more distant and suspicious.
Sansa makes herself smaller in order to survive her situation but Theon seems to decide at some point that if these people are going to hate him then he is going to earn that hatred and suspicion. Her courtesy as a vapid little good girl and his very ironborn type grossness are them taking the thing that people consider stupid & wrong and making it the thing that protects them emotionally. Theon does that literally from the first page - he holds Ice for Ned (very similar to Joffrey making Sansa kiss his sword - this is being done to let them know that a sword still hangs over their head, whether Ned realizes exactly how violent this is, it is what he is doing), then kicks the head of gareth. Feels small, and does something gross to make himself feel bigger. Sansa does similar stuff just in a more positive way - the Lannisters makes her feel small, and she will do something that makes her feel bigger. She snaps about Robb killing Joffrey, she saves Dontos after Joffrey has spent the day picking at her, she specifially takes over as Lady Of The Castle from Cersei during the Battle of the Blackwater after Cersei has spent hours drunkenly mocking her.
So first, that idea of Sansa recognizing her own complicity starts with recognizing that their situations as hostages were eerily similar. Robb rises in rebellion, Balon rises in rebellion. The Starks bring fire & blood to the Ironborn, the Lannisters bring fire & blood to the Riverlands and the North. Sansa is not allowed to go home, Theon is not allowed to go home. Cersei attempts to "teach" Sansa and expects loyalty in return for not keeping her chained up in the dungeons, Ned attempts to "teach" Theon and expects loyalty in return for not keeping him chained up in the dungeons (Rodrick explicitly says so!). The Lannisters believe her blood to be tainted by both her traitorous family and her inherent "otherness" as a Northerner, and the Starks believe Theon to be tainted both by his traitorous family and his inherent "otherness" as Ironborn.
And that's not even where it ends - both their mothers lose their minds over grief, both lose older brothers to this rebellion, both wind up being "accidental" heirs whose claims are being sought after very explicitly by the people who stole them from their homes and kept them as hostages. Both have an "out of the frying pan, into the fire" escape that's pretty heavy on the corruption & underworld imagery when Theon goes from being a hostage of the Starks to the plaything of Ramsay and Sansa goes from being a hostage of the Lannisters to something much more nebulous and uncertain as Littlefucker's obsession. Both of them are forced to choose between the family they are ~marrying~ into (Theon as the Stark whore, Sansa as Joffrey's fiance) and their birth families and both of them objectively choose wrong (and interestingly, this choice is a contrast between them - Theon should have chosen the brother who does love him in Robb, while Sansa should have chosen the biological family who she maybe does not understand but does wholeheartedly love) ("oh it's not a betrayal because-" right yes, that's another element of parallel here, is that you can't quite call what either of them do as a betrayal yet both they and the people around them categorize it as such!) Did they react differently to their circumstances? No doubt. But regardless, they have lived incredibly similar lives.
So how is Sansa complicit in this? Well I talked aboutt his before, withthe bedding ritual, and how I think it's meant to make everyone complicit to some level in structural sexual abuse. No one has clean hands. So the same way that Theon takes his own rage at his trauma out on the smallfolk of Winterfell, literally re-enacting his own status as a hostage by putting a noose around Beth's neck and threatening Rodrik with hanging her. He's mad at them, at all of them, for hating him and not understanding why he hates & loves the Starks so much - they stood there, for years, and watched Ned put a noose around his neck and that was fine but when he does the same to Beth now that is a terrible crime. But why? Why is what Sansa experiences in the capital somehow worse than what Theon experiences in Winterfell? Why is her gilded prison a tragedy while his is what he deserves? Being so alienated from his fmaily and culture and made to think that his very blood is "tainted" drives him insane and while the smallfolk are innocent it is in fact The Starks as a unit, has a family, as a whole, as a house, that do this to him. Yes he's responsible for what he does at Winterfell. But you simply cannot set someone up for failure and then pretend like you have no culpability in why they failed.
And Sansa's whole story is looking at why her family failed and figuring out a different way. She is knocked for being a passive character but her passivity comes from watching the people around her acting up and learning from what they do. And part of Ned's "sins" so to speak involve the way he treats Theon so it follows part of Sansa's arc will involve rethinking the entire concept of taking a hostage to ensure good behavior - and it also follows that part of that arc will include actually thinking through the way her family treated their own hostage. She knows that no matter what circumstances you are in living in, being a hostage is terrifying and dangerous. She knows what it is to be young and far from home and all alone and deeply afraid. And she witnessed what it feels to be treated like she was anyone in the house, like she was one of them when she wasn't when it comes to Myrcela, Tommen, and Margaery post marriage. And she couldn't tell them she was afraid, and she couldn't explain why she was really there and no one else was. Once upon a time she was Myrcella, she was Tommen, she was Megga and Elinor and Alla, and she watched Theon turn himself into a sharp, pathetic, nasty man as a trauma response to experiencing exactly what she experienced. I think a Sansa that is in control of her life would in fact see this similarity and it would make her think about what she would do in this situation that is different than Ned, and that in turn would make her soften towards THeon and understand why he "turned his cloak" against her family. After all, she never meant to hurt Tyrion, but she had to escape; Theon in the end, didn't wish any harm on Bran or Robb or Rickon but he had to escape.
do you think the book will have a similar theonsa scene like the show did with theon asking sansa if he may fight for winterfell?
GOD I FUCKING HOPE SO
Well okay, I'm actually hoping a bit more for SOUP SCENE aka sansa & theon spend a night together doing nothing but enjoying each other's company and it is easy and calm and full of love.
I go back and forth a LOT like a LOT A LOT on what's happening with Theon. I think he and Asha are getting involved in northern politics & I think Euron is going to get involved in the Long Night, which will bring them crashing into each other plot wise - and that feels correct, and also inevitable, given that Asha & Theon are like Next Gen Victarion & Aeron, that they step up into these roles of Ironborn Captain and Religious Leader to stop their Satan Incarnate Uncle. But how book theonsa shakes out kind of depends on how that shakes out. Like, if Euron attacks the Wall, or Winterfell, or raises the dead in the South and marches North to meet the Others, idk, there's a lot of possibility there and I genuinely, honestly, don't know that I could accurately put together what Euron is doing and the exact location of where he is.
BUT IF the books do in fact center the theonsa relationship (whether that be like, romantic or platonic, i honestly don't care, the point would ring true regardless), I can see Asha separating from Theon towards the end of TWOW/maybe early ADOS to whip the Ironborn into fighting formation and Theon wishing to stay on his own with Sansa. I can see this being a very heavy thing for Sansa as well - like, is he doing this out of guilt? Is he hoping to just get himself killed for "redemption"? Do I need to protect him, in a far more intimate way than he thinks he needs to protect me? But I can also see it being simultaneously romantic & fulfilling for her (regardless of whether anything happens, like romantic in the same way that Brienne swearing her sword to Sansa/Catelyn is romantic, ya know, like chivalrous & intimate) because of course, what Sansa has desired is someone who will fight for her because they care for her as a person and not her claim. Joffrey, the Tyrells, Dontos, Littlefinger, Harry, they all want something from her and they are willing to forcibly take it; now here is Theon, offering himself, not because he wants something but simply because he cares.
So ya, if it happens, I would imagine it like...beginning of ADOS/middle of ADOS, but the context....like maybe it's a last ditch thing, they're at the Wall, it comes down, he just throws in his lot with the North because they're the closest but he swears to Sansa specifically. Or maybe he actively travels to wherever she is to swear to her (that would be like the "Euron raises the dead in the South" thing, probably) & splits from Asha amicably to do so. But I do think Theon swearing his sword to a Stark is pretty likely to happen! Maybe not Sansa, maybe Bran instead. But I think it kind of has to be part of his arc. I've talked about that before, that Theon is a Starkling, Winterfell is his home just as much as the Iron Islands are whether anyone really likes that fact or not, and since he helped let a monster take it, he has to be part of retaking it, and in fact part of him wants taht, wants to be a hero of Winterfell, and in order to truly reconcile with his alienation from the Iron Islands and his hostage status in Winterfell, he has to like, stick around Winterfell in order to engage with that. Just running around the seas doesn't really force him to engage with it - but running around the North taking care of a Starkling or two does.
why do you see robb as gay but ship theon with sansa? personally, i think both have comphet 😭 theon was never attracted to sansa, he just wanted to feel part of the family lol
1. bisexuals experience comphet as well
2. i’m reiterating that point, anon u don’t even realize you’ve wandered into a rage trigger i have but bisexual people can and do experience compulsory heterosexuality.
3. theon can experience comphet & still be bisexual but frankly, i think theon is much more similar to like, stannis or how i view ned, which is that he is just not self aware or sexually comfortable enough to ever “identify” as queer in any way. i think how theon identifies is 100% contextual on who he is with At That Moment & even in the gayest of grrm written scenarios, theon would insist his experiences ~made~ him gay, and that he could turn back straight at any time. honestly i dont think theon would ever even admit to being with a man when pressed, like if we had, idk, canon greysnow, he is insisting hes straight while sleeping in bed next to his partner of 30 years. like, YEAH theon experiences comphet, that doesnt actually say anything about his ultimate sexuality or how he personally would identify tho.
4. yeah, in fact the point is that theon dreamed of marrying sansa bc he wanted to be a stark rather than any sort of infatuation with sansa, its why that moment is compared to sansa’s daydreams about willas. both of them essentially daydream about a scenario where they marry their way out of being a hostage, because they are children who are missing the nuances of their situations, and it is sad not only to get confirmation that theon was once just as much of a romantic dreamer as bran & sansa, but also that sansa is experiencing the same sort of victimization as The Family Hostage and coping in very similar ways.
5. the further point about sticking them together anyway is making sansa grapple with the ways she has been complicit in victimizing theon the way the lannisters victimized her and continued engagement with her themes of true knights + theon grappling with the reality of being sansa’s lover and her personhood vs his daydream of her as a stand in. it’s about the irony of theon wishing to be her husband and then after a LONG FUCKING DETOUR winds up in a romantic relationship with her.
6. i just think robb doesn’t like jeyne very much. he is respectful of her but he comes down very meh on being around her, they spend most of their time together fucking. obviously this is tainted also by the issue that their marriage is a huge political misstep but imo that goes literally right back to his feelings for theon. his whole relationship with her is just him trying to do theon but better and he only makes things worse.
7. i think making the eldest boy or a boy who is going to inherit gay is always the correct choice. every character should have laenor or renly problems.
8. i have a fetish for people marrying the sibling of their dead love.
