Sansa, Smart
So. Sansa. I hear some people think she’s not very clever. This is a view shared by several characters in the books.
But there’s no reason the readership should share those views. Sansa is a very clever individual who makes increasingly good use of several skills she started the series with, and develops greatly as an observer and an actor over the course of the story.
Putting everything under a cut, for reasons of four books of brainpower.
Skills
Pre-series, what we know about Sansa’s academic talents is that she can read and write better than her fourteen-year-old brothers (Sansa IV, AGoT; and from what we see of Jon interacting with the written word he doesn’t have much difficulty) but doesn’t have a head for numbers. (Arya I, and again in Sansa IV.) We also know she can sew, dance, sing, and play the bells. (Arya I) She knows Westerosi heraldry well, as Arya tells us in Arya VII, ACoK - specifically in a situation where knowledge of heraldry could have been extremely valuable to her.
Sansa also has a strong grasp on the value of appearances. When she appeals for mercy for Ned, she chooses to wear a gown Cersei gave her, dyed for mourning, and no flashy jewelry. (Sansa V, AGoT) When she attends Joffrey’s nameday tourney, she makes sure to wear a hairnet he gave her, while also fully aware she’s wearing bruises he gave her too (Sansa I, ACoK). She wears Stark colours to the Purple Wedding, while also making sure she can accessorise her poison hairnet properly. (Tyrion VIII) In AFFC, as she’s dressing for a different role, her attention to her clothing comes back full force.
After initially putting on a red-and-blue Tully dress one morning, very obviously taken from Lysa’s wardrobe, Sansa must change clothing to meet with the Lords Declarant. As she says, she does not need to be reminded to avoid blue and cream (the colours of House Arryn). After a bit of thinking…
There was a gown of purple silk that gave her pause, and another of dark blue velvet that would have woken all the colour in her eyes, but in the end she remembered that Alayne was after all a bastard, and must not presume to dress above her station. The dress she chose was lambswool […] It was modest and becoming, though scarce richer than something a serving girl would wear.
- Alayne I, AFFC
Arya I, AGoT, tells us that Sansa knows how to dress. It’s been a valuable skill for her the whole series through.
Political Actions and Analysis
Sansa’s first impressive moment is fairly early in AGoT, where in spite of being under stress and never having seen the people concerned before, she successfully identifies both Ser Barristan and Renly Baratheon. (Sansa I, AGoT) She knows her Small Councillors, and she knows her heraldry. It’s a damn good thing she has this moment, because AGoT is not her finest book, intellectually speaking.
But her first big public political action is her appeal for mercy for her father. (Sansa V, AGoT) Aside from carefully considering the visuals, she practiced what she had to say beforehand, so she could say it well when the time came. She knew the limits of what she could ask for Ned - she did not even try to deny Ned’s crime, but asked mercy and a reduced punishment for him because Robert loved him, and while she did, she downplayed Ned’s culpability, blaming Stannis and/or Renly and/or the drugs Ned was on. This was very well done from start to finish, and it’s not Sansa’s fault that Joffrey went off-script or that Cersei froze up at the critical moment.
Once her beauty = goodness illusions are mostly (not entirely) stripped away, Sansa immediately starts distrusting her servants (Sansa VI, AGoT). She quickly realises why they’re changed so often, too, and proceeds from the assumption that they’re all spying on her. (Sansa II, ACoK) Tyrion confirms this fact for her. (Sansa IV, ASoS)
Once Sandor Clegane articulates the nature of the role Joffrey wants her to play (Sansa VI, AGoT), Sansa starts playing it. Notably, she starts when neither Sandor nor Joffrey are around to remind her one way or another, denying herself her wishes to scream at Meryn Trant in favour of her developing perfect royal betrothed act - save for the fact she tells him disdainfully that he is no true knight. She still has a bit of trouble interpreting satire that chapter, though, not picking up very quickly that no, really, the boar in the singer’s song really was meant to be Cersei.
When we pick up with Sansa in her first chapter of ACoK, one of the first things we see her do is pick up that what people tell Joffrey the smallfolk have named the comet and what the smallfolk actually name the comet are probably quite different. She also sees through some pageantry at the tourney itself:
The Redwyne twins were the queen’s unwilling guests, even as Sansa was. She wondered whose notion it had been for them to ride in Joffrey’s tourney. Not their own, she thought.
- Sansa I, ACoK
That is progress from the bulk of her AGoT chapters right there. Sansa also displays some impressive double-talk in this chapter:
“It’s almost as good as if some wolf killed your traitor brother. Maybe I’ll feed him to wolves after I’ve caught him. Did I tell you, I intend to challenge him to single combat?”
“I would like to see that, Your Grace.” More than you know. Sansa kept her tone cool and polite, yet even so Joffrey’s eyes narrowed as he tried to decide whether she was mocking him.
- Sansa I, ACoK
No, Joff, she’s not mocking you. She just said you can’t take her brother in a fight and she wants to see you dead. Keep up. It’s impressive facility with language for someone as young as she is, and in a stressful situation too. Just so we can confirm it wasn’t a fluke, she spots the same word games from Tyrion:
[Joffrey] gave Sansa an angry look, as if it were her fault. “[Jaime’s] been taken by the Starks and we’ve lost Riverrun and now her stupid brother is calling himself a king.”
The dwarf smiled crookedly. “All sorts of people are calling themselves kings these days.”
Joff did not know what to make of that, though he looked suspicious and out of sorts.
- Sansa I, ACoK
That Sansa looked to Joffrey to see what he made of it tells us that Sansa knew perfectly well what Tyrion meant. In Tyrion’s words, Sansa saw something that Joffrey might react to.
Then, of course, she steps in to save Ser Dontos. Where her lie about ill luck falls flat and needs the assist from Sandor Clegane to get past Joffrey, her follow-up about making Dontos a fool rather than a knight, because “he doesn’t deserve the mercy of a quick death,” was definitely well done.
When she receives a mysterious letter under her pillow, Sansa immediately starts analysing not just the note (“unsigned, unsealed, and the hand unfamiliar”), but possible responses. She’s aware that this could be a trap, or Joffrey’s idea of a joke, and burns the note immediately. What she does not do is accept it at face value.
Throughout ACoK Sansa becomes steadily more skeptical. By the Battle of the Blackwater she sees that Joffrey’s battle getup is “bright, shining, and empty,” and by contrast “there was nothing childish about the battle-axe slung under [Tyrion’s] shield.” (Sansa V, ACoK) She questions rumour around the Kettleblacks, too.
Of late Ser Osmund had taken Sandor Clegane’s place at Joffrey’s side, and Sansa had heard the women at the washing well saying he was as strong as the Hound, only younger and faster. If that was so, she wondered why she had never once heard of these Kettleblacks before Ser Osmund was named to the Kingsguard.
- Sansa VI
And tourney-and-heraldry enthusiast Sansa would know the top competitors. She knows something does not match up here. Sansa VI also features her rejection of the philosophy of ruling Cersei promotes.
…she had always heard that love was a surer route to the people’s loyalty than fear. If I am ever a queen, I’ll make them love me.
- Sansa VI
This woman has been telling Sansa again and again that she’s stupid, but in this matter Sansa has enough confidence in her own judgment to say to herself, you’re wrong. GRRM will also go out of his way to show that Sansa is correct, too - contrast the reaction to Margaery’s imprisonment (mobs outside the Sept of Baelor calling for her release), to that to Cersei’s imprisonment (…nope, no mobs), and Ned’s legacy (armies fighting for his children’s rights) and Tywin’s legacy (time to tear that shit down!).
When the rewards post-Blackwater are being handed out, she examines the reward handed to Littlefinger very critically indeed. First, she notes that she doesn’t know what he did to earn it. Second, she notes that the Lannisters don’t even have Harrenhal to give away, and that Littlefinger’s Lannister-backed Lord Paramountcy is not something her maternal grandfather’s vassals are going to accept, “unless my brother and my uncle and my grandfather are all cast down and killed.” (Sansa VII, ACoK) Sansa here gets a glimpse of the Red Wedding, half a book in advance.
Once the Tyrells enter the picture in King’s Landing, we really get to see Sansa’s analysis pick up. Tyrell PR is exactly the sort of thing she’s developing a mind for picking apart. Again, since she’s a twelve-year-old prisoner with no assistance (both things that don’t exactly lead people to keep her informed), it’s sometimes slow going and she definitely makes mistakes, but she also makes progress. Literally the first thing we see her do in ASoS is question Margaery’s motives. The second thing we see her do in ASoS is critically recount Margaery’s entrance to King’s Landing. As she watches the smallfolk cheer, she thinks,
The same smallfolk who pulled me from my horse and would have killed me, if not for the Hound. Sansa had done nothing to make the commons hate her, no more than Margaery Tyrell had done to earn their love.
- Sansa I, ASoS
What happens in the rest of Sansa I of ASoS shows that in Sansa, we’re still dealing with a beginner, compared to the mature skills of Olenna Tyrell. Margaery, too, has had rather more lessons in politics than Sansa at this point, and it shows. The purpose of Olenna’s “candor” (to induce Sansa to be honest in return), plus Margaery’s good cop tactic, both go over her head. She also fails to question Ser Dontos’ loyalties, to her detriment, in Sansa II, ASoS, going to far as to think that Ser Dontos “didn’t count” in Sansa IV, ASoS. But then again Ser Dontos is pressuring her into trusting nobody but him. Sansa’s vigilance is not total, and in order to be a plausible character, it cannot be total. She also still has a naive streak, as we see when she discusses a bit of history with Tyrion and Oberyn Martell (Sansa IV).
However, she does quickly realise that something else is wrong, the more she thinks on Margaery’s match with Joffrey and Loras’ appointment to the Kingsguard.
Joff might restrain himself a few turns, perhaps as long as a year, but soon or late he will show his claws, and when he does…the realm might have a second Kingslayer, and there would be war inside the city, as the men of the lion and the men of the rose made the gutters run red.
Sansa was surprised that Margaery did not see it too. She is older than me, she must be wiser. And her father, Lord Tyrell, he knows what he is doing, surely. I am just being silly.
- Sansa II, ASoS
There’s a lot going on there. Sansa’s right about Joffrey. She’s right about Loras. She’s right about the consequences if Loras kills Joffrey. She’s right to be surprised that Margaery, who she judges to have “a little of her grandmother” to her, is acting like there’s nothing wrong about this at all.
At the Purple Wedding, despite again being under quite a bit of stress, Sansa still has time and energy to notice that Ilyn Payne isn’t carrying the same sword as he has been since ACoK. (Tyrion VIII, ASoS) Not to mention she immediately notices the missing stone in her poison hairnet, and starts connecting its absence to the night’s events. She weighs “it’s only an amethyst” against “the hair net is magic,” and “you must wear it at Joffrey’s wedding feast,” and ends up with the truth. “There was murder in them!” (Sansa V, ASoS) She gets to that in a matter of minutes. Minutes at most. Likewise, as soon as Littlefinger tells her that he arranged for the joust at Joffrey’s wedding, Sansa knows that he framed Tyrion, though she doesn’t understand his motives.
Littlefinger, along with his oh god so creepy grooming of Sansa, also teaches her how he does his politics. The first half of Sansa VI is lesson one. While Sansa errs in applying her knowledge before receiving the lecture (Ser Dontos did not poison Joffrey; Ser Osmund with his proximity to the king was a better guess but still incorrect), she does keep up with the lecture quite easily.
By Sansa I, AFFC, she’s not only following Littlefinger’s lessons but applying them. She sees why Littlefinger signed the documents giving Nestor Royce the Gates of the Moon, as opposed to getting Sweetrobin to sign, bringing it up before Littlefinger points it out. In Alayne I, she can spot that a declaration that speaks of “false friends” and “misrule” is aimed squarely at Littlefinger without ever naming him.
Also take note of the seating arrangements for the meeting between Littlefinger and the Lords Declarant; when Sansa supervises the setup of the room, she has two seats put on one side of the table, and three on the other side. Littlefinger takes one of the two seats, forcing Nestor Royce to sit next to him, across from the others who came to the meeting. Regardless of whose idea it was, again, the narration makes it clear that Sansa sees the purpose of the seating plan. And when, at the end of the chapter, she goes to Littlefinger to clarify what happened in that meeting, she goes with a theory: Lyn Corbray was in Littlefinger’s employ, to disgrace himself and by extension his co-conspirators at this critical juncture. This time, she’s right.
In Alayne II, she also manages to follow a giant wall ‘o text from Littlefinger explaining how Harry is the Heir. It’s no picnic to follow when written down, but Sansa manages it without notes. At the very least, she can concentrate well.
A Developing Liar
One of the major skills Sansa learns in King’s Landing, and only develops further in the Vale, is her skill at deception. She’s actually got a pretty decent knack for it, as soon as ACoK calls her to start lying. When accosted by Sandor Clegane on her way back from her first meeting with Dontos - close to her worst case scenario for the meeting, being caught by someone in Joffrey’s employ - this happens:
“And what’s Joff’s little bird doing flying down the serpentine in the black of night?” When she did not answer, he shook her. “Where were you?”
“The g-g-godswood, my lord,” she said, not daring to lie. “Praying…praying for my father, and…for the king, praying that he’d not be hurt.”
“Think I’m so drunk I’d believe that?”
- Sansa II, ACoK
This is a really good lie. Simple. Plausible. Reusable. And believing that the extent of Sansa’s falsehood is that she wasn’t praying for Joffrey’s health at all, Sandor looks no further. Even the level of deception is plausible. What’s more likely, twelve-year-old Sansa sneaking out to the godswood to pray for her father and Joffrey’s defeat, or twelve-year-old Sansa sneaking out to plot her daring escape from the Red Keep? It fools Cersei too, as we see in Sansa VI, ACoK.
She also successfully deceives Tyrion at a key moment, and Tyrion is not easily fooled.
“I would sooner return to my own bed.” A lie came to her suddenly, but it seemed so right that she blurted it out at once. “This tower was where my father’s men were slain. Their ghosts would give me terrible dreams, and I would see their blood wherever I looked.”
Tyrion Lannister studied her face. “I am no stranger to nightmares, Sansa. Perhaps you are wiser than I knew. Permit me at least to escort you back to your own chambers.”
- Sansa III, ACoK
Tyrion was that close to putting her under guard in the Tower of the Hand, putting a serious crimp in her plans to meet with Ser Dontos in the godswood and continue planning to escape. She’s not fooling him that she’s loyal to the Lannisters (she can’t fool Cersei that she has any love for Joffrey, as seen in Sansa IV, ACoK), and her plea that the wildlings frightened her didn’t move him, but she found the thing that would.
We see how good she’s become at lying when she’s confronted with a whole new person to deceive in Lysa; dependent on her aunt’s good will, she quickly works out that she cannot tell Lysa that Tyrion was kind to her, and tells her Tyrion preferred to patronise sex workers instead. (Sansa VI, ASoS)
In Sansa I, AFFC, she lies to a murder investigation, channeling her own emotions into her performance. (This lesson in particular came with a whole lot of troubling baggage, thanks to Littlefinger being Littlefinger.) She even evaluated her performance as she went: “That’s good, a tear is good…” This performance was accepted uncritically. Sansa has got good at lying.
Why Do People Think Otherwise?
A few reasons.
One, AGoT. Most of the book she’s stuck in beauty = goodness thinking. She has a very rigid idea of how the world works, and real trouble reconciling events and personalities that don’t fit into this model. But she’s eleven, she gets over it, and an immature eleven-year-old is still not necessarily an unintelligent eleven-year-old. To paraphrase the wise words of Princess Myrcella, children are supposed to be childish. Still, first impressions are powerful.
Two, the huge long list of people who call Sansa stupid or think of her as stupid. The vast majority of the time, when we get feedback on Sansa’s intelligence, it’s negative.
Joffrey calls her stupid.
“You truly are a stupid girl, aren’t you? My mother says so.”
- Sansa VI, AGoT
Cersei calls her stupid.
“I see flowering hasn’t made you any brighter,” said Cersei.
- Sansa IV, ACoK
Olenna Tyrell calls her stupid.
“You know, child, some say you are as big a fool as Butterbumps here, and I am starting to believe them.”
- Sansa I, ASoS
Tyrion doesn’t have a high opinion of her intelligence. This is important, since the reader has already been trained to accept Tyrion as a highly intelligent PoV. As always with GRRM, though, highly intelligent =/ infallible.
It’s one of the first things Tyrion thinks about her from his PoV in ASoS, allowing for the possibility that “Sansa had been stupid enough to confide in one of her bedmaids, every one of whom was a spy for Cersei.” Sansa hasn’t trusted her bedmaids since the end of book one. It’s an interesting dynamic, as Tyrion consistently fails to understand that Sansa’s clever, even with exchanges like this:
“I confess, I know little of the old gods,” he said, trying to be pleasant. “Perhaps someday you might enlighten me. I could even accompany you [to the godswood].”
“No,” Sansa said at once. “You…you are kind to offer, but…there are no devotions, my lord. No priests or songs or candles. Only trees, and silent prayer. You would be bored.”
“No doubt you’re right.” She knows me better than I thought.
- Tyrion VI, ASoS
In other words, Sansa has learned about Tyrion, and now Tyrion knows that, where Tyrion has failed to learn about Sansa. If anything, he’s further from discovering that Sansa’s sneaking out to the godswood to conspire with someone than he was back in book two.
He was tempted to ask what she prayed for, but Sansa was so dutiful she might actually tell him, and he didn’t think he wanted to know.
- Tyrion VI, ASoS
Girls her age were not known for keeping secrets.
- Tyrion VII, ASoS
Yeah, no. Sansa has an ideal position for lying to Tyrion, now. He does not believe she is capable or willing to lie to him. Readers know that she can, will, has already, and continues to. So thoroughly does he underestimate Sansa that at the Purple Wedding he asks himself, as Sansa fiddles with her (poison-carrying) hairnet and looks towards Joffrey,
Does she wish it were her in Margaery’s place? Tyrion frowned. Even a child should have better sense.
- Tyrion VIII, ASoS
And Lysa calls her stupid.
“You can’t love her. You can’t. She’s a stupid empty-headed little girl.”
- Sansa VII, ASoS
There are advantages to the appearance of not being very clever, as Ser Dontos outlines to Sansa.
“My Jonquil’s a clever girl, isn’t she?”
“Joffrey and his mother say I’m stupid.”
“Let them. You’re safer that way, sweetling.”
- Sansa IV, ACoK
Advantages or no, Sansa’s clearly hurt by being called stupid. Not to mention the constant negative feedback matters. Is it terribly surprising, after all this, that Sansa would come to join the list of people who don’t think she’s very bright? Let’s look at this again:
Sansa was surprised that Margaery did not see it too. She is older than me, she must be wiser. And her father, Lord Tyrell, he knows what he is doing, surely. I am just being silly.
- Sansa II, ASoS
That pesky internalised belief that she’s not all that bright stops Sansa questioning any more deeply. And a good thing for GRRM too, or Sansa would be well on her way to spotting the Purple Wedding in advance. As it is we’re kept out of Sansa’s head for the wedding because she knows too much, and only allowed to return to her PoV once Joffrey is dead.
The internalised belief that she’s not very clever rears its head again later.
“Do you read well, Alayne?”
“Septa Mordane was good enough to say so.”
- Sansa VI, ASoS
It’s a long way from the girl who read and wrote better than any of her brothers and wasn’t afraid to think so. She refers to her past self as “foolish” and “stupid” in Sansa I and Alayne I of AFFC respectively.
With all these characters, including Sansa herself, thinking so poorly of Sansa’s intelligence, it’s that much easier for the reader to let it skate by as well.
There is also, frankly, audience sexism to contend with as well. In a narrative full of people underestimating Sansa because she’s young and female, parts of the audience are inclined to accept the sexist views of the characters doing the underestimating.
Conclusion
It’s obviously the case that over the course of the series, Sansa has made a few big and noticeable errors because of unsound thinking. She’s not the only character in the series with an intellectual blind spot. She’s even not the only smart character in the series with a sizeable intellectual blind spot. Tyrion, and Stannis during ACoK in particular, both leap to mind.
What Sansa is, is a girl of 11-13 with a lot stacked against her learning things for half the series. During books 1-3 she has no effective mentor and is left to figure out how things work by herself. During books 2 and 3 she must do this while people tell her she’s not smart at all. It’s only in book 4 that someone tries to teach her. Littlefinger’s tutelage is not designed to help her become an independent political actor, and Sansa must fight against certain aspects of his teaching even as she learns.
In spite of this she uses the skills she already has well, develops new skills, and her ability to analyse and make connections becomes better by orders of magnitude from where she started. In other words, Sansa started out not knowing much, but she learned - something she can do all the more effectively because she is, in fact, smart.
