I was thinking about the finale script again (a dangerous pastime), and it really bugs me that they note Sansa loves Jon, and he knows it. They link it with Jon not forgiving Sansa, but what struck me is that it is yet another way that Aemon’s quote covers so much of what happened in the finale. In the script they present Jon’s choice as killing one love for the other love because they forgot that the embedded dilemma is love v duty and that’s what they reintroduced in the same episode, but the line from Aemon is: “What is honor compared to a woman’s love?” And in light of the fact that it matters that Sansa loves Jon, I realized, this line is about being the object of affection. What is duty compared to being loved by a woman.
The script has the decision come down to Jon weighing his loves, but, if Jon is sucked down so deep into bad writing, cowardice, pandering to a certain fanbase his love for Dany, it reminds me of s6 when Jon refused to fight for Winterfell, and then they learn that Ramsay has Rickon, Sansa reaches across the table and takes Jon’s hand, rescuing him from his emotional spiral and pulling him back to all the ideals he has always had, reminding him of who he is, the obligations that come with it. So, instead of just looking at how Jon weighs his loves one against the other, a better way to look at it is: how do those loves weigh on him?
We don’t need to compare the tangibles of who did what for Jon. The fact that Sansa’s victory in the BotB is what led to Jon being crowned king vs Dany murdering half the population of KL in order to usurp him, or that Sansa spent all of s7 protecting Jon’s kingship while Dany spent the same season demanding Jon’s crown. When Dany learned of Jon’s parentage, no matter what Jon said about not wanting the throne, she could only see him as a threat to her, and yet, Jon not only accepted becoming KitN, but then he knelt to a Targaryen, and Sansa still assured him that he was a Stark, she still insisted he was her king, even after it all. I’m not talking about those, but the knowing and loving and trusting Jon as a person.
Immediately before Jon killed Dany, he received an offer from her, a vision of their future, a version of love, but it was conditional, requiring him to ignore the unpardonable. She offered a form of love, but for how hard they tried to sell the J8neryrs romance in interviews, there were no personally meaningful exchanges akin to Arya and Sansa’s unconditional acceptance and faith in Jon even though they barely had screen time together in s8 which is captured in two of their lines: “You’re my brother” and “you know I do.”
Sansa’s inexplicable (if we take the scripts seriously) trust in Jon didn’t stop her from finding her own way of achieving her goals in s6 or in s8 because she knew better than to mindlessly follow someone else’s lead, but, she also knew Jon, and just as her dedication to her people was rewarded so was her faith in him. And while the script would have us believe that it’s a tragedy Jon had to choose between the Starks and a mass murderer, I think their love saved him as much as his saved them.
Accepting Dany would have come at the price of every value Jon held, and he was finally able to reject her not just because he loved the Starks loving them didn’t stop him from kneeling or lying or dragging their men South to another war or very nearly accepting the burning of KL, but because he was beloved. I’m pretty sure this is a profoundly unfeminist take, we’re supposed to reject the trope of female love saves man, but sometimes, love is our lifeline, and just like in s6, in the end, it is his family that keeps Jon from being lost.
