Jon Snow

No one in Winterfell can say for certain who Jon's mother was. He's believed to have been born near the end of Robert's Rebellion, around the time King's Landing was sacked, and Eddard Stark brought him home determined that he grow up alongside his trueborn children. The decision didn't sit well with Lady Catelyn, who saw the boy as proof of an infidelity and treated him coldly; his father, though, always treated him as one of his own.

He shared sword games and a rivalry without real malice with Robb, though it only took Jon once calling himself «Lord of Winterfell» for Robb to remind him that could never happen. As a boy he dreamed of matching the Young Dragon, the boy king who subdued Dorne while barely more than a teenager; his bastard birth already closed off most of those roads.

Jon rides out with his father to watch the execution of a Night's Watch deserter, and on the way back they find a dead direwolf with her pups; of the six cubs, he claims the palest one and names him Ghost.

When Eddard leaves for King's Landing as Hand of the King, Catelyn doesn't want Jon staying in Winterfell, so he seizes the chance to join the Night's Watch. He says goodbye to Bran, in his coma, to Robb, and to Arya, to whom he gives a Braavosi blade she names Needle; Tyrion Lannister travels with them.

At Castle Black the recruits distrust him for his birth, but he earns his place by standing up to the master-at-arms Ser Alliser Thorne and by protecting Samwell Tarly. The night he takes his vows, Ghost returns with a dead wildling's severed hand. When word comes of Robert's death and Eddard's arrest, Alliser calls Jon a «traitor's bastard» and Jon goes at him with a knife; that same night he saves Mormont from a wight, taking burns to the hand, and is given Longclaw, the Mormonts' Valyrian steel sword, in return.

His father's execution drives him to try deserting to join Robb, but his brothers bring him back. Soon after, Mormont organizes a great expedition north to find the missing rangers, Benjen Stark among them.

With Ghost at his side, Jon joins the expedition the Watch sends beyond the Wall to trace Benjen and the other missing rangers. Mormont tells him Maester Aemon once turned down the Iron Throne in favor of his younger brother; Jon promises to keep his vows to the end, as Aemon did.

The expedition reaches Craster's Keep, where they learn the wildlings are gathering under Mance Rayder. At the Fist of the First Men, Ghost digs up a war horn and a cache of dragonglass that Jon hands out among his brothers. When Qhorin Halfhand arrives, he picks Jon for one of three parties scouting the mountains.

In the Frostfangs, Qhorin's party runs into wildlings; Jon kills one and chooses to capture, rather than kill, the other target, a woman named Ygritte. When Qhorin orders her killed, Jon secretly lets her go, and she tells him Mance would take him in among the free folk.

That night, through Ghost's eyes, Jon sees thousands of wildlings, giants, and mammoths before an eagle attacks him in the dream; his companions realize then that he's a skinchanger. With the group down to Qhorin and Jon, Rattleshirt's wildlings catch up and demand Jon kill Qhorin to prove his loyalty; with Ghost's help, he does, and is taken before Mance.

Among the wildlings he becomes Ygritte's lover to avoid suspicion and ends up genuinely falling for her. When Styr's party scales the Wall, Jon escapes — wounded in the leg by one of Ygritte's arrows — and returns to Castle Black, where he learns Bran and Rickon have been killed on Theon Greyjoy's orders. Earlier, in Mance's camp, an eagle carrying something of the slain wildling Orell tears at his face; Ygritte saves him with a bone knife while Jon wonders «Is it possible for a bird to hate?»

Back at Castle Black, Jon helps Donal Noye organize the defense after Mormont's death in the mutiny at Craster's Keep. When the wildlings attack the castle, he helps beat them back and finds Ygritte dying, who bids him farewell with «You know nothing, Jon Snow».

When Mance's army attacks the Wall, Donal hands Jon command of the top while he goes down to defend the gate; after Donal's death, Jon takes command at Maester Aemon's urging and holds the Wall for several days. On his return, Ser Alliser Thorne and Lord Janos Slynt arrest him for desertion, until Aemon vouches for his honor and both realize hanging him would be a mistake given how popular he is.

They force him into a parley with Mance, hoping he'll be killed there: Mance claims to hold the Horn of Winter, but before Jon can act, Stannis Baratheon's knights arrive. His defense of the Wall wins him back his freedom; Stannis offers to legitimize him as Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell, if Jon names him king, but Jon turns him down. Soon after, helped along by Samwell Tarly, he's elected the 998th Lord Commander by a landslide vote.

Now Lord Commander, Jon sends Samwell Tarly to Oldtown with Maester Aemon, Gilly, and Mance Rayder's son. He puts up with constant friction from Stannis's men, settled into Castle Black and the Nightfort; when Janos Slynt refuses to garrison an abandoned castle, Jon beheads him himself with Longclaw for insubordination.

Against the wishes of much of the Watch, he sends Val to negotiate with Tormund Giantsbane and strikes a fragile alliance letting him settle wildlings south of the Wall. Melisandre burns the man everyone believes to be Mance Rayder; it's actually Rattleshirt under one of her glamors, and the real Mance sets off, on Jon's orders, to rescue the girl they think is Arya Stark from Ramsay Bolton, neither knowing it's really Jeyne Poole.

He advises Stannis to seek the mountain clans' support before marching on Deepwood Motte. With Deepwood Motte taken, word of Ramsay's wedding to «Arya Stark» sends Stannis toward Winterfell. Melisandre tells Jon she sees a girl fleeing toward Castle Black in her flames; Jon believes it's Arya, but the girl who arrives is Alys Karstark, and the priestess also warns him she sees him surrounded by knives in the dark.

Weeks after Stannis continues toward Winterfell, Jon receives a letter signed by Ramsay Bolton and headed «Bastard», claiming he's defeated Stannis and captured Mance Rayder, and demanding Jon submit to House Bolton in exchange for sparing his life and his men's.

Jon answers by organizing a march against Ramsay, but doesn't order the Night's Watch to fight beside him — he asks for volunteers among wildlings and black brothers alike. The decision provokes fierce opposition among the Watch's leadership and leads to the murder of Ser Patrek. Soon after, Bowen Marsh and other black brothers stab Jon himself, in tears, murmuring «for the Watch». What becomes of him after that is left unknown.