Jon Snow, Aragorn, and the myth of the ruler who doesn't want to rule

Vanity Fair ran a piece last week wondering whether Jon Snow would, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings, end the series not as a king, but by leaving for the Gray Havens--the closest thing to that in the violent world of Game of Thrones being the North. Last night's episode where Daenerys goes full dragon-PMS blew that theory up--it's hard to imagine Jon going off to live a life of luxury knowing his family would be subject to a ruler who is now revealed to be a tyrant. But last night does revive the possibility that Jon may end up as king.

That same Vanity Fair article touched upon an idea that's been popular in America since George Washington: the best rulers are the ones who don't want to rule. For many, this brings to mind Aragorn from Tolkien's legendarium, a legendarium Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin has admitted his series is in dialogue with.

Aragorn didn't want to be king, so he was the perfect king, the thinking goes, and now that Daenerys is definitely not the right person for the job, reluctant ruler Jon Snow will be the man for the job.

But is this really a good criterion for a ruler? Doesn't being a ruler require someone who has prepared an entire life specifically for that role?

The idea that Aragorn didn't want to be king is entirely from the movies. Tolkien's Aragorn very much wanted to be king. Elrond, the father of his true love Arwen, would only give his daughter to Aragorn if he first became the king of a united Gondor and Arnor. Aragorn actually spent decades preparing for the test. (True, he trained to win the throne by wandering and being a badass, not to be a good ruler by reading a lot, but it still shows he wanted to be king.)

If there is anything the show has taught us, it's that ruling is always a terribly deft art of threading an impossibly thin needle. There are dangers of being too soft and being too hard. There is danger in too much ambition and too little. You can show too much strength or too little. Someone like Daenerys who has been taught to believe in her destiny to rule might end up going too far in one direction, but a Stark who is always naively good might just as well go too far in the other. The only person right now on Game of Thrones who might be fit to rule is Sansa. Or Tyrion, if he could stop making one wrong decision after another.

A lot of people don't have the ambition to rule. That doesn't mean they should rule. 

I see three possibilities for the last episode next week:

-Daenerys is evil, and she is killed/ousted in favor of someone else, like Jon, Sansa, Tyrion, etc. (A cool scene could take place in which she tries to dragon blast Jon for not bending the knee to her after her nuking the city, and the dragon either won't do it or it doesn't hurt him because he's a Targaryen.)

-Daenerys is evil, but the show ends without a coup being fully carried out. Instead, we're right back where we started with a mad Targaryen and the need to find a king slayer. You can't break the wheel, because in trying to break it, you only make it go round. The entire show was about the futility of trying to escape the game. The game is inevitable.

-Daenerys is, against all reason, right. She had to do what she did. After listening to her advisers tell her over and over to go lightly, she finally had to get raw with her enemies. It's a dark and Machiavellian ending, one in which the worst thing power can do is to be half-hearted. She gets to work and does a good job ruling, after first overpowering everyone who opposes her. (Personally, I don't see this as possible. I think the graphic images of innocent people dying are clear indication she's gone too far to save. But it wouldn't be totally out of line for a show that's been pretty close to an endorsement of realpolitik throughout.)

Whatever happens, I hope we don't think that Jon can save us because of his pure heart that doesn't really want to rule unless we all ask him really nice so he just has to.