Eldest daughter of Eddard and Catelyn, born at Winterfell and raised on songs of knights and queens, with auburn Tully hair and a keen taste for lemon cakes. Betrothed in 298 AC to Prince Joffrey Baratheon and brought south with her father's household, where her direwolf Lady was put to the sword at Darry to assuage the queen for a wound her sister's wolf had given the prince. At the Hand's tourney she found her notions of chivalry confirmed and Ser Loras Tyrell's red rose proof she lived in a song; but when her father uncovered the truth of Joffrey's parentage and made to send her home, she ran to Cersei to plead that she might still marry the prince, and so handed the queen the knowledge that broke Lord Eddard. She watched him die from the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor.
Held thereafter in the Red Keep as a hostage of the Crown, beaten by Joffrey's Kingsguard whenever Robb won another battle in the riverlands, and rescued from the bread riots by Sandor Clegane, whom she came to call her dog. On the night of the Blackwater he came drunk to her chamber to flee the wildfire and made her sing for him at knifepoint, leaving behind a bloody white cloak that she kept folded with her summer dresses. Her betrothal to Joffrey was broken to seat Margaery Tyrell beside him, and the Tyrells in turn schemed to wed Sansa to the crippled heir of Highgarden, Willas, until Lord Tywin learned of the plot and married her instead, on three days' notice and at thirteen, to his son Tyrion. She wore her courtesies through word of the Red Wedding and through Joffrey's choking death at his own marriage feast, then slipped from the hall on Ser Dontos Hollard's arm to a boat in Blackwater Bay, where Petyr Baelish waited and had Dontos shot from the deck.
Taken first to the Fingers and then to the Eyrie, she lives as Alayne Stone, Littlefinger's natural daughter, her auburn hair dyed a burnt chestnut to mask her Tully blood. She watched her aunt Lysa Arryn confess to the murder of Jon Arryn before Petyr shoved her through the Moon Door, and she keeps the lie that the singer Marillion did it. As Alayne she is de facto Lady of the Eyrie, raising her sickly cousin Sweetrobin through his shaking fits and learning at Petyr's knee that a lie told kindly is no sin.