Recently, I started watching "Game of Thrones." I'm about six years behind the take on this one, but I figured it's better late than never. There's a lot I could talk about in a show as dense as GOT, but I thought I'd focus on Jon Snow as King in the North - more specifically, his title as “The White Wolf.”

Now it’s easy to see why Jon would merit the name in the narrative -- he’s the only Stark left who’s direwolf is still alive and present (although we don’t see Ghost much in the show). But I was wondering if it could mean something more. Obviously, he’s a ‘wolf’ because of his position as Ned’s (*cough* Lyanna’s) son, but why white? Maybe because he’s one of the few who’s killed a Whitewalker, but, as far as I know, that’s not common knowledge in the narrative.

So I looked to symbolism. When I was perusing the interwebs for a look into any special meaning for the color white in the medieval Europe on which Westeros is based, I stumbled upon a quote by Wassily Kandinsky (an art theorist and abstract Russian painter):

"White, therefore, has its harmony of silence, which works upon us negatively, like many pauses in music that break temporarily the melody. It is not a dead silence, but one pregnant with possibilities. White has the appeal of the nothingness that is before birth, of the world in the ice age."

Now, I'm not saying that the unholy trinity of George R.R. Martin, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff came across the same quote as me and decided to build a character's entire plot around it, but it seems a bit coincidental, no?

But if we interpret 'A song of ice and fire' as a harmonious completion of two physical elements as symbols, as a harmony between sound and silence (also known as what a song literally is), we get some interesting parallels to Jon's plot:

The three biggest parts in Jon's life are marked by silence. The most recent one is his encounter with death as related in Season 6, Episode 3 "Oathbreaker." When Melisandre presses him for details about the afterlife, Jon says:

"Nothing. There was nothing at all."

This nothingness obviously terrifies Jon, but could instead be read as Kandinsky does - as a silence to the song that will become his life as it will be remembered in the history of Westeros. It would also give him a juxtaposition to be given life back again by the Lord of Light, which has the symbol of a fiery heart. Jon may claim to not be a god, but if his afterlife was characterized by silence and then was brought to life by a heart on fire, it sounds like he might become the savior figure as "the prince who was promised."

The second part is Ned Stark's silence on the identity of both Jon's mother and his sister, Lyanna - although only a few characters know they are one and the same. It has a Dumbledore-sending-Harry-to-the-Dursely's vibe to it: making sure that a 'Chosen One' lives in relative obscurity in order to protect him from the evils of fame and promises of fortune by their elevated status (no matter what abuses they suffer in the meantime).

It's this silence, that kick-starts the series of events that gives Jon the background and character in order to become 'the prince who was promised' or, at the very least, an important player in the great game. He has a hunger to prove himself with a sense of honor to restrain him, but he also knows that anything he earns he has earned himself.

The third and most important is the silence surrounding John's name. The Tower of Joy sequence was a long time coming for book fans, but I am but a simple member of the TV audience and it took me by surprise. The importance of names and titles can't be overstated in the world of 'Game of Thrones' - it's even a tic of Daeneyers that when she feels challenged, she trots out her titles to protect her like a coat of armor.

You could read that scene as Benioff and Weiss giving fans a mystery to gnaw on as they wait for the next season, especially now that R+L=J has been confirmed. But I think it gives more legitimacy to the motif of silence surrounding Jon, and it'll be when he's finally named that we'll see where Martin & Co. were leading us all along.

His current bastard status even makes him sort of a blank space on the Stark family tree, which I'm not even sure he would be included in. In the grand scope of history, a Jon Snow should have lived and died in obscurity - both as a bastard and as a man of the Night's Watch. He should have lived in silence, but instead, he is suspiciously poised in a way so he has a claim to both of the most powerful thrones in Westeros.

The White Wolf is coming with the Winter and I cannot wait to see what happens.