And in GRRM’s books, being born a bastard is not an absolute bar to inheriting property or titles (they do have to paper over the matter first). In the show, Jon becoming King in the North over Sansa against accepted law and custom is a Watsonian manifestation of two Doylist problems.

Problem One: The Show Was Lazy

See, in the books, GRRM has done the work to create a society where Jon Snow might inherit - if, and only if, disaster struck his family.

When he was very young, too young to understand what it meant to be a bastard, he used to dream that one day Winterfell might be his. Later, when he was older, he was ashamed of those dreams. Winterfell would go to Robb and his sons, or to Bran or Rickon should Robb die childless. And after them came Sansa and Arya. Even to dream otherwise seemed disloyal, as if he was betraying them in his heart, wishing for their deaths. I never wanted this, he thought as he stood before the blue-eyed king and the red woman. I loved Robb, loved all of them…I never wanted any harm to come to them, but it did. And now there’s only me. All he had to do was say the word, and he would be Jon Stark, and nevermore a Snow. - Jon XI, ASoS

The idea of inheritance issues involving Jon is introduced very early:

[Luwin’s] was the perfect solution. Benjen Stark was a Sworn Brother. Jon would be a son to him, the child he would never have. And in time the boy would take the oath as well. He would father no sons who might one day contest with Catelyn’s own grandchildren for Winterfell. - Catelyn II, AGoT

Catelyn II, AGoT, her second chapter, the sixth proper chapter of the entire series. And, as she warns Robb in ASoS,

“If you make Jon legitimate, there is no way to turn him bastard again. Should he wed and breed, any sons you may have by Jeyne will never be safe.” - Catelyn V, ASoS

That fear informs a good deal of the dynamic between Catelyn and Jon, and the way in which Jon feels his bastardy fuels a lot of his decisions. Not exploring that in depth is a repeated failure of Jon’s characterisation on the show. It’s done best in season one, and then largely disappears as an influence on Jon’s character. Certainly we didn’t get a good sense of the emotions in that internal monologue I quoted earlier, from Jon XI of ASoS. Or this:

Every morning they had trained together, since they were big enough to walk; Snow and Stark… […] They were not little boys when they fought, but knights and mighty heroes. […] This morning [Jon] called it first. “I’m the Lord of Winterfell!” he cried, as he had cried a hundred times before. Only this time, this time, Robb had answered, “You can’t be the Lord of Winterfell, you’re bastard-born. My lady mother says you can’t ever be the Lord of Winterfell.” I thought I had forgotten that. - Jon XII, ASoS

Whereupon, with the aid of a blow to the head, Jon goes ballistic on his training partner in the present and has to be pulled off the man. There is perhaps a tiny bit of emotion in play.

And sure enough, as disaster strikes and continues to strike the Starks, the prospect of Jon inheriting over Catelyn’s daughters becomes a real spectre in the minds of both Catelyn and Jon himself (see that first quote again). It gets to the point where Robb ordered, as king, close to what the collected Northern lords did in 6.10:

“A king must have an heir. If I should die in my next battle, the kingdom must not die with me. By law Sansa is next in the line of succession, so Winterfell and the north would pass to her.” His mouth tightened. “To her, and her lord husband. Tyrion Lannister. I cannot allow that. I will not allow that.”

“No,” Catelyn agreed. “You must name another heir, until such time as Jeyne gives you a son.” - Catelyn V, ASoS



Here we have GRRM establishing that Robb - and Catelyn - are now resigned to passing over Sansa permanently in the succession for Winterfell due to her forced marriage. Stannis agrees. Stannis would also pass over Sansa, for the same reasons.

“By right Winterfell should go to my sister Sansa.”

“Lady Lannister, you mean? Are you so eager to see the Imp perched on your father’s seat? I promise you, that will not happen whilst I live, Lord Snow.”

- Jon I, ADWD

Everyone involved here knows that if they were following the accepted laws of succession, Sansa would get Winterfell. Everyone involved here except Jon is ignoring them because the accepted patriarchal laws of marriage are even more absolute. Even Stannis “Laws Should Be Made Of Iron Not Pudding” Baratheon has to pick which laws he’s going to prioritise. Everyone involved here can see that giving the Lannisters a legal claim to Winterfell would be unjust, to more than Sansa alone. She’s been written off as collateral damage.

Back in Catelyn V ASoS, Catelyn suggests some Vale cousins instead, Robb says he’d rather release Jon from his Night’s Watch oaths and legitimise him. The vows are Catelyn’s first and primary argument over appointing Jon Robb’s heir, rather than his bastardy, but she gets to that in due course.



“A bastard cannot inherit.”

“Not unless he’s legitimised by royal decree,” Robb said. “There is more precedent for that than for releasing a Sworn Brother from their oath.”

- Catelyn V, ASoS

Stannis agrees. In fact, Stannis tries to do the same thing by the same method.

“Your Grace,” [Jon] said, “you forget. I am a Snow, not a Stark.”

“It is you who are forgetting,” King Stannis said.

Melisandre put a warm hand on Jon’s arm. “A king can remove the taint of bastardy with a stroke, Lord Snow.” - Jon XI, ASoS

In Catelyn V of ASoS we also get the best info-dump on the complications of bastard inheritance, since GRRM kindly wrote in a whole set of civil wars into the history that revolve around problems with legitimised bastards claiming royal titles.

“Precedent,” [Catelyn] said bitterly. “Yes, Aegon the Fourth legitimised all his bastards on his deathbed. And how much pain, grief, war, and murder grew from that? I know you trust Jon. But can you trust his sons? Or their sons? The Blackfyre pretenders troubled the Targaryens for five generations, until Ser Barristan the Bold slew the last of them on the Stepstones.”

- Catelyn V, ASoS

This is only accentuated by the opening to the Hornwood inheritance crisis in ACoK, where Bran champions Lord Hornwood’s bastard to inherit the disputed lands. (Bran II, ACoK) There’s also the case of Ramsay Snow, who almost certainly murdered his legitimate half-brother Domeric Bolton.

It’s all work. GRRM put effort into building a world where Jon ultimately inheriting Winterfell, even over his living sisters, regardless of the law, is plausible and a point of conflict internal and external.

He wanted [Winterfell], Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. May the gods forgive me. - Jon XII, ASoS

What does the show do? A few people call Jon a bastard and Jon calls himself a bastard, both in contexts that suggest this is a nigh-insurmountable barrier to Jon inheriting, rather than an ever less remote possibility. There’s this disjoint: we’re told bastardy is an absolute bar, and shown that the Northern lords will overlook it at the first sign of a heroic solo cavalry charge and dramatic unsheathing of sword, without the stuff in between GRRM gives us to make it plausible. By rights Winterfell belongs to Sansa, yes, that’s true in book and show - GRRM gives us the stuff necessary to see why societies would elect to ignore that in this case, and the show does not.

When the time came, Jon was acclaimed King off the back of one inspiring speech by Lyanna Mormont and not much else, really. It was cheap. Show!Jon’s deeds throughout the season didn’t warrant the acclaim, and the paper fictions I’ve just quoted don’t exist. It was not earned.



And if show!Jon felt bad about displacing his sister…it doesn’t come through well at all, robbing the scene of redeeming emotional complexity.





Problem Two: The Show is Sexist

It’s all the more egregious because Sansa is right there. Right next to Jon. She didn’t even say anything.

This is where the sexism comes in. Put simply, Sansa is a low priority character, her development and story beats subordinated to developing or showing off other characters. In Catelyn and Robb’s discussion about inheritance, it matters where people believe Sansa (and Arya) are, and what their status is:

“Have you considered your sisters? What of their rights? I agree that the north cannot be permitted to pass to the imp, but what of Arya? By law, she comes after Sansa…your own sister, trueborn…” “…and dead. No one has seen or heard from Arya since they cut Father’s head off. […] Arya’s gone, the same as Bran and Rickon, and they’ll kill Sansa too once the dwarf gets a child from her.” - Catelyn V, ASoS

The belief that Sansa is not escaping Tyrion any time soon influences their decisions. In helping to plan her own escape, Sansa affected the plot. Minor example there.

Sansa affecting the plot was a huge issue last season, where the showrunners decided that her training sequence in the Vale wasn’t worth adapting. Just having a training sequence is a big deal, since characters who receive training in stories use it.

Instead, Sansa was shipped off to Winterfell to be raped.

Now that Ramsay’s dead and this arc has concluded, we can see with a good deal of clarity that the rape was utterly unnecessary. Sansa had plenty of good reasons to hate and fight against the Boltons before any of them laid a finger on her personally. Sansa’s actions while at Winterfell, save her escape (which could have been accomplished without the rape, by the way) did not achieve anything. Sansa’s actions this season, save her begging Littlefinger for help (another thing that could have been done without anyone getting raped), did not achieve anything. Ineffectiveness was imposed upon her, and violence against women was written in for our ostensible entertainment.

What happens with Sansa is that she’s moved around the story for other characters to bounce off of. At first it was Joffrey and Tyrion, then Littlefinger, then Theon and Ramsay, now it’s Jon Snow. The show clearly does not know what to do with Sansa and her skills. It’s been a recurring problem with the show, not quite knowing what to do with female characters who don’t use violence or sex to accomplish their ends, most notably Sansa and Catelyn, but even Cersei in seasons two and three and for big chunks of season six.

Anyway, the show has a habit of having Sansa just kind of…be in scenes, with little to no thought given to what she might do or how she might affect the plot. It’s now reached the point of absurdity, where Sansa sits idly by as everyone forgets the law because damn wasn’t Jon’s action hero slo-mo dramatic last episode?

It’s just another part of the series-long pattern of Sansa’s plot being less important than those of the male characters around her.





Conclusion

I’m not saying Jon being acclaimed King in the North made sense. I’m saying it could have made sense and didn’t. The writers skipped pretty much every single bit of worldbuilding that would have helped them, shutting Sansa out of power (for now) rather than examining the system that would shut her out (and institutionalised discrimination against Jon, and hurt Catelyn badly), and forgot to write Jon Snow as at least competent into the bargain.

They also forgot that Sansa’s a character in this story, hypothetically capable of doing more than one thing per season. Oops?