What do you think that Sansa thinks about when sitting at a table with the royal family? Here's what I imagine going trough her head in such moments...
Sansa's Poem
Sansa was sitting at the table, trying to enjoy her meal despite the very un-enjoyable company around her: she was taking her supper with the royal family. The only thing that could be worse than sitting at the same table as Cersei was sitting at the same table with Joffrey. And the only thing worse than sitting at the table with Joffrey was sitting at the table with both Cersei and Joffrey. To be fair, there were also two of the younger Cersei's children, but their aura of silent obedience wasn't powerful enough to counter the bad vibes escaping from their mother and their brother.
Especially their brother...
Oh, how she hated the king. Every day in this place was hell for her and every moment spent in the same room with him was torture. Every time Sansa felt Joffrey's eyes on her, she felt her stomach turn and cold sweats enveloped her. And here, she had to live with him. Here, she had to dine with him.
The only way to cope with the horrible situation that was thrown on her was to escape in a different world... In the world in her head... In her imagination... Where everything she imagined would be possible... Sansa couldn't really do anything, but she could always think. And when she would find herself in a situation like this one, in a situation where she couldn't swallow one bite of the meal in front of her because her stomach was so full of hatred that she felt she could throw it up, she would think of poems.
Sansa loved poetry. When she still lived in Winterfell, in what seemed now one thousand years ago, she would write poetry every day. Sometimes, she would read her poems to her mother and her father, who enjoyed it. Other days, even Bran and Arya would come to her room and ask her to read to them. Even them... For Sansa could write all kinds of stories happening in her poems, as well stories of princesses being abducted and saved by charming princes as stories of heroes slaying monsters. Arya enjoyed those... And where was she now? She fled and abandoned her. Now Sansa was all alone.
The king murdered her father. The king murdered her septa and probably sent people to look for her sister. But he wouldn't get her. Sansa prayed every night for Arya to be safe. Her staying alive would be at least some little victory for her house, the proof that the Lannisters couldn't have them all.
And when she didn't pray, Sansa thought of poems. But those were not those that she would want to write down.
The king's head was held by his neck
He couldn't see behind his back
A knife flying to get him down
Knocking off his head with his crown
Sansa giggled. Those verses were usually thought on the spot and safely kept inside her head. Since they weren't written down, she could never decide on the exact pattern she was going to use for her verses. Still, she had always preferred four-line stanzas, with the same number of syllables by verse. A poem needed to be at least slightly regular if she wanted it to sound elegant. No matter its content...
My sweet poems kept soundly in my head
Never to be seen, never to be read
Being only thought, for they can't be said
All of them of Joffrey meeting his end
King Joffrey will be dying in one thousand ways
Each one of his deaths bringing us better days
In one thousand manners and in one thousand games
One thousand times, I will be watching his remains
And one thousand times, I'll see him agonize
I'll see the pain on his face caught by surprise
I'll see coming towards me in the sunrise
My brother Robb bringing his head as a prize
My brothers and sisters running towards me
Saving me from this terror, from my tragedy
In which I'm forced to marry my father's slayer
Who made an honest man pass for a betrayer
That seemed like a happy end, Sansa thought. When it comes to their form, her other poems – the shallow ones that she wrote just so the queen would tell her that she has a certain talent – were much more regular than this one. And yet, she loved this one the best. The others were perfect, had perfect rhythm, were perfect and shallow as the image that she had to give of herself if she wanted to stay alive and see her family – or at least the surviving members of her family – ever again. She looked back to the king. He was talking, but the blood drumming in her ears made her unable to hear anything. Suddenly, some more images came to her head...
I can see blood coming from his eyeballs
I see him devoured by wild animals
I can see the Hound chopping off his head
I can see king Joffrey dropping dead
I can see a faceless man ripping him open
And his legs are no more and his neck is broken
And then he's brought back to life to suffer some more
With a proper amount of blood and guts and gore
His body will be cut in one thousand pieces
Then the pieces hidden in one thousand places
Then those places found by some sorceress of doom
Who will bring them together in a torture room
And with some sort of dark magic make him alive
And he will shout "again?" and he will cry and strive
His body still painful, his memories still fresh
Of all the spikes and knives that dug into his flesh
He knew they would dig again and kill him once more
With the same sword that in his flesh already tore
And he will scream again and cry and whine and gloat
As the sorceress cuts his hands, his feet, his throat
She summons the dark forces from the other side of life
Every single one of them with a dagger or a knife
That they will point in his body and wake him up that way
And he will come back again to suffer another day
He will escape the sorceress
He will escape her dark forces
He will flee towards the city
Hoping he will be safe and free
But the evil will be punished
He will be beaten and famished
By the people who will find him
Let another torture begin!
The city folks are tired of their kings
And want to make this one pay for his sins
He will feel the cold, he will feel hunger
He will feel the power of their anger
The hungry folks of the city
Will cut on him with no pity
They will eat something fresh
They will feast on his flesh
"I am happy to see that you are finally eating again, little dove."
The voice of the queen woke Sansa from her reveries about the last stanza. The last two lines had one syllable less than the first two ones and she had promised herself that she will try and make her stanzas even. Not with each other, she was much too emotional for such regularity now, but still... Within one stanza, she always wanted to have the same number of syllables per verse... That was her... Thing. Even at her worst, she would want her verses to be even. And her stanzas to have four lines, no more, no less. Yet this time... They will eat something fresh, They will feed on his flesh... It was beautiful. The image was so vivid in her head, so clear and bright... But now she has to answer something to the queen, or the queen will make one of her famous hurtful and utterly annoying remarks, and Sansa felt that if she heard one more of those, she will start dreaming up of poems about Cersei too.
"Yes, your grace. I have found my appetite again."
Only then did Sansa look at her plate and noticed that it was empty. The meals that she was served here in King's Landing were always huge and copious, and even in her best days she could never finish her plate. It truly is incredible how imagining that her food was made out of the body parts of the king did wonders to her appetite...
The king was now alone, lost in a dark forest
And his mere presence there disturbed somebody's rest
An army of skeletons emerged from the soil
With the aim of making him pay for all their toil
King Joffrey moved backwards with fear
How did he even end up here?
What was that noise behind his back?
A skeleton hand grabbed his neck.
His breath escaped his lungs and flew in the night
He was too weak to cry and too weak to fight
Skeletal hands on his body, caressing
Going under his clothes, he was protesting
Screaming this time when they invaded his body
In an unclean way, in a way which was bloody
In a way which hurt both physically and inside
That he will never wash from his skin or his mind
What they did to him further, that, we will not tell
Until the moment their hands dragged him straight to hell
Where he will learn new types of pain to men unknown
And they will laugh while king Joffrey will scream and moan
For he'll be feeling the worst pain anyone ever felt
His blue eyes will drop from their sockets and his skin will melt
As the fire consumes him and he utters one last scream
"If gods are real and they hear me, let this all be a dream!"
As soon as he finished the thought, the king opened his eyes
And realized that in his bed he safely and soundly lies
He walked his head high in the throne room and sat on the throne
Thinking that his nightmares and his troubles were forever gone
But the throne didn't want an usurper sitting on it
So the spikes cut deep through the flesh of the arse of the git
And when he jumped and made the mistake to lean on the back
Of the throne, it also cut through his head and through his neck
Sansa chuckled without realizing it. Now all the eyes were on her.
"What are you laughing about?" spat Joffrey.
"Oh... Um... Nothing your grace."
"You might be dense, but you wouldn't be laughing for no reason." Joffrey shouted. "The king has asked you a question!"
The silence was heavy around the table. Cersei was giving Joffrey her side-eyed stare, while the king's younger brother and sister were silent.
"I... I recalled a funny story with two pigeons" Sansa replied.
"Pigeons?" inquired Joffrey.
"Yes... Pigeons. This morning I heard them in front of my window. They were chasing each other. They... They could've been playing... Or they were fighting, I... I don't know."
Everybody around the table was listening. Sansa took one deep breath before continuing the story.
"At one moment, the pigeons went too close to the vegetation of the castle. They flew straight into it. One of them managed to untangle itself, but the other... The other couldn't. The herbs were holding too tightly, they were knotting in the pigeon's feathers... Every move could kill the pigeon. Every move... The second pigeon. The second pigeon flew far, far away... But then it came back! It came to save its sister."
Why'd she say sister? How could she possibly know that those pigeons were sisters? And do pigeons even have those sorts of... Relationships? Oh, and why would she care now, she was making it all up anyways. She continued.
"The other pigeon tried to pluck out the thorns that were trapping its sist...the... The feathers. The trapped pigeon's feathers. But it was hard. At one moment, a strong gust of wind blew and somehow, the entire part of the vegetation unstuck from the rest, trapping the other pigeon with it and falling to the floor."
Why did her eyes sting?
"It was funny to watch because... Isn't that ironical? Pigeons dying from a free fall."
"Yeah," the king said through a half-grin after a couple moments, "that's a funny story indeed."
They all went back to eating and ignoring her. Sansa was left to continuing the rest of the story in her head.
The two pigeons merely died
When they came back from the dead
With only one thing in mind
Going for king Joffrey's head
So they flew up to this room
They found us at this table
They were prophesying doom
For the one they'd disable
They went for Joffrey's face
And they plucked out his eyes
They robbed him from his grace
Now let's just hope he dies
They didn't leave us hope in vain
For then two dead prostitutes came
They came to torment their killer
On his head they dropped a pillar
For their strength was stronger in death
Than it was when they were living
They wouldn't just take his last breath
They'd take their time at his killing
In front of a horrified queen Cersei
Who was screaming for them to have mercy
Who was begging them to save her son's life
They dragged him and then killed her with no strife
They dragged him to the dark cellar
Where a man stood with a knife for flaying
He would torture every cellar dweller
And then he would kill them, there's no saying
All he would have to eat would be his own eyeballs
Living in that room with his blood smeared on its walls
His stomach full if worms that eat him from inside
All that while the ex-king's on his pole, firmly tied
And when the pain crosses the line
When it becomes too hard to take
When it becomes as strong as mine
When I saw my father's head on the stake
When it hurts as much as my chest
Every time I go to bed
And when my sleep is no rest
I won't rest until I'm dead
When all his pain becomes so hard to bear
So hard that it can finally compare
To the pain that I feel right now and here
The pain I feel more painful with fear
Then, when I will judge it fair,
Sitting on the iron chair,
I'll order that king Joffrey
Be put out of his misery.
She needed to repeat it.
Then, when I will judge it fair,
Sitting on the iron chair,
I'll order that king Joffrey
Be put out of his misery.
Then, when I will judge it fair,
Sitting on the iron chair,
I'll order that king Joffrey
Be put out of his misery.
It was the end of the meal. Sansa stood up and went up straight to her room. Tonight, as every night, she will dream of her father's execution. She will dream of her mother who will never braid her hair again. She will dream of her three brothers far, far away. One of them bravely fighting to save her. Two of them needing to be saved themselves. She will dream of her sister, she will refuse to believe that she was caught and killed. But she will dream it. As every night before this one, her dreams will be dark and frightening. So she will try to influence the images that will come in her dreams by those that she created. They were equally dark and frightening, but at least, they were directed at the one who was the cause of her nightmares in the first place. From now on, every time before she falls asleep, as a prayer, she will recite her poem... Repeating its last lines over and over again, until she falls asleep.
So here it is, the tale of hatred towards king Joffrey. I think that pretty much all of us can understand Sansa hating him so much...
I hope that this fanfic has quenched your thirst for seeing him suffering while waiting for the fourth season, just as it did mine xD
Lots of love to all my readers, and don't hesitate to drop me a review! Your thoughts, your feelings, your opinions, I'd be very interested to read what you have to say and to see whether you liked my fanfic :)