Could You Bring Back A Man Without A Head? Not Six Times. Just Once.

‘’Could you bring back a man without a head? Not six times. Just once.’’

Arya’s time in Harrenhal is actively ignored and disregarded by certain circles in the fandom because that arc doesn’t fit with the agenda they have for their preferred fanon. Why? Because we see Arya being strategic, observant, self-possessed, intelligent, cunning, courteous, hard working, political, and able to read people and then adjust her behavior while dealing with them. She survives and escapes Harrenhal under the Lannisters and then the Boltons using her intelligence, not her minimal ability to use a sword. 

In particular, even among fans of Arya, she is regarded as constantly discourteous with a sassy comment always at the ready. In reality, she struggles but tries to remember her courtesies in AGOT. In ACOK, doesn’t struggle as much, especially by the time she gets to Arya X, where courtesy seems second nature. Her biggest struggle with courtesy comes from remembering to call Roose “my lord” in one scene in her ninth chapter, which seems to be something GRRM causally set up as a clue that by the time ADWD rolled around, he realized who Arya was.  Otherwise, she’s begging pardons, editing out insults from messages, and following through with the “yes, my lords” and “no, my lords” and “at once, my lord”. 

It’s also significant that she served as a page and cupbearer since that’s part of the typical leadership training of highborn children. Aegon V, Edric Dayne, and Rhaenyra I also served those roles, for example. This allowed her a place at council meetings where politics and war strategy were discussed. 

“You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the North. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you.”

There's this great pack, hundreds of them, mankillers. The one that leads them is a she-wolf, a bitch from the seventh hell.

Princess Arya of House Stark, Lady of Winterfell.

Arya Month 2022 || Day Twenty-Two: Cute Character Tic - Biting Her Lip

Arya takes more after her mother in personality while Sansa takes after her father's.

Sansa and Ned are more gentle and we don't really see them using physical force that much. Hell, they even try to save others from harm even if it was cause them harm in return. Ex) Ned giving Cersei a chance to run away with her kids because he knows that she and her children will possibly die if Robert finds out the truth but instead he is the one who is executed. Sansa telling Maragery the truth about Joffrey which becomes one of the reasons for Joffery's death but Sansa is framed for it.

Catelyn and Arya are not afraid to speak their minds and are pretty stubborn when they have their mind set on something. Catelyn who frees Jaime Lannister because even if having Jaime has a captive gives the North and its allies a advantage, she will do whatever it takes to get her daughters back. Arya refusing to give up her love for Needle despite her parents telling her that it's no such thing for a lady, even refusing to get rid of Needle when she joins the faceless men because it's the one few connections she has to her identity as Arya Stark, the girl with wolf blood.

ARYA STARK APPRECIATION MONTH 2022 ↳ Day 26: Lyanna Stark

Her father sighed. “Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. ’The wolf blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early grave.” Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not often speak of his father, or of the brother and sister who had died before she was born. “Lyanna might have carried a sword, if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes. You even look like her.”

“Lyanna was beautiful,” Arya said, startled. Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of Arya.

“She was,” Eddard Stark agreed, “beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time.”