how she thinks of Alyn in AGOT for an illustration of this.) Jon clearly had the fighting ability to attain knighthood, but unlike the other Starks, he has never kept the Seven at all. To "properly" occupy an honored place in "Sansa's world", Jon would have to first be a knight-not just a fighter, but an actual anointed knight, with all of the accompanying chivalric duties and responsibilities. But the issue with Jon is that Sansa, during AGOT, pretty clearly viewed knighthood as the central aspect of a man's worth. Now, I think it's worth noting that, although bastards have far lesser status in Westerosi society, there are "places" that can be carved out for them nonetheless, especially for paternally-acknowledged highborn bastards like Jon: we're told that bastards have served in the Kingsguard, a bastard (Sam Stone) serves as Master-At-Arms for House Royce of Runestone, a bastard ends up on Cersei's Small Council, at least one bastard served as Hand of the King, bastards freely join the Citadel and the Faith, etc., etc.
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Sansa knew her "world of chivalry" clearly viewed a bastard like Jon with suspicion, and because of that, I think Sansa probably had difficulty holding what seemed like two contradictory notions in her head: on the one hand, Jon was her brother, raised along with her and someone she never seemed to have any open conflicts with (unlike Arya, for example), and on the other hand, as the occupier of a "place" (bastard) that her social code condemned. She believed that knighthood and its accompanying (southern) chivalric code were the celebrated foundations of the world, and interpreted everything she saw through that cultural lens. She loved knitting, dancing, listening to singers, things that Jon had no use for-there was no room for Sansa in Jon's "world".Īnd Sansa's "world" contained no real "place" for Jon. Sansa is the one Stark child inherently incapable of fighting. Look at his initial attitude toward Tyrion as well as the other Watch recruits, for example. By that I mean: Jon loved to fight, occupied a world in which fighting was the primary activity, and at the beginning had a great deal of difficulty interacting with people incapable of fighting. In AGOT, Sansa and Jon occupied two very different, inherently non-overlapping worlds, and each person's understanding of how "the world" worked implicitly contained no real "place" for the other. Of the boys, Jon looks the most like Ned, while Sansa looks the most (out of the girls) like Catelyn-superficially, readers were encouraged, in the beginning, to associate Sansa and Jon with two different "regions", one with the South and one with the North. Sansa was the Stark child most heavily and explicitly associated with the Faith of the Seven (she was always with her septa and she's the Stark child we see actually worshiping in the sept the most), while Jon was, at the beginning of the series, the most heavily associated with the Old Gods (given that he's the only one of the children who does not keep the Faith at all, not to mention Ghost's physical resemblance to a weirwood tree). Given the changes they've both undergone since their last meeting, that type of dynamic makes a certain amount of literary sense.Īt the beginning of the series, Jon and Sansa seemed to sit at two opposite ends of the "Stark" children's cultural spectrum: Sansa is viewed by other characters as the most culturally "southern" of the children, (and she did initially seem to value "southern" courtly culture more than Northern culture), while Jon is viewed as the most culturally "Northern" of the Starks because he does not associate with southern-based institutions. If Jon and Sansa meet in the future, it will doubtless come across to readers, in a very real way, as their very first meeting. Everything we know of their past interactions comes via someone's reminiscences, so each is present in the other's life, but only in the past, never in the present. Sansa and Jon are, as far as I can tell, the only two Starks we never actually see interact in "present" time, and I don't think that's a coincidence from a literary standpoint.
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