Did chainmail protect Jon? An old idea revisited.

[Sandy Clegg]

While reading through some Classic Thread ideas I came across this excellent old post on Jon the Berserker by @bemused:

https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/130451-jon-the-berserker/#comments

It's a good read overall, but the idea I want to focus on is not Jon's potential berserker power, but rather the theory that, when Jon was stabbed, he was wearing the ringmail that Sam sees on the workbench outside Jon's solar in AFFC. Here is the relevant section:

 

Quote

 

“Did that wretch break the skin?” 

Sam eased the books down and peeled off his glove. “He did.” He felt faint. “I’m bleeding.” 

“We all shed our blood for the Watch. Wear thicker gloves.”

 

In that same scene, as Sam enters Jon's quarters - ... he made his way past the forge with its anvil and bellows. A shirt of ringmail rested on his (Jon's) workbench, half-completed.

This scene raises some questions ... Does it foreshadow the assassination attempt on Jon , and does it hint at hidden information? - I think we can draw a definite parallel. For openers, Jon's attackers certainly can be described as "wretches" .

Is Sam hurt ? - Yes , but not seriously. He's bleeding ,and he "feels faint" ( just as Jon seems to later, when pain washes over him ) ... Sam handles ravens all the time , and apparently has a way with them. Mormont's raven can be a nuisance , but is generally regarded affectionately by those who come in close contact with it. - e.g. while Jon calls it a wretch ,or a thief , or swats at it , he also lets it read over his shoulder, and strokes it's feathers. - Sam may be equally wounded ( if not moreso ) by the fact the bird "turned on him". ... Will this prove to be similar to the attack on Jon? ..Probably not as much as we would like , but I'm betting - to a degree - yes.

 

Does Jon go on to heed his own advice to "wear thicker gloves" ? .. Was that Chekov's shirt of ringmail on his workbench ? .. Although he doesn't seem to expect Marsh to go as far as attacking him , he must have felt vulnerable going to address the wildlings ( Some had earlier accepted his terms with cold, dead eyes , while fingering their sword hilts.).. He couldn't be certain he'd win them all over, and from some of them, violence might be expected , after hearing the letter .. more so than from Bowen .

 

I think it's reasonable to assume Jon would take extra precautions in his attire . The following playful banter between Jon and Val says it would only be common sense.. 

 

“This queen of yours must be fierce if the legs of grown men give out beneath them when they meet her. Should I have dressed in mail instead of wool and fur? These clothes were given to me by Dalla, I would sooner not get bloodstains all over them.”

“If words drew blood, you might have cause to fear. I think your clothes are safe enough, my lady.”

 

I suspect Jon may have been wearing mail during all the scenes where he's put himself at risk since the shirt was mentioned ; places where he knew he could be facing more than mere words ...

 

 

Jon's potential survival from assassination (in a condition which may range from 'mortally wounded / almost dead' to 'bleeding but still able to fight' - I'm not coming down on any particular side here) is not a new idea. But the huge cliffhanger status it has been given in the series means that this is an event which surely falls into the category of 'landmark moment'. These moments tend to be things that GRRM lays groundwork for, in terms of plot details (e.g. some Chekov's Gun chain mail lying on a workbench, as mentioned above). He is not the kind of author to leave foreshadowing solely to plot elements, however - there are usually echoes lurking in thematic elements, too, or even wordplay. And I think there may be more than a few of these in Sam's first AFFC chapter.

 

This would imply that GRRM had Jon's assassination written in stone since starting AFFC nearly a quarter of a century ago. So, we're looking for anything that ties into stabbing, bloody wounds, and protection. The fact of Jon wearing hidden ringmail would no doubt increase his chances of survival, so I think it's worth exploring any seeds GRRM has sown in this regard.

 

We only need take a look at the two pages from Sam's POV just before meeting Jon, and the initial moments of their conversation. The observation of the key item - the chainmail on the workbench  - actually comes between some other hints of foreshadowing. At least, it's possible - with hindsight -  to read them as such. You might well disagree and think these are quirks of pattern-finding. Intentionality is hard to prove when George is at his most subtle, I guess, but it'll be interesting to get people's thoughts.

 

The most significant point to bear in mind here is the extremely close proximity of these clues in the chapter. All occur within a two-page spread (in my edition at least).

 

1) The first echo of Jon's future assassination comes in the unlikely figure of Gilly, who Sam bumps into, causing him to drop two books:

"Sam." Her voice sounded raw. Gilly was dark-haired and slim, with the big brown eyes of a doe. She was swallowed by the folds of Sam's old cloak, her face half-hidden by its hood, but shivering all the same. Her face looked wan and frightened.

"What's wrong?" Sam asked her. "How are the babes?"

Gilly pulled loose from him. "They're good, Sam. Good."

"Between the two of them it's a wonder you can sleep," Sam said pleasantly. "Which one was it that I heard crying last night? I thought he'd never stop."

"Dalla's boy. He cries when he wants the teat. Mine . . . mine hardly ever cries. Sometimes he gurgles, but . . ." Her eyes filled with tears. "I have to go. It's past time that I fed them. I'll be leaking all over myself if I don't go." She rushed across the yard, leaving Sam perplexed behind her.

Gilly has a certain 'Jon aura' here, being described as ;dark-haired and slim, shivering with half her face hidden'. More interestingly, of the two babes it is Gilly's son who hardly cries, reminding us of Jon's direwolf who makes no sound, perhaps. And there is the first faint hint of the theme of a bloody stabbing with the words: "I'll be leaking all over myself if I don't go." 

2) From two babies to two tomes. Sam drops two books on bumping into Gilly:

He had to get down on his knees to gather up the books he'd dropped. I should not have brought so many, he told himself as he brushed the dirt off Colloquo Votar's Jade Compendium, a thick volume of tales and legends from the east that Maester Aemon had commanded him to find. The book appeared undamaged. Maester Thomax's Dragonkin, Being a History of House Targaryen from Exile to Apotheosis, with a Consideration of the Life and Death of Dragons had not been so fortunate. It had come open as it fell, and a few pages had gotten muddy, including one with a rather nice picture of Balerion the Black Dread done in colored inks. Sam cursed himself for a clumsy oaf as he smoothed the pages down and brushed them off. Gilly's presence always flustered him and gave rise to . . . well, risings. A Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch should not be feeling the sorts of things that Gilly made him feel, especially when she would talk about her breasts and . . .

A couple of things here. The book that ends up damaged in the fall is the one on dragon kin (we can easily draw a broad connection to Jon here). Specifically, it is a picture of Balerion the Black Dread which ends up muddy. In the original thread Jon's dream of himself atop the Wall in 'black ice, holding a flaming sword' is compared to this quote:

“When your dragons were small they were a wonder. Grown, they are death and devastation, a flaming sword above the world.” ... Xaro Xoan Daxos to Dany .. ADWD

So black Balerion is quite a nice parallel to Jon, in his dream at least. The picture, we note, isn't ruined beyond repair - Sam brushes it off and smooths it down. But it is damaged nonetheless. This could inform us as to Jon's condition post-stabbing, I believe, even though it's still rather vague.

The second thing to notice is a piece of wordplay on Sam's 'risings'. Here, it ostensibly refers to his rising arousal caused by Gilly (we all know where that eventually leads!). Feelings which a Sworn Brother ought not to feel. But as we are in Jon-assassination foreshadowing territory here, I believe we should also take the other meaning of 'rising' to be equally pertinent:

rīsing noun

1. The action or process of the verb in any sense
2. A revolt

A rising of sorts, or 'uprising' if you prefer, is precisely what occurs when Bowen Marsh et al. decide to turn on their Lord Commander and stab him multiple times. And no, "... a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch should not be feeling" treasonous thoughts such as these, let alone act on them. So we have foreshadowing as to an incident involving a dragon's downfall, and a possible motive/context for the reason behind it.

3. The ringmail itself appears next. A key component in the foreshadowing (if this is indeed what we are seeing).

"Lord Snow is waiting." Two guards in black cloaks and iron halfhelms stood by the doors of the armory, leaning on their spears. Hairy Hal was the one who'd spoken. Mully helped Sam back to his feet. He blurted out thanks and hurried past them, clutching desperately at the stack of books as he made his way past the forge with its anvil and bellows. A shirt of ringmail rested on his workbench, half-completed. 

Jon never mentions putting on any ringmail in his assassination chapter - this is covered more in the original thread. So this tiny mention all the way back in the start of AFFC is ... about as subtle as it gets. And are there any other clues relating to shielding, protection or padding in the upcoming paragraphs? Yup.

4. As mentioned in the original thread, Sam is bitten by the Old Bear's raven:

“Did that wretch break the skin?” 
Sam eased the books down and peeled off his glove. “He did.” He felt faint. “I’m bleeding.” 
“We all shed our blood for the Watch. Wear thicker gloves.”

We all shed our blood for the Watch. The mention of wearing 'thicker gloves' here is also interesting, if Jon has the ringmail in mind as a preventative measure even now. I don't want to repeat what's been said, though. Read the old post, it's great.

5. The letter to Tommen is described as a 'paper shield' - a nice callback to the one Ned uses against Cersei.

"A paper shield."
Sam sucked at the blood on his palm as he read. He knew Maester Aemon's hand on sight. His writing was small and precise, but the old man could not see where the ink had blotted, and sometimes he left unsightly smears. "A letter to King Tommen?"

This shield is blotted and stained with ink (in place of blood). If we run with the metaphor we might say that this shield has seen action, and not been entirely effective.

6. Bran's padding. Right after the 'paper shield' comes yet another mention of protection, this time in Jon's recollection of when Bran fought Tommen in Winterfelll:

"At Winterfell Tommen fought my brother Bran with wooden swords. He wore so much padding he looked like a stuffed goose. Bran knocked him to the ground." Jon went to the window. "Yet Bran's dead, and pudgy pink-faced Tommen is sitting on the Iron Throne, with a crown nestled amongst his golden curls."

Let's remind ourselves of the original scene from book one:

To her disappointment, it was the younger boys drilling. Bran was so heavily padded he looked as though he had belted on a featherbed, and Prince Tommen, who was plump to begin with, seemed positively round. They were huffing and puffing and hitting at each other with padded wooden swords under the watchful eye of old Ser Rodrik Cassel. - AGOT, Arya I

Two padded fighters. Not only does this reinforce the motif of padding/protection, it also pulls into focus the chief antagonist of Jon's attempted assassination, Bowen Marsh:

Bowen is round and red as a pomegranate, with plump hands, round cheeks, and a red face. 

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Bowen_Marsh

Just like the plump and padded Bran and Tommen, Bowen is round and portly - and red (just like a pomegranate). So, in miniature, we have we have two combatants, both padded in their own ways, who possibly foreshadow a future event in which one padded (with flesh) individual stabs another individual ... also then padded, we might assume? If the parallel is to fit, then it seems so. 

What do you think? Has George gone to incredibly subtle lengths to foreshadow Jon's wearing of ringmail here? And if so, to what extent could this mitigate against his wounding?

[kissdbyfire]

It’s not just the ringmail but boiled leather and the layers of woolen small clothes that Martin keeps bringing up again and again. All of that + short blade = voila all the undead Jon theories go down the drain. 

[Aldarion]

3 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

What do you think? Has George gone to incredibly subtle lengths to foreshadow Jon's wearing of ringmail here? And if so, to what extent could this mitigate against his wounding?

3 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

It’s not just the ringmail but boiled leather and the layers of woolen small clothes that Martin keeps bringing up again and again. All of that + short blade = voila all the undead Jon theories go down the drain. 

Agreed. Mail + padding could allow him to be wounded by stabs without it being lethal... mail is generally not good at defending against stabbing / piercing attacks, but it still mitigates damage to an extent.

By the way of a nitpick, "ringmail" is really a nonexistent term, much like "chainmail". That is like saying a "bladed sword"... sword has a blade, you don't need to specifically note that.

[Aebram]

We know that Jon was wounded badly enough that he lost consciousness: not all at once, as if from a blow, but gradually over several moments. That seems to suggest some major blood loss, although I'm no expert on such things. Perhaps Marsh's blade was poisoned, and a small nick was sufficient to knock Jon out.

[sifth]

22 minutes ago, Aebram said:

We know that Jon was wounded badly enough that he lost consciousness: not all at once, as if from a blow, but gradually over several moments. That seems to suggest some major blood loss, although I'm no expert on such things. Perhaps Marsh's blade was poisoned, and a small nick was sufficient to knock Jon out.

I doubt it, the whole stabbing seemed like a rush job, not something that was planned. Else wise they wouldn't have done it in public, in front of an angered giant no less. The whole thing just feels very sloppy to me. If anything Marsh should had left Jon march on Winterfell and then name him a traitor after he left and took control of the Wall in his absence.

[House Cambodia]

Something that never seems to come up - maybe it was properly debunked years ago, and I missed it, but immediately before Jon was ambushed and stabbed, he'd just come out of a meeting with Melissandra. I thought about Cregan Karstark still festering in the freezing vault, about Mel's foresight of the impending attack on Jon combined with her ability to glamour, as she did in switching Mance and Rattleshirt. Admittedly the detail that doesn't fit is his last word, "Ghost".

[Aebram]

5 hours ago, sifth said:

I doubt it, the whole stabbing seemed like a rush job, not something that was planned.

I will disagree with this. Marsh stabbed Jon, and two or three other men also stabbed him within moments. I don't think Jon was so unpopular that several of the black brothers would spontaneously join in on a murder attempt.

I don't really believe that Marsh's blade was poisoned. I just threw that out as a possible explanation for Jon losing consciousness.

I think Jon was badly wounded. Remember, he had moved into Donal Noye's former quarters in the armory. It's natural that there would be some armor, blades, and other works in progress lying about.

[kissdbyfire]

7 hours ago, House Cambodia said:

he'd just come out of a meeting with Melissandra

No, he didn’t. He’d just come out of the Shieldhall and was on his way to see Selyse and then Mel.

ADwD, Jon XIII

“Then Tormund was pounding him on the back, all gap-toothed grin from ear to ear. “Well spoken, crow. Now bring out the mead! Make them yours and get them drunk, that’s how it’s done. We’ll make a wildling o’ you yet, boy. Har!”

  “I will send for ale,” Jon said, distracted. Melisandre was gone, he realized, and so were the queen’s knights. I should have gone to Selyse first. She has the right to know her lord is dead. “You must excuse me. I’ll leave you to get them drunk.”

  “Har! A task I’m well suited for, crow. On your way!”

  Horse and Rory fell in beside Jon as he left the Shieldhall. I should talk with Melisandre after I see the queen, he thought.”

 

[House Cambodia]

2 hours ago, Aebram said:

I will disagree with this. Marsh stabbed Jon, and two or three other men also stabbed him within moments. I don't think Jon was so unpopular that several of the black brothers would spontaneously join in on a murder attempt.

I think you're both right, in a sense. The murder could have been planned in the few minutes that Jon was in that meeting with Melissandra, or at the most in the course of that day, as events were developing fast.

[House Cambodia]

1 minute ago, kissdbyfire said:

Horse and Rory fell in beside Jon as he left the Shieldhall. I should talk with Melisandre after I see the queen, he thought.”

Oh right, I misremembered.

[Sandy Clegg]

On 3/30/2024 at 10:11 PM, Aldarion said:

Agreed. Mail + padding could allow him to be wounded by stabs without it being lethal... mail is generally not good at defending against stabbing / piercing attacks, but it still mitigates damage to an extent.

From a random website (aren't they all though?)

Furthermore, mail is very flexible and drapes well over the body. It is particularly good at resisting slashing by weapons. It is not quite so good at resisting penetration, in that the point of a knife will easily pass through a ring before its edges contact the circular ring, deforming it into an oval. Clearly, slender weapons go through further than broader ones: the stiletto is an Italian assassin’s knife that will penetrate deeply. To protect against penetration, mediaeval warriors wore a quilted cotton jerkin, called an aketon, beneath chain mail 

So mail would have offered some protection, but against stabbing boiled leather would have been the critical item perhaps. Perhaps this explains Jon's thought - "stick them with the pointy end" - as Needle was itself a slender 'thrusting' sword which may also have easily penetrated ringmail. 

So even if he had been wearing mail as protection, it still wasn't enough to prevent severe wounding, but perhaps it did stave off a fatality?

 

[Aldarion]

On 4/4/2024 at 2:17 PM, Sandy Clegg said:

So even if he had been wearing mail as protection, it still wasn't enough to prevent severe wounding, but perhaps it did stave off a fatality?

 

Yeah, what I thought.

[House Cambodia]

58 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Yeah, what I thought.

It's not going to go down well if we wait 20 years to find out what happened, only to learn, "'Twas only a flesh wound!"

[Aldarion]

58 minutes ago, House Cambodia said:

It's not going to go down well if we wait 20 years to find out what happened, only to learn, "'Twas only a flesh wound!"

Probably not, but I guess we will see.

[Buried Treasure]

Quote

Often, even with a deep cut, the blood came before the pain.

Doesn't this seem to perfectly describe the slice at Jon's throat? It feels to him that the knife barely grazed the skin, but when he touches his hand to his neck 'blood welled beneath his fingers'.

 

The line is from the very  next page, the start of a Barristan chapter. A little more: 

A thin red slash marked the eastern horizon where the sun might soon appear. It reminded Selmy of the first blood welling from a wound. Often, even with a deep cut, the blood came before the pain.

[Jaime Lannisters Gold Hand]

As far to my best knowledge chainmail will not be efficient against piercing and stabbing. Boiled leather adding protection but again if it was effective enough against that kind of attacks, no one would create a plate or segment armors. 

If they attacked him with small short blades maybe but I guess it was daggers, something closer in length to Bowie knife or WW2 bayonets.

I don't think it could give him protection against that attack to prevent serious penetration.

[Aldarion]

On 4/12/2024 at 7:03 PM, Jaime Lannisters Gold Hand said:

As far to my best knowledge chainmail will not be efficient against piercing and stabbing.

Yes and no - it depends on the mail and the weapon. Historical mail was always riveted, which means that you need a decent bit of force to get through it.