Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-24734681-20150914214448/@comment-5014364-20150914231903

Read the writeup I did in the episode guide: http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Mother%27s_Mercy#Jon_Snow.27s_fate

In the novels, they grudgingly accept the wildlings coming through the Wall (though they hate it), but then Ramsay Bolton sends a taunting letter to Jon Snow claiming that he defeated and killed Stannis (though the letter might be lying). He also threatens to "cut out your bastard heart and eat it" if Jon doesn't hand over Stannis's wife and daughter.

Jon then proclaims in the courtyard that he is riding south to fight Ramsay: he can't keep letting the Boltons tear the realm apart even as the White Walkers attack from the North. Only THEN do they stab him, not for the wildlings, but explicitly for breaking his vow of neutrality.

So in their view, Jon broke his sacred vow of political neutrality, punishable by death.

In Jon's view, 1 - He can't just let the Boltons tear apart the North, and more importantly 2 - Ramsay directly threatened to kill him, and the neutrality of the Night's Watch is supposed to go both ways; it's a crime to threaten members of the Night's Watch like that.

The TV version goofed this up and made all sorts of plot holes as a result:

1 - Letting wildlings through the Wall isn't really enough to make them want to kill Jon, the way that breaking his vow of neutrality to fight the Boltons would.

2 - ...why the heck would Thorne let Jon and the wildlings through the Wall, only to then stab him in the very next episode? Why would he even let Jon through the Wall in the first place? Why not just lock both him and the wildlings out? What good does killing Jon now do? It doesn't prevent the wildlings from coming through the Wall, they're already there, and now they'd be angry at the Night's Watch for killing the guy who saved them all; keeping in mind that the south side of Castle Black is poorly defended, and the wildlings number around 5,000 to the maybe 50 men still in Castle Black.

...it's...the scriptwriters didn't think this out, it's one of the worst plot holes they ever made.

But they act proud of it as if "hey cool, we killed Jon Snow!"

No...the book author came up with that idea. All they had to do was perform it well, and they didn't, instead cutting so much out that it doesn't make sense.

read the link I posted above.

Any questions?