Benjen died. Dead men don’t inherit. Whatever he was brought back as, it’s not human. There’s no way the North is going to accept a half-wight as Lord of Winterfell in the best of times, far less so with a zombie army pushing past the Wall.
If you think laws of inheritance trump political reality in Westeros, please take a look at the current occupant of the Iron Throne. Not to mention the current King in the North.
Common Kings landing citizen: At this point i dont care. I’ve got a fishing pole and there are a lot of empty houses.
I sure hope The Hound and Arya are not passing each other on the ladder of moral relativity. Back when they originally visited that farmhouse, The Hound reckoned they were already dead and he saw no need to waist good silver on dead people while Arya argued that they were still alive and that’s what counted.
The Hound knew they were dead but didn’t understand what that meant. Not really. Death was an abstract out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing to him and stumbling upon this farmhouse again removed death from the abstract and laid it painfully on his conscience.
Arya, on the other hand, has turned death from something that is personally painful-- even the death of people she didn’t know-- to a video game achievement. I sure hope she doesn’t kill those Lannister soldiers.
I’d be okay with her slitting the minstrel’s throat though, looked like she sized up the shape of him before she even sat down.
Counterpoint:
In one of the James Herriot stories, Herriot recounts how a medical student’s braggadocio caused him to try a bovine Cesarean operation that goes horribly wrong. He incises the rumen thinking it’s the uterus; the resulting spill leaks into the peritoneal cavity along with muck and dirt from the floor. They do their best to clean up, then deliver the calf, suture the various wounds, and leave. Away from the farm, the student apologizes for feigning familiarity with the operation, and asks if there’s any hope for the cow. Herriot says something like, “I’m afraid not. Peritonitis is inevitable.”
He’s stunned to learn that the next day the cow is on her feet and eating a bit. It not only made a full recovery but went on to have several calves unaided, which Herriot describes as miraculous.
So while I admit there’s an unlikely aspect to Arya’s survival, I don’t say it’s impossible.
Evidently you didn’t notice the smilies there.
My post was pretty obviously tongue in cheek.
We could ask a man if a girl could become a cow by taking its face, but at the time, she didn’t impersonate one. So, a cow’s ability to heal is immaterial.
If you want to establish that “miraculous” recoveries happen in life, I won’t argue the point: too many of them are documented to dismiss them summarily as mistakes or deceptions.
And they are almost a given in many movies and tv shows.
Yet, Game of Thrones established early that injuries have serious consequences: they kill quickly or slowly, they incapacitate for a time or from that point onward, they handicap, and they take a toll on the character’s mind and his (self-)perception.
The Hound’s recovery was highly improbable, but it followed the rules. The same is true for Bran, Jamie, Robert, Ned, Theon and so on.
There are exceptions to the rule: a) when the injury (or curious lack of one) is inconsequential to the plot, or b) when the miraculous recovery is the plot point.
The first exception is such a common practice that we can easily dismiss its unreality for entertainment’s sake as long as the show ignores the implications as well.
The second exception is usually not ignored by the show at all, quite to the contrary: Beric’s and Jon’s resurrections are major plot points, the Hound’s recovery is a milestone in his character arc.
Arya’s improbable recovery is treated like a gimmick. The character goes to the motions associated with a serious injury, but the following action sequence shows her performing feats that should not be possible.*
If the strangeness had been acknowledged within the show, it’d establish the character’s realization that something is different, and the viewer could speculate more easily that we have seen a glimpse of yet another power that comes with her training as a Faceless Man.
By ignoring it, her feats are presented as normal within the show - which doesn’t match its established narrative conventions.
It’s time for a new episode, if we’re reduced to discussing the relative inheritance rights of women vs. bastards vs. the dead.
Clearly you do not understand the pettiness of The Teeming Millions when it comes to GoT. There are still lingering resentments over the Great Potato Debate.
Sure, but Cersei didn’t command those men because she had any LEGAL rights.
There actually is a scene in the show which strongly argues against my position, which is the scene where the entire garrison of Riverrun lays down their arms because Edmure tells them to, and he’s the right heir, even though the Blackfish, who is awesome and has been kicking ass and taking names, and is legitimately in the line of succession, tells them not to. But that’s, in my opinion, one of the stupidest, least realistic things that happens in the entire series. But I suppose that if ingrained belief in the importance of legal inheritance is so strong in Westeros that it causes an entire castle of people to surrender for no reason to their hated enemies, well, maybe I’m not giving it enough credit.
Imagine what we could do if the Sand Snakes were killed and then raised from the dead!
Fifty pages at least!
The only reason anyone follows Cersei (or Tommen) is because of her legal right to command them. She’s clearly not a stable person or a good strategist. If it wasn’t for that, everyone would have followed Kevan after Tywin’s death.
And it’s not like the legal right always supersedes other rights to power. Tywin was a strong enough personality and leader that his will was followed over Joffrey’s even though Joffrey was king. Legal right is one avenue to power and it’s a consideration when judging who has it, but definitely not the only one.
Here’s a hypothetical that just occured to me. Beric and the gang seems to be headed towards the Wall, but can he even climb the Wall after being raised from the dead? Isn’t that exactly what the magic wards are supposed to keep out?
Tommen, as supposedly the offspring of Robert, had a legal right to command. Cersei has zero legal right to command. She is not in the legal line of succession on any basis. Even with respect to Lannister troops, she comes after Jaime (and Tyrion). Cersei is purely a usurper.
I missed that one, do tell! LOL!
That was Jamie’s psychological warfare winning out. When he met with the Blackfish and talked about the useless of allowing all his men to die, he wasn’t talking to Blackfish, he was talking to the soldiers standing around. I found it not the least bit surprising that the men went along with surrender.
Jon passed through the Wall after his resurrection, so there would be no reason Beric couldn’t. But Jon and Beric are actually living, not undead.
Benjen on the other hand has explained he can’t pass through the Wall, since he is undead (although not fully converted to a wight). The Wall apparently only is a barrier to the fully dead.
We have seen the corpses of two dead Rangers be brought through the wall, and be revived as undead after passing through. So evidently you can pass through if actually dead, but not as undead.
He did?
Checking the episodes, maybe I was misremembering and he was only shown in Castle Black itself. But Jon and Beric appear to be fully alive again, not semi-undead like Benjen, so I don’t think there is any reason to suppose they couldn’t cross the wall. In any case, why does Beric have to cross the Wall?
Wasn’t Jon Snow revived on the ground just north of the wall (within the courtyard there)? So technically, he did cross the wall after being revived. I think there’s a difference between being revived as Jon and Beric were, and the sort of revival done by the Night King, and the curse preventing the undead from crossing the wall applies only to the latter.