Jon Snow's Eye Colour

[Ashbolt]

So, going by the theory of 'R+L=J', Jon Snow is a Targaryen, however, the lack of Valyrian features in Jon has always frustrated me. In other people of part-Valyrian heritage (Bittersteel, House Dayne, Valarr Targaryen, etc.), there is at least one Valyrian feature so why does Jon have none? Of course there is one other case where a Targaryen hasn't had Valyrian features (Baelor Breakspear) but that could just be a one-off. I refused to believe that Jon also had no Valyrian features so I looked into his eye colour (dark-grey) and this led me to find the 'High Valyrian Vocabulary' page. On this page I discovered that the High Valyrian word for purple was also the word for dark, black, dark-coloured and grey.

• zōbrie ['zoːbri͡e], -ior

adj. III dark; black; dark-colored; grey; purple

Could this be evidence for Jon's eye colour being purple? If the Valyrians thought the colours so similar that they could be shared by the same word, surely Jon's eyes could just be another shade/variation of purple.

[SFDanny]

Ashbolt, welcome to the forums, but may I ask you to read the rules before you post here. What the show "confirms" is totally meaningless relative to book discussions. Not only that, but discussion of the show in these book forums will get you banned. Please, read the rules and continue to participate.

[Raisin' Bran]

I am not sure where to start.

I will go ahead and ignore the references to the show and answer what I can from the books.

There have been numerous mentions of Targaryens with non-Valyrian features. You mentioned Baelor Breakspear. Rhaenys Targaryen (Rhaegar's daughter with Elia Martell) was said to take after her mother, in that she looked very Dornish and King Aerys even said that she "smelled Dornish".

In ADwD, Young Griff's dyed blue hair made his eyes appear a shade of blue rather than purple. Jon Snow's black hair may produce a similar effect as to the shade of his eyes (if they are in fact purple).

[Ashbolt]

13 minutes ago, SFDanny said:

Ashbolt, welcome to the forums, but may I ask you to read the rules before you post here. What the show "confirms" is totally meaningless relative to book discussions. Not only that, but discussion of the show in these book forums will get you banned. Please, read the rules and continue to participate.

Mention of the show 'confirmation' has been removed. Thank you.

[SFDanny]

1 hour ago, Ashbolt said:

Mention of the show 'confirmation' has been removed. Thank you.

Thank you, and once again, welcome to the forums!

[Lollygag]

If Jon has any Valyrian feature, the entire plot becomes impossible. Ned was really pushing his luck in hoping no one would connect his bastard to the Rhaegar & Lyanna incident. It requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief as it is for some readers, including myself. Any hint of Valyrian blood raises too many questions and it would no longer be believable to the reader that no one had figured it all out.

And it then becomes absurd that all of the adults at Winterfell had been looking at his eyes for Jon's entire life and they'd never noticed his real eye color. Equally absurd that all his sibs have been looking at Jon's eyes for their entire lives and never noticed his true eye color. If none of these POVs can get something as simple as an eye color right given how many times they've seen Jon in all kinds of lighting, then it calls into question the rest of their POV. It becomes unreliable narrator on an insane level.

I've seen it happen a lot where one kid looks like one parent and absolutely nothing like the other parent. I don't have a problem with it.

 

1 hour ago, Raisin' Bran said:

Jon Snow's black hair may produce a similar effect as to the shade of his eyes (if they are in fact purple).

Book Jon has the Stark brown hair.

[Ralphis Baratheon]

His eyes are grey. He looks like Eddard Stark. Not sure we know more then that.

[Vaedys Targaryen]

Jon is described as having a very lean build, which I suppose is a trait often associated with Targaryens, specifically Rhaegar (and Viserys).

 

2 hours ago, Raisin' Bran said:

In ADwD, Young Griff's dyed blue hair made his eyes appear a shade of blue rather than purple. Jon Snow's black hair may produce a similar effect as to the shade of his eyes (if they are in fact purple).

A very good point.

1 hour ago, Lollygag said:

If Jon has any Valyrian feature, the entire plot becomes impossible. Ned was really pushing his luck in hoping no one would connect his bastard to the Rhaegar & Lyanna incident. It requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief as it is for some readers, including myself. Any hint of Valyrian blood raises too many questions and it would no longer be believable to the reader that no one had figured it all out.

And it then becomes absurd that all of the adults at Winterfell had been looking at his eyes for Jon's entire life and they'd never noticed his real eye color. Equally absurd that all his sibs have been looking at Jon's eyes for their entire lives and never noticed his true eye color. If none of these POVs can get something as simple as an eye color right given how many times they've seen Jon in all kinds of lighting, then it calls into question the rest of their POV. It becomes unreliable narrator on an insane level.

While I agree with your overall point, I think it's worth mentioning that very few people truly looked Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella and thought they might not have been Robert's. Hell, Jon Arryn, Robert's father figure, and Stannis, Robert's brother, didn't even realise it until almost thirteen years later.

And in the people of Winterfell's defense, they had never seen Jon's mother and thusly had no idea what she might've looked like. And if you see a person every day, you're not really going to notice tiny details that you may think of as unimportant, such as eye colour. Jon looks a lot like Ned and Ned says he is his son, that's pretty much all the people of Winterfell need to know.

1 hour ago, Lollygag said:

Book Jon has the Stark brown hair.

Which is very nicely described as "dark-brown". While I'm not a colour expert, if you image Google "dark brown hair", you get hair that could very easily be thought of as black.

Just pointing that out.

[Ygrain]

1 hour ago, Ralphis Baratheon said:

His eyes are grey. He looks like Eddard Stark. Not sure we know more then that.

We know that his eyes are so dark grey they look black. 

An interesting point for comparison: Darkstar's eyes are so dark purple they look black, and it requires a very close look to distinguish the colour properly, per Arianne. Unfortunately, Ygritte is no longer around to tell us if there might be a shade of indigo in Jon's grey, like Rhaegar's eyes were :-)

[Ygrain]

4 minutes ago, Vaedys Targaryen said:

Which is very nicely described as "dark-brown". While I'm not a colour expert, if you image Google "dark brown hair", you get hair that could very easily be thought of as black.

I don't think such a deep brown colour could be described as "lusterless brown", which is how Arya refers to her and Jon's hair as the Stark hair inherited from Ned.

[Lollygag]

Just now, Vaedys Targaryen said:

While I agree with your overall point, I think it's worth mentioning that very few people truly looked Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella and thought they might not have been Robert's.

They also had no reason to question the parentage of Joff, Myrcella and Tommen unlike Jon who had a big mystery parent out there somewhere and rumors were flying about who she might be since he arrived at Winterfell. It's not uncommon at all for black haired people to have blonde children. Ned wasn't convinced until he saw a perfect pattern in the Baratheon line of only black hair. Robert never questioned the parentage of his children.

10 minutes ago, Vaedys Targaryen said:

Which is very nicely described as "dark-brown". While I'm not a colour expert, if you image Google "dark brown hair", you get hair that could very easily be thought of as black.

GRRM wrote it as brown, not black. Starks have brown hair, Baratheons have black hair. I see what you mean in real life, but the text goes nuts if you blur the lines in-series. If one asserts that Jon is stated as having brown hair but that it is really black, then the door has been opened to Jon being a secret Baratheon. Extend the point that GRRM doesn't know his colors or deliberately misreported colors for whatever reason, then we can question a lot about the series to the point of absurdity.

[Khal Pod]

26 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

We know that his eyes are so dark grey they look black. 

An interesting point for comparison: Darkstar's eyes are so dark purple they look black, and it requires a very close look to distinguish the colour properly, per Arianne. Unfortunately, Ygritte is no longer around to tell us if there might be a shade of indigo in Jon's grey, like Rhaegar's eyes were :-)

Exactly, and while I'm sure Cat looked closely into the eyes of all her children while playing with them as babies, I'm pretty sure she didn't do this with Jon.

[Manderly's Rat Cook]

Something peculiar about indigo is that it can be different colours. There is the colour of indigo dye, which is a very dark blue. The dye is made from a plant, and it's the traditional colour that is used to colour jeans. So very much blue indeed, and not purple. Then there is also the traditional colour indigo, which is the color on the rainbow between blue and violet. 

There also appears to be quite a bit of discussion on where exactly on the spectrum indigo should be according to Wikipedia.

Quote

Later scientists conclude that Newton named the colors differently from current usage.^[19][20] According to Gary Waldman, "A careful reading of Newton's work indicates that the color he called indigo, we would normally call blue; his blue is then what we would name blue-green, cyan or light blue."^[21]If this is true, Newton's seven spectral colors would have been:

Red:     Orange:     Yellow:     Green:     Blue:     Indigo:     Violet:    

The human eye does not readily differentiate hues in the wavelengths between blue and violet.^[dubious ] If this is where Newton meant indigo to lie, most individuals would have difficulty distinguishing indigo from its neighbors. 

It's interesting how unclear that makes the colour of Rhaegar's eyes... 

[TMIFairy]

41 minutes ago, Vaedys Targaryen said:

Jon is described as having a very lean build, which I suppose is a trait often associated with Targaryens, specifically Rhaegar (and Viserys).

Simply undernourished.

Blame Catelyn for that!

Think of all those days when he was denied dessert or sent to bed without supper!

 

 

 

 

 

[Lollygag]

7 minutes ago, Khal Pod said:

Exactly, and while I'm sure Cat looked closely into the eyes of all her children while playing with them as babies, I'm pretty sure she didn't do this with Jon.

She really wanted to know who his mother was to the point it ate away at her, so I'm pretty sure Catelyn and everyone else looked at him very closely.

Especially for any hint of purple eyes since the dominant theory was that his mother was Ashara.

[Lord Varys]

Chances are not that good that Jon does have Valyrian eyes of any shade. Blue or purple eyes are not grey or black eyes. And not all Targaryens or Valyrian have eyes the shade of purple or violet. Some simply have blue eyes.

The examples of Daemon II Blackfyre - who made his eyes appear more bluish when wearing blue and more purplish when wearing violet clothes - and Prince Aegon's blue hair cannot be transferred to Jon Snow. Jon's eyes are described only once and we never read about them changing their color when Jon changed his wardrobe. In that sense we do have every reason to believe they are, in fact, a dark grey which can look black under certain conditions.

A dark purple could also appear like black but then it would still be a dark purple. Just as a dark blue might.

But then the author would have given Jon blue or purple eyes resembling black or he would have given him black eyes which, under certain conditions, look blue or purple. But he hasn't done such a thing.

Jon has the eyes of his mother. Stark eyes, not Valyrian eyes. He could have Rhaegar's nose, ears, hands, etc., but I doubt George is ever going to tell us if that's the case. It is not likely that anybody closely knowing Prince Rhaegar is going to examine Jon's body in detail. Not to mention that such people might not exactly remember Rhaegar all that well. He is dead for over fifteen years now.

People might certainly look for those standard Targaryen traits in Jon when they learn that he is supposedly Rhaegar's son but them actually finding any such traits hiding in plain sight would be silly. Purple eyes and silver-gold hair are pretty conspicuous.

[The Wolves]

4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Chances are not that good that Jon does have Valyrian eyes of any shade. Blue or purple eyes are not grey or black eyes. And not all Targaryens or Valyrian have eyes the shade of purple or violet. Some simply have blue eyes.

The examples of Daemon II Blackfyre - who made his eyes appear more bluish when wearing blue and more purplish when wearing violet clothes - and Prince Aegon's blue hair cannot be transferred to Jon Snow. Jon's eyes are described only once and we never read about them changing their color when Jon changed his wardrobe. In that sense we do have every reason to believe they are, in fact, a dark grey which can look black under certain conditions.

A dark purple could also appear like black but then it would still be a dark purple. Just as a dark blue might.

But then the author would have given Jon blue or purple eyes resembling black or he would have given him black eyes which, under certain conditions, look blue or purple. But he hasn't done such a thing.

Jon has the eyes of his mother. Stark eyes, not Valyrian eyes. He could have Rhaegar's nose, ears, hands, etc., but I doubt George is ever going to tell us if that's the case. It is not likely that anybody closely knowing Prince Rhaegar is going to examine Jon's body in detail. Not to mention that such people might not exactly remember Rhaegar all that well. He is dead for over fifteen years now.

People might certainly look for those standard Targaryen traits in Jon when they learn that he is supposedly Rhaegar's son but them actually finding any such traits hiding in plain sight would be silly. Purple eyes and silver-gold hair are pretty conspicuous.

Jon's eyes are described multiple times throughout the book and each time they are called grey. 

[Angel Eyes]

20 hours ago, Ashbolt said:

So, going by the theory of 'R+L=J', Jon Snow is a Targaryen, however, the lack of Valyrian features in Jon has always frustrated me. In other people of part-Valyrian heritage (Bittersteel, House Dayne, Valarr Targaryen, etc.), there is at least one Valyrian feature so why does Jon have none? Of course there is one other case where a Targaryen hasn't had Valyrian features (Baelor Breakspear) but that could just be a one-off. I refused to believe that Jon also had no Valyrian features so I looked into his eye colour (dark-grey) and this led me to find the 'High Valyrian Vocabulary' page. On this page I discovered that the High Valyrian word for purple was also the word for dark, black, dark-coloured and grey.

• zōbrie ['zoːbri͡e], -ior

adj. III dark; black; dark-colored; grey; purple

Could this be evidence for Jon's eye colour being purple? If the Valyrians thought the colours so similar that they could be shared by the same word, surely Jon's eyes could just be another shade/variation of purple.

One word: meiosis. And the Daynes are not confirmed to be Valyrian. The Starks are on the other end, as First Men.

[Dex the Dog]

Gray eyes are pretty much always blue eyes "with a twist". The same kind of gene that produces blue (or perhaps purple) eyes to some can produce very dark and gray -looking eyes to others. A lot of people with grey eyes were in fact blue-eyed as children but the color can slowly shift to almost perfect gray over the years.

[Raisin' Bran]

22 hours ago, Lollygag said:

Book Jon has the Stark brown hair.

Thanks. Not sure why I didn't remember that.