I never thought I’d be writing a sequel to my “Smarter Than Robb” meta (here), especially not on the eve of the series finale of “Game of Thrones.” However, that was before “The Bells” (at least in my opinion) broke the show’s streak of so-so to awful episodes that started somewhere in season 7. It made me wonder and marvel and gasp and tear up and, above all, think. So did the many articulate posts my fellow Jonsa fans have made about that episode, and in particular about Jon’s role both in that segment of the show and in the watershed overwhelming Westeros at the moment. As I rewatched the episode and read people’s posts, I began seeing Jon’s actions in a slightly different light. Then I realized how similar they were to Ned Stark’s doomed efforts to keep his family and the Seven Kingdoms safe and stabilized in season 1.
Ah, yes, Ned Stark, the original Northern fool – or, at least, that was how so many people, both on the show and off it, viewed him, much as they later saw his son nephew. And what fools they both were, right? Certainly they were such from a general perspective, but seen from Sansa’s viewpoint, many of those actions attained the very height of idiocy. Let us count the ways, starting with Sansa’s father, Ned Stark:
1. HE LIED TO HIS FAMILY, HIS FRIENDS, AND THE WORLD
He brought a Targaryen heir into his home under the nose of a king who had sworn to eradicate all Targaryens from the face of the earth and claimed that the boy was his bastard, without knowing if Jon would grow up to look like his birth father and therefore clue in Robert – and the rest of Westeros – to the truth. He let his own wife think the worst of him, ensuring both a huge strain in their young marriage and her less-than-motherly treatment of poor Jon. What a stubborn, reckless idiot, one could be forgiven for thinking. And what an unnecessary sacrifice of his reputation as a man of honesty and honor, two of the things he valued most.
2. HE DISREGARDED HIS FAMILY’S WARNINGS AND HEADED STRAIGHT INTO A DANGEROUS PLACE
Many years later, when Jon Arryn died, Robert Baratheon requested that Ned replace the older man as his Hand. Ned, a devoted family man, did not want to leave his family, and especially not to live in King’s Landing with its politics and backstabbing. And due to his friendship with Robert, he had a good chance to refuse the other man’s offer while keeping his head, family, and honor intact. But Lysa Arryn’s raven arrived at Winterfell with its allegations that the Lannisters had murdered her husband. That gave Ned reason to fear for Robert’s safety, and so he left his family behind him. No one could fault him for his desire to keep Robert on his throne and avoid another succession conflict, which the Seven Kingdoms could ill afford. However, he could have employed any number of better, smarter options to fulfill that desire, right? How about suggesting another Hand, one who could play the Southern political game more effectively? How about sending ravens to other loyal friends of the king, or even meeting with them in person, to gather more information? Maybe then he could have discovered the truth about Jon Arryn’s death before his family antagonized the Lannisters.
3. HE DELIBERATELY SHOWED HIS HAND TO HIS ENEMY – ALL BECAUSE OF HONOR
Speaking of the Lannisters, many would argue that Ned reached the height of his Northern naiveté in his dealings with them. After all, what kind of idiot would warn the very enemy he’s about to rat out to the king? We know that Ned did this with noble intentions. He knew what Robert would do to Cersei and the children once he discovered Jaime’s affair with Cersei, and despite his dislike of Cersei, his honor would not allow him to stand by while her children died horrible deaths. Still, if he truly wanted to serve the greater good, could he not have let five lives go for the sake of the greater good? After all, wasn’t the greater good the reason he lied to everyone he knew about Jon, as well as his motivation for leaving his family to serve as Robert’s Hand?
4. HE PLOTTED AGAINST THE “KING” OF WESTEROS WITHOUT SEEKING HELP AND COUNSEL FROM HIS FAMILY AND TRUSTWORTHY FRIENDS
Not a good idea, right? Especially when that means the continent’s second succession crisis in two decades and it’s not yet recovered from the first. Ned’s eventual aim was honorable and worthy, which helps to justify his dangerous and dishonorable actions, but he could (and should) have sought the advice and support of his wife, who’s clearly a canny woman with a lot of connections. Moreover, he probably should have at least considered involving Stark or Tully bannermen whom he knew would be loyal to him, rather than counting on Stannis Baratheon and a motley crew from King’s Landing, all of whom had their own agendas.
Speaking of which…
5. HE IGNORED HIS GUT INSTINCTS AND PLACED HIS TRUST IN A DANGEROUS AND DEADLY INDIVIDUAL
Littlefinger rubbed Ned the wrong way from the day they met. It took less than one episode after that for Ned to slam the snake against the wall of his own brothel by his neck for his perverted remarks about Catelyn, Ned’s wife. But Catelyn was convinced that Littlefinger would never harm her and therefore would not want to see any harm come to Ned because she loved Ned so much, so Ned ignored his first instincts – and Littlefinger’s own warnings – which told him the man was a snake waiting to strike. Instead, he chose to believe that Littlefinger would see the nobility – or at least the intrigue and the reward – in Ned’s attempts to place the rightful heir on the throne and keep Westeros from being ruled by a beast like Joffrey. But, as Ned found out the hard way, the most sophisticated strategy in the world doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t trust the people who are supposed to be helping you carry it out.
6. HE SACRIFICED HIS LIFE AND LEFT HIS FAMILY FOREVER – ALL FOR A MINUSCULE CHANCE AT KEEPING SANSA SAFE
Granted, by the time Ned was brought out onto the steps of the Sept of Baelor, his options were very, very limited due to his own deliberate course of action. He knew he would either (a) die, or (b) get sent to the Wall, separated from his family forever. Either way, his life would essentially be over, and he would most likely be declared a traitor to the crown, which meant that unless his son Robb swore fealty to Joffrey (which he likely knew would never happen), his entire family would be considered traitors, and their lands and goods and freedom forfeit to Joffrey (and, by extension, Cersei). Still, dying would be more honorable. Accepting exile to the Wall meant lying abominably to earn a hollow life of shame – not an action the honorable Ned Stark would have taken lightly. But he did it anyway, because doing it gave his beloved daughter Sansa a better chance at survival. Of course, Ned failed to take into consideration the extent of Joffrey’s megalomaniacal cruelty, and he died anyway for his troubles.
Certainly, many of Ned’s actions, when taken at face value, don’t look too brilliant. That makes his more intelligent and shrewd deeds, such as the conspiracy to place Stannis on the throne, even more confusing. One sees a picture of a noble and even heroic man, one who clearly has a brain for military and even sometimes political strategy, who hatches incredibly detailed and sophisticated plans but then blows them all in bursts of idiocy.
But what motives lie behind that apparent idiocy? That is the crucial question, and one that many viewers have missed, although the answer should surprise no one.
Every time Ned Stark made a “stupid” decision, it was for one or more of the following three reasons: 1) serving the greater good of the realm (leaving Winterfell to become Robert’s Hand, taking on Littlefinger as a co-conspirator to put Stannis, the rightful heir, on the throne); 2) acting honorably (warning Cersei that he was about to reveal her affair with Jaime); and, most importantly, 3) protecting his family. The motives are often intertwined, and sometimes one (such as honor) conflicts with one or more of the others (such as protecting Ned’s family), but every one of the decisions outlined above has involved some combination of these three reasons.
Twelve-year-old Sansa, of course, could not entirely understand her father’s actions or the complex motivations behind them. All she saw was that he screwed up and lost his head for it. When she got older, she had more of a capacity to understand why Ned did what he did. As she says to Jon in episode 1 of season 7, “He was trying to protect [his daughters].” However, that doesn’t decrease the trauma his death put her through, and she wishes he would have been smarter by listening better to both his own instincts and the wise counsel of his family and friends.
Sound familiar? Good. Let’s unpack some of Jon’s more questionable decisions from the past two seasons, which parallel his uncle’s to an uncanny degree, and see what his actions and mannerisms tell us about why he made those decisions:
1. HE LIED TO HIS FAMILY, HIS FRIENDS, AND THE WORLD
During most of Jon’s scenes with Daenerys, he’s been uncomfortable, stilted, cautious, resigned, and even downright afraid, especially as season 8 has worn on. His final “I love you” to her in the early scenes of “The Bells” is just the latest, but perhaps the most obvious, instance in which he uses what’s left of her romantic feelings for him in a desperate attempt to placate her and de-escalate her more violent tendencies. The man is clearly not in love with Daenerys, and, based on his prior interactions with her, he never was (heck, he even looked uncomfortable while having sex with her!) – although that’s an argument for a different post.
But Jon never spells this out clearly to either his people (sorry, but “I gave up my crown to protect the North” is an ambiguous allusion, not a specific explanation) or, even more important, his family, whom he loves more than anyone. He can bring himself to admit his true parentage to his siblings cousins, but not that he deceived Daenerys into thinking he was in love with her. Instead, he keeps reciting the tired refrain that “she’s my queen; she’ll be a good queen; you just don’t know her.” Ironically, of course, and as another meta that contrasted Ned’s circumstances with Jon’s noted, his family members could and would help him if only he would ask for it. Sansa is a terrific leader with a keen political mind and the clout to call the Northern banners to defend Jon against Daenerys, if she wanted to do it. Arya is one hell of a warrior assassin. And Bran’s visions, as we’ve seen, can work wonders. Furthermore, all three of them are fiercely loyal to him. But he still won’t tell them squat about what he fears Daenerys is becoming, and even when Sansa figures it out during the battlements scene with Tyrion, you can see the wheels turning in her head over why the heck Jon didn’t just tell her about it in the first place.
What an idiot, right? But remember Ned Stark’s three main motives behind some of his “stupid” decisions, and you’ll see that Jon truly is his uncle’s nephew. Clearly, he sees Daenerys as a threat to the North in general and to his family in particular, especially Sansa (whom Daenerys threatened twice in the first episode alone). The fewer people who know Jon’s true feelings about her, the less he has to worry that she’ll hear about them and go Dracarys on the people Jon cares about the most.
Ned Stark motives #1 and #3: CONFIRMED.
2. HE DISREGARDED HIS FAMILY’S WARNINGS AND HEADED STRAIGHT INTO A DANGEROUS PLACE
Back in episode 2 of season 7, Sansa and the Northern lords between them listed every possible reason that Jon should rethink his impulsive decision to travel to Dragonstone and form an alliance with a Targaryen who, given the family’s history of madness and violence, might very well either listen to Jon or burn him on the spot. Granted, Tyrion Lannister, whom both Jon and Sansa trusted, had vouched for Daenerys, and neither of them particularly wanted Cersei Lannister to stay on the Iron Throne, but to Sansa’s mind, Daenerys was enough of an unknown quantity – with three dragons to boot – that Jon should have considered his decision a bit more thoroughly.
But Jon, like his uncle, had a larger goal in mind that outweighed his desire to stay home with the only family he had. Jon’s goal, though, was not the realm’s political stability, but its survival. To his mind, the only hope he had of achieving that goal for his people and the people of the other six kingdoms was to bring Daenerys, her armies, her dragons, and her dragonglass back North. That much he does admit to Sansa in episode 1 of season 8, but, as she points out, he hadn’t fully considered the price he was paying for her assistance. Had he known ahead of time, though, I think our beloved, impulsive hero would have done the same thing all over again. To him, every sacrifice he made on Daenerys’s altar was worth it to save his family, the North, and Westeros, in that order.
Ned Stark motives #1 and #3: CONFIRMED.
3. HE DELIBERATELY SHOWED HIS HAND TO HIS ENEMY – ALL BECAUSE OF HONOR
When Jon first met Daenerys, he tried to convince her to join the fight against the White Walkers by every above-board means possible. He asked her nicely. He showed her evidence to support his claims (depending on what you believe about the cave drawings, but I think they were authentic). He offered his support to her claim to the Iron Throne. He warned her when he received the raven from Bran indicating that the Night King and his armies were on the way to Eastwatch. Only when Daenerys refused beyond all reason to drop her demand that Jon bend the knee did his actions become more underhanded and calculated. Only after he realized that his only other option was imprisonment did he agree to the mad idea of the Wight Hunt. Only after Cersei had apparently refused to join with them at the dragon pit summit and Daenerys began to waver in her commitment to help save the realm did Jon play the false romance card. He did the “dishonorable” thing, as Ned would have put it (sleeping with a woman he had no plans to marry and risking fathering a bastard), only after his attempts at honor, as he saw them, had failed.
Ned Stark motive #2: CONFIRMED.
4. HE PLOTTED AGAINST THE “QUEEN” OF WESTEROS WITHOUT SEEKING HELP AND COUNSEL FROM HIS FAMILY
(Well, he plotted against Cersei Lannister, too, but that was a given from the beginning, so I won’t go into it any further here.)
By season 8, Jon knows Daenerys Targaryen well enough to be wary of her, at the very least, and by the end of episode 1, he’s clearly beginning to see just how applicable the “-[A]erys” at the end of her name is. She threatens Sansa twice. Sam tells him that she killed Randyll and Dickon after they had already surrendered on the field of battle. She clearly expects the North to kowtow to her and loves it when her dragons frighten them.
As the season wears on, Daenerys’s paranoia and impulsiveness increase at lightning speed. In episode 4 alone, she threatens Sansa for a third time, forces Jon into promising not to tell his own family who he really is, and pressures him to continue his sexual relationship with her even when he doesn’t want to do it. Jon clearly sees the writing on the wall at that point, and he finally rebels against her in his own way by breaking his (coerced) promise and telling his cousins that he’s not Ned Stark’s son. That would have been the perfect opportunity for him to enlist their help against Daenerys. As mentioned above, they all have skill sets that could help him greatly in that endeavor. Instead, he decides that it’s more important to “protect” them by giving them no choice in the matter and separating them from the threat Daenerys has become. He swears allegiance once again to the Dragon Queen and heads south at her command with no clear plan to stop her oncoming descent into full-fledged villainy except to talk her out of it, and then maybe deal with any out-of-control actions on her part once Cersei Lannister has been defeated. Sigh.
Ned Stark motive #3: CONFIRMED.
5. HE IGNORED HIS GUT INSTINCTS AND PLACED HIS TRUST IN A DANGEROUS AND DEADLY INDIVIDUAL
Even though Jon was the one who insisted on heading off to Dragonstone in season 7 to persuade a completely unknown quantity descended from the craziest, most violent House the Seven Kingdoms have ever had the misfortune to host, he clearly has his reservations about it. He’s rightly uneasy when the Dothraki confiscate his ships and weapons, and just as rightly indignant when Daenerys insults him and his family. However, he persists in trying to obtain her assistance because she can help him with his goal of defeating the dead, much like Ned thought Littlefinger could help him with his goal of putting the rightful heir on the throne of Westeros. He believes, at least for a time, that she’ll be a better choice as an ally than would Cersei Lannister, and that belief makes him overlook warning signal after warning signal: her threat to burn down the Red Keep, her insistence on imprisoning him on Dragonstone until he agrees to go on the wight hunt, her hauling him to King’s Landing against his will, her threats against his family (particularly Sansa) – all to defeat the dead. Until the dead have finally been defeated, and he gets a full view of Daenerys’s true colors, just like Ned Stark got an eyeful of Littlefinger’s.
Ned Stark motive #1: CONFIRMED.
6. HE SACRIFICED HIS LIFE AND LEFT HIS FAMILY FOREVER – ALL FOR A MINUSCULE CHANCE AT KEEPING SANSA SAFE
Jon knew there was a high likelihood that he’d die defending Winterfell against the dead in episode 3, and a similar possibility that he’d die trying to take King’s Landing with Daenerys’s armies in episode 5. Dying in episode 3 would have meant dying with some honor in defense of his home, but once he went south to die in episodes 4 and 5, he knew that his options were limited. He could either (a) die in the service of a pyromaniac tyrant, or (b) live, but only under the terms she’d dictated to him in episode 4. Either way, he knew he might never be able to see his family again, and either way, he’d brought shame and dishonor upon himself and his family. As with Ned Stark, the greater shame lay in the second option, which in Jon’s case basically involved being enslaved, sexually and otherwise, to his cruel and unhinged aunt (yes, the great “Breaker of Chains” – oh, the irony!).
But instead of rushing forward to his death in King’s Landing, as he had in the Battle of the Bastards, Jon chooses to live. He chooses to retreat with as many of his men as he can and risk living a life of slavery and shame. If he’s dead, he can’t protect his family. He can’t protect Sansa. He’s promised to protect her, and that’s what he’s determined to do no matter what the cost – to his honor, his life, and his soul. It’s beautiful, but incredibly tragic.
Ned Stark motive #3: CONFIRMED.
So, in the end, was Jon Snow really smarter than his uncle? Unlike with Robb, I’d have to say no, and I think that Sansa, even as an adult and with the capacity and insight she now has to understand the proverbial methods behind both men’s madness – would as well. Both men had significant military skills, and both men planned and executed fairly sophisticated schemes. And both were willing to protect their families, with a special emphasis on Sansa, no matter what the cost. But both had the same fatal flaws: (a) they were a bit too noble in some cases for their own good, (b) they held their cards too close to their chests, and (c) they failed to communicate with and seek the aid of the trustworthy people around them. Only good luck – and the intervention of his family, however much he tried to avoid it – has kept Jon alive longer than Ned. I participated in an interesting Tumblr discussion the other day (which I have tried and failed to track down for reference here), and one of the other posters put the difference between Jon and Ned in an absolutely ingenious way. Ned, the poster pointed out, had a “pack” full of children, none of whom could assist him in the way that he needed. (I’d add to that assertion that he had a brilliant asset in Cat, but she couldn’t be by his side to advise him moment to moment the way he needed to be advised.) But Jon has a “pack” of peers – fellow young adults with the ability and the influence to help him defeat an enemy he has no hope of taking down on his own. I absolutely agree with this, and I think Sansa would too. In fact, she’s already correctly guessed (most of) Jon’s reasoning and begun taking matters into her own hands to help him. I’d love it if she did even more in the finale, along with Arya and Bran.
After all, they remember, even if Ned and Jon themselves do not, that the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. They love him even though he’s never been any smarter than Ned. (Although, of course, he might do better in the future, after Daenerys has been dealt with, to choose a wife like the wife his father married – politically smarter than he is, unafraid to tell him the unvarnished truth when he needs it, and, of course, red-headed. I don’t think Sansa would mind that, either.)
