Can Everyone On ‘Game Of Thrones’ Please Stop Mansplaining Everything To Sansa Stark?

Listen up, all you Game of Thrones boys who are always diving into water, or opening Westeros up to the to the White Walkers, or dying, just dying all the time: it’s time to bend the knee to Sansa Stark.
She’s savvier than any man on this show.
At the very least, she’s one of the rare Starks who doesn’t get herself killed. I know there’s a certain contingent of people who will say that the Stark family’s charm is that they’re noble and upstanding. However, as Sansa pointed out, that quality mostly seems to mean that they are also dead. Eddard, who was so kind that he wanted to tell Cersei he knew her secrets before exposing them? Murdered by Cersei. Robb Stark, who just had to to marry a doctor instead of one of the Frey daughters? Also murdered, along with his mom.
You want to talk about how great Jon Snow is? Jon Snow literally died. A child-murdering witch brought him back to life. That feels… a little bit like cheating. He would have been dead, again, if Sansa hadn’t worked with Littlefinger to help him win the Battle of the Bastards.

Sansa understands how not to die. It’s been her main objective for the past 7 seasons. Let’s recount what she had to do in that time to survive:
1) Stay calm while being shown her father’s head on a pike
2) Feign love for a man who killed her entire family
3) Hang out and be friendly with Cersei, a lady literally holding her captive
4) Escape King’s Landing
5) Escape another man who is raping her, horribly (and feed him to his own dogs)
Ned Stark wouldn’t have lasted a week in her shoes.
The worst part? Sansa gets no respect for her savvy whatsoever.
That’s true in real life – when asked whether Sansa would make a good leader, Kit Harington remarked upon how Jon would be a better ruler than Sansa because “Sansa is like…just annoying. Really annoying. She’d annoy like, all of her subjects, and, like, no.”
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I’m going to reiterate that Jon would have died (for the second time!) without Sansa’s help.
I’m also going to point out that calling women “annoying” is right up there with claiming they’re unfit to lead because they’re “shrill.”
People on Twitter seem to agree though, and you’ll find plenty who think that Sansa just needs to be slapped in the face:

Including one writer for TV Guide who feels that Sansa is “making it really difficult to love you and defend you to the haters” and instructs the character, “Do not make me slap you.” (Yes, he really wrote that.)
The cause for that ire? Sansa told Jon in a meeting that letting people who fought for the Boltons keep their castles was not a great idea. Maybe their castles should go to, you know, Stark loyalists.
This is a fucking good idea. I don’t know, maybe don’t reward the guys who fought for the man who had women eaten by dogs? Instead, how about saying something to the effect of “you people who did not do that have better judgment, in general.” That is probably why – though this is never mentioned – practically every old man in that hall says “aye” to her idea.

It’s almost like Jon Snow and everyone on Twitter didn’t hear that.
But then, the characters in Game of Thrones live in a world where a woman voicing her dissenting opinion at a meeting to a man – especially a man that people like – is seen as being super annoying. Thank goodness no one feels that way in real life.
Oh.
Wait.
When Sansa gets put in charge of Winterfell, she seems to do an amazing job. She’s not just able to placate her subjects in the present, she’s able to anticipate their future needs. The men in her presence are smart enough to listen to her ideas which they all seem to agree are very good.
It almost seems like Sansa might get the chance to be something resembling content, for once. And then Bran shows up.
He proceededs to ruminate about how he is the Three Eyed Raven now. When Sansa asked him if he could explain what he was talking about he told her that it was probably too difficult for her to understand. (It’s not. He’s basically omniscient. There. I explained it.)
Then he talked about how nice the weather was … ON THE NIGHT SHE GOT RAPED. (!!!)

Jesus Christ.
Sansa was just doing her job, telling people that they need to cover their armor in leather and figuring out the grain storage situation.
Then a man showed up to explain her own rape to her.
How helpful of him.

The nice thing about this season has been watching Sansa realizing that she’s smarter than most of these guys, and telling them so. She’s beginning to realize – as it takes plenty of women a lifetime to do – that she doesn’t need to defer to every man in her vicinity.
To hell with sitting around quietly leading prayer circles and declaring your eternal devotion to horrible men. To hell with seeming like a nice, loyal, unassuming woman who stays quiet in meetings. Yes, to finally responding to people like Littlefinger as Sansa does.
When Littlefinger tells her, “I know Cersei better than anyone here,” she finally gets to reply, “You don’t know Cersei better than anyone here.”
He doesn’t. And Sansa’s done letting everyone else mansplain to her.
Far away, on Dragonstone, Tyrion tells Jon that Sansa is “Smarter than she lets on.” Jon replies, “She’s starting to let on.”
She is. And that’s a good thing. For the Game of Thrones characters, and for everyone in the audience.
Jennifer Wright is the author of It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Break-Ups in History and Get Well Soon: The Worst Plagues in History. Follow her on twitter @JenAshleyWright.