A King in Hiding: Adding It All Up

[BaseBornBastard]

Also if Robb as King legitimized Jon, wouldn't that make Jon, Rickon's Elder brother, first in succession?

It would as Jon has seniority over Rickon. But if it comes out that Jon isn't actually Eddard's son at all then his seniority wouldn't matter.

[Ramsay Gimp]

Jon cannot be King in the North and King on the Iron Throne both.

But he can be first one and then the other. So chronologically there will be two reveals in Jon's future. First that he is named in Robb's will - which will happen in the next book.

This will allow him to unite the North.

Then in the final book, the big reveal of the entire series will show Jon being Rhaegar's son. That will lessen his claim to Winterfell - at least symbolically - as he is not Eddard's son after all.

He will then out of his own volition guive up his beloved North - but to his beloved brother Rickon, so no cause for sadness there, and ascend the Iron Throne out of duty.

A little optimistic, no?

[Johirrim]

Don't know if mentioned or not. This one is when Jon is about to send Val off to treat with Tormund, and they talk about Gillys babe.

Jon: Monster?

Val: His milk name. I had to call him something. See that he stays safe and warm. And keep him away from the red woman. For his mothers sake, and mine. She knows who he is. She sees things in her fires.

Jon: Ashes and cinders.

Val: Kings and dragons.

And we all know what Melisandre sees in her flames. Snow.

Also, it is interesting to note that the babe is practically an inversion of what Jon is. A common babe made out to be a king.

The followup of Kings and dragons is good too.

Dragons again. For a moment Jon could almost se them too, coiling in the night, their dark wings outlined against a sea of flame.

Jon wouldn't be the first Targaryen to have visions of dragons.

[Ruby Chevrolet]

Wow. This quotation in the first post of this topic is quite out of context.

And then there's the one FE brought up, the one that made me wonder how many of these things are out there that we haven't even noticed yet.

"Kings are a rare sight in the north." Robert snorted "More likely they were hiding under the snow. Snow, Ned!"

Also, the paragraph breaks are omitted.

The full quotation is:

Robert snorted. "Bogs and forests and fields, and scarcely a decent inn north of the Neck. I've never seen such a vast emptiness. Where are all your people?"

"Likely they were too shy to come out," Ned jested. He could feel the chill coming up the stairs, a cold breath from deep within the earth. "Kings are a rare sight in the north."

Robert snorted. "More likely they were hiding under the snow. Snow, Ned!"

Obviously, King Robert is jesting that the northern people are hiding from a king under the snow. He is not saying that a king is hiding under the snow.

But if you want foreshadowing, how about all the foreshadowing that Prince Aegon will be king?

-- Tyrion says (referring to Aegon) that signs and wonders accompany the birth of kings.

-- A sign (a comet) was seen the day Aegon was born.

-- Prince Rhaegar says Aegon is a good name for a king.

-- Rhaegar says Aegon is the prince (a prince may be a future king) that was promised.

-- Princess Daenerys says in A Game of Thrones that if Aegon had survived, she would have married him. Later, Queen Daenerys thinks that whomever she marries will be a king.

[Fire Eater]

Wow. This quotation in the first post of this topic is quite out of context. Also, the paragraph breaks are omitted.

The full quotation is:

Obviously, King Robert is jesting that the northern people are hiding from a king under the snow. He is not saying that a king is hiding under the snow.

But if you want foreshadowing, how about all the foreshadowing that Prince Aegon will be king?

-- Tyrion says (referring to Aegon) that signs and wonders accompany the birth of kings.

-- A sign (a comet) was seen the day Aegon was born.

-- Prince Rhaegar says Aegon is a good name for a king.

-- Rhaegar says Aegon is the prince (a prince may be a future king) that was promised.

-- Princess Daenerys says in A Game of Thrones that if Aegon had survived, she would have married him. Later, Queen Daenerys thinks that whomever she marries will be a king.

I know the full context of that, but it's foreshadowing using a little thing called subtlety.

Robert was referring to the people, but before that Ned was talking about kings, and Robert used "they" making it ambiguous about who he was referring to, and it could be taken to refer to the kings Ned mentioned, which would serve as foreshadowing for Jon.

[Narea]

You could also argue about the irony of the statement : "Kings are a rare sight in the north." If Jon is/was/will be a king then kings are not so rare a sight in the North as many of Ned's bannermen know Jon and he likely sometimes traveled with Ned (to the mountain clans at least).

[Dacie]

It would be even sweeter if Cersei found out (provided that she can't do any harm of course). She thought that she had completely outmanoeuvered Ned, and low and behold, honest, hapless Ned's been safeguarding the greatest secret of them all. I hope she has a chance to let that wash over her. Varys and Littlefinger too.

I think this will be my favorite reveal of the series when/if it happens.

[Jon Wolfwalker]

Jon wields a Valyrin steel bastard sword.

Aegon the Conqueror wielded a Valyrian steel bastard sword.

[Narea]

Jon wields a Valyrin steel bastard sword.

Aegon the Conqueror wielded a Valyrian steel bastard sword.

I completely missed that Blackfyre was a bastard sword as well...nice catch !

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

<snip>

As Fire Eater said, it depends on how you read it. There's more than one way to digest the language.

If you want to discuss fake Aegon being king, you're free to make your own thread about it. This is about Jon.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

I completely missed that Blackfyre was a bastard sword as well...nice catch !

Me too. Very nice catch indeed.

*cue "OMG Longclaw is Blackfyre!" theories*

[Roza Ahai]

*cue "OMG Longclaw is Blackfyre!" theories*

Longclaw has been in the Mormont's family for 500 years.

[Ruby Chevrolet]

I know the full context of that, but it's foreshadowing using a little thing called subtlety.

Robert was referring to the people, but before that Ned was talking about kings, and Robert used they" making it ambiguous about who he was referring to, and it could taken to refer to kings the Ned mentioned, which would serve as foreshadowing for Jon.

I can see this -- you see subtle foreshadowing, I see an idea whose reach exceeds its grasp. But as long as the context is out there, both are legitimate ways of looking at it.

I was responding to the first post in this topic, which talked about "obvious" clues and conclusions that "of course" followed from those clues. I'm just saying it overegged the pudding a little.

By that I mean that I don't see anything to connect "hero" with "king." Or that Lyanna Mormont will be a surrogate mother for Jon any more than Rhaegar Targeryen was a surrogate father for Rhaegar Frey or Rickard Karstark was a surrogate grandfather for Robb Stark and so on. That is why I mentioned the bits from the books that more directly foreshadow that Aegon will be a king (not that I believe Aegon necessarily will be king, just that there seems to be more foreshadowing for Aegon than there is for Jon). That's all.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

Longclaw has been in the Mormont's family for 500 years.

I know, I was being mostly facetious. It was a joke on the (surprisingly widespread) theory that Longclaw is Dark Sister.

[Thendel]

I thought the blue rose is associated with Starks.

Not necessarily, given that the only occurances of the blue rose is in connection to R+L=J, Bael the Bard, and Jon himself. The blue rose could well be a denominator for a king. To take each example:

At the tourney of Harrenhall, Rhaegar crowned Lyanna the queen of love and beauty with a bundle of blue roses. Many believe this singular event sparked their relationship, which resulted in the conception of Jon, a rightful king in many ways. Just after having given birth to Jon, Ned finds Lyanna clutching blue roses. It should also be noted that Ned associates the blue rose with this particular painful memory, given his hesitant answer to Robert before her tomb.

This one is the weakest: Bael the Bard stole the daughter of a lord Stark, and left a blue rose in her bed instead. Later on, she reappeared in that exact spot, holding Bael's son. In some ways, the abduction was paid for with the blue rose. Later, Bael became King-Beyond-The-Wall, and his son became the new lord Stark. The two later met in battle, and the former let the latter kill him, not wanting to kill his son.

The last one is Dany's vision in the HotU. Jon is singled out as residing at the Wall, and that he will have some important part to play in her story. Does the use of the blue rose imply that Dany will help him connect the dots, thus establishing that his claim to the throne is better than hers?

[Eir]

I was responding to the first post in this topic, which talked about "obvious" clues and conclusions that "of course" followed from those clues. I'm just saying it overegged the pudding a little.

Not to belabour this point, but I think there's a difference between "obvious" clues for the average reader and "obvious" clues for those of us intentionally on the prowl for them (you, me, basically everyone on these boards and especially on threads like this one :)). A quotation about hidden kings and Snow reads like gold for R+L=J believers/others looking for hints of less obvious rulers, whilst "Aegon was born under a comet" reads like gold for those wanting a straightforward answer to who's going to be on the Iron Throne at the end (if indeed there remains an Iron Throne). It's like Fight Club--the first rule of reading ASOIAF is that nothing is as it seems at first glance...which can be really cool or really irksome! ^_^

But if you want foreshadowing, how about all the foreshadowing that Prince Aegon will be king?

-- Tyrion says (referring to Aegon) that signs and wonders accompany the birth of kings.

-- A sign (a comet) was seen the day Aegon was born.

-- Prince Rhaegar says Aegon is a good name for a king.

-- Rhaegar says Aegon is the prince (a prince may be a future king) that was promised.

-- Princess Daenerys says in A Game of Thrones that if Aegon had survived, she would have married him. Later, Queen Daenerys thinks that whomever she marries will be a king.

In line with the idea that anything stuffed down our throats isn't actually real/inevitable, I read all of this as evidence that someone other than Aegon will be king, because

1) GRRM likes to invert our expectations (e.g. main characters never die, Jon's a bastard who looks just like his father, it's the dragon blood/genes that makes a Targaryen child capable and worthy of a crown), and the expectations of his characters (e.g. bastards=lusty and covetous!, women=helpless and incapable!, dragon blood=magical!);

2) Where's the conflict/narrative merit in an "inevitable" ascension for Aegon? (Though, in fairness, you could technically say the same thing about Jon, alleged prophesied prince that he is, though I don't think it's quite the same thing.)

His education was intended to teach him that kingship was a duty, not a right.

This statement from Varys on Aegon in the ADWD epilogue seems a more apt description of Jon*, who's undergone quite the education as commander and stateman pursuant to his duty to protect realm (the Learning to Lead threads lay this out at length). One could say that it's Aegon who's got all of the "rights" of kingship in his corner--comets in the sky, the kingly name, talks of marrying dragon queens--but it's Jon who's walking the walk of living by his duty to other people, whom another character speaks of as worshipping the gods of honor and duty. All indications of Jon eventually shifting into the role of king I'd say.

*Are there any threads that consolidate all of those statements made by other characters that could indirectly reference/describe Jon? There seems to be a lot of them, to the point where it's almost a literary device.

[Fire Eater]

I am not a wolf, he thought.

This was Jon thinking about his warging and relationship to Ghost, a white direwolf. But the direwolf is also the sigil of House Stark as everyone knows, and a white direwolf would be the sigil of a Stark bastard. This could imply Jon isn't a Stark or a Stark bastard, but I may be reaching here.

Before that we had: "I have no sister."

Jon has no surviving siblings. The Stark kids don't count as they are his cousins.

"The next time I see you, you'll be all in black."

Jon forced himself to smile back. "It was always my color"

[Bushido]

Both he and a lot of readers missed that the Raven called him king all the way back in CoK.

Really?

Jon notices that the bird's eyes never left him while saying "King".

In Dance,we see Jon Snow,not just Snow and King. Out of blue,practically.

[Roza Ahai]

Really?

Jon notices that the bird's eyes never left him while saying "King".

In Dance,we see Jon Snow,not just Snow and King. Out of blue,practically.

First time BR might observe him, in Dance Bran.

[Eira Seren]

Wow. This quotation in the first post of this topic is quite out of context.

Also, the paragraph breaks are omitted.

The full quotation is:

'Robert snorted. "Bogs and forests and fields, and scarcely a decent inn north of the Neck. I've never seen such a vast emptiness. Where are all your people?"

"Likely they were too shy to come out," Ned jested. He could feel the chill coming up the stairs, a cold breath from deep within the earth. "Kings are a rare sight in the north."

Robert snorted. "More likely they were hiding under the snow. Snow, Ned!"'

Obviously, King Robert is jesting that the northern people are hiding from a king under the snow. He is not saying that a king is hiding under the snow.

well, i think there's something there, mainly in the way that we are being asked to consider the meaning of snow - or Snow (?) pretty early on. Add to that the later conversation where (IMO) Ned dodges Robert's questions about Jon's mother. . . . And then we have this description of the cold creeping "up the stairs, a cold breath from deep within the earth". . . . just a "chill"? or is this one of those moments where the past, and all its secrets, start creeping out of hiding? As soon as Robert arrives and they visit the crypt, Ned starts dredging up old memories, particularly of Lyanna. This cold. . . . GRRM makes it sound like someone has just walked over Ned's grave. So it could be foreshadowing Ned's untimely end. . . but again, the cold air that comes out of the crypt, or buried secrets resurfacing might be another option.

Are they going into Winterfell's crypt at the time?

ETA: reading it as buried secrets, they have, in fact, been hiding under the snow/Snow. also, forgot to add that at this point in the series, something else associated with the cold has also been "buried," or at least relegated to being just a tall tale, and is now re-emerging. . . interesting that the Others and Westeros' past start introducing themselves to the reader fairly quickly in the story, via cold and chills.