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[winterisfinallyhere]

How season 7 should have gone...

...if they wanted a believable Dany/Jon love story.

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Even the most dedicated of JonxDany fan must admit that there love story lacks finesse at best and at worst is not a love story at all. As a storyteller and watcher of way too much television, I decided to put together this little re-write of season 7 with an actual Dany x Jon romance. Mostly to demonstrate how easy it could have been done with this was the actual aim of the writers/ producers.

Let’s jump right in.

We’ll assume everything starts off the same. So we have 7x03 with Jon arriving and being stripped of his weapons. Because Dany is careful and so even though this is an impolite way to act towards someone you’ve invited as a guest, we’ll keep it

1# First meeting.

 If I was writing it the first meeting would take place pretty much anywhere but a cold and mostly empty throne room. Maybe over a shared meal, where Dany could talk like equals (which they as Queen / King are at this point). Even her small council / the war room would have made it feel better. But let’s keep the setting the same because Dany of the Many titles likes set-up like this. 

So yeah. It goes pretty similarly only this time, during their first meet, Dany tells him of the Red Woman’s visit and is a tiny bit more open-minded about the prospect of the White Walkers and the speech about how Dany managed it all because she had faith in herself gets taken out.

Jon x Dany would meet and talk and rather than having Tyrion tell her to give Jon the Dragon Glass, she would come to this decision on her own and while perhaps still a little doubtful (not sure why the girl who has three dragons isn’t willing to believe in magic, but I digress). Perhaps here, she’d ask him to bend the knee again (because she sure likes doing that) Jon would point out he’s been named king and can be unnamed(very true). The only way for her to win the north is for her to show the north she’ll fight for them. That if she truly believes herself the true ruler of all of Westeros seven kingdoms, isn’t it her duty to protect all of them? She’d come away from this talk a little unsure.

Next episode we have Jon finding the cave paintings as they mine for dragon glass. Dany agrees that this is something and rather than asking to bend the knee, she suggests he show her the army of the dead. He’d asks, “How? The Wall is hundreds of miles away.” She’d smile and say something like “Do you forget so easily? I have three dragons. I can go anywhere.” But as they exit the cave, Dany learns her forces have been defeated and that the Lanisters army is on the move with food and gold. This is where she gets annoyed with Tyrion and asks Jon’s advice. This time the advice would maybe be more like, “Send your army to handle this, but let us fly north and I’ll show you the true enemy.” She’d agree, because who wouldn’t want to spend hours cuddling with Jon Snow on the back of a dragon?

So this is where things would change majorly. Dany would not take part of the field of fire, but if the desired/ needed outcome here is to have both Sam’s brother and father dead (so he can be lord at some point maybe?) then having the Dothraki kill them would be just as effective. The coolness of a dragon battle would, of course, be lost and so would one of the defining Dark!Dany (bend the knee or die is pretty dark, an executing prisoners of war is a war crime) moments but if DxJ is going to have a happy ending this would just be a good thing.

So, now we have Dany X Jon, off on an adventure together. Possibly Dany just misses her reunion with Jorah, because that would just be for the best. Or it could be included and we’d have some much clearer parallels on how both Jon and Jorah has the hots for Dany but Dany only has eyes for Jon. 

Anyways, JXD are off to see the WW’s army. So many chances for bonding and bantering and maybe some talk of succession. Maybe how they both can’t see much further than the wars. Maybe they’d still stop off at the wall and meet up with the Brotherhood + hound. Maybe not.

Back south the gang left behind could still be attempting to negotiate some sort of peace treaty with the most amazing royal bitch of them all (Cersei) which would be a chance for the Jamie / Tyrion reunion as well as Gendry’s reintroduction. Maybe this meeting could be set up to discuss possible terms for the return of the remaining Sand Snakes / Theon’s sister (which show!!Dany seems to just have forgotten were her allies since it’s no longer convient for her).

In the north, perhaps Dany’s dragons aren’t faring quite as well as she’d hoped. This could serve as a sort of reason to why they suddenly are super easy to kill. Let’s say they do a fly over and Dany sees the Night’s King’s army and is actually horrified by it and the implications.

This is the second big change. Because in order for Dany X Jon to work out, they need to get on the same page about who the real enemy are. Canon!Dany refuses to do this even after seeing the White Walkers and having lost one of her dragons to them.

Let’s say now Dany or Jon together come up with the crazy idea of getting a wight back south. Maybe to get Cersei’s army to help them. Maybe to just show everyone that the danger is real. Not just Cersei (my sweet darling Queen of evil) but the whole realm (because let’s face it, at this point no one really believes in dead men walking). Jon agrees, a little reluctant because he knows that Cersei is not to be trusted. But he tells Dany she can’t come on this mission and instead the Brotherhood without Banners tags along. Before leaving, Jon and Dany would share a romantic kiss and she’d tell him he had to come back to her safe.

Wight hunt goes the same as the show and they end up with one they can bring along. Gendry runs back to Eastwatch but instead of having to send a raven across a whole bloody country, all he has to do is tell Dany and she’s off to save her new boy toy friend. When she shows up, she gets to play the hero, one of the dragons still dies, and instead of being a heroic fool Jon actually takes her hand and get on the dragon. The “awwaaws” in the audience is deafening.

Still wanting to return home, Jon asks Dany to come with him to Winterfell, because even though he’s falling for her he still wants to see Arya and Bran who he hasn’t seen in ages (and maybe first now learn have returned to WF). Maybe at this point, we could have some Jon X Rhaegal bonding? Maybe jokingly suggest Jon could almost fly home himself. She would tell him she can’t leave with the dragons for fear of being attacked by Cersei’s fleat but that she’ll let him return home if that is what he wishes. He chooses to stay with her to go to KL to try to gather more support and awareness.

Yet another quite OoC move, as I believe Cannon!Jon would have gone home. But alas, he’s in love with Dany or at least getting there (because he’s a guy and all guy must fall in love with Dany) and wants to stay with her.

We all know how the rest goes. We’d have the silly dragon pit meet, Cersei would find some other excuse to not accept the treaty other than Jon having bent the knee to Dany. We’d still get the shady exchange between Cersei and Tyrion, which we still don’t know what he promised her to get her to agree.

We can still have everyone reuniting at once (because that was such a great idea) and have Dany x Jon talk about the dying of the dragons and her not being able to have babies. Only she’s as determined as him to fight the NK even if Cersei tells them she won’t help. The stakes are lower, but the still need Cersei’s men to fight for them.

Having gotten their peace treaty, Jon and Dany decide to sail to Winterfell together.

We can have something similar to boat!sex the original with Bran letting us all know just how doomed this love story is in the voice over (only let’s assume they’d have skipped that if JonxDany were endgame. because it made so freaking creepy)!

Thada!

We’ve almost everything happening the same way they did, except for a small few changes in the character’s choices and settings. This way we get Dany actually believing in Jon, Dany X Jon spending private time together, an emotional first kiss, a rescue of lover and we totally eliminate the whole “I am your prisoner” aspect (if she offers to let him leave) and we still end up with creepy boat sex. Jamie can still betray Cersei, Sansa and Arya can still cut LF’s throat and Theon hopefully would have gone to rescue his sister without a Jon Snow pep talk.

So yeah. That’s my take on how Jonerys should have been done if they were actually being portrayed as a romance. But clearly, they weren’t, because there were so many chances to actually add it and make it more believable.

Dany sharing about her brothers should have led to a bonding conversation. The cave scene looks pretty romantic but Dany ruins it by asking him to bend the knee again. Rather than share why he got the scars, Dany figures it out by peeking at him as he sleeps and then deduces from what Davos said about taking a knife in the heart. Jon fails to tell her he saw his Ucel Benjen out there and that he saved him. No first kiss before the sex scene. No emotional commitment/ admission beforehand. No marriage proposal. The list goes on and on.

Point is,DXD  and their whole team didn't just completely forget how to write romance. Which means Jonersy is not the endgame romance we’ve all been waiting for. Jon might very well be attracted to her and in the commentary and in interviews they can tell us DanyXJon are in love as much as they like. But their story, what actually happened on the show was not portrayed as a romance and without changing much else in season 7 probably quite easily could have, begging all viewers to ask, why?

#anti targaryen restoration #anti-daenerys #anti-jonerys #notaromancepeople #pleasenoboatbaby #stark restoration #makingjoneryspossible