Game of Thrones: Here’s Jon Snow’s title in his own words

Jon Snow is King in the North no more, or at least he doesn’t seem to see himself as such for the future episodes of Game of Thrones.

Earlier this week, when we talked about where Jon Snow had been in season 7 of Game of Thrones, we referred to him as the King in the North. After all, that’s been his title ever since the northern lords shouted it at him in season 6. It’s a big step up from just being Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, but he’s officially taken a step down.

It does solve that little problem of being a monarch allied with another monarch, right?

Making Game of Thrones, one of the show’s official sources for behind-the-scenes content, published photos showing Jon’s message to Sansa explaining to her what’s going on. We’ve written it out below in a much easier to read text form, British spelling of defense and all.

"“Sansa,Cersei Lannister has pledged her forces to our cause, as has Daenerys Targaryen. And if we survive this war, I have pledged our forces to Daenerys as the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. We are both coming to organize the defence of the realm.Jon Snow, Warden of the North”"

The key point there, of course, is that Jon refers to himself here as “Warden of the North,” which was Ned Stark’s old title along with being lord of Winterfell. It’s somewhat fascinating, especially considering all the talk of Ned Stark this season, that his not-actual-son would end up inheriting his noble obligations. Granted, there’s no one else to do it except Bran if you restrict yourself to thinking about men only. (We still support Sansa being in charge of everything, as we talked about in our evaluation of Jon’s work this season.)

What is perhaps even more interesting is that Daenerys has apparently not actually made him a Stark yet. He doesn’t sign the letter as “Jon Stark,” does he? He has the Stark direwolf on his letter and everything, but he still isn’t a member of the house. As a monarch, Daenerys has the power to confer that name upon him if she so chooses. As the Game of Thrones wiki reminds us in its short but rather helpful piece on the concept, Stannis Baratheon dangled that in front of Jon in earlier seasons.

Has he simply turned it down again without the viewers seeing it happen, or is this part of Daenerys’ plan to remake the social order by putting a bastard, with a bastard’s name and all, in charge of the biggest region of the Seven Kingdoms?

It’s really an academic question more than anything else, based on the big deal that has now been made about Jon’s real parents being married, to the point of letting us see their wedding.

We suppose a secondary question is this: Can Daenerys marry a Warden safely?

Just asking for the sake of the predictions.

And because the two of them can’t keep their hands off each other.

Next: Game of Thrones: Did the Night King kill Tormund and Beric?

But mostly for the predictions.