Who has had the roughest ride on GoT so far?

Other: Theon!

Voted Sansa, but my second choice would be Cersei. She is not a sympathetic character, but hoo boy, has she had some shit thrown at her (figuratively and literally).

Theon? didn't think it was close.

Egh. Theon was a murderer and a lech before Ramsay got hold of him. Sansa was just spoiled and naive and has had to deal with both Joffrey and Ramsay.

Arya. There is something so soul-crushing about being THAT CLOSE to being reunited with her mother, only to have Catelyn (and Robb and the others, but especially her mom) slaughtered just as she and the Hound reach the Twins. She must lie awake and wonder what they could have done to arrive just a few minutes earlier, and maybe somehow rescue her mother.

This is such a hard poll because so many of these characters have struggled in so many ways. I do feel bad for Theon. Yes, he betrayed the Starks but he was every bit a product of his background as Cersi was. And she killed a lot more people. I'm more sympathetic to his plots than hers. Neither of them get my vote, however, because I tend to think bad people get what's coming to them.

For me, it's a tie between Sansa and Arya. Good girls who were delt terrible hands. I think Arya has found her strength, however, with Sansa not far behind. I fully expect both girls to emerge as great influences on the outcome of the show in one way or another.

When you get into this much betrayal, pain, abuse, torture, loss etc, I'm not sure there's a "most." It's like saying which is more a piece of fruit: an apple or an orange? They're different, but comparable.

Agree that Sansa has had it the hardest. Difficult to re-watch scenes from season one when she was a ditsy little teenager, knowing the long path she'd soon go down.

I think being broken to the point of thinking you are a dog (Reek), being violated in unimaginable ways, having your penis cut off . . . can be considered "having it bad."

He's done despicable things, including killing children. (So did Jaime.)
He was a disrespectful little shit. (So were a lot of characters.)

But yeah, I don't think anyone deserves Ramsey's torture. Sansa definitely had it worse, yes, but Theon wasn't on a list that included Jaime and others who didn't come close to surviving the same horror.

Then again, I am a sucker for redemption, and I think Theon has earned it. Reading the books, I HATED that I realized I had forgiven him, but that's what GRRM does best. He did it with the Kingslayer too, and Jaime's chapters became my favorite.

Arya will always be my girl, but Sansa deserves some serious respect! She's one (if not the only one) who has escaped from King's Landing and Cersei's wrath. Only to fall into Littlefinger's fingers and later end up with Ramsey. And now she's standing tall, the lady of winterfell.

Theon, Theon, Theon and... Theon.

JoyceAernouts said:

Arya will always be my girl, but Sansa deserves some serious respect! She's one (if not the only one) who has escaped from King's Landing and Cersei's wrath. Only to fall into Littlefinger's fingers and later end up with Ramsey. And now she's standing tall, the lady of winterfell.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I LOVE That she is rocking things so hard right now.

Roughest ride/dealt the worst is a kind of open to interpretation. If it's according to what they "deserve", then Theon and Cersei are straight out.

If it's what would I personally never want to have happen to me, Theon wins.

If it's injustices (not deserved), I'd say it's more of a four-way tie for second place among Jon, Dany, Sansa, and Arya, in that order.

But they all made choices, even if ignorantly. Jon chose to join the Night's Watch and break the tradition, Dany chose to pursue power and the Seven Kingdoms, Sansa chose to leave Winterfell and marry a king, Arya chose to make her list.

Jaime is an anomaly - I like him a lot, and feel for him, but he's made a ton of crap choices, few to none of them ignorant.

Tyrion is golden. Why is he on the list?

And then there's Bran. He never did anything except climb a wall he'd climbed a million times, at the wrong time. He annoys the hell out of me, but I can't for the life of me think of a single thing he's done in selfishness or malice or greed or even ignorance. His choices were taken away from him in Season 1, Episode 1. That, and assuming a life as the three-eyed raven is a life no one would want, I voted for Bran.

Other: Almost anyone from the peasantry.

#99percent
#helphelpimbeingrepressed

Despite the actor looking older and older, Bran is still a kid (even in a world where kids grow up fast). He's younger than Arya and has finally found a way to have some power in a world that sees him as useless.

Arya made reckless choices and didn't listen to Jaqen and suffered consequences too. Bran has (potentially) far more power than she does, but not yet much more wisdom. (Although that may come more quickly now that he can see so much more.) And, yeah. Bran can be frustrating because we want to see him doing amazing things with his abilities, not being stupid, but I feel like that would be a little unrealistic.

Theon certainly didn't deserve what Ramsay did to him, but he made a series of very distinct choices that put him into the position where he was captured by the Boltons. (Choices which involved betrayal, murder and greed.) Sure, he was basically a hostage who was then not welcomed home because he had adopted some of the ways of Westeros instead of clinging fully to his Iron Island roots. But I don't remember him being treated worse than Jon, despite acting like a shit to the Stark siblings. (Been a while since I read that first book.)

All of which is to say, some of the characters did things that put them in bad situations. Some of them had a distinct lack of control over their situation and suffered for it. And some made bad choices and paid a price because they are still kind of young and stupid.

Well said, AggyB.

And regdog, I don't mean to imply that Sansa had control - she was just a young teen (younger in the books I think) but her attitude started out with hating boring old Winterfell and begging her mother to let her go to King's Landing - and even not wanting to leave when Ned told them they needed to because she wanted to marry Joffrey and be his queen. But like AggyB (and Sansa herself, later) said, she was just young and stupid. And just to be clear, Sansa is one of my most favorite characters.

eta: damnit, I forgot about Bran disobeying the three-eyed raven. regdog is right; bad choice right there.

Even though my gut feelz always puts Sansa first--Queen in the North!--I didn't vote for her.

And no one had it easy-- except, oh lordy, Joffrey maybe? Right up until he died? And despite being the shittiest little shit, his 'father' despised him openly and his mother coddled him into a rotten egg so...

Wait, where was I? Right: so, I'd go with Theon. The worst thing is, the Stark kids had bad things happen to them because they were (big) small players swept up in big events. They made small bad choices, but nothing terribly egregious.

Theon... I mean, he was a small player, too, who made shit choices, but the BIGGEST shit choice was his own, and therefore will always know that everything bad that happened to him was ALL HIS OWN FAULT. And that's makes it all the worse.

Put Sansa, because it's the case. But let's talk about the many pits of suck Sam's been in, and how he's gonna end up saving Westeros because of it. Though with his family being Targ'd, I guess he stands to inherit a lot of land soon (more when the Lannisters go down).