Ser Waymar met him bravely. “Dance with me then.” He lifted his sword high over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a man of the Night’s Watch.
Game of Thrones - Prologue
I think there’s a chance that I may have misunderstood the text of this scene.
“Bronze Yohn knows me,” she reminded him. “He was a guest at Winterfell when his son rode north to take the black.” She had fallen wildly in love with Ser Waymar, she remembered dimly, but that was a lifetime ago, when she was a stupid little girl.
Welcome to the beginning of my attempt to draw a picture for every A Song of Ice and Fire chapter, in hopes that, in the process, I’ll transform from a person who cannot draw to a person who can.
I’m still solidly in “cannot draw” mode, and for some reason I chose to start off with a hand with perspective??? I don’t know what I was thinking. But, hey, this is the first one; there’s nowhere to go but up!
Anyway, here’s dead Ser Waymar about to end the Prologue of A Game of Thrones, along with its narrator’s life.
In this meta I will try to point out the clues of Jon’s death- warging into his direwolf- coming back to life process.
Our main hint is going to be : ONE EYEmotifs…
And interestingly this hint is always close to Sansa…
[Most of these clues etc have been already examined by many people but I will try to put them all in order to show the pattern..]
A GAME OF THRONES:
Waymar Royce
Waymar Royce appearence and story are very similar with Jon’s.
They look similar:
SerWaymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyedandgracefulandslender as a knife.
[AGOT; Prologue]
Jon’s eyes were a grey so dark they seemed almost black, but there was little they did not see. He was of an age with Robb, but they did not look alike. Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast.
[AGOT; Bran I]
They are both young men of Night’s Watch but they were not very welcomed by their other black brothers:
His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin. “Bet he killed them all himself, he did,” Gared told the barracks over wine, “twisted their little heads off, our mighty warrior.” They had all shared the laugh. It is hard to take orders from a man you laughed at in your cups, Will reflected as he sat shivering atop his garron. Gared must have felt the same.
[AGOT; Prologue]
“Yes, life,” Noye said. “A long life or a short one, it’s up to you, Snow. The road you’re walking, one of your brothers will slit your throat for you one night.” “They’re not my brothers,” Jon snapped. “They hate me because I’m better than they are.” “No. They hate you because you act like you’re better than they are. They look at you and see a castle-bred bastard who thinks he’s a lordling.” The armorer leaned close. “You’re no lordling. Remember that. You’re a Snow, not a Stark. You’re a bastard and a bully.”
[AGOT; Jon III]
Others are a very important part of Jon’s arc and story and Waymar meets with them in Prologue:
Ser Waymar met him bravely. “Dance with me then.” He lifted his sword high over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a man of the Night’s Watch.
[AGOT; Prologue]
This phrase also reminds us Jon:
It is more than impatience, Jon realized. They are afraid. Warriors, spearwives, raiders, they are frightened of those woods, of shadows moving through the trees. They want to put the Wall between them before the night descends.
A snowflake danced upon the air. Then another. Dance with me, Jon Snow, he thought. You’ll dance with me anon.
[ADWD; Jon XII]
In Prologue, Waymar gets killed by Others:
Royce’s body lay facedown in the snow, one arm out-flung. The thick sable cloak had been slashed in a dozen places. Lying dead like that, you saw how young he was. A boy.
[AGOT; Prologue]
And Jon dies in ADWD:
Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger’s hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. “Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold …
[ADWD; Jon XIII]
But Waymar comes back to life as a wight with ‘ONE EYE’:
Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him. His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye. The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.
[AGOT; Prologue]
So:A young man of Night’s Watch who looks like Jon dies and comes back to life with ONE EYE.
Let’s continue with the second book…
A CLASH OF KINGS:
Orell
Orell is Wildling who is also a skinchanger. His animal is an EAGLE.
Jon kills Orell in ACOK; Jon VI:
Jon nodded toward the one by the fire. It felt queer, picking a man to kill.
[…]
Jon’s man leapt to his feet, thrusting at his face with a burning brand. He could feel the heat of the flames as he flinched back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the sleeper stirring, and knew he must finish his man quick. When the brand swung again, he bulled into it, swinging the bastard sword with both hands. The Valyrian steel sheared through leather, fur, wool, and flesh, but when the wildling fell he twisted, ripping the sword from Jon’s grasp.
[…]
“You ought to burn them you killed,” said Ygritte.
[ACOK; Jon VI]
But due to the magic of skinchanging, a portion of Orell’s consciousness remained in the eagle, which developed a fierce hatred for Jon.
And in ACOK; Jon VII he dreams of an eagle attacking him and people talk about vargs and skinchangers:
Then a sudden gust of cold made his fur stand up, and the air thrilled to the sound of wings. As he lifted his eyes to the ice-white mountain heights above, a shadow plummeted out of the sky. A shrill scream split the air. He glimpsed blue-grey pinions spread wide, shutting out the sun… “Ghost!” Jon shouted, sitting up. He could still feel the talons, the pain. “Ghost, to me!” Ebben appeared, grabbed him, shook him. “Quiet! You mean to bring the wildlings down on us? What’s wrong with you, boy?” “A dream,” said Jon feebly. “I was Ghost, I was on the edge of the mountain looking down on a frozen river, and something attacked me. A bird… an eagle, I think…”
[…]
“Skinchanger?” said Ebben grimly, looking at the Halfhand. Does he mean the eagle? Jon wondered. Or me? Skinchangers and wargs belonged in Old Nan’s stories, not in the world he had lived in all his life. Yet here, in this strange bleak wilderness of rock and ice, it was not hard to believe.
[ACOK; Jon VII]
So:There is a skinchanger who dies because of Jon but a part of him keeps living in his animal: eagle.
The interesting thing is that between these two Jon chapters (Orell and eagle dream) comes a very important Sansa chapter which has many parallels with Jon VI chapter…
An example of parallels:
[…] ‘All I ask is a flower,’ Bael answered, ‘the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o’ Winterfell.”
“Now as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious…
[ACOK; Jon VI]
Sansa lowered her head. “The blood frightened me.”
“The blood is the seal of your womanhood. Lady Catelyn might have prepared you. You’ve had your first flowering, no more.”
Sansa had never felt less flowery. “My lady mother told me, but I… I thought it would be different.”
In this chapter Sansa says she wants to be loved and Cersei warns her that “love kills too…” Next chapter is Jon with his eagle dreams and warging abilities:
A half smile flickered across the queen’s face. “[…]Robert wanted to be loved. My brother Tyrion has the same disease. Do you want to be loved, Sansa?”
“Everyone wants to be loved.”
“I see flowering hasn’t made you any brighter,” said Cersei. “Sansa, permit me to share a bit of womanly wisdom with you on this very special day. Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.”
[ACOK; Sansa IV]
Let’s move on to third book…
A STORM OF SWORDS:
Orell and Wargs
In ASOS; Jon I, we learn the name of the Wildling that Jon has killed in ACOK; Jon VI:
“He slew Qhorin Halfhand,” said Longspear Ryk. “Him and that wolf o’ his.”
“And did for Orell too,” said Rattleshirt.
“The lad’s a warg, or close enough,” put in Ragwyle, the big spearwife. “His wolf took a piece o’ Halfhand’s leg.”
[…]
“What’s this?” he said. “A crow?”
“The black bastard what gutted Orell,” said Rattleshirt, “and a bloody warg as well.”
“You were to kill them all.”
“This one come over,” explained Ygritte. “He slew Qhorin Halfhand with his own hand.”
[ASOS; Jon I]
This Jon chapter comes after ASOS; Sansa I.
And these chapters have many parallels such as:
Sansa knelt at the feet of her future queen. “You do me great honor, Your Grace.”“Won’t you call me Margaery? Please, rise. Loras, help the Lady Sansa to her feet. Might I call you Sansa?”
[ASOS; Sansa I]
“I would be pleased to eat, Your Grace. And thank you.”
“Your Grace?” The king smiled. “That’s not a style one often hears from the lips of the free folk. I’m Mance to most, The Mance to some. Will you take a horn of mead?”
We also learn about Sansa’s new betrothed: Willas Tyrell..
Willas has a bad leg and so does Jon, in ASOS:
“Willas has abad leg but a good heart,” said Margaery. “He used to read to me when I was a little girl, and draw me pictures of the stars. You will love him as much as we do, Sansa.”
[ASOS; Sansa I]
If the mare had gone down, he would have been doomed. “A lucky thing my leg got in the way,” he muttered.
He rested for a while to let the horse graze. She did not wander far. That was good. Hobbled with a bad leg, he could never have caught her.
[ASOS; Jon V]
Let’s keep reading…
InASOS; Jon II chapter Jon’s eagle dream from ACOK comes true and Orell’s eagle attacks Jon’s eye:
He could still hear wings, though the eagle was not in sight. Half his world was black. “My eye,” he said in sudden panic, raising a hand to his face.
“It’s only blood, Jon Snow. He missed the eye, just ripped your skin up some.”
[…]
Can a bird hate? Jon had slain the wilding Orell, but some part of the man remained within the eagle. The golden eyes looked out on him with cold malevolence.
[…]
I will need to get this tended, he thought, but not just now. Let the King-beyond-the-Wall see what his eagle did to me.
[…]
The look Mance gave Jon was grim and cold. “What happened to your face?”
Ygritte said, “Orell tried to take his eye out.”
“It was him I asked. Has he lost his tongue? Perhaps he should, to spare us further lies.”
Styr the Magnar drew a long knife. “The boy might see more clear with one eye, instead of two.”
“Would you like to keep your eye, Jon?” asked the King-beyond-the-Wall. “If so, tell me how many they were. And try and speak the truth this time, Bastard of Winterfell.”
Jon’s throat was dry. “My lord… what…”
[ASOS; Jon II]
Jon almosts loses his ‘one eye’ and becomes Jon ‘One Eye’ Snow because of this attack..
After this eagle attack Jon chapter comes ASOS; Sansa II
And these chapters have many parallels such as:
Jon wheeled and followed Tormund back toward the head of the column, his new cloak hanging heavy from his shoulders. It was made of unwashed sheepskins, worn fleece side in, as the wildlings suggested.
[…]
“I wear the cloak you gave me, Your Grace.”
[ASOS; Jon II]
A new gown?” she said, as wary as she was astonished.
“More lovely than any you have worn, my lady,” the old woman promised. She measured Sansa’s hips with a length of knotted string. “All silk and Myrish lace, with satin linings. You will be very beautiful. The queen herself has commanded it.”
“Which queen?” Margaery was not yet Joff’s queen, but she had been Renly’s. Or did she mean the Queen of Thorns? Or…“The Queen Regent, to be sure.”
And after the chapter of an eagle attacks Jon’s eye we learn in next chapter that Sansa’s betrothed Willas Tyrell flies EAGLES:
“Willas has the best birds in the Seven Kingdoms,” Margaery said when the two of them were briefly alone. “He flies an eagle sometimes. You will see, Sansa.”
[ASOS; Sansa II]
Why is Almost One Eye Jon and Sansa Stark being near to each other important?
Because the first Sansa Stark in Stark family tree was married with her half-uncleJonnel ‘One Eye’ Stark:
So another Sansa being close to another Stark family member who almost had lost his one eye sounds interesting.
Well, Jon didn’t lose his eye but his face got scarred:
He had almost forgotten about his face. “A skinchanger tried to rip out my eye.”
Noye frowned. “Scarred or smooth, it’s a face I thought I’d seen the last of. We heard you’d gone over to Mance Rayder.”
[ASOS; Jon VI]
Who else has a scarred face? Sansa’s husband- Tyrion Lannister:
“I like your scar.” She traced it with her finger. “It makes you look very fierce and strong.”
He laughed. “Very ugly, you mean.”
“M’lord will never be ugly in my eyes.” She kissed the scab that covered the ragged stub of his nose.
[ASOS; Tyrion II]
Varamyr
What happens to this eagle later?
Skinchanger, Varamyr Sixskins, takes control of Orell’s eagle. Varamyr uses the eagle to scout Castle Black and spots Stannis Baratheon’s arrival at the Wall.
The eagle bursts into flames during the attack on Castle Black with Melisandre claiming she was responsible.
The skinchanger was grey-faced, round-shouldered, and bald, a mouse of a man with a wolfling’s eyes. “Once a horse is broken to the saddle, any man can mount him,” he said in a soft voice. “Once a beast’s been joined to a man, any skinchanger can slip inside and ride him. Orell was withering inside his feathers, so I took the eagle for my own. But the joining works both ways, warg. Orell lives inside me now, whispering how much he hates you. And I can soar above the Wall, and see with eagle eyes.”
[…]
“Banners,” he heard Varamyr murmur, “I see golden banners, oh …” A mammoth lumbered by, trumpeting, a half-dozen bowmen in the wooden tower on its back. “The king … no …”
Then the skinchanger threw back his head and screamed.The sound was shocking, ear-piercing, thick with agony. Varamyr fell, writhing, and the ’cat was screaming too…. and high, high in the eastern sky, against the wall of cloud, Jon saw the eagle burning. For a heartbeat it flamed brighter than a star, wreathed in red and gold and orange, its wings beating wildly at the air as if it could fly from the pain. Higher it flew, and higher, and higher still.
[ASOS; Jon X]
Melisandre burns the eagle. Who else got burned in the books?
Jon Snow in AGOT:
He had burned himself more badly than he knew throwing the flaming drapes, and his right hand was swathed in silk halfway to the elbow. At the time he’d felt nothing; the agony had come after.
[AGOT; Jon VIII]
And Jon burns himself in AGOT; Jon VII:
Jon tried to shout, but his voice was gone. Staggering to his feet, he kicked the arm away and snatched the lamp from the Old Bear’s fingers. The flame flickered and almost died. “Burn!” the raven cawed. “Burn, burn, burn!”
Spinning, Jon saw the drapes he’d ripped from the window. He flung the lamp into the puddled cloth with both hands. Metal crunched, glass shattered, oil spewed, and the hangings went up in a great whoosh of flame. The heat of it on his face was sweeter than any kiss Jon had ever known. “Ghost!” he shouted.
The direwolf wrenched free and came to him as the wight struggled to rise, dark snakes spilling from the great wound in its belly. Jon plunged his hand into the flames, grabbed a fistful of the burning drapes, and whipped them at the dead man. Let it burn, he prayed as the cloth smothered the corpse, gods, please, please, let it burn.
[AGOT; Jon VII]
This Jon chapter comes after AGOT; Sansa IV:
And these two chapters have many parallels such as:
So she went to the queen instead, and poured out her heart, and Cersei had listened and thanked her sweetly … only then Ser Arys had escorted her to the high room in Maegor’s Holdfast and posted guards, and a few hours later, the fighting had begun outside.
[AGOT; Sansa IV]
They took his knife and his sword and told him he was not to leave his cell until the high officers met to decide what was to be done with him. And then they placed a guard outside his door to make certain he obeyed. His friends were not allowed to see him, but the Old Bear did relent and permit him Ghost, so he was not utterly alone.
[AGOT; Jon VII]
*
Yet somehow it seemed colder with Jeyne gone, even after she’d built a fire. She pulled a chair close to the hearth, took down one of her favorite books, and lost herself in the stories of Florian and Jonquil, of Lady Shella and the Rainbow Knight, of valiant Prince Aemon and his doomed love for his brother’s queen.
[AGOT; Sansa IV]
Yet he was trembling, violently. When had it gotten so cold?
[…]
Metal crunched, glass shattered, oil spewed, and the hangings went up in a great whoosh of flame. The heat of it on his face was sweeter than any kiss Jon had ever known. “Ghost!” he shouted.
What happens to skinchanger Orell and warg Varamyr after the eagle burst into flames?
The incident greatly affects Varamyr and supposedly kills the remnants of Orell inside the eagle.
After the defeat of the wildlings at the battle beneath the Wall, Varamyr has lost all his possessions in his madness from experiencing the eagle’s death; he has also lost control of his snow bear and shadowcat, but his wolves remain.
[Orell dying completely and Varamyr gets mad also reminds me another resurrected character Beric Dondarrion who also has ONE EYE and him dying for good to bring Catelyn Stark back to life… And like Varamyr, Lady Stoneheart loses her mind too… ]
Let’s move on to fourth book…
A FEAST FOR CROWS:
Jon is not even in this book?
But Sansa is and we learn few things about her crushes:
Waymar Royce:
She had fallen wildly in love with Ser Waymar, she remembered dimly, but that was a lifetime ago, when she was a stupid little girl.
[AFFC; Alayne I]
Grrm reminds us Waymar Royce aka the biggest foreshadowing for Jon in AFFC book via Sansa’s chapter…
Loras Tyrell:
Loras was another crush of Sansa and we learn that he got burned really bad in AFFC.
Like the eagle and Jon.
“Tell me,” said Margaery. “I command it.” Command it? Cersei paused a moment, then decided she would let that pass. “The defenders fell back to an inner keep once the curtain wall was taken. Loras led the attack there as well. He was doused with boiling oil.” Lady Alla turned white as chalk, and ran from the room. “The maesters are doing all they can, Lord Waters assures me, but I fear your brother is too badly burned.”
InADWD; Prologue Varamyr encounters with Others (just like AGOT; Prologue) and Varamyr’s body dies, but his mind lives on in his wolf One Eye.
And Varamyr also thinks about Jon and his direwolf..
So we have dead warg who kept living in his animal: A WOLF whose name is ONE EYE.
Varamyr could feel the snowflakes melting on his brow. This is not so bad as burning. Let me sleep and never wake, let me begin my second life. His wolves were close now. He could feel them. He would leave this feeble flesh behind, become one with them, hunting the night and howling at the moon. The warg would become a true wolf. Which, though?
[…]
“They say you forget,” Haggon had told him, a few weeks before his own death. “When the man’s flesh dies, his spirit lives on inside the beast, but every day his memory fades, and the beast becomes a little less a warg, a little more a wolf, until nothing of the man is left and only the beast remains.”
Varamyr knew the truth of that. When he claimed the eagle that had been Orell’s, he could feel the other skinchanger raging at his presence. Orell had been slain by the turncloak crow Jon Snow, and his hate for his killer had been so strong that Varamyr found himself hating the beastling boy as well. He had known what Snow was the moment he saw that great white direwolf stalking silent at his side. One skinchanger can always sense another. Mance should have let me take the direwolf. There would be a second life worthy of a king. He could have done it, he did not doubt. The gift was strong in Snow, but the youth was untaught, still fighting his nature when he should have gloried in it.
[…]
A sleeping direwolf raised his head to snarl at empty air. Before their hearts could beat again he had passed on, searching for his own, for One Eye, Sly, and Stalker, for his pack. His wolves would save him, he told himself. That was his last thought as a man. True death came suddenly; he felt a shock of cold, as if he had been plunged into the icy waters of a frozen lake. Then he found himself rushing over moonlit snows with his packmates close behind him. Half the world was dark. One Eye, he knew. He bayed, and Sly and Stalker gave echo. When they reached the crest the wolves paused.
[…]
The things below moved, but did not live. One by one, they raised their heads toward the three wolves on the hill. The last to look was the thing that had been Thistle. She wore wool and fur and leather, and over that she wore a coat of hoarfrost that crackled when she moved and glistened in the moonlight. Pale pink icicles hung from her fingertips, ten long knives of frozen blood. And in the pits where her eyes had been, a pale blue light was flickering, lending her coarse features an eerie beauty they had never known in life. She sees me.
[ADWD; Prologue]
Jon dies in his last ADWD chapter and his last word was his direwolf’s name: GHOST…
Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger’s hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. “Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold …
[ADWD; Jon XIII]
So we have a full circle:
It started with Agot; Prologue
and ended with ADWD; Jon XIII
Let’s not forget that Jon’s death was foreshadowed in ASOS; Sansa VIchapter.
Lord Petyr dismissed him with a wave, and returned to the pomegranate again as Oswell shuffled down the steps. “Tell me, Alayne—which is more dangerous, the dagger brandished by an enemy, or the hidden one pressed to your back by someone you never even see?”
“The hidden dagger.”
“There’s a clever girl.” He smiled, his thin lips bright red from the pomegranate seeds.
[ASOS; Sansa VI]
Next chapter was Jon:
Fore more about Jon’s death and Sansa; please check:
“Do not be so certain.” The ruby at Melisandre’s throat gleamed red. “It is not the foes who curse you to your face that you must fear, but those who smile when you are looking and sharpen their knives when you turn your back. You would do well to keep your wolf close beside you. Ice, I see, and daggers in the dark. Blood frozen red and hard, and naked steel. It was very cold.”
“It is always cold on the Wall.”
“You think so?”
“I know so, my lady.”
“Then you know nothing, Jon Snow,” she whispered.
[ADWD; Jon I]
In conclusion:
Jon’s death, him warging into his direwolf during his death and him coming back to life arc has been foreshadowed since AGOT; Prologue and its most obvious hints were given in ADWD; Prologue by echoing AGOT; Prologue.
The ‘ONE EYE’ motif seems like a key hint for his resurrection.
AndSansa is always close to this motif or she has some connections with this motif via other characters or her chapters.
A Sansa Stark being close to another ‘ONE EYE’ Stark is interesting because of the historical couple: Jonnel ‘One Eye’ & Sansa Stark in Stark family tree..
Even the hints of Jon’s death can be found in Sansa chapters.
All of these tell us that Sansa will be important in Jon’s past resurrection story.
Ser Waymar met him bravely. “Dance with me then.” He lifted his sword high over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a man of the Night’s Watch.
Game of Thrones - Prologue
I think there’s a chance that I may have misunderstood the text of this scene.
