I’m not going to talk about Jon and Dany (although if she winds up getting pregnant and dies in childbirth so that he can temper his sword in her heart, I am going to be SO pissed), or how Jaime is almost definitely going to kill Cersei, or any of that.

No, I’m going to talk about Sansa and something that’s been niggling at me for the last few weeks. Now that she’s Lady of the North and armed with Brienne of Tarth and her own personal assassin/sister Arya, Sansa is going to get serious about ruling once everything shakes out and Jon assumes the throne (oh, of COURSE he’s going to get it. Don’t be silly). And one of the first things she’s going to have to do as Lady of the North is arrange a strategic marriage for herself.

Yes, I know, technically she’s still married to Tyrion. But seeing everything that he’s gone through in the last seven seasons, plus the fact that he’ll probably wind up as Hand of the King to Jon, I highly doubt he’ll push to resume their marriage. And Sansa will need to produce an heir (or heiress) for the Stark clan to take over the North after she’s gone.

So logically, what does Sansa need? Well, she needs to marry a nobleman, obviously. He also needs to be able to defer to her as Lady of the North (another reason why it would never work with Tyrion), and it would help if he could back her up by putting the fear of the old gods and the new into the other nobles and Sansa’s enemies. She also needs someone who will be kind to her in the bedroom, especially after everything that Ramsay Bolton put her through.

I’m not putting this out as a prediction, but it is my sincerest hope that the writers do the smart thing and have her propose to the Hound. Hear me out — he’s got an amazing redemption arc going on, and this would be a terrific ending for it. And for all his rough behaviour Sandor is still a nobleman, and quite possibly Lord Clegane once he kills the Mountain. That being said, he has no personal interest in ruling and is happy to leave that to other people. His bloodthirsty reputation will scare the crap out of everyone and would serve as a fearsome boost to Sansa’s power base. And, probably most important of all, he actually cares about her in his own weird way. Remember how he told her he’d be the only thing between her and Joffrey after their marriage, fought his way through a rabid crowd and killed three would-be rapists to rescue her, and tried to get her out of King’s Landing after the Battle of the Blackwater? She’s going to remember that.

He’s badly scarred? So what? Her luck with pretty boys (including Littlefinger) hasn’t been what you would call stellar. And once she explained what happened with Bolton, I think he’d bend over backwards to treat her gently. He already told he he would never hurt her, and he’d make good on that promise. And considering his antipathy towards his own family, I wouldn’t be surprised if he agreed to her proposal on one condition — that he be allowed to take the Stark name. After all, the children of the Lady of the North should be Starks.

Besides, can you imagine Arya’s reaction when she finds out he’s going to be her brother-in-law? If I didn’t already have it I’d get HBO just for that one episode.