Hi, Ive Been Reading Your Dany And Jon Asks And I Am Really Curious Why You Think The Political!jon/ucl

Hi, I’ve been reading your Dany and Jon asks and I am really curious why you think the political!jon/ucl theory goes against the themes of the books? Thanks!

“It was the cold,” Gared said with iron certainty. “I saw men freeze last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold.”

- Prologue, AGoT

The prologue’s there to frame the conflict of the entire series, and it’s outright stated that the cold is the enemy. (And at the end of the book, Dany proclaims that the fire is hers. Bookends.) The ultimate antagonist in this series is an inhuman, anti-human force against which all humanity should unite. 

The idea that people should work together to face threats greater than themselves recurs across the series. Whether it’s Ned telling Arya that she and Sansa will need each other, Catelyn imploring the Baratheon brothers to work together, or Jon and Stannis making common cause at the Wall itself, the idea’s there. The White Walkers are a problem bigger than anyone, and people should work together. The idea that at the business end of the series one of the protagonists will callously manipulate another protagonist into helping sort out the final showdown is just bizarre to me. Especially when the other option is one protagonist convincing another protagonist to lend a hand and a few dragons, nothing but good faith between them. Even the show has started to bear in this direction from time to time.

I think this theory is also pretty OOC for even the show versions of Jon and Dany. The show’s got its issues with showing us one thing and telling us another, but that theory pretty well denies that Dany could ever want to save the world because the world’s worth saving, and ignores Jon’s distress over deceiving Ygritte.

Given the options between “offscreen, Jon decided to give up on a good faith alliance with Daenerys and instead seduce her into offering her assistance,” and “the Jon/Dany romance writing did not come off altogether as convincing as intended,” I know which I find more plausible.

Your usage of the Melisandre's words just blow my mind!

anon bear with me for a moment bc i’ve been dying to talk about this. so here’s the full exchange between jon and melisandre in a dance with dragons:

“Ghost,” he called. “To me.” The direwolf looked at him as if he were a stranger. Jon frowned in disbelief. “That’s … queer.”“You think so?” She knelt and scratched Ghost behind his ear. “Your Wall is a queer place, but there is power here, if you will use it. Power in you, and in this beast. You resist it, and that is your mistake. Embrace it. Use it.”I am not a wolf, he thought. “And how would I do that?”“I can show you.” Melisandre draped one slender arm over Ghost, and the direwolf licked her face. “The Lord of Light in his wisdom made us male and female, two parts of a greater whole. In our joining there is power. Power to make life. Power to make light. Power to cast shadows.”

among many other parallels and contrasts, this is probably the one i like the most. because melisandre is talking with jon about him and his direwolf but i immediately thought of daenerys and her dragons. daenerys spends most of the fifth book “denying” her dragons and her true self so she can be a queen and a mother to her people. and here we have melisandre telling jon that he should embrace his powers and ghost’s powers as well. and then she goes and talks about the power that a female and a male together can have. i mean, george isn’t talking about melisandre and jon here lol he is calling out for jon and dany’s struggle and then telling us that in their union there’s power to cast shadows and make light. i mean…………

Thinking about this illustration by Marc Fishman from the cover of the limited-edition release of A Dance with Dragons, featuring Jon with Daenerys watching over him in the sky and I will never get tired of this particular imagery associated with them:

“A trader from Qarth once told me that dragons came from the moon,” blond Doreah said as she warmed a towel over the fire.

[…]

Silvery-wet hair tumbled across her eyes as Dany turned her head, curious. “The moon?”

“He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi,” the Lysene girl said. “Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return.” — Daenerys III, AGOT.

*

She dreamed. All her cares fell away from her, and all her pains as well, and she seemed to float upward into the sky. She was flying once again, spinning, laughing, dancing, as the stars wheeled around her and whispered secrets in her ear. — Daenerys X, ADWD.

*

I loved a maid as fair as summer with sunlight in her hair.

I loved a maid as red as autumn with sunset in her hair.

I loved a maid as white as winter with moonglow in her hair.

Guys! Guys, she is the MOON!

The white wolf raced through a black wood, beneath a pale cliff as tall as the sky. The moon ran with him, slipping through a tangle of bare branches overhead, across the starry sky.

“Snow,” the moon murmured.

[…]

“Snow,” the moon called down again, cackling. — Jon I, ADWD.

*

You should look behind you, Lord Snow. The moon has kissed you and etched your shadow upon the ice twenty feet tall. — Jon VI, ADWD.

And he is the WOLF! He is the white wolf and she is the moon in the sky and the moon is WATCHING over him, CALLING for him, KISSING him!

Say whatever you want about GRRM but don’t ever say he is not a romantic at heart and a sucker for beautiful symbolism.

Burning shafts hissed upward, trailing tongues of fire. Scarecrow brothers tumbled down, black cloaks ablaze. “Snow,” an eagle cried, as foemen scuttled up the ice like spiders. Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist. As the dead men reached the top of the Wall he sent them down to die again. 

— A Dance with Dragons, Jon XII

One of the best dream sequences in the books. Jon being armored in ice like the servants of the Great Other but in his hand he wields a fiery blade like the champion of R’hllor.

Ice and fire!!!

Jon Snow’s type of women

In my previous meta I wrote about the misconception that Jon has a thing for redheads. I briefly mentioned that Jon has indeed a type which hasn’t anything to do with hair. I didn’t further explained because I meant to write another meta  about Jon’s preferences. So here we are!

When a boy is young his mother represents the whole female gender to him. It’s through her that he learns about womanhood and she is the one who shapes his first views on women. This wasn’t the case for Jon Snow because as we all know that his mother, Lyanna, died while giving birth to him. In his childhood he interacted with only a few women (the only women he recalls from his days at Winterfell are his two sisters, his step-mother and the old Nan) and only one who was actually close to him, his little sister Arya.

Usually, on close sibling relationships of different sex it’s the younger ones that are affected by the older ones on the subject on how they view the different sex (ex: Bran likes girls that resemble his older sister, Arya). However, in Jon’s case he’s definitely influenced by Arya. This is hardly a surprise because as I noted before, she’s the only female close to him so it makes sense to be his ideal of womanhood.

The evidence of this lay on  the fact that he compares Ygritte,his first love, to Arya. First, in terms of physical appearance:

[..] She looked plump as she crouched there, but most of that was layers of fur and wool and leather. Underneath all that she could be as skinny as Arya.

And later on in terms of personality’s traits:

“If you kill a man, and never mean t’, he’s just as dead,” Ygritte said stubbornly. Jon had never met anyone so stubborn, except maybe for his little sister Arya. 

Even aside from the direct comparisons within the text, one can also draw a lot of  parallels between the two girls’ characters.

Ygritte and Arya are not gender confirming girls. Both show interest in fighting, are feisty, stubborn and loud. They aren’t the typical Westeros girls (well, in Ygritte’s case she’s not a Westerosi). However, they do possess traits that can be found on other Northern and Wilding girls,too.

In a way, it makes poetic sense for Jon’s female ideal to be his sister because Arya resembles Lyanna a lot. Ned Stark, the person who knew both of them very well, demonstrates that:

“You remind me of [Lyanna] sometimes. You even look like her.”

“Lyanna was beautiful,” Arya said, startled. Everybody said so.”-

It’s like Jon’s ideal woman isn’t only his little sister but also his mother, despite the fact that he never got to know her.

The next woman Jon Snow shows an interest at, is Val. Another Wilding, another fighter, another fierce and brave woman.

Lonely and lovely and lethal, Jon Snow reflected, and I might have had her

They are all convinced she is a princess. Val looked the part and rode as if she had been born on horseback. A warrior princess, he decided, not some willowy creature who sits up in a tower, brushing her hair and waiting for some knight to rescue her

Val’s characteristics could easily apply to Ygritte and Arya, so it strengthens the case that Jon indeed has a certain type.

Since I wrote about what Jon likes in women I think it’s time to address what he doesn’t like. Earlier on, I wrote that Arya is the only female that was close to him to Winterfell. That’s true but there is another woman who has also influenced Jon’s perspective on women. That is his step mother, lady Catelyn Stark.

Lady Stark and Jon Snow didn’t have a good relationship. Some fans say she was merely cold to him, others that she was emotional abusive. No matter where you stand on this matter, it was unavoidable that she would have a major effect on him as she was the most prominent female figure on Winterfell and also the one he had a dysfunctional relationship with.

The way she has influenced him is that he came to dislike everything she stood for. Or to be more correct, everything he thought that she stood for. That’s why Jon doesn’t like the women who adhere the traditional femininity. Sometimes his words towards those women can be even harsh and uncalled for. Here are two examples of what I’m describing:

[…] A warrior princess, he decided, not some willowy creature who sits up in a tower, brushing her hair and waiting for some knight to rescue her

And yes, I will take your women too. I have no need of blushing maidens looking to be protected, but I will take as many spearwives as will come.

This meta would be incomplete if I didn’t include Daenerys, his current love interest on the tv series. While Daenerys has more traditional feminine traits than Ygritte or Arya, she still can be described as a free spirited, proud and more importantly brave woman. She’s even a warrior in her own way. She doesn’t wield a sword, but she participates in battles through flying on Drogon.

[…] I know she is proud. How not? What else was left her but pride? I know she is strong. How not? The Dothraki despise weakness. If Daenerys had been weak, she would have perished with Viserys. I know she is fierce. Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen are proof enough of that. She has crossed the grasslands and the red waste, survived assassins and conspiracies and fell sorceries, grieved for a brother and a husband and a son, trod the cities of the slavers to dust beneath her dainty sandaled feet. […]

She’s a woman who could impress Jon Snow and I think that’s intentional by the author. After all, those two have many hints that they will meet and probably end up together in the books (because in the tv series Jonerys is already canon).

I keep seeing this post by J0nsas, that when Sansa is in the Eyrie and laments that no one will ever marry her for love, the chapter that follows hers is a Jon chapter, as if that is supposed to be foreshadowing.

Well, how about this:

Daenerys I, A Dance with Dragons

Five Aegons had ruled the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. There would have been a sixth, but the Usurper’s dogs had murdered her brother’s son when he was still a babe at the breast. If he had lived, I might have married him.

And wanna know whose chapter follows directly after this one? That’s right, Aegon Targaryen’s…I mean, Jon Snow. Ohh and what is memorable line from the first page of that Jon chapter?

“Snow,” the moon murmured.

Jon I, A Dance with Dragons

And who do we know who is called the moon? Hmm…I wonder…?