Books

Signs Jon & Dany Are Meant To Be, Straight From The 'Game Of Thrones' Books

by Charlotte Ahlin
Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO

With the end of Game of Thrones season seven, the Westerosi fan community has been split down the middle over whether or not Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen are a good couple. On the pro side, you have people who see them as the perfect meeting of fire and ice, two passionate young people who want to make the world a better place, and the only hope for uniting the Seven Kingdoms against the army of the undead. On the con side... she's his aunt. No matter how you feel about Targaryen on Targaryen love, though, the books have dropped some major clues that these two are going to hit it off big time. Here are a few signs that Jon and Dany are meant to be in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Of course, Jon and Dany have not yet met each other in the books, and chances are good that their first meeting will be way different than the TV version. Currently, Dany is dehydrated in the Dothraki Sea and Jon is dead. But assuming that they're both back to some version of normal by The Winds of Winter, here are a few visions, prophecies, hints, and parallels that seem to suggest they're going to end up together:

1

The blue rose vision

When Dany visits the House of the Undying in Qarth, she has a whole mess of prophetic visions, including this one: "A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness." There's only one major wall of ice in this series, and that's the Wall. As for the blue flower, Lyanna Stark was crowned with her favorite flowers, blue winter roses, by Prince Rhaegar Targaryen before he "stole" her away. This seems to imply that Dany will have some kind of sweet connection with Jon, Lyanna's son who is currently up at the Wall.

2

Jon likes ladies with silver hair

Jon doesn't quite get the same warlock-fun-house-full-of-visions experience, but he does have a similar moment in book five. He's looking at Val, the hot wildling "princess," when she suddenly seems to have silver hair like Dany: "The light of the half-moon turned Val's honey-blond hair a pale silver and left her cheeks as white as snow. She took a deep breath. 'The air tastes sweet.'" It's a subtle moment, but the imagery of "sweet air" is a definite connection between the two of them.

3

Dany’s into shadowy dudes

Jon is frequently described as being in shadow. He sees himself as the "the silent man standing in the shadows who dares not speak his true name." Melisandre sees his face as shrouded in moving shadows when she has a vision of him in the fire. And when Dany tried to imagine her ideal lover, "his face remained a shifting shadow."

4

Dany hears wolves when she’s sad

In A Dance with Dragons, just as Jon is being stabbed to death by the Night's Watch, Dany hears a lone wolf howling in the Dothraki Sea, which makes her feel sad and lonely. It's probably just a normal wolf in the literal sense, but the way that George R.R. Martin juxtaposes the two chapters, it's almost as if Dany is empathizing with Jon's pain from the other side of the world.

5

Their magical pets are color-coordinated

Ghost the direwolf is white with red eyes. Drogon the dragon is black with red eyes. Both are the alphas of their pack. Both Dany and Jon have some kind of spiritual connection with their animals, with Jon warging into Ghost and Dany being the first dragon rider in hundreds of years. It's also notable that for the Children of the Forest, red eyes mean the ability to have prophetic dreams (and Jon and Dany love them some prophetic dreams).

6

They had weirdly similar childhoods

Their childhoods were... kind of the opposite but also the same? Both of their mothers died in childbirth. As a kid, Dany had her impressive family name, but no real home. Jon had his impressive family home, but no real name. Both traveled far from home at the start of their teens, and both traveled away from the Iron Throne that is their birthright (Jon to the chilly North, Dany to the sweltering East).

7

Both of them hook up with “barbarians”

At the start of their arcs, Dany thinks the Dothraki are savages and Jon thinks the wildlings are barbarians. Then both of them fall in (highly problematic) love with people from these cultures, learn a lot from them, and realize that their own preconceived notions were way off base. And then Ygritte and Drogo both die, and Jon and Dany are kinda-but-not-quite at fault for the deaths of their respective lovers. Jon betrays the wildlings, leading to Ygritte getting killed in battle, and Dany smothers a comatose Drogo with a pillow.

8

Both of them are fighting for refugees

...and both of them are only doing an OK job at it. Jon wants to save the wildlings from the Others by letting them through the Wall. As a result, he gets stabbed by his fellow Black Brothers. Dany wants to free all the slaves and save all the refugees from Astapor. As a result, she kind of wrecks the global economy, is almost poisoned by her husband, and winds up tripping on berries in the Dothraki Sea. So both of them have their hearts in the right place, but could use a tad more advising (I don't know, maybe teenagers don't make the best political leaders?).

9

Both of them are thrust into leadership positions

Dany may be a full-on dragon queen now, with a couple of armies and a penchant for taking over cities. But at the beginning of A Game of Thrones, she was just a scared little girl who wanted to go home to the house with the red door. It's only after she's made Khaleesi that she starts to grow into her role as a queen. Jon never gets quite as power hungry, but he is voted in as Lord Commander of the Night's Watch without wanting the job, and quickly becomes a far stricter leader than his chill friends thought he would be.

10

Both of them are Targaryens

Yeah, yeah, it's a little icky. But Jon is almost certainly the secret son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, and we know how much Targaryens love other Targaryens. Unless that hipster kid Aegon turns out to be real, they're the only Targaryens around. Jon might even get to ride one of Dany's dragons. And when Dany thinks of Rhaegar's deceased son, she muses that, "If he had lived, I might have married him."

11

They might both be Azor Ahai, somehow?

Both of them fit the requirements for the fabled Prince/ss Who was Promised, who's supposed to defeat all the baddies with a magical fire sword. Both are from the same blood line. Both of them have votes of confidence from Red Priests or Maesters. Does that mean that they can do it as a team? That one of them has to die tragically for the other to win? That they're going to have a cool, sword-wielding baby? That prophecies are bunk? Only time will tell.

12

They’re ice and fire

The political strife in Westeros started with a Targaryen and a Stark's forbidden love, and it seems like Jon and Dany are going to carry on that tradition. They represent two opposing forces, yet seem to be more similar than they are different. She's fire, he's ice. Given what we've seen so far, it's highly unlikely that George R.R. Martin will give us a happy ending. But even if Jon and Dany don't wind up as a happily married couple sharing the Iron Throne, it looks like we can expect one hell of a steamy romance.