George R.R. Martin‘s book seriesA Song of Ice and Firehas been around for two decades now, which is much longer before the show came out and people started going crazy over Game of Thrones. And since the books have had immense popularity within avid readers anyway, most fans had already figured out the R+L=J theory, while some of them had done it 20 years ago and confirmed that Jon’s parents were really Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, without having anyone officially reveal that the theory was true. The recent revelation in the season 6 finale of Game of Thrones was hardly surprising to us, but turns out that what fans had known for years was also sneakily confirmed by Martin himself way back in 2002.

Martin is known for dropping hints online about his books, and since there weren’t as many ardent fans of the series as there are now, those hints went somewhat unnoticed. However, now if he was to drop such hints it would be counter-productive considering the fact that the world is filled with smarts fans who would figure out everything on their own. One such incident, where Martin dropped a hint about Jon Snow’s parents, has just come out. A Redditorfound a question and answer session that Martin had with his fans in 2002, when he was asked the following: “Since all of their mothers died, who gave Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and Tyrion Lannister their names?”

Martin answered this: “Mothers can name a child before birth, or during, or after, even while they are dying. Dany was most like [sic] named by her mother, Tyrion by his father, Jon by Ned.”

Now this sneaky reply indicates that Dany and Tyrion were named by their respective parents, but when it came to Jon, Martin said ‘Ned‘, which means that he subtly dropped a hint about Jon saying that it wasn’t his father who named him. It seems that Game of Thrones has learned to drop sneaky hints in the show from Martin himself.