‘Game of Thrones’ Is About to Deliver a Pro-Incest Plotline and We Might As Well Accept It
Look, you can pretend to be scandalized by Jon and Daenerys’s relationship. But heaven knows our heroes won’t be.
Is it wrong to say that I’m excited for incest?
Sorry, sorry. Yes. Obviously yes. Silly question. Let’s try another: Is it wrong to say that I’m fucking pumped for incest?
OK, not just any incest. I am not, for one, interested in anybody’s IRL incest, which I realize even putting on the record may make me seem suspicious. But this is the world that Game of Thrones has given us, and I intend to spend this spring’s Sunday evenings fully prepared. Because, well, to watch Game of Thrones is to suspend certain subsets of natural law: Dragons are real, monarchy is good, and incest between consenting, loving, extremely related adults is perfectly fine. Even great. And I cannot freaking wait.
You might recall that the seventh season of Thrones closed with two major developments: One, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen finally got it on after umpteen episodes of eye-snogging (it’s a British thing), and two, time-traveling creep Bran—Jon’s supposed half-brother—delivered (with some direction from Sam) a flashback revealing Jon to in fact be Aegon Targaryen, the legitimate progeny of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen; i.e., Dany’s trueborn nephew, and the holder of an even better claim to the Iron Throne than hers.
As Season 8 commences, our heroes do not yet know that their coitus was between kin: Jon was raised under the belief that he is a bastard of Stark and miscellaneous-wartime-tryst lineage. But he and Daenerys—younger sister to the late Rhaegar—are sure to find out the truth soon: Bran (actually Jon’s cousin, it turns out) knows, and Jon’s best (only?) friend Sam Tarly knows, and Gilly—poor Gilly—especially knows, and one of them is likely to have to break the news to our lovebirds upon their imminent arrival at Winterfell.
Let’s be real: Dany—who, as a Targaryen, comes from a long line of sibling-lovers and who has, among other things, sexily eaten a horse heart to entice a previous beau—is not likely to care much, at least from an ew-gross angle. (Whether she considers this newly risen Targaryen a threat to the throne is another question.) If she likes porking her nephew—and we know she does, given all the panting and smooching in the Season 7 finale—she is probably not going to stop just because of genetic overlap.
Jon, however, might be a different story: Our dude loves rules and honor and generally having no fun at all, and it’s hard to imagine him viewing affectless Bran spilling the sex beans as a positive development.
So as we barrel toward this reckoning, there are two possibilities. One: Jon Snow, repulsed by the revelation that his paramour is, in fact, his aunt, will swear off future attempts at spreading wildling STIs to the Mother of Dragons. Two: Jon Snow, repulsed by the revelation that his paramour is, in fact, his aunt, will decide that, actually, incest is good.
Well, friends, if you’ve seen much of the Season 8 promotional footage, you know that Jon and Dany, man and aunt, nephew and lady, incestee and incestee, sure seem like they’re going to spend a lot of time side by side. This in turn suggests that there is almost certainly going to be a moment at which Jon and Dany, having had the truth—so to speak—laid bare, will once again lock eyes and, with a blush or a wink or maybe nothing at all, slip off their furs and make sweet, knowing, incestuous love.
Can I get a giggity-giggity?
In closing, I leave you with this. Westeros has never been very big on family planning, so if Dany is carrying an aunt-nephew lovechild as the final season of Thrones gets underway, consider this: The baby would be both Jon’s son/daughter as well as his cousin. Mazel tov, everyone.
Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.
