who is Jon Snows Mother

[Jewel]

Just now, Rupert Honeybun said:

Yes if you assume Ned sent Danny across the narrow sea with her brother as part of Ned's master plan. That is not what I believe, and honestly I can't be arsed to explain the theory. I think there are some videos on Youtube you can watch for in-depth theory or some other topics with more words and stuff.

Yes that is a broken promise, but as I mentioned before which is more likely?

As I mentioned before, the former.

Ned starts thinking about broken promises when he's in the cells.

[MostlyMoody]

7 minutes ago, Jewel said:

As I mentioned before, the former.

Ned starts thinking about broken promises when he's in the cells.

Broken promises is mentioned several times, black cells is the most visceral scene, and most thoughts of promises are very often after discussions about Danny. I can't provide quote proof atm, so you can just discredit this claim.

[Jewel]

5 minutes ago, Rupert Honeybun said:

Broken promises is mentioned several times, black cells is the most visceral scene, and most thoughts of promises are very often after discussions about Danny. I can't provide quote proof atm, so you can just discredit this claim.

Promises are mentioned throughout Ned's chapters, broken promises only occur in the cells.

Ned has thought to himself though that he has lived a lie for 14 years. But this being about Dany makes very little sense.

Like I said before in this thread, RLD isn't likely simply because the timeline doesn't fit, and it would diminish the importance of Jon's parentage which has been well established to be a big deal.

 

[Pile-O-Starks]

First Post!

R+L=J is pretty much a fact at this point. The only question is whether there were twins. If so, the only plausible twin would be Meera, which would be interesting but not mind-blowing.

Probably it's just R+L=J. Hey, when Martin first started writing AGOT, the internet barely existed. He had no reason to think it would get spoiled all over the place. He also thought he'd be done after 3 books. Technology and his own inability to wrap this thing up have undermined his big reveal. It'll be a relief more than anything when it's finally confirmed.

[MostlyMoody]

1 minute ago, Jewel said:

Promises are mentioned throughout Ned's chapters, broken promises only occur in the cells.

Ned has thought to himself though that he has lived a lie for 14 years. But this being about Dany makes very little sense.

Like I said before in this thread, RLD isn't likely simply because the timeline doesn't fit, and it would diminish the importance of Jon's parentage which has been well established to be a big deal.

 

Yeah I can't disprove that as I don't have actual text evidence of that, but neither do you so hey-ho  . What about timeline does not make sense? Jon is 8-9 months older than Danny as confirmed by George, and again I don't know if that is an actual quote.

It was established to be a big deal by Jon Snow fans.

[Leticia Stark]

55 minutes ago, Rupert Honeybun said:

Yeah I can't disprove that as I don't have actual text evidence of that, but neither do you so hey-ho  . What about timeline does not make sense? Jon is 8-9 months older than Danny as confirmed by George, and again I don't know if that is an actual quote.

It was established to be a big deal by Jon Snow fans.

Are you sure? I guess George thinks it's a big deal too.

Quote

In 2006, screenwriters D.B. Weiss and David Benioff approached George R.R. Martin, the author of the acclaimed A Song of Ice and Fire series, to see if he was open to a television adaption.

That meeting spawned the creation of HBO's "Game of Thrones" series; now the most popular series the network's history. But many fans of the show don't realize what Weiss and Benioff had to do in order to secure Martin's trust. 

In a Q&A back in 2013, the story was told of how the three of them sat down for a lunch that was eventually dragged into a five hour meeting. Martin recounted, "I did ask them a few pointed question to determine whether they had actually read the books, and they gave me the right answers."

When asked to specify what they were grilled on, Weiss elaborated:

He asked us, “Who is Jon Snow’s mother?”  We had discussed it before, and we gave a shocking answer.  At that point, George didn’t actually say whether or not we were right or wrong, but his smile was his tell.  We knew we had passed the Wonka test, at that point.

This is an impressive anecdote, given that a many readers of the books typically miss the hints given for Jon's true parentage, and it's unlikely that many casual show watchers would have a slightest idea of the truth.

 

[Ebrose]

2 hours ago, Jewel said:

Remember that there's also a broken promise he made to Jon- right before Jon left for the Wall, Ned promised him the next time they would see each other, they'd talk about his mother. That is a pretty broken promise right there.

Isn't that show only?

[MostlyMoody]

2 hours ago, Leticia Stark said:

Are you sure? I guess George thinks it's a big deal too.

 

I'm pretty sure it was made to be a big deal way before the TV series.

[Leticia Stark]

1 hour ago, Rupert Honeybun said:

I'm pretty sure it was made to be a big deal way before the TV series.

We are talking about the author of the books here, he knows better than us about what is a big deal in his story. The fact that he brought this question as a way to know for sure if the directors knew his books well says a lot. It's even more interesting when you read interviews with the directors and you realize that they always talk specifically about this question and their answer to it when people ask how they got George's permission. Some people think that they only got his permission because their answer was right, well, we have to wait for the next books and see if the answer is the same from the tv series (the tower of joy secret will be revealed in the next two episodes, I think).

[Ygrain]

10 hours ago, WSmith84 said:

If Dany is Lyanna's, then all I'll say is that Ned is a really shitty uncle. Rather than, oh I don't know, send her to live in peace and safety with Howland Reed in the Neck (where nobody ever goes) he lets her end up on the other side of the world, known to all as Viserys' sister. Where she's got a constant target on her back and no means of supporting herself. And when Robert orders her dead, all Ned does is resign and head home. Yeah, shitty uncle.

Amen to that.

10 hours ago, Gamel said:

The concept of unreliable narrator is something real in ASOIAF. Especially 15 years later. And the TOJ dream was but a dream. Do you always dream of past events with clinical accuracy? It might have been what Ned wished it had happened that year. Personally, I never dream of real past events in my life. Or when I do, it's blurry and totally irrelevant.¨

You don't dream your past because you're not writing your own life. In books, dreams are a literary device used for conveying some information to the reader. This particular dream is not just "a" dream, it is an old dream which Ned recognizes as having dreamt before. Not necessarily exactly the same on every occasion, but on every occasion containg three white knights, a tower long fallen and Lyanna in her bed of blood.

 

10 hours ago, Gamel said:

Anyway, GRRM will have to decide soon enough. R+L=J is so well-established that most readers are going to be disappointed. I really hope something mind blowing will be revealed.

That decision is made already. You don't plant hints and foreshadowing to change your mind later on, and this is what GRRM explicitely said he wouldn't do.

7 hours ago, Jewel said:

Remember that there's also a broken promise he made to Jon- right before Jon left for the Wall, Ned promised him the next time they would see each other, they'd talk about his mother. That is a pretty broken promise right there.

That's just the show, though.

6 hours ago, Rupert Honeybun said:

Broken promises is mentioned several times, black cells is the most visceral scene, and most thoughts of promises are very often after discussions about Danny. I can't provide quote proof atm, so you can just discredit this claim.

You cannot provide any further quotes about broken promises because there ain't any. Up till that point in the Black Cells, the only promises Ned is haunted by are the promises to Lyanna and the price he paid to keep them. He also states explicitely that unlike Robert, he keeps his vows (the scene when he is returning from the brothel).

6 hours ago, Rupert Honeybun said:

What about timeline does not make sense? Jon is 8-9 months older than Danny as confirmed by George, and again I don't know if that is an actual quote.

no, Jon was not born "more than 1 year" before Dany... probably closer to eight or nine months or thereabouts

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1040/

[Cragen]

I didn't put together R+L=J after rereading. I look into it only after I read it on this forum, so it's not so obvious as people think it is. And I figured out that Rob Stark will die at Twins.

[COYStars]

13 hours ago, Rupert Honeybun said:

What promise has he broken to Lyanna? Is Jon unsafe in Neds eyes? Has Ned failed at hiding his identity? Did he protest when Jon decided to go to the Wall? What am I missing?

We don't know. But from what we do know, I surmise that Ned promised to Lyanna to keep Jon's true identity a secret. I believe that it is the keeping of the promise that haunts Ned, not the breaking of it - he, if anyone, would keep such a promise.  And that the keeping of it has caused the harm - to Catelyn, who believed that he did not love her as much as he did, and to Jon, who did not know how much he was loved, and who was not loved as much as he deserved. Both were harmed by the keeping of the promise; in keeping the promise, he had to lie to both.

That is the most logical explanation, imho.

[Jewel]

1 hour ago, Ygrain said:

That's just the show, though.

Ah, my apologies. It's been quite a while since I've read the first book and it was the first thing that came to mind. I assumed it was in the books in some form as well. 

That being said, my point still stands. A broken promise regarding Jon makes much more sense than a broken promise regarding Dany.

[COYStars]

9 hours ago, Jewel said:

As I mentioned before, the former.

Ned starts thinking about broken promises when he's in the cells.

Does he? Where does he say the promises were broken? He thinks about promises; I think you're interpreting where you say he was thinking about broken promises. He could quite easily be thinking about promises kept.

 

9 hours ago, Jewel said:

Remember that there's also a broken promise he made to Jon- right before Jon left for the Wall, Ned promised him the next time they would see each other, they'd talk about his mother. That is a pretty broken promise right there.

When did Ned break that promise, given that they have not seen each other since?

[COYStars]

Unless the broken promise (if there was one) was to tell Jon when he came of age.

[Jewel]

5 minutes ago, COYStars said:

Does he? Where does he say the promises were broken? He thinks about promises; I think you're interpreting where you say he was thinking about broken promises. He could quite easily be thinking about promises kept.

When did Ned break that promise, given that they have not seen each other since?

Quote

There was no sun and no moon. He could not see to mark the walls. Ned closed his eyes and opened them; it made no difference. He slept and woke and slept again. He did not know which was more painful, the waking or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbing dreams of blood and broken promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do but think, and his waking thoughts were worse than nightmares.

He broke the promise because he knew he wouldn't see him again.

[Ebrose]

Quote

Ned closed his eyes and opened them; it made no difference. He slept and woke and slept again. He did not know which was more painful, the waking or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbing dreams of blood and broken promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do but think, and his waking thoughts were worse than nightmares.

AGOT, Eddard XV

Yes, the promises were broken

Edit: Oh, @Jewel, you were faster than me! hehe

 

[COYStars]

10 minutes ago, Jewel said:

He broke the promise because he knew he wouldn't see him again.

If the promise was to tell him next time he saw him, he hasn't broken the promise because he hasn't seen him. I promise to think of you the next time I am 40 miles beneath the Earth's crust; I have no intention of breaking that promise. Does that make sense?

If there is a broken promise, it must be more than this.

[COYStars]

9 minutes ago, Ebrose said:

AGOT, Eddard XV

Yes, the promises were broken

Edit: Oh, @Jewel, you were faster than me! hehe

 

Hmm. Maybe. Maybe he was dreaming of what would have happened had he broken the promise and told Cat and Jon the truth. And then when he woke, the reality was worse than the nightmare...

[Jewel]

As mentioned before, that was a show-only scene so that's probably not it. However, if you're never going to see someone again, you're kinda breaking that promise aren't you?

Anyway, we don't know exactly what the broken promise is. All we can do is speculate. 
It does however make sense for it having to do something with Jon's parents. Either Lyanna wanted him to be acknowlegded as Rhaegar's son, which would be a broken promise because Jon's known as a bastard and now cannot hold any titles because he's going to the Night's Watch, or he could've promised Lyanna to tell Jon about his parents, which he hasn't done either.

It's clearly something noteworthy because promises tend to play a big part in Ned's thoughts and dreams.