It is different in the North. Oh -- would that you could see it! We lived happy lives. [ i lived a happy life, though she would have scarcely admitted so at the time. ] We sang and we danced and we played in the snow. It is the South that is so oppressive. Oppressive in its heat and in its...

[ the explanation is simple. she knows it is. but it's shameful to confess. but perhaps she can fill in the edges of the tale with a simple fact: ] My time in the South was spent in the King's court. And he...my brother and he were at war, you understand.

[ the term political prisoner would be apt here. ]

The war never--

[ hmm. no. she must begin at the start. she must treat it like a story. ] There was a time when Westeros was ruled by another king. King Robert. He and my Lord Father were firm friends from their boyhood days. And so King Robert asked him to his court, and he took me and Arya with him.

But King Robert died. And Joffrey was King after him. Although--

[ sansa pauses, asking herself whether she ought to share with him the rumours of joffrey's parentage. ]

Some say he did not deserve his throne. His claim was...suspect.

[ here she speaks treason. it puts a quiver into her voice. ]

It isn't a pleasant thing to say. It's...

[ really pretty gross, actually. ] His father the King may not have been his father. Not at all. Not in truth. That was what his enemies claim.

There are things worse than bastardy.

Ser Jaime Lannister. The Queen's own brother. He's -- [ she cannot bring herself to tread so near to the word incest, so she chooses instead a different path. ] Ser Gendry looks much more like the old king than Joffrey did. Does.

[ king robert certainly did. have a lot of bastards, that is. and sansa has made the acquaintance of two -- shocking, really, how similar her memory of mya stone is to ser gendry. ]

I'm not certain that every man's natural born child is so disliked. It's -- [ a delicate matter, stiles! ] I imagine it's treason still to talk about him like this. Him and his siblings. Though I swear they are sweeter souls than him.

[ tommen and myrcella! she likes them. liked them, when she knew them. when she could know them. ]

[ sansa could not explain it. she's too far invested -- she does not see the webs and reasons. but even she, with her first-hand experience of marriage pacts, could begin to see how natural born children threaten the tentatively tied alliances of westeros. in truth, from so high up low-born bastards were near indistinguishable from the rest. high borns, however!

she bit her lip and thought of jon. ]

Tommen is king, now. And I cannot blame him for his birth. As I said, he is sweet. But others still challenge his throne. Some of those challengers are already dead; some of them are here.

Lord Renly, for one. And the Starks. We --

[ no. they are not usurpers. they want only a free north. ] Ser Gendry may be King Robert's son, but he is not King Robert's heir. And yet my Lord Father swore to keep an eye out for him.

...I fled the capital with help from -- [ a friend? can she call him a friend, now? ] -- the man who calls himself Alayne Stone's father. He thought it best I hide: took on another name, darken my hair, lie.

And so it is not all falsehoods. The Eyrie is real. And I have lived there. And Lord Peter Baelish is real... [ and some days she wishes he was here. ]

[ she senses the insult offered to her one true friend back in the vale, and she tries to ignore it. it would not suit her to be defensive. ]

N-no. Not now that I am to take my place as father's heir, as he seems eager for me to do. That is why I travel with Ser Gendry when he goes.

...Daughters inherit when there are no brothers remaining to take up their father's title.

Yes. Jon cannot inherit. My mother and my father's marriage was a pact their their true-born children should carry their legacy.

[ sansa stands to inherit more than her father's titles. the poor riverlands-- ] And even if he could, he's taken the black. He's abdicated all claims.