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Clues about Jons resurrection?


MikeMartell

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I was just wondering what are the hints to Jons resurrection in the books if any. It's been a while since I read AFFC/ADWD. 

Be very grateful if somebody could jog my memory. Thank you avid ASOIAF fans! 

 

What is dead may never die.

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Well there are several foreshadowings in the books. It's been a couple years since I've read them as well but I'll give it a shot. Melisandre has several visions of Jon in the flames, the most relevant I think is the one where she sees him as a man, then a wolf, and then a man again. Also Jon dreams of himself fighting an army of dead men on the wall. In this dream he is armored in black ice and wields a burning sword.

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There's also the Varamyr prologue in ADWD, where we are introduced to the idea of a skinchanger's mind living on in an animal after death. This could be foreshadowing for how Jon's mind will be preserved until his body is revived, so he doesn't go all Stoneheart or Beric. Of course, it also showed us how a skinchanger's mind would eventually become more and more bestial, so Jon might come back slightly 'wolfish' anyway.

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5 hours ago, WSmith84 said:

There's also the Varamyr prologue in ADWD, where we are introduced to the idea of a skinchanger's mind living on in an animal after death. This could be foreshadowing for how Jon's mind will be preserved until his body is revived, so he doesn't go all Stoneheart or Beric. Of course, it also showed us how a skinchanger's mind would eventually become more and more bestial, so Jon might come back slightly 'wolfish' anyway.

Well, if I am correct that he will only be dead for 3 days, then there won't be that much exposure to being a wolf. Bran has spent a lot more time than that in Summer, and he is not wolf-like in any way.

So it all depends on the duration of Jon's death. Which, for symbolic and practical reasons, I believe will be 3 days.

 

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Much foreshadowing exists of Jon as a ghost with multiple references supporting his eventual resurrection. 

First, his wolf's name is 'Ghost' which is very suggestive from the outset of Jon's fate.

Then, his recurring Winterfell crypt dreams (the crypts are haunted by (un)dead Starks).  One such passage starts out like this:

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A Game of Thrones -- Jon VII

"Othor," announced Ser Jaremy Rykker, "beyond a doubt. And this one was Jafer Flowers." He turned the corpse over with his foot, and the dead white face stared up at the overcast sky with blue, blue eyes. "They were Ben Stark's men, both of them."

My uncle's men, Jon thought numbly. He remembered how he'd pleaded to ride with them. Gods, I was such a green boy. If he had taken me, it might be me lying here . . .

...

It is only a wood, Jon told himself, and they're only dead men. He had seen dead men before . . .

But, of course we know in retrospect that they're not really dead, nor is a wood ever really 'only' a wood. In fact, we learn that a wood such as a weirwood is inhabited with the spirits of the living dead.  Here, Jon compares himself to the wights ('it might be me lying there'), who later come back from the dead and wreak havoc at Castle Black.  This thought leads directly into the Winterfell crypt dream with the dead kings emerging from their vaults:

Quote

 

Last night he had dreamt the Winterfell dream again. He was wandering the empty castle, searching for his father, descending into the crypts. Only this time the dream had gone further than before. In the dark he'd heard the scrape of stone on stone. When he turned he saw that the vaults were opening, one after the other. As the dead kings came stumbling from their cold black graves, Jon had woken in pitch-dark, his heart hammering. Even when Ghost leapt up on the bed to nuzzle at his face, he could not shake his deep sense of terror. He dared not go back to sleep. Instead he had climbed the Wall and walked, restless, until he saw the light of the dawn off to the cast. It was only a dream. I am a brother of the Night's Watch now, not a frightened boy.

Thus, Jon likens himself to the dead men who are later magically reanimated, followed by a description of his own descent into the crypts (symbolizing Jon's death) together with the ascent of the dead kings out of their graves (symbolizing that Jon is one of them, a king of sorts, and will be resurrected).  The image of waking in the pitch-dark, heart hammering and being nuzzled by a 'ghost' might be an appropriate way of describing the disorienting experience of coming back to life!  Jon's premonition of dying frightens him so much he is afraid to go back to sleep lest he not wake again.

 

Reinforcing the point, the following childhood memory of the Starks playing in the crypts also prefigures Jon's return from the dead:

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A Game of Thrones -- Arya IV

Fear cuts deeper than swords, the quiet voice inside her whispered. Suddenly Arya remembered the crypts at Winterfell. They were a lot scarier than this place, she told herself. She'd been just a little girl the first time she saw them. Her brother Robb had taken them down, her and Sansa and baby Bran, who'd been no bigger than Rickon was now. They'd only had one candle between them, and Bran's eyes had gotten as big as saucers as he stared at the stone faces of the Kings of Winter, with their wolves at their feet and their iron swords across their laps.

Robb took them all the way down to the end, past Grandfather and Brandon and Lyanna, to show them their own tombs. Sansa kept looking at the stubby little candle, anxious that it might go out. Old Nan had told her there were spiders down here, and rats as big as dogs. Robb smiled when she said that. "There are worse things than spiders and rats," he whispered. "This is where the dead walk." That was when they heard the sound, low and deep and shivery. Baby Bran had clutched at Arya's hand.

When the spirit stepped out of the open tomb, pale white and moaning for blood, Sansa ran shrieking for the stairs, and Bran wrapped himself around Robb's leg, sobbing. Arya stood her ground and gave the spirit a punch. It was only Jon, covered with flour. "You stupid," she told him, "you scared the baby," but Jon and Robb just laughed and laughed, and pretty soon Bran and Arya were laughing too.

The description of Jon as one of the 'walking dead' or a 'spirit' (a synonym for 'ghost' which evokes his direwolf) emerging from the open tomb echoes the previous quote.  Jon is covered in 'flour,' which not only resembles a dusting of his eponymous 'snow,' but perhaps if one is sufficiently imaginative also evokes the old English folksong 'John Barleycorn,' considering that both 'flour' and 'spirits' (punning with the alcoholic beverage) are two products thereof (see below). 

If one is into puns, the other possibility is that Jon is covered in 'flower/s' connecting him to the only other person in the crypts adorned with flowers:

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A Game of Thrones - Eddard XIII

He was walking through the crypts beneath Winterfell, as he had walked a thousand times before. The Kings of Winter watched him pass with eyes of ice, and the direwolves at their feet turned their great stone heads and snarled. Last of all, he came to the tomb where his father slept, with Brandon and Lyanna beside him. "Promise me, Ned," Lyanna's statue whispered. She wore a garland of pale blue roses, and her eyes wept blood.

All the same elements are here:  flowers, pallor, blood.

When he was playing the prank on his siblings, Jon would have emerged from a grave near, if not immediately adjacent to Lyanna's since hers was near the end.

 

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'John Barleycorn is an old English folksong that originated in the 16th century. It was a popular tale, though it remains somewhat disturbing, even today. Primarily an allegorical story of death, resurrection and drinking, the main character—the eponymous John Barleycorn—is the personification of barley who is attacked and made to suffer indignities and eventually death. These correspond roughly to the stages of barley growing and cultivation, like reaping and malting. Some scholars see the story as pagan, representing the ideology of the cycles of nature, spirits and the pagan harvest, and possibly even human sacrifice. After John Barleycorn’s death, he is resurrected as beer, bread and whisky. Some have also compared it to the Christian transubstantiation, since his body is eaten as bread and drank as beer.'

For a fun read including many versions of the song in question, see:

http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/john-barleycorn/

 

@evita mgfs is interested in the Christian transubstantiation angle)

It's possible GRRM may have been aware of this folksong and been playing with the allusion (one of his characters is even named 'Tom Barleycorn'). Consider the following:

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A Feast for Crows - Alayne II

"Good. That is good." His chain clinked softly as he bobbed his head, atop a ridiculously long and skinny neck. "This descent . . . my lady, it might be safest if I mixed his lordship some milk of the poppy. Mya Stone could lash him over the back of her most surefooted mule whilst he slumbered."

"The Lord of the Eyrie cannot descend from his mountain tied up like a sack of barleycorn." Of that Alayne was certain. They dare not let the full extent of Robert's frailty and cowardice become too widely known, her father had warned her. I wish he were here. He would know what to do.

Coincidental?

 

Melisandre's pun on the word 'grave':

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon I

Jon did not deny it. "The Wall is no place for a woman."

"You are wrong. I have dreamed of your Wall, Jon Snow. Great was the lore that raised it, and great the spells locked beneath its ice. We walk beneath one of the hinges of the world." Melisandre gazed up at it, her breath a warm moist cloud in the air. "This is my place as it is yours, and soon enough you may have grave need of me. Do not refuse my friendship, Jon. I have seen you in the storm, hard-pressed, with enemies on every side. You have so many enemies. Shall I tell you their names?"

'Grave need' indeed!

 

Azor Ahai reborn:

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A Dance with Dragons - Melisandre I

Skulls. A thousand skulls, and the bastard boy again. Jon Snow. Whenever she was asked what she saw within her fires, Melisandre would answer, "Much and more," but seeing was never as simple as those words suggested. It was an art, and like all arts it demanded mastery, discipline, study. Pain. That too. R'hllor spoke to his chosen ones through blessed fire, in a language of ash and cinder and twisting flame that only a god could truly grasp. Melisandre had practiced her art for years beyond count, and she had paid the price. There was no one, even in her order, who had her skill at seeing the secrets half-revealed and half-concealed within the sacred flames.

Yet now she could not even seem to find her king. I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R'hllor shows me only Snow.

 

All the references in the text to 'a second life,' especially this one of 'Ghost' as 'a second life worthy of a king':

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A Dance with Dragons - Prologue

"They say you forget," Haggon had told him, a few weeks before his own death. "When the man's flesh dies, his spirit lives on inside the beast, but every day his memory fades, and the beast becomes a little less a warg, a little more a wolf, until nothing of the man is left and only the beast remains."

Varamyr knew the truth of that. When he claimed the eagle that had been Orell's, he could feel the other skinchanger raging at his presence. Orell had been slain by the turncloak crow Jon Snow, and his hate for his killer had been so strong that Varamyr found himself hating the beastling boy as well. He had known what Snow was the moment he saw that great white direwolf stalking silent at his side. One skinchanger can always sense another. Mance should have let me take the direwolf. There would be a second life worthy of a king. He could have done it, he did not doubt. The gift was strong in Snow, but the youth was untaught, still fighting his nature when he should have gloried in it.

 

GRRM's mythological reference to the 'corn king' (which ties in with other references like 'John Barleycorn' which I touched on above).  Enigmatically, Mormont's raven says this several times in Jon's presence:

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A Dance with Dragons -- Jon XII

The day had come. It was the hour of the wolf. Soon enough the sun would rise, and four thousand wildlings would come pouring through the Wall. Madness. Jon Snow ran his burned hand through his hair and wondered once again what he was doing. Once the gate was opened there would be no turning back. It should have been the Old Bear to treat with Tormund. It should have been Jaremy Rykker or Qhorin Halfhand or Denys Mallister or some other seasoned man. It should have been my uncle. It was too late for such misgivings, though. Every choice had its risks, every choice its consequences. He would play the game to its conclusion.

He rose and dressed in darkness, as Mormont's raven muttered across the room. "Corn," the bird said, and, "King," and, "Snow, Jon Snow, Jon Snow." That was queer. The bird had never said his full name before, as best Jon could recall.

The legend of the corn king sacrifice may date back to the Ancient Egyptian legend of Osiris and festival of his death and resurrection, and survives symbolically in modern versions of the Celtic equivalent of the harvest festival of Lughnasadh or Lammas, and the English folksong 'John Barleycorn,' among others.  A possible literary source for GRRM may have been 'The Golden Bough' by Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941), a comparative anthropologist whose influential work published in 1922 inspired many modern writers.

In addition to Jon, the other person with whom the 'corn king' archetype is most closely associated is Bran. 

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A Game of Thrones - Jon III

Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, was a gruff old man with an immense bald head and a shaggy grey beard. He had a raven on his arm, and he was feeding it kernels of corn. "I am told you can read." He shook the raven off, and it flapped its wings and flew to the window, where it sat watching as Mormont drew a roll of paper from his belt and handed it to Jon. "Corn," it muttered in a raucous voice. "Corn, corn."

Jon's finger traced the outline of the direwolf in the white wax of the broken seal. He recognized Robb's hand, but the letters seemed to blur and run as he tried to read them. He realized he was crying. And then, through the tears, he found the sense in the words, and raised his head. "He woke up," he said. "The gods gave him back."

"Crippled," Mormont said. "I'm sorry, boy. Read the rest of the letter."

He looked at the words, but they didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Bran was going to live. "My brother is going to live," he told Mormont. The Lord Commander shook his head, gathered up a fistful of corn, and whistled. The raven flew to his shoulder, crying, "Live! Live!"

Interestingly, Frazer notes that in his many manifestations Osiris is both a corn god and a tree spirit.  He says:

Quote

BUT Osiris was more than a spirit of the corn; he was also a tree-spirit, and this may perhaps have been his primitive character, since the worship of trees is naturally older in the history of religion than the worship of the cereals. The character of Osiris as a tree-spirit was represented very graphically in a ceremony described by Firmicus Maternus. A pine-tree having been cut down, the centre was hollowed out, and with the wood thus excavated an image of Osiris was made, which was then buried like a corpse in the hollow of the tree. It is hard to imagine how the conception of a tree as tenanted by a personal being could be more plainly expressed.

 

 

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon VIII

"Most like," said Bowen Marsh, stony-faced, "but the men do not like it. Traditionally the lord commander's squires are lads of good birth being groomed for command. Does my lord believe the men of the Night's Watch would ever follow a whore into battle?"

Jon's temper flashed. "They have followed worse. The Old Bear left a few cautionary notes about certain of the men, for his successor. We have a cook at the Shadow Tower who was fond of raping septas. He burned a seven-pointed star into his flesh for every one he claimed. His left arm is stars from wrist to elbow, and stars mark his calves as well. At Eastwatch we have a man who set his father's house afire and barred the door. His entire family burned to death, all nine. Whatever Satin may have done in Oldtown, he is our brother now, and he will be my squire."

Septon Cellador drank some wine. Othell Yarwyck stabbed a sausage with his dagger. Bower Marsh sat red-faced. The raven flapped its wings and said, "Corn, corn, kill." Finally the Lord Steward cleared his throat. "Your lordship knows best, I am sure. Might I ask about these corpses in the ice cells? They make the men uneasy. And to keep them under guard? Surely that is a waste of two good men, unless you fear that they …"

"… will rise? I pray they do."

This prefigures Jon's assassination ('stabbed a sausage with the dagger'; 'corn, corn, kill'), sequestering of his body in the ice cells (Cellador pun with 'cellar door' courtesy @The Fattest Leech on @Seams pun thread), and subsequent resurrection.

Linking with the 'king corn'/'John Barleycorn' motif, there's this quote showing that bodies (meat, dead men) are kept alongside the products of barleycorn (grain and beer), essentially equating people with produce for consumption:

Quote

A Game of Thrones - Jon VII

Something's wrong, Jon thought. Something's very wrong.

The dead men were carried to one of the storerooms along the base of the Wall, a dark cold cell chiseled from the ice and used to keep meat and grain and sometimes even beer. Jon saw that Mormont's horse was fed and watered and groomed before he took care of his own. Afterward he sought out his friends. Grenn and Toad were on watch, but he found Pyp in the common hall. "What's happened?" he asked.

Pyp lowered his voice. "The king's dead."

And this:

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon X

Carved from the base of the Wall and closed with heavy wooden doors, the ice cells ranged from small to smaller. Some were big enough to allow a man to pace, others so small that prisoners were forced to sit; the smallest were too cramped to allow even that.

Jon had given his chief captive the largest cell, a pail to shit in, enough furs to keep him from freezing, and a skin of wine. It took the guards some time to open his cell, as ice had formed inside the lock. Rusted hinges screamed like damned souls when Wick Whittlestick yanked the door wide enough for Jon to slip through. A faint fecal odor greeted him, though less overpowering than he'd expected. Even shit froze solid in such bitter cold. Jon Snow could see his own reflection dimly inside the icy walls.

Very strong foreshadowing.  Jon 'slips through' the door into the cell (symbolizing his death and the preservation of his body in the cells); however, it's conceivable that he may just as easily 'slip out' the other way (symbolizing his resurrection with his emergence from the cells).  Inside, he sees a dim reflection of himself like a ghostly presence wavering on the walls.  Additionally, the use of the word 'slips' is one GRRM often uses for warging (slipping into/out of skins, etc.), which might indicate that some warging could be involved in Jon's resurrection.  Alternatively, 'slips' could more generally indicate a spiritual transition between two bodies or two states.  Not sure about the 'damned souls screaming'...Is Jon a damned soul?

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I'm at work and on my phone but wanted to put this here real quick because it is on top for this thread. I was not to watch the attached video either. 

Kit H in a new interview about his death experience. More proof that the books and show share very little the further on we go?!?!

 

At first, I was worried that he’ll wake up and he’s the same, back to normal — then there’s no point in that death. […] He needs to change. There’s a brilliant line when Melisandre asks: ‘What did you see?’ And he says: ‘Nothing, there was nothing at all.’ That cuts right to our deepest fear, that there’s nothing after death. And that’s the most important line in the whole season for me. Jon’s never been afraid of death, and that’s made him a strong and honorable person. He realizes something about his life now: He has to live it, because that’s all there is. He’s been over the line and there’s nothing there. And that changes him. It literally puts the fear of god into him.

http://watchersonthewall.com/kit-harington-reveals-jon-snows-post-resurrection-state-mind/#more-63999

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Could be the case that death is different for everybody? For example, in AHS:Coven, Madison remembers that death was just like empty space for her, which many interpreted as her being hollow and empty herself. We later knew that other characters had different experiences (Misty Day, Fiona and LaLaurie were sent to a personal hell, for example)

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13 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

I'm at work and on my phone but wanted to put this here real quick because it is on top for this thread. I was not to watch the attached video either. 

Kit H in a new interview about his death experience. More proof that the books and show share very little the further on we go?!?!

 

At first, I was worried that he’ll wake up and he’s the same, back to normal — then there’s no point in that death. […] He needs to change. There’s a brilliant line when Melisandre asks: ‘What did you see?’ And he says: ‘Nothing, there was nothing at all.’ That cuts right to our deepest fear, that there’s nothing after death. And that’s the most important line in the whole season for me. Jon’s never been afraid of death, and that’s made him a strong and honorable person. He realizes something about his life now: He has to live it, because that’s all there is. He’s been over the line and there’s nothing there. And that changes him. It literally puts the fear of god into him.

http://watchersonthewall.com/kit-harington-reveals-jon-snows-post-resurrection-state-mind/#more-63999

Funny - after such an experience, he actually knows nothing.

...provided that he doesn't lie to Melisandre, or just doesn't remember for the time being. 

Plus, given the weird dreams and the crypt experience after Ned's beheading, I don't think that GRRM is  really aiming for "nothing".

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On 5/5/2016 at 7:46 PM, David Selig said:

He is the cliched Chosen One in a fantasy series, these guys always make it till the end somehow. Always.

I hope this Chosen one, turns out to be the evil guy. Jon's death will change him, hopefully.

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4 hours ago, Ygrain said:

Plus, given the weird dreams and the crypt experience after Ned's beheading, I don't think that GRRM is  really aiming for "nothing".

I think he will have some sort of experience, but I really hope is not exactly like Harry's at the end of DH (Ok, I've joked about it, but I don't really want it...). If he's somehow going to meet Rhaegar or Ned, it has to be in a different way.

3 hours ago, Falcon2908 said:

I hope this Chosen one, turns out to be the evil guy. Jon's death will change him, hopefully.

I kinda hope Jon is the one Targaryen that ends up crazy. People often forget he has the same chances to go mad as Dany, despite Dany hasn't shown any sign of such. Jon has, a bit

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For Jon to be resurrected he needs to die. I think he's just suffering from shock and loss of blood at this point.

For a foreshadowing, just before the stabbing scene he has toured the frozen food storage area under the Wall where hams are stored. Hams are preserved with salt and smoke. People near death are sometimes kept alive by being in extremely low temperatures. Logical sequence, Jon's taken to the meat locker where he is revived amid the salted and smoked hams. 

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Everything about warging and death in no way foreshadows Jon's resurrection. Those only foreshadow his death. The only thing Foreshadowing Jon coming back from the dead it Thoros of Myr, a Red Priest, just like mel who brought back Lord Beric several times. That is it. Mel is at the wall with Jon, and if he dies she will bring him back.  Everything about a wargs second life means nothing. You can't come back from a second life. That is it, as told by Varamyr.   

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43 minutes ago, Light a wight tonight said:

For Jon to be resurrected he needs to die. I think he's just suffering from shock and loss of blood at this point.

<snip>

I agree with you that Jon did not die.

I am of the opinion that in Jon’s final chapter in DwD he did not physically die. He was stabbed three times. He did not feel the 4th knife because the attack was interrupted.

Jon left the shield hall after his speech and Horse & Rory (whoever the hell they are) fell in beside him. The confusion with Wun Wun takes place and Jon, Horse & Rory head to Hardin’s Tower where Val is. Men poured out from the surrounding keeps and towers.  Northmen, free folk, queen’s men… the attack on Jon happens.

Might be that all the bystanders; northern men, wildlings and queen’s men stood passively by and watched. I don’t think so. Might be all three groups were in on the plan. I don’t think so. I think that someone intervened before Jon felt the 4th knife.

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Jon kills an Orrik, or Errik, at Skirling Pass, who then wargs into an eagle. It attacks both Jon and Ghost.

I think it's a foreshadowing of what will happen with Jon: he'll warg into Ghost to take inmediate revenge. After that, how knows? Melisandre might resurrect him just as Thoros did to Beric. Or the Ice Dragon might raise.

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2 hours ago, finger said:

Jon kills an Orrik, or Errik, at Skirling Pass, who then wargs into an eagle. It attacks both Jon and Ghost.

I think it's a foreshadowing of what will happen with Jon: he'll warg into Ghost to take inmediate revenge. After that, how knows? Melisandre might resurrect him just as Thoros did to Beric. Or the Ice Dragon might raise.

Evidently you are a Martin fan and like comedy so 

 

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3 minutes ago, Wrycthen said:

The entire ADWD prologue is foreshadowing, in conjunction with Jon's last line at the end of the book.

what was Jon's last line in DwD  or are you referring to Martins last line

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