Jon Snow

Lore & Background

Jon is introduced in 1996's A Game of Thrones as the 14-year-old illegitimate son of Eddard 'Ned' Stark, Lord of Winterfell, and half-brother to Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran and Rickon. Knowing his prospects are limited by his status as a bastard, Jon joins the Night's Watch, who guard the far northern borders from the wildlings living beyond The Wall. In A Clash of Kings (1998), Jon joins a scouting party investigating the growing threat from the otherworldly 'Others' beyond the Wall, and infiltrates the wildlings.

Jon learns of their plans to invade Westeros in A Storm of Swords (2000), and falls in love with the wildling woman Ygritte. Jon betrays the wildlings and Ygritte, returns to defend the Night's Watch against the wildlings' invasion, and is elected Lord Commander of the Watch. He appears briefly in A Feast for Crows (2005) and returns as a prominent character in A Dance with Dragons (2011), in which he works to negotiate an alliance between the Night's Watch and the wildlings against the Others; his policies are met with hostility by some among the Watch, and he is left for dead in a mutiny at the novel's end following a desired attempt to break his vows to fight House Bolton.

Reader's Guide

Jon Snow is a complex, thoughtful and basically good character, according to David Orr of The New York Times. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss explain that Jon is one of several characters who must 'face hard truths about the world they live in, and adapt themselves to those truths' because, 'The struggle many of them face is how to do that without losing their grip on who they are.' Ned Stark teaches all his children about leadership, selflessness, duty and honor.

Benioff and Weiss note that 'Jon Snow tries to live with honor, while knowing that honor often gets his family members murdered.' Jon is a prominent point of view character in the novels, and has been called one of Martin's 'finest creations'. Over the course of the series, Jon's loyalty to the Watch and its vows, his family, and even Westeros itself are tested as he becomes embroiled in the efforts of the wildlings from Beyond the Wall to force their way back into the Seven Kingdoms.

He lives among them as a spy for the Watch, sympathetic to their cause and becoming romantically involved with the tenacious Ygritte. However he ultimately betrays them to defend The Wall. Later, as the newest Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, he pursues an alliance with the wildlings. The identity of Jon's mother has created much speculation among readers of the series.

The popular fan theory—called R+L=J, an abbreviation of 'Rhaegar + Lyanna = Jon'—proposes that Jon is not the son of Ned at all, but is actually the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Ned's younger sister Lyanna Stark, and Ned feigned dishonor and claimed the nephew to be his own child in order to protect Jon from harm.

Did You Know?

• Jon adopts an albino direwolf that he names Ghost, and later finds that at times he can 'inhabit' the wolf and share its experiences.
• In the television series, Jon is revealed to have been born Aegon Targaryen, the legitimate son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark.
• Kit Harington was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama in 2019 for his portrayal of Jon Snow.