Back at the end of Season 4, with the series having reached the end of A Storm of Swords, and the easier page-to-screen sections of A Song of Ice and Fire, I wrote a piece called “On Jon Snow’s Mother.” In it, I argued that the show had failed so far to successfully transfer the running subplot throughout the series that involved Ned’s memories of his sister Lyanna, evolving tails of who Rhaegar Targaryen was as a person, as we saw him through the eyes of several different characters as they told stories of the past. part of my argument for this was that the Unsullied among us (who at that point still were very Unsullied) seemed completely baffled whenever someone (usually a book reader talking to another book reader) brought up the subject of Snow’s parents, as if somehow Ned was not his father. I even had the extremely odd experience (blessedly it didn’t happen often) of TV show fans who then went and read the books, but not deeply, tell me that there was nothing in the books that suggested Jon Snow’s father was anyone other than Ned Stark.
Well, no, nothing about Jon Snow’s parents is spelled out in the books. But, interestingly enough, it turns out I was wrong about nothing about Jon Snow’s parentage was being hinted at in the TV show. As this beautifully edited supercut proves, much like in the books, one has to see beyond the scene at hand to the subtext of what is being said in order to put the clues together.
With the quiet proof like this, it seems hard to believe that eventually the show won’t find a way to answer the question of whether or not R+L=J.
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