In the Game of Thrones finale, Bran Stark — a.k.a. Mr. Three-Eyed Raven — brings us into a flashback. There we find his dad, a young Ned Stark, plus Ned's dying sister, Lyanna, and a newborn. And then comes the whisper unheard 'round the world: We think Lyanna asks her brother to protect her out-of-wedlock child from King Robert Baratheon, to whom she was betrothed at the time. Like a true Stark, Ned does, for the rest of his life claim the baby — Jon Snow — as his own bastard, rather than his sister's secret son.
Most viewers and readers of the book have assumed the whispered secret also confirms a long-held fan theory, that Lyanna's baby daddy is Rhaegar Targaryen (brother to Daenerys, and either Lyanna's kidnapper or her lover or both...hopefully we'll get clarification on that next season, because WTF). But Isaac Hempstead Wright, the actor who plays Bran, told The Hollywood Reporter that we shouldn't forget anything is possible in Westeros — even incest.
"When Bran sees his father's reaction and understands that this is a surrogate child his father has brought up, he thinks to himself, 'Well, wait, what surrogate children has my father brought up? Oh! Jon Snow! So Jon Snow isn't my half-brother," Wright said of his character. "But we still are pretty clueless as to the father, I think."
And then, Wright said what we all were thinking during that intimate scene between Ned and Lyanna, but didn't dare say out loud. "At this stage, it could even be Ned. There could be a Cersei and Jaime thing going on there," Wright posited.
Oy vey. We're pulling for the Targaryen theory — otherwise, we're going to need one serious Stark family tree for season 7.
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