APPLICATION.
[nick / name]: Ashley
[personal LJ name]: kidouche
[other characters currently played]:
Fran | KHR | knifecushion
[e-mail]: sharingank@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: zuhvuhvuhvuh
[series]: George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series
[character]: Sansa Stark
[character history / background]: Suuuup
[character abilities]: Nothing...out of the ordinary. (I mean, okay, it's been hinted that she and her siblings are wargs- people with the ability to shove their consciousness inside of an animal. Wolves, in the Stark kids case. Buuuut for our purposes right now, we'll leave that as just a possibility.)
[character personality]:
I'm going to do my best to avoid major spoilers, but inevitably, some will make an appearance.
At the outset, Sansa is your typical highborn tween girl (typical in the framework of George R. R. Martin's world, anyhow). She was raised listening to romantic stories and songs about brave, honorable knights and the ladies who loved them, and, naturally, she wants the same scenario for herself. She is swayed by beauty and grandeur, by the 'magical' atmosphere of the court at King's Landing. She has been taught her courtesies from a very young age and she uses them well, even when she is frightened or disgusted (to the point where Sandor Clegane, the Hound, nicknames her 'little bird' for her ability to repeat the pretty words she's learned, and it isn't necessarily a compliment). She particularly hates when her sister, Arya, sweeps in a ruins things with her unkempt hair and unkempt clothes and willful, barbaric attitude. Sansa and Arya are polar opposites of each other, and Arya tends to bring out the...shriller side of Sansa, shall we say (yes, even Sansa forgets her courtesies now and then). Yet, Sansa does have a spine, and we are given glimpses of it rather early- at the Hand's tourney in honor of her father, a man dies in front of her and it is her friend Jeyne who reacts by sobbing rather than Sansa, who watches with clinical detachment. She does the same when she is shown the severed heads of her father and her septa (they don't look real to her, so she doesn't think of them as belonging to the people she loves).
At the outset, Sansa believes her engagement to Prince Joffrey Baratheon is the best thing that ever happened, or will ever happen to her. (It's important to remember that Sansa is only eleven when the events in Game of Thrones take place, still very, very much a naive child living in a fantasy world. This influences a lot of the heartbreakingly stupid decisions she makes.) She is so determined to love him and secure his love in return that she refuses to hate him when his INABILITY TO BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN A WHINY, EVIL BRAT ultimately results in the death of her direwolf, Lady. She shifts that anger and hate in her sister Arya's direction. When her father, Ned, the King's Hand, informs her that he is sending both Sansa and Arya away from King's Landing and back to Winterfell in secret, Sansa is so distraught over the idea of not marrying Joffrey that she confesses her father's plans to the queen in the hope that someone will command her father to allow her to stay. Unfortunately...things don't pan out the way Sansa expected. In the end, her father is branded a traitor and executed right in front of her (at Joffrey's command), despite her pleas for mercy.
Horrible way to lose your innocence.
However, from here on, Sansa shows her mettle. She shows us what she's made of. This girl is tough. Joffrey has her beaten whenever he feels like it, and rather than let the beatings shatter her, turn her into an empty shell, she bides her time. She cloaks herself in her courtesies like armor, because they're the best weapons she has, and she knows it. (Even so, she speaks her mind, as well- sometimes quite bluntly.) She's terrified of the consequences, but she screws up her courage and meets Ser Dontos in the godswood (the same Ser Dontos whose life she saved with quick thinking, with her own safety at risk), where they plot to escape King's Landing when the time is right. Yes, in many ways, she remains the naive girl who clings to the notion that true knights exist somewhere (though the knights she deals with daily she has come to hate, like the Hound does), she still has moments when she breaks down and cries, but she isn't a doormat, or an airhead, or a broken thing. She isn't merely a little bird. She's a Stark of Winterfell. Their sigil is a direwolf for a reason.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Her second chapter in Clash of Kings, just after she has met with Ser Dontos for the first time in the godswood.
[third person / log sample]:
Sansa Stark is a lady.
(Lady. Lady. Poor, dear, dead Lady, slain by her father's hand. They ran together in dreams now and then, Sansa and Lady. Ran and ran and ran. She wondered if Lady and her lord father went to the same place, if they ran together, hale and whole.)
She knows the courtesies, has drunk them in, absorbed them. Yes, my lord. As it please you, my lord. You are most kind, most wise, most gentle, most clever, my lord. No, forgive me, your grace. (Each blow hurt. Each fist in her gut, each lash across her arms, her thighs. The pain is sometimes unbearable, but she bears it. A lady conceals. A lady hides her feelings.)
She knows her letters. She is a master of needle and thread. She knows how to make herself pretty, knows how to be good and kind and gentle. 'Little bird,' the Hound calls her. (Sandor Clegane, with his fearsome rage, his hideously scarred face...his unexpected, and very brief, moments of gentleness.) A little bird who sings the songs she's been taught, on command, in every situation, by rote. The songs are in her, just like the courtesies, just like the stories of Florian and Jonquil, of Aemon the Dragonknight.
Life is not a song, Sansa has come to understand. Before, when the world took shape around her, it was full of noble knights, elegant ladies, the allure of the court, the thrill of a tourney (Ser Loras gave her a flower, a red flower, and her heart fluttered in her chest). It was full of Joffrey, before he became repulsive, before he cut off her father's head with her father's sword. (Yet, Ilyn Payne, the King's Justice, swung the sword. Joffrey passed the sentence but he didn't swing the sword.) Joffrey was her prince, Joffrey was everything she hoped for, everything she wanted. (He didn't swing the sword. He doesn't beat her with his own hands. Other hands do it for him. Hands belonging to knights.) She believed she would be his queen, a loyal and true wife to the end of her days. She believed they would be happy.
But life is not a song. Lady knows this. (Sometimes, it feels as though her direwolf is still beside her.) Sansa knows this. But perhaps true knights do exist. Perhaps the world that is shares some common ground with the world that should have been. Perhaps Joffrey's head will decorate a spike on the ramparts of her brother Robb's castle one day. Life is not a song, but perhaps such things are possible.
Sansa is a Stark of Winterfell. A lady of Winterfell. A direwolf of Winterfell.
A little bird who knows her courtesies.
They are tipped in ice.