Kettch said:
That last chapter is still pretty baffling to me. Jon has had so many chances to break his vows in the past, and he finally decides to do it here? Why? Because Mance Rayder means more to him than his entire family? The letter even says "Arya" has escaped, so it's not even to rescue her, he even decided against rescuing her just in the previous chapters.
You're misunderstanding the reasoning behind it. He's not doing it for Mance, duh, it was for the safety of himself and everyone at the Wall (while also maybe thinking he might find Arya before Ramsay and save her). He's doing it because he (thinks he) knows that if he just stays at the Wall, Ramsay will come and possibly cause some unwanted desctruction at a time when Ramsay fucking shit up is REALLY not wanted (not only could he destroy the Night's Watch, it could also cause additional problems with the wildlings) and they really can't protect themselves at all on the Wall. If he lets Ramsay have his time to get his troops together, he knows the Night's Watch will have no way of beating them. If he leaves the Wall and gets killed, then that will remove him from the equation and the Night's Watch should be in no danger from Ramsay anymore. He's kinda thinking of sacrificing himself for the others (I'm sure he knows attacking Winterfell head-on is an almost guaranteed suicide mission, with how much troops they've got gathered there and how hard it is to breach). That's why he doesn't ORDER anyone to come with him, but says that anyone who will, can. Also, as has been said, he might technically not be considered deserting the Night's Watch, if it's to protect the Night's Watch.
Besides, he's kinda deserted the Night's Watch once already. Sure, he didn't get that far before he was caught by his friends, but what he did... it DID theoretically count as deserting and he should've already been punished for it.
I'm also surprised that people are wondering why the Watch decided to turn on him at that point with so many wildlings around. He just made two public statements in front of everyone: 1) He's breaking his vows to the Night's Watch in order to save the king beyond the wall and 2) He's giving the command of the rescue of thousands of wildlings to Tormund Giantsbane.
1) He's not doing it to save the king beyoned the wall
2) why shouldn't he? Tormund knows the lands beyond the wall much better than anyone from Night's Watch. Tormund is a proven warrior, the lot at Night's Watch are basically just prejudiced racists who don't like it for no good reason.
Everything he had done prior to this was reasonable and his men put up with it. Despite not agreeing, they could see the wisdom and it was within his power as Lord Commander. Either of those two things above are completely different. He's a traitor to the Night's Watch and he's putting Night's Watch men under the command of a wildling for the first time instead of the other way around.
I'm not sure putting the Night's Watch at huge dept and letting thousands & thousands of wildlings, who could easily be provoked to cause trouble (or just do that even if unprovoked) is that reasonable. Humane? Yes. Necessary? More or less, but they are rash decisions from which the Night's Watch and the North could suffer a lot from in the long run.