~Discourse~

But the similarities between the theory that is political!Jon and the “Lois Lane will die, Chloe Sullivan will take her name, her job and her soulmate Superman and become the real Lois Lane” theory are too much for me.

If there are SV fans who’re watching the political Jon theory evolve and remembers “Chloe is the real Lois. She sat in front of a name plate that said Lois Lane! Let’s ignore and demonize the actual Lois Lane” theories, hit me up.

I can’t get over the toxicity of these fandoms that support such toxic theories for the sake of propelling their preferred ship and their preferred female character. I mean, things worked out for Lois Lane, Clark Kent, and the ship. But I’m not happy about seeing a version of that grossness again.

One of the main similarities between the two is that both GOT and SV were/are adaptations of a pre-written source material. So basically the canon is set in stone as to what the major romantic relationship are in it. Jon and Dany may not have met yet in the book but, honestly, I’m still surprised at people who didn’t see the relationship coming with all the story and character parallels between the two. I’ve said before that I figured out the two of them would get together before I ever read the books, or watched the show. Maybe some people really did just miss it, but I think a lot of it just came down to not wanting to believe it. Maybe because their hatred of Dany (because it’s usually always Dany) blinded them to the inevitable. Maybe they’re just weirded out by the incest; which is fine, but it’s clear GRRM isn’t making any moral judgement about incest in his work, especially when it comes to the Targaryens. And he’s the author of all this, so anyone using their personal opinions on the issue to determine where the story is going wrt Jon and Dany? Well, it was always going to lead them down the wrong path wrt the Jon/Dany relationship. (And will continue to do so wrt S8 BTW).

So yeah, Jon/Dany is going to happen in the books too (if Martin ever finishes them). No matter how many times some people keep trying to put it on “fanservice” or just something that will be “show only” and still denying the reality of it, I didn’t need director Alan Taylor confirming that GRRM told them back in S1 that the story would all come down to them and them meeting was the point. 

So because D&D aren’t making this ship up, and it’s something that is weaved into the overall narrative by the source material the show is adapted from per word-of-the-author, there is a need for some people to try and twist the set canon into something that will give them what they want. Which is just like the Chlois theory was - trying to twist the set-canon into something that will give a certain group of shippers something they desperately want. Lois and Clark’s relationship, at the time SV was on, was a relationship that had over 70 years of canon behind it. From the first ever Superman comic book back in 1938, it has been set in stone who Clark Kent’s main love interest is. So there was no way Chloe Sullivan was ever going to get him in any permanent way just by being Chloe Sullivan. She would have to be twisted into someone else, made to BE someone else, for the ship to ever happen and be endgame. So came the Chlois Theory.

Now, because we don’t have the final books, this all happening in GOT fandom isn’t about turning Sansa into the set love interest via having to become someone else (because people can still happily be in denial if they wish about it happening in the books for now). It’s about twisting the two characters who are the canon relationship into different people in order to argue how a break up “twist” will happen and then get them the ‘ship they so desperately want. 

Sansa, just like Chloe, has become a self-insert character. Which is something I DO blame on D&D, because they decided to move Sansa away from her book storyline and give her Jeyne Poole’s, which makes her way more sympathetic compared to what the sample chapters from Book 6 show her doing as Alayne Stone. Just as the Chlois theory had nothing to do with Clark except to make him a prize for Chloe to win and get everything she ever wanted back in S1 of SV, this political!Jon and Dark!Dany theory stuff has nothing to do with who Jon and Dany are as the actual characters they are, and everything to do with giving Sansa “everything she ever wanted” back in S1 of GOT, with Jon as the prize to be won. (A handsome prince and becoming Queen). 

Anyway, this is all going to go down just like Chlois did after the final season of SV aired. The crack theories aren’t going to happen. And while some will admit they never expected it to after it doesn’t (even though they argued otherwise all though hiatus), I expect more will start arguing it’ll happen in the books, even though the books hold even more evidence than the show that it won’t. 

Jon’s bond with Ghost and Daenerys’ bond with Drogon + parallels (x)

But, I think Jon being a King in any sense has less to do with actual thrones and more to do with the tribal meaning of what a king is.

The Corn King is a term for a male fertility god/sacred king who dies or is sacrificed for the good of his people to bring fertility or spring back into the land. The Corn King is born at Yule, matures through the year, and dies at harvest, only to be reborn the next year. At Beltane, the Corn King weds an earth goddess (an aspect of the Earth Mother). The consummation of their wedding restores fertility to the land.

The English version of the Corn King myth called John Barleycorn is detailed here.

This was first expounded on in James Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (first published in 1890). It’s been used by fantasy writers over the years for inspiration. It’s up there with Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with A Thousand Faces. 

The king was the incarnation of a dying and reviving god, a solar deity who underwent a mystic marriage to a goddess of the Earth. He died at the harvest and was reincarnated in the spring. Frazer claims that this legend of rebirth is central to almost all of the world’s mythologies. FROM WIKI

Deep in the race, Frazer explained, is the belief that the king carries within himself the life and fertility of the land he rules. As such he is a living god. He may be called upon to give his life in a time of famine so that his blood may fertilize the fields anew…The Corn King myth underlies the practices of various primitive peoples and appears in mythology under the names of Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Baal, Tammuz, and Bran the Blessed. The wounding and healing (or the death and resurrection) of the god/king represents (and is believed actually to facilitate) the renewal of vegetation in the Spring after the death of plants in the winter.

GRRM is definitely familiar with the Corn King myth. He even puts in a story in ADWD that is very much the Corn King:

“In Pentos we have a prince, my friend. He presides at ball and feast and rides about the city in a palanquin of ivory and gold. Three heralds go before him with the golden scales of trade, the iron sword of war, and the silver scourge of justice. On the first day of each new year he must deflower the maid of the fields and the maid of the seas.” Illyrio leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Yet should a crop fail or a war be lost, we cut his throat to appease the gods and choose a new prince from amongst the forty families.”

GRRM connects Jon in the books to a Corn King:

Mormont’s raven muttered across the room. ”Corn, “ the bird said, and, ”King, “ and, ”Snow, Jon Snow, Jon Snow. “ That was queer. The bird had never said his full name before, as best Jon could recall.

Jon dies at the end of ADWD and will be resurrected. Jon in the show has died, been resurrected, and he “took a knife in the heart for his people. He gave his own -” 

The Corn King is a term for a male fertility god/sacred king who dies or is sacrificed for the good of his people to bring fertility or spring back into the land. The Corn King is born at Yule, matures through the year, and dies at harvest, only to be reborn the next year. At Beltane, the Corn King weds an Earth Goddess (an aspect of the Earth Mother). The consummation of their wedding restores fertility to the land.

The king was the incarnation of a dying and reviving god, a solar deity who underwent a mystic marriage to a goddess of the Earth. He died at the harvest and was reincarnated in the spring. Frazer claims that this legend of rebirth is central to almost all of the world’s mythologies. FROM WIKI

I just wanted to make a ship-specific post as we know that Jon and Dany have both been set up as our savior figures to stop the Long Night, restore balance, and bring Spring back again. And, their convergence has been stated has being the point of the series. Does Dany fit the figure of an Earth Goddess, an Earth Mother? The Mother part is easy as Dany is connected to motherhood from the first book and first season onwards. Mhysa means “mother.” She’s the Mother of Dragons.  

Frazer, in The Golden Bough, uses Diana, the Roman moon and nature goddess (who has also been called Light Bringer interestingly) and her symbolic marriage to the priest-king Nemi “the two figuring as King and Queen of the Wood in a solemn marriage which was intended to make the earth gay with the blossoms of spring and the fruits of autumn.” Egyptian kings married their sisters and they impersonated Osiris and Isis in the rites of spring. 

In Barbara L Talcroft’s The Death of the Corn King which is built on Frazer’s The Golden Bough, she says:

Irish texts speak of the banais rigi or “the wedding of the kingship” which probably meant that the queen, who also impersonated the earth goddess,  chose a mate from among her war band and later to become the king-sacrifice. Mac Cana relates the story from Irish literature of King Eochaidh whose kingship was not recognized because his goddess-wife, Edain, had been taken away from him. Mac Cana concludes, “In the context of Irish tradition, the meaning of this is clear. Eochaidh had become king, but his kingship could be validated only by his union with the goddess of sovereignty, in this case, Edain. This union of king and goddess was at one time ritually enacted at the Feast of Tara.”

So, this part is interesting because it’s the Goddess of Sovereignty that gives the king legitimacy. Without her, his kingship is not validated. 

The ceremony so essential to the legitimacy of the king took place at his inauguration and had two parts- some form of drink offered by the goddess-bride to the king and the sexual union

Have I just talked myself into accepting Bran’s legitimacy VO while Jon/Dany are having sex? Heh.

The intricate relationship between king and Goddess, at least in the Celtic tradition, was undoubtedly caused by the conflicting emphases of the patriarchal sun religion represented by the king, and of the matriarchal earth and moon religion represented by the Goddess.

Moon symbology has figured in Daenerys’ story. ‘Moon of my life’ which Drogo called her is only one such example. The dragon creation myth is another. There are a lot of moon references in Dany’s chapters. But, there are even more moon references in Jon’s chapters. The Azor Ahai myth and R’hollorism is filled with sun, moon, and star references too. R’hllor specifically is connected to sun and stars.

“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.”

Melisandre says to Jon in ADWD  "You should look behind you, Lord Snow. The moon has kissed you and etched your shadow upon the ice twenty feet tall.“

R’hllor,” sang Melisandre, her arms upraised against the falling snow, “you are the light in our eyes, the fire in our hearts, the heat in our loins. Yours is the sun that warms our days, yours the stars that guard us in the dark of night.”

LOOK AT THIS FUCKING ADORABLE SEVERELY INCESTY BABY!!!

LOOK. AT. HIM.

I don’t even think the Targaryens ever went so far as to wed children to parent. Did they? And Gilly…was her mother a daughter of Craster too? Does it ever say? I think it’s at least possible considering how young she is. Which makes Little Sam either Craster’s grandchild, great-grandchild, or possibly even great-great-grandchild.

How? Well…Say Craster takes his first wife (non-daughter) at 15ish, has a daughter. Craster is 30 and marries his first daughter who’s 15. She gives him another daughter who is also his granddaughter. Craster is 45 he takes his daughter/granddaughter to wife and she gives him another daughter who is also his great-granddaughter. At 60 he could wed the great-granddaughter who can give him another daughter/great-great-grandaughter and so on.

And Craster’s age is never specified. We get this description of him:

Craster’s sheepskin jerkin and cloak of sewn skins made a shabby contrast, but around one thick wrist was a heavy ring that had the glint of gold. He looked to be a powerful man, though well into the winter of his days now, his mane of hair grey going to white.

Middle-aged people have grey hair. But old people have white hair. If Craster’s hair is turning white, he very well could be 60ish or even older.

And there is nothing wrong with Little Sam. He’s adorable.

Jon and Dany’s child will be just fine. Hell, after Dany’s parents and grandparents, her family is quite mixed with Martell blood, Dayne blood, and Blackwood blood. That’s not even anywhere close to how inbred little Sam is.

So can we please…get off the topic of child deformities as way to argue Jon and Dany shouldn’t marry and have kids. It’s just. Not. Plausible.

OHHH *Edit*

And I forgot to add…the amount of DNA family members share varies greatly! It’s not a hard and fast rule that aunt-nephew share 25% DNA while first cousins share only 12.5%. When a person takes after a certain parent, they have more of that parent’s genetic makeup than the one they don’t favor. Jon clearly does not favor Rhaegar, whom Dany looks like. So the percentage of DNA Jon and Dany share can be as little as 1.7%. Don’t believe me. HERE.

(and why yes, I did just become a genetics expert in the last five minutes).

The amount of DNA Jon and Dany share, is likely the same amount of DNA Jon and Sansa share considering he looks nothing like her at all.

Imagine that your argument against Jonrya is that Jon and Arya = sibling love, but instead being a Jonsa shipper. WOW. And then imagine tagging one of your posts like this:

When you’re writing Jonerys, do you picture Kit and Emilia’s faces as you write them or some other physical versions of Jon and Dany?

I realized that I don’t see their faces when I write Jonerys but rather a vaguely-similar looking them. Jon still has dark, curly hair, facial hair and dark eyes, and Dany is still small with Emilia’s rounded blue (or violet) eyes. But it’s definitely not Kit and Emilia themselves that I envision.

Almost like two actors playing Kit and Emilia playing Jon and Daenerys. The only way I can describe it would be like fan art versions of Jonerys, which makes sense since I tend to imagine in 2-D anyway.