Jon Snow

Raised at Winterfell as Eddard Stark's bastard, Jon grew up a second son among trueborn children, sharp-tongued and yearning for a place of his own. He found it at the Wall: he joined the Night's Watch, rose to Lord Commander while still a boy, and chose to let the wildlings through the gates rather than leave them for the dead — a mercy his own brothers repaid with knives.

His story turns on a secret his father kept for a lifetime: he is not Ned's son at all, but Aegon Targaryen, born of Prince Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark — the heir by blood who never knew his own name. Melisandre returned him from that death, and the knowledge cost him more than ignorance ever had: every choice after it asked which family he would be.

He reclaimed Winterfell, was named King in the North by his bannermen, bent the knee to Daenerys Targaryen, and led the fight against the dead at Winterfell. Whether the unfinished books will carry him to the same places the song does, no maester can say — but every telling puts his two bloodlines at the centre of the realm's end.