It’s beyond time we admitted it: Jon Snow is hilarious in the books

Jon Snow ignores his destiny, becomes unintentional comedic genius

But none of these moments compare to how entertaining Jon becomes in A Dance with Dragons,  the fifth book in the series and still the most recent one, despite coming out way back in 2011. By this point, Jon isn’t even actively trying to be funny. He’s an experienced brother of the Night’s Watch, traveled beyond the Wall with the wildlings, fallen in love with and lost Ygritte, and been elected as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. He is aware of the impending threat from the White Walkers as well as from winter itself. In this book, he is determined to not be swept up into any unnecessary drama, so he ignores things like Melisandre turning up and trying to convince Jon that he is the chosen figure in an ancient prophecy. He has to worry about feeding people through the winter.

In a way, Jon’s chapters in A Dance with Dragons consist of everyone around Jon screaming at him that he is the hero protagonist of a fantasy story while Jon himself is determined to pay zero attention to such things. He starts warging into Ghost in his sleep more often, and instead of wondering what this means, Jon is simply annoyed that it keeps happening. On other nights he is plagued by dreams of him fighting the dead with a glowing red sword. Jeor Mormont’s raven continually squacks “KING JON” while the wildlings swear vows of fealty to him as they do to the King Beyond the Wall. Jon seems absolutely dead set on refusing to see anything significant about this, and instead marches off to go and count how much salted meat the Night’s Watch has in its stores.

Jon is nowhere near as witty in this book as he was in the past few — he has a lot on his mind — but trying to be as boring as possible makes him funnier than ever. It’s clear to the reader that Jon is being set up for a hugely important role, and his refusal to acknowledge any of this it is highly entertaining.

In the television adaptation Game of Thrones, this humorous side of Jon’s personality is pushed aside somewhat to make space for his growth into the King in the North. But for book fans, Jon Snow’s witty humor and hilarious refusal to notice how important he is makes him one of the funniest characters George R R Martin has written.

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