Game Of Thrones: 5 Reasons Sansa Stark Was The Real Hero & 5 Reasons Why She Was The Ultimate Villain

If you watched HBO’s Game of Thrones since season one, you likely have a soft spot in your heart for the Starks, the family from Winterfell that ends up ruling all of Westeros by the end of the show. Most of the Starks were only children in the early episodes, the most innocent among them: Sansa Stark.

As one of the only female characters who did not wield a sword, Sansa’s softness and femininity were often misinterpreted as weaknesses—not only by some viewers but also by the other characters in the show.  But Sansa Stark was never weak.  She won the game of thrones.  She was a driving force on the show, an expert manipulator who learned from all of Westeros’ best heroes and villains… but which one was she?

10 Villain: Betrayed Arya In Season One

It’s impossible to discuss Sansa’s various good and bad deeds without discussing the one that infamously got her direwolf Lady killed.  After Joffrey and Sansa stumble upon Arya and her friend playing with fake swords, Joffrey antagonizes them, and Arya puts a stop to Joffrey’s power trip.  When Joffrey gets sniffly about losing a fight against Arya and Nymeria, he tells his mother and father, Cersei and Robert.  When Sansa refuses to back up Arya’s truthful telling of the events, Arya is forced to send Nymeria away, leading to Lady being killed when the Lannisters can’t find Nymeria.  This event creates a schism in the Stark family that doesn’t get resolved until the final season.

9 Hero: Took Back Winterfell

As Sansa loves to tell people, she’s the real reason that her brother Jon was able to retake Winterfell from the Boltons.  Knowing that Jon would never trust Littlefinger enough to call upon the Knights of the Veil, Sansa goes behind his back to request help from her cousin Robyn Arryn and Littlefinger.  Because of her careful planning, the Knights of the Veil are able to swoop in at the last minute and bring Jon’s plan of surrounding the Boltons to fruition.  After the Knights arrive, Jon escapes the battle to hunt down Ramsay, finally ending the battle and retaking Winterfell for the Starks.

8 Villain: Manipulated Jamie Into Leaving Brienne

One of Sansa’s greatest skills is her ability to learn from the successful people around her.  After she is forced to rely on Littlefinger for safety, she begins to learn from him too, and Littlefinger is a master of manipulation.

It cannot be a coincidence, then, that in the final season Sansa chooses to reveal to Jamie that Danaerys is marching on King’s Landing.  When Jamie hears this, he, of course, abandons Brienne and joins Cersei to die, eliminating two of Sansa’s problems: Jamie’s presence in Winterfell, and any distractions Brienne might have from protecting Sansa.

7 Hero: Liberated The North

In the final season of Game of Thrones, there were a ton of plots that needed to be resolved.  Only Sansa was concerned with the North maintaining its independence from the South and King’s Landing.  This plotline started with Rob, the Grey Wolf and King in the North.  As he took the throne, he vowed that the North would never bend its knee again, and though Sansa was trapped in King’s Landing at the time of his pronouncement, she clearly took the sentiment to heart.  Because she remained adamant that the North would be independent, she returned to Winterfell and concluded her plotline as Queen in the North.

6 Villain: Used Arya As Her Personal Assasin

In the first episode of the series, we see Ned attempting to teach his sons that “he who passes the sentence should swing the sword.”  Ned’s not a king, but it’s clear that he believes this applies to any good ruler.  In King’s Landing, later that season, when Joffrey passes the sentence to execute Ned but someone else swings the sword, it seems almost dirty.

Later we see her brother, King Rob, rely on this same moral when executing the Karstarks.  However, in season seven, Sansa uses Arya to execute Littlefinger even after she passed the sentence.  All in all, asking your little sister to kill someone is pretty messed up.

5 Hero: Ended Ramsay Bolton

There aren’t many Game of Thrones villains who infuriated fans as powerfully as Ramsay Bolton.  And while many, many characters had a bone to pick with the feral-dog-master, Sansa’s vendetta against Ramsay was personal.  Not only did Ramsay take Winterfell from her family, but he also raped and abused Sansa, and after she escaped him he killed her brother Rickon.  When Jon finally has Ramsay beaten, Sansa arrives and, after he sees her, Jon leaves Ramsay alive.  Many of the more vengeful fans of the show were upset when Jon let Ramsay live… and those same fans were ecstatic when just scenes later, Sansa fed Ramsay to his dogs.

4 Villain: Antagonized The Dragon Queen

It’s fair to say that Sansa didn’t know Danaerys and that her priority was always preserving and empowering the North, so pleasing the foreign queen wasn’t high on her list of priorities.  However, the iconic scenes in which Sansa quizzes Danaerys about how they will feed her army and dragons are a little problematic.

In a plotline in which everyone was concerned about defending themselves against the Night King and his army, Sansa remains focused on finances and inner-court squabbles.  Though Danaerys was not necessarily her ally, she was Jon’s, and Sansa showedDanaerys less respect than she gave Cersei in earlier seasons.  In short, Sansa purposely pushed Danaerys’ buttons during a time when the group had many other priorities.

3 Hero: Uncovered Littlefinger’s Deceit

After watching Littlefinger snake his way around Westeros for seven seasons, it was nothing less than cathartic when Sansa confronted Littlefinger about his crimes against her family.  With the help of the Three-Eyed-Raven and her sister (Winterfell’s faceless assassin), Sansa cornered Littlefinger in a room full of people he had manipulated and lied to and put him on trial for his crimes.  When he tried to play his usual tricks, Sansa listened to him beg for his life calmly, but ultimately knew that he could not be trusted, which took everyone else on the show (save Ned and Jon) a very long time to figure out.  She ordered him killed, and just like that, the Littlefinger problem was no more.

2 Villain: Allowed Jon To Be Exiled

One plothole that’s been addressed by many fans is why the leaders of Westeros allowed Greyworm to have any say in what happened to Jon, and why Jon was exiled for killing a foreign queen that invaded King’s Landing in the first place.  However, the question that should be asked is: how did his family allow that?

If his brother, Bran, was King in the South, and Sansa was Queen in the North, it’s hard to believe that Jon was exiled for ending Danaerys’ terrible reign.  Sure, Sansa cried when she said goodbye to Jon, but as Arya pointed out in season seven, Sansa always wanted to be Queen.  And Jon stood in her way of being Queen, right up until the moment he was exiled.

1 Hero: Revealed Jon’s Lineage

After Jon discovered the truth about his lineage, it didn’t take him very long to entrust the other Starks with that information.  Fans were pretty upset, then, when Sansa took that information and spilled it to Tyrion less than a day later.  Noting that Ned took this secret to the grave, fans chastised Sansa for not being as trustworthy as her father and brothers.  However, when Jon is in the Dragon Pits with Cersei and Danaerys, he stresses to them the importance of being honest, keeping his word, and doing what’s right.  When Sansa told Tyrion of Jon’s true lineage, she did it because she knew Jon would be a better ruler of Westeros than Danaerys ever could be, and she couldn’t lie to Tyrion when he told her there was no other option.

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