No chance, no choice

Look at my King dawg we’re definitely getting through the Wall!!!

For the last month and a half, I have been working closely with Liesl to design concepts for Jon as King Beyond the Wall and Ygritte as his Queen. Personally, I’m not invested at all in Jon becoming King of the Seven Kingdoms despite him being my favorite character. He’s not very connected with the South and I don’t feel that it’s his birth right or anything, even being the son of Rhaegar. I am significantly more interested in him becoming King in the North, but my interest in Freefolk culture has led me to be far more invested in the idea of him rejecting Southron society as a whole and becoming King Beyond the Wall (this isn’t necessarily mutually exclusive to being King in the North later on).

The motivation for Jon becoming King as opposed to Mance stems from a theory that has been around since AGOT has come out: that the Others will only treat with/negotiate with a Stark. In the prologue of AGOT, when the Others are speaking among themselves before killing the Watchmen, what if they were confirming with each other that Waymar Royce was not a Stark and that they could go ahead and kill him? All in all, it doesn’t really matter if this is true, but rather that this is a plausible rumor that could easily have been passed down among the Freefolk which could lead Mance to conclude that Jon as a leader would give the Freefolk the best chance of survival. It’s not very hard, at least in my opinion, to imagine an AU like this, since survival is the most important thing to the Freefolk during the events of ASOIAF. But is it plausible that under these circumstances that Jon would abandon his Night’s Watch vows? I think so if he can be led to believe that only Stark blood could defeat the Others, but that is not the only factor. Jon Snow is insecure about his bastard status, plain and simple. He’s always lived in the shadow of his Robb, though he loved him. He’s wanted Winterfell, though he didn’t want to nor had any intention to take it from Robb. But he’s known since he was a small boy that he could never Winterfell and that would never inherit anything because he was a bastard. Jon also has thoughts, at least in passing, that Ned loved Robb more than him. He perceives Ned as having been more proud of Robb, of looking at him differently than himself. He’s seemingly always believed this, but there is a sort of confirmation of Jon’s feelings when Ned allows him to join the Night’s Watch without much preparation on what the Watch is actually like. Fully me making assumptions here, not something Jon has explicitly thought, but it’s unlikely that Ned would have sent Bran off at 14 to the Watch without much warning of what it was like, had Bran not become paralyzed. While we never get this exact thought process from Jon, in my opinion it fits into his psychology and insecurity. All this to say, if Jon is offered to be a figurehead, King, a title equal to his brother, but without taking anything away from the Starks or from Robb, that would almost certainly scratch that itch in him. It would be of his own merit, and there would be people behind him that don’t care that he’s a bastard, don’t see him as less than, and are willing to accept him for who he is. Not to mention that it also lets him feel like a hero and as if he is saving something far more precious than himself. And it probably doesn’t hurt that he would be able to remain with Ygritte as well.

We know from the descriptions of Mance and Dalla, as well as from being told directly by the former, that the King and his wife dress like all the other Freefolk, in thick furs. While the Jon and Ygritte arts from above are not particularly ostentatious by Southron standards, they are in obvious contrast to how Mance and Dalla are dressed. My idea was that Jon, having lived South of the Wall in a Lord’s keep all of his life, brought his own ideas to the Freefolk and added a distinction between a King and all other men. Nothing like in King’s Landing, all changes are inspired by his experience at Winterfell. I tried to think of what was achievable by the Freefolk, that would be difficult enough that it can’t be easily replicated for everyone else, but also keeping in mind of what could be done relatively quickly seeing as the Freefolk are focused on migrating South and saving themselves from the Others. The cultures I took inspiration for the clothing from are the Byzantines, Russians, Incans, Aztecs, and Mongolians. I wanted more “open” and flowy clothing, as opposed to more closed off and excessively modest clothing of 1300-1500s Europe that most of Westeros is based off of. Ygritte is still wearing furs, but they are dyed and there is weirwood embroidery in symbolism of the Old Gods and flame embroidery to symbolize her being kissed by fire. Her jewelry are simply clay beads that have been powdered blue. I didn’t want to give her any jewels as I felt it would be too difficult for the Freefolk to cut them directly and just overall would be against the spirit of the Freefolk. However, getting the blue on the clay like that still would be expensive and take a lot of time. I tried to keep the main color scheme surrounding gray as obviously that’s House Stark’s color. Jon’s clothes are similarly nice, with my main concern being him looking intimidating. I want the furs around his shoulders to be black because I wanted to call back to his time in the Night’s Watch without him keeping his psychical cloak, because I’m sure the Freefolk would not want him to do that. The furs are massive and make his shoulders look far larger, in an effort to make him look more intimidating, especially on a battlefield or in negotiations. He also has weirwood embroidery and his sigil is on the front of his outfit (my original idea was for him to have a flag with his heraldry on it, in which case the sigil would have looked far different, with a full length direwolf). There’s a white wolf on one side and either a crow or eagle on the other side (up for interpretation, both are relevant to Jon and one is one of the animals that can be used a symbol of the Freefolk) and the flame in the middle to represent Ygritte. The sigil is more than about Jon, after all, as it’s for the entirety of House Whitewolf, the House he founds. I thought the name fit far more in to Freefolk culture than something like Whitestark or something along those lines. Ygritte was supposed to have sewn on the sigil herself, and was very adamant about it, and that is meant to be why the thread is uneven and more visible than it ought to be. She’s not very good at the craft!

As I indicated before, crowns are not something common to Freefolk. That would be something else Jon would implement. Ygritte’s crown is very much like a hat, very casual. The beads are nice but obtaining them wouldn’t be unheard of, and holly most likely would not be particularly hard to come by. The reason I gave her a crown with holly is that during Christmas in the Tudor period and even before during pagan celebrations, people would go out into the woods and find holly and ivy to decorate their houses with. Holly was a symbol of masculine energy and ivy feminine energy. If you found more holly, it was meant to indicate that the man would rule the household for the year, and if you found more ivy then the woman would rule the household in the coming year (this was a way to “tell the future” not a rule lol). I liked the holly better for Ygritte so I’m just saying the Freefolk had the opposite belief. Jon’s crown is made of weirwood, which was important to me as I feel like his connection the Old Gods is also important as it is something that him and Freefolk both use to guide them. It ties them together. That being said, a weirwood crown is often used for Bran so I did not want to use a design that was too similar to the one used for him. Bran’s weirwood crown usually is made of weirwood branches, however, and not weirwood bark or logs, so I feel like it’s different enough. The frozen weirwood sap, as far as I know, is also unique to this design. There’s also some ivy to parallel with Ygritte’s holly.

The remaining bits and bobs I wanted to explain are the blue rose and then the face paint. The blue rose is obviously something associated with Lyanna Stark, who is widely accepted to be the mother of Jon Snow. I originally wanted to give him a rose somewhere, whether he was holding it or it was in his embroidery, but I forgot to ask during sketching, and then it was too late. But Ygritte holding the blue rose isn’t just about Lyanna. It’s also about Bael the Bard, a most likely fictitious person (or at least, the tale is fictitious, though I personally choose to believe it’s real) that went South of the Wall posing as a bard. He impressed the Lord of Winterfell so much that he granted Bael anything he wished; all Bael asked for was the most beautiful flower in Winterfell. This was granted for him, but the next morning he had stolen the Lord of Winterfell’s only child, a girl, and had left the flower in her bed in her place. He hid in the crypt with her for a year and they had a son together. Bael eventually went back North of the Wall and eventually Winterfell, having no other heir, passed to Bael’s child. Under this story, Jon is descended from Ygritte’s idol (maybe idol is stretching it, but she really likes him), Bael the Bard. Not only him, but all the Freefolk including Ygritte, according to her story. Following the story’s premise, Jon also poses as Bael and Ygritte as Winterfell’s daughter, with Jon joining her home under false pretenses and “stealing her”, as she calls it. So the blue rose has significance regarding both the Starks and the Freefolk. The face paint is inspired by tattooing done by cultures indigenous to North America. Indigenous Americans are not the only groups to use facial tattooing, the Vikings were famous for it as well, but Viking facial tattooing had more patterns based on shapes rather than lines and dots. I didn’t like the shapes so much, but the chin tattoo was one was that observed in all sorts of different cultures. Usually the chin tattoos with the line were on women in indigenous America, but I found some on men in other outside cultures. The dots I didn’t see outside of Native American culture and the claw marks on Jon’s cheeks I found mainly among Vikings. Because these all are an amalgamation of different cultures, we did them as face paint instead of tattoos because it seemed disrespectful otherwise. Not enough research went into it to be a proper representation of any one culture so paint was a better bet than a permanent body modification that is sacred to a number of cultures. The only thing that was meant to be a tattoo was the chin tattoo, which like I said, actually is from an amalgamation of cultures. Among the Freefolk (in this AU), dots on the cheeks are widespread, one of cultural mainstays of their people, and are generally a sign of peace, whereas the claws are meant to look intimidating and is applied to look like blood (Ygritte applies it for Jon) and is specifically used for military leaders. I really wanted to drive home the point that the goal with Jon’s whole look is to look fearsome.

I have so much more to say about Jon as King Beyond the Wall, how he negotiates with the Wall, the different rules he sets in place, how he sets up being King as a hereditary title once his daughter Bael is born, etc etc, but then I’d be here all day and approximately one person total read through all this. Oops! Ask in my inbox if you have any questions because I would love love love to answer them. All in all, shripscapi (Liesl) is so talented and she worked incredibly hard for me. She was extremely accommodating and changed as much stuff as I wanted. She never complained about the million times I decided something was not quite right and she sent me so many updates. I would recommend working with her to just about anybody. It was very cool what she was able to achieve and I got it in time for the holidays so I can enjoy my winter themed pfp on twt. So thank you from the bottom of my heart Liesl, and I hope everyone showers her with compliments because she deserves it. I also hope that people that don’t enjoy Ygritte very much can still appreciate the art and the concept of Jon as King Beyond the Wall. Hopefully I’ve gotten across how much I love and care for these characters to a chronically online degree and nobody accuses me of mischaracterizing them because that would make me!!!! very sad!!!

Bonus Jon with weirwood leaves: