On the Rape of Sansa Stark and Quitting Game of Thrones

Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones ended on a rough note. The producer’s choice to insert Sansa into what book readers refer to as “The Fake Arya Plot” culminated in her choice to marry Ramsay Bolton, who proceeded to rape her on her wedding night while Theon watched. For book readers, it was a scene we knew could happen, and were bracing ourselves for. For Unsullied, it was a punch in the gut.

But not everyone was okay with yet another rape of yet another leading lady in the ever bleaker world of Game of Thrones. For some, it was the last straw.

This is not the first time viewers have threatened to boycott Game of Thrones. The “last straw” reactions seem to crop up almost every season. In Season 1, it was the death of Ned Stark. In Season 3, it was the Red Wedding. Last year, many quit over the badly edited consensual sex scene between Cersei and Jaime, which read on screen as rape. But those threats to quit were different. Ned’s death and the Red Wedding represented the show pulling the same trick on viewers twice—it subverted their reliance on the trope that the romantic hero always survives. And though Season 4’s Jaime and Cersei sex scene is closer to what happened here, it was, in the end, a mistake on the part of the showrunners, and on the part of director Alex Graves.

But most of those reactions came from fans and commenters—the internet hoi-paloi, if you will. This situation is different because it involves a high profile website, one that trades in all things geeky, The Mary Sue. In a post entitled “We Will No Longer Be Promoting HBO’s Game of Thrones,” the editors of The Mary Sue argue that the producers’ choice to make rape a plot point again was just too much for them to take. They weren’t the only ones who decided this was a bridge too far. Other high profile writers also declared themselves done with the show, though it should be noted that, unlike the writers at The Mary Sue, which posted several Game of Thrones posts a week, none of them recapped or wrote about Game of Thrones for a living (as Ryan McGee readily admitted). They are not sticking their careers on the line by deciding to stop writing about it, and there’s no chance their decisions will become a subject for discussion at their annual reviews.

So why did Sansa’s rape push so many viewers, writers, and recappers over the brink? I spent a lot of time yesterday, both on and offline, discussing this scene with fans, and have identified three issues. The first was that they didn’t see it coming. The second was the fact that the scene didn’t allow Sansa her own agency. Lastly, people feel it was unnecessary for the show to go there.

I had a bit of a hard time understanding the first issue, but that’s partly because my own sense of what is and isn’t out there in terms of Game of Thrones news is badly skewed. After all, the great majority of Game of Thrones fans aren’t paid to wake up at the crack of dawn and Google search every last story that references the show. I understand that I am in a serious minority when I say that the possibility of this scene has been on my radar since December of last year. Sophie Turner, Alfie Allen and Iwan Rheon have been (admittedly obliquely) warning us that this scene is coming in just about every interview they’ve given since the start of the season. And once it became clear that Sansa was heading to Winterfell to marry Ramsay Bolton, thus fulfilling the producers’ wishes that she take the place of Jeyne Poole from A Dance with Dragons, it was obvious this was probably what everyone was talking about. After all, we know from previous seasons that the producers tend to show torture scenes onscreen that Martin left off-page. (See generally: Theon, Season 3). The scene of Jeyne Poole’s wedding night rape is something that does happen on the page, so we were bound to see it. Perhaps this scene was a surprise for the casual viewer, but the clues were there for anyone who wanted to look.

I do understand where people are coming from regarding Sansa’s lack of agency. In the original story, Theon is present in for the consummation of Ramsay’s marriage because he is a POV character—we would not see Ramsay rape Jeyne if Theon was not there. In fact, the reason most of her subsequent abuse does not happen on the page is because Theon is not around to witness it. Now, the show is not bound by POV characters, and unlike with Jeyne, it spares Sansa from being sexually assaulted by both Theon and Ramsay. So Theon’s presence in the scene from “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” is unnecessary. And though I believe that the director’s choice to cut to Theon’s pained face was done to spare us the sight of actually seeing Sansa raped, it had the effect of making the rape about someone other than Sansa. As one friend said to me: “making Sansa’s rape by Ramsay into *Theon’s* manpain was just infuriating.” More than one viewer I spoke to compared Sansa’s wedding night rape to Dany’s wedding night rape by Khal Drogo. But at least in that scene, Benioff and Weiss (who directed that episode, unlike this one), had the courage to show Dany’s face as she was being raped. That scene was therefore about Dany’s response to being raped, giving her agency and power in a scene that is about what is being done to her.

These arguments about Sansa’s agency helped crystallize in my mind part of what has viewers so infuriated by this. After all, in the books, Sansa has never had agency. That’s true to this day, as we saw from the Winds of Winter chapter Martin released last month. On the page, Sansa is still under Littlefinger’s control—she’s not even using her own name, let alone making any choices that affect her fate. But last season, the show took a huge step for the character by doing away with all that. In “The Mountain and the Viper,” Sansa took charge during the inquiry into her Aunt Lysa’s death by choosing to reveal her identity. Later, she stepped out wearing a stunningly sexy dress, showing that she was ready to graduate from pawn to player. It was a hugely empowering moment for the character, one that was cheered by everyone from the most dedicated book reader to the most no-nothing Unsullied.

But although it was a huge step for Sansa to take in the moment, how much did she really know about what she was getting into? Sophie Turner herself compared Sansa’s Season 4 transformation to her entering a “goth teenage” phase, suggesting that she still has a lot to learn. And indeed, while Sansa may have a snazzy new outfit and a killer hairdo, she has not been making wise choices this season. After all, the first rule of Game of Thrones is to Never Trust Littlefinger (right after “Never Get Into A Land War in Essos”). Ned Stark, Lysa Arryn, and even Joffrey Baratheon broke that rule, and they all ended up dead. Littlefinger claims to have affection for Sansa, but that doesn’t mean he’ll do everything he can to keep her safe. At the end of day, Littlefinger has more affection for Littlefinger.

And Sansa didn’t just trust Littlefinger when she agreed to go on to Winterfell. She trusted him by believing him when he told her that being a Stark in Winterfell somehow meant something. She was clearly holding on to that idea in this episode, as evidenced by her bravely telling Myranda and her fear-mongering warnings about Ramsay’s true nature to buzz off. Would Sansa have trusted Littlefinger if she knew he was currently down in King’s Landing promising her head on a spike in exchange for the title of Warden of the North? I would argue that Sansa did have agency in this episode (though not in her rape scene), and that her choice to marry Ramsay was her own. She was, however, acting on very bad advice, with no idea what she was in for once she consented to be—and let’s be real about a married woman’s place in Westeros—Ramsay’s property.

Was it necessary for the show to go there? This is the heart of The Mary Sue‘s argument, and the hardest question to puzzle through. I mean, it’s easy to say no. The show is already deviating from the books, so why did it choose to hew closely to this particular plotline from A Dance with Dragons, especially after it had already subbed out one of the principal players? For answers, I can only point to this quote from showrunner David Benioff, who was discussing the decision to send Sansa to Winterfell in place of Jeyne Poole.

“We really wanted Sansa to play a major part this season,” Benioff said. “If we were going to stay absolutely faithful to the book, it was going to be very hard to do that. There was as subplot we loved from the books, but it used a character that’s not in the show.” 

This bears repeating—Jeyne Poole’s story is a subplot the producers “loved” from the books. For those who may have not read it, or who blocked it out, our producers admitted that they “loved” a plotline involving a terrified girl getting married to a monster. That monster then rapes her, has his servant rape her, and worse. After her marriage “She is then known only by those at Winterfell by the bruises on her body, and her sobs echoing through the castle.” When rescue comes, she refuses help out of terror that she’s being tricked, much in the same way Theon refused to go with Asha after she attempted a rescue last season. Here’s what Jeyne says when she’s given a chance to escape:

“No. This is some trick. It’s him, it’s my… my lord, my sweet lord, he sent you, this is just some test to make sure that I love him. I do, I do, I love him more than anything.’ A tear ran down her cheek. ‘Tell him, you tell him, I’ll do what he wants…or whatever he wants…with him…or…or with the dog or…please…he doesn’t need to cut my feet off, I won’t try to run away, not ever.”

When people tell you who they are, you must believe them. When the men who run this show tell you that this is the sort of thing they love from the books, you must take that under advisement and expect them to act consistently. To expect anything else is unrealistic.

Many people have expressed horror over the fact that I watch Game of Thrones. Usually, I remind them they can choose not to watch. When people make that choice, it doesn’t affect the enjoyment of those who continue on, and vice versa. But we can be certain of one thing—the show is what it is, and it will continue to be that way. Please proceed accordingly.

• Published on 05/19/2015 at 1:21 PM CDT
• Last updated on 12/01/2016 at 4:23 PM CDT