I am Sansa Stark

I hate how much I’m like Sansa Stark from the Game of Thrones. When I first started watching the show I saw her as the weakest link. A follower and an ignorant, privileged child trying to be a woman. I heard the show was merciless to their characters, so I didn't expect her to last long. As time progressed, I think many people realized how much like Sansa they were. A sheltered and impressionable young person, taught to desire things one does not understand but was being trained to understand from a particular perspective. Similar to how some people are raised in religious environments.

My perspective of her didn’t change after the last episode. Nor did it, like it did for other characters, when I started reading the book. However, I gained a higher respect for her. In the Game of Thrones world, similar to our reality, religious upbringing depends on your geographic location. Northerners are more likely to believe in the old gods of the forest, Southerners believe in the Faith of the Seven and those across the Narrow Sea believe in a multitude of religions, including the one viewers have become most familiar with called the Lord of Light. Some characters were born in communities that practice a certain religion but Sansa’s upbringing went beyond that. She was born and raised by a family that is royal, old and has practiced the ways of the old gods for many years. The Stark’s faith transcends generations and that is where Sansa finds strength at the beginning of her family’s demise.

In the South, a place she’s always wanted to be and believed she belonged, Sansa adopted the Faith of the Seven and prayed in candlelit rooms like her mother did when she moved to the North. But during a time of adversity, Sansa prayed to the old gods in hopes of finding strength to get through a difficult time for her and her family. The quote "Sometimes she prayed in the godswood as well, since the Starks kept the old gods" marks her transition from the weakest link in Season one to a secret weapon in the Battle of the Bastards (Season six), a battle she fought for her freedom and her family's honour. The quote was said when enemies like Cersei were toying with her family’s lives and questioning her loyalty. It’s at this point of the first book of the Ice and Fire series that Sansa realizes that perhaps the North, its culture and religious foundation aren’t as bad as she once thought they were. It was a turning point for her character. In the show Sansa gets harder, less trusting and more independent and simultaneously gets closer and closer to her family until she sees Jon again. By this time she’s a changed woman but is still battling her childlike views of the world, a feeling I can relate to at the turning point of 2016. Except, I'm still waiting for my cute, same-faith man to run to.

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