Could Melisandre resurrect Jon Snow?

[BluSnow]

GRRM is very specific in the way that he words things, such as the dragons blood smoked from the wounds that it had and that blood steams from people ; when Jon gets stabbed his blood smokes in the night air which is strange, but I could be looking into it too much. I dont think he is dead, and I don't think that he will go into ghost.

[Lord Liam DarkStark]

Jon describe's val in a strange way in a dance with dragons. Pg. 137 as mance is burning. He says she stood on the platform as still as if she had been carved of salt. Salt and smoke. Mel and val. Val seems to have a clairvoyance or something magic about her. Perhaps her and mel will heal jon. Born admist salt (val) and smoke(mel)

Why is it strange because george is very specific in his wording. He would of used stone if it wasn't significant. We never really hear him say carved of salt..do we? Its a little grasping to me but i feel that val is important in jon's story (if he is alive)

[Lord Varys]

A fair-haired woman in white might look more like salt than stone ;-). As to Val's magic/secret knowledge: It's possible that she knows stuff, but if she does she still has to show us what she can do. As of yet it's even unclear whether he talk about greyscale is real knowledge or just superstition.

We know that Dalla knew something. She is the one who really talked about sorcery. But there is magic knowledge among the wildlings. Those woods witches can do stuff, Mother Mole truly saw ships coming to Hardhome.

[Lord Liam DarkStark]

A fair-haired woman in white might look more like salt than stone ;-). As to Val's magic/secret knowledge: It's possible that she knows stuff, but if she does she still has to show us what she can do. As of yet it's even unclear whether he talk about greyscale is real knowledge or just superstition.

We know that Dalla knew something. She is the one who really talked about sorcery. But there is magic knowledge among the wildlings. Those woods witches can do stuff, Mother Mole truly saw ships coming to Hardhome.

but it was about her stillness not her coloration. I just get a feeling from val. I can't explain it, I feel like she is lethal and knowledgeable. But of nature and healing not like dark magic. It seems possible she could have something to do with the healing of jon.

[Lord Varys]

A lot of people are in place to help Jon to live again:

1. Borroq will realize that Jon's spirit lives on in Ghost. That's the whole point of the wargs always recognize each other thing.

2. Melisandre is there, who has the means to make a fire wight out of him (like Beric or Catelyn).

3. Bran and Bloodraven are out there and most likely keep more than one eye on the events happening at Castle Black.

4. The whole ice conserves flesh thing also suggests that Jon's corpse might be preserved so that he could be revived magically later on when people have figured out a way how to get him out of Ghost.

My guess is that Borroq realizes that Jon is in Ghost, but Jon-Ghost may not understand what is happening and might very well run off beyond the Wall, where Bran might reach him through Summer and One Eye/Varamyr. Mel might very well secure Jon's body, and provide someone with a glamor to impersonate Jon to put a stop to Marsh's coup. It would be funny of Dolorous Edd had to fulfill that role ;-).

[Lord Liam DarkStark]

Idk borroq would already suspect jon would go in ghost, I don't think he needs to see ghost to know that is where jon's soul went. Melisandre would know that's where jon is. She has an understanding about his power. She tells him to brace it. She would know he still exists in ghost. But I don't even know if he'll be dead. I think his body may still be alive. Only his soul will be in ghost. His body will remain in the comatose state until the situation is handled. The chapter where he speaks of val being carved of salt is the chapter where he ends speaking of the jade compendium to clydas about azor ahai and lightbringer.

[Heretic_knight86]

It is quite possible for Mel to resurrect Jon like Thoros did with lord Beric, but then again she could also be limited in her powers and it could take a couple tries. Or an other possibility if the theory of (R+L=J or A+L=J) proves to be true and he is of Targ blood then the possibility of when they set him on fire comes to life via rebirth salt and smoke, and rises from the ashes as AA.

[Macho Hand of the King]

GRRM is very specific in the way that he words things, such as the dragons blood smoked from the wounds that it had and that blood steams from people ; when Jon gets stabbed his blood smokes in the night air which is strange, but I could be looking into it too much. I dont think he is dead, and I don't think that he will go into ghost.

I agree with you. I think Jon warging into Ghost to escape death is a "book closing" moment. For a writer to spend so many pages upon pages giving us a story like nothing we've every experienced before, a cliche that huge would be like skinny dipping in the Milkwater...jarring and uncomfortable.

[whitedog42]

I actually think this will be another song of ice and fire.... Bran is going to warg into WunWun,(ice) as he has with Hodor and wipe the NW out, and Mel's going to reign fire via burning skin and together save Jon. I think that Jon can be healed as long as Ghost is close by. And I think they will announce that Jon Snow is dead, and Rhy-jon Targaryen is born.

[Lord Davos Seaworth]

I still think it's likely Jon is going to have some deeper connection to the Others... personally I hope he rises to be the King of them... We have to remember that the Others are still one of the mysteries all the way from the first book we know very little about. Just because Melisandre and her strange religion which we ultimately know nothing about say they are the ultimate evil that must be destroy doesn't mean it is so.

I think this is one of the major themes about the Red Religion.. it's setting up a classic archetypal pure good vs pure evil battle, which we all know GRRM hates. That on top of being a massive statement to religion in general (as miraculous as somethings might seem, you can't but faith in something just because you don't understand it - ie life and death!!)

[bemused]

I think Val is a seer / priestess , but not a hands on healer . She tried to go for a midwife when Dalla was giving birth, and she tells Jon to ask a woods witch about greyscale. But I think together with Morna , who is a warrior witch ( one with expertise with battle wounds ?) they would be able to take care of Jon nicely.

[joluoto]

We don't even know if Melissandre have the ability to resurrect the dead. Just because Thoros had it doesn't mean Melissandre has it. I think Jon warged into Ghost (his last thought was Ghost), since there has been alot of foreshadowing about him warging in the book. Mel's vision that he was a wolf and then suddenly a man again could mean he wargs into Ghost, and then somehow has to become a human again. We also have Varamyr's prologue where he plans to survive through warging, which foreshadows that someone will cheat death that way, and it's probably Jon.

[The Bastard of Walton]

We have seen in aSoS how Thoros would resurrect Beric Dondarrion from the dead, not mentioning Catelyn Stark as well, and both he and Melisandre are servants of the Lord of Light.

Melisandre did warn Jon Snow about tidings from the sky, which he didn't put much thought to until too late. Could Melisandre be able to resurrect Jon from death, if he actually died?

Another thing, why would the Night's Watch even attack Jon Snow, other than the fact that they viewed his actions of leaving the watch behind and facing the Bastard of Bolton to be nothing more than acts of treason. Remember, the Night's Watch takes no part in the affairs of the realm, and for Jon to leave behind the watch on personal affairs could be considered desertion. I recall how they said to Jon, "For the Watch" as they stabbed him (I'm paraphrasing here). Could be they viewed his actions as those of a deserter.

I think Jon being resurrected is the most likely thing to happen. I doubt he will simply be dead and gone as some people believe. With the attempt on Jon's life at castle Black, the watch & wildlings will be in complete disaray, which will probably lead to the wall being breached. I can see Melisandre & maybe a few wildlings fleeing the wall with Jon not far from death, then Melisandre breathing fire into like Thoros did with Dondarrion & Moqorro did to Victarion. Jon will be able to hunt The Bastard of Bolton( I can see the Battle in the Snow going the way of Stannis & Ramsey fleeing).

On the traitor to the watch side of things, Jon pushed the other members of the watch to far to fast. There job was to protect the wall from the wildlings, Stannis & Jon let them march right into Castle Black. Stannis had already left & It was Jon left to sort it all out. Sending ships to save the wildlings, giving them Nights Watch Castles on the Wall & then deciding to just leave & go on a personnel mission of vengence where the last straw. He had been elected Lord Commander & then was leaving them, I can see why they took this action. It will turn out bad for Bowen Marsh & the rest though. If the others dont get them first, Stannis will.

[victim]

I just find it really strange that Jon, after having a TWO HOUR conversation with Tormund about what must be done, was planning on marching towards Winterfell more or less by himself. It's idiotic, and Jon hasn't done anything remotely like it since aGoT, which was done on a whim when Ned was killed, and he came back quick enough.

Nope, something happened in those two hours that we don't know about.

[JLE]

I'm remembering one of the things right at the end of the first book - in the conversations between Daenerys and Mirri: "Only life can pay for life".

That's a pretty standard fantasy theme through many novels. We see TWO different versions of it in Harry Potter - the "good" one, where Harry is protected from the curse of death by his mother's sacrifice, and the "evil" one, where Voldemort murders people to store his soul away outside of his body - and, worse than that, in many different places, each costing another murder.

So this is how I see it:

I'm fairly convinced that this was why Beric and Catelyn "came back wrong" from Thoros's kiss of life, while Daenerys survived walking into the fire. No life was paid for Beric, though he came back from death many times, each time there was less left than the previous time: he himself knew there was something "wrong" about it, and chose to give what he had left for Catelyn. And that was the only life that was paid for hers, and it was a poor, maimed, several-times-dead-and-raised shadow of a life, which is why she came back as pretty much a sick parody of herself.

Whereas, in Dany's case, life WAS paid for life: Two people went alive into the flames - Mirri and Dany - and Dany walked out, unharmed, and the dragons were born.

BUT...

It was still done in the corrupted, "evil" way because it was done by murder. Whatever Mirri had done - and whatever had been done *to* her - her death was not of her own volition: Dany may or may not know much of blood magic, but she took the life Mirri had left to walk through the fire unburned and hatch the dragons.

Meanwhile, back at the Wall...

Jon Snow is dead. He has the blood of kings on at least one side (at least one parent is a Stark, descended from the Kings of the North), which makes blood magic that much more powerful. Whether or not his other parent comes from the royal dragons (Targaryens) is a matter for conjecture, but even without them he has royal blood.

And Mellisandre, frustrated by her inability to see what she wants to see - looking for Stannis and finding only snow, looking for Azor Ahai and finding only Snow - is overdue for a terrible revelation: that all her time she's been working for the other side. Shadow assassins? Draining Stannis's own strength (and, possibly, her own)? Human sacrifice by fire? All using the excuse that "the brightest light casts the darkest shadow"? That kind of magic is not doing the work of R'hllor, but of the Other, the un-namable shadow. Looking into the Light for too long will blind one to see only the darkness. And it's what she's been doing all along. Stannis, who does not truly believe but makes use of religion as a tool, may escape from Mellisandre's prophecies, but Mellisandre as a true believer is damned.

And there's only one possible redemption. One possible sacrifice to make. She looked for Azor Ahai, she found Snow... Snow is dead... Only life can pay for life... And there is only one life that she can give to bring back Jon Snow: Her own.

Jon, of course, is going to have a funeral pyre (along with anyone else who died that night - Ser Patrek, possibly Wun Wun, maybe a couple of others.) The whole Watch knows now, and the wildlings too, that you now have to burn the dead to stop them rising as wights or Others. But in this snow, maybe they can't make the fuel catch fire, and in the end somebody says they must send for the fire priestess. She is brought there. And if she has not realised it already, she now realises what she has to do.

Mellisandre walks into the pyre herself and begins chanting, others fearing to come close but unable to stop watching. It catches light... Mellisandre chants, burns, screams, dies... Jon Snow gets up and walks out of the fire, fully alive, with all his wounds healed, and has a true life returned, because life has been paid for life. And Azor Ahai is reborn... and Jon Snow will have no more rebellions, not by anyone who has seen it.

And thus, an ancient wrong is righted. The original Azor Ahai found the magic he needed in a blood sacrifice... but by murder. The death of Nissa Nissa was not a "necessary evil", it was a terrible murder, it corrupted his fight against the eternal darkness, it threw the very seasons themselves out of balance, it ensured that even if the darkness was thrown back this time, it would return. The only sacrifice that Azor Ahai had the "right" to make was HIS OWN, just as her own life is the only one Mellisandre has the right to sacrifice.

[TheDarkOne]

I don't know why it's so hard to accept him being dead, and see this as an incredibly brave move from a story telling stand point. In the odd numbered books, a male Stark dies, plain and simple.

I didn't want Ned to die, or Robb, and now Jon. But for the story it makes sense and adds realism. Jon warging into ghost, being resurrected by Mel, Bran controlling giants, geesh. It's just so over the top.

[The Frision Wolf]

Why not?

[The Frision Wolf]

I think the proloog was for BRAN POV and JON is not a warg, the wildlings think he's a WARG but it was BRAN inside GHOST that time.

[Fat King Robert]

I don't know why it's so hard to accept him being dead, and see this as an incredibly brave move from a story telling stand point. In the odd numbered books, a male Stark dies, plain and simple.

I didn't want Ned to die, or Robb, and now Jon. But for the story it makes sense and adds realism. Jon warging into ghost, being resurrected by Mel, Bran controlling giants, geesh. It's just so over the top.

GRRM has said himself that he's has been adding more and more magic for every book. While I agree it would be cliche for it to happen, it's not impossible. I see 3 outcomes for this:

1: Jon was deadly wounded but survived.

2: Jon was killed but warged into Ghost, beginning his second life. (He stays in Ghost until he dies or becomes "one" with the direwolf, no ressurection in other words)

3: Jon dies. Goodbye, adieu, the end.

[Kasporio]

Jon is untrained as a warg, as stated by Varamir. Warging is inate but needs alot of practice to be useful, Bran spend alot of time mastering this abilitie. But every stark children are Warg, not only Bran. See Arya, still having wolf-dreams from across the see.

Being unprepared there's no hint Jon could live the second life. Even if he succeds in doing so, well... his mind will vanishes anyway.

GRRM likes to kill fav characters, ok, but why Melisandre didn't went with Stannis? She could have been of some use to him.

She didn't stay at the wall by respect for the clansmen religion.

And she foresaw Jon's death.

So, if a drunkard like Thoros managed to bring people back, albeit in a twisted way... What a fiercely faithful (or it seems so) red priest with a great knowledge of blood magic could do ?

Wait (3 years more at least) and read.