The Badasses of Winterfell *SPOILERS*

 Madison Kuehl 

The Badasses of Winterfell

In Game of Thrones there are alot of female characters that do not play a traditional role of what a woman should be. The main one is Arya Stark from one of the first scenes she is in, we see her doing something that a “woman” should not be doing. During this time when Arya was wanting to do something that she was not supposed to do, her sister Sansa Stark was doing as she was supposed to do. Sansa wanted to marry the king and become queen because that was what a woman should do. Throughout the whole series we meet a lot of female characters that do not play the role of a normal female. To me they are the one that stand out more because they are doing what they believe in the most. The reason they stand out to me is because they do not need someone else to fight their battles. 

 I do not like the way Sansa is in the first part of the series and I think most of you will agree with me. She does end up changing my mind by the sixth season. She is still more a traditional woman then the rest of them but now she has some balls on her and she is not scared of standing up for what she believes in. She makes the decisions she makes because that is the only way she can survive when she is in King's Landing and when she is married to Ramsay Bolton. We all remember what she went through in King’s Landing with her seeing her dad die and then getting beat by Joffrey Baratheon and then her getting forced to marry Tyrion Lannister. All the things that Ramsay did to her and she is still willing to run off and maybe get caught. The first time that she stated to see that her way of thinking is probably not the way is when she told Joffrey that maybe her brother will bring her his head. This was the first time that I started to feel like she was a Stark. Sansa went through a lot of mental things that she had to do to live and that made her stronger and made her the badass she is now. It took awhile for me to like Sansa because she one did not like her sister, two she did not want to tell the truth about Joffrey, three she tried to get her family killed when she sent the letter to them telling them to come to King's Landing. But if we talk about her after season six then that is a different story. The difference in why people did not like her and why people do now is that she now knows that everyone is not as nice as her father taught her. She knows who she is now and what she has to do to get the world how she wants it. 

Most of the women in this series use their sexuality to gain power over men, but the ones that do not use it are the only ones that are the true badasses. In my opinion there are three of them Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, and Daenerys Targaryen. Arya Stark is and always has been one. She started off wanting to learn how to fight like her brothers. She started learning how to fight when her father got a teacher for her then she learned from watching other people, but the main place was when she was training to be nobody. This was a good thing that she went there because it taught her how to become anybody she wanted to be. She also learns how to fight when she was blind. When she left the many face god to be Arya Stark, she went to kill all the people on her list. Every night that we saw her she would say this list before she went to bed and it gives me chills. It gives me chills because she is a lot done with her list and I think she is going to get it done. Arya is not a traditional fighter because she fights more like it is a dance and not like she is in a war. She fights this way because she is small to most people and she is also a girl. Saying this does not mean i think she can not fight it is just that it is a different style then what we are used to seeing. She is very good at not being seen and being quiet and that makes her a good killer. Some people would even say that she is a trained assassin. When you think of someone that is a trained assassin you do not think of a little girl. The first time she wanted to kill someone could be two parts, one when she was fighting Joffrey or when she saw her father get killed. The person that taught her after she left King’s Landing is Jaqen H’ghar, he is nobody and she saved his life so he gave her three names of people that he would kill for her. I think after he was able to do all that for her she wanted to be like him and be able to kill anybody she wanted. 

When Arya leaves the many face god she goes and finds the people of her list. The first people that she goes to are the people that killed her mother and brother. She kills a whole room of men by herself, if this isn't a badass then I do not know what is. Then she is headed to King’s Landing and she comes across a group of people and they ask her where she is going and when she tells them it is to King’s Landing, they ask her why and she says it is to kill the queen and they all start laughing because they think it is  a joke. This happens again when she gets to Winterfell, when her sisters ask why she was going to go to King’s Landing instead of home. She does try to convince them that she is telling the truth but she just laughs with both of them. She has and will alway be a badass.

There is a lot of difference between the two sisters but they have both turned out to be very strong women. The decisions Sansa makes in the first part of the series should not reflect how strong she is because by the end of the series she is one of the strongest women in the series. There is still some tension between the sister but they do understand that they are family and all they have is family. There are only four Starks left in season six and they all have something to bring to the table. They are finally in the same place as each other and this is not a good thing for Cersei Lannister because as long as there is a Stark in the north then there is no way the people are going to follow her. The series started off more of a man controlled world and by the end of it is controlled by women and the men are the one sitting beside them. 

Work Cited

Power and the Denial of Femininity in Game of Thrones. By: Marques, Diana, Canadian Review of American Studies, 00077720, 2019, Vol. 49, Issue 1

Jamal, Zakiya. “Is Arya Stark Permanently Blind On 'Game of Thrones'? She May Never See Again.” Romper, Romper, 24 Apr. 2016, www.romper.com/p/is-arya-stark-permanently-blind-on-game-of-thrones-she-may-never-see-again-9303. 

Frankel, Valerie Estelle. Women in Game of Thrones: Power, Conformity and Resistance. McFarland, 2014. 

Rawat, Kshitij. “Road to Game of Thrones Season 8: Sansa Stark's Journey so Far.” The Indian Express, 14 Apr. 2019, indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/television/road-to-game-of-thrones-seaoson-sansa-stark-journey-5644244/.