Syrio Forel

Here’s the Jon Snow conclusion I imagine.

Jon and Tyrion are reunited. Yay, it is lovely to see them together for the first time since they ventured to the wall together in Book 1. They talk about Jon learning from his father’s mistakes.

Jon learns his heritage and unlike the TV show, when Daenarys shows up with her dragons, Ghost is still around. Suddenly, Jon is caught between the two heraldries that make up his ancestry – the Stark’s Dire Wolf and the Targaryen’s dragon.

This is a good trick GRRM likes to pull – let’s make it look like a protagonist has a binary decision and then show that the world is more nuanced than that.

Jon isn’t sure what to do and Tyrion is reading whatever he can get his hands on. In this case, it is a book written by the first maester to domesticate ravens. When young Lord Snow goes to Tyrion with his problem, Tyrion tells him about how ravens and wolves have a symbiotic relationship and actually help each other have food.

Slowly and surely, Jon starts to ride one of Daeny’s dragons and go hunting with Ghost, training them to support and compliment one another, using the way Tyrion taught him how ravens help wolves hunt as inspiration.

In doing so, he also learns how to use dragons and rangers together on the battlefield. Rangers, in all black, become the Queensguard, a visceral opposite of the all-white Kingsguard.