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They crown Sansa with a rope of twisted steel, two wolves arching across her brow in a delicate embrace. No stags upon this crown—no branching antlers, no gleaming manes, no blooming hearts of southern roses. No fire, no blood, no graceful sweep of scales and wings, or the silver bite of dragon’s teeth.
It is winter that they crown her with, the snows and the winds and the harsh love of the North that they sit upon her burnished head. She listens to their cheers, and holds her slender neck strong beneath the weight.
A thousand kings have been crowned within these walls. Builders, Breakers, Burners, Bridegrooms, have ruled within these halls, with love and fear, with strong hands and weak words, through winters, summers, autumns, and spring.
Now Sansa joins their stony ranks, straight-backed and steely-eyed as the sons and daughters of the North, the Riverlands, the Vale, kneel at her feet. They have bled for her, burned for her, stood shoulder to shoulder against the forces of darkness and night for her.
She has bled for them in turn; upon polished stone before green-eyes kings, upon the soft linens of the marriage bed. Upon the very gown she wears now, stitched in the light of dying hearths by her own raw, aching hands.
The Quiet Wolf was slain by southron lords, the Young Wolf’s blood spilled upon the stones of an ally’s keep. The White Wolf is gone beyond what remains of the Wall, and there is no whisper in the wind as to when he may return. Two of them had once been crowned, as she is now, in times of war and bloody storms.
It is blood that has bought this crown, that has kept the walls of her home standing tall. Blood has brought them this far, Sansa knows this all too well. But it will bring them no further.
These are not the times before them, not the challenges they must face. It is not the warriors who will see that the people of the North survive the winter ahead, and this they know.
Instead, they bow before a daughter of the land, and lay their fealty at her feet. Sansa is not so proud as to begrudge all those they had gifted it to before her—it is hers now, to seize with both hands, draw close to her breast, and hold beside her beating heart.
She is their daughter, their sister, their mother, their queen, and she will feed them, keep, love them for as long as she may call them her own.
Later, when the sun has set and the moon has risen beyond the clouds, she will venture alone into the snow, her head bare of cloak and crown. Sansa will sink to her knees before the great heart tree, and make her pledge to the gods of old.
It is the vows of men she takes now, in velvet and brocade and a glinting crown. Vows of duty, of loyalty, of honour, hand clasped on the hilt of a blade she cannot swing. The weight of the words she speaks before these hundred bowed heads is not one she takes lightly, but it is still only the weight of a promise to men.
The pledge she will make before the Old Gods is of another, wilder nature. Its language is older, and has the brutal ceremony of simplicity, unlike the gilded phrasing of kings. No witnesses will see her make it, no maesters will record her words within their pages. No other breathing king will know what promises she makes—only Sansa, and the trees.
They come to her in droves, nobles and smallfolk alike. Wintertown spills beyond its bounds, stretching away from the shadow of the walls, and straw pallets line the length of the Great Hall, the kitchens, the cellars, wherever there is room.
The population of Winterfell grows, swelling to five times the numbers they recorded before the Long Night had begun, and still, they come, dragging wagons and leading mules, all of them hoping for the warmth of her embrace.
Almost always, it is womenfolk seeking the safety of Winterfell’s hearth, left vulnerable from the loss of their husbands and brothers, fathers and sons. Taken by war, by wights, by winter, it makes no difference.
They have done what they can to tend to the farms, to sow the scant winter crops before the snows grow too deep, and to keep the livestock fed. They have done their best to hunt and to fish, and to keep the fire burning in the hearth of their family’s home. But for most, it is not enough, and they must survive.
Sansa brings them all within her walls. She will leave no woman out in the snow, even as their meals shrink, and the faces of her people grow thin, and she shares her bedchamber with Brienne and Alys and Myranda, Gilly and Sam and their children in the antechamber beyond.
The women that come to her are hungry and cold, with lined faces and threadbare clothes, trailing children, clutching babes, leading elders, and all of them nursing that same unseen hurt that Sansa knows so well. She has seen women like that before, has been a woman like that herself, and so long as she rules in the North, none will be turned away from the sanctuary of her home.
In histories that have not yet been written, they will name it the Widow’s Winter, both for the queen who rules, and the women left after circumstance has robbed the kingdom of its menfolk. Not all those who arrive before the walls are widows, and Sansa herself will rarely be remembered so, but each will be written as receiving the Widow’s Welcome, and a place in the Queen of Winter’s hall.
They will speak of a city birthed from her words, and grown in the shadow of great stone walls. A city of girls, maidens, matrons, and widows most of all, the only menfolk were those boys still too young to swing a sword.
Mostly, the histories will be right. The men of Wintertown are few and far between, most of them ill, and aged, and ravaged by the savage teeth of war and winter snow. The Free Folk keep their own camp, sheltered beneath the thick canopy of the wolfswood, and there are men among their numbers, but they are not a people who care for the frivolity of written record.
Instead, it will be written that once the winter winds begin to blow, no man will walk through Winterfell’s gates, or come seeking the sanctuary of its queen, until the southern snows begin to recede, and the sun shines in the sky once more.
Then, they will come, and Sansa will be glad of it, but then is not now, and winter has only barely begun.
The days are short, and their work hard. What little can be done in the few daylight hours, they do. The rest is done in darkness, the shadows staved off by lanterns, candles, and the glowing warmth of the hearth.
Sansa works alongside them, pinning back her hair and fastening her skirts about her waist so they fall only to her knees, leaving her lower legs and feet free and unhampered as she toils. Bundled in thick layers, a woollen scarf wound about her face and covering her distinctive red hair, many would have difficulty distinguishing her as their queen.
The old stonemason’s apprentice, propped on crutches and his left leg ending in a bandaged stump, oversees the cutting of stones, and the relaying in places where Winterfell’s walls have begun to crumble. A groom’s daughter instructs on the feeding and care of livestock, clad in a short tunic and woollen trousers.
She has none of the skills such work requires; her lessons, when they had been deemed necessary for Sansa to attend, had been concerned with the names of the great houses, their histories, the names and dates of their great deeds.
None of it serves her now, as she hauls rubble from the snowy courtyard, pulls frozen weeds from the empty beds of the glass gardens, breaks the layer of ice formed over the well again and again and again.
It is harsh, hard work. They rise before the sun, crawling out from beneath the furs, bodies aching like old women.
Those in the kitchen wise even before that, and Sansa has no difficulty being grateful as she swallows hot mouthfuls of the meagre broth. It steams in the bowl, burning her throat as she swallows, and still, she shivers from the cold, despairing at the prospect of venturing behind the relative warmth of the hall.
There is work to be done indoors—caring for the babes and young children, tending to the sick and injured, stoking the hearths and feeding the bonfires. These jobs go to the frail and the elderly, the pregnant women and the children not quite reached maturity, but Sansa could work among them, if she so wished. It would be her right, as their queen.
She resists such temptation only barely, for even buried in layers of wool and worsted and thick fur, the wind still bites at her skin. She longs to be warm, to bathe in the heated water of the springs and thaw her frozen body before a roaring fire.
But she has sworn oaths to serve and oaths to protect, and even if she had not, Sansa has learned long ago the wisdom in choosing not to serve herself.
As her ladies had trembled deep within a stone keep, and stifled their cries with silken gags, a golden queen had lounged atop her dais, regal and remote as she signalled a taloned finger to the page bearing a pitcher of rich, dark wine.
A silver queen has ridden astride a great black dragon, the wind catching in the bright bells strung through her hair as the beast brought fiery destruction upon the forces below, too high to hear the screams, or know if they came from friend or foe.
The red queen walks among her people, works and sleeps and eats alongside them too. She is frozen when they are cold, starved when they are hungry. Her hands grow rough with callouses and crack in the cold, her cheeks and brow are burned red from the icy wind. There is snow in her hair, soil beneath her fingernails, and weary lines branching from the corners of her eyes.
To southroners, Sansa would not appear to be a queen. She wears no silks or cloth-of-gold, her shoes are made from undyed leather. No rings adorn her fingers, no jewels nestle in the curls if her hair, or sit at the hollow of her throat. Her crown has not been worn in many moons, and rests in a simple oak box in her father’s solar.
They would not know her for a queen, but it is not the southroners she rules. Sansa has watched many queens who wore fine silks and jewels, watched them rise and watched them fall, and learned from their mistakes as if they were her own. Things have always been done differently in the North, after all.
Old Nan had told them many stories as children, all gathered about her even as they grew too old for such things. Northern stories, all of them, of giants and direwolves and the Children of the Forest, of wildlings and warrior women and Kings of Winter, and the Long Night that had come before.
In the evenings, when their day’s labour has been done and they gather at the hearths and rest their stockinged feet before the flames, and gather their work in their laps, Sansa remembers what she can of these stories. The nights are long, quiet except for the wind, and the hearth is not the only thing to warm them as she shares the stories of her childhood with the women sitting around her.
She is not the only one to have heard these stories, not the only Northern daughter to lay a claim. Alys chimes in with details Sansa forgets, and picks up the threads of a story when she lets them drop. She’s happy to let her, happy to be lulled into a half-slumber by the familiar words, by the click of knitting needles and the thump of the loom, and the soft rasp of the whetstone.
When they two of them have told every story the North has to offer, Myranda takes up the thread, sharing the legend of the Vale, of mighty stonemen and weeping mountains. With baby Jonny asleep at her breast, Gilly offers tales from beyond the Wall, similar, but curiously different to the Northern stories Sansa knows.
Even Brienne is coaxed into speaking, laying Oathkeeper to one side as she carefully recites the epics and adventures of the Stormlands, brow furrowed in concentration. Sansa is fascinated by them all.
Winterfell burned when it fell, and the library had burned with it. Histories of ancient kings, genealogies of Northern families, crop records for a hundred years' worth of summers—all of it had burned. The volumes of folktales, of mythologies, odes, and epics had burned along with them.
As they sit around the hearth, each of them remembering what they can, Sam sits a little apart. He is silent, bent over a sheaf of parchment, his quill scratching softly against the vellum.
This is part of rebuilding, part of healing. Not just reinforcing the walls with well-shaped stones, and planting rows and rows of new seed in the glass garden, but ensuring that they leave something of themselves behind, something to be shared around the hearths of their children, and passed down to their grandchildren.
Sansa tells herself this as she chokes out memories of her childhood, of her father, her mother, of Robb, of Rickon, of Theon, of Lady. Memories of Uncle Benjen, Jeyne Poole, Jory Cassel. She needs to know that they have been told, that they will be remembered by someone who is not her, and there is no one else to speak of such things.
The months of winter become years. Sansa spends every day reviewing Winterfell’s stores, sending desperate raves to lords in the Westerlands and the Reach, waiting impatiently for wagons sent from White Harbour to struggle through the drifts, and thanking every god she knows that the glass gardens have been repaired.
What Free Folk that chose to remain in Winterfell for the Winter have proved vital in the attempts they have made at hunting. Alys’ Thenn husband teaches the boys and the able women how to string a half-size bow and flush game from its winter home, and Gilly leads foraging parties in the wolfswood, showing them where to find the roots and fleshy vegetables that grow beneath the snow.
Still, they grow thin and lean. Sansa has lost count of how many times she has taken in her gowns, and wears several layers of stockings not only for warmth, but so that her boots do not shift about her narrow ankles. The cloak that she wears almost swallows her.
It is one of Jon’s, left behind when he had gone beyond the Wall. The cloth is dark, heavy on her sloping shoulders, but warm, so very warm. Sansa has not felt warm in a very long time.
The Free Folk think that the winter is drawing to a close, seeing signs in the wind and the weather that no one else can. To her, the snowdrifts at the base of Winterfell’s outer wall look just as high, the ice over the well frozen just as thick. She hopes they are right, in any case—does not know how they will survive another year.
Little Sam is walking now, wandering after his mother and tugging the tails of skinny cats. Baby Jonny toddles in his walk, babbling happily and waving arms chubby with baby fat. Theirs is a happy family, grown with the birth of another babe. A girl, this time, fair-haired, and named Talla for Sam’s sister.
For all that she loves Gilly and Sam, for all that she is glad the gods have blessed them and their children, Sansa finds it hard to watch them all together. It reminds her of things she would rather forget, people she sometimes struggles to remember.
She is not the last surviving Stark, not the last child of Ned and Cat to still draw breath. But in the depths of winter, watching Sam chase after his sons, and Gilly nurse her daughter, wrapped in the embrace of an over-large cloak, Sansa has never felt more alone.
The Queen of the Iron Islands sends words that the winter storms are ceasing, the roiling seas calming. The ravens fly easier, too. It takes days, instead of weeks, for a message from Sunspear to reach Winterfell.
There had been no word from the Citadel, no white wings on the wind, but even so, Sansa begins to quietly hope that the winter will soon reach its end.
She does not allow herself to consider what that might mean—who that might bring. But as the watery daylight slowly grows stronger, and the people of Wintertown depart in groups and small caravans, straggling away over the drifts, she begins to hope.
The days slowly grow longer, yet more often now than before, Sansa finds herself confined indoors, poring over illegible charters and charred records with Sam, struggling to find a path forward for them once the snows have gone.
They are an insular kingdom, the North. It has served them well in the past, to rely on no one but their own. But the winds have shifted, times have changed.
She has brought them allies, brought the Riverlands and the Vale into the fold. But they are not alliances in the true nature of such a thing; the bonds are of a personal nature, formed by marriage, mothers, and blood, and inextricably attached to her.
If they are to survive in this new world, Sansa needs to find a reason for them to stay beyond these, and to draw in other kingdoms besides. Trade is what they need, a revitalisation of the old routes and the development of new.
The North has lumber, leagues of hardwood forest needed for the construction of fleets and cities and mighty empires. Hides and furs, too, when the winter has passed and they do not need them for their own. Ice, and granite, if affairs with the mountain clans can be arranged.
All these they can send south, carried on Ironborn ships that must find livelihood without raiding. They can do it, she knows they can, but it will take years to establish, lifetimes, even. Longer than the hours she and Sam spend locked in what was once her father’s solar, hunched over old volumes.
Once, Sansa had tired of reading easily, had pushed away the books for her lessons, and complained of sore eyes and an aching head. Now, she reads long into the night, bonding her hair back with strips of cloth and burning tallow candles down to weeping stumps.
When the wagons from White Harbour are no longer being buried in snowstorms, she has Lord Manderly send copies of the volumes that had burned with Winterfell, as many as can be replaced. He is more than happy to oblige, and many of these join the stacks on the old oak writing table, to be read when she finds more hours in the day.
The callouses on her hands have worn down to nothing, the cracks in her skin have smoothed over. Instead of burning red knuckles, her fingers are stained black with ink, strained and spasming from hours of writing with a quill.
Her crown remains in its box, nestled among layers of carefully stitched silk. She will wear it again, one day, but she is a queen even without its weight.
In the songs, the return of a hero is accompanied by the bright fanfare of trumpets, by the cheers of an entire kingdom, by the voices of a heavenly chorus. There is no such welcome when Jon Snow rides once more beneath the gates of Winterfell.
If he were Aegon Targaryen, perhaps there might have been. But he is not, and never will be, by his own request and by Bran’s decree, and so he arrives without note, riding through the gates with Ghost at his side as though it were years before, when summer reigned, and they had all been children still.
Sansa is in the glass gardens when he arrives, walking the rows with Little Sam clutching tightly to her hand. They are examining the delicate sprouts of the cowberries when Brienne gives her the news, broad face flushed ruddy with her haste.
She has never moved so fast as she does now, feet flying as though they have grown wings. Three years of winter she has weathered alone, steadfast and strong as a heroine of old, and now he has come.
Winter has changed him. She can see it in the weary set of his shoulders, the deep shadows beneath his eyes, the way his dark curls tangle about his shoulders.
In some ways, Sansa is glad it has changed him—it has changed her after all, and the vain girl that sometimes joins her in the dark of night had been afraid of being left behind, cast aside. But it is still Jon beneath that heavy, lined face, and when she looks at him she knows her fears have been for nothing.
Still Jon, who leaps from his horse and staggers the last few steps between them, sweeping her into an embrace that lifts her feet from the ground. He is wearing the cloak that Sansa had made him, when the winger had barely begun, and she rests her cheek on the shaggy fur, letting his warmth leech the cold from her skin.
There will be concerns about his presence, worries about what it will mean for the delicate peace they have wrought. But as Jon sets her gently on the ground, slipping an arm about her waist, Sansa cannot bring herself to care.
Sansa will never come before the Old Gods with a crown upon her head. It would be an unspeakable arrogance, to raise herself to something like their equal.
The lords do not like it—spend hours petitioning to change her mind, long after they know she is resolved in her decision. She cares not, for there is little and less that they like, and she does not need them to understand, only obey.
Jon understands it, he always does. If he were another man, she might worry at his eagerness to see her without a crown.
But he is not another man, not one of her former husbands or past betrotheds. He is Jon, who Sansa has known since she was a girl, who stands quietly at her shoulder as she does battle with the lords, and sits at her feet before the hearth, resting his dark head in her lap.
She will wear no crown before the Old Gods. Instead, Alys and Myranda braid her hair into a burnished wreath, and Gilly weaves in pale, pointed snow stars that stand out like the most delicate of jewels about her bare head.
The gown Sansa wears is one she has made herself, bent over the cloth late into the night, stitching until her fingers are worn down to the bone.
Once, she had thought it would be a gown her mother would help her see, that Sansa would tell her mother of her fears and hopes for the future as they stitched, and listen to the wisdom of her mother’s additional years.
She grieves the loss, of course, but it is an old one, one that she can set aside with all the others, like a tarnished set of memories that she can take up and remember another time. Now is not the time for lingering in the past—they are in the days of the future.
Brienne walks with her down the snowy path, strong forearm offered for Sansa’s pale hand. She had once thought that it would be her father her, guiding her across the uneven ground, and calming her with his steady presence.
That is another loss she sets aside, offering Brienne a smile as she leaves her at the base of the Heart Tree. A steadfast protector to the last.
But Sansa does not need to be protected, not here, not now. This is her home, her heart, where she will live, where she will die, where her bones will rest until the end of time. She turns away, cloak sweeping over the ground, and joins Jon before the great weeping face.
She slips her hand into his, bloodless fingers squeezing his broad hand. He squeezes back, and some of the pallor has left his face. Together they face the Old Gods, and prepare to say their vows.