Hi! What do you think is the point of the whole R+L=J revelation (aside Jon's feelings)? Given that being a Targaryen is not necessary in order to ride a dragon I don't think it will change anything. Thank you!
Thanks for the question, Anon.
Well, if the only point of Jon’s arc was to ride a dragon, no, it wouldn’t change anything. But surely that’s not all there is to Jon, right?
Number one I think, a careful distinction needs to be drawn. Jon isn’t a Targaryen. Jon is the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna. There’s a key difference there. Jon won’t do what he does heroically because he’s a Targaryen and only Targaryens can be heroes, that’s silly. Hell, I doubt if, by the end of the story, more than a handful of characters are even aware Jon was the son of Rhaegar. His story is not a House Targaryen story (in contrast to that of Daenerys, which is very very much a Targaryen story): he’s not going to claim the Iron Throne, he’s not going to rule the Seven Kingdoms, he’s not going to fly with a dragon banner fluttering beside him and his breastplate decorated with a ruby three-headed dragon.
He is, however, a child of prophecy, and that’s my second point. Jon is an in-your-face classic hero, right - the one who starts as a down-on-his-luck boy, roses in this ancient institution, and becomes an obvious leader against a major supernatural threat. He’s pointedly and immediately sympathetic from the first. So obviously, a good classic hero needs this miraculous birth story, right (something something gods and wonders always appear), and he has one! Rhaegar, the lost silver prince, last Prince of Dragonstone, handsome and chivalric, this guy who was apparently great at everything; Lyanna Stark, beautiful and brave, willing to stand up for the defenseless, a scion of that most cherished family, House Stark.
But then you realize - Jon doesn’t get a power-up from that parentage. Instead, everything is totally fucked up about that. Rhaegar broke every chivalric and dynastic code by absconding with Lyanna - daughter of the Lord Paramount of the North, sister of his future Lord of Winterfell, the betrothed of his Lord Paramount of the Stormlands. Given his melancholic personality, I don’t think he ever really loved her; rather, he needed a mother for his third head, and saw that she fit his prophetic designs. I tend to doubt whether Lyanna was actually happy in the tower of joy; she might have been pleased to run away with the handsome crown prince as though her life was a daring song, but would she really have been happy living for several weeks and months after with a gloomy man, in a faraway lonely little keep in Dorne, never again seeing her beloved brothers? That’s really sad.
So instead of being the ideal prince, the son of the great Rhaegar and the lovely Lyanna, Jon is the prophecy-conceived child of a prophecy-obsessed prince who was willing to throw his realm into war to fulfill what he thought was necessary and his captive teenage vessel. Jon only exists because Rhaegar thought his conception would fulfill a prophetic vision (much in the same way Rhaegar himself was conceived). It’s glorious and horrible all at once: sure, Stark and Targaryen blood make a potent combo, but fuck man, you got it in the worst possible way. Poor Jon has lived his life in a crisis of identity, and now he finally gets the answer to his biggest personal question: his father is the man whose actions led to the death of Rickard and Brandon and was the villain of the popular telling of Robert’s Rebellion, his mother was the woman that prince ran away with, about whom his adoptive father rarely talked because the memory of her made him so sad, and his adoptive father spent his entire marriage hiding the truth of Jon’s parentage from his beloved wife because he couldn’t risk his best friend murdering baby Jon for the accident of his birth.
Poor Jon. He’s going to be devastated by that news. And that revelation is going to become a question for the remainder of his arc - am I a hero because I choose to be a hero, or because I was destined to be a hero from before I was born? And that’s the question of ASOIAF, isn’t it? So much of the story is hammering in that being a hero isn’t this glorious destiny for a chosen few. Being a hero sucks. And it’s hard. And you do it even though you might never get recognized for doing it.
So I don’t see R+L=J as a plot device, per se; rather, it’s, as @poorquentyn says, is the ultimate expression of that theme. It’s a way to demonstrate that heart in conflict, the key axis of GRRM’s story. Are you defined by what came before you, or are you what you choose to be? Are you the hero because it’s been foretold you would be the hero and you’re just another gear in the machine of prophecy, or are you someone who chooses to act in the hope of spring against the cold and darkness of winter? Or, alternately, are you able to escape what came before you, or are you bound to repeat the madness and blunders of those who came before you? Are all people, as Tyrion thinks, “puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us”, or are we our own characters with destinies we make for ourselves - good or ill?
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