#GoT: Is Jon Snow the “True King” of Westeros?

There is a scene in the first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones where Eddard Stark is perusing the Book of the Great Houses of Westeros and discovers that while all the Baratheon issue are “black of hair,” Joffrey, King Robert’s supposed son, is, like the Lannisters, “gold of hair.” That’s the point when Ned figures that Joffrey is in fact the issue of incest between Queen Cersei and her twin brother Jaime Lannister; it’s all down hill for Ned from there until the axe comes down on his neck in Episode 9. Oops.

Ann and I have been drilling into the back story of the TV series and the book, and have come to believe that one of the secrets buried in the story conceals the true identity of Jon Snow, he of black hair and the Night’s Watch.

Part of the back story is: Raeghar Targaryen – the son of the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen – abducted Ned Stark’s sister Lyanna, raped and impregnated her; these are among the circumstances that led to Robert’s Rebellion, the war that ended the nearly 300 year Targaryen dynasty and put Lord Robert of House Baratheon on the Iron Throne. After the rebellion, Ned finds his sister in Raeghar’s captivity, and she extracts a promise from him before she draws her last breath.

Nobody knows for sure what that promise was, but Ned returns shortly thereafter to Winterfell with a baby boy, much to the consternation of his wife Lady Catelyn, who assumes the boy is Ned’s bastard child by another woman and shuns the kid for his entire life. Ned never lets on that the child may be his nephew, not his son.

But if Jon Snow is the son of Raeghar Targaryen, shouldn’t his hair be platinum blonde like Danaerys? (OK, this is not advanced genetics theory, just work with me here…)

So here is our theory: that some how, in passages unwritten from before the books and series begins, Robert Baratheon and Lyanna Stark ‘hooked up,’ and the child she bore is the result of that liaison – and thus the child entitled to inherit Robert’s throne (not withstanding his still obvious bastard status, unless Robert and Lyanna were secretly married…)

Before they parted company in the first episode – Ned Stark on his way to King’s Landing to become the Hand of the King and Jon Snow on his way to The Wall to join The Night’s Watch – Jon asked Ned about his mother.

“We’ll talk about your mother when I return,” Ned says to Jon.

Unfortunately, Joffrey Baratheon’s sentence and Illyn Payne’s sword prevent that from every happening…