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Benjen Stark, the King Who Never Was


And Stannis Laughed

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First post. So come at me if any of this has been done to death elsewhere. It’s the only way I’ll learn.



Da Greatjon:



"Renly Baratheon is nothing to me, nor Stannis neither. Why should they rule over me and mine, from some flowery seat in Highgarden or Dorne? What do they know of the Wall or the wolfswood or the barrows of the First Men? Even their gods are wrong…[W]hy shouldn't we rule ourselves again? It was the dragons we married, and the dragons are all dead!"



What the first-time reader could miss, amidst their blood pumping at the sheer cathartic awesomeness of Robb’s crowning (which will, of course, eventually be revealed as a colossal mistake resulting in thousands of deaths) is that these questions could just as easily have been applied to Robert during his rebellion as to his brothers upon his death. What right does Robert Baratheon have to tell the North what to do, given the notable lack of dragons to stiffen his commands? The North is separated and defended from the South by the Neck and Moat Cailin, as even the strategy-allergic Ironborn recognized; the Conqueror’s dragons made that natural defense totally irrelevant, and so Torrhen Stark bent the knee rather than let the fire come north. After the fall of House Targaryen, which never stopped trying to revive its game-changing pets, why should the North still subscribe to Aegon’s fiction of a united Westeros?



Well, because power resides where men believe it resides; Robert was king because people called him that. But what drove the northern lords to do so? The easy answer is they bent the knee because Ned did, following his lead as they did Torrhen; I don’t need to belabor the point that most northern lords have a quasi-mystical loyalty to the Starks. And Ned bent the knee in large part out of love for Robert; as Renly declares in the show, "their friendship held the kingdoms together." After Ned’s death, with no analogous bond to the snotty little psychopath on the Iron Throne, the northerners were ready to risk independence.



But Ned was in the Vale during the run-up to the Rebellion. Who was the Stark-in-Winterfell before L and R eloped? I very much doubt it was Lyanna; I can’t think how she and Rhaegar could have made it out of the North unmolested. The "abduction," then, happened after Lyanna was already below the Neck, presumably heading to Riverrun for her brother’s wedding to Catelyn Tully, which also accounts for Brandon’s whereabouts. I also strongly believe Lord Rickard accompanied his daughter south. Given the hints at his Southron Ambitions, and Hoster Tully’s reluctance to fully commit himself to that nascent Stark-Arryn-Baratheon alliance, I can’t imagine Rickard wouldn’t go to Riverrun himself to witness the sealing of the deal.



So Benjen was the Stark in Winterfell, for an unspecified amount of weeks between Rickard’s departure and Ned’s return, the latter very much delayed by a torturous journey via the Fingers and the Sisters. What did Benjen do in this capacity once he heard that his sister had been abducted, his father and brother murdered, and his other brother condemned with no certainty of making it back home alive? I cannot believe he did anything less than call the banners, summoning the northern lords to Winterfell. And what was said within those walls? Remember, communication amongst the lords is controlled by the maesters, and Maester Waelys of Winterfell seems to have been central to stoking Rickard’s aforementioned ambitions. What did he whisper into young Benjen’s ears, when his ravens brought word of the horrific deaths of his liege and the heir? Was the word war, or was it king?



"Why shouldn't we rule ourselves again?" This is the question that I believe lords including Jon Umber, Jeor Mormont, Rickard Karstark, and Roose Bolton put forth to the young Stark-in-Winterfell, their liege lord should Ned fail to return for any number of reasons. The southron alliance, before the hasty betrothals of Ned to Cat and Jon Arryn to Lysa, no doubt looked DOA to these lords. Whoever won the Iron Throne in the end would be weakened, their rule resting on uncertain alliances. What better time for the North to declare their independence? Waelys whispered, the Greatjon roared, and at some point, Benjen agreed to crown Ned…or himself, if Ned didn’t return.



But Ned did make it back home. And when he learned what his brother and bannermen were up to, he freaked right the frak out.



"It was all meant for Brandon. You, Winterfell, everything. He was born to be a King's Hand and a father to queens. I never asked for this cup to pass to me."



Could Catelyn’s reply here echo Benjen’s, years earlier in the immediate wake of Brandon's death?



"Perhaps not," Catelyn said, "but Brandon is dead, and the cup has passed, and you must drink from it, like it or not."



Ned hates being a lord. He is a good soldier at heart, and he desperately needs someone to be conceptually "above" him. He seems to think of himself as Robert’s loyal sidekick, and by the time he reaches Winterfell as its new Lord, he and Jon Arryn probably already had the idea of Robert claiming the crown as a distant cousin of Aerys and Rhaegar. Ned counts Howland Reed as a close friend and wouldn’t want the Neck to suffer at the hands of any southerners who wouldn’t accept Northern independence. He’s also spent long enough in the Vale to lack the reflexive hatred of all things southron as expressed so memorably by the Greatjon. Above all, Ned’s narrow sense of honor would lead him to flinch from the idea of exploiting his family tragedy to enrich his own position. But ignore my blather; Ned makes his feelings about crowns clear to Cersei in AGOT’s defining conversation.



"You should have taken the realm for yourself. It was there for the taking. Jaime told me how you found him on the Iron Throne the day King's Landing fell, and made him yield it up. That was your moment. All you needed to do was climb those steps, and sit. Such a sad mistake."



"I have made more mistakes than you can possibly imagine," Ned said, "but that was not one of them."



So before Ned refused a crown in the south, he refused a crown in the north, and at some point declared his intention to sit Robert on the Iron Throne. What happened next? Mayhaps Maester Waelys tried to manipulate Benjen into usurping Ned’s position. Mayhaps Roose Bolton plotted to kill Ned, planning to rebel against Benjen in turn once the Iron Throne abandoned its claim to the North. I actually think the serious possibility of any such coup occurring would’ve be enough to get Benjen to back down, grieving as he still was for the loss of his father and eldest brother. I could see Benjen taking full responsibility for the aborted conspiracy in order to prevent a northern civil war, and thereafter taking the black both as penance and as a guarantee he will have no part in further plots. Whatever else happened, I’m guessing Eddard Stark killed Maester Waelys. Not only would this execution perfectly epitomize Ned’s rejection of his father’s schemes, not only would it dovetail with Ned's first appearance in the text (executing Gared) and with Robb and Jon’s own reign-defining beheadings, it would also fit with the timing of Maester Luwin’s arrival at Winterfell. Catelyn mentions that Luwin has delivered all her children, which means he entered House Stark’s service nine months after Ned and Cat marry and conceive Robb, at the latest—and Cat would probably have wanted a maester around during the pregnancy; it was her first, and she was alone in a strange castle. According to Lady Dustin (admittedly, a possibly unreliable source talking to an extremely unreliable narrator), Maester Waelys arranged the betrothal of Brandon to Cat. So the Starks need a new Maester sometime between the betrothal and the wedding…why would that be?



The co-conspirators may well have been chastened by the Maester’s death. If Ned is willing to behead a member of his own household, what will he do to them? Perversely, Ned intimidates them into granting him less power than they’re offering, an act of nobility or cowardice, depending on the mindset you bring to the game/dance/song. The rebellious lords likely still held the death of Aerys as their highest priority, and Ned would certainly have agreed...although he would later openly condemn the manner by which the Targaryens are slaughtered. How must his bannermen have felt when they heard their liege express sympathy for the Mad King and his progeny, especially after he spoiled their shot at independence from the southerners who committed those murders? Ned’s inability to break away from the southron entanglements that have brought nothing but grief to his people is exemplified by Jon Snow’s presence in Winterfell. Cat resents the bastard boy as a symbol of her husband’s betrayal of her, but Ned sheltering a son of Rhaegar and Lyanna’s would be treated by Robert as a betrayal of him, which would prove considerably more lethal. If Jon were ever exposed as a dormant dragon, Robert’s wrath would have come down on the north far hotter than it had on Pyke, and Ned would have provoked the devastating invasion that he refused a crown to avoid.



The northern lords, meanwhile, spent the next fifteen years itching for a chance to break away, only to see the realm rally around Robert during the long summer and the Greyjoy Rebellion, the latter giving a bad name to any further secession movements. But then Robert dies, the new king removes Ned’s head, and suddenly, it’s as though the gods have run time backward to give the conspiracy a second chance. Does anyone else think the Greatjon’s coronation speech, and the speed with which his fellow lords follow his lead, feels suspiciously rehearsed? As soon as Robb manages to win a battle or two by sheer surprise, his lords eagerly leap through the reopened window, too proud and pent-up to notice the drop outside… and the spikes waiting several stories below.



As for Benjen, who forsook all for peace but ultimately abandoned the north to those would blunder into war? He’s dead. Dead dead. Dead dead dead. He’s not Coldhands, he’s not the Hooded Man, and WOW is he not Daario. (IMO, Coldhands is Night’s King, Hooded Man is Harwin, and Daario Naharis is Daario gods-damned Naharis, haters.) Benjen is a thread left dangling, a fate to which he condemned himself. We’ll never know if he regretted his decisions, if he encouraged the conspiracy to crown Robb, if he knew the truth about Jon. Benjen Stark didn’t die an epic, song-worthy death like his father and brothers; like the Watch’s own Maester Aemon, he chose to write himself out of that story. Having failed to erase his ancestor Torrhen’s genuinely heroic surrender, Benjen settled for a cheaper form of symbolic power as First Ranger: leading sullen rapists out to die horribly for no reason, hunting wildlings people he swore an oath to protect, murmuring words whose true meaning has been long forgotten. Am I being too harsh? If Benjen took the Others seriously, he would never have let any of his men beyond the Wall; the folly of all rangings is brought home when Benjen’s own men return as wights, infiltrating the Wall and nearly killing the Lord Commander. If Benjen hadn’t gone north, that never would have happened. And yet even as Mormont then excoriates himself and the Watch for forgetting their true foe, he promptly announces the Great Ranging, dooming the Wall’s best to death and worse. Ned, too, upon receiving a letter from Benjen detailing the Watch’s weakness and Mance Rayder’s strength, can think only of leading a Great Ranging himself to deal with the wildlings. At best, this would be a one-off victory that would do nothing to address the Watch’s structural problems. More likely, Ned would be responsible for horrific slaughter and a massive new wight army. He knows nothing.



Finally, the question that got me thinking: Why, why in the hell, does Benjen leave it to Maester Luwin to inform Ned about Jon’s decision to join the Watch? Why not tell Ned himself, and have a direct and intimate conversation about what this would mean for the boy and the family? In fact…why do we not see Benjen conversing with any member of his family besides Jon? Yes, men of the Watch abandon their old families when they take the black, but note that Jon is bewildered by the change in his uncle’s attitude once they reach the Wall, given how openly and unabashedly affectionate he was in Winterfell. I doubt Benjen gets to visit the castle often, given his duties as First Ranger; he seems relaxed and happy during the feast, taking visceral pleasure in the crunch of a fried onion as Jon’s youthful insobriety reminds him of his own initial experiments with booze, which probably happened right there in that same hall. Yet we get no brotherly embrace between Ben and Ned, no scenes of Benjen kissing Cat’s hand or wrestling with Arya or commenting proudly on Sansa’s beauty and Robb’s swordsmanship. In other words, GRRM makes no attempt to integrate Benjen into his painfully brief portrait of the Starks united. Why not?



Remember, GRRM spends four chapters in ADWD on Theon’s own return to the now-ruined castle, where he’s forced to confront his past as a child of Winterfell (not by birth, but it couldn’t matter less) and then as its conqueror; these are some of the best-written and most emotionally and thematically resonant chapters in the series. But for Benjen? Nothing. The show goes so far as to correct this seeming oversight by inventing a conversation between Ned and Ben about Mance and the Others. There is no such scene in the books. We see Benjen solely through Jon’s eyes (in Winterfell, that is), and Jon’s very existence is a symbol of the lasting tensions and grievances of Robert’s Rebellion. When Jon notes his exile from the high table at Winterfell upon the king’s arrival, Benjen muses that the boy would do well at the Wall—just as he himself did after his own exile from Winterfell, which was also prompted by Ned’s deference to Robert and southron rule. Then Jon decides he, too, craves the simplicity and individuality of permanent northern exile, begging his uncle to intervene with Ned on his behalf. Instead, Benjen allows this incredibly emotionally laden piece of information to pass through an intermediary—to his own brother, ostensibly the boy’s father.



I don’t mean to suggest that there’s still actively bad blood between the Stark brothers. If my suspicions are correct, Benjen took the black to prevent his fellow conspirators from violently removing Ned from power; there’s got to be a complex mix of gratitude and pain in there, but little resentment on either side. What does stand out to me is that Ned hugs Robert. Ned takes Robert to visit Lyanna, who was Benjen’s sister and never Robert’s wife. When Ned refused to become King in the North, he was rejecting the chance to rule alongside his brother by birth for a chance to serve the brother he chose, just as Robert did when he tapped Ned for Hand over Stannis. Brandon Stark rode south to rescue his sister from a southron prince. Rickard Stark rode south to rescue his son from a southron king. Eddard Stark rode south to rescue his southron king, after casually musing on maybe one day riding north to rescue his brother. He loves Benjen, but he loves Robert more, and Ned’s decisions during the Rebellion made that painfully clear. A conversation about Jon and the Watch would bring all these tensions and memories to the surface; Ned and Ben have repressed too much for too long to go there, so Ben sends the Maester to conspire on his behalf. Their father would undoubtedly approve.



Anywho, back to the text. Benjen does briefly join the other lords at the high table; is it notable that he enters alongside Theon, who is himself only present in Winterfell thanks to a failed bid for secession? We’re never actually shown him conversing with Ned or Robert, however, and he soon descends to the benches to party with Jon. As it happens, Jon uses a revealing character reference to bolster his appeal to join the Watch.



"I will turn fifteen on my next nameday, and Maester Luwin says bastards grow up faster than other children."



"That's true enough," Benjen said with a downward twist of his mouth. He took Jon's cup from the table, filled it fresh from a nearby pitcher, and drank down a long swallow.



First, note the foreshadowing of the metaphor Ned and Cat use in the very next chapter to describe the responsibilities of inherited power: the cup has passed. Here, Benjen doesn't wait for Jon's cup to be passed--he quite literally takes it for himself. Did he do the same with Ned's "cup," namely Winterfell itself?


Second, Benjen reacts rather strongly to Luwin-via-Jon's evocation of the hard life of the bastard. Bastardy is not only a literal status in ASOIAF; it serves as a metaphor for all disinherited or otherwise alienated children. Tyrion, later in that same chapter, illustrates this concept with the bluntness of the lifelong alcoholic: "All dwarfs are bastards in their father's eyes." It's unlikely Benjen would feel any such empathy if he had freely chosen to take the black. What if he, too, feels like a bastard, driven away by his own blood for the crime of wanting to be free of those that had slaughtered his father and brother? The Night's Watch is the bastard child of Westeros, nigh-universally scorned even as it is expected to do its part to uphold the "family" honor. Surely this is partially why Jon is attracted to the black cloak, but it pains Benjen to witness such earnest declarations, given how he arrived at the Wall.



Jon then cites Daeron I Targaryen as a hero of his. Why? Well, the Young Dragon conquered Dorne, an impressive feat at which all his vaunted ancestors had failed. An annexation is an inverted secession, both of them rewriting the map of Westeros. But what followed this brave campaign, worthy of so many songs? Chaos, disillusionment, death. The wounds were only healed by dynastic marriage, and the geographically distant realm was warily brought back into the king's peace. See the parallels? Benjen might, for he quickly and harshly shoots down Jon's naive hero worship. Daeron only held Dorne for a summer, just as the newly independent North only lasted until Ned refused to make it a reality. And just as the Dornish marriage alliance sowed the seeds for the Blackfyre Rebellion, so Ned's support for Robert merely delays the northern rebellion until Robb comes along, with no such reluctance.



The modern Wall exists as a psychological balm for an entire continent, a DMZ non-space where Westeros sends the people it doesn’t want to think about or acknowledge—bastards, criminals, lunatics, and soldiers whose war stories don’t make into the songs. Benjen and Jon are among these, because they expose the truth that Robert’s Rebellion wasn’t a shining glorious crusade for justice and freedom. It was just another war, and as WWI’s gargantuan bloodshed served, in retrospect, merely to set the stage for WWII’s even higher body count, so Robert’s Rebellion is little more than the prelude for the War of Five Kings, for all that so many AGOT characters are haunted by the Rebellion and its fallout. This is what Ned cannot face, that the crucible in which he was forged was for naught. He swallows his grief for fifteen years and then dies with his secrets, but the sons conceived in his war pay the price.



If Brandon hadn’t been so reckless, if Ned had claimed either crown, if he’d been turned over to the Mad King to burn, if, if, if…the Song is built of the ghosts of possible futures forsaken. In between the lines of the story that is, GRRM hints at a more romantic, cathartic, symmetrical, and traditionally inspiring story that his characters actively abandon. Instead, the Northerners repress their rage until the opportunity arises to exploit young, hapless Robb as a vessel. Thus, the War of Five Kings could have been avoided in even more ways than GRRM explicitly details, but our heroes live in the corner of the multiverse where it all happened anyway. The GNC, badass as it is, ultimately serves as little more than a last pointless checkmate before the Others overturn the board. We, the powerless audience to it all, are left only with the sad, slow songs; the embers and the ashes.



Tl;dr, Benjen tried to crown Ned King in the North at the start of Robert’s Rebellion; Ned refused out of loyalty to brother-I-chose Robert and executed the conspiratorial Maester Waelys; Ben took the black as penance but their relationship has remained strained, with Jon in particular provoking painful memories; the coronation of Robb was planned beforehand as a long-awaited reversal of Ned’s rejection.




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another attempt to create fictional fissures in a fictional family. IF NED DIDNT LIKE BENJEN WHY WOULD HE INVITE HIM TO WELCOME ROBERT TO WINTERFELL? :bang: :bang: :bang: :bang: :fencing:

I tried to stress that Ned doesn't feel intense resentment toward Benjen; merely that their relationship, like so many in AGOT, is haunted by past mistakes and failed ambitions, and that Jon in particular provokes these emotions, as is very clear at least in Ned's case. Above all else, I found it truly bizarre that the northerners easily acquiesced to Robert's rule, given that the argument the Greatjon makes against bending the knee to Stannis or Renly is completely applicable to Robert.

Heehee, 'fictional family,' fair enough. Benjen is nothing more than marks on paper, he doesn't actually have a past. IF YOU WANNA GET ALL DECONSTRUCTIVE ABOUT IT

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I have always said Ned was too much the younger brother, lacking in confidence and ambition.

He should have declared independence after he won Robert's rebellion for him. That would have ended the Iron Throne there and then as Dorne, the West, the Iron Isles and the Vale would have followed suit.

Instead, he meekly bound the North to the Iron Throne once again. He had 8000 years of history in his hands, and he threw it away out of misguided loyalty to the flawed Robert Baratheon.

The 8000 years of Stark kings probably howled in their crypts at his decision.

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Yeah this is pretty thin, like the emperor's new clothes thin.

Oh, totally, lack of textual evidence is glaring, no question. This is just my attempt to plug several holes that jumped out at me in a recent AGOT reread--why did the northern lords bend the knee to Robert, why do we never see Ben and Ned interact at all, what became of the ashes of the Southron Conspiracy, how did Maester Waelys give way to Luwin, why did Ben trust Luwin with word of Jon's decision. If you have better answers to any and all, do share.

Also...that's not how the 'emperor's new clothes' works, unless you think I'm an emperor for some reason. I just got here.

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I have always said Ned was too much the younger brother, lacking in confidence and ambition.

He should have declared independence after he won Robert's rebellion for him. That would have ended the Iron Throne there and then as Dorne, the West, the Iron Isles and the Vale would have followed suit.

Instead, he meekly bound the North to the Iron Throne once again. He had 8000 years of history in his hands, and he threw it away out of misguided loyalty to the flawed Robert Baratheon.

The 8000 years of Stark kings probably howled in their crypts at his decision.

Couldn't agree more, very well put. By the time Robb declares independence, the inertia of Robert's rule lends a patina of legimitacy to his dueling heirs, Joffrey and Stannis, and so the south refuses to accept northern secession.

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Brandon Ice Eyes would have hung Aerys' s entrails on a heart tree and told the southron jackanapes to keep their prancing selves south of Moat Cailin from that day onwards.

Eddard the Meek just signed his kingdom over to be subject to some flowery seat in Highgarden or Dorne yet again.

Ice Eyes, the Hungry Wolf and their like must have gnashed their stone teeth in the dark below Winterfell, at that unworthy move.

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Brandon Ice Eyes would have hung Aerys' s entrails on a heart tree and told the southron jackanapes to keep their prancing selves south of Moat Cailin from that day onwards.

Eddard the Meek just signed his kingdom over to be subject to some flowery seat in Highgarden or Dorne yet again.

Ice Eyes, the Hungry Wolf and their like must have gnashed their stone teeth in the dark below Winterfell, at that unworthy move.

HELL YEAH.

I find it fascinating how it's gradually revealed that Ned, like Torrhen, is a very atypical Stark, and that most of his ancestors were more analogous to the modern-day Umbers in temperament.

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Oh, totally, lack of textual evidence is glaring, no question. This is just my attempt to plug several holes that jumped out at me in a recent AGOT reread--why did the northern lords bend the knee to Robert, why do we never see Ben and Ned interact at all, what became of the ashes of the Southron Conspiracy, how did Maester Waelys give way to Luwin, why did Ben trust Luwin with word of Jon's decision. If you have better answers to any and all, do share.

Because that was the easiest way it worked out, and probably the only way that Ned was going to remain allies with Robert was to support the IT. Can you imagine declaring the North independent after the rebellion's leaders decided to go after the IT? It's a big fuck you to Hoster "I married your eldest daughter" Tully and Jon "Thanks for saving my head Arryn", let alone your best friend who you just spent over a year to put on the Iron Throne. That's on top of what the lack of unity does. It plunges the realm back into independent kingdoms who are going to fight, which is the cherry on top of your allies "betrayal sundae."

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Because that was the easiest way it worked out, and probably the only way that Ned was going to remain allies with Robert was to support the IT. Can you imagine declaring the North independent after the rebellion's leaders decided to go after the IT? It's a big fuck you to Hoster "I married your eldest daughter" Tully and Jon "Thanks for saving my head Arryn", let alone your best friend who you just spent over a year to put on the Iron Throne. That's on top of what the lack of unity does. It plunges the realm back into independent kingdoms who are going to fight, which is the cherry on top of your allies "betrayal sundae."

Right...which is why Ned rejects a northern crown. That was my whole point. Given his friendship with Robert, his time in the Vale, and his father's southron meddlings, Ned is personally invested in staying within the realm. What incentive do his lords have? What benefit has 'one kingdom, one king' brought the North? And why would Jon Arryn care if the north abandons the Iron Throne? Who's to say the separation couldn't be amicable?

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Because that was the easiest way it worked out, and probably the only way that Ned was going to remain allies with Robert was to support the IT. Can you imagine declaring the North independent after the rebellion's leaders decided to go after the IT? It's a big fuck you to Hoster "I married your eldest daughter" Tully and Jon "Thanks for saving my head Arryn", let alone your best friend who you just spent over a year to put on the Iron Throne. That's on top of what the lack of unity does. It plunges the realm back into independent kingdoms who are going to fight, which is the cherry on top of your allies "betrayal sundae."

Moreover, Robert makes it clear he never wanted the throne. It's Tywin who would've caused all sorts of trouble once he arranged the betrothal to Cersei; can't see him giving away half his grandson's inheritance.

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No non-Targ had ever ruled the entirety of Westeros. The Iron Throne and its domains was a purely Targaryen intervention; it's not at all intuitive that the Seven Kingdoms would kneel to Robert just because he took King's Landing, any more than it would've been if Ned had, in fact, claimed the Throne for himself during the Sack. It only seems intuitive to us because we join the story fifteen years later, when much of the realm seems to have acclimated itself to Robert's rule...but only on the surface, which was my point. The Martells and Greyjoys are in fact constantly on the edge of secession, and the Lannisters are actively working to usurp power. Why wouldn't the northern lords, the most anti-federalist faction in Westeros outside Dorne, have a similar scheme?


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Good essay. I always got the impression though that Benjen was as wrapped up in the same tightly-wound honour-and-rules schtick that eventually cost Ned his life. None of the Catelyn POV's touched on any dissention between the Stark brothers either, and something as emotionally intense as one brother siding with the southern king while the other one wanted freedom for the North surely would have generated a few arguments significant enough for Catelyn to mention at least once. What little we saw of Benjen in AGOT really didn't show any indication that he was a crypto-rebel longing to return the North to it's pre-Targaryen independence. Maybe we'll eventually see Benjen again and GRRM can explain why he left Winterfell to join the NW but until then it's all supposition. With the simplest answers almost always being the most true it's merely probable that Benjen was no longer relevant as a spare heir to the North when Ned and Catelyn had their own children so he did what Northmen commonly do and took his services elsewhere, in this case to the NW.



I suspect that Benjen's true significance to the overall story might be that he is the only one other than Howland Reed that can confirm Jon Snow's parentage as I believe that Ned might have been far more comfortable in telling something like that to Benjen (considering that Lyanna was his beloved sister too) than he was to anyone else, including Catelyn. Maybe the real reason that Benjen joined the NW was that he did know everything about Jon and that the Wall and the northern wilds were the safest places for him to keep the secret to himself.


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