So what’s the big deal with Jon Snow anyway? I know, technically the answer is “he’s the hero.” The hero is the one who survives, who stands up to the Big Bad and “saves the world’ and so on, even if they give their own lives doing it. Standard fantasy trope and all that.
But leaving behind the meta, what’s the big deal with Jon Snow in Westeros. Yes, R+L=J, sekrit Targ, eleventy one. But WHY is that so special? So Jon Snow isn’t Ned’s bastard, he’s half Targaryen, a family that was driven out of Westeros a while back, you may have heard about it. Will this family relation really make a difference? But more importantly, why does this particular joining of a Targaryen and a Stark create such an important character? Why does *that* make him the hero?
“Why does this particular joining of a Targaryen and a Stark….” Oh, but that’s just it. You see, if you go back through the years, and roll your way up the Targaryen Family tree, all the way back to the conquering, or up the Stark Family Tree, back to when the Targaryens arrived you’ll notice that there’s something that has never happened. Starks and Targaryens have never, ever joined their families together.
The Starks bent the knee to the Dragon conquers when they arrived in Westeros, same as everyone else of course. And there was that one time the Starks sat on the Iron Throne, known as the Hour of the Wolf. (It was only for a couple of days, at the very end of the Civil War known as “The Dragon of Dragons,” Shireen had a book you might borrow on the subject.) But even though Aegon named Cregan Stark hand of the King for his honorable insistence that those who had wronged their own Targaryen family be punished at the end of the War, that lasted all of hours, before Lord Cregan tendered his resignation and rolled himself right back up North, thank you kindly. (If only Ned had been so wise.)
No, Starkls have bonded through marriage and children with many Northern houses and even a few more far flung families in recent years with the marriages to Tully and Lannister. But not once in the entire history of Westeros has there ever been the offspring of a Stark and a Targaryen to walk upon the lands of Westeros.
Ice and Fire don’t meet often. From the sounds of it, Lyanna and Rhaegar’s utter infatuation with each other, so strong that one forsook their honor and the other their marriage vows in order to get together to have a baby, was more than just two highborns throwing caution to the winds and starting a war. This was some sort of fate to finally force a pairing of two families who had miraculously managed to avoid any sort of intermarriage for emotional or political reasons.
Does that make the difference between Dany and Jon’s fates to come? After all, though Dany is true born, pureblood, etc, she’s also just another trueborn pureblood, like her ancestors before her. Jon Snow is something altogether different, something new that hasn’t existed before. Ice and Fire meeting and made flesh.
Via http://winteriscoming.net/2016/08/31/jon-snow-special-anyway/
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