Fanfic / Dragons of Ice and Fire

Sonagon, the Dragon of the North by Ed Mattinian

"There are things hidden in the far north, secrets buried under ice. Jon Snow faces the white walkers early, and stumbles upon a power that could change the world. It forges a new path for him and everyone around him - and a new journey south, a journey as a dragon. The world begins to change - with steel and snow, fire and blood..."

— opening story synopsis, Dragons of Ice and Fire

Dragons of Ice and Fire is an ongoing A Song of Ice and Fire Fan Fiction written by Serpentguy, edited (and currently hosted by) by Diablo Snowblind. It is hosted on Fanfiction.net, where it is complete up to Chapter 31. It was also temporarily hosted on Archive of Our Own, but has since been taken down. A Wayback Machine archive exists of this version, which is complete up to Chapter 51. The first chapter was published in October 2016, with the first of two books completed. The second book is on permanent hiatus, with a basic outline given in the comments section of the final book one chapter.

In the aftermath of a white walker's devastating ambush on Mance Rayder's host, Jon Snow awakens an ice dragon north of the Wall. Divergences ensue; Jon learns how to bond with the dragon and travels south with the Westeros equivalent of an ultimate weapon, to unite a war-torn realm and fight the Others. Things do not go as straightforwardly as anyone, Jon included, expected.

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Examples

Book 1: Ice

• Abdicate the Throne: Jon abdicates his titles as King in the North and King Beyond-the-Wall to Bran, believing the North would be better unified under a trueborn.
• A God Am I: Euron Greyjoy even before he summons and binds a kraken. He just offers the occasion as definitive proof.
  Men were staring at Euron with horror, but he could only laugh, and laugh, and laugh. Who can doubt my godliness now?
• And I Must Scream: Margaery, Lancel and everyone that Qyburn touches.
• Aborted Arc: The abandoned black armour in the Nightfort was originally a setup for Bran's plot.
• Admiring the Abomination: Tyrion is next to giddy about the irony of Sonagon's existence while a dragonless Targaryen attempts to retake the throne. Archmaester Marwyn travels all the way to the north just for the chance to learn about the dragon.
• Androcles' Lion: Since dragons are natural wargs, mentally dominating Sonagon isn't an option. So instead Jon saves it from the Others, helps it find food in an unfamiliar environment, and guides it away from wights until it feels comfortable enough with him to let him warg it.
• Anyone Can Die: Very much in the spirit of George R.R. Martin's series.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Cersei absolutely refuses to believe that an ice dragon exists, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
  • Justified with Jorah, as he associates dragons with his reverence for Daenerys and believes only she is worthy of having them.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Stannis asks Melisandre how Daenerys and her three dragons factor into her prophecies of the Great Other and himself as Azor Ahai. She doesn't have a clear answer.
• Attempted Rape: Harry the Heir to Sansa, and indirectly Baelish to Sansa since he arranged it.
• Badass Bureaucrat: Tyrion Lannister excels as paymaster of the Golden Company, so much that Jon Connington becomes afraid he'll steal the entire campaign.
  • Fat Lord Manderly also counts, especially when he has three Freys sledgehammered to death in the middle of his court.
• Batman Gambit: Petyr Baelish planned to accelerate Sansa's marriage to Harry the Heir specifically because he knew Harry is the kind of man to exploit Marital Rape License. He did this so Sansa would feel vulnerable and hurt so that she'd turn to him for help and become more reliant on him.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. The very beautiful Val suffers severe wounds. She survives but she loses an arm, has a deep scar on her chest, and she looks like she has aged years by the time she recovers.
• The Beastmaster: Skinchangers and wargs in general. With Jon, he has Ghost, Phantom, and, of course, Sonagon. He later gains the mammoth Wrath during the Battle for the Wall. The three-eyed crow, Bran, Varamyr and all the other wargs all qualify too.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: Many examples, special note goes to Chapter 31, Euron destroying Oldtown with a giant kraken, and the Battle for the Wall.
• Black Comedy: One particular death when Jon and Sonagon demolish the Twins.
  Jon found a screaming man who had dived into a well to take shelter, and broke both of his legs from the fall. They had no rope to get him out, so they left him in the well to die.
• Blood Knight: Easily the Weeper. Even Jon has moments of this too.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Others, in general. Also Sonagon himself, such as when he eats a whole village of innocents because he was feeling peckish.
• Bond Creatures: Jon and Sonagon. It's well-acknowledged in-universe that if Jon is hurt, Sonagon will go berserk trying to save him. If, as implied in canon, Jon's presence boosts Sonagon's powers, the characters have yet to realize it.
• Broken Pedestal: The three eyed raven to Bran, due to placing The Needs of the Many over the lives of Bran's friends and family.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Jon tries to invoke this, but the Weeper refuses by arguing they can find a more powerful Warg to replace him.
  • The roles switch later as Jon concedes to a degree with the Weeper’s vicious acts since the man’s raiders are such effective fighters and his declaration of fealty got the ball rolling for the free folk to swear to Jon. Gets invoked during the most tragic occurrence, when the Weeper kills the heir of White Harbor during the chaos at the beginning of The Battle of the Snows. For just about any other man Jon would have executed him, instead the punishment is a brutal, but single beating. After the beating, Jon gives the Weeper fair warning that if he screws up again, Jon will kill him.
    Jon: He deserves it. He does. He's a violent bastard and he killed Ser Wylis for no other reason than because he was angry. It was murder, it was, and the Weeper killed your friends, but that doesn't matter because I still need him.
• Cool Sword: Jon loses Longclaw. When Bloodraven points out he needs a new sword, Jon laments that he is unlikely to find a finer blade...so Bloodraven gives him Dark Sister, an ancestral Targaryen blade. In Jon's next battle he slices clean through a giant's leg in one stroke.
• The Chosen One: As in canon, Melisandre's view of Stannis. Then, Mother Mole and many wildlings towards Jon and Sonagon.
  • The Chooser of the One: The three-eyed raven, which he does by being very good at picking out people who have the right skillset (and/or supernatural powers) and are in the right location to complete an important task. He can also arrange special training with the Children of the Forest for those who have really rare traits that make them significantly more likely to succeed than others (such as Valyrian blood for Jon). Deconstructed, as these tasks are actually decoy and stalling missions. Bran is the only one Bloodraven actually needs.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Jon and Sonagon vs Stannis' fleet. Since the Free Folk are busy trying to get civilians to safety and fighting off the ambush from the Others, it's just dragon and rider against Stannis and his men. Stannis still looses almost all his men, his ships, his hand, and allegedly Davos.
• Depraved Dwarf: Tyrion, more so than in canon actually.
• Destructive Saviour: This is Sonagon's whole gig, particularly with the hostages and the destruction of the Twins.
• Didn't See That Coming: Ser Shadrich. He very successfully executes a high-risk kidnapping, escapes a castle, trekked through the mountains, avoided mountain clans, and single-handedly beats Ser Jorah down to escape. And then Sansa Stark snatches his dagger up and jams into his back. "Oh".
• Disappointed in You: Olyvar Frey, Robb Stark’s former squire, is convinced that Robb would have had this reaction to his half-brother after Jon Snow demolishes The Twins in dragon fire.
  • On occasion Jon agonizes over how his father and brother would feel about the decisions he has had to make to unite the free folk and northerners against the Others.
  Jon Snow(thinking): By the gods... Would my father curse me for saying those words?
• Do Not Go Gentle: Even in the face of gigantic undead wyrms and the literal collapse of the Wall much of the Night's Watch and Jon Snow's coalition fight tooth and nail during The Battle for the Wall. They know if the White Walkers make it through they are all done for anyway.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Ramsay Bolton tried this, when he sent the pink letter bragging about raping his sister to Jon. The result? Goodbye House Frey.
• Door Stopper: The series is planned to consist of two books. Book 1: Ice is already 700,000 words long, and Word of God says that Book 2: Fire will be about the same.
• Dragon Rider: Jon Snow becoming this is the main divergence point of the story from canon.
• Dramatic Irony: Bloodraven points out to Jon that he needs Valyrian blood to bond with a dragon. In response Jon ponders how his unknown mother qualifies.
• The Dreaded: Euron, Ramsay, Jon Snow, Malvern, the list goes on, with some more justified than others.
• Dreaming of Times Gone By: Justified with Jon, who sees Sonagon's dreams and memories when both of them are sleeping at the same time.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Jon manages to kill an Other in the first chapter, before they spill his blood. Of course he gets better, but still.
  • Even as her son dies in her arms, Olenna Tyrell maintains her composure and looks his and soon to be her murderer straight in the eye.
  • Mance and several Nights Watchmen sacrifice themselves in order to direct a section of the falling Wall onto the larger wight-wyrm's head.
• Empathic Environment: The storms during the Battle of the Snows and the Battle of Oldtown. Euron engages the fleets in Oldtown right during a violent storm for a reason. It is also implied that with Malvern close by the Other may also be influencing the winter storm.
• Enemy Mine: Ramsay hates Jon Snow, but he hates the Others more because the white walkers enslaved him as a wight. So he does his best to sabotage the Others, giving important information to the Night's Watch and later killing one of the white walkers himself.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Though Lord Borrell is all too happy to sell Sansa Stark back to Petyr Baelish, even knowing who she is, he changes his mind when Sansa tells him about Baelish's Batman Gambit.
  • The wildlings unanimously are horrified by the Frey's violating Sacred Hospitality; earlier in the story, the Weeper wants to kill one specific wildling for having done the same thing in the past.
• Evil Gloating:
  • Ramsay does this a lot, especially when he has beaten Jon Snow and subdued Sonagon. Of course it gets him killed.
  • The white walker Malvern. It gets him killed too.
• Eviler than Thou: Ramsay to all the Wildlings- and some of the wildlings are pretty damn awful.
• Evil Versus Evil: The maesters see the upcoming conflict brewing in Westeros this way, which they've nicknamed "the War of Five Monsters." The five monsters being Euron, Jon, Stannis, Cersei, and Tyrion (viewed as the The Man Behind the Man for Aegon, perhaps rightly).
• Fantastic Nuke: How dragons are considered.
• Falling into the Cockpit: A magical variant with Jon, in that despite all odds and the setting, there wasn't a Chessmaster or a prophecy responsible for the awakening of an ice dragon (that we know of). Jon was just in the right place at the right time.
  Bloodraven: ...And so it seems that even after a hundred years and with a thousand eyes, a man can still be surprised.
  • This is actually Zigzagged with the reveal that the Others were searching for Jon's unique mix of bloodlines for years, and when they found him, drove him towards the place where Sonagon was buried on purpose in order to use his blood to unseal the Horn of Winter and awaken the dragon. They definitely weren't expecting Jon to survive and take the dragon for himself, however.
• Fate Worse than Death: Ramsey gets raised as a wight. He is fully aware while the White Walker Malvern controls every movement of his corpse.
• Fix Fic: Averted. The course of events does change, starting north of the Wall and rippling outward, but close to the same number of named characters are deceased as are in the first three books of A Song of Ice and Fire.
• Foreshadowing: There are a few examples:
  • An early one when in chapter 11, Jon meets a hated wildling raider who once used greyscale-infected meat as an undetectable poison against unwitting victims. Then, in chapter 33, it's revealed that greyscale can be used as a poison against dragons, and the Boltons use it to disable Sonagon.
  • In chapter 6, Jojen has a green-dream about about a man of stone that tries to hack through ice, and breaks his own hand off. This is exactly happens to Stannis in the Battle of Hardhome.
  • In chapter 14, the whaler Alvin Whaletooth tells Jon about sea monsters, the worst being the kraken. Later Euron Greyjoy summons one kraken during the Battle of Oldtown.
  • In one of Jon Snow's dreams there is a woman screaming and watching the earth churn beneath her and great beasts rise out of the ground. The ice wight-wyrms burrow through the ground and emerge when they reach the Wall.
  • An especially morbid one concerning Cersei; who repeatedly tries to insist that Margaery is the one who should face trial, not her. This becomes much more significant when brutally murdered zombie Margaery is dressed up in Cersei's dress, placed in the carriage, and sent to Cersei's trial.
  • In chapter 38, Aegon says when he dreams of his mother, he remembers her silver hair. Elia Martell had dark hair.
• Fridge Horror: It's never explicitly stated what happened to captives like Margaery Tyrell, Jeyne Poole and others while they were prisoner, but the context makes it pretty clear that it wasn't very nice. There is a lot of emphasis that women in their situation have been suffering a lot.
• From Bad to Worse:
  • The Battle of the Snows devastated the North's fighting forces. Then Malvern raised most of the corpses as wights and starts sending them for the Wall. Then right when Jon Snow attempts to marshall some form of force to stop them Melisandre's shadow assassin strikes.
  • As if things weren't bad enough for the Reach, Qyburn allies with Euron.
  • And now the Others are working to exterminate ocean life and building a fleet out of whale corpses providing them with a new road to invasion and depriving the living of an important food source in the winter.
• Giant Flyer: Sonagon, even compared to the three dragons Dany has. Especially compared to the three dragons Dany has. He's described as a "flying mountain" more than once, and Jon can bring 20-30 men with him when they go flying.
  When (the dragon) opened its mouth, you could have rode a horse into jaws and not been able to touch its teeth.
• God Was My Copilot: Implied to be the three-eyed crow, who Jon suspects to be pulling the strings around a lot of his journey. The immortal greenseer typically hangs back, but regularly helps out by saving the best friend or creating distractions through skinchanging.
  • Later turns out to be a deconstruction; the three-eyed crow never thought Jon could "save the living," only endure and create a distraction so that Bran could be set up as the next Greenseer.
• Godzilla Threshold: Lord Manderly's justification for siding with Jon, a giant dragon and the wildlings against the Boltons.
  • Gets one-upped by Euron when he Stages the Battle of Oldtown as a ritual to summon Cthulu.
• Going Native: Played with, but largely subverted in regards to Jon Snow. The Night's Watch and many people south of the Wall certainly believe this, but even as he becomes their king Jon suffers a lot of grief to adapt the free folk to ways of the south in order to keep the peace.
• Gratuitous Latin: Only with old Valyrian instead of Latin and mildly deconstructed, since Jon isn't fluent in the language he accidentally gave the dragon a verb for a name (Sonagon roughly translates as "to do winter").
• Hair-Trigger Temper: The Weeper is often noted to be this. He threatens to kill Jon quite regularly. He's one of Jon's most crucial supporters.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Due to the Boltons keeping a lid on their evil and the wildlings and magic having a bad reputation, Jon Snow is seen as a monstrous Evil Sorcerer wildling-king Bastard Bastard by most of Westeros.
  • Sam amongst the Night's Watch, for letting the Wildlings in.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: Euron plays this trope very straight in chapter 31.
  • Subverted on the heroes side, as Jon's original plan was to warg Sonagon the same way he does to Phantom. Turns out dragons are natural wargs, so instead Jon had to earn Sonagon's trust enough for the dragon to let him warg.
• Hidden Backup Prince:
  • Bronn privately reveals to Olyvar Frey that Lollys Stokeworth's gang rape pregnancy is a cover story for the truth, that King Joffrey raped her in the aftermath of the Riot of Kings Landing. Subverted though since no one will rally around a baby while the kingdoms are at war. Bronn knows this, but he still takes pride in his stepson's royal blood.
  • The first book concludes with Jon learning he himself is this, being the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark.
• Hollywood Tactics: Played straight and then inverted in the battle of Oldtown. Euron deliberately makes 'bad' decisions, like charging and ramming much larger and more fortified ships in a naval battle. However, his formations were so suicidal because Euron wanted to unnerve the defenders by throwing lives away, so the men would freak out and break rank. Inverted in that it was all very much deliberate - he was never trying to win the die, he just wanted enough people to die so that he could summon a kraken with all their blood.
• Hypocrite: Jon Connington's most repeated advice to Aegon after they've conquered King's Landing and a majority of the realm accept his kingship is caution. However, when Jon receives word that his man has killed Tyrion Lannister his only reaction is barely restrained glee. He doesn't consider for a second the possibility the dwarf outwitted him.
• I Surrender, Suckers: One of the layers of Tyrion's plan to capture Casterly Rock along with Aggressive Negotiations and Down the Drain.
  • It's the course of action that ultimately kills Malvern. In large part it works because Samwell's defining characteristic is his cowardice.
• Ignored Epiphany: Cersei regrets not taking Ned Stark's offer way back in A Game of Thrones and leaving Westeros with Jaime and their children. It doesn't matter and it doesn't last.
  Now that was the jest – that at the end of it, Ned Stark had been the wisest one of them all.
• Ironic Echo: Bloodraven and Jon Snow's conversation where the seer implores Jon Snow to utilize his supernatural power as a warg to save the dragon from the Others (powers which in the books Jon never liked or embraced) parallels kill the boy and echoes magic is a sword without a hilt, quotes from the novels.
  Jon Snow: I was once told that that sorcery is like a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it
  Bloodraven: Would you rather have no sword at all? Yes, it will hurt. Men like us must endure the pain so that nobody else will have to. (...) Swing the sword, Jon Snow. Swing the sword and swing it true.
  • Mance wonders aloud if he should start calling Jon Snow, the new King-Beyond-the-Wall, 'Your Jon'.
• Irony: When Jon Snow and the alliance of northern houses write up their war declaration against the Boltons they decide to declare for the only Stark they can be certain of: Arya Stark. The truth of matters is Arya's the one Stark none of them can account for and the one in the least danger.
  • Aegon/"Young Griff" is the nephew of Viserys as in, Varys' birth name was Viserys.
  • In-Universe, how Jon sees the return of Sansa Stark to Winterfell at first.
    I lost one sister, but the gods returned to me another, he thought. I lost the little sister I loved and played with, in return for the sister that shunned me. It was a cruel thought, but he was feeling too bitter to care.
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: Even if from the reader's point of view Lord Magnar's attempt to warg with Sonagon is suicidal, it really is his only option to beat Jon Snow. However, it's also something the dragon absolutely hates and, unknown to Magnar, won't work, and gets many people killed.
• Just Toying with Them: The Others have been noted to do this on occasion, as they kill a lot of people. Jon exploits this during The Battle for the Wall, tricking one of the Others into playing a game with him and lulling it into a false sense of security, before using its distraction to get close enough to kill it.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Val and Dalla are heavily implied to be Greatjon Umber's daughters Valerie and Rebekah, lost in a wildling raid two decades earlier.
• Kill It with Fire: Played straight with the Other's wights, even the ice wyrms but then very much averted with Qyburn's special creatures — that he uses as unstoppable suicide bombers carrying wildfire.
• The Marvelous Deer: Coldhands has his elk, and Jon is given an elk too. Later, Jon skinchanges into a goat named Hullen to carry him around, but it doesn't last long.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Happens to Aemon Targaryen, one of the few people who Jon could honestly talk to.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Maester Aemon claims that the Valyrians bred the dragons they rode, but Sonagon remembers being a wild dragon before being captured and enslaved.
  • Jon himself, in-universe. Ever since his hair turned white, he began wielding an ancestral Targaryen sword, and riding a dragon, many people (including Jon himself) begin wondering if he has Valyrian blood. Several stories and theories of his parentage spread, ranging from an affair with Ashara Dayne to a lost Blackfyre princess Ned Stark harbored. They all agree, however, that Ned Stark is his father.
• My Girl Is Not a Slut: One of the reasons that it takes so long for Jon's romantic relationship with Val to form is that he has to overcome this mentality first. That, and The Mourning After.
• Mythology Gag: When discussing the possibility that Jon has Valyrian blood, Lady Mormont informs him that there used to be a rumor that he was the son of Ashara Dayne - just as some fans have theorized.
• Near-Villain Victory: The Battle for the Wall. The Others have breached the Wall with their undead wyrms, Jon's relief force is barely able to fight them off and Jon himself is exhausted after killing one of the wyrms and a white walker, and hiding behind a broken portion of the Wall from the ice wyrm trying to kill him. Then Sonagon arrives, and with the remaining defenders' help, kills the rest of the undead wyrms and destroys the Others' army.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Although Jon Snow doesn't know it yet, his crushing defeat of Stannis (and the subsequent removal of the Only Sane Man in his employ) has led Stannis' crew to become more fanatical than ever, Stannis himself turning to piracy and Jumping Off the Slippery Slope to take Jon down.
  • It's a kind thing Theon does when he stays with Jeyne Poole to die with her. But he was also one of the few people alive who knew the Boltons posed her as Arya Stark. Granted there was a chance he was going to be killed by the Boltons, but the death of Arya is devastating for Jon and fractures the Northern Alliance.
  • How Olenna Tyrell eventually sees her assassination of Joffrey. In the lead up to disaster in King's Landing she traces the start of her family's problems and Cersei's unpredictable paranoia to that event.
• Nicknaming the Enemy: The White Walker who sneaks through the wall is nicknamed "Malvern" by the Wildlings.
• Nightmare Fuel: Everything Qyburn. Special mention to Margaery Tyrell and Lancel Lannister, who were both brutally murdered and transformed into mindless wights. Wight-Margaery was begging to die even after her head was chopped off.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Jon Connington repeatedly regrets saving Tyrion from drowning because he was infected with greyscale as a result and Tyrion is getting much more credit for the conquest than Jon and tainting Aegon's reputation by association.
• One-Man Army: Very much Jon Snow. He goes from surviving beyond the Wall and fighting wights all by himself for months, to cutting down twenty knights from Stannis' army all by himself. Though he did have help from all his animal friends.

• Pintsized Powerhouse: Ser Shadrich, especially when he easily beat the much larger Ser Jorah in a one on one fight.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Jon gets white hair after the incident that rose Sonagon. It's supposedly due to temporarily being a wight before being successfully revived, but it also makes him look more Targaryen — a fact many people note.
  • A variant with Sonagon, who used to be a red-scaled, fire-breathing dragon before the Doom of Valyria forces him to flee across the world and he crash-lands in the North. A Stark greenseer uses the Horn of Winter to seal him away, and this dyed his scales white and turned him into an ice dragon.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • Randyll Tarly's main motivation for siding with Aegon Targaryen's kingship is that he believes the alliance will establish peace and stability in King's Landing, so the war could focus on Euron Greyjoy's invasion in Tarly's homeland. Counts as villainy because Tarly assassinated Tyrell men, including the previous Warden of the South, to remove Aegon's major opposition outside King's Landing.
  • Once they are south of the Wall, a few wildlings leaders try to recruit Rattleshirt into their planned coup against Jon Snow. Rattleshirt kills them instead. He never likes Jon, but will still wait until there is no risk to his own hide.
• Principles Zealot: Even after he accepts the truth of Melisandre's prophecies and earns a crazed and harsh reputation, The Broken King, Stannis still carries shades of his former defining trope. While Melisandre and Selyse argue for a ritual sacrifice of a thousand people Stannis is against killing such numbers of innocents.
• Prophecy Twist: The valonqar Cersei feared so much? Kevan Lannister, who qualifies by virtue of being born after Tywin, and strangles her when he sees how low she fell.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The Battle of the Snows. Jon Snow’s northern coalition wins the battle, but between the enormous losses, several traitors among the northern houses, the murder of Arya Stark, and a sickened dragon peace hangs by a thread. Relationships between Jon and the free folk and the north are so tense in the aftermath that Jon must keep hostages and guests in Winterfell, even from the houses still loyal to him. This was Roose Bolton’s whole strategy, see below, and for good measure he surrenders just to sow more distrust.
• Raising the Steaks: The Other's army has a good portion of dead animals in it.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Slightly deconstructed with Jon Snow; while he manages to keep all of the promises he makes, he does so by crossing several lines that he wasn't sworn to obey (or raised to follow due to Ned Stark's Honor Before Reason), despite knowing it will still displease his allies. The result is that nobody can get a problem with his behavior that's large enough to call him out on it, but tensions rise as his followers and allies become more irritated.
  • Lord Manderly and Mance Raider are both examples. Surprisingly, The Weeper is sort-of one; he's viscous, cruel, and violent, but he's not The Sociopath and he's willing to compromise if it keeps people alive (and if there's no better option).
• Reluctant Ruler: Jon Snow to a T. The only reason he demands fealty from the free folk is because he realizes they need a strong ruler to keep them united together against the Others. When Robb Stark's will reveals he is a legitimate heir Jon flat out refuses to be King of the North.
  • Bran also has reservations due to self-consciousness about his youth and crippled legs. He and Jon Snow have a heartfelt back and forth before he finally accepts.
• Revenant Zombie: Turns out that it's possible for some wights to regain control of their body after the Others turn them. If done quickly enough their hearts re-start and they become regular humans again, like Jon Snow, though it turns his hair white. Those who regain their bodies later have no heartbeat and don't age, like Coldhands and Ramsay.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: It turns out that Cersei's prophecy is self-fulfilling. She is so scared of the volanqar coming to kill her that she turns the Red Keep into a hostage situation. This directly leads to the multiplication of her enemies who manipulating her fear into straight-up paranoia. It is her fear of her younger brother that leads a different younger brother to strangle her.
  Cersei: Don’t you understand? He’s coming to kill me… Tyrion is going to destroy me!
  Ser Kevan shook his head. "He already has."
  • In-Universe meta example. Melisandre believes Jon Snow is fated to die only at Stannis's hands. Thus her shadow assassin doesn't target him when it attacks at Winterfell.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Arya Stark in Winterfell. Jon launches a whole campaign to save his sister, amassing free folk and northmen to march on Winterfell to rescue her... only for "Arya" to burn to death in a tower while Jon's army is ambushed outside the castle walls. In the immediate aftermath, Jon's sister is thought dead and he even receives the blame from some for her murder. Nobody even finds out that she was a fake, Jon mourns Arya's death and it makes the entire northern coalition's purpose moot.
  • Another mention to Margaery Tyrell trapped in the Red Keep by Cersei. It's a hostage situation that lasts 77 days because nobody wants to risk Margaery's live. And yet this whole standoff is resolved when Cersei strangles her in a fit of rage, resurrects her as wight, and sends her in to the trial as a distraction.
• Shout-Out: Jon drops the famous "Come with me if you want to live" line while rescuing Sonagon.
• The Sociopath: Euron. And Ramsay.
  • In the case of the latter, it's at least partially due to House Bolton being descended from Other-Human hybrids.
• Spanner in the Works: Jon's blood awakening a dragon is this to the entire North, and everyone with plans for Westeros.
  • Ser Shadrich kidnapping Sansa becomes this for Petyr Baelish and Jorah Mormont, although Jorah manages to make the best of it by rescuing her for real.
• Suicide by Cop: How Jon Connington plans to end it all, where Stannis Baratheon is the cop. It actually solves two of Jon and Aegon's problems, Jon hides all signs that Aegon's army carried a man with contagious greyscale when Stannis burns him to a crisp, but not before Jon infects one of Aegon's enemies with a greeting handshake. What Jon Connington doesn't know about going in is Melisandre's powers and that Stannis no longer has his dominant hand.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Aemon, the old blind and father figure maester, after being pushed down the stairs by surprise assassins going for Jon.
• Talking Down the Suicidal: Played with during Sansa's escape to the North. She's desperate enough to be rid of Littlefinger to jump off the walls of White Harbor, but she also plays the situation so Littlefinger's man is more focused on calming a frightened girl and less on her hidden dagger.
• Token Evil Teammate: Rattleshirt and the Weeper on Jon's side.
  • Invoked in Vary's case, as he intends to do all the Dirty Business for the Golden Company so Aegon won't have to.
• Too Good to Be True: Alleras realizes that the incoming Ironborn attack is way too obviously going to fail, and there has to be something else going on. Nobody listens, and they're all unprepared when Euron uses the men killed in the attack to summon a kraken.
• Trap Is the Only Option: Exploited; Jon can't be hurt without triggering Sonagon, so before he knew how to poison the dragon, Ramsay planned to assassinate Jon in his sleep and make Sonagon rampage on Jon's forces.
• Undignified Death: Poor Maester Aemon; one of the last Targaryens and likely oldest and most decent man alive, dies a very sudden death when assassins meant for Jon accidentally knock him over and cause him to break his neck. Jon laments how unfair a death it is for such a great man.
• Unknown Rival: Thanks to a combination of Melisandre's false visions implying that Jon Snow is The Great Other's Champion and the Curb-Stomp Battle that he suffered, Stannis sees Jon as his Arch-Enemy. While Jon knows Stannis doesn't like him, Ramsay Bolton and the Others are his real Arch Enemies, and Stannis isn't even in his top ten priorities.
• Unreliable Narrator: In an attempt to retain superiority in their retelling of history, the White Walkers claim that they built the Wall or that they allowed the Wall to be built. They also leave out mentioning that their king is half-human.
• Unwanted False Faith: Happens to Sonagon after a religion forms around the ice dragon. The dragon doesn't seem to mind, but Jon Snow does.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Jon's single biggest challenge is making sure the Free Folk and the Northerners don't kill each other, and form an alliance strong enough to fight together against the Others.
• Won the War, Lost the Peace: With a ginormous ice breathing dragon on their side some of Jon Snow's allies and some of his traitors believe and act as though they are all but guaranteed to win easily. Jon quickly learns this is not the case, but mostly from experience. A dragon can destroy, but it cannot conquer and rule.
• Would Hurt a Child: The elder Sand Snakes, Lady Stoneheart's Brotherhood, and Varys.
• Wrong Context Magic: The Free Folk think that Jon is only using Warging to connect with Sonagon, and that any sufficiently powerful Warg could replace Jon. Some of them start planning to do just that, because nobody told them that Valyrian blood is needed for a dragon bond.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Stannis thinks he's The Chosen One, and Jon is the Big Bad and The Antichrist, or at least The Dragon to the Big Bad. While Jon isn't The Chosen One so much as a well-meaning Spanner in the Works, Stannis himself is more of a Disc-One Final Boss whose quirk is being a Heroic Wannabe.
• Xanatos Gambit: All of the Boltons' and Ramsay's undercover maneuvering and subterfuge leading up to and during the Battle of Snows. The author refers to it as a Reverse-Xanatos Gambit, where no matter how Jon moved or reacted he would still lose.

Book 2: Fire

• All in the Manual: The author has stated they will not be publishing the second book, but they did provide an outline of the basic plot points for the major characters.

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