Do you like Jon and Sansa together? Do you think it's a posibility in both the books and the show? Why or why not?
Ah, Jon and Sansa. For some reason this has become like the ultimate GOT / ASOIAF Rorschach test? Either you see it in the inkblots or you don’t. I have no problem with people who don’t, but personally, I see it. While I wouldn’t call myself a passionate shipper or anything - I pretty much only get passionate about crackships or Cleopatra-and-Antony-style tragedies - I quite like Jonsa.
I think the two of them complement each other’s personalities, have similar belief systems and life goals, and have a surprising potential to be a truly healthy and supportive couple (surprising both because of the ‘thought they were siblings’ thing and because this is GOT and ‘healthy romance’ has been pretty much unheard of since the passing of Ned and Cat). There’s also enough angst built-in to the relationship to keep it an interesting dynamic for me. And I think it just makes for a fun twist and a good story.
TV relationships are usually based on the most unrealistic idealizations of romance ever to fuck up someone’s concept of how love actually works, and so for me Jonsa is a nice aversion in the sense that they clearly work as a couple. You can see why they like each other, where they clash, and how they work to resolve those clashes. The mechanics of the pairing make sense, you know? If I met them in real life I feel like they’d be an actual functioning couple, not a toxic circus show like most fictional romances - particularly in the fantasy genre. The appeal of Jonsa is in its practicality more than its drama, which I find very refreshing, especially in a high fantasy setting.
As for the possibility of its happening, yes, I think it has a good chance. I actually thought it had potential for winding up endgame a long time before I even starting caring about them as a romance. That’s why I became interested in it in the first place - it has textual evidence, it has a solid narrative structure, and the politics of it work out almost too well. Thematically, I think it would be a satisfying ending for both characters - if you want to hear more on my opinion on this aspect, you might take a look here. It also has the advantage of being a relationship that could quite literally save lives when it comes to patching together the Northern alliance and possibly the realm as a whole. It has historical parallels to events we know GRRM drew from when writing the books, and there’s proof that GRRM already considered pairing Jon off with one of his sisters from his original outline of the series. And that’s not even getting into all the hints the show has been dropping.
A Jon and Sansa marriage would be an ironic, unexpected twist that nonetheless functioned as a deeply appropriate cap to the thematic arcs of both characters: for Jon, finally becoming a ‘true’ member of the Stark family despite - and, in fact, because of - the new knowledge that he was never even Ned’s bastard in the first place but a Targaryen all along (not to discount the importance of Lyanna as his mother, but I’m looking at it with the patriarchal logic of the setting); and for Sansa, finally marrying a prince and becoming a princess in the most unexpected way possible, long after she became too wise to want to do so, and all because of the bastard half-brother she used to look down on. For Jon, marrying Sansa would be about coming to terms with his identity issues - if he was truly a Stark, he couldn’t marry her, but in marrying her as a Targaryen he achieves a kind of ‘Stark-ness’ anyway. And for Sansa, a relationship with Jon would be the culmination of her character growth about looking past appearances to the truth underneath. It just makes a good, twisty end to a good, twisty story.
That doesn’t mean that Jonsa is inevitably going to happen, of course - I could be wrong, as I’ve been wrong about endgames before (ah, Zutara, I remember you fondly). And as I’m not reading the series or waching the show primarily for the potential romances, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I’ve always been more drawn to interpersonal relationships and character dynamics than I am to action scenes, however, and this particular relationship is interesting enough that I’d like to see it play out on the page and the screen. (I also, personally, just enjoy being right about things, and so a Jonsa endgame would also be fun for me purely because I like having my theories turn out to be correct.)
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the Jon and Sansa relationship. Hope that helps!
pixelskylines
jbbartram-illu
annaxmalina
stormborns
prguitarman
discoholicmusic
