Jon's Assassination In The Winds Of Winter

I’ve thought a lot about this topic, and here’s where I stand: upon his inevitable resurrection, Jon will certainly experience rage and trauma regarding the assassination, but that might actually be the least of the changes he undergoes in The Winds of Winter. There are two major and intertwined shifts on his story’s horizon, one existential and one in terms of genre, that will largely supersede any lust for Bowen Marsh’s blood (or Ramsay’s, for that matter; in my Stannis-fanboy fantasies, Jon’s king cuts down the Bastard of Bolton before the now-former Lord Commander even returns to his body).

I’ll tackle the latter first. Jon’s story changes genre with each successive book, in a manner that both reflects and contributes to his increasing

The author first sets Jon on an undercover mission, veers sideways into doomed romance, builds up to multiple battles wherein his leadership provides the payoff to that aforementioned growth, and ends with a final (beautifully written) emotional test, Stannis’ offer of legitimacy and lordship weighed against Jon’s loyalty to the old gods and the Watch, culminating in his election as Lord Commander. That perfectly sets up his Dance with Dragons arc, the ironclad spine of my favorite book in the series and an intricately structured, deeply moving political portrait I could ramble on about forever. Jon’s brain becomes an incredibly rewarding place to live in Dance; the dynamic between his inspiring radical humanism and his tragic blind spots is no less affecting for being so subtle and complex. Indeed, by the time he and Tormund achieve the impossible—bringing the Free Folk peacefully through the Wall—Jon Snow has earned the title of

That leads me to the genre gearshift coming for Jon in The Winds of Winter, which will dwarf all those before it. Up until now, for all the aforementioned directions GRRM has gone with Jon’s story, it’s all been filtered through the cultural, political, and military relationships within the Watch and between the Watch and the wildlings. No more. Daenerys decides in her mind-blowing soul-searing final installment in Dance (my #1 chapter in the series) that she is done trying to enact reforms by incremental, institutional means, and I think Jon’s arc has come to a similarly clean break. He’s exiting the political realm and entering the magical