#jonposting

☆ deuce - faget

“I don’t care,” Jon said. “I don’t care about them and I don’t care about you or Thorne or Benjen Stark or any of it. I hate it here. It’s too… it’s cold.” “Yes. Cold and hard and mean, that’s the Wall, and the men who walk it. Not like the stories your wet nurse told you. Well, piss on the stories and piss on your wet nurse. This is the way it is, and you’re here for life, same as the rest of us.” “Life,” Jon repeated bitterly. The armorer could talk about life. He’d had one. He’d only taken the black after he’d lost an arm at the siege of Storm’s End. Before that he’d smithed for Stannis Baratheon, the king’s brother. He’d seen the Seven Kingdoms from one end to the other; he’d feasted and wenched and fought in a hundred battles. They said it was Donal Noye who’d forged King Robert’s warhammer, the one that crushed the life from Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident. He’d done all the things that Jon would never do, and then when he was old, well past thirty, he’d taken a glancing blow from an axe and the wound had festered until the whole arm had to come off. Only then, crippled, had Donal Noye come to the Wall, when his life was all but over.

This part in Jon V, only two chapters later, when he’s finally about to become a man of the Watch but he can’t get too excited because he’s realizing that there’s a great big world down there, yet he’s all the way up here at the Wall - a cold, unwelcoming home; a prison with no escape unless he wishes to die.

He had no destination in mind. He wanted only to ride. He followed the creek for a time, listening to the icy trickle of water over rock, then cut across the fields to the kingsroad. It stretched out before him, narrow and stony and pocked with weeds, a road of no particular promise, yet the sight of it filled Jon Snow with a vast longing. Winterfell was down that road, and beyond it Riverrun and King’s Landing and the Eyrie and so many other places; Casterly Rock, the Isle of Faces, the red mountains of Dorne, the hundred islands of Braavos in the sea, the smoking ruins of old Valyria. All the places that Jon would never see. The world was down that road… and he was here. Once he swore his vow, the Wall would be his home until he was old as Maester Aemon. “I have not sworn yet,” he muttered. He was no outlaw, bound to take the black or pay the penalty for his crimes. He had come here freely, and he might leave freely… until he said the words. He need only ride on, and he could leave it all behind. By the time the moon was full again, he would be back in Winterfell with his brothers. Your half brothers, a voice inside reminded him. And Lady Stark, who will not welcome you. There was no place for him in Winterfell, no place in King’s Landing either. Even his own mother had not had a place for him. The thought of her made him sad. He wondered who she had been, what she had looked like, why his father had left her. Because she was a whore or an adulteress, fool. Something dark and dishonorable, or else why was Lord Eddard too ashamed to speak of her? Jon Snow turned away from the kingsroad to look behind him. The fires of Castle Black were hidden behind a hill, but the Wall was there, pale beneath the moon, vast and cold, running from horizon to horizon. He wheeled his horse around and started for home.

Yes Jon could leave the Watch, but he has no place! Because where would he go, bastard that he is?

That’s why the most underrated endgame theory is ‘Traveling Diplomat Jon’. Yes he’s a talented politician and he would do very well as a ruling lord, but there’s so much he’s yet to discover because he struggled to see where his illegitimate status could take him. But even in his bastardy, Jon is connected to so many important locations all around Westeros. Forget Winterfell. He could visit Harrenhall where his parents met. He could go look for rubies in the Trident and see where his father died. He could visit the Vale, the place that raised his adoptive father and the man he’s named after. He could take a trip to Starfall and visit his milkbrother, then visit the Tower of Joy’s ruins. He could got to Dragonstone and Summerhall, his father’s birthplace and home. If he wishes, he can cross the Narrow Sea and visit his friend (and personal banker) Tycho Nestoris in Braavos. And if his suicidal tendencies get stronger, why not visit the smoky ruins of Valyria where sleeping dragons were once brought to life, just like himself?