One of the more interesting thoughts from Harrington is that because the characters know nothing about each other, "you’ve got to take yourself out of the mindset of the viewer. As far as Jon knows, he’s just meeting this queen he’s heard of and trying to negotiate with her — he’s not meeting Daenerys, who the audience has been watching for so many years. That helps with the surprise of it. He walks into the room and doesn’t expect to see such a beautiful young woman of similar age to him. Any young man’s reaction is going to be, ‘Okay…’ but he puts that aside because he has to." In other words, we realise that Jon Snow is just trying to do his job, regardless of how beautiful he finds Daenerys. These two characters have been shipped since the books were first published in 1996, though in the world of the story, Jon and Daenerys still have no idea how their lives have been intricately intertwined since their births