Submission: How do you think r+l=j will be handled in the books?
Hi, him-e! I appreciate the fact that you make an effort to parse through what the show’s given us in order to make more calculated predictions about what’s coming in the books. I’d like to ask, then—because I don’t recall you ever talking about it—how will r+l=j be handled in the books.
It’s a fairly accepted possibility in fandom that finding out about it will wreck Jon. And fair enough, it probably will, considering how much pride he takes from being Ned’s son. But then there’s the rub for me—a lot of people also expect Jon to be angry at Rhaegar and to revolt against his biological father by abandoning the role he was supposed to have in the WftD. That makes sense, it can be existentially terrifying to think that your actions are all a product of a prophecy and that you have no control over them. It’d also fit with the other five main characters, who will likely all be going through their own dark phases.
Here’s the part where I think we should take the show into consideration. What effect did r+l=j have on Jon, exactly? Mostly, none—I’d say it served as a catalyst for Dany’s downfall. Nothing was made to challenge Rhaegar’s character or actions, and the last season was the perfect place to do so, considering he’s Dany’s brother and almost every single aspect of Dany started being portrayed negatively. But sure, one could argue that the show isn’t good at handling psychological turmoil and that he’s Jon’s father too, and Jon must remain morally pure.
Still, I then think about the books. If GRRM intends to make Jon rebel against Rhaegar and what he stood for as part of the fandom believes, why didn’t he seed anything related to that yet? Anything that makes Rhaegar more challenging and least susceptible to idolization? Some examples of how he could’ve done this:
* GRRM could’ve shown Doran or Oberyn still angry at Rhaegar for leaving Elia behind. Instead, they both want to side with Viserys and later Daenerys without any (mentioned) reservations.
* GRRM could’ve had Ned thinking about the fucked up power dynamic between Rhaegar and Lyanna (less harshly than Robert, but still negatively), but instead Ned only thinks about how Rhaegar didn’t frequent brothels.
* GRRM could’ve had Dany have her view of Rhaegar be challenged the way her view of Aerys is being (slowly) challenged, instead she still thinks of him the same by the end of the fifth book.
* GRRM could’ve added a POV who is critical of Rhaegar’s actions, yet he added three in FeastDance who idolize him (JonCon, Cersei, Barristan).
And that’s not even mentioning how R/L was painted as straightforwardly romantic in the S7 finale, which may well be what GRRM does—if he doesn’t think Dany was raped by Drogo in the books, maybe he thinks R/L is an unproblematic love story, even if many have pointed out the consent issues. Finally, I don’t see his friend Arthur Dayne having his reputation challenged in any way in-universe for remaining with Rhaegar despite the fact that there is reasonable criticism to hold against him.
My question, then, is: isn’t it more likely that Jon’s problem with r+l=j lies with his relationships with Ned and Dany and not with Rhaegar?
Hi, thanks for your submission, and sorry it took me a while to answer! ;))
Using the show as an indicator for how the books will deal with things like this is very tricky—because, as you said, the show sucks at psychological insight, and character motivations are usually either grossly simplified or not taken into consideration at all (which, ironically, makes them seem even more obscure and complicated if you’re trying to analyze them. See: the entire debate on why Sansa didn’t tell Jon about the knights of the Vale back in season 6. The show simply didn’t address the reason why she didn’t tell Jon, because it wasn’t important to the plot, but the fandom—me included—tried to make sense of it nonetheless, with increasingly convoluted explanations. Was Sansa trying to throw Jon under the bus, and let him perish in the battle so she could be lady of Winterfell? But that clashes with her desperate attempts to convince Jon to delay the battle. Did she hope they could do without Littlefinger’s help until last minute? Was she afraid that Jon would’ve had the final say on how to use the Knights, had he known? Was she trying to prevent him from taking credit for the victory? And so on).
There’s also the fact that the show dealt very quickly and superficially with the Prince that was Promised and Azor Ahai prophecies, mostly via Melisandre’s cryptic catchphrases and more as an afterthought or book nod than as an organic part of the narrative. The prophecy was just not conveyed well in the show. We’ve hardly ever seen other characters grapple with its meaning, or experienced its importance in the context of Westeros’ slowly waking up to the threat of the White Walkers. So, if the bulk of book!Jon’s reaction to r+l=j is temporarily rejecting his supposed role in the PtwP prophecy, it makes sense that the show completely skipped it, just as it makes sense that it skipped the valonqar part in Cersei’s prophecy: it simply has no place in the show’s narrative as they devised it. There would be no point in having a major character angst about his role in a prophecy, if said prophecy is all but a namedrop whose significance remains largely unknown to the average viewer who hasn’t read the book.
So… is it possible that in the books resurrected!Jon will go through a phase of complete rejection and denial of his heroic destiny, that will climax with the reveal of his parentage and a major identity crisis? Yes, totally. It’s exactly the mix of complex character study + mystical/magical stuff that I can see d&d scrapping in favor of a more materialistic, down to earth “game-of-thrones” narrative (the whole bend-the-knee pseudopolitical drama with Dany, for example).
But what will he reject, what will he deny? Which identity will challenged?
His destiny as a prophesied hero, fulfilling which has never been an (explicit) driving force for him? (we know everything Jon’s done in the Night’s Watch was building up towards his becoming the champion of humanity against darkness, the “third head of the dragon”, the “prince that was promised”, but it was Ned’s teachings and Ned’s moral lessons that inspired his choices and actions, not Rhaegar’s prophecy) His (non-existent) relationship with a biological father that never mattered to him?
Or…
isn’t it more likely that Jon’s problem with r+l=j lies with his relationships with Ned and Dany and not with Rhaegar?
^ Nailed it.
I think Jon’s psychological conflict about his parentage will be more about Ned/his Stark identity (and Dany) than about Rhaegar. For one thing, Rhaegar—regardless what light the overall story presents him in—isn’t really present in Jon’s narrative; Jon has virtually no opinion of him, and Rhaegar’s name rarely shows up in his chapters. Sure, when the PtwP prophecy finally erupts in Jon’s narrative and he realizes what Rhaegar was trying to accomplish, he’ll necessarily develop more complex feelings for him. But as of now, Rhaegar Targaryen is simply someone from the past that Jon isn’t really preoccupied with. Secondly, and more importantly, Rhaegar is a dead character, who has always been dead since the beginning of the story. I truly doubt he is going to have more of an impact on Jon’s character evolution than Ned (the father that raised him, the only father he’s known, and the faux-protagonist of book one) or Dany (the living and breathing major character Jon will plausibly have a romantic dynamic with, that with no doubt will be drastically affected by the parentage reveal).
I actually think it’s more likely and more narratively compelling that, rather than rebelling against Rhaegar, r+l=j makes Jon rebel against Ned, and everything he represents. Make him temporarily reject his Stark identity (out of fiery anger re: being lied to by Ned, and forced to a life of bastardy and anonymity, the reasons behind which resurrected!Jon, more wolf than he’s ever been, might not immediately understand, or care to understand) and embrace his Targaryen ancestry instead, with the whole fire&blood shebang. That is… until he’s made whole again by the love he has for his siblings, and the need to protect them. I think Jon’s love for his family—the family he grew up in—will be what eventually leads him *back home*, back to his Stark roots, back to Ned’s teachings.
I was in Atlanta last week, shooting a film, and I went in a convenience store to get a pack of gums and water, and there’s a guy there, his name tag says “Paul”. And I just- I was buying what I was buying and he said to me, “Hey, man, I’ll be watching March, 18th!” I said, “Cool, pal. I hope you like it!” and he goes, “Yeah, I hope so too,” and just like, gives me this death stare.
I’ve been thinking about the Night King and why the showrunners decided to create a supervillain out of the amorphous, faceless, eldritch evil that the Others are in the books.
One reason, as I suspected early on when I saw Hardhome, was the need individualize and narrow down the threat to a classic Protagonist VS Antagonist formula, for dramatic purposes. Instead of facing an impersonal evil, Jon, the champion of the Night’s Watch (and by extension humanity) is directly antagonised by the Night King---the champion of darkness. A bit of a Evil Wizard archetype, a bit of a demigod à la Sauron---the NK is someone who, albeit silent, has a degree of characterization, a personality (we can easily infer he’s smug, he’s ambitious, he’s single-minded, he toys with our heroes in a mocking way, he used to be a human being until the CotF turned him into a magical creature with unlimited powers; he even has flaws that we can conceptualize as human). It’s the bare minimum of characterization but it’s still a characterization, and it’s both a positive and a negative thing. Positive because it gives the audience something to latch on, a Villain With A Face and, to a degree, even a motivation---negative because it undermines the sheer eldritch horror of the Others being quintessentially inhuman in every possible way.
The other reason is probably because d&d needed to give the White Walkers an Achilles’ Heel so that our heroes could defeat them---all of them. I think the Others will have an Achilles’ Heel in the books too (maybe whatever lies beyond the Curtain of Light?), but perhaps either GRRM still didn’t know what it would be when he sat down and talked about the endgame with the showrunners, or GRRM’s version of it is something d&d couldn’t do on the show for budget and/or time limitations, so they had to come up with an alternative or a shorthand for it. Either way, it’s food for speculation.
I’ve already talked in favor of Arya, and not Jon, being the one who killed the NK. While I’ve seen people warm up to the fact that this totally makes sense for Arya’s arc, many still resist the idea for what it supposedly does to Jon’s arc. What about the Azor Ahai prophecy? What is the significance of his arc now? What was the point of building up this one-on-one antagonism between him and the NK if Jon didn’t actually defeat him? Well, imo the idea behind this decision wasn’t shock value for shock value’s sake, but rather an attempt---I won’t argue if successful or not---to subvert the Chosen One trope, almost Tolkien-style, in the sense that the chosen one gets so, so close to complete his mission yet ultimately, tragically, fails. But the... small metallic object... is still delivered in the right place to destroy the Evil Overlord and his entire army, and the person who does is an unexpected one, in an unexpected way. So the bittersweetness of this anticlimax, the way it feels both right and wrong, is probably intentional---because the Chosen One(s) both won and failed. Jon and Dany will likely be remembered as the heroes, the Azor Ahai’s, the great commanders, the princes that were promised, but they know deep in their hearts that, had it been for them, humanity would have been destroyed.
speaking of Tolkien, and looking at it from another angle, the last moments of the battle did remind me a bit of RotK in the way Bran (and according to some interpretations of the scene, Jon too) kept *the eye of Sauron* distracted so Arya/Frodo could get close enough without being noticed. Not only them---the entire battle can be seen as a giant distraction game to blindside the NK and take him off guard.
all of this will, of COURSE, play completely differently in the books. But if there’s anything in all of this that can put us on the right track in our book speculation (and imo there is---remember, GRRM talked about the books’ ending in broad strokes with d&d, they didn’t entirely come with this on their own), it would be useful to take a step back and try to see the bigger picture, the most basic gist of it, rather than the flaws of the execution. I think it’s reasonable to expect a degree of subversion of the chosen one narrative, bittersweet tolkien vibes, and the Others being defeated in some sort of anticlimax in the books too.
Do you think Jon or Arya's endings, with both of them essentially living out separate exiles, are likely to have been in the outline Martin provided HBO, or just endings that made sense to the writers in the context of the show versions of those characters? I'm torn with Jon especially, because it seems like he *could* end up effectively becoming a wildling, but it also seems weirdly mundane for a boy that died and came back.
I think they have both good chances to be part of Martin’s outline. I’m less certain of Arya’s ending, because I don’t think the books have laid an adequate foundation yet for her eventually leaving Winterfell again to explore the world. Re: Jon’s endgame, I have mixed feelings. It’s a bit too circular to suit me (and I hate circular storytelling), but I also think it absolutely fits George’s definition of “bittersweet” ending, as well as his deconstruction of heroic tropes and chosen one narratives. The fact that it “seems weirdly mundane for a boy that died and came back” is exactly why I feel it works. Jon already had a climatic, sacrificial death, if you think about it. And if I’m being honest I’ve always felt that the three heads of the dragon riding into the sunset the curtain of light in a suicidal mission to destroy the heart of winter, and never coming back but being forever remembered as the saviors of humanity, was a bit too standard high fantasy to really fit George’s narrative. That’s not what I would call bittersweet---it’s highkey epic.
With this finale, on the other hand, you have the entire parabola of a hero: a secret prince who is raised as a bastard, joins the Night’s Watch, goes undercover as a Wildling, becomes lord commander, dies and resurrects; goes from war hero to king, from king to savior of humanity, from savior of humanity... to queenslayer and kinslayer, imprisoned and plagued by guilt, and eventually sentenced to go back to where he started---with the Free Folk, the people he initially was meant to defend the realm from, and now has to defend from the realm (because the realm corrupts, look what it did to him), and finally guide home.On the surface it’s a regression but it’s also him going back to where he actually had been at his happiest (even if at that time he was weighed down by too many oaths and unresolved business to notice), where he met his first love and what it meant to be free. Ironically, it’s the ending that fits most my own headcanon that Jon, Dany and Tyrion would all survive the WftD only to retire to a quiet place where they could heal, while the world would go on without them and slowly forget them, even. I wasn’t entirely sure of what they would need to heal from, when this idea formed in my mind. But the show provided an answer.
Overall, although this season was DEEPLY flawed, I could see George’s blueprint filtering through. In its basic concept, if not in the details and certainly not in the execution. It deals with the “what happens after the big heroic battle?” in the same brutally sincere and vaguely uncomfortable way I expect Martin to do. We thought the story ended with the WftD, we got a curveball instead. The main heroes survived relatively unscathed the battle against the Others, and then... Then they had to deal with what’s left. We thought the aftermath would simply be about mourning their losses and rebuilding, but instead it was about deep identity issues coming to a tragic climax for Dany, and the inability to cope with a world where the evil you know and have built your whole life around no longer exists for Jon. As I said many times, I don’t necessarily think the events will unfold in the books the way they did in the show---but the spirit, the intent, the main climatic and thematic beats behind this season, regardless of the execution, are something we should definitely look at when speculating about the books’ endgame.
Hi, I’m not sure if you’ve talked about this already, but since I really enjoy your thoughts on ASoIaF (and got), I‘d love to read your analysis of Jaime’s ending in the show and whether you think his arc is going to end the same way in the books as well.
Can’t make an in depth analysis because I lack the mental energy / motivation for that, but yes, I believe that’s where his arc is going in the books too. He’ll have a role in the WftD, be one of the many heroes who will defend humanity against the Others, have a shot at happiness with Brienne, but ultimately he’ll feel compelled to go back to Cersei when shit goes down in King’s Landing because it’s ~his sister, his responsibility and he can’t shrug it off.
The main difference I think will be be that Jaime ~kills~ Cersei in a similar fashion to how Jon killed Dany in the show, perhaps in a hail mary to save the city again (consciously or not replicating the scenario that turned him into the Kingslayer when he was seventeen, only now there’s his sister in Aerys’ place, and a dragon queen in Tywin’s, threatening to unleash her fury on everyone if the city gates won’t open), or maybe to spare Cersei a much more horrifying death by dragonfire or worse, if she manages to piss Dany off the way she did in the show. Either way, there’s plenty of foreshadowing in the books that Jaime will be Cersei’s valonqar but the whole thing won’t play as Cersei imagines, not even remotely. I used to believe Jaime being the valonqar and Jaime playing a role in the war for the dawn couldn’t be both simultaneously true, but that was based on the assumption that the war for the dawn *needs* to be chronologically the final part of the story, which I no longer believe.
I’m also fairly certain that D&D took the valonqar part of the J/C arc and repurposed it for Jon/Dany, for reasons I can’t fully comprehend right now. Part of it is probably the fact that they have a soft spot for J/C---see how they consistently shied away from the most toxic aspects of their relationship---so they probably wanted to end this dynamic on a sweet/tragic note rather than a disturbing, alienating one. Perhaps BOTH Jaime and Jon are going to kill their respective lovers in the books (it wouldn’t be the first time their arcs parallel each other, you know), which would be fifty shades of yikesy, but I wouldn’t put it past GRRM, especially considering how guilt over Ygritte’s death is a recurring theme in Jon’s narrative and how Dany being backstabbed by someone who swore to be on her side to thwart her *dangerous* political vision echoes eerily the Ides of Marsh. Or, perhaps Dany dies in some other way that D&D couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt verbatim for whatever reason, so they chose to go for the (relatively) “simple” option of having her stabbed by Jon; or, GRRM didn’t give enough details about her death so they had to fill the blanks by rearranging book material conveniently.
...well, it turned out to be some kind of analysis anyway, didn’t it? being concise is not my strong suit, lol.
if jon survives the war, would you expect him to soon fade away and die anyway, as part of a his-time-is-up/magic-has-left-westeros-again deal?
Tbh I thought Jonerys would end up ruling together before aDwD, but then Jon died and I think, giving a happy ending to a guy who dies is just not going to work. Like Beric and LSH he’ll pay for his life and will be a different person when he returns. Dany, however, is alive, but she will lose something dear as well - maybe her ‘children’, or it’ll be Jon himself. In fight against the Others many characters will die, otherwise it won’t make sense, but I think Dany has a better chance than Jon.
Putting these two asks together because they’re on the same topic.
I don’t know? I think magic in asoiaf isn’t a zero-sum game, and I would refrain to make predictions on either Jon’s or Dany’s odds of survival based only on their status as people who should logically be dead if magic didn’t exist. (anon #2, though Jon literally died and was resurrected, Dany too is living on borrowed time, in a way: she walked in a funeral pyre to perform a magical ritual based on an “only death can pay for life” logic, and walked out of it alive, nearly entirely unscathed and with three dragon hatchlings. But by logic she should have died there. And… what if she did? In a metaphorical way, or even in a spiritual way of sorts? So it makes sense to link this experience to Jon’s resurrection, because it was a rebirth in magic too and, as in Jon’s case, it makes room for speculation on whether she will survive or not once her business on this earth is done, so to speak.)
I guess in a very concrete sense, particularly in Jon’s case, we should figure out whether he is being kept alive by magic (R’hllor’s fire magic, specifically), therefore magic is continually necessary to keep his body functioning (in which case then yes, it would make sense that once—if—magic leaves Westeros, then Jon loses his spark of life), or if the magic required for his resurrection was a one-off deal, which would mean that his new life is permanent even if magic fades and he will only die of natural causes. (I lean towards the latter, mostly because I see no evidence of the contrary, but I’m open for discussion.)
Whether it is likely or even inescapable on a thematic, meta level that Dany and Jon die after the WftD because they’ve been living on borrowed time is another issue, and the fandom consensus seems to be that yes, they’re going to die but it will probably be a willing sacrifice on their part, rather than fading away for supernatural reasons or being killed in battle (or murdered).
Again, as far as I’m concerned I’m not sure. Like I said, it’s not a zero-sum game, and the fact that something makes sense on a trope/storytelling level isn’t in itself a guarantee it will happen in asoiaf, because we have no way to predict whether GRRM will play a certain trope straight or deconstruct it or even subvert it entirely. But in a very broad sense, yes, I suspect that regardless their chances of survival Martin won’t give these characters an all-around happily ever after anyway. Personally I think he’ll opt for an endgame that counterbalances their chosen one status. Chosen ones in fantasy either get a glorious HEA or die heroically—there’s usually no in-between, and it’s extra-ordinary in either case. But maybe they’re getting normalcy instead? Probably not the pleasant normalcy of a married life, but the tedious, mundane routine of running a kingdom and supervising rebuilt. OR they’ll be together, but they’ll lose their status of leaders. OR they’ll be so irrevocably changed by this experience that they’ll have no choice but retire somewhere quiet and safe where they can heal.
So in short I think anon # 2 is right in that they will get something AND lose something (both of them, though it’s entirely possible that Jon’s price will be his life and Dany’s price will be Jon’s, or the dragons’, death). In my opinion their endgame has to be something that either grounds them in humanity again—with all the flaws and compromises and fatigue that a human life entails—or further alienates them from the rest of humanity, makes them incapable of savoring the sweetness of life again (à la Frodo).
what makes you say that hardhome didn't advance the plot? it introduced the final threat in the person of the night king to the audience, and directly provoked jon's death when he ordered the wildlings let through the wall. do you just mean it doesn't reveal anything new about the trajectory of the books, or that it was actually insignificant to the show itself and that stuff would have happened anyway?
Don’t get me wrong, I think Hardhome is one of the best episodes of the show, it is impeccably written and accomplishes two very important things in a serialized visual medium that needs to keep a large, mostly casual audience engaged: it gives the Real Bad Guys an opportunity to shine and prove how dangerous and capable of inflicting lethal damage they are (how often have you heard show watchers complain that “there weren’t enough white walkers in this season”?), and it personalizes the conflict into a Jon VS Night’s King hero/villain dynamic, which is 200% more compelling than having Jon fight against a horde of nameless, faceless ice demons with no semblance of individuality or personal agenda.
But plot wise, for all it is this huge epic battle between humanity and the White Walkers, nothing that happens in Hardhome is strictly necessary for Jon’s storyline or has a real permanence.
While it makes you worry a little for supporting characters like Edd or Tormund, they all easily survive, and the only casualties are those introduced by the episode itself like the never forgotten Karsi and the Thenn warlord with the mini-redemption arc, or very minor villains like Rattleshirt who are already very dead in the books. Yes, Jon learns that valyrian steel kills white walkers, and that’s about the most substantial thing that comes out of that mission. Wun Wun is the only newly introduced wildling “character” to survive and join Jon’s storyline. The members of the NW who were skeptical about the WW threat, like ser Alliser, weren’t there to see them destroy the settlement and raise the dead, so they’ll continue antagonizing Jon as if nothing happened. No important character died or was permanently injured—not even Jon, who is supposed to be murdered two episodes later anyway.
See, in the books, the events of Hardhome happen entirely off page. Jon sends Cotter Pyke with a few ships to bring to safety the wildlings who reunited there under Mother Mole’s guidance, but when Cotter gets there, he messages that the settlement is in disarray: half the wildlings were abducted by pirates who meant to sell them as slaves, the remaining ones are eating their dead and even attacked one of Pyke’s ships, but, though there’s mention of “dead things in the woods, dead things in the water”, we don’t know much else. We don’t know if Hardhome has been or will be attacked by an entire army of Others, and if it does, chances are nobody will make it back to the Wall to tell the tale until it’s too late. In the show, the main change is that Jon leads the mission himself (in line with the show’s habit of putting pov characters in non-pov storylines, see also Sansa in Jeyne’s place); not only that, he also brings a bunch of other NW’s members with him. They witness the army of the dead. They see the Night’s King with their own eyes. And they all survive and make it back to Castle Black. Yet NOBODY LISTENS TO THEM! And everything proceeds as per book schedule (minus the Pink Letter).
This is what I mean by “no real permanence”—the fact that Jon goes instead of Cotter Pyke doesn’t alter his arc in any significant way, and he is just smoothly reinserted in his book trajectory after this digression, and murdered by those in the NW who were already unhappy with his political choices. But by trading the Pink Letter with Jon going to Hardhome in person and bringing back more free folk to the Wall, the mutiny and Jon’s subsequent assassination aren’t as convincing as they are in the books. They removed an instance of Jon actually breaking the NW’s oath to pursue a personal agenda—which gave his opponents the perfect casus belli to revolt against him—and replaced it with an event that SHOULD convince even the most skeptical ones of the Others’ threat, but DOESN’T. On a character level, this makes Jon come out smelling like roses (as he always does), while Thorne & co. look like even bigger idiots than they are in the books.
This doesn’t mean that Hardhome is insignificant—as I said, it introduced the Night’s King to Jon Snow and viceversa, personalized the conflict, raised the stakes by showing how the WW are able to immediately reanimate the fallen in battle and turn them into their puppets. Hell, personally, I think it was a great piece of television, and I think the choice of bringing an obscure and offpage book event to the forefront through Jon’s pov was very inspired. But the fact remains that the supposedly HUGE plot point of a good portion of the NW facing an entire army of Others is immediately normalized to let Jon’s arc continue according to book schedule. It’s an example of how the writers tend to make changes to character arcs but without any real intention to alter the overall storyline, which means the changes aren’t allowed to have an impact or any long lasting effects on the character in question.
