[ADwD Spoilers] Jon and Dany character devolution

[Eaglewood]

It makes sense in that he's heading south to fight now that:

1. His duty (protection of the NW) requires it of him; and,

2. He has the swords that follow. As a practical matter, deserting earlier would only have gotten him labeled oath breaker and his head chopped off.

Huh? Point that duty out in the oath to me.

His duty is to man his post and guard the realms of men. Not to march into a freaking winter blizzard to confront a man who claims to be marching north (through that same blizzard). Especially when not a word of it is confirmed.

The prudent thing to do? Send the wildings north to Hardhelm. Pull all his strength to Castle Black and prepare for battle. Let Ramsay march through the snow to HIM. Take a defensive position, you'll have time. And most of all confirm what is being said! You are supposed to be manning that damn wall for Others. Not running south to preemptively engage in battle!

This was never about protecting the Night Watch and I'm tired of people making this argument. He decided to head south for one reason and one reason only: Arya. That's why he repeats the line about the bride over and over in his head.

[Markus]

If GRRM wanted to present Jon as reckless or stupid for not picking up on Ghost's suspicions about Bowen and for not keeping Ghost with him at all times he wouldn't have introduced a perfectly legitimate reason in Borroq the Skinchanger and his boar to keep Ghost locked away, and for Jon to attribute any strange behavior of Ghost to the scent of the boar. GRRM even has Tormund advising Jon that he should keep Ghost locked up because of Borroq's boar to show that Jon wasn't overreacting.

So the problem isn't that Jon has turned stupid suddenly but that GRRM sabotaged Ghost's ability to function as a reliable protector in Jon's eyes to make a successful assassination more plausible. It certainly has nothing to with Jon regressing to a boy.

[Dragonfish]

Jon followed the old maxim of keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

1. Not all maxims are 100% true. Sometimes you need to send your enemies away to different locations to make it difficult for them to plot together. I think Jon got it in his head to do this with Thorne or one of Thorne's buddies, but then he ended up sending Thorne on a ranging.

2. Jon didn't really follow this maxim anyway. He sent his friends away at almost every opportunity. If anything, the maxim he followed was "keep your friends far away and your enemies close," which is just stupid.

[Dragonfish]

If GRRM wanted to present Jon as reckless or stupid for not picking up on Ghost's suspicions about Bowen and for not keeping Ghost with him at all times he wouldn't have introduced a perfectly legitimate reason in Borroq the Skinchanger and his boar to keep Ghost locked away, and for Jon to attribute any strange behavior of Ghost to the scent of the boar. GRRM even has Tormund advising Jon that he should keep Ghost locked up because of Borroq's boar to show that Jon wasn't overreacting.

So the problem isn't that Jon has turned stupid suddenly but that GRRM sabotaged Ghost's ability to function as a reliable protector in Jon's eyes to make a successful assassination more plausible. It certainly has nothing to with Jon regressing to a boy.

Accept that Ghost specifically tenses up at Bowen Marsh. Jon should have picked up on this. The boar thing honestly comes across as a clumsy device to make Jon ignore Ghost completely, when experience ought to teach Jon that Ghost is valuable for sensing danger.

[Eaglewood]

If GRRM wanted to present Jon as reckless or stupid for not picking up on Ghost's suspicions about Bowen and for not keeping Ghost with him at all times he wouldn't have introduced a perfectly legitimate reason in Borroq the Skinchanger and his boar to keep Ghost locked away, and for Jon to attribute any strange behavior of Ghost to the scent of the boar. GRRM even has Tormund advising Jon that he should keep Ghost locked up because of Borroq's boar to show that Jon wasn't overreacting.

So the problem isn't that Jon has turned stupid suddenly but that GRRM sabotaged Ghost's ability to function as a reliable protector in Jon's eyes to make a successful assassination more plausible. It certainly has nothing to with Jon regressing to a boy.

The wargboar was a plot device to get rid of Ghost. A clumsy one, but at least it's there as a plausible explanation. Nothing explains why he decided to go south in a blizzard after thinking about it for five minutes and break his oaths to save his sister when 1. He did not do it when his father was murdered and his brother rode south to war 2. He did not do it when he was tempted with the wildings and Ygritte or 3. He did not do it when offered freaking Winterfell and to be a legit Stark when his brother was killed as well.

It's either a terrible, terrible, completely regressive decision by Jon or bad writing by GRRM. But honestly... I'm not going to complain. Jon "dying" was clearly needed to move the plot along and ANYTHING that moves the plot along is acceptable in my books.

[sn0mm1s]

Honestly I think Jon's been a fairly wise commander, and I was impressed. Maybe he needs to be out of the way because he's too competent and the Others need a leg up. He locked up Ghost because the wolf was going nuts, and he misinterpreted the reason for that. Had he known he was a character in a fantasy story where the author loves betrayal, he could've made the right decision. My dog goes nuts if there's a squirrel.

Melisandre has not proven to be reliable to him either. We actually know why he doesn't pay attention to her, and it's perfectly reasonble.

No - Jon was a complete fool. The only reason he has to even worry about the Boltons is because he decided to take part in the politics of the realm.

1) He not only tells Stannis where he can get more men he tells Stannis where he should attack (Deepwood Motte).

2) He imprisons Karstarks and then marries the Karstark girl to Thenns so that they can gain control of Karhold.

3) Instead of using a living Mance to help gather up and lead wildlings he has him and some spearwives infiltrate Winterfell to steal back his sister.

4) He sends word to Stannis that the Karstarks are planning to betray him - and uses Night's Watch to do so.

5) The final straw, in front of all his men that he is supposed to be leading, he says he is going to break his vows and deal with Ramsay.

If Jon had just worried about manning The Wall instead of trying to influence the events of The North maybe his brothers wouldn't have wanted him dead. They may not have liked his treatment of the wildlings but at least that way he wouldn't be making enemies south of The Wall as well. In regards to Melisandre - she wasn't correct in intrepreting her visions - but Jon is an utter idiot to not see that there was a lot of truth in her visions. I mean, he is acting on the letter of Ramsay which has just as much truth in it as Melisandre's visions. However, for some reason he completely disregards her and is willing to break his vows and go fight the Boltons. IMO - it would be fitting if Jon just stayed dead.

[Steve Moss]

No - Jon was a complete fool. The only reason he has to even worry about the Boltons is because he decided to take part in the politics of the realm.

...

If Jon had just worried about manning The Wall instead of trying to influence the events of The North maybe his brothers wouldn't have wanted him dead. They may not have liked his treatment of the wildlings but at least that way he wouldn't be making enemies south of The Wall as well.

Both the Lannisters and Boltons were planning on taking care of Jon Snow irrespective of whether he gave the finger to Stannis or not. And if he told Stannis to take a leap, Stannis would have likely seized the Wall and placed Jon's head on a spike so he could have a more cooperative LC.

And Jon is not an idiot, seems tactically astute, and we can probably assume he was aware of the likelihood of all of the foregoing. All said, Jon played his hand well but was beat by a wild card.

[Direwolf_Warg]

Huh? Point that duty out in the oath to me.

His duty is to man his post and guard the realms of men. Not to march into a freaking winter blizzard to confront a man who claims to be marching north (through that same blizzard). Especially when not a word of it is confirmed.

The prudent thing to do? Send the wildings north to Hardhelm. Pull all his strength to Castle Black and prepare for battle. Let Ramsay march through the snow to HIM. Take a defensive position, you'll have time. And most of all confirm what is being said! You are supposed to be manning that damn wall for Others. Not running south to preemptively engage in battle!

This was never about protecting the Night Watch and I'm tired of people making this argument. He decided to head south for one reason and one reason only: Arya. That's why he repeats the line about the bride over and over in his head.

You're not going to mount much of a defense from a castle with no walls. It's specifically stated numerous times throughout the series that the NW was required to build their castles with no defense to an attack from the South, in order to keep them loyal, or in the event that they didn't stay loyal, they'd be easy to defeat.

As I recall, there's a story about a Stark mudstomping the Watch at some point in the books. It's an obscure reference, but one that is made. If you know there's no chance to defend, meeting an enemy in the open field, or on a field of your own choosing becomes the better plan.

[History of Westeros]

Ramsay was threatening to attack the Watch. Jon wanting to go after them makes sense. IMO he viewed it as oathbreaking because a) he's asking men to fight men, which is clearly against their vows (despite the necessity of it) and B) because no matter what Jon tells people, it's going to seem personal.

That said, the way GRRM wrote it does not make this clear, and it should've been. At first read it does seem like a very odd regression. So I agree that its somewhat weak.

[Eaglewood]

You're not going to mount much of a defense from a castle with no walls. It's specifically stated numerous times throughout the series that the NW was required to build their castles with no defense to an attack from the South, in order to keep them loyal, or in the event that they didn't stay loyal, they'd be easy to defeat.

As I recall, there's a story about a Stark mudstomping the Watch at some point in the books. It's an obscure reference, but one that is made. If you know there's no chance to defend, meeting an enemy in the open field, or on a field of your own choosing becomes the better plan.

Once again.

Winter.

No confirmation if a word of it is true.

I'm guessing waiting where you have food and time to draw up a plan is more prudent then racing out blindly. You can gather men/supplies/and still march out to engage in battle somewhere.

[The Human Abstract]

Except that in this particular fantasy story, he placed great stock in how Ghost reacted to others, and kept him near for that reason.

I think he kept him around for general protection, and I think he did generally trust Ghost's insticts and intution. It's one thing to realize your dog can sense that there's something "off" with a person or "The Others" or "wights". It's another to intellectually realize your dog has the magical ability to see into people's souls, apparently. Or the future, as the case may be.

I think you're overreacting. He thought he knew the reason Ghost was upset, and the story explains why he thought that. It was a reasonable thought process. He was also going somewhere he felt was not particularly dangerous with people he trusted. It's also likely to me that his betrayers were merely waiting for a time when Ghost wasn't with him. And eventually that was going to happen. Moreover, even if he did make a mistake it does not make him an idiot. The most brilliant people make foolhardy mistakes. Such is the way of life.

[Eaglewood]

And Jon is not an idiot, seems tactically astute, and we can probably assume he was aware of the likelihood of all of the foregoing. All said, Jon played his hand well but was beat by a wild card.

Shrugs. He played his "break oaths and race into a blizzard" card and got stabbed for it. Four times. I don't blame the men who did it for a second (although I would if they had done it any earlier).

[The Snow King]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Something Dany has learned, I expect. It's one thing to want something, it's quite another to actually get it.

I really don't think Dany has learnt anything. This idea should be quite obvious, after we see how 'libaration' of Astapor went. Yet it does not seem to influence her behaviour in ADwD and at the end of the book she still haven't change her patters of thought. I saw no progress, but YMMV.

[Direwolf_Warg]

Once again.

Winter.

No confirmation if a word of it is true.

I'm guessing waiting where you have food and time to draw up a plan is more prudent then racing out blindly. You can gather men/supplies/and still march out to engage in battle somewhere.

This I don't disagree with. But it isn't clear when Jon means to march, either. He announced his intention to march, he didn't do it.

He could have planned to do all the things both you and I deem prudent. He's just betrayed right after the announcement, and we don't see what his preperations were. He certainly wasn't leaving right then.

[Markus]

Accept that Ghost specifically tenses up at Bowen Marsh. Jon should have picked up on this. The boar thing honestly comes across as a clumsy device to make Jon ignore Ghost completely, when experience ought to teach Jon that Ghost is valuable for sensing danger.

That's what Jon sees after he had one of his fruitless discussions with Marsh: Ghost sniffed at them, his tail upraised and bristling.

I don't quite think that this is an unambiguous pointer to Marsh being about to assassinate Jon, in particular when Ghost had previously bitten someone else.

In any case, as far as devices to make Jon ignore Ghost are concerned, the giant boar who has to be kept away from Ghost and makes Ghost aggressive isn't as clumsy as all that I would say. It's better than Robb ignoring Grey Wind because with Bran's and Rickon's death he has lost faith in the direwolves.

[Sword of the Morning]

Ramsay was threatening to attack the Watch. Jon wanting to go after them makes sense. IMO he viewed it as oathbreaking because a) he's asking men to fight men, which is clearly against their vows (despite the necessity of it) and B) because no matter what Jon tells people, it's going to seem personal.

That said, the way GRRM wrote it does not make this clear, and it should've been. At first read it does seem like a very odd regression. So I agree that its somewhat weak.

But if your intepretation is truly accurate, then Jon shouldn't have any trouble asking the Night's Watch to take part.

The reason he didn't is because he BELIEVED that what he was about to do was breaking oath and he wanted to take that responsibility himself without involving others.

He is a Night's Watch man as well. What applies to him applies to the Watch. If he felt his decision to march south was justified and within the Night's Watch vows, he could have ordered the Watch to go with him. Instead, he made it personal and had volunteers mostly from the wildlings who had sworn NO OATH.

So that argument doesn't fly with me.

Also from the internal monologue it's CLEAR that now he is finally making the decision to break oath. Why? For his sister Arya. He stayed after his father was murdered and dishonored for his vows, he stayed while Robb was betrayed and murdered for his vows, he stayed while Theon murdered Bran and Rickon for his vows, he stayed while Sansa disappeared and died for all he knew for his vows, he stayed when his only living kin was kidnapped and forced to marry a bloody sociopath for his vows. Now at the end, he simply can't endure anymore.

It is CLEAR that he is marching south for Arya and to fact Ramsay and that this is personal. I just have a very hard time understanding any other explanation of his actions that frames around it benefiting the Night's Watch for instance.

As for meeting your enemy on a field of your choosing, well hell's fucking bells, you meet him AFTER making him march through a blizzard cold enough to wipe out most armies on this earth. People were eating their horses AND EACH OTHER just taking that little scenic jaunt from Deepwood Motte to Winterfell. What do you think is going to happen to ANY army that has to go from Winterfell to the Wall? The threat in that letter is idiotic to begin with and Jon is a moron for believing it in the first place.

Fine, let them march. You can defend the Wall from Mole's town. By the time those 85 half starved soldiers stagger in from the blizzard, the women and kids and cripples can take care of them . . .

It would be the utter depths of stupidity to take any army and march to Winterfell to do . . . what exactly?

Again, sheer idiocy and a very very clumsy plot device along with the boar to get Jon killed. Hell might as well just have him trip and fall from the Wall it would have been as subtle.

[HarransRoast]

Has anybody thought about the fact that when Mel brings back Jon via Fire Magic and warg dickery that he will now be free of his oath to the Nights Watch because he has literally died and then been resurrected?

[Blue Steel]

Anyone who thinks Jon was bad leader read a different book than the one I read.

He had the most progressive and moral vision of any of the kings and queens that I've seen in the series so far. While Dany was floundering in Meereen, Jon was flourishing at the Wall by adapting to the changing times. The old institutions of the Nights Watch were doomed, which Jon saw and acted on. Unlike the other leaders of the Nights Watch like Bowen Marsh who couldn't see past their racist sensibilities, Jon knew that the "realms of men" could be defined to include the Wildings so he brought the Wildings south of the Wall.

This accomplished many things. First, it reduced the supply of wights that were available for the Others. It also gave the Watch more battle tested and hardy men that could be used to garrison most of the forts. Unlike Jon's predecessors who saw the many keeps of the Nights Watch fall into ruin, Jon saw them rebuilt and fortified. Then he used marriages to integrate them into Westeros society. And with the logistical problem of extra mouths to feed, Jon borrowed money from the Iron Bank of Bravos and forced the Wildings to give much of their wealth as well.

Jon's men killed him for this, that's true. But that's not Jon's fault. That's the fault of Bowen Marsh and everyone else who lacked the moral and political vision to see that Jon was acting in their best interests of the Watch and in the best interests of the realms of men. The irony is that when Bowen Marsh and his conspirators put their knives in Jon's back and called out, "For the Watch," they killed the one man who truly stood for the Watch, especially in the changing realities of the world that they lived in.

[Raksha the Demon]

Jon and Dany have a lot to learn. I don't think they're stupid, but a year or two is not enough time to go from Rookie Ranger to Lord Commander of the Night's Watch and be effective at the job, not for a 16-year-old boy, I don't care how noble and strong and well-intentioned he is. Ditto Dany, she's still also a teenager, has no family to guide her (and the family she once had consisted of a vicious, insecure older brother who had expected to marry her and then sold her for a better offer, but never trained her to be anyone's ruler), and finds herself ruling over a foreign culture she understands hardly at all. They both probably could have pulled off their new roles if the times had been more peaceful, less turbulent. They needed time, more than a year or two, to learn the ropes, and they didn't have five or six years before things got tough. Alexander the Great was young when he began his military career (I think he set out to conquer the East at 18 or 20, though I'm not sure), but he didn't have to battle zombies in the frozen north.

I doubt that Dany would have succeeded in gaining control over Mereen in ten years, frankly, without becoming a vicious tyrant; she's just too foreign to Mereen, and Mereen is just too foreign to her. At least Dany has a shared and meaningful history with her khalasar, brief as it was; they shared her love for Drogo and her grief for his death, and the fire and blood of the dragons' birth. The worst thing is that Dany has squandered the brief time of the dragons' physical immaturity; they are either in their adolescence or maturity now, and she didn't spend much time training them when they were dog-sized, and when they grew huge, she's confined them to chains and a large cage and turned a blind eye to Drogon's depredations. If she cannot control them, the dragons will be useless as weapons of war, they'll be burning her own armies as well as enemy forces. GRRM could have sent Dany on a two-year mission to old Valyria in search of the dragon-lore needed to control her monstrous 'children', which might have been more interesting than having her stewing in the fleshpots of Essos and being frustrated, as a young woman and a would-be ruler. Hit the Road, Dany! At least I hope she will; and get over to Westeros in the next book....

I doubt that Jon is dead, but he could be sidelined for a long time, until he's mended or vivified or zombiefied or whatever, and he may not be in any physical condition to command the Night's Watch or even fight.

[Ran]

Yep, HarransRoast, that's been brought up.

I think Jon won't necessarily see it that way, but doubtless circumstances will force him to accept it. I think the Watch certainly will have nothing more to do with him.

Hrm... the vision of the blue rose growing out a chink in a wall of ice -> Jon preserved in one of the cells in the Wall until he can be restored to life? I'm kind of imagining this to be a late-novel thing for TWoW, but who knows.