Jon Snow

Season One

Ned Stark's bastard, raised inside the family and seated below the salt, and quicker than his trueborn brothers to notice the people the world overlooks. He takes the black expecting the order of the songs and finds thieves, poachers and old men holding seven hundred feet of ice; he is made a steward instead of a ranger and is furious about it until he understands why. He pulls the Old Bear out of a burning room and is given Longclaw for it. When word comes that his father is dead and his brother has raised the banners he rides south in the night, and his friends ride after him and talk him back.

Season Two

Beyond the Wall with the Great Ranging: Craster's Keep, where he learns what the Watch is willing to overlook for a warm hall, and then the Fist of the First Men. Paired with Qhorin Halfhand and sent scouting, he cannot bring himself to cut a wildling girl's throat, and it costs them everything. Qhorin's last order is the hardest one in the Watch's book ÔÇö turn your cloak, and make them believe it ÔÇö and the only way to make them believe it is to kill Qhorin himself.

Season Three

Among the free folk as a spy who keeps forgetting that he is one. He climbs the Wall with Ygritte, sees the world from the top of it, and finds that the wildlings are not an army of monsters but a hundred quarrelling peoples running from something worse. At Queenscrown he refuses to kill an old horse-breeder to prove himself, and the pretence ends there. He rides back to Castle Black with three arrows in him, having broken faith with everybody in the story except himself.

Season Four

Castle Black holds against a hundred thousand for one night, and the man who has been telling everybody he is not in charge finds himself in charge. Ygritte dies in the yard with an arrow in her back and his name in her mouth. Then he walks out through the gate alone to murder Mance Rayder under a parley ÔÇö a plan with no version in which he survives it ÔÇö and is interrupted by Stannis Baratheon's cavalry coming out of the north.

Season Five

Elected Lord Commander by one vote, and spends the office on the one thing the Watch will not forgive. He sails to Hardhome to bring the free folk south of the Wall, and sees on that beach exactly what he has been arguing about: the Night King raising every corpse in the village with his arms out. He brings the survivors through the gate anyway. His own officers gather in the yard, tell him it is for the Watch, and put their knives in him one at a time.

Season Six

Brought back by a red priestess who did not expect it to work, and comes back angrier and colder and no longer bound by anything. He hangs the men who killed him, hands his cloak to Edd, and quits. Then Sansa arrives, and the North has to be taken back from the Boltons with an army that does not exist. He very nearly dies under the bodies at the Battle of the Bastards. He is proclaimed King in the North by a hall of lords who spent the whole campaign refusing him men ÔÇö and in a vision at a tower in Dorne, his brother learns who his mother was.

Season Seven

Goes to Dragonstone with nothing to offer and asks a queen for dragonglass, and ends up bending the knee to her ÔÇö for the war, he says, and by then not only for the war. He leads seven men beyond the Wall to drag a corpse back as an argument, which works, and costs Daenerys a dragon that gets up again on the wrong side. Sam and Bran, in different rooms, put together the thing nobody has ever asked: whose son he actually is.

Season Eight

He tells his sisters the truth about his name, which is the same as telling the realm. He rides a dragon, holds the left at Winterfell through the Long Night, and watches a city that had already surrendered burn from the ground. The last thing he does in the war is walk up to the woman he loves in the throne room and put a knife in her, because nobody else could get close enough ÔÇö and the realm, unable to decide whether that was murder or mercy, sends him back to the Wall and lets him keep going past it.

A Game of Thrones 9 chapters of their own, and 1 more that name them

Jon I At the feast Jon sits below the salt with a wine cup and meets Tyrion Lannister, who teaches him what bastards must make of themselves. Jon II Farewells at Winterfell: Jon gives Arya a sword called Needle and says goodbye to a Bran who cannot hear him. Tyrion II Riding north to the Wall, Tyrion trades truths with Jon Snow and watches the boy's illusions about the Night's Watch die one by one. Jon III Castle Black hardens Jon; he turns the recruits who hated him into something like brothers, and Benjen rides north on a ranging without him. Jon IV Samwell Tarly arrives at the Wall, fat, craven and kind; Jon shames the bullies into sparing him and makes an unlikely friend. Jon V The recruits are called: Jon is named to the stewards, not the rangers ÔÇö rage first, until Sam shows him whose squire he has just become. Jon VI Jon says his words before the weirwoods beyond the Wall; on the way back, Ghost brings a gift ÔÇö a dead man's hand. Jon VII The dead rangers come back in the night: a wight with black hands and blue eyes; Jon's torch and Ghost's teeth save the Old Bear. Jon VIII For a burned hand and a saved life, Mormont gives Jon the Valyrian blade Longclaw ÔÇö while word of his father's fall gnaws at him. Jon IX Jon rides for his brother's war and his friends ride him down; Mormont offers him the only war that matters ÔÇö the Watch will ride beyond the Wall.

A Clash of Kings 8 chapters of their own

A Storm of Swords 12 chapters of their own

A Dance with Dragons 13 chapters of their own