Character Information
Name: Sansa Stark
Canon: A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones
Canon Point: From her The Winds of Winter teaser chapter
Age: Late teens, around 17. While this is older than her last stated age in the book, it reflects the fact that an indeterminate amount of time has passed until her current canon point, as well as the author's original intent for a timeskip. Also, it keeps her icons accurate.
History: From the Wiki of Ice and Fire

Personality:

"Life is not a song, sweetling. You may learn that one day, to your sorrow."

There was a time when Alayne Stone believed she was living the life of a legendary heroine, a time when chivalry and beauty were sovereign over all. The knights were gallant, the ladies fair, and in her naivety, she could not have been happier. She was blissfully (and at times, willfully) ignorant of the reality of things, particularly those surrounding her. She lived in a castle and dressed in gowns of samite and silk, she ate lemon cakes when she wanted, and she was betrothed to a sweet and handsome prince who loved her well. There was a time when Alayne Stone was not Alayne Stone, but Sansa Stark.

But that time is far behind her, so far behind it now seems out of reach, distant and vague. Sansa Stark feels almost like another person. Another person, another life. Sansa Stark was naive, Sansa Stark wanted joy and love and a sweet life, and Sansa Stark tasted sorrow. Her family is, to her knowledge, dead. Her prince had her abused, had her beaten. Her home was razed and sacked. The song that Sansa Stark sought turned out to be a tragic one indeed.

Yet that was Sansa Stark, and not Alayne Stone.

Alayne is the alter ego she adopts at the instruction of her current guardian, the one playing as her father, and Sansa takes on the role to the point where she thinks of herself as being Alayne Stone, braver and wiser than Sansa ever was. This is one major illustration of her almost frightening capability to compartmentalise. Time and again, Sansa - and Alayne because the two are not so separate as she tells herself - shifts details or sets information aside. This stretches as far back as the first book when, faced with evidence that her noble prince is not the dream she perceives him to be, she tells herself her family members are to blame for things going awry - after all, they’re a far safer target than powerful people revealing themselves to be volatile and vicious. More recently, she refuses to question the intentions or interests of her false father, despite the fact she’s beginning to cotton on to his scheming. He saved her from danger, he keeps her safe now, and he’s really the only shield she has, so how can he not be looking after her?

Sansa lies to herself. She lies to others. She notes that she’s developing a talent for it, that it’s becoming easy for her. Recently, as a means of reconciling lying - perhaps as the daughter of a famously honourable and honest man, however secret that lineage may be - she tells herself that they’re acceptable as they’re “kindly meant”. Sansa lies to reassure and reasons that there’s no harm in that.

Despite these attempts at idealism, tragedy, trauma, and deception have begun to shape her from the naive girl she was. She is being made wiser and shrewder. These things may seem at odds with one another, and perhaps they are, but although Sansa has been growing more clever, keen, and prone to suspicion, she still falls back on that compartmentalising approach as both a coping mechanism and survival mechanic. The difference, perhaps, is that now she seems more willing to actually consider the undercurrent of what's happening and is beginning to gain awareness of things she'd previously have forced from her mind almost entirely. Petyr Baelish may be her father and protector, but Sansa is beginning to pay attention to his schemes. She is learning to adapt her skills to suit the game being played all around her - and in doing so, she's beginning the transition from piece to player.

“Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next. Sometimes the best way to baffle them is to make moves that have no purpose, or even seem to work against you. Remember that, Sansa, when you come to play the game.”

“What...what game?”

“The only game. The game of thrones.”

Alayne is sweet, polite, and oddly beguiling for it. Though shy, she is unfalteringly courteous, ("A lady's armour is her courtesy," Sansa Stark was taught), and she knows how to speak to people, how to be friendly and likeable. She is good at selecting which smile to wear for each person she encounters, and she seems warm and amiable to everyone from royalty to servant. She's careful, more so than her family (correction: Sansa Stark's family) was - she has an even-temper and seldom ever crumbles under pressure, even though bitter experience has her feeling worry and concern easily. Sansa was accused of being foolish, vacant - in Alayne, this only becomes further and further from the truth. Behind that armour of hers she hides the fact that she is a keen observer, seldom ever overcome with emotion even when faced with so much grief, and a strong desire to understand the people around her.

She still has some level of naivety, yes, or at least, there is still a fragment of her that desperately hopes for the world she once dreamed of, but she remains a thinker, prone to study and reflection. She has become practical, pragmatic. Experience has instilled in her a grim realism, though part of her (Sansa) still clings to the idealism of days past. She may not be a great strategist, but she remains intelligent, and possesses an eye for detail. We're repeatedly shown that she applies herself to learning that which is important to her - she excels in the ladylike talents taught by her septas, and though criticized as being a 'little bird', capable only of repeating what she's taught, it's clear that she pays attention to what goes on around her and learns from it. Alayne's courtesy and friendliness belie a cleverness that's being honed over time.

She possesses a genuine desire to please the people around her. Before some people, this is a defense mechanism - keep them smiling, avoid as much harm from them as possible - but when it comes to those who manage to grow closer to her, she harbours a need to be worth something. Though her sweetness is used as a shield to hide something broken, she is earnestly kind, and has only grown more so over the course of the story as she experiences her own grief and pain. Lancel Lannister treats her cruelly as a servant to the king, and is involved in her beatings even if he doesn’t raise a hand himself. Still, finding him gravely wounded, Sansa dismisses the idea of leaving him to die, instead calling for a maester to tend him.

In fact, Alayne is generally conflicted. She would show her true colours, but instead chooses to hide it out of necessity. But despite this conflict - and the conflict that has raged around her - Alayne has come from being frightened and vulnerable to someone with burgeoning courage, far more than she herself realizes. Instead of being crushed by the weight of circumstance, she has instead turned herself to steeling her heart and her head. This young girl has seen her father's head on a pike and lost her every shred of home and family. She has been beaten by men sworn to protect her. She has been threatened and abused. Surely, her endurance to pull through these things is extraordinary.

But Alayne hides such ability, largely because she's hardly aware of it herself. When Alayne looks at herself - or indeed, when Sansa looks at herself, she sees little there anymore. Time has hewn into her the feeling that she will not be loved for who she is, that after all she has been through, she may not even deserve what genuine warmth might exist in the world. Locked away in her is her grief, and her sorrow, and for all her loveliness Alayne possesses a suspicious, guarded mind, because that is what she's been taught over the years. Kindness is not a simple matter, it is a currency, and it is not a lie that she will fall for ever again.

The snow drifted down and down, all in ghostly silence, and lay thick and unbroken on the ground. All color had fled the world outside. It was a place of whites and blacks and greys. White towers and white snow and white statues, black shadows and black trees, the dark grey sky above. A pure world, Sansa thought. I do not belong here.

At a glance, Alayne appears friendly and sweet and beautiful, warm and open, but the reality runs deeper than that. She is a young woman who hides herself behind walls near insurmountable, and her trust is not to be so easily won. Though she dons the name and life of Alayne, she remains fiercely, privately proud of who she really is. And she is stronger, both in heart and mind, than it seems. Her time in Demeleier has served to make her more sure of herself and more comfortable in her means of keeping up appearances, but it also continually reminded her of direwolves and northern snows.

Abilities & Skills:

There is little supernatural or superhuman to Sansa’s name. She is not a fighter, either - her abilities are rooted in the sensibilities of her home. Westerosi society's expectations and visions of what the consummate lady should be are where her talents, and experience, tend to lie.

She sings, she stitches. She can read and she can write. She plays music. She has a head for details - not only for songs and stories, but for genealogies, remembering names and faces and family histories. Recently, she has learned about running a household, becoming the mistress of the Eyrie for a time. She is courteous. She is well-spoken. She is everything a young lady ought to be, regardless of her birth.

These things are easily dismissable, however, because while they may serve her well in Westeros, what use are they really? What good is etiquette, when it comes down to it?

But this, and all these things, are bound into a lesson Alayne had drilled into her early, a lesson that has kept her alive this long - courtesy is a lady's armour.

Alayne was taught by her father that there are two types of people in the world - the pieces and the players. All through her life, Sansa has been a piece, but now, thanks to her etiquette and her sweet words and her lady's armour, she is making the transition to player. It is easy to consider her skillset as that of a vapid girl, but Alayne is intelligent and sharper than she shows. Sansa Stark's disguise runs deeper than dyed hair. The adaptability that came with being able to speak politely to anyone, be they stableboy or queen or the knight who beat her black and blue, becomes another tool to Alayne's belt. Observant and keen, Alayne is good at noticing the little things, things others might overlook. She is quick to learn and studious. She is charming.

There is only one 'power' that Sansa might be able to claim - the ability to warg, or skinchange. This is an ability that Sansa never had the chance to explore, and does not even know to be possible; each of the Stark children were given a direwolf cub, and each of them formed a special bond with their animal. In Sansa's brothers and sisters, this directly becomes, or is alluded to becoming, the beginning of their ability to shapechange by projecting themselves into the mind of an animal and subsequently controlling it, but Sansa's direwolf was killed before she had the opportunity to start having the dreams that seem to kindle the ability.

Inventory/Companions: Only the clothes she’s wearing, well made and warm.

Choice: Witch
Reason: A lot of Sansa’s storyline revolves around her lack of agency, but she’s started to learn skills that are helping her make the shift from piece to player in the game (of thrones). I think that realising her potential as a witch both reflects and compliments this.

Sample: Fourth Wall top level