Sansa

Meanwhile, in a quiet village not far from the castle, little Sansa Stark felt anything but grumpy.

(It might be worth it to point out that, no matter how young or childish Sansa might look, she was sixteen. This is because all girls in stories are sixteen. For legal reasons, you're not allowed to attend the ball in a pumpkin carriage, touch a cursed spinning wheel, dance with your prince charming or go on an epic quest to save the world until you turn sixteen. You can start early with dwarves and poisoned apples if you've got a signed permission slip, which is hard to get given that your average protagonist is an orphan. Sansa still had both her parents, but she didn't much like apples and had decided to stick with lemoncakes, for which you don't need any permission slips.)

Sansa was a very beautiful girl, with soft auburn hair and a pretty smile and graceful movements. She looked just like a princess, and she had her heart set on becoming one. Ever since she was very little, Sansa had known that the only way for her dream to come true was if she married a prince.

Unfortunately, the only prince in all of the land was the aforementioned Prince Joffrey, who wasn't exactly a contender for Future Husband Of The Year, but Sansa was willing to overlook several awful character flaws for the sake of the pretty silver tiara that came with the royal title.

Despite what everyone said about Prince Joffrey, Sansa was sure that if he proposed she would have accepted in a heartbeat. On the day after the evil enchantress of R'hllor had showed up, Sansa was walking towards the castle with her direwolf Lady at her side, hoping to meet with the prince and talk about their future blonde children.

"You should see how he treats his dogs, like they're nothing to him," Lady complained for what was probably the hundredth time. (Yes, Sansa's pet direwolf is talking in this story. If I had any skill with rhyming, she might even had broken into song.) "And he treats humans just the same."

"But he's so pretty," Sansa replied with a pout. " Besides, he's always been so nice to me." Lady snorted, but since direwolves don't have an equivalent for 'just wants to get into your knickers', what with not wearing knickers in the first place, she couldn't find a suitable reply and the conversation stalled.

Just then, Prince Joffrey appeared on the horizon. (If this story were in any way, shape or form realistic, maybe he wouldn't have appeared immediately. Maybe he'd have shown up after ten minutes or so, which would have translated to ten paragraphs of describing Sansa's hair or the color of the leaves on the trees or the songs of the birds. But that would have been boring, and I'm not that desperate for word padding, and anyway we already kissed realism goodbye when we introduced the talking wolf. So, Joffrey just has impeccable timing. Hooray!)

Joffrey appeared on the horizon, riding the fastest horse from his stables and followed by all of his guards and servants on slightly slower but still very fast horses. All horses had suddenly decided that it would be a very bad idea to stay near the castle, in case they got turned into servants or carriages and sent to the ball.

"Sansa!" the prince exclaimed as he saw her. "Good timing! A crazy evil enchantress has just taken over my castle. You should have seen her! She had huge boobs. Oh, and she also killed my dog."

"That's... terrible," Sansa replied, choosing to ignore the boob comment. "If you're not a prince, I can't be a princess. Surely there must be something you can do to regain your rightful throne?"

At those words, Joffrey had an idea. "Let's get married," he said. "So your father and his men will have to come to my aid and together we will take back the castle from the evil sorceress."

Since she hadn't had much character development yet, Sansa beamed. "Yes, yes, I accept your proposal!" she said immediately.

"It was more of an order than a proposal," the jerkass prince replied. "But whatever. The sooner we get married, the sooner we can start with the baby-making. We'll have at least a dozen beautiful babies and they'll all be blonde like me and beautiful like me."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Lady said. There was a convenient puddle of mud nearby and, since Sansa didn't seem inclined to do anything apart from standing there and beaming, Lady jumped at Joffrey and headbutted him.

He fell from his horse, screaming his usual high-pitched scream, and Lady watched with satisfaction as he tumbled headfirst into the mud.

"Treachery!" Joffrey shouted amidst mouthfuls of mud. "Guards, seize that dog! It tried to kill me!"

Lady scoffed. "If I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead," she said. "And anyway, this is a bowdlerized adaptation of the original story so nobody gets killed."

However Joffrey didn't seem very inclined to listen to her because he kept shouting orders and drew his sword. Or tried to draw his sword, at least. It got tangled in his belt, and when he struggled with it he slipped and fell in the mud again. (The scene would have been more entertaining if this were a movie, there could have been background music and a funny noise as Joffrey fell on his arse and a chorus of laughter from the guards.)

"What have you done?" Sansa asked Lady, her eyes going wide. She stared at Joffrey and debated the benefits of helping him out of the mud versus the hazard of getting mud on her dress.

When she finally gathered enough courage to extend her hand towards Joffrey, he slapped it away brusquely. "Don't touch me!" he screamed, crawling away. "Guards, arrest this girl and her dog. They tried to kill me."

Lady nudged Sansa away from him. "I told you he was trouble," she said, doing the canine equivalent of shaking her head and sighing.

Before Sansa could reply, the guards had closed in around her and Lady. They stopped at a safe distance, giving Lady worried looks, but Joffrey kept yelling at them and it was just a matter of time before one of them would attempt to grab Sansa.

With a growl, Lady jumped at the nearest guard. "What are you doing?" Sansa screamed.

"Run, Sansa!" Lady yelled without turning back. "Run!"

"But I haven't done anything wrong," Sansa protested as the other guards drew their swords. Finally, she took the first good decision in this story: she hitched up her skirt and ran for it.

Have you ever tried running into a forest? It's not exactly easy even if you're wearing comfy shoes and a tracksuit and staying on the path. Sansa was wearing a gown and her shoes were anything but sensible and she wasn't exactly the athletic type. But somehow, even though her hair and clothes got tangled in branches on a regular basis, she managed to outrun all of her pursuers.

This could be due to the fact that the guards weren't in any hurry to catch her because it would have meant going back to Prince Joffrey, and the direwolf was still circling around Prince Joffrey, and the guards were very attached to their jugulars and would have liked to keep them, thank you very much. Or it could be just because the story required Sansa to get away.

Either way, thanks to Lady's heroic sacrifice, Sansa managed to escape from Joffrey's evil clutches and therefore proceeded to do what every other princess would do in her situation: she got completely and utterly lost.

Unfortunately, there was no group of friendly woodland animals who could come to her rescue, so she wandered alone in the forest until nightfall. It was winter, by the way, in case you had forgotten. So by the time Sansa reached the castle, all she wanted to do was get inside and away from the freezing night wind.

Her fingers felt stiff and clumsy as they pushed a small side door open. Sansa peered inside and saw no signs of evil, big-breasted enchantresses, so she closed the door behind her and proceed to scour the castle for lemoncakes.

The first place she checked was, of course, the castle's huge dining hall. She was a proper princess-in-training, not like those wannabes who moonlighted as maids or seamstresses or whatnot. She had no idea of where the kitchens would be, let alone the pantry.

Luckily for her (and for our story), the evil enchantress had arrived just before a banquet. There was a fire roaring at one end of the hall and the long tables were already laden with soups and roast boar, now gone cold and unappetizing. But, to Sansa's delight, the desserts were still fresh and delicious. She picked up a tray full of meringues and started eating.

Okay, actually, before eating she carried the meringues to the table on the raised dais, sat down in a chair that she felt was appropriate to her birth, smoothed her gown, wished she could have washed her hands before her meal, searched her pockets for a handkerchief, didn't find any, wondered if Arya had been stealing her handkerchiefs again, surreptitiously wiped her hands on a corner of the table cloth and then started eating. Sansa felt that, even though she was alone in an empty castle, she shouldn't skimp on table manners.

When she finished her meal (meringues with a side of biscuits, Septa Mordane would have been horrified) Sansa cleaned her hands once more on the tablecloth and wondered what to do. She wished there was some servant around, so she could order them to put more wood in the fireplace, because she was still feeling chilly after her long trek to the forest. She was also feeling sleepy, which totally wouldn't do, because it made her think that back at home her sister and her brothers were probably about to go to bed.

This made her terribly homesick because it was the first time she had to spend the night away from her family. Sansa didn't know when she'd be able to go back home. She would have to apologize to Joffrey, and who knew if he'd forgive her? He'd been so angry!

To stop herself from thinking any more sad thoughts, Sansa started singing to herself. It felt a little silly, hearing her voice echo in the empty hall, but it was better than the eerie silence from before. And, if she occasionally forgot the words of the song, it didn't matter. There was no one listening or pointing out that she was getting too old to sing nursery rhymes.