SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.
“His guilt came back afterward, but weaker than before. If this was so wrong, why did the gods make it feel so good?”
Synopsis: “Oh sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you…”
SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.
Ok, I’ve mentioned this in bits and pieces here and there, so I might as well do it in one place.
So, Jon’s definitely getting resurrected. Although I think it’s going to have a more profound effect on him than in the show:
Burning shafts hissed upward, trailing tongues of fire. Scarecrow brothers tumbled down, black cloaks ablaze. “Snow,” an eagle cried, as foemen scuttled up the ice like spiders. Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist. As the dead men reached the top of the Wall he sent them down to die again. He slew a greybeard and a beardless boy, a giant, a gaunt man with filed teeth, a girl with thick red hair. Too late he recognized Ygritte. She was gone as quick as she’d appeared.
That screams fire wight and/or Azor Ahai to me…Anyway, once that happens, the question is, where does his story go next, what are the marks he needs to hit?
He needs to deal with the crisis at the Wall.
He needs to reunite with at least some of his family.
He needs to meet Daenerys and reunite with Tyrion.
He needs to deal with the Army of the Dead.
I’m not sure where and when and in what order that happens, but at some point the Wall is going to come down – although, like @poorquentyn I think this is going to involve Euron blowing the Horn of Winter, probably from the top of the Hightower – and the Army of the Dead will begin marching south.
At which point, we have to ask: where does Jon go when that happens? I don’t think his story is the defense of Winterfell, that’s Stannis’ story. Rather, I think Jon’s story involves going on a ranging north to the Heart of Winter where the Great Other dwells – because the “kill the one who raised them and the wights die” actually is a pretty good fantasy-style hook for a party of adventurers.
Who’s in the party, I’m not sure on. But if I’m right about the Last Hero story, having Jon go into the Heart of Winter with a group of characters we care about is an interesting parallel plus a way for GRRM to do the whole Fellowship of the Rings but no one has plot army thing. So the story is: Stannis holds the Army of the Dead at Winterfell (i.e, distracts the eye of Sauron) while Jon goes into the Heart to try to slay the Great Other and destroy the Army in one fell swoop (i.e, take the One Ring to Mount Doom).
But unlike in LOTR, I think the body count on this mission is going to be high indeed.
Jon would probably feel very different about Robb’s will from Stannis’ offer.
“Jon.” Melisandre was so close he could feel the warmth of her breath. “R’hllor is the only true god. A vow sworn to a tree has no more power than one sworn to your shoes. Open your heart and let the light of the Lord come in. Burn these weirwoods, and accept Winterfell as a gift of the Lord of Light.”
When Jon had been very young, too young to understand what it meant to be a bastard, he used to dream that one day Winterfell might be his. Later, when he was older, he had been ashamed of those dreams. Winterfell would go to Robb and then his sons, or to Bran or Rickon should Robb die childless. And after them came Sansa and Arya. Even to dream otherwise seemed disloyal, as if he were betraying them in his heart, wishing for their deaths. I never wanted this, he thought as he stood before the blue-eyed king and the red woman. I loved Robb, loved all of them … I never wanted any harm to come to any of them, but it did. And now there’s only me. All he had to do was say the word, and he would be Jon Stark, and nevermore a Snow. All he had to do was pledge this king his fealty, and Winterfell was his…
You can’t be the Lord of Winterfell, you’re bastard-born, he heard Robb say again. And the stone kings were growling at him with granite tongues. You do not belong here. This is not your place. When Jon closed his eyes he saw the heart tree, with its pale limbs, red leaves, and solemn face. The weirwood was the heart of Winterfell, Lord Eddard always said…but to save the castle Jon would have to tear that heart up by its ancient roots, and feed it to the red woman’s hungry fire god. I have no right, he thought. Winterfell belongs to the old gods.
Accepting Stannis’ offer would have meant taking Winterfell without the leave of the Starks and betraying their gods. If one takes the position that death releases Jon Snow from his vows, then Robb’s will not only gives that consent but makes it a command, and Jon would be under no obligation to burn the weirwood.
However, there’s going to be tension regardless, because there’s going to be Sansa and the army of the Vale, Rickon and the Manderlys, and possibly Bran as well if the most recent episode of the show is any indication.
Yes, and it’s a classic case of sunk cost fallacy.
Jon’s initial decision to send the Night’s Watch’s fleet to Hardhome does fit his overall military objectives – he wants to rescue the thousands of free folk at Hardhome, he doesn’t want them added to the army of the dead – but the risks are huge, in terms of ships, men, and officers.
Then when the expedition goes as bad as it could – half the ships lost in the storms, the wildlings unwilling to accept rescue after the slavers betrayed them, “dead things in the wood. dead things in the water” – Jon wants to commit hundreds if not a thousand men to an overland rescue mission, without any plan of how this expedition will accomplish what the second one failed to do.
And I think this is where GRRM’s thing about being a good leader vs. a good man comes into play. The heroic thing to do is ride in to save the day, but the right command decision is to cut your losses and preserve your resources when the army of the dead is bearing down on the Wall.
It was easy to lose your way beyond the Wall. Jon did not know that he could tell honor from shame anymore, or right from wrong. Father forgive me. Synopsis: As the wildlings reach the Fist of the First Men, Jon has a talk with Mance and gets his first mission as a turncloak. SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and…
“Might be you fooled these others, crow, but don’t think you’ll be fooling Mance. He’ll take one look a’ you and know you’re false…”
Synopsis: Jon Snow meets Mance Rayder.
SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.
(more…)
The Pink Letter was the excuse, but there is no such thing as a spontaneous mutiny/assassination – first you have to identify and organize those of your peers who agree with you, second, you have to create a plan for how you’re going to kill your commander and not be executed afterwards, and do all of the setup; third, you have to execute that plan.
And this is where I depart from a good number of ASOIAF fans who basically argue that Jon’s assassination was justified b/c of his reaction to the Pink Letter, because all of that work I discussed above had to have happened before the Pink Letter. Which means that the conspirators had already decided Jon had to die before he broke his vows openly, which is convenient for them, but in no way gets them off the hook for when they were making the call.
Which brings me to something I feel gets left out of a lot of Pink Letter theorization – predicting the fallout from that letter is pretty damn impossible. The letter gets sent to Jon and arrives “sealed with a smear of hard pink wax.” Unless someone cracked and then remade the seal, and that’s unlikely (Clydas isn’t the kind of guy to do that, and he’s not one of the conspirators), no one other than Jon at the Wall knows its contents. And no one can predict what Jon’s reaction is going to be – hell, even Jon doesn’t know what he’s going to do before he does it.
So all of the theories that rely on Jon bringing men south to Winterfell as the purpose for the Pink Letter are bunk. Ramsay wrote the letter operating on (mostly) bad information. Period.
They glimpsed the eagle twice more the day after, and heard the hunting horn behind them echoing against the mountains. Each time it seemed a little louder, a little closer. Synopsis: a grizzled veteran and a rookie agent are on the run from enemy military forces and hit the end of the road. The rookie agent is ordered by his superior to defect to the enemy. SPOILER WARNING: This chapter…
“Eagles have sharper eyes than men. We are seen. So now we run.” Synopsis: Jon and Qhorin have a significant conversation, Jon talks to Bran in his dreams, and then an eagle forces the ranging into a headlong retreat. Squire Dalbridge stays behind. SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes.…
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