Road to Game of Thrones season 8: Sansa Stark's journey so far

One of the best things about HBO's Game of Thrones is that its characters are not static like cardboard cutouts. They are rather dynamic. They grow and change and not just because the plot requires it. The process is organic. It is their circumstances and the things that happen to them that change them.

For example, to protect his daughter, even someone as rigorous as Ned Stark had to give up his honor and admit to the crime of betrayal that he had not committed.

There are two characters who have undergone a radical transformation in the series, fundamentally changing their identity. One is Jaime Lannister and the other is Sansa Stark.

During the past season, Sansa Stark told an interesting story to her sister Arya, with whom she met several years later. She said, "You would not have survived what I survived." She did not say as if she was boasting. She declared it categorically, as a fact.

If one wonders aloud who is the strongest of the two girls, certainly very different, most people would answer Arya. But strength is more than reflexes and skills. As Cersei would have said, the real strength lies in the awareness of when you must save your strength and when you must completely annihilate your enemies.

Sansa was a sweet girl at the beginning of the series, admiring the handsome prince (Joffrey). All her life, she had wanted to escape the icy north to warm up and enjoy the riches of the south.

She was lucky when she was betrothed to Joffrey and her father was named King's Hand. Everything was splendid, as in the songs. But this romantic image of the world was about to break for Sansa. She was about to become familiar with the harsh realities of the world

After promising him that he would have pity on his father, Joffrey still decapitated him. And then began the torments. Joffrey would make him look at his father's head on a point. The beatings, the humiliations, Sansa suffered all pbadively, always hoping that things will get better.

Everyone she trusted had betrayed her. She was alone. Almost everyone in his family was dead. We do not know where Arya is. She was in a nest of vipers.

Now it was decided that Joffrey could not marry a traitor's daughter and a match with Margaery Tyrell had been arranged for him. At the wedding, someone (we later learned Olenna Tyrell and Littlefinger) poisoned Joffrey and the boy was suffocated with his own blood, perhaps a good ending for him.

Sansa escaped with Littlefinger to Eyrie and it was then that we began to see differences in the Sansa that we had always known. Years of suffering had hardened him. Under the tutelage of Littlefinger, she learned the art of climbing the ladder of chaos. We now know that it is Littlefinger who is behind everything, almost every conflict in Westeros. It is he who unleashed the war between the Starks and the Lannisters.

Sansa also knew that it was because of him that his father had been beheaded. But she offered her time. After Littlefinger married her to a monster even bigger than Joffrey – Ramsay Snow who raped her – she had had enough. She ran to Jon and forced him to fight Ramsay, secretly organizing with Littlefinger reinforcements of the Vale Knights.

The battle of the bastards, as it was called, was won and Sansa seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in making Ramsay's dogs feast.

How difficult is it to reconcile this Sansa with the innocent girl of the very first episode?

Now, since she had her home in Winterfell and that she had found not only Jon but Arya and Bran as well, Sansa decided that she no longer had any use for Littlefinger who was trying to anyway to set fire to a quarrel between the two sisters. Pbadionate pbadive before, she was now a formidable and cunning lady of Winterfell.

She had Arya as an executioner, who was only pleased to do the honors. Sansa thanked Littlefinger for all her lessons just before she had her throat slit.

At present, Sansa has all the cruelty of Cersei, but this ruthless is tempered by the kindness and ability of love and solicitude. Even after suffering so much, she is completely devoted to her family.

Jon and Dany may have a better chance of ending up on the iron throne, but it's Sansa who deserves it the most. Jon is a reluctant leader and Dany likes to use his dragons too much to burn those who do not kneel alive.

Season 8 of Game of Thrones begins on April 14th. It will be broadcast in India on Star World.