It was clear how much Sansa was infatuated with Loras and how she wanted to kiss him. Compare this with her thinking about Unkiss which always sounds forced and omnious. Grrm purposely show this contrast.
Hello Anon (Sorry for being late)
OMG this question!
I completely agree with you. Throughout the books Sansa expresses her deep crush on two young guys: Waymar Royce and Loras Tyrell, both handsome, brown haired, with graceful, slender bodies, and members of sworn brotherhoods.
“Bronze Yohn knows me,” she reminded him. “He was a guest at Winterfell when his son rode north to take the black.” She had fallen wildly in love with Ser Waymar, she remembered dimly, but that was a lifetime ago, when she was a stupid little girl. “And that was not the only time. Lord Royce saw … he saw Sansa Stark again at King’s Landing, during the Hand’s tourney.”
—A Feast for Crows - Alayne I
Wed to Ser Loras, oh … Sansa’s breath caught in her throat. She remembered Ser Loras in his sparkling sapphire armor, tossing her a rose. Ser Loras in white silk, so pure, innocent, beautiful. The dimples at the corner of his mouth when he smiled. The sweetness of his laugh, the warmth of his hand. She could only imagine what it would be like to pull up his tunic and caress the smooth skin underneath, to stand on her toes and kiss him, to run her fingers through those thick brown curls and drown in his deep brown eyes. A flush crept up her neck.
—A Storm of Swords - Sansa I
BUT
Those shippers insist that Sansa is the heroine of some gothic romance who is both attracted to and repelled by their fave ugly canine.
They elaborate the notion that while Loras is a safe crush (young, handsome, high borne, the right guy, etc), deep down Sansa is attracted to their fave brute killer, an old dark dangerous man, a bad boy.
They based their notion in the fact that Sansa often mentions Loras and their fave pedo sellsword next to each other in the text. So, if she mentions Loras and immediately after she also mentions their fave back row quinary character (or vice versa), that means that his true love interest is the stinky dog and not the fragrant rose.
But I have a more plausible explanation for Loras and that old ugly canine appearing next to each other in the text: Bretan Braith.
Bretan Braith is a character from GRRM's science fiction novel "Dying of the Light."
Bretan Braith was as young as Chell was old—surely no older than Garse Janacek and probably younger than Gwen and Jaan or himself. How had he come to be teyn to a Kavalar so many years his senior? He was no high, either, he had given no betheyn to Braith; his left arm, covered by fine reddish hairs that glinted now and then when he walked very close and let them catch the sunlight, had no bracelet of jade-and-silver.
His face, his strange half-face, was ugly beyond anything that Dirk had ever seen, but as the day waned and false dusk became real, he found himself getting used to it. When Bretan Braith paced in one direction, he looked utterly normal: a whip-lean youth, full of nervous energy held tightly in check, so tightly that Bretan almost seemed to crackle. His face on that side was unlined and serene; short black curls pressed tightly around his ear and a few ringlets dropped to his shoulder, but he had no hint of a beard. Even his eyebrow was only a faint line above a wide green eye. He appeared almost innocent.
Then, pacing, he would reach the edge of the roof and turn back the way he had come, and everything would be changed. The left side of his face was inhuman, a landscape of twisted plains and angles that no face ought to have. The flesh was seamed in a half-dozen places, and elsewhere it was shiny-slick as enamel. On this side, Bretan had no hair whatsoever, and no ear—only a hole—and the left half of his nose was a small piece of flesh-colored plastic. His mouth was a lipless slash, and worst of all, it moved. He had a twitch, a grotesque tic, and it touched the left corner of his mouth at intervals and rippled up his bare scalp over the hills of scar tissue.
In the daylight, the Braith’s glowstone eye was as dark as a piece of obsidian. But slowly night was coming, the Helleye sank, and the fires were stirring in his socket. At full darkness, Bretan would be the Helleye, not Worlorn’s tired supergiant of a sun; the glowstone would burn a steady, unwinking red, and the half-face around it would become a black travesty of a skull, a fit home for an eye such as that.
—Dying of the Light - Chapter 6
Sounds familiar???
Yes, Bretan Braith is the "ancestor" of both, the Lannister's dog and the Knight of Flowers.
I can't find the original source, but GRRM said that during a chat with fans back in 2001:
HOST BKPG Shark: Mr. Martin. In your story ‘Dying of the Light, the main Character, Dirk t’Larien seemed out of his element. Was there a purpose to that?
GRRM: Dirk was out of his element… an essentially modern man in a very alien culture. Actually, when I look back on DOTL, I think Dirk is the novel’s biggest flaw.
HOST BKPG Shark: Very much so.
GRRM: And Bretan Braith… who is an ancestor of both Sandor Clegane and Loras Tyrell, in a way.
[Source]
We also have this fan report from July 2012:
He (GRRM) also talked about his book 'Dying of the Light’, his first novel, published in 1977, and he said that some of the characters in this science fiction book were in a way predecessors or antecedents of others in ASoIaF. This is the case of Loras Tyrell and the Hound.
[Source]
And this other fan report from August 2005:
Maltaran asked about comparisons of Bretan Braith (from Dying of the Light) to the Hound.
He said yes, they are similar, but Bretan has much more duality in him, as he is handsome on the unburnt side, while Sandor was only average before the burning.
[Source]
I think George is playing with these characters and their common origin in Bretan Braith, that's why he surrounded Sansa with both of them. And Bretan Braith also makes me think that Loras was indeed severely injured by boiling oil and he will probably be left with half his face disfigured like his literary ancestor.
There you have it.
Thanks for your message :)
