The Direwolves Of Winterfell: Part 1, Lady and Sansa’s Bond

This is part 1 in my multi-part series about our favorite direwolves. The other posts in the series are here:

Part 1: Lady and Sansa, Part 2: Grey Wind and Robb, Part 3: Nymeria and Arya, Part 4: Summer and Bran, Part 5: Shaggydog and Rickon, Part 6: Ghost and Jon

As a primer, consider this SSM.

Q: Are all the Stark children wargs/skin changers with their wolves?

GRRM: To a greater or lesser degree, yes, but the amount of control varies widely.

Q: Yes I know that Lady is dead, but assuming they were all alive and all the children as well, would all the wolves have bonded to the kids as Bran and Summer did?

GRRM: Bran and Summer are somewhat of a special case.

https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/Quite_a_Few_Questions

Direwolves in the Snow 

The direwolves, found in chapter one of A Game of Thrones, are more than mere pets.  They are protectors, companions, and reflections of the personalities of their Stark children.  They are creatures of magic, possibly sent by the northern gods, who form a telepathic bond with the children.  The bond forged between them (confirmed by GRRM above) affects the personality and the actions of the children and the wolves.  It is more than the bond shared by a dog and its master; that kind of love is there, if fiercer, but the wolves become an integral part of their children (not masters) and vice versa. 

This series will investigate that bond for deeper understanding of the similarities and differences in each of the six pairs of direwolves of Winterfell.  Because this work is primarily exploratory, we are going to cover every single interaction with, thought of, or other related mention of each direwolf and their bond to their Stark, generally in reading order.  Basically, we are trying to leave preconceived notions at the door and let the text guide what we learn instead of making up our minds ahead of time and picking and choosing the evidence that supports our ideas.  As such we will try to leave no stone un-turned in this fact-finding mission. 

This lack of hypotheses will change a bit in later essays as there are certainly ideas we’ll come up with as we go through each direwolf/Stark pair.  The order of essays is chosen by an arbitrary combination and SWAG of the power of bond and the power of the wolf.  Given that the order was chosen before the fact finding, I reserve the right to be wrong about the reasoning behind said chosen order at the end.  We’ll discuss specifics of the reasoning behind the order later, but given Lady’s untimely death in the first volume, we start with her and Sansa’s bond.

“What in the seven hells is it?” Greyjoy was saying.

“A wolf,” Robb told him.

“A freak,” Greyjoy said. “Look at the size of it.”

Bran’s heart was thumping in his chest as he pushed through a waist-high drift to his brothers’ side.

Half-buried in bloodstained snow, a huge dark shape slumped in death. Ice had formed in its shaggy grey fur, and the faint smell of corruption clung to it like a woman’s perfume. Bran glimpsed blind eyes crawling with maggots, a wide mouth full of yellowed teeth. But it was the size of it that made him gasp. It was bigger than his pony, twice the size of the largest hound in his father’s kennel.

“It’s no freak,” Jon said calmly. “That’s a direwolf. They grow larger than the other kind.”

Theon Greyjoy said, “There’s not been a direwolf sighted south of the Wall in two hundred years.”

“I see one now,” Jon replied.

Bran tore his eyes away from the monster. That was when he noticed the bundle in Robb’s arms. He gave a cry of delight and moved closer. The pup was a tiny ball of grey-black fur, its eyes still closed. It nuzzled blindly against Robb’s chest as he cradled it, searching for milk among his leathers, making a sad little whimpery sound. Bran reached out hesitantly. “Go on,” Robb told him. “You can touch him.”

Bran gave the pup a quick nervous stroke, then turned as Jon said, “Here you go.” His half brother put a second pup into his arms. “There are five of them.” Bran sat down in the snow and hugged the wolf pup to his face. Its fur was soft and warm against his cheek.

“Direwolves loose in the realm, after so many years,” muttered Hullen, the master of horse. “I like it not.”

“It is a sign,” Jory said.

Father frowned. “This is only a dead animal, Jory,” he said. Yet he seemed troubled. Snow crunched under his boots as he moved around the body. “Do we know what killed her?”

“There’s something in the throat,” Robb told him, proud to have found the answer before his father even asked. “There, just under the jaw.”

His father knelt and groped under the beast’s head with his hand. He gave a yank and held it up for all to see. A foot of shattered antler, tines snapped off, all wet with blood.

A sudden silence descended over the party. The men looked at the antler uneasily, and no one dared to speak. Even Bran could sense their fear, though he did not understand. His father tossed the antler to the side and cleansed his hands in the snow. “I’m surprised she lived long enough to whelp,” he said. His voice broke the spell.

“Maybe she didn’t,” Jory said. “I’ve heard tales … maybe the bitch was already dead when the pups came.”

“Born with the dead,” another man put in. “Worse luck.”

“No matter,” said Hullen. “They be dead soon enough too.”

Bran gave a wordless cry of dismay.

“The sooner the better,” Theon Greyjoy agreed. He drew his sword. “Give the beast here, Bran.”

The little thing squirmed against him, as if it heard and understood. “No!” Bran cried out fiercely. “It’s mine.”

“Put away your sword, Greyjoy,” Robb said. For a moment he sounded as commanding as their father, like the lord he would someday be. “We will keep these pups.”

“You cannot do that, boy,” said Harwin, who was Hullen’s son.

“It be a mercy to kill them,” Hullen said.

Bran looked to his lord father for rescue, but got only a frown, a furrowed brow. “Hullen speaks truly, son. Better a swift death than a hard one from cold and starvation.”

“No!” He could feel tears welling in his eyes, and he looked away. He did not want to cry in front of his father.

Robb resisted stubbornly. “Ser Rodrik’s red bitch whelped again last week,” he said. “It was a small litter, only two live pups. She’ll have milk enough.”

“She’ll rip them apart when they try to nurse.”

“Lord Stark,” Jon said. It was strange to hear him call Father that, so formal. Bran looked at him with desperate hope. “There are five pups,” he told Father. “Three male, two female.”

“What of it, Jon?”

“You have five trueborn children,” Jon said. “Three sons, two daughters. The direwolf is the sigil of your House. Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord.”

Bran saw his father’s face change, saw the other men exchange glances. He loved Jon with all his heart at that moment. Even at seven, Bran understood what his brother had done. The count had come right only because Jon had omitted himself. He had included the girls, included even Rickon, the baby, but not the bastard who bore the surname Snow, the name that custom decreed be given to all those in the north unlucky enough to be born with no name of their own.

Their father understood as well. “You want no pup for yourself, Jon?” he asked softly.

The direwolf graces the banners of House Stark, Jon pointed out. “I am no Stark, Father.”

Their lord father regarded Jon thoughtfully. Robb rushed into the silence he left. “I will nurse him myself, Father,” he promised. “I will soak a towel with warm milk, and give him suck from that.”

Me too!” Bran echoed

The lord weighed his sons long and carefully with his eyes. “Easy to say, and harder to do. I will not have you wasting the servants’ time with this. If you want these pups, you will feed them yourselves. Is that understood?”

Bran nodded eagerly. The pup squirmed in his grasp, licked at his face with a warm tongue.

“You must train them as well,” their father said. “You must train them. The kennelmaster will have nothing to do with these monsters, I promise you that. And the gods help you if you neglect them, or brutalize them, or train them badly. These are not dogs to beg for treats and slink off at a kick. A direwolf will rip a man’s arm off his shoulder as easily as a dog will kill a rat. Are you sure you want this?”

“The pups may die anyway, despite all you do.”

“They won’t die,” Robb said. “We won’t let them die.”

“Keep them, then. Jory, Desmond, gather up the other pups. It’s time we were back to Winterfell.”

It was not until they were mounted and on their way that Bran allowed himself to taste the sweet air of victory. By then, his pup was snuggled inside his leathers, warm against him, safe for the long ride home. Bran was wondering what to name him.

Halfway across the bridge, Jon pulled up suddenly.

“What is it, Jon?” their lord father asked.

“Can’t you hear it?”

Bran could hear the wind in the trees, the clatter of their hooves on the ironwood planks, the whimpering of his hungry pup, but Jon was listening to something else.

“There,” Jon said. He swung his horse around and galloped back across the bridge. They watched him dismount where the direwolf lay dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A moment later he was riding back to them, smiling.

“He must have crawled away from the others,” Jon said.

“Or been driven away,” their father said, looking at the sixth pup. His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had died that morning. Bran thought it curious that this pup alone would have opened his eyes while the others were still blind.

“An albino,” Theon Greyjoy said with wry amusement. “This one will die even faster than the others.”

Jon Snow gave his father’s ward a long, chilling look. “I think not, Greyjoy,” he said. “This one belongs to me.”

– A Game of Thrones – Bran I

Jon was the hero of that scene.  He recognizes that these wolves were meant for the children, and then he sacrifices his own opportunity to have one in favor of his half-siblings. This is a huge indicator of his selfless character and the bond of love shared by him and his brothers and sisters.  Then our author (he’s not always heartless) rewards such with the discovery of Ghost.  This is queer because Ghost never makes a sound, ever, yet Jon swears he heard something which led to the discovery of our sixth pup.  The formation of the bond is indeed instantaneous.  We’ll discuss this further in the appropriate volume.

A Game of Thrones – Lady and a Proper Lady

We won’t do an intro here, so as to not add preconceptions to this investigation of the wolves. 

A Game of Thrones – Arya I

Sansa doesn’t have a POV until after they all leave Winterfell, so Arya introduces us to Lady.  Immediately we see that the wolves are a reflection of their children.  Sansa names hers “Lady” and Arya thinks that is the most natural thing in the world because Sansa acts such a proper lady.

Nymeria nipped eagerly at her hand as Arya untied her. She had yellow eyes. When they caught the sunlight, they gleamed like two golden coins. Arya had named her after the warrior queen of the Rhoyne, who had led her people across the narrow sea. That had been a great scandal too. Sansa, of course, had named her pup “Lady.” Arya made a face and hugged the wolfling tight. Nymeria licked her ear, and she giggled.

– A Game of Thrones – Arya I

A Game of Thrones – Sansa I

That’s not to say that the wolf doesn’t influence Sansa.   At the beginning of Sansa’s first POV, clearly Septa Mordane senses the wolf’s influence and disapproves.  Sadly, this dense POV is the only chapter with Sansa and Lady together before the pup is killed. It is a rich illustration of their already well-formed bond.  Sansa is feeding scraps to Lady under the table, and the Septa is having none of it.  The proud Sansa, though, just corrects the Septa’s word choice.  She’s right, too.  These direwolves are clearly much more than common dogs.  Lady, her constant companion for most of the chapter, is at her heels as she leaves the septa.  Note also that feelings of hunger can be felt through the bond, as evidenced in later essays.

“I’ve never seen an aurochs,” Sansa said, feeding a piece of bacon to Lady under the table. The direwolf took it from her hand, as delicate as a queen.

Septa Mordane sniffed in disapproval. “A noble lady does not feed dogs at her table,” she said, breaking off another piece of comb and letting the honey drip down onto her bread.

“She’s not a dog, she’s a direwolf,” Sansa pointed out as Lady licked her fingers with a rough tongue. “Anyway, Father said we could keep them with us if we want.”

The septa was not appeased. “You’re a good girl, Sansa, but I do vow, when it comes to that creature you’re as willful as your sister Arya.” She scowled. “And where is Arya this morning?”

[…]

“You may.” Septa Mordane helped herself to more bread and honey, and Sansa slid from the bench. Lady followed at her heels as she ran from the inn’s common room.

In an exchange between Sansa and Arya, Lady’s obedience is reflected in Sansa and is contrasted with Nymeria and Arya’s wildness.  To reinforce this theme, at the end of their exchange, Sansa even makes an apropos quip with the kennelmaster’s wisdom about an animal taking after its master.   Lady watches the whole scene, attentive to and shadowing Sansa.  Then she is affectionate with Sansa, when Sansa feels good about her teasing of Arya, reflecting her mood. 

She found Arya on the banks of the Trident, trying to hold Nymeria still while she brushed dried mud from her fur. The direwolf was not enjoying the process. Arya was wearing the same riding leathers she had worn yesterday and the day before.

In that passage, we established that Lady follows at Sansa’s heels, protecting her wherever she goes. In the passage that follows, when Ilyn Payne frightens Sansa, Lady is quick to growl and bare her teeth in defense.  This is not aggression, but defensive, mirroring Sansa, who is not aggressive herself.  She also spares a moan of a growl for the hound, though seemingly deeming him less of a threat.  While Sansa remains frightened the entire scene, Lady doesn’t seem to have growled when Barristan and Renly scared Sansa with their drawn swords. It’s a good thing the children have these wolves for protection and threat evaluation… doh! 

“The king is gone hunting, but I know he will be pleased to see you when he returns,” the queen was saying to the two knights who knelt before her, but Sansa could not take her eyes off the third man. He seemed to feel the weight of her gaze. Slowly he turned his head. Lady growled. A terror as overwhelming as anything Sansa Stark had ever felt filled her suddenly. She stepped backward and bumped into someone.

Strong hands grasped her by the shoulders, and for a moment Sansa thought it was her father, but when she turned, it was the burned face of Sandor Clegane looking down at her, his mouth twisted in a terrible mockery of a smile. “You are shaking, girl,” he said, his voice rasping. “Do I frighten you so much?”

He did, and had since she had first laid eyes on the ruin that fire had made of his face, though it seemed to her now that he was not half so terrifying as the other. Still, Sansa wrenched away from him, and the Hound laughed, and Lady moved between them, rumbling a warning. Sansa dropped to her knees to wrap her arms around the wolf. They were all gathered around gaping, she could feel their eyes on her, and here and there she heard muttered comments and titters of laughter.

“A wolf,” a man said, and someone else said, “Seven hells, that’s a direwolf,” and the first man said, “What’s it doing in camp?” and the Hound’s rasping voice replied, “The Starks use them for wet nurses,” and Sansa realized that the two stranger knights were looking down on her and Lady, swords in their hands, and then she was frightened again, and ashamed. Tears filled her eyes.

Joffrey is on his best behavior, playing the gallant in front of everyone in the camp, but he is different when away from vigilant eyes.  Speaking of vigilant eyes, Lady doesn’t allow her attention to be diverted from Payne, whom she deems the greatest danger in the group.  Sansa calms her, though, again demonstrating their close bond and Lady’s obedience.

“Leave her alone,” Joffrey said. He stood over her, beautiful in blue wool and black leather, his golden curls shining in the sun like a crown. He gave her his hand, drew her to her feet. “What is it, sweet lady? Why are you afraid? No one will hurt you. Put away your swords, all of you. The wolf is her little pet, that’s all.” He looked at Sandor Clegane. “And you, dog, away with you, you’re scaring my betrothed.”

[…]

There was general laughter, led by Lord Renly himself. The tension of a few moments ago was gone, and Sansa was beginning to feel comfortable … until Ser Ilyn Payne shouldered two men aside, and stood before her, unsmiling. He did not say a word. Lady bared her teeth and began to growl, a low rumble full of menace, but this time Sansa silenced the wolf with a gentle hand to the head. “I am sorry if I offended you, Ser Ilyn,” she said.

Notice how Sansa get’s her point across with a touch. Communication through the bond seems enhanced when physical contact is in the equation.

One theme we’ll see time and time again is that when the wolves are forcibly tied up, separated from the children, or when the “dire-warnings” given by the “direwolves” are ignored, something bad is bound to happen, eventually (or sorrowfully). Sansa and Arya earlier discussed needing to leave the wolves behind when visiting Myrcella and the queen, foreshadowing the scene that follows where Joff fatefully convinces Sansa to tie up Lady when they go riding. 

“Oh, I love riding,” Sansa said.

Joffrey glanced back at Lady, who was following at their heels. “Your wolf is liable to frighten the horses, and my dog seems to frighten you. Let us leave them both behind and set off on our own, what do you say?”

Sansa hesitated. “If you like,” she said uncertainly. “I suppose I could tie Lady up.” She did not quite understand, though. “I didn’t know you had a dog …”

Lady is only mentioned once again in the chapter, when Sansa regrets leaving her behind.  Her absence may loom large.  We all know what happened after that.  Nymeria attacked Joffrey, who showed his true colors.  I’ll submit to you that Lady’s presence may have changed the outcome in 2 ways.  First, Joffrey may have behaved better with Lady vigilantly shadowing Sansa.  He may not have escalated with the threat of the wolf so close (instead of the silent hidden Nymeria).  Secondly, if Lady had been with them, there’s a good chance that Nymeria might not have bitten Joffrey.  Lady might have been able to curtail her wild sister a la Summer and Shaggydog.  This is of course idle speculation.  What is undeniable is that Lady was left behind and something bad happened.  

“Someone’s there,” Sansa said anxiously. She found herself thinking of Lady, wishing the direwolf was with her.

“You’re safe with me.” Joffrey drew his Lion’s Tooth from its sheath. The sound of steel on leather made her tremble. “This way,” he said, riding through a stand of trees.

– A Game of Thrones – Sansa I

A Game of Thrones – Eddard III

Ned takes up the terrible tale of what happens next in his 3^rd POV.  I kept the entire passage below, as I can’t adequately summarize it.

The queen raised her voice. “A hundred golden dragons to the man who brings me its skin!”

“A costly pelt,” Robert grumbled. “I want no part of this, woman. You can damn well buy your furs with Lannister gold.”

The queen regarded him coolly. “I had not thought you so niggardly. The king I’d thought to wed would have laid a wolfskin across my bed before the sun went down.”

Robert’s face darkened with anger. “That would be a fine trick, without a wolf.”

“We have a wolf,” Cersei Lannister said. Her voice was very quiet, but her green eyes shone with triumph.

It took them all a moment to comprehend her words, but when they did, the king shrugged irritably. “As you will. Have Ser Ilyn see to it.”

 

“Robert, you cannot mean this,” Ned protested.

The king was in no mood for more argument. “Enough, Ned, I will hear no more. A direwolf is a savage beast. Sooner or later it would have turned on your girl the same way the other did on my son. Get her a dog, she’ll be happier for it.”

That was when Sansa finally seemed to comprehend. Her eyes were frightened as they went to her father. “He doesn’t mean Lady, does he?” She saw the truth on his face. “No,” she said. “No, not Lady, Lady didn’t bite anybody, she’s good …”

“Lady wasn’t there,” Arya shouted angrily. “You leave her alone!”

“Stop them,” Sansa pleaded, “don’t let them do it, please, please, it wasn’t Lady, it was Nymeria, Arya did it, you can’t, it wasn’t Lady, don’t let them hurt Lady, I’ll make her be good, I promise, I promise …” She started to cry.

All Ned could do was take her in his arms and hold her while she wept. He looked across the room at Robert. His old friend, closer than any brother. “Please, Robert. For the love you bear me. For the love you bore my sister. Please.”

The king looked at them for a long moment, then turned his eyes on his wife. “Damn you, Cersei,” he said with loathing.

Ned stood, gently disengaging himself from Sansa’s grasp. All the weariness of the past four days had returned to him. “Do it yourself then, Robert,” he said in a voice cold and sharp as steel. “At least have the courage to do it yourself.”

Robert looked at Ned with flat, dead eyes and left without a word, his footsteps heavy as lead. Silence filled the hall.

“Where is the direwolf?” Cersei Lannister asked when her husband was gone. Beside her, Prince Joffrey was smiling.

“The beast is chained up outside the gatehouse, Your Grace,” Ser Barristan Selmy answered reluctantly.

Send for Ilyn Payne.”

“No,” Ned said. “Jory, take the girls back to their rooms and bring me Ice.” The words tasted of bile in his throat, but he forced them out. “If it must be done, I will do it.”

Cersei Lannister regarded him suspiciously. “You, Stark? Is this some trick? Why would you do such a thing?”

They were all staring at him, but it was Sansa’s look that cut. “She is of the north. She deserves better than a butcher.”

He left the room with his eyes burning and his daughter’s wails echoing in his ears, and found the direwolf pup where they chained her. Ned sat beside her for a while. “Lady,” he said, tasting the name. He had never paid much attention to the names the children had picked, but looking at her now, he knew that Sansa had chosen well. She was the smallest of the litter, the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting. She looked at him with bright golden eyes, and he ruffled her thick grey fur.

Shortly, Jory brought him Ice.

When it was over, he said, “Choose four men and have them take the body north. Bury her at Winterfell.”

“All that way?” Jory said, astonished.

“All that way,” Ned affirmed. “The Lannister woman shall never have this skin.”

– A Game of Thrones – Eddard III

Sansa is beside herself once she realizes that Lady will be killed (though I can’t help but notice how quickly she places the blame directly on Arya, who for her part also defends Lady).  She might have lied about the incident, but she is certainly not lying about Lady.  Lady is good and was completely innocent in this.  The injustice of Cersei’s action is appalling.  Recall, though, that she had had thoughts even before they left Winterfell about refusing to allow the wolves at court.  She got her victory and cared nothing for the fallout.

Note how Ned perfectly describes how Lady is a reflection of Sansa, “the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting,” indeed.  The truth of that is a great summary of Sansa’s story in AGoT.  Ned’s gesture of sending the body north is nice, but too little too late for Lady… RIP.

A Game of Thrones – Eddard IV

In his next chapter Ned sees the full ramifications of the tragedy.  Ned is filled with rage about the whole affair, Sansa is disconsolate and still blames Arya, and Arya broods silently alone in shame for Micah and Lady.  This is indicative of a huge wedge that formed in the two sister’s relationships over the issue.

Outside, wagons and riders were still pouring through the castle gates, and the yard was a chaos of mud and horseflesh and shouting men. The king had not yet arrived, he was told. Since the ugliness on the Trident, the Starks and their household had ridden well ahead of the main column, the better to separate themselves from the Lannisters and the growing tension. Robert had hardly been seen; the talk was he was traveling in the huge wheelhouse, drunk as often as not. If so, he might be hours behind, but he would still be here too soon for Ned’s liking. He had only to look at Sansa’s face to feel the rage twisting inside him once again. The last fortnight of their journey had been a misery. Sansa blamed Arya and told her that it should have been Nymeria who died. And Arya was lost after she heard what had happened to her butcher’s boy. Sansa cried herself to sleep, Arya brooded silently all day long, and Eddard Stark dreamed of a frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell.

– A Game of Thrones – Eddard IV

A Game of Thrones – Arya II

In Arya’s next chapter the guilt she feels over both deaths and the loss of Nymeria is crushing her.  Notably her feelings are unselfish; she’s lost her own wolf but feels guilty (and vengeful) for Lady and Micah.

Only that was Winterfell, a world away, and now everything was changed. This was the first time they had supped with the men since arriving in King’s Landing. Arya hated it. She hated the sounds of their voices now, the way they laughed, the stories they told. They’d been her friends, she’d felt safe around them, but now she knew that was a lie. They’d let the queen kill Lady, that was horrible enough, but then the Hound found Mycah. Jeyne Poole had told Arya that he’d cut him up in so many pieces that they’d given him back to the butcher in a bag, and at first the poor man had thought it was a pig they’d slaughtered. And no one had raised a voice or drawn a blade or anything, not Harwin who always talked so bold, or Alyn who was going to be a knight, or Jory who was captain of the guard. Not even her father.

– A Game of Thrones – Arya II

Arya correctly places the responsibility for Lady’s death on queen Cersei.

A Game of Thrones – Sansa II

As a contrast to Arya, Sansa is hurt inside for her own loss, and vengeful against Arya and the queen.  In her next chapter, she expresses no sentimentality for her sister’s lost wolf.  Both girls feel bad about Lady’s fate though.

Jeyne Poole wept so hysterically that Septa Mordane finally took her off to regain her composure, but Sansa sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching with a strange fascination. She had never seen a man die before. She ought to be crying too, she thought, but the tears would not come. Perhaps she had used up all her tears for Lady and Bran. It would be different if it had been Jory or Ser Rodrik or Father, she told herself. The young knight in the blue cloak was nothing to her, some stranger from the Vale of Arryn whose name she had forgotten as soon as she heard it. And now the world would forget his name too, Sansa realized; there would be no songs sung for him. That was sad.

[…]

Sansa and Septa Mordane were given places of high honor, to the left of the raised dais where the king himself sat beside his queen. When Prince Joffrey seated himself to her right, she felt her throat tighten. He had not spoken a word to her since the awful thing had happened, and she had not dared to speak to him. At first she thought she hated him for what they’d done to Lady, but after Sansa had wept her eyes dry, she told herself that it had not been Joffrey’s doing, not truly. The queen had done it; she was the one to hate, her and Arya. Nothing bad would have happened except for Arya.

She could not hate Joffrey tonight. He was too beautiful to hate. He wore a deep blue doublet studded with a double row of golden lion’s heads, and around his brow a slim coronet made of gold and sapphires. His hair was as bright as the metal. Sansa looked at him and trembled, afraid that he might ignore her or, worse, turn hateful again and send her weeping from the table.

– A Game of Thrones – Sansa II

Note the phrase “she had used up all her tears for Lady.” Is this an indication that she is turning cold inside, or just flowery language or some other type of symbolism?  She also doesn’t blame Joffrey, the bully who started the whole incident.  Queerly, she is afraid of him, recognizing that he could “turn hateful” but goes on admiring him nonetheless.  If Lady were alive, I would think that she would have sense enough to warn Sansa about him.

A Game of Thrones – Sansa III

In her next chapter, Sansa’s coldness to Arya turns dark in a striking way as she wishes her sister dead.  Is this just a reflection of grief or is something irreparably broken between them?  While she mourns Lady, Sansa still expresses no regret for Nymeria being lost.

“You have juice on your face, Your Grace,” Arya said.

It was running down her nose and stinging her eyes. Sansa wiped it away with a napkin. When she saw what the fruit in her lap had done to her beautiful ivory silk dress, she shrieked again. “You’re horrible,” she screamed at her sister. “They should have killed you instead of Lady!”

[…]

Sansa sat up. “Lady,” she whispered. For a moment it was as if the direwolf was there in the room, looking at her with those golden eyes, sad and knowing. She had been dreaming, she realized. Lady was with her, and they were running together, and … and … trying to remember was like trying to catch the rain with her fingers. The dream faded, and Lady was dead again.

– A Game of Thrones – Sansa III

Sansa never has a wolf dream as we’ve come to know them from Bran, Jon, and Arya, but that dream is a reminder that their bond was strong, even in its infancy.  Could this be an echo of a small piece of Lady’s soul that Sansa still holds inside herself?

Lady, overshadowed at the end of AGoT by Ned’s imprisonment and death doesn’t come up again in Sansa’s POV’s until ACoK.  She is mentioned in Bran and Jon POVs during that time, though.

A Game of Thrones – Bran VI

In a letter home, Sansa again spares no thought for her sister, but Bran points directly to her loss of Lady as the reason.  His insight is true in at least two ways.  Lady being gone serves to disconnect her telepathically from her pack, and Lady’s death was the wedge that had metaphorically separated the two girls.  Bran also recalls the scene when the remaining wolves howled as Lady’s bones returned.  This is the first hint we get that the wolves are telepathically linked.  We explore this link throughout these essays.

[…]”King Robert is dead, and Mother and I are summoned to the Red Keep to swear fealty to Joffrey. She says we must be loyal, and when she marries Joffrey she will plead with him to spare our lord father’s life.” His fingers closed into a fist, crushing Sansa’s letter between them. “And she says nothing of Arya, nothing, not so much as a word. Damn her! What’s wrong with the girl?”

Bran felt all cold inside. “She lost her wolf,” he said, weakly, remembering the day when four of his father’s guardsmen had returned from the south with Lady’s bones. Summer and Grey Wind and Shaggydog had begun to howl before they crossed the drawbridge, in voices drawn and desolate. Beneath the shadow of the First Keep was an ancient lichyard, its headstones spotted with pale lichen, where the old Kings of Winter had laid their faithful servants. It was there they buried Lady, while her brothers stalked between the graves like restless shadows. She had gone south, and only her bones had returned.

– A Game of Thrones – Bran VI

A Game of Thrones – Jon VII

By Contrast, Jon is mostly concerned for his sisters and father. Notably, he also recognizes the value of the wolves as protectors. Later, though, he goes on to feel sorry for himself and do something Arya would call “stupid”, so let’s not build him up too much.  

The rest of the afternoon passed as if in a dream. Jon could not have said where he walked, what he did, who he spoke with. Ghost was with him, he knew that much. The silent presence of the direwolf gave him comfort. The girls do not even have that much, he thought. Their wolves might have kept them safe, but Lady is dead and Nymeria’s lost, they’re all alone.

– A Game of Thrones – Jon VII

ACoK and ASoS – The Shade of Lady and the Girl Held in a Tower

In the later volumes we continue to examine Sansa’s connection to her pack family, while we look to the pack for traces of the bond and for their memory of their gentle sister.  We also see continued development of Sansa’s telepathic power as she grows into a woman.  Lady doesn’t come up in Sansa’s story often, but she is remembered at key points. 

A Clash of Kings – Sansa II

In her second POV chapter in ACoK, Sansa encounters the murdered Princess Rhaenys’s cat “Balerion” (the one Arya had worked so hard to catch) then thinks of Lady in the next paragraphs. 

The noise receded as she moved deeper into the castle, never daring to look back for fear that Joffrey might be watching . . . or worse, following. The serpentine steps twisted ahead, striped by bars of flickering light from the narrow windows above. Sansa was panting by the time she reached the top. She ran down a shadowy colonnade and pressed herself against a wall to catch her breath. When something brushed against her leg, she almost jumped out of her skin, but it was only a cat, a ragged black tom with a chewed-off ear. The creature spit at her and leapt away.

By the time she reached the godswood, the noises had faded to a faint rattle of steel and a distant shouting. Sansa pulled her cloak tighter. The air was rich with the smells of earth and leaf. Lady would have liked this place, she thought. There was something wild about a godswood; even here, in the heart of the castle at the heart of the city, you could feel the old gods watching with a thousand unseen eyes.

The wording regarding her contact with the cat is also quite striking.  She almost jumped out of her skin!  Taken literally, it is almost certainly a hidden-in-plain-sight hint that Sansa retains the ability to skinchange, and in the instant they brushed against each other, she may indeed have partially slipped the cat’s skin.  There are clear instances of this exact type of scenario in Jon’s story in ADwD.

We are then reminded that the direwolves have an innate sense of danger, which dovetails nicely with Jon’s prior mention of Lady.

And what will they do to me? Sansa found herself thinking of Lady again. She could smell out falsehood, she could, but she was dead, Father had killed her, on account of Arya. She drew the knife and held it before her with both hands.

– A Clash of Kings – Sansa II

She remembers Lady fondly, then laments that she’s not there to protect her.  Note that the protection from “falsehood” that Lady could provide was needed to one degree or another at this moment, as this was the beginning of Littlefinger’s plot with Ser Duntos to abduct her from the city.

A Clash of Kings – Arya VI

While Sansa continues to blame Arya, not the queen or Joffrey for Lady’s death, Arya again laments the unjust killing Lady and rightly places the blame on the queen.

Arya watched and listened and polished her hates the way Gendry had once polished his horned helm. Dunsen wore those bull’s horns now, and she hated him for it. She hated Polliver for Needle, and she hated old Chiswyck who thought he was funny. And Raff the Sweetling, who’d driven his spear through Lommy’s throat, she hated even more. She hated Ser Amory Lorch for Yoren, and she hated Ser Meryn Trant for Syrio, the Hound for killing the butcher’s boy Mycah, and Ser Ilyn and Prince Joffrey and the queen for the sake of her father and Fat Tom and Desmond and the rest, and even for Lady, Sansa’s wolf. The Tickler was almost too scary to hate. At times she could almost forget he was still with them; when he was not asking questions, he was just another soldier, quieter than most, with a face like a thousand other men.

– A Clash of Kings – Arya VI

A Clash of Kings – Sansa III

In her next POV chapter, Sansa finally does confront Joffrey about the unjustness of Lady’s killing, but she doesn’t completely shift blame from Arya. 

“Silence, fool.” Joffrey lifted his crossbow and pointed it at her face. “You Starks are as unnatural as those wolves of yours. I’ve not forgotten how your monster savaged me.”

“That was Arya’s wolf,” she said. “Lady never hurt you, but you killed her anyway.”

– A Clash of Kings – Sansa III

A Storm of Swords – Sansa VI

Lady only comes up once more in ASoS, once Sansa’s in the vale. 

That night Sansa scarcely slept at all, but tossed and turned just as she had aboard the Merling King. She dreamt of Joffrey dying, but as he clawed at his throat and the blood ran down across his fingers she saw with horror that it was her brother Robb. And she dreamed of her wedding night too, of Tyrion’s eyes devouring her as she undressed. Only then he was bigger than Tyrion had any right to be, and when he climbed into the bed his face was scarred only on one side. “I’ll have a song from you,” he rasped, and Sansa woke and found the old blind dog beside her once again. “I wish that you were Lady,” she said.

– A Storm of Swords – Sansa VI

The memory coincides the proximity of another beast, this time a dog, who is definitely the trigger for the memory of Lady.  I can’t help but wonder again if her dormant warging ability is being stimulated by the contact with the dog.  Or is the part of lady that still lives on in her stimulated by this contact with beasts?  Nonetheless, she has a few other interactions with this same dog that indicate she might have formed a warg bond with the animal, although we won’t cover that here. 

As an aside, I believe Petyr Baelish also has some kind of telepathic ability.  Could he use such as this old blind dog to listen in on people’s conversations?  We do know that he once, seemingly malevolently, appeared in Ned’s fever dreams in the dungeons of King’s Landing.

Lady doesn’t come up in Sansa’s AFfC or TWoW chapters.  We must hope that she doesn’t forget her or her “pack”.

Afterword

She’s gone but not forgotten by Summer/Bran and Ghost/Jon, who share a pack bond with her.  The bond from wolf to wolf is featured prominently in the first three passages, while the last two are about the boys remembering the Lady and Sansa.  I don’t think further analysis of these wistful memories is necessary, especially considering that these passages will be repeated in the next parts of this series.  Here at the quotes:

Summer’s howls were long and sad, full of grief and longing. Shaggydog’s were more savage. Their voices echoed through the yards and halls until the castle rang and it seemed as though some great pack of direwolves haunted Winterfell, instead of only two . . . two where there had once been six. Do they miss their brothers and sisters too? Bran wondered. Are they calling to Grey Wind and Ghost, to Nymeria and Lady’s Shade? Do they want them to come home and be a pack together?

– A Clash of Kings – Bran I

Sometimes he could sense them, though, as if they were still with him, only hidden from his sight by a boulder or a stand of trees. He could not smell them, nor hear their howls by night, yet he felt their presence at his back . . . all but the sister they had lost. His tail drooped when he remembered her. Four now, not five. Four and one more, the white who has no voice.

These woods belonged to them, the snowy slopes and stony hills, the great green pines and the golden leaf oaks, the rushing streams and blue lakes fringed with fingers of white frost. But his sister had left the wilds, to walk in the halls of man-rock where other hunters ruled, and once within those halls it was hard to find the path back out. The wolf prince remembered.

– A Storm of Swords – Bran I

“Snow,” the moon called down again, cackling. The white wolf padded along the man trail beneath the icy cliff. The taste of blood was on his tongue, and his ears rang to the song of the hundred cousins. Once they had been six, five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard dead nipples whilst he crawled off alone. Four remained … and one the white wolf could no longer sense.

– A Dance with Dragons – Jon I

The other wolves made do with his leavings; the old male fed first, then the female, then the tail. They were his now. They were pack.

No, the boy whispered, we have another pack. Lady’s dead and maybe Grey Wind too, but somewhere there’s still Shaggydog and Nymeria and Ghost. Remember Ghost?

– A Dance with Dragons – Bran I

Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand. The Night’s Watch takes no part. He closed his fist and opened it again. What you propose is nothing less than treason. He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon’s breathless laughter.   You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest. 

– A Dance with Dragons – Jon XIII

As a further reminder of her warging ability, I’ve also included 2 tall (slanderous) tales about Joffrey’s murder that implicate Sansa as having caused the death by using some kind of warging magic, as well as the Ghost of High Heart’s prophecy that implicates her more correctly.  I don’t believe the slander of course; there is plenty of tinfoil out there about Joffrey’s death.  I even subscribe to some of it!  Still, these passages are reminiscent of her heritage as a scion of Harrrenhal and Winterfell.

“I dreamt a wolf howling in the rain, but no one heard his grief,” the dwarf woman was saying. “I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow.” She turned her head sharply and smiled through the gloom, right at Arya. “You cannot hide from me, child. Come closer, now.”

– A Storm of Swords – Arya VII

“The dwarf’s wife did the murder with him,” swore an archer in Lord Rowan’s livery. “Afterward, she vanished from the hall in a puff of brimstone, and a ghostly direwolf was seen prowling the Red Keep, blood dripping from his jaws.“

“What wife?”

– A Storm of Swords – Jaime VII

“I forgot, you’ve been hiding under a rock. The northern girl. Winterfell’s daughter. We heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window. But she left the dwarf behind and Cersei means to have his head.”

That’s stupid, Arya thought. Sansa only knows songs, not spells, and she’d never marry the Imp.

– A Storm of Swords – Arya XIII

Shout-out and attribution as always goes to those who’ve gone before me with some of the theories that I am probably subconsciously utilizing / mentioning / building upon here, including:

u/LoveMeSexyJesus who posted https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/3gjex7/the_relationship_between_the_stark_children_and/

u/RockyRockington who posted https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/aivijc/spoilers_extended_a_theory_about_ghost_and/

u/PrestonJacobs and all his videos related to this topic

I have a lot of original thought here, but I am certainly synthesizing a lot of their ideas, and those of others not mentioned as well. Thanks to you, too, for reading, commenting, sharing and subscribing!

Also, Thanks GRRM!

TL;DR Sansa’s bond to Lady is strong from the beginning.  There is a fair amount of foreshadowing and evidence that this bond is telepathic (as with their packmates) but that the warging ability in Sansa is underdeveloped because she lost her wolf so early in the bonding process.  Lady’s death caused a major rift with Arya, who undeservedly gets the lion’s share of Sansa’s blame (pun intended) while Arya herself feels terrible about her part in it but rightly blames Cersei and Joffrey (the lions… get it?), as did Ned.  Can these sisters recover their relationship and reform the pack in time for The Winds of Winter? Lady is gone but not forgotten by Sansa, the other Stark children, and their direwolves.  There are 5 more parts to this series.  I urge you to read them; they are worth it!  No more TL;DR’s from here on out.  Next, we tackle Grey wind and Robb.  See you all then!