Warning: This post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones season 8.
If you’re one of those people who thinks incestual relationships in fantasy shows are not romantic, then I suggest you leave your negative attitude at the door because we are here to talk about the facts.
At the conclusion of Game of Thrones season seven, we were presented with the idea that Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) and Jon Snow (Kit Harington) were more than just lust-filled rulers who find boats particular arousing, but rather that they both belong to the slightly problematic House Targaryen.
It was revealed that Jon was not Ned Stark’s bastard son after all, but the secret son of Daenerys’ oldest brother Rhaegar Targaryen and Ned’s late sister, Lyanna Stark.
While everyone seems to have accepted this information without question and has moved on with their lives, I cannot help but think there might be a little more to this story then what we’ve been told so far.
Clare Stephens and Holly Wainwright debrief on the latest episode of Game of Thrones on the Mamamia Recaps podcast. Post continues after audio…
Maybe it’s all the hype around the trailer for the upcoming movie Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that has spiked this, but an old interview with Game of Thrones star Alfie Allen, who played the dearly departed Theon Greyjoy, has resurfaced where he uses an interesting choice of words that could point towards the couple actually being siblings.
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Ned Stark did not "lop off" the deserter's head in the first episode "[without] a second thought." He took it very seriously. He made his son watch and stressed to him that sentencing a man to die is not something to be done lightly, and that if you're going to pass the sentence you had to be willing to carry it out. He didn't just stroll over and casually slice off the guy's head between bites of dinner or something, tra la la, no biggie.
The penalty for deserting the Watch is death. Ned knew how important the Watch was/is, especially since he knew winter was coming. He carried out the sentence because he had to. He definitely always supported letting people live if there was a way, he just also knew that if you say the penalty is death you had to mean it and that they couldn't let people think they could just run away from the very-necessary Watch and live. (Honestly, if he didn't support mercy he wouldn't have offered Cersei the "deal" that led to his death.)
It's possible he urged Robert to let Dany live because of her relation to Jon, but I doubt it--don't forget, Jon was off to join the Watch, so not only would his true parentage never matter, but he'd (as far as Ned knew) never have a chance or reason to meet Dany to begin with. Ned planned to tell Jon about his true parentage *after* Jon had taken his oath--because then it wouldn't matter anymore and wouldn't put him in danger.
IMO Alfie's comment about "kind of a Luke & Leia situation" was just a reference to Jon & Dany being related, and discovering that they're related. As others have pointed out, the timing is wrong, and I don't see why Dany would have been sent to Dorne while the rest of the Targ/Martell kids weren't. If memory serves, Rhaegar & Elia did have a son, and he would have been the heir presumptive--Dany would have been considered merely a princess to marry off for political gain, not really a potential ruler. She only became a ruler/potential ruler when Drogo gave Viserys his "crown for king."
It's fun to theorize (and I'm still very proud that I came up with R+L=J on my own, not having ever seen it as a theory anywhere before that [and of course as soon as I looked it up online I saw that it was a common theory, but still]), but I agree with those who say this one isn't happening.
If you're basing this on the books, it doesn't quite add up. Jon is a bit over a year older than Dany in the books (in book 1, Jon turns 14 a bit before Dany turns 13) by the time that Dany was conceived, Rhaegar had already annulled his marriage to Elia, married Lyanna and Jon had been born. I can't remember exactly how long it was after Lyanna died that Rhaegar was killed, but I highly doubt he had time or was even inclined to go back to dorne, remarry Elia and sire Dany. Probably the lemon tree grew in the garden in Braavos as it was a rich man's exotic mansion