They have very, very different character arcs. It’s interesting to compare them and I’ll do so earlier but the tldr is here at the top for those who dont want to read the whole thing.
GRRM has deliberately written Jon so that the reader understands and relates to him and supports him. He has also deliberately written Daenerys so that the reader at the very least has some questions about her.
Jon is written as a typical hero.
But Daenerys is written almost as a GODDESS, with lots of Messianic and religious imagery and symbolism about her. But not a goddess of light and love. A goddess of blood and fire.
Jon is a relateable hero. The worst things we can say about him is that he’s got a bad temper and he arguably makes a few unwise decisions in the interests of the greater good. But for the most part, he’s pretty much as good as good gets in A Song of Ice an Fire. So naturally the reader supports him..
Daenerys, by constrast, with the messianic imagery and symbolism that her story is steeped in, is much less relateable. She’s not so much a hero, not so much a villain: she is more like goddess of destruction, whose story echoes religious myths rather than run-of-the-mill hero arcs.
I want to summarize the story and the development of these two characters:
GAME OF Thrones:
Jon: THIS KID’S GOING PLACES
In the Game of Thrones, we are introduced to Jon as a moody teenager. We have sympathy for him because he is a bastard, is treated less well by the people at Winterfell(especially Catelyn). His moodiness seems natural.
He is a bit of a punk bully at the beginning of his stay at Castle Black, but he quickly pulls it back and ends up becoming a natural leader among his peers. In the process, on the positive side he:
- stands up to the bully Alliser Thorne
- protects the bookworm Sam from Thorne and other bullies(he who shields the bookworm is beloved by readers)
- befriends the beloved bookworm Tyrion
- shows emotional growth
- kills a damn ice zombie!
On the negative side:
- goes berserk and attacks Thorne at dinner. But the audience forgives him because Thorne is a jerk.
- deserts the Night’s Watch under high emotional turmoil, which the reader can hand-wave away as being a bit of teenage pique, which it kind of is.
The reader ends up with an overall positive view of Jon as he seems to be a hero in training.
Danerys: Birth of a goddess:
Daenerys, is an orphan who has been raised by her abusive brother. This also garners sympathy for her. She seems set on a path of a victim, but she turns around. Let’s review her storyline:
- She is sold into sexual slavery.
- She finds a core of hardness in her, her “inner dragon.”
- She uses her sexual powers to become almost coequal with the savage Khal Drogo.
- She integrates to some extent into Dothraki society(she is resilient.)
- She survives a assassination attempt by the wine-seller.
- She frees slaves and criminalizes rape among the khalasar(which the reader approves of.)
- She goes through a weird mystic, hallucinogenic ordeal at the end which sees her unborn baby, her husband die
- Her story culminates in the birth of the dragons and her emergence unscathed from a huge pyre.
Its a moment that gives you goose-pimples. Already she is on a different level than every other point of view character we’ve had thus far. This is on the level of MYTH, more than typical fantasy story.
A Clash of Kings:
Jon: Treading the line of honor
- journeys into a Haunted Forest, continually showing his leadership qualities.
- He is chosen to go on a top secret mission, where he is revealed to have magical powers(he wargs Ghost.)
- In a tense couple of chapters he is pursued: Qhorin tells him something:
Our honour means no more than our lives, as long as the realm is safe.
This line, which almost pits the concepts of ‘'honor” and “what’s right”against each other will become the dominant theme of his arc. So that even when Jon ‘'loses honor”— by sleeping with Ygritte, say — he does so with the welfare of the Realm and, eventually, all of humanity in mind.
- He is forced to kill his mentor and join the wildlings…under orders from his superior officer. So the reader sympathizes with his horrible choice and understands it.
Daenerys: The Prophet
The religious imagery continues in Daenerys’ story in a Clash of Kings.
- She follows a comet that might or might not be related to her and the dragons.
- She travels through a desert wilderness, like Moses in Exodus.
- She is tempted to stay in the oasis of the City of Ghosts.
- She meets three emissaries from Qarth, who also offer her temptation. Well at least two of them do. The other one offers her cryptic prophecies as advice.
- She fails to gain the support of the rich and powerful.
- She enters a weird magical castle and has a lot of prophetic visions.
- She is attacked by what basically seem to be blue death-sucking demons.
- She vanquishes them with dragon fire.
Her story kind of putters out in A Clash of Kings but the reader still has a positive view of her. But some readers have complained that it feels like GRRM is sort of killing time as the story doesn’t wholly satisfy.
A Storm of Swords:
Jon Snow: Walking the peaks of honor
Jon Snow, having infiltrated the Wildling army, eventually deserts to save the Night’s Watch.
- He falls in love with Ygritte.
- He practices cunnilingus. (He who practices cunnilingus in literature is beloved of the reader as it shows that he cares for his partner’s sexual needs.)
- He refuses to kill an old, innocent man.
- He saves the Night’s Watch.
- His lover is tragically killed.(He whose lover is tragically killed gets brownie points.)
- He is wrongly imprisoned and threatened with execution by Thorne and the vile much-hated Janos Slynt (whom the reader hates.)
- He is defended by the blind old man, Aemon (who the reader loves.)
- He turns down the offer of Winterfell. Thus confirming how really seriously he meant his vows.
- Almost as if in reward he is elected Lord Commander.
Daenerys: The Goddess of Destruction
This is where Dany’s story gets interesting again, as her god-like powers are utilized. She also makes some moves that readers start to question.
- She vanquishes three cities in a row, gaining a big army and a tens of thousands of followers who look at her as “Mhysa”, again, more a goddess or a messiah figure than a hero or a queen. And her adversaries are so vile, they kill babies, eat puppies and crucify children that the reader only begins to wonder when
- She randomly selects 163(or whatever the number is) Masters of Meereen and has them flayed and crucified.
- She begins using her servant Irri as her personal cunnilingus mistress. Questionable in the modern age. (Though, since Irri doesn’t seem to mind, the reader can shrug it off.)
Here her story gets a little darker. Again, she isn’t a villain: her intentions are basically good. And her adversaries are so evil that we cheer for her. But her decisions are actually kind of scary.
A Dance with Dragons:
Jon: The Hero’s tragic flaw
Here is where Jon’s story gets complicated. IN this story he continually treads, often deliberately close to the line of breaking his oath. He is forced to make a bevy of decisions that some readers criticize:
- he sends his allies away
- he seems determined to save Hardhome despite the fact that all is most likely lost lost.
- He meddles in the politics of the North several times, to support Stannis,who is allied with the Night’s Watch against the threat of the Others, but also to stick it to the Boltons and to rescue his “sister” Arya.
- He lets an army of Wildlings though the Wall.
- He announces his intention to lead an army of Wildlings against Winterfell.
The reader, being privy to his private conversations with Stannis, with and his own thoughts knows that his intentions are ultimately good and heroic; and that Jon is in very bad position where there are no decisions that can be made that don’t carry with them considerable risk. So when he is shanked, the reader feels shocked — it seems we have another Eddard Stark type death. But he ultimately ends up being seen as a hero who truly wants to save mankind at the end of it. If Jon has a tragic flaw that brings him down its his very heroism itself.
Daenerys: The mess
Goddess/Messiah/young girl/queen
Daenerys’ story in A Dance with Dragons also gets more complicated. Far from the fiery warrior-goddess figure of the last book, she locks her dragons away with her inner nature and seems desperate to become just a normal human ruler. IN doing so, she seems to put away her goddess persona and becomes a bit of a mess: a young teenage girl lusting after mercenaries; a powerful queen giggling at ambassadors; a decision-maker surrounded by people she can’t trust in a culture she doesn’t understand. She’s completely out of her depth. And she even knows it, herself.
- by chaining away her dragons she forfeits a good deal of her power and image
- she makes compromises with her anti-slaver ideals in order to get a very, very tenuous peace in Meereen which sees slave markets thriving right outside the gates in mockery of her
- she has some children tortured
- she takes some children hostages, but refuses to torture them — a decision which the leader likes
- she has sex with a mercenary with questionable motives
At the same time her image is being used literally as a Messiah figure by the priests of R’hllor and the entirety of Essos seems on the brink of revolution by disgruntled slaves yearning for freedom.
In the end, she is in the middle of nowhere, sick and delirious. She is clearly on the wrong road and she commits to the Fire and Blood philosophy that served her so well in the past.
The discerning reader knows by now that, however admirable her feelings about slavery and so on are, the only thing she is really proven herself good at is destruction.
So it seems plain that while Jon Snow is very much on a heroic path to save the realm, Daenerys’ is less certain.
I think that Daenerys, along with the Others and Euron Greyjoy and his weird attempt to summon a tsunami,(or whatever it is he is doing), represents an existential threat to the realm. I think that makes an awesome story, particularly if her intentions still remain more or less ‘good.’
But other readers, sensing the shock of it in advance, use that to peg her in a ‘'villain” role, probably so they are not surprised when she does do shitty things in Westeros.
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