I don't think Littlefinger actually cares about Sansa. I don't think he's genuinely capable of caring about anyone, in either the books or the show. He may have genuinely loved Catelyn before his duel with Brandon Stark, but after that I think he was just bitter and sociopathic. He may have even had sociopathic tendencies before that, but they were masked by youthful idealism and stories.Needle wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2017 8:39 amAlright, so let's assume he didn't know about Ramsay's psychotic behaviour: Roose literally stabbed her brother, and betrayed her family even though his house is sworn to their's. LF's portrayal on the series shows that he actually cares about Sansa, even if it's just an unhealthy obsession. Why would he marry her off to the people who murdered her family? Regardless if he assumed they won't hurt her because they need her to rule Winterfell, being forced to marry the son of the man who killed her brother and mother probably won't do well to Sansa's mental state.Casso wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2017 1:47 amWhile Ned and Robb were still in charge, Ramsay presumably kept his flaying secret. It had been outlawed, and he would have been executed (or fled into exile) if he was caught. Ser Jorah fled justice because he was caught selling slaves, so a bastard like Ramsay Snow would have certainly faced death or exile if he was caught. After the Red Wedding, Ramsay became more open and public about the flaying. He flayed the Ironborn garrison at Moat Cailin, but the only witnesses to that were his own people, who had likely learned long ago to keep quiet about Ramsay's activities.
The first really public flaying that non-Bolton northerners would likely have been aware of would be the Cerwyns. If they had any idea what kind of person Ramsay was, they probably would have paid their taxes the first time he asked, so it seems that prior to that incident, Ramsay's brutality wasn't generally known even in the north. By the time the Cerwyns had been flayed, Roose had already accepted Littlefinger's offer, and he informed Ramsay of the marriage right afterward, so Ramsay's brutality wasn't widely known yet when Littlefinger made the offer.
He wants to win "everything", and Sansa is one of the prizes he's striving for because getting her is essentially a proxy for finally "winning" that long ago duel, but as long as he gets her in the end, he doesn't really care if she suffers psychologically along the way.
I think he honestly did think that Stannis would most likely beat the Boltons, in which case he could show up with the Knights of the Vale, offer the Vale's allegiance to Stannis in exchange for marrying Sansa and becoming Warden of the North. Stannis would need Sansa to help hold the north anyway, so if she agreed to the match, Stannis would gain the support of the North and the Vale, which would make it a pretty good deal for him, even if he didn't like or trust Littlefinger. Littlefinger could then begin whatever plot he had in mind for undermining Stannis.
If Stannis lost, I think he intended to bring the Knights of the Vale to the North to reinforce the Boltons, while quietly working to undermine them and eventually kill Roose and Ramsay, and marry Sansa. Perhaps he planned to use Sansa to convince Ramsay to kill Roose, then have Ramsay executed for murder. Since most of the northerners didn't like the Boltons anyway, they might be glad to be rid of them and hand Winterfell back to Sansa.
In either of these scenarios, Littlefinger gets what he wants. Ramsay being such a complete psycho that Sansa flees Winterfell wasn't really an outcome he was expecting. As he's said many times, he's a gambler. He was playing the odds, but this time things didn't go as he planned.