Free Game of Thrones A-Z by Martin Howden Page A

the Seven Kingdoms. He also becomes the lover of Ygritte, the woman he was supposed to kill, breaking the Night’s Watch vows of chastity. After spending a lot of time with Mance Rayder and the wildings, Snow manages to escape and heads to Castle Black; he sees off the wilding raiders – including Ygritte, who dies in his arms. They hold the wall for several days, but, when Alliser Thorne and Janos Slynt arrive at Castle Black, he is arrested for his defection. Snow is eventually released from prison and ends up growing into his position as a leader. However, he is stabbed seemingly to death by his fellow commanders because of his insubordination and willingness to team up the Watch with wildings. We still don’t know who his mother is – with possible suspects including Ashara Dayne and a wet nurse called Wylla – but one popular theory is that Ned Stark isn’t his father after all. He was, in fact, protecting Jon under the pretence that he is his dad. If that’s the case, it limits who his dad could be – with Rhaegar Targaryen often mooted. Rhaegar was the son of the Mad King, and is alleged to have kidnapped Lyanna Stark – Ned’s sister, who Robert Baratheon was betrothed to. This would kick-start the events leading to Robert’s Rebellion, but there are some who believe that Rhaegar hadn’t kidnapped her but, in fact, loved her. Robert’s loathing of all things Targaryen was never better seen when he was presented with the bodies of Rhaegar’s dead children after he won his battle against the Mad King. With Ned disgusted at the thought that these kids were slain, Robert was almost happy. If his beloved Lyanna did fall pregnant with Rhaegar, who knows what Robert would do. And so it would stand to reason that Ned would pretend the child was his, despite having his wife believe he had an affair, if he knew the baby of his sister would come to harm.
    Jon Snow is played by Kit Harington.
    Kit Harington’s life changed when he starred in the original London stage production of War Horse , which would eventually become a motion picture by Steven Spielberg.
    He said about his character to  westeros.org , ‘When I first got the part, I devoured the books and ended up far, far ahead of myself. They’re page-turners. But I had to reel it back in because I was just too far ahead. I really like having the source material there – some actors don’t, some actors just want to know it’s in the script, but if I have the character there on paper and it has more than what’s in the TV script, I want to know.’
    Harington continued, ‘He did want to know who his mother is, but it isn’t what makes him tick; it’s that he wants to prove that he’s more than a bastard. He’s a good man, like his father, and he wants to prove it. He knows he may see his brothers and sisters again, he may see the South again, he may avenge his father’s death, but right now he’s with the Night’s Watch and there he can rise and be the best.
    ‘He’s always making mistakes, Jon, because he’s trying too hard to impress. He’s very good at what he does and he’s a natural born leader, but like any young man he makes mistakes. He makes mistakes this second season, for sure.’
    Despite the original mutterings of disapproval that Kit was too old to play the 14-year-old character from the book, he is now seen as a heartthrob, and many female fans are happy with the changes that Weiss and Benioff oversaw.
    He found working on the second season harder than the first. ‘It was harder because our outfits were bigger, that was the main difference,’ he explained. ‘Last year we were in the training yard with minimal stuff on, but here we’re trekking north of the Wall and you’ve got your big cloak on, and then layers and layers of stuff – they just keep layering you up – and under that you have your thermals and so on. So when we were in Iceland, we choreographed a fight that we practised every day to where it got to a