After season seven finally confirmed Jon Snow’s parentage and reintroduced Gendry, ‘Game of Thrones genealogists’ have found a family link between the two fan-favourites.
Game of Thrones is a huge world, with a lot of characters, families, histories and name swapping to keep track of – however some brave souls have been trying to keep track of the family trees of all the fictional families.
To illustrate just how complicated this is, especially since Jon Snow’s real name was revealed as being Aegon Targaryen, he is the 13th character across the lore with that name.
There were already at least nine characters with the name Jon!
I guess this is why we get so much, ‘first of his/her name’ stuff,…so many people have the same bloody name.
Daenerys Targaryen collects names and titles like Pokemon cards.
However, the characters are at least consistent, with George RR Martin creating impressively realised family trees running back several generations.
Several generations back is where bastard Gendry and former bastard Jon Snow’s family become entwined – 3 generations back, Gendry’s great-grandmother, Rhaelle Targaryen, is Jon Snow’s great-aunt.
Game of Thrones expert and excellent YouTuber Alt Shift X shared their family trees to explain the link:
Alt Shift X also explained the family ties in an in-depth video about the episode where we first discover Jon Snow’s true parentage and name:
This technically makes the moodiest man in the north and Arya’s almost love interest cousins twice removed.
Not the strongest of family ties to be fair but you never know what fruit can be borne of the seeds that George RR Martin sows.
One of the stranger things about this revelation is, Robert Barathon had a Targaryen grandmother and yet he still tried to completely eradicate the family line.
Then again, in history, royal bloodlines have been a total mess – Queen Victoria of England basically invented six-degrees of seperation thanks to European royals’ unhealthy interest in almost-incest.
