Game Of Thrones (since season four) Thread - Everything in HERE!

[Minty]

OK. The rumour is Jon Snow is really half Targaryan, half Stark - the fruits of Rhaegar Targaryan's kidnap of Lyanna Stark which led to the rebellion putting Robert Baratheon on the throne & saw the Targaryan's exterminated. Lyanna's death was known to have been in a tower room with blood everywhere, but she lived long enough to extract a deathbed promise from Ned Stark. Was this blood really down to a messy birth (in the world GOT is based in deaths during childbirth would be a common hazard).

It is rumoured that Rhaegar's "kidnap" of Lyanna wasn't quite as forced as has been painted - that she was terrified of being married to a notorious drunkard & philanderer like Robert Baratheon, a house with a bad reputation for mistreating women (although not as bad as the Boltons!)

If all true, a lot of matters fall into place - Robert Baratheon would have demanded such a child be slaughtered as the living reminder that his beloved Lyanna was taken from him, & Jon's existence would also always put the Starks in danger of being seen as potential rebels to the throne. For Caitlin, Jon Snow doesn't represent a living insult as Ned's bar steward as everyone thinks, he represents someone whom if unmasked could see the Starks exterminated & destroyed (which has all but happened anyway, oh well!).

Ned gave the story that Jon Snow's mother was Edric Dayne's wet nurse, Wylla, but this cannot be true. A wet nurse's tasks include breast feeding noble's children (hence why they all looked like Nursey in Blackadder II - they were literally fattened up for the job). Edric Dayne is adamant that he & Jon Snow are "milk brothers" (shared the same wet nurse at the same time). But no wet nurse to nobility was allowed to have children of their own.

That's the theory anyway!