Homecoming Queen: Daenerys vs Sansa

In a series where the power balance is forever being challenged and traded from one hand to the next, one of the most prominent questions is: after it’s all said and done, when the final battle is over and the dead litter the landscape, who will remain standing? And who will be overlooking the cleanup?

With the on-screen adaptation of Game of Thrones edging ever nearer to its conclusion, the body count is rising and our options for winner of the game are dwindling. Viable options include fan favorites Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, and Jon Snow (just as soon as he gets over that whole “allegedly dead” thing), all of whom have strong factors working for and against them. As of now, despite what we know about her current circumstances, it seems that Daenerys is the most likely to end up on the Iron Throne. It’s where her story has been leading from the beginning and, unless she dies or has a change of heart, there’s no other ending for her but to restore the Targaryen dynasty to Westeros.

But as Rob Bricken at Io9 recently pointed out, there’s another option who’s often overlooked, and her name is Sansa Stark. Sansa and Daenerys are embarking on similar journeys—both are trying to go home and avenge their fallen families along the way. Both are on a mission to reclaim what has been taken from them (Sansa in the latest Season 6 trailer: “It’s all I think about. What was taken from me.”), and both are doing everything in their power to triumph.

As of now, there’s no competition between the two, but if we imagine that Daenerys and Sansa are the last remaining pieces in the game, Bricken makes a case for Sansa being a better candidate to rule Westeros than Daenerys. Let’s break it down:

• Sansa knows Westeros; Daenerys does not

Along with reciting her ever-evolving list of titles, Daenerys is wont to claim that Westeros is her home and the throne hers by right. Viserys did likewise, and I think that Daenerys’ insistence is due wholly to her brother’s lingering influence because, as Bricken writes, “She’s spent probably less than a year living in the country she wants to rule, as a baby; she’s grown up living in nothing but the foreign lands of another continent.” I agree with Tyrion in Season 5 when he suggests that Daenerys stay in Meereen and establish her rule there.

Sansa, however, knows Westeros and its people. She’s grown up at Winterfell, the Eyrie, and King’s Landing, and as such she’s tangled with a lot of noble families: the Baratheons, the Lannisters, the Arryns, the Tyrells, the Tullys, and the Greyjoys. She “has first-hand experience with whether they are loyal subjects or horrible betraying murderers.” Because of her intimate knowledge of these people, Sansa knows how to work them, and we’ve seen examples of her being savvy and calculating when, for example, she goads Joffrey into getting himself killed in the Battle of the Blackwater or undercuts Ramsay’s confidence in his successorship to the Bolton family name. Despite what some fans think of her, Sansa has known how to play the game from the beginning; if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have survived this long. She knows the land, the people, and the games they play with each other, and knows how to survive them.

• Sansa has seen a parade of rulers in action

Bricken says of Sansa, “She’s seen just rulers like Ned, and horrible rulers like Joffrey, weak leaders like Lysa Arryn in the Eyrie, conniving leaders like Littlefinger, more subtly conniving leaders like the Tyrells, and so on. In Essos, Daenerys had zero contact with any ruling class until she wed Khal Drogo and became Khaleesi to his band of horse barbarians, which at best is only tangentially equivalent to ruling the people of Westeros.”

As he goes on to point out, watching other people rule does not necessarily make you a natural at it, but Sansa has learned from her observations. Daenerys has no experience with the Westerosi government and, moreover, she often refuses to listen to her advisers, even though Jorah and Ser Barristan alike hail from Westeros and are familiar with its customs and ruling families. But we see in Season 3 when Daenerys travels to Astapor in search of an army, that she considers her word law, and that should be good enough for everyone else. She would not hear of Jorah and Ser Barristan’s objections when she agreed to trade a dragon for the Unsullied, and while ultimately Daenerys’ plan was decidedly amazing, her methods to getting there were stubborn and almost childish.

Sansa, meanwhile, lives off the advice of others, and following others’ example has gotten her to where she is now—while not undamaged, she continues to survive. She played every angle taught to her by Cersei, Margaery, and Littlefinger, all of whom exude a confidence that Sansa replicates to suit her own needs. Sansa recognizes what others can offer her, and never considers herself too superior to learn a thing or two from people who know better. Again, Daenerys’ antics in Astapor proved fruitful, but a mark of a good ruler is not just asserting power, but listening to those who have power and know how to use it.

• The Starks have a favorable family history

There is constant talk within the Thrones universe about how those in power need to be loved by their people, and the only family who can boast that kind of devotion is the Starks. As Bricken explains, “The Starks have had a pretty good rap as quiet, benevolent rulers of the North for several centuries, and it’s rare to find its people complaining about them. Granted, Ned and Robb Stark were both declared traitors to the crown and were executed/murdered, but since that was under the Baratheon/Lannister regime and no one likes them, very few non-Lannisters are going to hold that against Sansa.”

The Baratheons have been snuffed out, and it’s common knowledge throughout Westeros that the Lannisters’ rise to power was unjust, as King Tommen (as well as the late Joffrey and Myrcella) is a bastard who has no legitimate claim to his kingship. It would seem, then, that the Starks are more or less pardoned by default.

The Targaryens, on the other hand, aren’t so lucky, as Bricken writes that “the last Targaryen to sit on the Iron Throne had a bad habit of burning his subjects alive, [so] very few people are going to be excited to put Daenerys on the throne.” While she claims that the common people of Westeros will support her, there’s zero narrative evidence of that, and it’s far more likely that a few constitutional peasants would pop up to offer their two cents. (Someone would inevitably remind Daenerys that they “didn’t vote for [you],” I’m sure of it.)

Daenerys says that she will take Westeros because it is her right, and that’s that. I realize that’s how conquerers work, but if she really wants the common people—or anyone else—to rally around her, decreeing “This is mine because I say it is” isn’t going to cut it. Just because the freed slaves in Essos call her “Mhysa” doesn’t mean Westerosi peasants will react to her as reverently, and if you ask me they’re all sick of the noble families’ daytime drama, anyway.

• Daenerys would have to take Westeros with a foreign army

Bricken goes on to point out that, should Daenerys conquer Westeros, the only way she’ll be successful is by invading the country with a foreign army: “No one wants to see a giant horde of horse-bound berserkers and the terrifyingly silent, emotionless death squad of Unsullied show up on Westerosi shores and wreak havoc in anyone’s name. If you think that the fictional peoples of Game of Thrones have any less prejudice about immigration policies than modern-day America, you are 100 percent wrong, and that’s even if they weren’t being brought over to specifically kill the native-born soldiers of the houses opposing this sudden invasion. Even if Daenerys wins the throne through blood, virtually every single man, woman, and child in Westeros will hate and fear her because of who she used to win it.”

This goes to show that while Daenerys excels at conquering places, she doesn’t seem to realize that her actions will have lasting consequences on not only the lives of the conquered, but on how she’s perceived and treated as a ruler. It’s not enough to have an army, even one made up of skilled warriors like the Unsullied. It’s not just about taking power, but how you do it, and Daenerys has become too focused on the former to consider whether her ends justify the means.

We have yet to see Sansa raise an army, but it looks like we may be treated to that this season, and any troops she raises will likely be made up of Stark and Tully supporters, the knights of the Vale, and any odd bannermen hanging around. If Sansa takes the North back, it’ll be for the Starks, and should she ever wish to go after the throne, she would do so with an army of Westerosi nobility.

• Daenerys is a conqueror, not a ruler

I’ve said it before and I always will: Daenerys can conquer like nobody’s business. She knows how to get an army and gain its loyalty, and she’s used those armies to take every piece of land that catches her eye. But when it’s time to not only take the land, but command and control it as well, Daenerys draws blank after blank. She freed the slaves and provided them with food and shelter, but they continue to live in poverty and violence, and she’s at a loss as to how to combat that. She solves one problem and creates another that she doesn’t know how to fix, and she becomes woefully disheartened when her solutions aren’t successful.

In the interim, she vastly underestimated the great enemies she made when she overthrew the masters in Meereen. She didn’t consider that they could turn around and do the same to her, no matter what she tries to do to pacify them after the fact, as Bricken reminds us, “She attempts to cow them into submission by crucifying them, then by marrying one of them, and even accommodating them by reopening the Fighting Pits, and they don’t care—they’re still so determined to oust her they staged a giant attack in the season five finale, and would have won had Drogon not decided to stop by.”

Daenerys does have the upper hand in experience, as she has ruled while Sansa has not, but Sansa was raised to take some position of power and respectability. Whether she was to become queen or a lady to some noble lord, Sansa learned to play the part. She does not balk in the face of death, as we saw at the Hand’s Tourney in Season 1, because she understands that such casualties are part of custom, but Daenerys is so horrified at the prospect of the Fighting Pits that she puts an end to an important part of a culture that isn’t hers. We can debate the morality of the tourneys and the pits until the sun comes up, but they are culturally significant in the Thrones universe, and yet Daenerys refuses to humor any rationale because she does things her way or not at all.

All these points considered, I don’t know that we can reasonably expect Daenerys to take the Iron Throne. In fact, I only think she will because I don’t yet see any other option. My dream, fanfiction-ready scenario is for Sansa to ascend the throne, with Arya and Brienne heading her Queensguard, Tyrion as her Hand, and Pod her consort (just go with me on that last one—trust me, the more you think about it, the more you’ll want it, too).

But when I consider all the angles and ask myself if think Sansa should sit the Iron Throne, I have to say no. She, like Ned, doesn’t want that power, which is perhaps why she would be so well-suited to it, but Sansa belongs in the North. She had once regarded King’s Landing as her home, but ended up desperate to leave it and the tragedies she’d experienced there. She endured another helping of horrors at the hands of Ramsay at Winterfell, but it’s still her home, it belongs to her, and she won’t let her ill-begotten husband change what Winterfell is to her. It took years for Sansa to realize that’s where she belongs, and now that she knows, her biggest triumph will be to take it back and restore it to its former glory.

As similar as Sansa and Daenerys’ goals are, the difference is that Sansa knows that Winterfell is where her heart is, and Daenerys is still lost. I don’t know that Daenerys’ story is truly about a girl going home to a place that isn’t really her home at all. I can’t begin to really pin down where she’s going or how she’ll get there; I only know that I want her to figure out what she wants for herself, rather than what she’s been taught to want by others.

When you boil it down, that’s really the theme of the women in Westeros—deconstructing expectations, discovering what they want regardless of what’s forced upon them, and then going after it. Rumor has it that Season 6 is all about the ladies, and even if they don’t all deserve to sit the Iron Throne, if you ask me they’ve all earned a crown.