Viewer Mail request: Why did the Ramsay/Sansa rape subplot happen in Game of Thrones?

1) Because they love how Sophie can cry on cue — she did it so well in the first few seasons so they basically rehashed her KL storyline, turned the bullshit up to 11, and topped it off with gorgeously tousled post-rape hair.

2) They've never understood Sansa Stark as a character nor her story arc as written and frankly have never cared. They probably thought her Vale arc was "boring" so instead of giving her a hiatus season for "training" like they did Bran, they thought it would be more "dramatically satisfying" to see her get raped instead. In retrospect, this was just a cheap rape-revenge plot. They couldn't even do her the courtesy of becoming Queen In The North after going through all that bullshit.

3) Pure, lame shock value. D&D openly admit this. They said that they did this because they didn't think people would "care enough" about Jeyne Poole…. which… (a) is bullshit because Karsi was on the show for like 5 minutes and we all became pretty invested in her when she was killed, so THEY disproved their own point, and (b) THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT OF JEYNE POOLE!!! She's "expendable" in this world, she represents all the low-born folk who are just bought and sold and nobody cares. So D&D pretty much proved GRRM's point because they don't understand irony (or the books, obviously). So, they believed that people would be more SHOCKED by this rape if it happened to a character people were emotionally invested in. Even though…. was ANYONE "shocked" that Ramsay raped his new bride??? The only thing that was actually "shocking" was that they went through with it. That they had Sansa just sit around for 6 episodes doing nothing and just awaiting her fate.

4) Kinda ties in to #2, but they want Sansa to become Cersei 2.0. This has been obvious since Season 2, with Cersei giving Sansa "advice" on how love and caring about people is lame and will only hurt you and how a woman's greatest weapon is "between her legs". D&D openly admit that they "identify" with the Lannisters the most — this is why Tyrion is their Mary Sue and this is why Cersei is framed as a Strong Female Character™. This was confirmed in Season 7 with Sansa ACTUALLY STATING that she "learned a lot" from Cersei and deliberately wearing her hair like Cersei used to. D&D COMPLETELY MISS THE POINT of Sansa Stark's character development — she is NOT Cersei 2.0; she is the ANTI-Cersei!! All those "lessons" she gave Sansa, Sansa did absorb, yes…. TO SUBVERT THEM. "If I am ever queen, I will make them love me." CERSEI IS NOT A ROLE MODEL FOR SANSA FFS. But she is for D&D, so they are determined to make Sansa, a character they've never liked anyway, her heir apparent. And so they did it in the most gruesome, horrifying way possible. They pushed Sansa to a point where she HAD NO CHOICE but to become a bitter, hardened, vengeance-fueled "strong female character" like their idol Cersei. Like every other character on GoT. This was how they thought they could finally make Sansa a "worthy" character. But it backfired because people still hate her.

Because they love how Iwan can emote “crazy face” and needed to point him in a position to demonstrate “crazy face”. Also they needed Allfie “cry face” so they made him watch.
“Fuck Ramsay the character and Theon the character! We need to write for the actors not the fictional characters!” -sub conscious of Dave and Dan

They designed this scene to highlight Sophie Turner as a strong actress. To take her through an emotional Roller coaster of marrying Ramsey with rape as a cherry on the top. Similar to season 7 Arya, having "bad ass" stamped all over her scene to highlight Maisie can do action scenes. This is D and D's way of giving Sophie a scene she can use to get hired for other shows or movie productions

“It made sense to them because they wanted it to happen”- read: they got off on the idea of it. Sophie Turner should never be left alone with the writers…One day, writing about it won’t be enough.

D&D simply wanted more shock value. I disagree with many other commenters, I don't actually believe this was to show off the actors (for once). I think they wanted to bring the show back into the limelight as they did in the earlier seasons of Dany's rape and Joffrey's atrocities. They needed this season to have another in-your-face shock value subplot that brought the media attention back on them. This was a shot to stir up controversy that made the show a household name.

I thought that the wight hunt was about more than just "Wow, Emilia Clarke would have such a cool look on her face if we kill her dragon right in front of her" + "Wow, Kit Harrington does his own action scenes!". This is mainly because Emilia Clarke's face has always sucked (maybe I'm giving the writers too much credit here), and the ice zombie dragon was such an awesome sounding idea that of course they would impulsively add it without any regard to the plot mechanics of actually getting there. Clarke's face when seeing her dragon die was a huge bonus, and of course you can debate which was more important in D&D's mind, but I come down on the side of "Let's give the Night King a zombie dragon because it's so fucking awesome nobody will care how we give it to him" over "Emilia Clarke would look sad if we killed her dragon, who cares how we kill him". We both agree that Kit Harrington's stunt work was also a primary factor, even more important than any desire to give the Nigth King a dragon.

Granted, when the Blu Ray commentaries come out, I fully expect they just talk about Emilia's face, and add in the zombie dragon as an afterthought, so maybe I don't really disagree with you.

So, as someone with a minor disagreement about the lengths that the showrunners will go to pander the actors at the expense of story, the Ramsay/Sansa subplot was 100% "Sophie Turner is great at looking distraught, let's put her in a place where she can truly shine!" + "Man, Iwan Rheon is great at being sadistic, let's give him something to torture again". There is literally no other reason to add that entire subplot. If it was intended as the setup for a rape revenge storyline, they sure failed to mention that in the scene where Sansa executes Ramsay. She just says "History will forget you, also, your dogs are hungry"

Because D&D thought the vale subplot was boring in the book, they love how evil Iwan Rheon can act, and they want to keep the show has controversial as possible.

Well, as we have seen and as you have said before in many of your videos, D&D have massive egos, they assume anything they come up with is automatically good. So I think what happened is they just did this because Rape is a very controversial subject, and that because they think they're good writers, they'd put it in and assume they handled it well because they wrote it and wanted to use it to get an Emmy. In addition for more "LOOK AT THEIR FACES" Moments.

Before, I used to think that it was because they wanted a rape-revenge storyline. Rather than having Sansa stay in the Vale as she is in the books, growing, learning and becoming an actual player in the game, they instead have her married off to a serial rapist, raped (because, you know, ‘what choice did they have?’) and essentially throw out her book plot and any of the growth that she went through.

I thought that it was because D & D are idiots who thought that ‘Sansa gets raped and is a crying prisoner for a while but then she gets revenge and kills her rapist’ is a better storyline than what we got in the books. It was still idiotic, and made no sense to me, but I was naive enough to still believe they thought in terms of fictional characters.

Now, though, after watching your videos and looking more into it…

I honestly think that the Ramsay/Sansa subplot happened because of “Look at That Face”.

Sophie Turner gives a good crying performance.
Alfie Allen gives a good crying performance.
Iwan Rheon gives a good ‘creepy, sadistic villain’ performance.

Put those elements together and what do you get? A forced, contrived and idiotic rape plot that makes no sense, butchers Sansa’s character arc and turns her into a helpless, weeping damsel-in-distress prisoner again. But hey, at least we get some emoting out of it, right? That should win us awards, despite the complete lack of logic or proper storytelling on display here.

D & D logic:

Why have good, well-written story-lines with compelling characters and motivation, when you /could/ have actors making faces at the camera and crying on cue?

I feel it only resembles the Jeyne Poole story from the novels only for the fact of Theon and Ramsay's presence and the rape. In the novels, Jeyne Poole's story matters to the Northern characters. Lady Dustin says "Lady Arya's sobs do us more harm than all of Lord Stannis's swords and spears. If the Bastard means to remain Lord of Winterfell, he had best teach his wife to laugh." Indeed there's a whole Winterfell plot of lords readying themselves to turn on the Boltons, going out in a suicide mission, all to save "Ned's little girl." What happens to Jeyne enrages other characters and motivates them to action. And book!Theon's development is only a minor factor as he isn't involved in a majority of the rescue attempt. It creates huge butterfly effects on the entire Northern plot.
We have no hint that any Northern lord gave a fig about show!Sansa's rape. Even feminist icon Lyanna Mormont mocks her for her Lannister and Bolton marriages. It does nothing to motivate northern lords to join Jon and Sansa's cause for the Battle of the Bastards. Even though you've shown there was an original show ending with the Umbers and Karstarks turning on the Boltons, there's still no evidence that Sansa's rape was set up to be a factor in this. Sansa doesn't even get to use it to leverage the KotV out of Littlefinger while he's begging to make up for his "mistake." She has to go crawling back to him, ask him for the KotV in a letter, and hope he comes through. At most, she gets to kill Ramsay in a "dramatically satisfying" way.
What I'm getting at is that I can not only see any logical reason why the rape plot happened in the first place AND I don't see how it mattered that much to the plot going forward either. It mattered to Jon, which I'm sure was to give Kit some "dramatically satisfying" manpain to power up his death glare while punching Ramsay. That and Rickon's death. Looking back on seasons 6 and 7, what it mostly did was to give Theon a means of redemption so he could be forgiven by the Starks. So Sansa's rape, in the end, primarily served Theon's character, only mattered to male characters with a personal connection to Sansa, and it was a good way to show off the actor's emotive performances. The rape scene was like dropping a boulder in a lake and having the ripple effect of a pebble. What was the point if it affected so little?

I think so that Sansa's story on the show could be made more dramatic (her book storyline as Alayne in the Vale is not that dramatic/not much exciting stuff has happened in that story line so far) this then later lead to a more dramatic revenge story line where Sansa has Ramsey killed.
I don't think it's because Sophie Turner is a good cryer, she has shown that several times in earlier seasons, eg with Joffrey, and having Sansa cry in every season could become boring. They wanted something to happen to Sansa that would turn her from a sad girl into a strong woman, so Sophie could act all badass and angry.

Bc they lack the imagination that a woman could be an interesting character w/o being raped or losing a child. Plays right into D&D‘s „whore or holymother“ BS that you already talked about. They are really stuck in the past when it comes to writing female characters, and the fact that they don‘t have women as writers/directors anymore really shows here I think.

To pull off the novel's plot they would have introduce characters they'd already ignored (both in the Vale and on the North) and try to encourage viewers to get into subtle political machinations in the Vale. By joining the plotlines they could wring plenty of emotion from the cast while keeping up on shock value.

To make it dramatically satisfying.

I joke, of course

Good topic. Unfortunately, I think the answer is because it was easier.

They wanted to get Sansa in the North, both for budget and for story (symplicity really) reasons. They thought about a plot she could have there and ended up stealing Jeyne's, 'cause they didn't want Jeyne in the story and they thought Sophie Turner would be able to emote the rape scenes.
So, simplicity and Sophie Turner emoting.

They're lazy rather than have Jeyne Poole they wanted to cause more "Drama" by having it done to Sansa. They probably never liked the idea of LF in the Vale and Harrold Arryn etc. I don't think they even understood the "North Remembers" cause no one cared that she got repeatedly raped by Ramsay in the show.

Aside from their fanboyism over actors and trying to showcase their emoting capabilities, I think they wanted just another water cooler moment, something shocking and controversial. D&D do not care about the why and how or before and after of events. All they want is to potray events on screen. There are no in-universe consistencies and logic required and they do not get Sansa and do not care about her because you know, she is not the dragon chick or the tom boyish chick or the big sword swinging chick. Sansa is a very traditional feminine character and D&D do not like and don't get women who aren't riding dragons or swinging swords. Incase of Cersei and Catelyn, both of them were 'motherized'. All of their character's agency revolved around them being mothers. Catelyn's political agency was completely taken and given to other men and Cersei's narcissism, paranoia and cruelty was removed to potray her as this greiving mother who wants what's best for her children coz you know she can't be a bad mother. But they don't know what to do with Sansa, her time in Vale didn't fit into their stereotype and must have thought of it as boring and stupid. So, if you are a women in D&D's planetos and you don't ride dragons or swing swords, you SUCK!.

Knowing what we now know about how D and D think:

1. Sophie Turner is one of their "favorite toy" actresses (Calling her a favorite actress or actor would imply that they respected these people as professionals.). Her character goes through hell and does a lot of crying, so they've seen Sophie cry a lot. This is what they want to see her do.

2. But, if Sansa's in the Vale, she's learning how to be a player, in a position where she isn't completely helpless, and not crying very much. D and D can't get their fireworks here. Never mind that a fireworks display has no story or characters.

3. So, D and D need to send Sansa somewhere where Sophie can cry a lot. They look through nearby subplots and they remember their other favorite crier: Alfie Allen. He's in Winterfell, with Ramsay, the resident psycho. He's supposed to be married to Sansa's friend Jeyne Poole, who would suffer and cry a lot as his victim.

4. So, if Sansa takes Jeyne's place, Sophie will get to cry more, AND they won't have to go through the effort of introducing another new character. It doesn't really matter to them how they get her there, why she'd be there, or anything like that. They're going to take their best sad boy, and their best sad girl, and have them be sad together and cry on cue, and the audience will be moved by their suffering and this will lead to rewards somehow.

Somehow, they didn't factor in that if the audience was moved by their suffering, but able to notice how random it was, they'd turn against the writers more than Ramsay.

Since Jeyne was never introduced we can either assume D&D had been planning this plot change from the start, or they were never going to include it.

I think what happened is they had no idea what to do with Sansa’s story arc and decided that she would be a fitting replacement (which she wasn’t) and Sophie would also have many opportunities to emote scared and defenceless to the camera.

A few points about what the rape plot might have intended to achieve imo:

1 – Game of Thrones had built up a reputation for being a dark and edgy show, and naturally the showrunners wanted to take it a step further (note the burning of Shireen was also in this season). They wanted to get attention, and for what its worth, they basically got what they wanted to achieve there, at the expense of storytelling.

2 – It makes the audience hate Ramsey more. It seems somewhat likely that BotB was already planned out by the time this came around (or the rape plot might have motivated its creation). While BotB didn't do a lot for me (I'm still going to admit it has some spectacular shots though), it's obvious it reasonated with casual audiences, and, as much as I hate to admit it, the rape plot probably achieved more to hate Ramsey than the Theon torture stuff, simply on the basis that Sansa is the more sympathetic character. This was pivotal in building a (boring) good guys vs. bad guys plot for later on.

3 – As you constantly point out, the showrunners love putting actors in extreme situations to make them emote in the way they want them too. Ironically, the actors are not being shown off to the best of their abilities because of these extreme situations. Something a bit more nuanced and subtle would be needed to really show them off, because these are harder to pull off. I can't imagine acting horrified while being raped would be that dificult honestly.

The other thing with this is that actors don't get to show off their range because they are so tightly cast. Season 7 Davos (and even season 6 for that matter) could have been more interesting for example if he wasn't so cartoonishly cheerful all the time. Obviously they enjoy having Liam Cunningham playing that role as the smart, good spirited character (truth be told, he is a fan favourite with the casual viewers), even though Stannis died and Shireen was burned, so his personality should have changed somewhat. The one scene where he gets angry at Mellisandre is among his most memorable scenes. Heck, arguably the most memorable actor moment in GoT, Tyrion's trial scene confession is as memorable as it is because Tyrion shows a different side to his character. Ever since, Tyrion's become pretty boring, because he's the same in most scenes. This tight casting makes the actors look worse, not better.

Overall, it fails because the logic makes no sense, and it basically ruins Sansa's arc. Season 4 sees Sansa starting to come into her own, and then she regresses into a damsel in distress. It might have worked if she didn't need help with everything and achieved something on her own (it's that Ralph Wiggum analogy again). Furthermore, while it's shocking in a cheap way, it's also boring. Ramsey is evil already (they might have been pushing to make him worse than Joffrey, which they might have succeeded in, though in the most uninteresting way possible), Sansa doesn't develop, and in fact, regresses, and even Theon, who saves Sansa in the end, is stuck in some sort of time loop where he's playing out his redemption arc over and over again because the showrunners don't know what to do with him.

I think D&D thought that the fans would enjoy seeing Sansa turn the tables on Baelish. To that end having Baelish turn her over to Ramsey was an attempt to turn the fans against Baelish so they would later root for Sansa. It is clear from the way that the scene was shot that the rape was not meant to be overly shocking. I think D&D were focused more on the build up to the rape, to have audiences dread what was coming, and to drag that dread out.

They didn't waste the opportunity to zoom in on Sophie and Alphie's face for the scene. But in this case, I believe this was D&D trying to be clever with their writing to build up and maintain that dread, and to set up Baelish's death and how it would be Sansa's crowning moment, more than it was purely to watch the actors and actress emote.

Wouldn't be surprised if it was so we could get that long shot of Alfie Allen emoting…

Because Sophie Turner emotes best when she's a prisoner of some sort. Joffrey's dead so they switched to Ramsay. Being raped gives her an excuse to give more traumatised prisoner faces, which is also the reason that Theon was forced to watch and have the camera focused on him during the act

In Game of Thrones, characters don’t learn or grow: they are flat bricks. Ned Stark was honorable therefore Rob Stark and John Snow must behave exactly the same. Sansa will always be a damsel in distress devoid of any agency and with the same dubious will to become a princess from season 1. Arya’s sibling rivalry from episode 1 towards Sansa is her main driving force until season 7, when she’s not the Terminator.

To answer your question, the Sansa rape*scene happened for shock value and to show how Sophie Turner * can cry on cue.