“竟没想到”and “没想到竟”both express the speaker’s emotion of surprise. But there are some different usages between them.
“竟没想到”is always used after a pronoun, such as “我”、“他”、“她们”, and no other sentence parts or content will be put after it. Example sentences are as follows:
“没想到竟”is always put before some sentence parts, for example:
Furthermore,“没想到”and “竟”could be used separately, for example: