Recently, I was on a roll reading tumblr posts about pre-canon Jonsa theories.
There was this one from dontbipanicjonsa and ester-dot. In it, a case is made for a possible kissing game played in the godswood. I like how ester’s like, “I’m not convinced it did, just if it did...” I feel that.
There was also this one from cappymightwrite. It links unreliable narrator and memory editing ideas to “emphasis on innocent” pre-canon kiss ideas. Also, when I reblogged it, I shared a bit of my own experience with accidental memory editing and how it’s not always tied to traumatic events.
And then there was this one from softvniverse and fedonciadale. I really love it because it just hits on so many points in such a quick, concise way.
SO ANYWAY. I was thinking about all I read in those posts, and here’s my idea, Jonsa friends...
(I worked it into the one-shot I just posted so sorry if it’s redundant for some of you, but I wanted to spell it out in more detail here on Tumblr).
What if, as a young girl, Sansa didn’t understand that Jon was her half-brother? Hear me out! I grew up in a big, blended, complicated family, and I don’t remember anyone ever explicitly explaining to me, “This is your sister, these are your half-siblings, and these are your step-siblings.” It was just assumed that I understood.
Add to that idea that at Winterfell, Robb, Theon, and Jon were all about the same age and Theon was a ward. So what if, knowing Jon wasn’t a Stark, Sansa thought he was a ward too? It’s possible, right?
Now, let’s revisit these two lines:
1. "He missed the girls too, even Sansa, who never called him anything but ‘my half brother’ since she was old enough to understand what bastard meant."
2. "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."
Ya’ll! I’m about to share the idea I put in my fic, but it could be replaced with a kissing game or a conversation with Catelyn, or anything. Here goes:
What if Sansa and Arya (on one of the occasions they were getting along) were playing pretend in the godswood, acting out their future wedding days. And Arya’s like, “Okay, I’m going to marry Mycah and you’re going to marry Theon.” And Sansa’s like, “I don’t want to marry Theon. I want to marry Jon.”
And Arya, even though she’s younger, already understands the family dynamics and she’s like, “What are you talking about Sansa? That’s gross and weird you can’t marry Jon, he’s our half-brother! And a bastard too. You can’t marry a bastard, you’re a lady.”
That lends itself pretty nicely to those two canon quotes, right? Like, after Sansa understood, she might have been very deliberate about calling Jon “my half brother” because she’s overcompensating for her embarrassment. And at some point, she might have transferred those feelings and those memories on to Waymar, which gives new meaning to *she remembered dimly* and *when she was a stupid little girl.*
Anyway! I try not to post too many things that I think antis would call cherry picking or grasping at straws. Like, I could totally be wrong. I’ve seen theories about Sansa’s Unkiss relating to something more traumatic and I thought those theories were pretty convincing too, even though they didn’t support Jonsa. So anything’s possible!
But I like like this theory. It’s fun, so I wanted to share. Let’s bask in it together.
