[ADWD spoilers] Jon Snow's Fate

[Ninotchka]

Robbwind's resurrection!

Hmmm my english really sucks, because I can't remember THAT part :lmao:

No, seriously, haven't Martin said something like that? That the resurrections were just taking to a great one? :bang:

[DemiNymph]

Jon has to die because the wall has to come down. The whole point of the series is to have an epic Dragon vs The Others fight at the end, and Jon has to die to make it happen.

[Maistjarnan]

Jon has to die because the wall has to come down. The whole point of the series is to have an epic Dragon vs The Others fight at the end, and Jon has to die to make it happen.

Why does he have to die for the Wall to fall? It's not like his life is somehow connected to the fact that the Wall is still standing. ;)

[Dolorous Edson]

Jon has to die because the wall has to come down. The whole point of the series is to have an epic Dragon vs The Others fight at the end, and Jon has to die to make it happen.

OK, can someone point me to speculation for a dragon imprisoned in the wall? IF that is truly the case, then my money would be on that dragon being insensate and immobile until Jon can warg into it and become Icedragonjon. How that would tie in with Dany's dragons, I have no clue.

Oh, and another reason why Jon can't be truly dead - his parentage question absolutely needs resolution before the end of the story, AND that revelation must have a huge impact on the story itself... Whether his Targ lineage means that he can become a dragon or mrely control one, the groundwork has been laid and must be resolved.

[gbellinator]

In AGOT he dreamt of Winterfell being empty, the stables burnt down (see Theon's last thought) he ran the halls shouting for his father (dead), Benjen (dead) Robb (dead) and Arya (i am no one) he didnt want to go down to the crypts where the dead starks were but he knew he had to go. Could be a fortelling of his own 'death' and i'm hoping Arya's death is not completely as well :(

Could you point the page/chapter of this out? I don't recall this at all.

[king biters chamber pot]

It's strange to me that the people at the Wall who actually spent their lives fighting the wildlings, ie the rangers were the ones who supported Jon. While the stewards, builders and septons who until recently rarely lost men to the wildlings were acting so illogically prejudiced.

I don't find it so strange, from one of the earlier books, we know that there is more trade between the NW and the wildlings, than one would expect, it likely happens through the rangers when beyond the wall.

similarly the rangers don't seem to go raiding wildling villages killing women and nameless babes, though they seem to know where they are. They know it's not an all out wildling war they are fighting, they target specific threats to the wall, such as the prologue in AGOT.

where as the stewards/builders/septons only see the dead brought back (or not returning).

[Tyrone Biggums]

where as the stewards/builders/septons only see the dead brought back (or not returning).

And they only see the people that are taking food away from NW men. They aren't seeing the big picture - they seem to still see the Wildings as enemies, when really the TRUE enemy is the Others. Which they still don't seem to want to accept...

[The Snow King]

I wonder if the 'armoured in black ice' part means that's going to be some kind of magical ice armour? But how could that work, and ice seems to be a asset for the Others, not the good guys. Maybe it's supposed to be dragonglass, obsidian? However, obsidian is probably as crappy armour material as ice, very brittle.

[King_In_The_North]

I wonder if the 'armoured in black ice' part means that's going to be some kind of magical ice armour? But how could that work, and ice seems to be a asset for the Others, not the good guys. Maybe it's supposed to be dragonglass, obsidian? However, obsidian is probably as crappy armour material as ice, very brittle.

Yes, but it may be good against the Others.

[strings]

So I'm still working on putting together an overarching theory but a few quick notes.

-First Jon's death matches the Azor Ahai prophecy way to close for it to be a coincidence.

-Next:

Jon dreams of the direwolves, and realizes that one of the female wolves is dead. Then he hears a voice behind him, a silent shout or whisper, and he looks around, searching for a lean grey shape. He sees a sapling weirwood rapidly growing from the cliff side, and it has Bran's face, except it has three eyes. He wonders if his brother always had three eyes, and the weirwood tells him that it wasn't the case until the crow. John smells wolf, tree and boy, and warm earth, hard stone and death. Bran tells him that he likes it in the dark, and then the weirwood touches Jon to open his eye. Suddenly Jon slips into Ghost and sees things from his perspective.

As Jon is dying Bran pushes him into Ghost.

-Next is the shakiest part of the theory that I am still working on. There is very dark tidings surrounding Jon at this point.

Jon tells Sam of a recurring dream he has of Winterfell. He dreams he is walking in a long, empty hall in the castle, his voice echoing around him and no one is answering. He is looking for someone, but he isn't sure who, sometimes it is his father, sometimes Robb, or Arya, or even Benjen. But he never finds anyone, the castle is always empty. Even the ravens are gone, and the stables are full of bones. It scares him, and he runs around looking for someone. Then he finds himself in front of the door to the crypts, and he knows he has to go down there, but he doesn't want to. He's afraid of what is waiting for him. Not the old Kings of Winter, but something else. He screams that he is not a Stark, that it isn't his place, but it is no good and he feels he has to go down, so he starts, with no torch to light his way. It gets darker and darker, until he wants to scream, and then he wakes up.

Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him ... North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned his cheeks.

-Besides the tidings of Jon getting darker and all memories of warmth leaving him I took one more thing from this. That is that the heart of winter is protected from dreams and prophecy somehow. Another thing that points to this is another of Brans dreams.

Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid.

Skulls. A thousand skulls, and the bastard boy again. Jon Snow...

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.

The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, limned in tongues of red and orange, appearing and disappearing again, a shadow half- seen behind a fluttering curtain. Now he was a man, now a wolf, now a man again. But the skulls were here as well, the skulls were all around him.

-Mel is constantly seeing skulls surrounding Jon and takes these to mean deaths. I think the skulls could also refer to the wights. I think GhostJon escapes the wall and goes north into the heart of winter. This is why Mel sees him in the visions appearing and disappearing, only half seen. I think this is because of him going into the heart of winter which is messing with the vision.

-This is where we'll find out more about the actual others. So far we've heard very little about them but they have often been referred to as an incorporeal white mist. I think Tormund at one point mentions this as well as a few prophecies.

Snowflakes swirled from a dark sky and ashes rose to meet them, the grey and the white whirling around each other as flaming arrows arced above a wooden wall and dead things shambled silent through the cold, beneath a great grey cliff where fires burned inside a hundred caves. Then the wind rose and the white mist came sweeping in, impossibly cold, and one by one the fires went out. Afterward only the skulls remained.

-This is clearly talking of Hardholme. The wildlings and NW that are already there from the boats are defending it from the wights behind their wooden barricades before the wind rises and the others come in to finish the job.

Visions danced before her, gold and scarlet, flickering, forming and melting and dissolving into one another, shapes strange and terrifying and seductive. She saw the eyeless faces again, staring out at her from sockets weeping blood. Then the towers by the sea, crumbling as the dark tide came sweeping over them, rising from the depths. Shadows in the shape of skulls, skulls that turned to mist, bodies locked together in lust, writhing and rolling and clawing. Through curtains of fire great winged shadows wheeled against a hard blue sky.

-Just another reference to the mist. "Shadows in the shape of skulls, skulls that turn to mist."

-now's when my theory goes from crackpot to outright lunacy. I think while in the heart of winter Jon will somehow get pulled from Ghost and become one of the white mists. Here he'll learn that the others were the original Children of the forest. They all went the way of Jon and are essentially wargs without bodies that went to the next stage. The children that Bran is with are the ones that stayed pure and didn't go down that route and stayed neutral in what was essentially a war against the first men. We've already seen a lot of connections with the Starks to the Children of the forest. We'll also learn at some point that the Targs "inbreeding" was to keep the blood of the first men Pure in their line. He'll go south with the others and take down the wall "waking the stone dragon" that lies within. We've already learned from Mel that the wall is a great power and one of the "hinges of the world."

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?"

-At some point Jon will learn of R + L = J and he'll start to regain some of his humanity. He'll then take on the role of Azor ahai reborn and be the link between the first men and the children. Not sure where it will go from there, like I said it's still a work in progress. I know it's a seriously crackpot theory and I'm sure there are many things out there to contradict it but it's a work in progress and i do see potential.

If nothing else Bran's dream pretty much proves that Jon will be alive in Ghost at least for now and it's due to Bran.

Okay, that turned out to be a lot more than a few quick notes but it'll be more fleshed out when I finish.

[strings]

DP

[GoodKingAlf]

I wonder if the 'armoured in black ice' part means that's going to be some kind of magical ice armour? But how could that work, and ice seems to be a asset for the Others, not the good guys. Maybe it's supposed to be dragonglass, obsidian? However, obsidian is probably as crappy armour material as ice, very brittle.

The black ice thing made me think too...

Coldhands has cold black hands.

Could it be that Jon is resurected wightish like Coldhands? So he's still Jon, just dead... and with cold black skin. I.e... skin like black ice... armoured in black ice.

[Husband to Bears]

I am going to quote the Great Miracle Max,

Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.

Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

[Saracen]

The black ice thing made me think too...

Coldhands has cold black hands.

Could it be that Jon is resurected wightish like Coldhands? So he's still Jon, just dead... and with cold black skin. I.e... skin like black ice... armoured in black ice.

Isn't Coldhands a good wight. Btw do we know who he is yet.

[Wellspring]

"Reborn amidst smoke and salt."

Anyone remember when Jon and Bowen Marsh were going through the winter stores of Castle Black? They lacked meat, vegetables, etc. But they had no lack of salt down there. The symbol of Ser Patrek is a blue star on silver. In addition to symbolizing the Dallas Cowboys, his blood-covered surcoat might count as a "bleeding star". Might it be that Jon's corpse is burned? (This is how they're dealing with all the corpses at the Wall these days.)

Smoke isn't hard to come by-- but for salt, we've been using it as a metaphor for the sea (Dany/Stannis), for tears (Rhaegar's birth), etc. Why not take it literally as the huge stores of salt under Castle Black? And as for "reborn", we can take it as Azor Ahai coming back from the grave... or as his successor being reborn. Dany's transformation was metaphorical. Jon's might be literal.

(Someone asked what Wun Wun was doing killing Ser Patrek-- it seems clear to me that Patrek had found some reason to slay the giant and Wun Wun was defending himself.)

Maistjarnan asks why Jon has to be dead for the Wall to fall. Strictly speaking, he doesn't. But if the wall falls while Jon is Lord Commander, then he's failed. It's only if he is out of action somehow, off stage, when other incompetents are running things, that the reader can blame their treachery and bad decisions for the Wall going down. Jon's much less of a hero if his big accomplishment is fixing a mess of his own making. Having him killed (or unconscious) by mutinous NW members is ideal.

GRRM can do this in many ways. He could resurrect Jon immediately, and have him rejected and driven out by the NW-- who call him a wight. So Jon goes on a lonely heroic journey of becoming while the Wall falls. Or he could be resurrected as a result of the Wall falling (a side effect of the great release of magic that comes as the spells that keep it together are broken)-- coming up too late to rescue things, but in time to rally the survivors. Or, after the Wall is down, he is reborn during Westeros's darkest hour, when the battle lines have moved far, far south.

[Wellspring]

Oh, one other thing: what's the immediate aftermath of Jon's murder? The wildlings have been whipped into a frenzy to save Mance. Jon has earned their respect and gratitude. And suddenly, when the mob is fit to riot and march on Winterfell, that's when the Pomegranate decides to bushwhack and murder him. In front of everyone.

I expect a bloodbath at Castle Black. The rangers seem much more comfortable with Jon's decisions than the Stewards and Builders-- how will they react? And what would Melisandre do? And what will Stannis do when he finds out? The wildlings certainly won't stand for it.

The conspirators don't seem to have thought this all the way through. The Watch might survive, but I'd be surprised if Bowen makes it through the night. Ser Alliser is likely to be the 999th Lord Commander, if only because he's stayed out of the back-stabbery.

[Aegon II]

^I think WunWun protects the wildling princess from Ser Patrek.

[Maistjarnan]

Maistjarnan asks why Jon has to be dead for the Wall to fall. Strictly speaking, he doesn't. But if the wall falls while Jon is Lord Commander, then he's failed. It's only if he is out of action somehow, off stage, when other incompetents are running things, that the reader can blame their treachery and bad decisions for the Wall going down. Jon's much less of a hero if his big accomplishment is fixing a mess of his own making. Having him killed (or unconscious) by mutinous NW members is ideal.

I actually just asked that question because some people made it sound as if Jon's life was somehow tied to the Wall and that in order for it to fall he just had to be dead dead. Your explanation makes more sense of course. ;)

Regarding Jon as Azor Ahai: isn't it also some kind of subversion of the whole prophecy trope if the person who fullfils it isn't the one with the most spectacular and obvious signs (Dany and her dragons) but the one with the mundane signs, i.e. the salt just being someone's tears and the bleeding star just the sigil of a random guy who got himself killed. I like that actually more than Dany being AA.

[Black Crow]

I’m inclined to think too much may be read into some of this. As argued above Jon is pretty well plot armoured and therefore not dead and gone. There’s a fair consensus that he is Rheagar’s son and therefore the third head of the dragon after Dany and Aegon. Unless yet another lost Targarayen crawls out of the woodwork he’s needed to complete the set. That being the case I suggest that he is the dragon (ie; Targarayen) in the wall and there’s not necessarily a need for anything more clever – although I do wonder about that old horn he gave to Sam…

And I also have my doubts about Bran. If Jon is also AA then we have a fight between darkness and the light and there was an awful lot on emphasis on the darkness of the caves where Bran has fetched up. Are the children of the forest really so cuddly as they appear, or can they warg into the dead and if so are Bran and Jon going to end up on opposite sides at the end? GRRM did say it wasn’t going to be peaches and cream.

[nothatso]

I don't know if there was really much to this, but I thought it was worth a post. In an EW interview from July 12th Martin said the following:

If you wrote Rings, Gandalf would have stayed dead after Mines of Moria.

Yes, he would have. I get a lot of credit for killing my characters, but Tolkien really did it first and in some ways that was the inspiration for me. And then Tolkien did it again at end of the second book where he seemingly kills Frodo, though that turns out to be feint.

http://shelf-life.ew.com/2011/07/12/george-martin-talks-a-dance-with-dragons/

Just intriguing that he referenced a feinted death of a major character from another fantasy series at the release of ADWD, but I may be reading too much into it.