I think everyone involved knew how crucial it was to keep Jon’s Targaryen lineage a secret; if anyone knew or suspected, Jon–as direct heir–would be as good as dead.
Ned doesn’t tell Cat not because he distrusts her, but because he is (fatally!) honorable to a fault and he keeps his promises, especially, I would think, to his dying sister’s last request.
Things can have two meanings.
Also, read the quote from Dany’s visions in the House of the Undying.
jayjay, Dany’s vision shows Rhaegar, but the woman is Elia Martell and the baby is Aegon. Gregor smashes his head against a wall during the sack of King’s Landing.
It’s my opinion that Rhaegar was just mistaken about who the prophecy referred to.
Ah…okay. I forgot that Rhaegar’s son with Elia was named Aegon. And I’m not sure what I meant by what I posted, other than the quote. I was apparently confused somehow…you know how you re-read something you wrote and think “What the hell was my point?” Yeah.
Here’s a question, who named Jon?
I think Ned named him after Jon Arryn.
It’s clearly Hodor.
For “Why not tell Cat,” two reasons. First, he’s not keeping Jon’s parentage in reserve for the next revolution. He wants the secret kept forever. You keep a secret forever by not telling anyone, even those you trust.
Second, he had been married for Cat for 9 months at that point, and they’d been able to actually interact for like 15 hours. Not trusting her with a serious secret is reasonable. By the time he’d grown to love and trust her, he’d been deceiving her about it for years, and she’d already started to resent Jon. Hard to backtrack from that, and much riskier than not. And what would it gain? She’d still probably treat him badly, out of guilt for treating him badly.
That said, while I don’t think Jon is Ned’s son, (there’s way to much careful language when Ned talks and thinks about him) there’s an outside chance that he’s Brandon’s, or Ned’s dad’s Or Robert’s via Lyanna? How long were her and Rhaegar together? Ned COULD have stashed little Rhaegar/Lyanna with someone else, and that all the vagueness in the narration is a smokescreen. And there was some not-particularly-subtle hinting at something between Ned and Lady Starfall. And people have been mistaken about prophecies before, particularly THAT one, and the version of that we got was third hand/seen in a vision. And there’s been no hint that Jon has any Tygarian traits at all.
Beyond a, ah, ‘taste for fire’ shall we say, which is quite a stretch.
The thing is, that’s a LOT of smokescreen, and the Rhaegar+Lyanna=Jon version is the simplest theory that explains a lot of weirdness. Most importantly, if Ned didn’t promise Lianna he’d keep her child safe, what DID he promise?
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Some baby-swaping seems likely, if only because that gives Jon doing the same a nice echo quality.
Isn’t that acknowledging parenthood? There’s a big difference between that, and “We share common blood.”
Or, Ned could tell Cat, and she could bitch about it in public, and be nice to Jon in private. Seems a lot easier for everybody to me.
Which came first, Hodor or Timmy?
Hodor. Game of Thrones came out a year before South Park even started.
Hodor Hodor Hodor.
Hodor?
AUGH! This is why it’s so hard to read the episode threads and keep my spoiler finger out of it…someone over there just posted that they only just realized that Jaime and Cersei weren’t just siblings, but twins. And then hoped she doesn’t get pregnant! AUGH!!!
I just stared at the post and ran through the possible responses in my head for about five minutes before just deciding to post this mini-rant here. It’s SO TEMPTING!
I imagine that the newbies will figure it out before Ned does.
They left Jamie to protect the king, so they knew he’d be safe 
ETA: more seriously, would the Kingsguad even protect her if she was knocked up by Rhaegar. Even if she was, the kid would just be the bastard of the prince, and I don’t think we ever see the Kingsguard protecting any of Roberts bastards.
Yes, but none of Robert’s bastards was birthed by the love of his life.
ETA: And more importantly, they were guarding a very pregnant Lyanna more than the child.
Monty Python’s bridge knight is an object of ridicule, not a model to be emulated. It behooves us to admit the obvious after a certain point.
That would appear to me to be the same interpretation as Snarky_Kong’s. “His is the song of ice and fire.” His being Jon’s.
That makes the two heads of the dragon referred to here Jon and Dany, the baby in the vision and the person watching the vision.
The third head of the dragon is Tyrion Lannister.
This sort of thing can have more than one meaning. Jon’s song is the song of ice and fire. The song applies just as poetically to him personally as to the coming fight.
I remember coming to this conclusion myself but it’s been so long that I forget why. Why is Tyrion the third head?
Isn’t the baby Aegon? Did Rhaegar name two of his sons Aegon?