Introduction

As most know, the books and GRRM have been telling us for 20 years that Ned Stark is Jon Snow’s father, but still there have been doubters. The purpose of this essay will be thus to examine Ned Stark as a possible father for Jon Snow. This will be done by first examining Ned Stark’s reputation as an honourable man who therefore would not lie about having fathered Jon. The paper will then examine Jon Snow’s looks as evidence for Ned Stark being his father and of the story Ned weaves to explain Jon. Following this, the paper will examine Ned’s curious (or rather not so curious) “Jon is my blood” and not “Jon is my son” line to Catelyn in the early days of their marriage, before moving on to examine Bran’s weirwood vision of a younger Ned praying for two people to “grow close as brothers”, and an examination of Jon possessing a direwolf. Then the paper will examine why Ned never told his family who Jon’s mother was, before once again examining Jon’s looks and how they relate to what I call “the bastard look”. Then finally the paper will examine the truths hidden in the faces of children, of which the only truth that can be found is that Jon is Ned’s son. Finally, the essay will finish off with a brief summary of the essay’s major arguments and then some brief parting remarks.

The Honourable Ned Stark says so

Ned Stark was considered by many to be one of the most honourable men in the Seven Kingdoms during his lifetime. When Ned said he would do something, he went through with it to the bitter end.

This is the man whose sense of honour demanded that he tell Cersei Lannister to flee with her children as he planned to tell Robert that Cersei had swindled him and the realm for all these years.

So if honourable Ned Stark says that he fathered Jon Snow, then his character lends enormous credit that he is not lying.
But of course, the very fact that Ned is such an honourable man makes it unlikely that he’d have cheated on Catelyn, which is what he says that he did when he fathered Jon.

He’d agreed to take Catelyn as his wife, and for an honourable man, that would mean forswearing other women. So it would seem out of character that this honourable man broke his vows to Catelyn to father Jon, so perhaps he’s lying. But, as Ned’s best friend tells us repeatedly, Ned Stark couldn’t lie for shit.

As Ned’s best friend, Robert was one of the people most attuned to Ned’s personality and characteristics. On multiple occasions he’s able to note when Ned’s lying to him in AGOT, and the first quote shows that he’s very familiar with Ned’s attempts at lying throughout their life, and has always been able to detect when Ned lies. Yet Robert never detects any hint of a lie regarding Ned’s story of fathering Jon on a common girl named Wylla.

He’s confused that 15 years later Ned is still beating himself up over the fact that he had cheated on a woman he barely knew, but other than that he doesn’t pick up on any hint that Ned is lying to him when Ned says that Wylla is Jon’s mother. And it’s not just that Ned would have had to have sneaked a lie past Robert once regarding Wylla and Jon.

Ned has told Robert before that Wylla is Jon’s mother as Robert remembers her name. They’ve had this conversation at least once before, and Robert has never detected any lie in Ned’s voice, despite being very familiar with how Ned lies. Which is peculiar if Ned is indeed lying. Either Robert isn’t as good at detecting when Ned lies as we are told, or Ned is not lying.

Other than Robert not picking up on Ned possibly lying to him regarding Jon Snow’s mother, there’s a few other clues that make it unlikely that Ned is lying when he says that he is Jon’s father.

First of all, Edric Dayne, the Lord of Starfall in faraway Dorne, confirms Ned’s tale.

We learn that Wylla is indeed a real person, and that she currently serves House Dayne in Dorne, where presumably she is telling the exact same story as Ned for Edric to believe that she is Jon Snow’s mother. Or at the very least, if not Wylla, then someone in House Dayne is repeating the same story as Ned regarding Jon’s parentage and Wylla’s role as Jon’s mother. Regardless, Ned’s is a tale that’s verified by other people as it’s the same story being told in far away Dorne. That makes Ned Stark, Robert Baratheon, Edric Dayne, and Wylla all saying that Jon’s parents are Ned Stark and Wylla.

Some might argue however that Wylla is an impossible mother for Jon as she lives in Dorne and Ned never travelled there in the right timeline for Jon to be “off an age with Robb”. But note that Edric never says in the above quote that Wylla was serving the Dayne’s during the Rebellion. Simply that she’s been serving the Daynes since before Edric was born, which is years after the Rebellion. So Wylla is perfectly capable of having been some chance encounter on the road, as we simply have no idea where she was before she began serving the Daynes in Starfall, or when she began serving them. Furthermore, not only is Ned’s explanation for fathering Jon Snow being verified and repeated by other people literally across the country, we also never hear of anybody doubting it.

Part of this is potentially due to Ned’s honourable reputation (and therefore if he says he fathered Jon then he did), but no one ever wonders that Jon might not have been Ned’s. Jon is obviously at least half Stark, but no one ever thinks that Jon might have been Brandon’s, Benjen’s, Rickard’s, or even Lyanna’s who was supposedly being raped hundreds of times by Rhaegar during the war. With all these Starks who could have supplied Jon with his Stark blood, why does no one ever question if Jon is one of theirs instead of Ned’s? Simple plot device by GRRM? Or is it simply that people have investigated, and not found anything that could indicate that Jon is not Ned’s? Surely guys like Varys and Littlefinger dug up every ounce of information they could find as knowledge is power to men like them, but nope. Everyone seems to be entirely convinced that Jon is indeed Ned’s son. So either Ned has hidden the truth so well that not even masters of secrets like Varys and Littlefinger could find it, or they never tried, or there’s nothing to find as Ned is indeed Jon’s father.

Next though, this paper will examine Jon Snow’s looks and how they help us identify Ned as his father.

The Starkest Stark

It is repeatedly, and I mean repeatedly stated, that Jon looks incredibly like Ned. Qhorin, Cersei, Catelyn, Ned, Tyrion, Stannis and numerous others all say that Jon looks like Ned.

Obviously the Starks have a recognizable family look, but this goes beyond that. People are saying he looks specifically like Ned, which is very important for judging if Ned is Jon’s father, as Ned looked different than Rickard, Brandon, Lyanna, and Benjen.

“She was more beautiful than that,” the king said after a silence. His eyes lingered on Lyanna’s face, as if he could will her back to life.

His uncle was sharp-featured and gaunt as a mountain crag, but there was always a hint of laughter in his blue-grey eyes.

Catelyn notes that Ned wasn’t as handsome as his brother Brandon, Robert (and a few others) tell us that Lyanna was beautiful (and therefore not plain looking like Ned), Benjen was sharp-featured and gaunt, and Rickard had a long stern face. Ned therefore has a distinct look from his family and if Jon looks like Ned so much so that people comment on that fact so often, than we can reasonably conclude that he does not just look like a Stark in general. He looks like Ned, and not Brandon, Lyanna, Benjen, or Rickard. As we all know it’s of course possible to have children who look like their aunts and uncles more so than their own parents, so it’s possible for Jon to still look incredibly like Ned if Ned was his uncle instead of his father, but it’s far more likely that one would look like a specific family member if they were directly related to them.

Which also ties into the fact that no one ever says that Jon looks like Brandon, Benjen, Lyanna, or Rickard. It’s only ever Ned who people say that Jon looks like in the Stark family tree. No one who ever knew the other Starks mention that Jon looks like any of them, which would be particularly odd if Jon was one of their children’s instead of Ned’s as he’d be more likely to look like them than Ned. There’s of course the fact that Arya and Jon apparently resemble each other as Arya has the Stark look, and Arya resembles Lyanna according to Ned so the argument might be there that Jon looks like Lyanna. But no, this is not true, because as noted above, Lyanna was noted to have been beautiful while Ned was plain looking. If Jon truly resembled Lyanna, he would be more handsome, and people would say that he looks like Brandon instead of Ned as Brandon was handsomer than Ned. Or they would simply say that Jon looks like Lyanna. But no, it’s always Ned that people say Jon looks like, even though many people knew the other Starks from Ned’s family and could say that Jon looked like one of them. They don’t, so Jon does not beyond the general Stark features. The resemblance between Arya and Jon is nothing more than the resemblance that they would have shared with any of Ned’s other children had they inherited the Stark look as well.

Which means it’s far more likely that Jon is Ned’s son, than any other Stark. Jon’s looks point to Ned as his parent.

Jon’s looks also potentially help support Ned and Edric’s story that Wylla is Jon’s mother.

Jon is noted to be “dark where Robb was fair” right after Robb was noted to have “fair skin”. This means that Jon has darker skin than Robb. As I pointed out already in this essay, we don’t actually know where Wylla is from, simply that she currently lives in Dorne. But if she lives in Dorne because she is Dornish, then the fact that Jon has dark skin supports the idea that Wylla is his mother as 2/3 Dornish have darker skin.

Assuming Wylla is Dornish, as long as she’s not a stony Dornishwomen, then she would have darker skin. Thus if her and Ned were to have a baby, then this child would have darker skin due to its mother having dark skin. Jon has dark skin, so the signs point to a Dornish woman or Summer Isle woman as his mother, and if Wylla is indeed Dornish, then this is another clue that Ned is indeed not lying when he says that he fathered Jon.

Which fits with the fact that 5/7 characters (Ned, Robert, Cersei, Catelyn, Edric Dayne, Godric Borrell, and Tyrion) who comment on Jon’s parentage possibly think that Jon’s mother was Dornish.

Again, it’s unknown if Wylla is herself Dornish, but she does have a Dornish connection so it seems likely. But regardless, Ned, Robert, and Edric all say that Jon’s mother is Wylla. If she’s Dornish, then they’re saying that Jon has a Dornish mother.

Catelyn and Cersei both think that Ashara Dayne is possibly Jon’s mother, and Ashara was Dornish, so they believe that Jon had a Dornish mother.

Tyrion decides that he cannot see past Jon’s Stark features (and more accurately Ned’s features as should have been noted, Tyrion is one of the many who notes that Jon looks liked Ned) to guess at who Jon’s mother was.

Godric Borrell believes that Jon’s mother was a woman from the Vale, but he has never seen Jon Snow before so he’s hardly reliable for discussing Jon’s features, nor does he ever mention them.

So, that makes 5 of 7 characters who guess at Jon’s mother thinking that she was Dornish. Therefore the majority of characters believe Jon to be of Dornish descent, and there must be a reason for this, otherwise they wouldn’t believe this. Jon therefore potentially has some Dornish features otherwise people wouldn’t believe that he had a Dornish mother. We see that he has dark skin which lends credence to the idea that his mother was Dornish as the Dornish have dark skin, and again, assuming that Wylla is indeed Dornish, then Ned’s story is all adding up to point to him and Wylla being Jon’s parents. Ned and a Dornish woman would make a child who looks like Jon does.

Next this essay will discuss the fact that Ned tells Catelyn that Jon is his blood, and not his son.

The blood of the Stark: Ned’s not so curious choice of phrase when asserting that Jon is his blood

While many might see this as Ned refusing to call Jon his son by instead calling him his blood, this is not so. Calling someone your blood can indeed mean that you are related to them as you share the same blood, but it does refer to your children as well. In fact, that is what it is mainly used to indicate when someone says that someone is their blood in the North.

Ser Rodrik calls Lord Hornwood’s bastard his blood, but not Lady Hornwood’s seeing as he was only Lord Hornwood’s child. This though indicates that calling Lord Hornwood’s bastard his blood indeed indicates that he is his son.

Catelyn calls Arya her blood to indicate that she’s her daughter.

Mormont says that as Eddard’s bastard, Jon is his blood. Therefore calling someone your blood can mean calling them your son. And note that this is the second instance that when discussing a person’s bastard that they are called their father’s blood and not their son in the North as both Jeor Mormont and Ser Rodrik Cassel have now done so. Perhaps that’s the norm to indicate that a bastard is someone’s son?

Mormont says that Jon will never hold a child of his own blood in his own arms, therefore any son of Jon’s could have been called his blood. Interestingly, this quote also implies that if Jon holds any child of Robb’s, he will not be holding a child of his blood. Therefore when Ned says that Jon is his blood, according to this, he cannot be talking about anybody other than his own child.

Jon calls a child of his and Val’s a son of his own blood, thus the child would be his blood, and not any of his other sibling’s blood. Thus my own blood indicates someone who is solely your own blood.

So when Ned called Jon his blood instead of his son to Catelyn, he never said that Jon wasn’t his son. In fact, as these quotes all show, that’s exactly what “my blood” indicates Jon is: Ned’s son. Ned calling Jon his blood did mean that he was calling him his son. He wasn’t avoiding calling Jon his son at all. And besides, Ned does call Jon his son in some of the very first pages of AGOT.

Ned never avoided saying that Jon is his son.

Next this essay will examine Bran’s weirwood vision of a young Ned Stark.

The Truth in The Trees

While many point to this as definite proof that Jon is not Ned’s son, this text is actually far more ambiguous and indeed works perfectly well as showcasing that Jon is indeed Ned’s son. Bran sees Ned asking for two people to grow up close as brothers, and this works perfectly well for Jon and Robb as Jon is not Robb’s brother. He’s his half-brother. Ned asking for them to grow up like brothers implies that he wants them to focus on their similarity, i.e. their shared father, and not their differences, i.e. their different mothers. There need be no hidden meaning behind Ned not saying that Jon and Robb, if that’s who he was discussing, are not brothers, when they are indeed not brothers.

Furthermore, we actually have no idea if Ned is even talking about Jon and Robb here. Ned Stark wants two people to grow up like brothers, but it never says that he wants Jon and Robb to grow up like brothers. A very real possibility is that Ned could be talking about Theon and Robb, who we see did in fact grow very close together. Theon initially says that the Starks didn’t treat him well, but then in Dance says that Ned was a father to him, and certainly Ned never made any attempt not to let Theon grow close to Robb. It seems like he actually encouraged a friendship between Robb and Theon, otherwise why else bring Theon to execute Gared, why bring Theon on hunts with Robb, why have Rodrik train Theon when Rodrik was training Robb and Jon, etc. Ned did clearly did want Theon and Robb to grow up like brothers, and they definitely were not brothers, so they fit about who Ned might be talking about “growing up as close as brothers”.

And finally, the vision says that Ned looks younger, but never how young. Presumably Ned was around 20-21 when he brought Jon back, and 26 when he brought Theon back. In both instances Ned would indeed look much younger than how Bran last saw him at 35 years old, so the timeframe works for both instances. And in both instances, seeing as Ned never consulted Catelyn either time he brought Jon or Theon home, he would indeed need to ask her for forgiveness. The point being though is that the vision is not conclusive about exactly who Ned is talking about, and more importantly, does not automatically indicate that Jon is not Ned’s son.

Next this essay will discuss the importance of Jon’s direwolf Ghost.

Part of the Pack – The Wolves of Ned

At the start of AGOT, the 6 children happen to find 6 direwolf pups. All of the direwolves correspond exactly to the sexes of the children of Ned, and all reflect their owners. In short, they all deeply represent the children, and all of these children happen to be Ned’s. So the fact that Jon also received a direwolf, who mirrors the others in that it is both male and bonds with Jon, indicates that Jon is also a son of Ned’s.

There is an argument to be made that possibly one need not be a child of Ned’s to have received a direwolf. But, I think this argument is flawed, as it seems likely that there are other Stark bastards running about other than Jon.

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/Asshai.com_Interview_in_Barcelona

Benjen implies that he’s slept with a woman and fathered a few bastards, and the SSM implies that Brandon fathered some daughters, or that he died before his son was born, but that he “very well” could have fathered some bastards. Of course there’s no definitive proof that Benjen and Brandon had any bastards, but if Benjen and Brandon’s bastards did not receive a direwolf (at least we’ve never heard of them receiving such, and these are the first direwolves in 200 years so it’s doubtful that they did), then it’s awfully convenient that only Jon, out of all the Stark descendants who are not Ned’s, received a direwolf. It seems far more likely that only Ned’s kids received direwolves, and therefore Jon must be Ned’s son.

Next, this essay will examine why Ned never told his family who Jon’s mother was.

The Silent Bond

The interesting bit here is that Ned wouldn’t speak of who Jon’s mother was when he initially moved in with Catelyn. Not necessarily that he wouldn’t speak of her at all, or might not have spoken of her should anybody have asked him as the years passed. He only refused to answer the question then and there, and then seemingly never went out of his way to talk about it himself over the years.

We have no other reference to Ned refusing to tell his family who Jon’s mother was other than Catelyn’s, as far as I am aware. He simply didn’t talk about it, not that he refused to talk about it when questioned and was actively ignoring his family’s questions surrounding Jon’s mother.

And while many would say that Ned actively tried to keep Jon’s parentage a secret because of the Catelyn quote where he silenced all talks of Ashara, this is not true.

Sansa tells us that there were rumours in Winterfell that Jon’s mother was common born. So clearly Ned was not stopping talks regarding Jon’s mother, otherwise Sansa would never have heard this rumour. All we actually know, is that Ned didn’t allow talks of Ashara Dayne in Winterfell. And Robert and Edric tell us that Wylla was indeed common born, which is what the rumours in Winterfell repeat. So Ned allowed the rumours that were true to percolate, but he would not allow people to believe that Ashara was Jon’s mother. This is likely because if Ashara was not Jon’s mother, than it was a slight on her honour to say that she’d birthed Jon when she did not. Regardless though, Ned clearly was not going out of his way to end talks of who Jon’s mother was in Winterfell, as we see that he let these rumours stand.

Also, let’s say that he did refuse to answer the questions his family were asking. It’s not as though it wouldn’t make sense. Telling his family who he cheated on his wife with would just serve to drive a wedge in the family. It would alienate Catelyn, and it would cause the children to focus on the fact that they were different, instead of similar. And we know that that is definitely not what Ned wanted.

Jon swelled with pride. “Robb is a stronger lance than I am, but I’m the better sword, and Hullen says I sit a horse as well as anyone in the castle.”

We see that Ned went out of his way to include Jon in the family. He made him eat with his trueborn children, he had him trained with Robb, he had him educated with Robb, etc. Ned wanted to unite his family, and went out of his way to do so, so there’s no reason why he should have actively gone out of his way to drive wedges into what he was trying to accomplish, which is what telling everyone who Jon’s mother would do. Better to let it be a mystery and let everyone focus on the fact that they all share him in common.

Next this essay will once again take a look at Jon’s features, but this time it will do so in the context of the other bastards found within the story, and in doing so showcase that there is something called “the bastard look” in the series which serves to prove that Jon is Eddard’s son.

The Bastard Look

We see repeatedly throughout the novels bastards who look like their fathers in some way. When GRRM describes both the bastard and the father, there is repeatedly some aspect of the father’s features in the bastard. I call this “the bastard look”.

Here is every bastard I could find, where there is a description of both the father and the bastard, who has “the bastard look”.

Jon

Robert’s bastards

Jaime Lannister’s bastards

Ramsay

The Sand Snakes

Bittersteel

Daemon Blackfyre

Shiera Seastar

Walder Rivers

Donnel Hill

Aurane Waters

Ronald Storm

While this is obviously not every single bastard that can found in ASOIAF, it is the list of every bastard who has a description of both themselves and their father, and there is a clear pattern that bastards can be identified by who their father was by their features as they have some aspect of their father’s features. Of the bastards I found while researching this part of the essay, where there were descriptions of their and their father’s features in the books to compare each other to, I found only TWO bastards, who DO NOTlook like their father in some way, and that’s Harry Rivers and Ser Glendon Flowers. Want to know what they both have in common however? People doubt that their fathers are actually who they claim they are.

Harry Rivers

Ser Glendon Flowers

The scorn in his voice made Dunk give the youth a closer look. Ser Glendon’s clothes were of good cloth, but well-worn and ill-matched, with the look of hand-me-downs. Tufts of dark brown hairstuck out from beneath his iron halfhelm. The lad himself was short and chunky, with small close-set eyes, thick shoulders, and muscular arms. His eyebrows were shaggy as two caterpillars after a wet spring, his nose bulbous, his chin pugnacious. And he was young. Sixteen, might be. No more than eighteen. Dunk might have taken him for a squire if Ser Kyle had not named him with a ser. The lad had pimples on his cheeks in place of whiskers.

Unless I’ve missed a bastard (and I used the wiki’s Notable Bastard section and looked over every bastard there plus all the others I could think of), Jon’s father pretty much needs to have been a male Stark as GRRM has always made his described bastards take after some aspect of their father’s features and Jon’s features are all Stark. It’s of course possible that Jon is the sole described bastard who’s inherited no features from his father (and thus Lyanna must be his mother for him to look like a Stark), but that seems quite unlikely to me. GRRM has created “the bastard look” which seemingly always showcases the father’s features in some way in their bastard and Jon’s features are all the same features that his father possesses.

Next this essay will examine the truth hidden behind the faces of children to slam home that not only does Jon have “the bastard look”, but his bastard look points to a specific Stark as his father.

The Truth in the Faces of Children

How could they have all been so blind? The truth was there in front of them all the time, written on the children’s faces. Ned felt sick.

While many fans believe that Jon is in fact not the child of Ned, one has to then wonder how that assumption can ever stand in the face of the above quote. Ned is sickened to learn that Cersei has managed to pass off Jaime’s children as Robert’s. Yet if Jon isn’t Ned’s, then that is exactly what Ned himself did by passing off Lyanna/Benjen/Brandon/Rickard’s child as his own all these years. He should be thinking about how he has done the same thing she did, but instead he’s horrified that Cersei not only passed off Jaime’s children as Robert’s, but that she did it so successfully and that someone should have noticed. If Jon isn’t Ned’s, then Ned did the exact same thing, yet he feels nothing but horror to find out that someone could have done such a thing.

And if Jon is Lyanna’s son as most fans seem to think, then the truth would have been written on his face all along like it’s written on Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen’s faces. While I personally do not subscribe to the popular fan held believe that Jon actually looks like Arya beyond that they both have the Stark look, and therefore anyone with the Stark look would look like Jon as well so Arya is not some special case of “real” similarities between their features, it is commonly held that because Arya is said to look like Lyanna, and that because Jon is said to look like Arya, then Jon also looks like Lyanna. So the truth would have been “there in front of them all the time, written on [Jon’s] face” if he was not Eddard’s son, in the same way that the truth is written on Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen’s faces that they are not Robert’s children.

Yet as I had previously explored in this essay, no one remarks upon how Jon looks like Lyanna, despite Jon encountering people who knew her in her lifetime. Yet with Joffrey and the others, people DO see the truth written on their faces. They look at the children and see who their parents truly are, even if they think they’re still Robert’s children.

Sansa sees Joffrey and see’s nothing of his “father” the “stag” in him, only that he’s a “lion”. Which he is as he only has Lannister (lion) blood by being actually Jaime and Cersei’s child. But when people regard Jon, they see nothing of the she-wolf, or the wild wolf, or the young pup, or the elder wolf. They see only the quiet wolf when they look at Jon’s face. The truth is written on the faces of children, and that truth is that Jon is Ned’s son.

Conclusion

Before briefly concluding with some parting remarks, this essay will quickly go over the main arguments in this paper.

Ned Stark is one of the most honourable men in Westoros, but he’s also a terrible liar. Despite this, no one in story has ever doubted that he is Jon Snow’s father, and there are multiple people verifying his tale that he is Jon Snow’s father.

Further evidence that Jon is Ned’s son, is that he distinctly looks like Ned, who looked distinctly different than his siblings. Thus it seems far more likely that he is Ned’s son than any other Stark’s son. Furthermore, Ned’s explanation for who Jon’s mother was seemingly fits with the fact that Jon has dark skin as presumably Wylla is a Dornish woman as she is currently a Dornish servant.

Thirdly, Ned calling Jon his blood by no means meant that he was not calling Jon his son. Rodrick Cassel, Catelyn Tully, Jeor Mormont, and Jon Snow all use the notion of blood to denote someone’s child, thus when Ned says Jon is his blood, he is also calling him his son.

Fourthly, Bran’s weirwood vision does not indicate that Jon is not Ned’s son. Firstly, it’s unclear if Ned is even talking about Jon and Robb in that vision as he could be talking about Robb and Theon, but regardless, Jon is not actually Robb’s brother, Ned’s bastard or not. They are half brothers, and Ned is simply hoping that they will grow up as if they were full brothers.

Fifth, Jon Snow received a direwolf while every trueborn child of Ned and Catelyn’s did as well. Seeing as there is some evidence that there are other Stark bastards than just Jon, but none of them received direwolves seeing as the 6 pups and their mother are the first direwolves seen in 200 years, it seems likely that only Ned’s children received direwolves. Thus Jon is a son of Ned.

Sixth, Ned never ignored his family’s questions regarding Jon Snow’s mother. Rather it seems that he simply didn’t bring it up himself, and choose instead to try and unite his family around their similarities instead of their differences. Ned did not speak of Jon’s mother as to do so would create wedges in his family, which is something that we know that he did not want.

Seventh, GRRM has seemingly created a so called “bastard look” in his series where bastards always inherit some feature of their father. Seeing as Jon’s features are all Stark, Jon’s father must have been a male Stark.

Eighth, Ned feels sickened to learn that Cersei has managed to pass off Jaime’s children as her own. Yet if Jon is not Ned’s, then that is exactly what did himself did by claiming that Jon was his son if he in fact was not. Furthermore, we see that people are able to see who someone’s parents are by looking at the face of the child. Yet everyone agrees that Jon looks like Ned.

In conclusion, Jon is indeed the son of Eddard Stark. He may not have the Stark name, but Ned Stark’s son he is.