Does Benjen know Jon Snow's parentage?

[LynnS]

4 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

That's in the show, right? He never said anything like that to Jon in the book. Why would he tell Benjen anything after Benjen joined the NW? What difference did it make with regard to Jon?

Damn HBO.  I just checked GoT and Ned says not a  thing to Jon about his mother. I'll amend this to say that it's possible that Benjen knows about Jon's parents.  Jon has made a vow to find his uncle at some point.  It's just one of the possible avenues for discovery I suppose.  Bran being the other possibility.   

[Queen of Procrastination]

46 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Damn HBO.  I just checked GoT and Ned says not a  thing to Jon about his mother. I'll amend this to say that it's possible that Benjen knows about Jon's parents.  Jon has made a vow to find his uncle at some point.  It's just one of the possible avenues for discovery I suppose.  Bran being the other possibility.   

Ned apparently regrets not having told Jon when he's in the Black Cells. Varys says to Ned that he might be allowed to go to the Wall if he confesses to treason and that he could join his brother and his son. 

Ned thinks in his last chapter:

Quote

The thought of Jon filled Ned with a sense of shame, and a sorrow too deep for words. If only he could see the boy again and talk with him...

I think Benjen definitively suspected something, but I can easily imagine that he helped her to run away. I also think that Lyanna was knight of the laughing tree and that Benjen helped her to get her armour. 

[sweetsunray]

10 hours ago, theblackdragonI said:

Just a general question because I honestly have no idea, do adopted children often have the characteristics of their biological parents?

The way we use our body and face and muscles (including vocal chords) is partly genetic, it seems. I knew my grandfather on my mom's side barely. When I visited he was mostly in his office, and he died when I was elementary age, but part of my personality and some of my movement and facial expressions is something my mom recognizes in me, and actually she only started to recognize that in me from my mid 20s on, close to 2 decades after he died. And voice, well that's something very physical. Even family cannot tell my mom and myself apart on the phone.

[sweetsunray]

5 hours ago, Runaway Penguin said:

Both brothers would at least need to agree on one sort of story, so that people do not get different replies to same answers from Ned and from Benjen - for example the difference between "She went willingly" and "She was kidnapped and raped".

Why would people even ask that? First, people already believe she was kidnapped and raped. Secondly, that's a rude thing to ask Lord Stark or his brother at the Wall. Northerners overall seem a private bunch of people who neither pry nor talk too much. I can see some fellow recruits (like our Alisser Thorne) try a jab at young Benjen with taunts about his sister during training. The only answer they probably got was a good beat-up.

[theblackdragonI]

5 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

The way we use our body and face and muscles (including vocal chords) is partly genetic, it seems. I knew my grandfather on my mom's side barely. When I visited he was mostly in his office, and he died when I was elementary age, but part of my personality and some of my movement and facial expressions is something my mom recognizes in me, and actually she only started to recognize that in me from my mid 20s on, close to 2 decades after he died. And voice, well that's something very physical. Even family cannot tell my mom and myself apart on the phone.

 Thank you I honestly had no idea. Jon could have had some of Rhaegars mannerisms, but I'd wager a lot more Stark in him. We know he didn't have Rhaegar's voice, purely because I don't remember Jons voice being commented on while we hear from Jaime, Cersei and others that Rhaegar had a very unique voice (iron toned is what Jaime recalls I think). Very off topic but while were on the subject of genetics, I always found it interesting that Jon and Arya look so much like Starks/Lyanna, while the rest take after the Tullys.

 

[sweetsunray]

1 minute ago, theblackdragonI said:

 Thank you I honestly had no idea. Jon could have had some of Rhaegars mannerisms, but I'd wager a lot more Stark in him. We know he didn't have Rhaegar's voice, purely because I don't remember Jons voice being commented on while we hear from Jaime, Cersei and others that Rhaegar had a very unique voice (iron toned is what Jaime recalls I think). Very off topic but while were on the subject of genetics, I always found it interesting that Jon and Arya look so much like Starks/Lyanna, while the rest take after the Tullys.

 

Iron toned is the "color" (tone) of a voice, but there's also timbre, certain way of stressing, or the intent laid behind the voice, aka stern. And it doesn't have to be the father. He can sound like his great-grandfather even, or only when he's in a certain mood. And we only have two chapters with Jon as LC from a POV that isn't Jon's - aFfC, Samwell I, and Mel's chapter in aDwD.

[Wall Flower]

10 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Iron toned is the "color" (tone) of a voice, but there's also timbre, certain way of stressing, or the intent laid behind the voice, aka stern. And it doesn't have to be the father. He can sound like his great-grandfather even, or only when he's in a certain mood. And we only have two chapters with Jon as LC from a POV that isn't Jon's - aFfC, Samwell I, and Mel's chapter in aDwD.

Also, I don't think that Jaime or Cersei actually got to speak to Jon - Cersei later mentions having a glimpse of the boy, who was kept away from the Royal party during the visit to Winterfell. Jon's only 14 at the start of AGOT, so his voice may be quite different from the voice of  the 24 year old Rhaegar that Jaime remembers. Jon's voice might have been just breaking at that point.

[sweetsunray]

16 minutes ago, Wall Flower said:

Also, I don't think that Jaime or Cersei actually got to speak to Jon - Cersei later mentions having a glimpse of the boy, who was kept away from the Royal party during the visit to Winterfell. Jon's only 14 at the start of AGOT, so his voice may be quite different from the voice of  the 24 year old Rhaegar that Jaime remembers. Jon's voice might have been just breaking at that point.

True. There is that factor as well. A boy's voice isn't a man's voice yet, since a boy's voice breaks during teen-years. Women don't have that.

Catelyn kept Jon away, but I'm sure Ned had a very good reason to not object to it. But I think that @theblackdragonI simply meant that people haven't yet commented on Jon having an iron-toned voice in any POV. It doesn't have to be a POV who knew Rhaegar commenting on Jon's voice, to make a voice parallel.

[Gertrude]

13 hours ago, theblackdragonI said:

Just a general question because I honestly have no idea, do adopted children often have the characteristics of their biological parents?

Can't speak to that specifically. I was helping my parents clean out some junk and my dad found his college notebooks that had been hidden away for years. I was in college at the time and ran to get mine because the way we took notes and formatted them, even shorthanded them was nearly identical. My brother's didn't look like that. Looking at pictures of me, my dad and his mom, we noticed that even at a young age, we all cocked our heads the same when we pose for the camera. Again, my brother never did that. So yeah, I think there is a large genetic component, though not all, obviously.

[1000th Lord Commander]

Interesting. I hadn't considered the role Benjen might have played in Lyanna's 'abduction' before reading this post. I always thought he'd simply been impressed by the nameless black brother, and after Ned comes home with two sons, thinks that even if Robb dies young, they can legitimize Jon, and joins the Night's Watch.

Jon as a baby wouldn't have been recognisable as Lyanna's son, but as he grew older, Benjen might have suspected something. But by then he was in the Night's Watch, so stayed out of it.