#so that he can perform a king’s duty and protect someone - mance’s baby

[nightswatchdisbandmentera]

“No.” He could hear the defeat in her voice. “Sorry to be of trouble, m’lord. I only … they said the king keeps people safe, and I thought …”

[…]

Jon watched her go, his joy in the morning’s brittle beauty gone. Damn her, he thought resentfully, and damn Sam twice for sending her to me. What did he think I could do for her?

Jon III, ACOK

This is one of my favorite ‘Jon is the king’ passages because it’s less about him being king by birth and more about him displaying one of the core qualities of kingship - that a king’s key role is to protect his people.

Because its adorable that Gilly heard that Jon is a bastard but upon meeting him, immediately bent the knee (as one would to a king) and then entreated him to help her by appealing to the idea that a king protects people. And with a severe lack of kings north of the Wall, Jon Snow is her best shot; yes there’s Mance Rayder but he’s quite far from Gilly.

And how ironic that Gilly appeals to Jon, a mere bastard boy who is sworn to an order that requires him not to hold any lands or wear any crowns. Jon’s closest relation to kingship at that moment is that his brother, Robb Stark, is king (as Gilly is told that he’s a brother to kings). But Gilly doesn’t say, “in the name of your brother who’s the king help me”. She doesnt say, “King Robb should help me”. She asks Jon to help her; she kneels to Jon. She recognizes that he may stand in for her but is probably seeing Jon, the mere boy, as the embodiment of the king’s duty. Really, it’s an interesting study of kingship as a quality outside of any official titles.

But I do think that Sam had something to do with it. Jon went out of his way to protect Sam in AGOT, so Sam probably used personal experience when speaking to Gilly. He understood that Jon is someone who protects people so he went and told Gilly about it; how ironic that Jon questions what Sam was thinking, because did he forget what he did for Sam?

But Gilly upon hearing Sam’s story asked for Jon’s help not in a “please help me like you helped your best buddy” type of way but in a “please help me like a king would” type of way. I wonder what stories Gilly grew up learning of kingship and if she decided that Jon was a king, despite wearing no crown, once she heard Sam’s story. I’m inclined to think that while Sam told her that Jon would help her, she is the one who then connected that promise of protection to kingship.

But there is also a larger theme that kingship isn’t easy, and Jon is just started on his character development here. He may want to help Gilly, but he hasn’t yet began to understand the wildlings as people in the way that he will later on. What Jon fails to do for Gilly here, he does for thousands of wildlings two books later (and will presumably continue to do so into Winds). While he didn’t challenge Night’s Watch tradition to save Gilly and remove her from a terrible situation here, he later challenged this tradition to remove thousands of others from a terrible situation later on; and even paid for it in some way. Thus, he does eventually live up to the ideal that a king protects the people; though how ironic that he protects the wildlings while still being crownless. And there’s also Alys Karstark who will later kneel to Jon and ask him to perform the king’s duty in regards to marriage and inheritance. What a curious display of Varys’ “power resides where the people think it resides”.

#jon snow #jon the king #asoiaf #valyrianscrolls #canonjonsnow #didn’t put in the post but it’s quite interesting how Gilly is connected #to moral choices and moral pragmatism in Jon’s story #there’s this and then there’s also that scene in ADWD where he has to #mentally toughen himself by repeating the ‘kill the boy’ line #so that he can perform a king’s duty and protect someone - mance’s baby #i personally don’t think he was callous or uncaring of gilly’s wellbeing #because we have that one line from sam’s pov where Jon is watching Gilly breastfeed monster #with a sad smile on his face #it’s most likely that jon is still a work in progress and so pragmatism sometimes ties the line of cruelty #however necessary #but I’m confident that he’ll learn to do better later on ☺️ #my stuff