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Episode 79: A CLASH OF KINGS, JON I & II "The True Steel" with Special Guest JoeMagician SHOW NOTES!

Added 2019-09-16 14:01:00 +0000 UTC

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish. 

And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.          

Welcome to the seventy-ninth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “True Steel: An Analysis of ACOK, Jon I AND II,” in which Jon meets up with good friends, gets challenged by his mentors and readers are introduced to Azor Ahai Reborn: DOLOROUS EDD! 

Emmett intros Matt, AKA Joe THE Magician

Matt says hi

Hi

This episode is brought to you by our Small Council: 

Spoiler warning: All published books - 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!

Question

Lady Pearl of Detroit, a Sworn Sword wrote us a long, fantastic message, but for length purposes, we’ll only read the TL;DR she helpfully included at the end!:

Considering the speed at which the Free Folk are gathering and harrying the Watch to be able to cross the Wall to get away from the Others, can anyone give insight into why the Others' advance is taking so long, considering both the current 3-year timeline, and how GRRM could've made it work if he'd kept the 5-year gap?

YouTube Questions

Reminder about our “Plans to Make”: our first Fevre Dream chapter by chapter episode out now for Small Counselors and High Lords/Ladies & Kingsguard if watching live, will be out for Poor Fellows and above if you’re listening on our episode release date.

Reminder about our 1000 patrons stretch goal = a NAC analysis of TWOW, The Forsaken.

Synopsis

Jon calls for Samwell Tarly softly through air smelling of paper and dust. Jon looks around, seeing books, scrolls and the glow of a candle somewhere. Jon blows out his own candle, sensing that maybe having a fire about isn’t for the best with all these old books. He follows the light and finds Samwell Tarly hunched over a table in the middle of the Castle Black library.

Jon asks whether Samwell has been in the library all night, and Samwell isn’t sure. Where Rast and the other Night’s Watchmen thought that Samwell deserted, Jon knew better. Desertion required courage, and Sam had little enough of that. Okay, Jon. Guess we’re just going to keep on with the projection from your AGOT chapters. Great.

Sam asks if it’s morning, and Jon calls Samwell a damn fool for not keeping to his bed. There’s not going to be any bed where they’re going after all. But Sam was only here in the library looking for maps. And then he found the books -- thousands of ‘em! Jon thinks that the Winterfell library only has a hundred books but then quickly changes the subject to asking Sam if he found the maps. He sure did.

“The paint had faded, but you can see where the mapmaker marked the sites of wildling villages.” He reaches for another book, “This,” he said reverently, “is the account of a journey from the Shadow Tower all the way to Lorn Point on the Frozen Shore, written by a ranger named Rewyn. It’s not dated, but he mentions a Dorren Stark as King in the North, so it must be from before the Conquest. Jon, they fought giants! Redwyn even traded with the Children of the Forest. It’s all here.”

Jon says that maybe Sam could write an account of their ranging, and he means so, so well. But it isn’t taken well. Sam isn’t thrilled about the prospect of going north. He wishes he had more time to go through the library to, uh, find more maps. Mm-hm. But that task would take years to complete. Years to complete. Uh-huh. Are you having a meta conversation with us here, George? 

But Mormont (and readers) want the maps (and books) sooner than months away at best. Jon picks up one of the crumling scrolls and reports that it’s crumbling. Regular ol’ watcher on the walls over here. Sam, nicer than me, says it’s crumbling, because it’s old. The important books got copied over with many books having been copied half a hundred times. Jon reads through his crumbling scroll and dismisses it as it’s only about logistics. An inventory, Sam corrects.

“Who cares how much pickled cod they ate six hundred years ago?” Jon wondered.
“I would. You can learn so much from ledgers like that, truly you can. It can tell you how many men were in the Night’s Watch then, how they lived, what they ate …”

Jon, sophomore philosophy major, says they ate food and lived in houses or some shit, but Sam knows better. The books tell a story. They’re treasures. Besides, Sam found books with the faces of trees, a book about the language of the Children of the Forest, shit that the Citadel doesn’t have. Hell, they even have scrolls from Old Valyria, accounts of the seasons, thousands of years old.

“The book will still be here when we return.”
“If we return …”

Jon says they’ll be plenty safe. They’re taking an assload of rangers. 200! And Qhorin Halfhand is bringing another 100. Sam will be as safe as if he were back in Horn Hill. Oh, Jon, sweet, stupid boy.

Samwell Tarly managed a sad little smile. “I was never very safe in my father’s castle either.”

Jon thinks that the gods play cruel jests, and that Pyp and Toad, the guys who desperately want to come on the ranging, will stay at Castle Black while Samwell, who really doesn’t want to go, is coming. Mormont needed Sam to manage the ravens. Sam says that anyone can really take care of the ravens. Hell, even Grenn could. Jon too. But Jon says that his duty is to be the Elsie’s squire and steward. He won’t have the time. And besides, Sam, you said the words. 

“You’re a brother of the Night’s Watch now.”
“A brother of the Night’s Watch shouldn’t be so scared.”
“We’re all scared. We’d be fools if we weren’t”

And they have good reason to be frightened. Lots of rangers and Benjen Stark had gone missing. And the two other guys Benjen Stark had taken with him wounded up dead and then undead. Jon’s fingers still twitch as remembers them, and he sees the wights in his dreams with their burning blue eyes and cold, black hands. But Sam didn’t need to hear about that.

“There’s no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it. Come, I’ll help you gather up the maps.”

They vault opens to a tunnel known as the “wormwalks” -- small passages that you could only move through single-file. They weren’t used often in summer, but in winter, it was the only way to get around when snows piled forty or fifty feet high. Jon thinks that time is coming soon. He knew from Aemon that summer’s end was at hand. Jon had seen winter once before as a boy, but that was short and somewhat mild. This winter would be different. 

Jon and Samwell emerge from the depths into a brisk wind and encounter Ghost, a very good boy, who is sleeping next to the granary. Sam looks up to the Wall high above them, and Jon feels like the Wall feels like a living thing sometimes with different moods as the light hits the Wall. Now, Jon feels that it’s a blue river of frozen rivers, then the dirty white of old snow when a cloud passed. 

The Wall stretched east and west as far as the eye could see, so huge that it shrunk the timbered keeps and stone towers of the castle to insignificance. It was the end of the world.
And we are going beyond it.

And above the Wall, you guessed it, the red comet hangs above and able to be seen by day as Samwell points out. But Jon’s not about comets. He needs to get maps to the Elsie. 

The two men, boys, Jon’s in that middle ground. Men of the Night’s Watch. There we go … walk through a mostly deserted courtyard of Castle Black. And why is Castle Black deserted? Because most of the rangers were out in Molestown, digging for buried treasure. At least, Grenn, Pyp, Halder and Toad were. They did want Sam and Jon to come, but Sam is scurred of scary sex workers (hi jinx!), and Jon, well, Jon be Jon:

Jon had wanted no part of it. “Do what you want,” he told Toad, “I took a vow.”

Jon and Sam pass by a sept, and Jon hears people singing a hymn and reflects that some people want to go to bone town, other people want to go to church. Jon’s not sure which people felt better afterward. Jon’s not a church boy. He kept the old gods, the ones where church is out in the wild and in the weirwood trees.

The Seven have no power beyond the Wall, he thought, but my gods will be waiting.

Yes. Yes, they will be, Jon. 

Jon spies Ser Endrew Tarth training new boys outside of the armory, and it’s a pretty poor crop. Two blond boys, an older man, a ragged clubfoot man and some idiot who thought he was a warrior. The last one was now getting a lesson on the error of his ways from Ser Endrew who’s a bit gentler than Ser Alliser Thorne but still brought the bruises. Jon stops to watch.

“What do you make of them, Snow?” Donal Noye says standing at the door of the armory bare-chested.

Jon thinks that Noye wasn’t pretty, which I beg to differ, but he’d been a good friend to Jon. So, Jon tells Donal that the boys smell of summer. He asks Donal where the boys came from, and the armorer helpfully replies that they came from a dungeon in Gulltown.

“A brigand, a barber, a beggar, two orphans, and a boy whore. With such do we defend the realms of men.”

Jon smiles a secret smile at Sam and thinks that they’ll do. Jon and Sam did anyways. So, Donal asks whether Jon has heard about what Robb’s been up to of late. Jon is in the know, but he’s unsure about it. Robb a king? He used to play games and spar with Robb. Hell, Jon had even shared his first cup of wine with Robb. But they didn’t share mother’s milk. And now Jon will drink summerwine while Jon drinks snowmelt. 

“Robb will make a good king,” Jon said loyally.

Noye eyes Jon and asks if he’ll actually make a good king given that the armorer thought the same about Robert and forged his warhammer. He was Robert’s man at Storm’s End until he lost his arm. He knew Robert and his brothers. 

“I tell you this -- Robert was never the same after he put on that crown. Some men are like swords, made for fighting. Hang them up and they go to rust.”

So, Jon asks after Robert’s brothers.

The armorer considered that for a moment. “Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He’ll break before he bends. And Renly, that one, he’s copper, bright and shiny, pretty to look at but not worth all that much at the end of the day.”

I guess Donal didn’t get around to reading my essay, smdh.

Jon wonders what metal Robb is but doesn’t ask. Given Noye’s background, the armorer probably thought that Joffrey was the lawful king and Robb a traitor. Regardless, the men of the Night’s Watch really didn’t talk about politics up here at the Wall. They took no part, leaving aside their past loyalties.

The Night’s Watch takes no sides.

Mm-hm, Jon. Sure.

Jon says he’s off to see Mormont, and Noye tells him to get going. And he asks for the old gods to be with Jon on his journey. And Jon’s to bring back Uncle Benjen, okay? Jon says he will, because he hasn’t read the rest of the books yet, and then Jon and Sam are off to climb the stairs of the King’s Tower to make his way to Mormont.

They make their way to Mormont to drop off the books, and Mormont grumbles that they took a long time making their way to him. He orders them to put the books down for his inspection, and Thoren Smallwood steps out to give Jon and Sam a cool look. Smallwood had once been Alliser Thorne’s henchmen, and he didn’t like those rascally boys. Thoren turns to Mormont and tells him that he should stay tight at Castle Black. But Mormont ain’t about that.

“If you are ever Elsie, you may do as you please, but it seems to me that I have not died yet, nor have the brothers put you in my place.”

Smallwood argues and says that he’s First Ranger, and he should be in command, but again, Mormont ain’t about that. He’s going himself. He won’t be sending men to look for Smallwood when he disappears. P.S., Thoren, Benjen Stark is still First Ranger until his fate is known for certain.

“Now stop wasting my time. We ride at first light, or have you forgotten?”

Thoren Smallwood gets to his feet all saucy and gives a begrudging, “yes sir” and steps out of the room. 

Smallwood, gone, the Elsie huffs and puffs about Smallwood accosting him for being too old to lead the ranging. He asks the boys whether he looks old or frail, and Sam starts doing that squeaking thing. But Jon puts in that Mormont looks strong as a, uh, as a … 

“Don’t cozen me, Snow, you know I won’t have it. Let me have a look at these maps.”

So, Mormont starts going through the maps, complaining about these maps being all that they could find. Samwell stammers out an apology about how everything is disordered inside the library, but Mormont (and Bloodraven, er, his raven) are upset about how old the maps are. But Jon puts in that sure, the villages will move, but the terrain will be the same. 

Mormont grunts as he does and asks Samwell whether he chose his ravens yet. He hasn’t. Aemon is going to pick them in the evening. Mormont instructs Sam that he wants strong birds, the best birds. If they’re all butchered out there (Yikes), he wants the world to know how they died. Sam goes all speechless at this idea of being butchered, and Mormont tells Samwell a lovely story about how his lady mother told him that if stood around with his mouth open, that a weasel would mistake it for a lair and run down his throat.

“If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, beware of weasels.”

He dismisses Samwell to Aemon. 

Now alone with Jon, he asks if Samwell is a fool. He originally thought to send Samwell to Renly’s camp, but he figures that Renly wouldn’t put up with Samwell’s shivering shenanigans. Jon asks after Renly and what Mormont wants with him, and Mormont tells him that he wants the usual: men, horses, swords, armor, grain, cheese, wine, wool, nails. They’ll take what they can get. Maybe Ser Alliser Thorne has reached King’s Landing by now, and maybe Joffrey will get the watch something, but the Lannisters ain’t friends of the Watch.

Jon says that they have the wight hand. Maybe that’ll help? Ha, no, sorry, Jon. It won’t. Mormont wishes he had another hand for Renly, and Jon helpfully puts in that Dywen believes they can find anything beyond the Wall. Yes, yes, you can, Dywen and Jon. Mormont snorts and says that Dywen claims the last time they went north that they found a fifteen foot tall bear. Absurd, right? But maybe it’s the case. There’s dead men walking. But Mormont’s never seen a giant bear … yet.

Given all the talk of hands, Mormont asks after Jon’s. It’s doing better. Itches, though. Mormont asks if Jon can wield Longclaw, and he can with pain, but he’s working through it with Aemon’s help. 

“Blind he may be, but Aemon knows what he’s about. I pray the gods let us keep him another twenty years. Do you know that he might have been king?”

Jon’s surprised at this. Sure, he knew that Aemon’s dad was a king, but he figured Aemon for a younger son. In that, Jon’s correct. Aemon’s granddaddy was Daeron II Targaryen, and his dad was proto-Stannis Maekar Targaryen. Aemon was named for Aemon the Dragonknight who may or may not have been Daeron’s true father. Regardless, Aemon took to books not swordplay and was sent off to the Citadel when he was nine or ten years old. He was also ninth or tenth in the line of succession. But then tragedy struck in House Targaryen:

“Aemon was at his book when the eldest of his uncles, the heir apparent, was slain in a tourney mishap. He left two sons, but they followed him to the grave not long after, during the Grey Sickness. King Daeron was also taken, so the crown passed to Daeron’s second son, Aerys.”

Jon wonders if this is Mad King Aerys, but no. This was Aerys I. Aemon was in the Citadel at the time, having forged half a dozen links on his maester’s chain. He served at some lord’s court Aerys wed his sister, and all was well except that Aerys died, and the crown passed to Maekar. Big Daddy Maekar had all his sons come to court, wanting their counsel, but Aemon refused. He didn’t want to usurp his older brothers. So, he served Daeron the Drunkard, Maekar’s oldest son until he died. Next up on the docket was Hedge Knight villain Aerion Brightflame who drank wildfire and died thankfully. But then Maekar, himself, died in battle against an outlaw lord. 

Jon knows most of this given that he had Maester Luwin teaching him history back at Winterfell; so, he tells Mormont that a Great Council was called, how Aerion’s son was passed over as well as Daeron’s daughter. And the crown fell to Aegon “Big Egg” Targaryen. Mormont offers some correction to this:

“Yes and no. First they offered it, quietly, to Aemon. And quietly he refused. The gods meant for him to serve, not to rule, he told them. He had sworn a vow and would not break it, though the High Septon himself offered to absolve him.”

In the end, they turned to Big Egg, Aemon’s younger brother, and Aemon, knowing that his presence would be bad for Egg, decided to seek for the Wall and has remained here since that time. And all this as House Targaryen fell into ruin and then desolation.

Bloodraven, um, Mormont’s Raven, starts saying “king”, and Jon comments that the bird likes the word. Mormont says it’s an easy word, and Jon jokes around that maybe the bird means for Mormont to have a crown.

“The realm has three kings already, and that’s two too many for my liking.” Mormont stroked the raven under the beak with a finger, but all the while his eyes never left Jon Snow.

Jon feels all weird inside; so, he asks Mormont why he’s telling him all this stuff about Aemon. Oh, no reason, Jon. Just that your bro is King in the North. You’re kind of like Aemon in that way with a king for a brother. Jon says he has a vow too, but Mormont snorts at him and talks about all the men who have broken vows on the Wall. 

When Jon puts in that he always knew that Robb would be the Lord of Winterfell, our good Elsie gives another snort and says “A lord’s one thing, a king’s another.” They’re going to do all sorts of great things for Robb. He gets to wear nice clothes, wed a beautiful princess and get sons on her. And you, Jon? You’re going to be in all black with neither wife, nor children. They’re going to call Robb “Your Grace” and sing his praises. Does that bother you, Jon? Does it? Does it!?

“Tell me that none of this troubles you, Jon … and I’ll name you a liar, and know I have the truth of it.”

Jon sits up straight like his mother told him to. Oh wait, his mom … nevermind. 

“And if did trouble me, what might I do bastard as I am?”
“What will you do?” Mormont asked. “Bastard as you are?”
“Be troubled,” said Jon, “and keep my vows.”

Sometime later, Jon and the Night’s Watch are north of the Wall, passing by the village known as Whitree. Jon reflects that it’s not much of a village given that there’s like all of four one-room houses about roofed with wod with shuttered windows made of ragged hides. But above the houses looms the pale limbs and dark red leaves of a massive weirwood.

Jon thinks it’s the largest tree he’s ever seen given that it’s eight feet wide with its branches shadowing the entire village. But Jon isn’t bothered so much by the tree’s size as, well, you know the haunted face carved into the tree with a mouth large enough to swallow a sheep.

Those are not sheep bones, though. Nor is that a sheep’s skull in the ashes.

Mormont rides up frowning about how the tree is old, but he’s not old, guys. He wants everyone to know this, especially you, Thoren Smallwood. Jon says that the tree is powerful, and Smallwood is there to helpfully offer to cut the tree down. But Jon says that no lies can be said in front of a heart tree. Ned had said as much. And Mormont’s dad had said similar. 

Mormont wants to take a look at the skull though, and they dismount to give it a looksie. Jon dismounts, thinking about having Longclaw on his back and how the men had joked around and said it was a “bastard sword for a bastard.” He reaches into the maw of the weirwood tree and pulls out another skull. He brings the skull to Mormont, and we get some good wildling lore:

“The wildlings burn their dead. We’ve always known that. Now I wished I’d ask them why, when there were still a few around to ask.”

Jon remembers Othor then, and he’s like, uh, Mormont, it’s really not a mystery why the wildlings are burning their dead. But the Elsie continues, saying that how he wishes he knew what happened or who burned them. And especially where the wildlings have gone. The CoTF allegedly could speak to the dead, but Mormont can’t. He throws the skull back to the tree and orders his men to go through the houses. He wants another another ranger (Giant) to climb the tree have a look about. And bring the hounds.

The rangers go through the houses in pairs, and Jon gets paired with none other than … not Quaithe!

Jon was paired with dour Eddison Tollett, a squire grey of hair and thin as a pike, whom the other brothers called Dolorous Edd. “Bad enough when the dead come walking,” he said to Jon as they crossed the village, “now, the Old Bear wants them talking as well. No good will come of that, I’ll warrant. And who’s to say the bones wouldn’t lie? Why should the dead make a man truthful, or even clever? The dead likely dull fellows, full of tedious complaints -- the ground’s too cold, my gravestone should be larger, why does he get more worms than I do.”

I could just spend the rest of this synopsis quoting Edd, but I can’t. I know. 

Jon looks through a door and sees packed earth and no furniture about. The only sign that anyone lived in the hut is the pile of ashes beneath a smoke hole. 

“What a dismal place to live,” Jon said.
“I was born in a house much like this,” declared Dolorous Edd. “Those were my enchanted years. Later I fell on hard times.”

Jon and Edd poke around for a bit, but then Edd smells old dung in a pile of straw that may have been a bed at one time. They search through the straw but don’t find anything. And that’s par for the course. All of the huts turn out the same with the people, possessions and livestock gone. And the village hadn’t been attacked. This was the same thing they had seen both in Whitetree and the previous three villages they searched. 

Jon wonders what happened, and Edd says that something bad happened, something unimaginable -- except to Edd who can imagine the worst case scenario. The hounds that Mormont summons start sniffing around with Storm of Swords Prologue POV Chett cursing at them for smelling about or something. When Jon catches Chett’s sight, Chett’s eyes narrow. He doesn’t like Jon.

Regardless, there’s really nothing much about this village. Pure nothingness. 

“Gone,” cried Mormont’s raven, flapping up into the weirwood to perch above them. “Gone, gone, gone.”

Thoren Smallwood puts in that there were wildlings in this village a mere year ago. But Jarman Buckwell, commander of the scouts, says that yeah, lots of shit changes in a year. Like Robert. He was king a year ago. But Ser Mallador Locke has it that it’s all for the good that the wildlings are gone. Fewer enemies. Uh-huh.

Jon hears a sound from above, and Giant, who in reality is barely five feet tall, descends from a tree and reports that there’s a lake to their north with small hills to the west. Smallwood requests to camp at Whitetree, but Mormont says they’re heading up to the lake to camp. And he needs to write to Maester Aemon. So, Jon retrieves quill, parchment and ink and brings them to the Elsie who writes the chapter summary for Jon II:

At Whitetree, the fourth village. All empty. The wildlings are gone.

Elsie Mormont summons Samwell Tarly to get one of his birds to deliver a message, and Jon mounts his garron to find Samwell. He passes by Night’s Watchmen enjoying some salted beef, pissing, scratching and talking. The command passes for them to saddle up, and they get quiet and get to their task with Buckwell’s scouts ahead, Smallwood in command of the vanguard, the Elsie with the main force, Mallador Locke with the baggage train and packhorses and Ser Ottyn Wythers with the rearguard. Two hundred Night’s Watch bros, half mounted in total.

They had started their movement from Castle Black passing through game trails known as “ranger’s roads” that pushed into the Haunted Forest, camped beneath the starry sky and looked up at the Red Comet still up there beguiling our POVs as to its meaning. And while the party had first started out in good spirits, joshing with each other as bros do, the mood had gotten tense and silent the farther they move into the woods, the farther they had moved north. The woods, the abandoned villages, everything is making them scurred.

Jon takes his gloves off and lets his burned fingers feel the cold air. He thinks about how he used to run those fingers through Arya’s hair, and he hopes she’s doing well. Oh boy, Jon. Bad news on that front coming in our next Arya chapter. He flexes his fingers, knowing that he needs them to be nimble and strong to grasp a sword beyond the Wall. He finds Samwell Tarly watering horses with the other stewards with a cage of ravens on one of the wagons behind one of the pack horses he maintains. 

As Jon approaches, he hears the ravens saying what sounds like words. He asks whether Samwell has been teaching the ravens words, and Samwell admits that yeah, he has. Three of them even know how to say “Snow.” 

“One bird croaking my name was bad enough,” said Jon, “and snow’s nothing a black brother wants to hear about.” Snow often meant death in the north.

Sam asks what they found in Whitetree, and Jon recounts that they found nothingness and bones. Sam takes a bird from the cage, attaches the Elsie’s message and sends him flying with a command to “fly home now, brave one. Home.” 

Sam wishes he could fly home too, and Jon wonders if Sam is still afraid. He is, of course, but not as scurred as before. The first night, he thought someone pissing was the wildlings coming to slit his throat, but hey, the dawn rose and Samwell was still able to get vertical. And though Sam is craven and he’s sore all over, he kinda likes it out here. He’s barely scared at all these days. Plus! Samwell’s been working on his maps! Yay, maps!

The world is strange, Jon thought. Two hundred brave men had left the Wall, and the only one who was not growing more fearful was Sam, the self-confessed coward. “We’ll make a ranger of you yet,” he joked. “Next thing, you’ll want to be an outrider like Grenn. Shall I speak to the Old Bear?”

Sam says “Please do not do this” and pulls up the hood on his cloak. Samwell was hoping to spend the night in the village and sleep under a roof, but Jon says there ain’t enough roofs for all the men. Jon mounts up and rides back up the column having seen enough of Whitetree.

Just then, Ghost emerges from the trees and nearly scares Jon’s horse half to death. Most of the time, Ghost was off hunting away from the main line of advance, but these days, Ghost had not been having much success at hunting. 

The woods were as empty as the villages, Dywen had told him one night around the fire. “We’re a large part,” Jon had said. “The game’s probably been frightened away by all the noise we make on the march.”
“Frightened away by something, no doubt,” Dywen said.

Jon settles his horse from Ghostly terror and rides up to Mormont with his direwolf at his side. The Elsie asks if the raven has been dispatched, Jon says yup, mission accomplished. Oh, also, Samwell is teaching the birds how to talk. Mormont snorts (he is always snorting) and says that Samwell will probably end up regretting that.

They ride in silence for a while until Jon asks what Benjen would have done had he found all these villages empty.

“He would have made it his purpose to learn why, and it may well be someone or something did not want that known.”

Mormont says they’ll be three hundred when Qhorin Halfhand arrives. So, if they meet up with any enemy, they’ll beat the dogpiss out of them. They’re going to find their enemy.

Or they will find us, thought Jon.

And that is ACOK, Jon I & II. Sorry, folks for the super long synopsis about two chapters where the main action is riding around and reintroducing us to Jon Snow, but these are some good chapters! On the whole, I think Jon I does a great job of reacquainting us with Jon’s thematic impulse in the first book, provides backstory for Aemon Targaryen and gets us reinvested in the struggles of the men on the Wall while Jon II is a short chapter that is mostly tone-setting for the supernatural horror that awaits these poor bastards north of the Wall.

What do you guys think?

Depth

I was singing the praises of Bran’s ACOK storyline last week, but my feelings on Jon’s chapters are more conflicted; I’d put him as second-weakest POV in the book, the weakest being Dany. The structure of it feels less well-defined to me than his other storylines. As we talked about last time we checked in with Jon, his arcs in AGOT, ASOS, and ADWD all culminate in a temptation regarding riding south to rejoin House Stark. ACOK doesn’t have that, and while it does have a hell of an ending on its own terms, all of Jon’s best material in this book is relegated to the back half once Qhorin Halfhand shows up. We’ve defended George’s travelogues on the whole, but I think there are some pacing issues early on with Jon in ACOK. Neither of these chapters make it into the show; they start off Jon in Season 2 at Craster’s Keep, and I can’t really blame them.

That being said, there’s still a lot of great stuff here in isolation. George never stops doing important character work for Jon, and what really makes Jon’s ACOK storyline work is that Jon is rapidly becoming a more distinctive and interesting character. 

Matt Opening Thoughts

- Jon is Duncan the Tall, AMA. Also can see the gears turning on GRRM formulating Dunk and Egg series. We hear about the tourney at Ashford meadow and Baelor Breakspear’s death. Hedge Knight published months before ACOK, he’s bridging his short story to the main one. 

- Very very dense on background and world building, using Jon as a way to fill in some blanks he needs for later plots. Jon also doesn’t really notice or think about any of the background and world building. Jon look I found information about the Freehold! Ya but where are the maps. LOOK an account of humans trading with giants and cotf! MAPS SAM, NOW. A comet and the ice wall with Ghost looking like a weirwood and a white raven. GOTTA GET THESE MAPS TO LC. It appears that this weirwood has been eating people and is enormous. THIS DUNG SMELLS OLD. So focused on the Others and pleasing mormont he misses all this information that will become useful later. Shades of the Prince Ragger scene. 

- Feels like ACOK Jon I was written in response to an editor saying “you need to remind the audience who Jon is, where he’s going, and that oh yeah he’s a main character”. Could’ve very easily started his POV in the Wildling Villages, had those conversations happen elsewhere.

- Reads like Important things to remember as you go through ACOK in Jon’s plot: Jon is very conflicted about keeping his vows, Targaryen history, the Old Gods and Snarks and grumpkins being real, Maester Aemon, and that he’s very focused on the Others. Those things will all be major parts of his story that the reader needs to be reminded of. OH and that he’s the Song of Ice and Fire. 

- A lot of references and information on Aemon in these two chapters despite not appearing in either. Seems that George really wants to drive home Aemon’s lesson from AGOT Jon VIII was important and to reinforce what he said, why he said it, and how Aemon’s story we’ve been repeated twice now in short succession is probably going to mirror or have a huge impact on Jon’s in some way. *cough* Jon remembering Aemon’s lessons in s8 *cough*

- Feels very much like Dream Quest of Kadath personally for Jon (weirwoods as Old God, Outer God figures in another plane), and the journey into Mordor by Frodo and Sam (heh) as well as Faramir’s charge ordered by Denethor or Mormont. 

Jon Snow is in an interesting spot in ACOK. We’d be forgiven for thinking that his “Will he/won’t he” over the Night’s Watch has been resolved by the end of AGOT, but Jon’s first chapter in ACOK pushes this internal conflict for Jon right back into the forefront, alerting readers that this is going to be a consistent theme in Jon’s story. The twist here is that Jon’s second temptation is not to join with Robb in avenging Eddard Stark. Rather, it’s that Will Jon usurp Robb’s crown? I find this shift fascinating! And it gets me really excited for events to come for Jon’s arc.

The problem is the second chapter. I don’t mind it. I like it fine. But I find a tonal inconsistency between Jon I and Jon II. By the time we’re in Jon II, they’re in the fourth village that Night’s Watch has been to, and Jon’s internal thoughts and external dialogue and actions center around the “What happened to the wildlings?” And yes, it’s spooky setup for events to come (mostly in ASOS!), I wonder whether this chapter might have been stronger if the reader had time to marinate in Jon’s thought process after that impactful conversation with Mormont acting in concert with the Night’s Watch’s mission in the far north.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Aemon passing the throne to Aegon could foreshadow Jon passing the throne to Bran

Ironic foreshadowing in Mormont’s litany about the differences between Jon and Robb; the latter will never carry his own child, and Jon himself will be called “Your Grace” before it’s over. 

“I’ve seen the dead walk. I’ve not seen any giant bears.” You can tell how excited George is to get to one of his best horror images: the bear on the Fist of the First Men.

Theory/Discussion

Donal Noye’s metaphorical metallurgy: yea or nay? Was Robert “the true steel?” Is Stannis doomed to always break before he bends? Is Renly worth anything at the end of the day? (No.)

Conclusion


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