It should probably go without saying that there are huge spoilers ahead, but let's reiterate that here: there are massive, world-shifting spoilers ahead, and you don't want to read on unless you've seen the season 6 finale of Game of Thrones. Seriously, these are big spoilers.

 

 

SPOILERS AHEAD!

 

 

Don't say we didn't warn you.

 

Even if you've read the books, scoured the wikis, and invested a lot of time and mental storage towards keeping track of the many families, houses, and tertiary characters (Hey, Lem Lemoncloak showed up!) of Game of Thrones, the relationships in that world are pretty complicated. While plenty of people knew exactly where Ned was and what was about to happen the first time he was shown outside that big stone tower, it's probably safe to assume that just as many people weren't sure what was going on.

HBO seems to have realized that and has released a handy chart detailing the relationships of the characters involved in that particular story and a recap of what brought Ned to the tower in the first place:

"The only daughter of Rickard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Lyanna Stark was engaged to marry Robert Baratheon. According to Littlefinger, eyebrows were raised at a tourney hosted at Harrenhal when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen rode past his own wife, Princess Elia Martel, and presented his winner's crown of winter roses to Lyanna instead.

Sometime after, news spread that Rhaegar had abducted Lyanna. When her brother Ned made his way to Dorne and found the Tower of Joy, he discovered his sister, Lyanna, drenched in blood and sweat on a bed. “Promise me, Ned,” she whispered as a brown-eyed newborn was placed into her brother’s arms."

 

 

Tower-of-Joy

What's really cool about this is that it makes the big reveal at the end of the season 6 finale absolutely, positively concrete: Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryan are Jon Snow's parents. Though it was all but confirmed by the show, there was a little bit of ambiguity and, because it's Game of Thrones, fan theories were still rampant.

Now it's right there in coloured lines, and we can all go back to speculating on the fate of poor Nymeria the direwolf.

nymeria

Image Courtesy: HBO