The recent history of how Stark is full of mystery.
Ned, Brandon, Liana, their father, Rick Hard, that
generation there's much and more yet unrevealed S run ambitions.
Liana and Rhaegar, the tourney of Harrenhalm, Robert's
Rebellion, things even before that.
In fact, Benjen probably knew Leona better than Ned did, and
that's a really interesting thing.
You'll notice that these are southern plot lines too.
All of these take place in the South, deal with the South,
mostly impact the South of his generation, only Benjen Stark is
tied to all that and the greater mysteries of the North beyond
the Wall. None of his siblings are much
involved in that. Ned executed Garrett, then went
right back to focusing on the South.
Meanwhile, Benjen went in search of Waymar Royce, who Garrett was
last seen with. As soon as he got back to the
Wall, he went on that mission. Only Benjen has knowledge of
what happened to Lyanna amongst the living.
There might be a few exceptions to that, but among people who
knew her well. But not only that, he likely
played a role. He knew Howland Reed too.
He knows who the Night of the Laughing Tree is, and shortly
after that he was the Stark in Winterfell during Robert's
Rebellion. He might know things about the
Tower of Joy, even if Ned never told him, he'd be able to figure
out a lot. No other Starks of his
generation are involved with the Others.
The Children of the Forest, Bloodraven, Cold Hands, and who
knows what else. Only Benjen among the Starks has
the ability to help Bran, and not just to survive.
He luckily has information. Supernatural information, the
answers to mysteries, knowledge of the Others.
There's much to suggest he was the best fighter of his siblings
as well, but his siblings are all dead and technically he may
be too. But that doesn't mean he isn't
walking around, you know, acting like the 1st Ranger.
He was or is still on that final mission, which sometimes that
seems to be a thing with people who have died and come back.
They are focused on that last thing they were doing, whether
it's Stoneheart or Barack Dondarian.
And in this case, that ties him to John, but even more so to
Bran, right? Speaking of John, what does he
know about his past? His parentage?
Does he know about that stuff? He might be the only other one
than Ned that knows the whole truth now.
He might even know things Ned didn't know, things Bran has yet
to learn but might, truths Jon Snow has yet to learn about
himself. If only anyone who could benefit
from that knowledge knew where the heck Benjin is.
Benjin disappears so very early in the story, but the mentions
never stop. Even in A Dance with Dragons,
there's clues and mentionings that just keep going.
Bran's visions even include a young Benjen.
But even Bran with his powers doesn't have an answer to these
questions, at least not yet. So today we take on the longest
running missing persons case in The Song of Ice and Fire, a
mystery that touches on so many other mysteries, past, present,
and of course, future. All that and more on this
episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome back everybody.
I'm Aziz. With me is a Shaya and we are
live almost every Sunday at 3:00 Eastern on YouTube.
Afterwards, you can find the edited version on Spotify about
a week later. And all of the episodes that we
do are also on any platform you want in audio form.
And you can find them ad free if you join us on Patreon at
patreon.com/history of Westeros. This was chosen this topic by
our patrons in topic Smoot 2025. This is the 11th topic Smoot
topic of 16 for the year. And of course, I want to give a
shout out to our good friend Nina good Queen Alley on Tumblr.
Good queenalley.tumblr.com. The latest blog post over there
is a questions about Catlin and Lisa and visitations river to
River Run or vice versa to Winterfell and weather Hostel
Tully ever did. What's the deal with all that?
Good question. You want to see Nina's answer to
that? If you have any questions for
us, certainly feel free to hit us up live or messages at
westeroshistory@gmail.com or anywhere else on the social
media where we exist, which is pretty much everywhere.
You can hit us up on Discord, Facebook, you name it.
At the end of this episode, I'll name some more episodes that
relate to this one. Things that have overlap.
So if you want to stay immersed, we got you covered.
At that same time, I will reveal the answer to this trivia
question, which is what term does Mira Reid use to refer to
Benjin when Speaking of him and the attorney of Haranol?
Let's hear our section headers. What's all the different things
we're talking about today? Our subtitle.
Subtitle subtopics Rather, after our set up we'll talk about the
first mention of Benjen, then his first appearance will run
through his time at Winterfell and then going to the Wall with
John and Tyrion. And then we'll jump back to his
birth and early life. Then we have a section called A
Song for Liana, the Tourney at Harrenhal, The Not So Great
Escape, then Robert's Rebellion, and then a section called 1st
Ranger. And then why Take the Black?
Then where in Westeros is Benjen Stark back in black?
Two of seven Craster's lie, our quote of the week, then the cash
at the 1st, and finally your monster, Benjin Stark.
Let's get right to it, shall we? We did an episode called The
Missing, but only mentioned Benjin in passing because we
knew at the time that he'd get his own episode.
So we spent our time on all the other missing characters who
don't get their own episode, and there's quite a few of them.
That's a long episode. And while we're at it, hit us up
with your Benjin theory. I'm going to say that now.
I'll repeat it at the end, but it's a wide open topic.
There's a lot of ideas. People have been theorizing this
for 20 years more or more. So there's a wide variety of of
things people have come up with and I'd love to hear what you
think. I put a little live stream chat
up that says is Benjin alive? And the answer?
Alive, dead, or undead. Yeah, see what people say.
And now let's start with our first mention quote.
He was the 4th this year, Ned said grimly.
The poor man was half mad. Something had put a fear in him
so deep that my words could not reach him.
He sighed. Ben writes that the strength of
the Night's Watch is down below 1000.
It's not only desertions, they're losing men on rangings
as well. Is it the wildlings?
She asked who else. Nina writes that Ned's who else
is interesting here because it may suggest that Benjen didn't
tell Ned everything he may have suspected about the supernatural
basis for the disappearance of the Nights Watchmen.
If Benjen actually suspected it at all at this point, which he
may not have. That may have come later once he
went in search of Waymar and started to pick up more clues.
But this phrase who else comes up at another time.
It comes up when they find the bodies of Jay for flowers and O
Thor and they say it must have been the free folk.
And some was like, was it the free folk?
And someone said who else? And then John, who's POV it is,
thinks about the unspoken other answer that no one wants to say
out loud, but everyone is thinking that The Who else is
the others. In this same chapter where this
first mansion falls, Ned smiles when he learns that Robert's
coming to visit. Even though he's got a lot to
do, it's going to cause a lot of commotion and and difficulty.
He's still overall happy to that he's going to get to see Robert.
Meanwhile, Catlin gets a sense of dread and thinks about the
antler in the direwolf's neck because of the symbolism there.
But she only speaks about that, always thinks that she doesn't
say it out loud. Instead she says, well, we
should send word to your brother on the wall.
And Ned agrees. He's like, yeah, we should send
a letter to Benjen. It's interesting that Catlin
thinks of that first. But hey, there we go.
And then we Fast forward to the royal arrival, and Benjen is
there. Robert asks Ned if he knows why
he's come quote. For the joy of my company,
surely, he said lightly. And there is the wall.
You need to see it, your grace, to walk along its battlements
and talk to those who man it. The Night's Watch is a shadow of
what it once was, Benjen says. No doubt I will hear what your
brother says soon enough. Robert said.
The wall has stood for what, 8000 years?
It can keep a few days more. I have more pressing concerns.
This is of course, a running theme, right?
The passing of the torch here or absconding of responsibility.
Robert, of course, has no intent of going to the wall, nor does
he have much interest in listening to what Benjen has to
say. Robert is very much just, I
don't want to deal with that. I don't want to deal with that.
That's, that's Robert for you.
It's quite an ominous beginning though, for Benjen, right?
It isn't necessarily something you piece together, but if you
think about it, you have the first thing in the story is
these Rangers getting killed by the Others.
Then Ned talking about all these desertions and how he's just
wrong about what the problem is. He doesn't suggest the others.
He just just thinks it's the free folk.
Then we find out Benjin is 1st Ranger.
So he's immediately, we, we can see that he's going to be in the
midst of all that, like the Rangers are disappearing and
hey, this guy is 1st Ranger. So that's immediately like, uh
oh, what's going to happen? And indeed, well, he does
disappear pretty quickly, though not quite yet.
Those were his first mentions. We haven't actually seen him
yet. Let's get to that.
His first appearance quote. The last of the High Lords to
enter were his uncle Benjen Stark of the Night's Watch, and
his father's ward, young Theon Greyjoy.
Benjen gave John a warm smile as he went by.
Now, this is at the feast, welcoming Robert and Cersei and
all that. Which of course John has to sit
in the back because he's a bastard.
Theon ignores him. That's written here as well.
We didn't quote that part, but it's a little contrast.
Theon ignoring him, Benjen giving him a smile.
Now, the youngest son of many in a noble house has a lot more in
common with a bastard than the rest of his family.
It's a natural that Benjen would have more understanding of what
John is going through, though not entirely, though.
He's not a bastard, but he is very far down in the line of
succession, and there's some overlap in how you get treated.
Ironically, Benjin is the third son, and so is Theon.
We're walking together. But of course, Theon is the heir
and Benjin, well, Benjin was briefly the heir presumptive,
but that obviously changed. So this is where rereaders are
immediately prompted to wonder what Benjin knows about John's
heritage. Obviously, a reader first time
has no clue there's even a question about John's heritage.
And it's a question that repeats every time they speak, every
time you see Benjin and they talk to John and you think about
the undertones of what's being spoken.
It's like, what does he know? You know, it's, it's for the
most part, we're going to assume that he does know the truth
about John's parentage. And we'll go through why and the
reasons why. But if he doesn't know, then
there's nothing really to say. You know, we just move on past
that. So we're we will talk about the
possibility that he does because that's more discussable and
quite possible. And when, what it would mean if
he does know, there's a lot of implications of that.
Now, as an aside, this procession for dinner is like a
procession of the damned. You got Robert, Eddard, Catlin,
Rob, Joffrey, even the survivors have gone through an enormous
amount. Sansa, Arya, Jamie, Cersei,
Tommen and Ricken are probably the most whole.
But I don't think either of them are going to live.
So that's just they're just being held off from the worst
until it happens. Marcella's maimed, Bran is
crippled. Jamie lost the hand that pushed
Bran. Tyrion has lost his nose.
Theon outdoes them all in that department.
And then those who might be a quote alive but survived, it's
kind of an awkward term to use. Survived, right?
Catelyn didn't survive, although she is, you know, walking around
and well, she's not, isn't really talking that much, but
she's making sound. John too, who hasn't stood up
yet, but presumably Will and Benjen, he falls in that
category. So odd how all these people
ended up in these very strange tragic circumstances or
categories. And none of these are good
categories to be in the the crippled, the maimed, the
traumatized, The Walking Dead, like where the, you know, or the
actual dead in the case of the first people I listed, Robert Ed
Eddard, Rob Joffrey, etcetera. Now here's the first time Benjen
speaks and it's a pretty good one.
Let's hear it. Is this one of the direwolves
I've heard so much of? A familiar voice asked, close at
hand. John looked up happily as his
Uncle Ben put a hand on his head and ruffled his hair, much as
John had ruffled the wolves. Yes, he said.
His name is Ghost. It kind of throws me off if
you'll call him Uncle Ben because of the, you know, that
rice brand, which is like a an old black man.
You know this is an old black I was thinking of.
Spider Man. Oh yeah, Uncle Ben, you're
right. Well, I heard of, I think I
heard of the rice before Spider Man, but you're right, that's
the more popular one. Either way, it's it it implies
someone much older than Benjen is.
We'll talk about his age in a minute, but he is nowhere near
old. Shortly after this quote, Benjen
notices how quiet Ghost is. And Benjen says he and his men
here, direwolves sometimes when they're outranging, which is no
one else has really said that because when the direwolves are
found, it's a big deal because no one sees direwolves South of
the Wall and they're very South of the Wall at Winterfell.
It's not particularly close. I mean, that's quite a, quite a
way South. Think about how long it takes
John and Tyrion and Benjen to get to the Wall from Winterfell.
Now, it's funny how John, he's technically incorrect when he
thinks of Eddard as his sire. He's I, I always still call him
his father because he raised him.
And that to me that's if you adopt someone and raise them,
you're their father or mother, right?
So but sire and and you know, birth parent, those are how you
separate that father is who raised you.
Sire is who you know, the actual person who inseminated the woman
or whatever. So he's wrong in that he's
Eddard is not his sire. He thinks of Rob and Sansa
nemesis brothers and sisters incorrect.
But when he thinks of Benjin, his uncle, that is correct
because if he's the son of Lyanna, then he's still Benjin
is still his uncle. Ned would be his uncle too, but
he doesn't think of him now. So that's the he's accidentally
correct with that one. I think that's funny.
Let's get a description of Benjin Stark right here.
Quote. His uncle was sharp, featured
and gaunt as a mountain crag, but there was always a hint of
laughter in his blue Gray eyes. He dressed in black, as befitted
a man of the Night's Watch. Tonight it was rich black velvet
with high leather boots and a wide belt with a silver buckle.
A heavy silver chain was looped round his neck.
So he's sort of a Nights Watch fancy, which is this is the
version of Nights Watch fancy. It's not that fancy, especially
compared to the other Lords and ladies, but a big, you know,
nice leather, black velvet. Like that's not how your typical
Nights Watchman dresses either. It's a little bit of the
disparity we saw with Garrett and Will and how Waymar Royce
was dressed on his first ranging with his moleskin gloves and all
that. But this is probably, this is
not what we see Benjamin dress as normally.
This is just for presenting himself for the royal feast.
The Gray eyes, the blue Gray in this case.
Very common Stark feature Ned has that John has that a lot of
them have that. Ned isn't described as sharp,
featured or gaunt. He's more solemn, kind of hard
to read, inscrutable. But this is probably because of
his life as a Ranger. A lot of time spent out in the
wild, eating very little, eating sparingly.
Lots of activity. Way more.
Yeah. Just way more physical activity
than Ned would have. All that time outdoors.
Yeah. Just living hard, Right.
He's also described as long legged, which almost always
means tall. Doesn't always mean that, but he
usually does. So I think we can take it to
mean he's pretty tall, maybe even taller than Ned.
Though it isn't really mentioned so I doubt he's like a lot
taller than Ned. That would probably be a
description that we get if it's that stand out.
George often likes to give the biggest sense of humor to the
youngest child. He obviously doesn't do it every
single time, but it's it's the aloof youngest sibling trope who
makes fun of things that comes up a lot.
Obviously Benjen is one of them here, but we have Jerry and
Lannister, the youngest of Tywin's siblings, Tyrion himself
the youngest of the next generation.
Stannis is the funny one, right? He's he's he's actually funnier.
But Renly is the one who is more mocking, right?
Renly's sits back and mocks his brother and mocks other people,
Little finger, other, you know, all the that's his kind of his
role early on. Now also, Mance Rayder is
mentioned very early on right in Ned and Catlin's chapters as a
potential dangerous set up for future events.
It's, you know, a lot of foreshadowing and set up is
going on in these early chapters, of course.
And again, this brings us back to Benjen.
It's like, well, so Benjen is the guy that's going to have to
go fight the others because that was what was shown to us in the
prologue. But not only does Ned and no one
else know about that, but they do know about this big threat of
the King beyond the Wall, which Benjen has to face that also,
he's the first guy. He's the guy set up to do the
most right away, even though it doesn't look like that.
He's, this is all in between the line stuff.
He's like, man, this guy has a lot on his plate already.
So this is a lot of fun set up here.
He becomes the most important when he disappears, which is
kind of ironic. But in the early going, his
biggest role is to be a part of John's decision to join the
Watch. And John, in turn, will become
deeply tied to Mance Ryder. And Mance will tell John that
Benjen was, quote, the bane of his people.
That's very high praise, right? I mean, it's begrudging praise,
but it is high praise, especially from Mance because
Mance, he took John apart in the practice yard when they were
sword fighting. It was not close.
So. But but about Benjen, he, you
know, I don't know that it would be so easy.
So. Yeah.
And Mance also remember he to become king beyond the wall.
He defeated every other clan chief, and these are clan chiefs
that some of whom Benjin would have familiarity with, at least
know their names. There's a lot of intertwinings
here. So that's what they're facing.
So this is hugely Benjin knows that well, even if it's not 100%
clear to the readers just how deep this goes.
It's a particularly bad time for the Watt given the king be on
the wall, which is a rare thing like there's king be on the
walls don't happen that often. So you got the return of the
others and a king be on the wall at the same time.
Now we later learn these two things are deeply entwined.
One of the reasons Mance is getting everyone together is to
fight their way into the Seven Kingdoms so they don't have to
be annihilated by the others. Now here's the conversation with
John at the at the at the feast where John tells Ben he wants to
join the Night's Watch. And Ben's like, You sure about
that quote? You might if you knew what it
meant. Benjen said.
If you knew what the oath would cost you, you might be less
eager to pay the price, son. John felt anger rise inside him.
I'm not your son. Benjen Stark stood up.
More is the pity. He put a hand on John's
shoulder. Come back to me after you've
fathered a few bastards of your own, and we'll see how you feel.
That just gets John more mad, of course, because the idea of
bastards is a very hot button issue for John.
I don't think Benjen knew that, but he'd certainly learned it in
that moment. Most likely, it may have seemed
easy for John to idealize a life in the Nights Watch precisely
because of Uncle Benjen. Benjamin was clearly a
relatively familiar face around Winterfell, someone he respected
and again, someone that he had the most in common with, given
his status as a third son, someone that was not given the
noble privileges in the long run, he went off to join the
Night's Watch, which is a very hard thing.
It's honorable, but it's really hard, right?
Not to mention John would have just seen Waymar Royce pass
through another young aristocrat, you know, that would
have that passed through Winterfell and was like, hey,
this is another guy about my age who is joining up like that's
encouraging to him. He's like, ah, I see someone,
someone else doing that, you know, someone from a similar
family. You know, it's it it invites him
to consider doing the same. Now with this comment.
It's a little odd though, isn't it?
If Benjen knows about who John really is.
This is a very this is kind of an aggressive comment to say
Matthew, your father and a few bastards of your own now, I
mean, and for all we know, Benjin doesn't have any
bachelors of his own either. Does he go to Moles town?
Who knows? This has never been mentioned.
It's never been suggested. It's possible.
But hey, who knows, Maybe there's a couple of stark
bastards in the in the in moles town.
But maybe Benjin was testing him, you know, seeing how he
reacted, like if this boy is going to get really upset at a
comment like this, maybe he's not ready.
Maybe that's the shame. He's like he's not emotionally
ready for this. If if words are going to set him
off like that, he's not ready. And this is this is what Tyrion
does to John at the end of the feast.
It could this this theme continues of John's emotional
readiness, of his emotional maturity.
It's almost resolved by Tyrion here.
Benjen throws that comment at him.
He gets really mad. Benjen walks away.
John gets mad, leaves the room, walks outside, encounters Tyrion
and Tyrion says never forget what you are for surely the
world we're not. Make it your strength and it can
never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it and it will
never be used to hurt you. It's it's a follow up to this,
to what Benjin was saying to him, right?
Don't get mad at these things. Be what you are, you know, keep
your cool. Benjin isn't so blunt like this,
but he may have been hoping for an answer like this.
Benjin may have been hoping. John responded more maturely and
said, yeah, well, I don't want to do that.
I'm not I'm not going to do that.
Rather than getting mad about it, he's like, no, I have no
interest in fathering. Best He could have said that
calmly without all the pent up emotion.
This tells Benjen something that that John is, you know, thinks
about this a lot. It's a problem for him.
Now, if he really knows, if he expects John to actually go
fathers and bastards and he knows who John is, that's
dangerous. That's a dangerous suggestion,
right? What if one of those bastards
comes out with purple eyes or or silver hair, right?
That's whoops. It's like that gives away the
game right away. So this is a little bit of
evidence. Maybe the Benjen doesn't know
still, I I still land on that. He does, or at least strongly
suspects, and throughout this episode there'll be a variety of
reasons why. Now, Anita says in a more
general way, even if Ben genuinely knows or suspects it,
he may be referencing the fact that he knows what it costs
John's mother to swear an oath she didn't really understand.
Right. It was Liana who went off and
married Rhaegar, not knowing the full fallout of that event, of
their decision there obviously caused a lot of harm.
If she knew what it would do, I don't think she might not have
very likely wouldn't have done it.
I mean, yeah, if I marry you and all my family is going to die
and the world, the the whole realm is going to be thrown into
civil war. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't do that.
But of course she didn't see that coming.
Benjen doesn't. Here's another interesting thing
though. Benjen doesn't brush John off
even though he says that, even though he's like go fathers
ambassadors. That's why I think that maybe
this was a test that Bencher was giving him because the next
thing he does is goes and tell Maester Lewin that John wants to
join the Night's Watch. If he legitimately wants John to
wait, I don't know if he's going to go tell Maester Lewin so
quickly. And and also interestingly too,
why did he tell Maester Lewin? Why did he not tell Ned?
Interesting, right? Like that's curious.
Why does he tell the maester and not his brother?
Right? That seems strange, right?
I think that's the the kind of thing that you would keep in the
family. Maybe it's too hard, though.
Maybe Benjin, that's not a topic that Benjin and Ned like to they
maybe it's kind of a thing that they don't talk about.
They don't go there, you know, to men that have an unspoken
agreement to just not bring that subject up.
So that's why he goes to talk to Lewin about it.
It's a little indirect. I keep that distance because we
don't go there. We don't talk about that.
Me and Ned. That's a conversation we're not
going to have, but we both have an understanding.
It's not like they're both ignorant of what the other
knows. They just aren't going to go
there. Classic stoic male response to a
problem. They're not going to talk about
it. And maybe it was better to hear
it from a neutral third party. Maybe Ben telling Ned directly
might have seemed like, are you encouraging him?
Like, where did this really come from?
You know, is this really coming from John Leno?
That kind of thing. You want to really know that
it's John's push and not someone else's.
And then the response to this, though, when Lewin mentions this
is that he will go talk to Ben. So they are going to have a
conversation. We don't see it, of course, and
Ned doesn't think about it later.
Would have loved to see that conversations.
We can presume it happened, but yeah, there's no note about it.
So presumably that happened and that conversation happened and
and Ned said, yeah, that's a good idea.
Benjamin said, yeah, I'll you know, I'll we'll make it happen.
But we don't know exactly what was said, of course, but it's
it's super interesting. Now Ned's inner thoughts of all
the PO VS are the most like compartmental wise.
There's things he just doesn't think about because if he did it
would give away too much plot information.
It's one of those things where George is.
This is why George doesn't put us in the heads of characters
who know too much. With Ned, he had to kind of make
an exception by just not having Ned think about certain things.
He doesn't think about Johnson's heritage very much or hardly at
all. The Tower of Joy is just like a
fever dream he has for a minute. Leon is just vague hints of
promise me Ned just like echoes of that without just like
focusing on he doesn't want because he doesn't want to think
about it either. And that reflects this whole
Benjen thing where they don't want to talk about it.
They they don't talk about that. He doesn't even want to think
about it. And I kind of guess that there's
a very strong chance Benjen doesn't like thinking about it
either because of what it means. It leads to thoughts of Lyanna,
thoughts of their father and other brother too.
And that's that's painful. And, and truly, Ned never thinks
about his father or very little, never thinks about his mother, a
little bit about Brandon, a dialogue or two, a few choice
tidbits about Liana, as we said, but pretty much nothing about
Benjen. That's pretty interesting.
Kind of like he doesn't think about his brother really at all.
It's he's almost as out of his thoughts as his parents, right?
So, but that's Ned for you. He can't think about everything.
There's too many things going on in his head.
George has to keep it plot focused.
But it sure would be interesting to to know more about what Ned
thought of his brother. Maybe we'll get the reverse of
that at some point. Maybe we'll find out what
Benjamin thought of Ned and, and maybe Liana and Brandon in the
in the offing as well. Now here's an important moment.
This actually, this scene is not in Ned's head.
It's in Catlin's when Lewin tells Ned about this.
So if we were in Ned's head, it would have maybe triggered some
inner thoughts. And that's probably why George
didn't have the POV for Ned in the scene.
It's Catlin's scene. So they were not in Ned's
thoughts. That's very important.
There's too much to be given away there.
But here's what Catlin thinks. It's it's it's certainly
important here. Quote.
His was the perfect solution. Benjin Stark was a sworn
brother. Sean would be a son to him, the
child he would never have, and in time, the boy would take the
oath as well. He would father no sons who
might someday contest with Catelyn's own grandchildren for
Winterfell. There's some irony there, right?
And the thing the thought she's having about John apply to her
own husband. Except for the child he would
never have because Ned has other children.
But yeah, he would father no sons who might someday contest
with Catlin's own grandchildren for Winterfell.
That comes up later when Rob and and her discuss the succession
and she brings up the black fires and all these other
issues. So Catlin's thrilled with that
idea. It's like, yeah, take the black
gets him out of the way. I've been worried about that
ever since he showed up. You know, he's, he's, she's long
been worried about that. There's a sweet tone to it too,
though, even with all of her kind of.
Terribleness. To John, saying like he would be
a son to him, the child he would never have, that, you know,
would be nice for Benjen, I think, and John.
Yeah, it's a little bit tragic that the, the moment we get
Caitlin's opinion on John is when she's at her lowest in her
entire life. Like she's so sad, so hurt.
And you're right, it's super bitter, you know?
It's a good point, I'm always a little harsh on Caitlin for
that, but she was extra low. But to be pushed back the other
side, there's a number of times where Catlin's called to her,
called to him that we don't see. He thinks about that.
It's not specific. So.
Yeah, so it is a thing. So this is, you're right,
though. This is really nice that, you
know, I mean, she's thinking more about how it would be good
for Ned and how it would be good for her kids.
But it is. She does spare a thought for how
it would be good for John too, and for Benjamin.
And. For Benjamin, I think you know.
She knows. She's known Benjamin a long
time. Yes, very true, very true.
Like, Benjamin would have been there when they arrived at
Winterfell after the war with Rob, baby Rob and Benjamin would
have been there, and she would have gotten to know him a little
bit because he didn't go off the Wall right away.
We'll get to that later, But that's important.
It wasn't an immediate thing. Now, if we think back to just
for fun, George's original plan for the series, like his
original outline, a lot has changed since then, right?
He changed quite a bit. But one of these ideas was
Catlin was going to die beyond the Wall.
He would flee, she would flee with Brandon Aria to the wall
and Benjen and John were going to be like, sorry, I can't help
you. The Nights Watch takes no part.
George were going to have them be that hardcore about it.
So they would flee beyond the wall instead of like, well, the
only way we can escape the Lannisters now is to go north of
the wall and then they get captured by Mance Raider and
then the others attack Mance Raider's camp and Catlin dies.
So that was going to happen and Benjen was still going to move
on at some point, die or something, because George's plan
was for John to take his place as Lord Commander.
So in the original plan, Benjamin was going to be Lord
Commander, not 1st Ranger. But of course, you could be 1st
Ranger and then, you know, step down from that position to
become Lord Commander. That's there's nothing, there's
nothing to say that couldn't happen.
And in fact, that may have been the plan for John initially
before Mormont's like, Nah, I'm going to keep you by my side.
And maybe Benjamin was expected to mentor Waymar Royce as well.
That's a good catch by Nina. After all, John Royce goes
there. He delivers his son to the
Nights Watch. He doesn't descend him.
There he goes. And so there would have been
some conversations, you know, and all that.
And yeah, you got another noble, young noble son of a house that
is a tide to the old gods. At least the Royces, they
probably do a little worshipping of both.
So it's a kind of a natural for a Stark and who's already in a
position of authority to take him under his wing.
Right. And of course, that didn't work
out, but it may be why Benjamin was so keen on finding out what
happened to him. He might have felt responsible,
like, Hey, I was that kid was my, you know, my mentee.
And now he's missing. I got to I got to follow up on
that. This is this is my
responsibility. It would be his responsibility
anyway. He's 1st Ranger, but it might be
more personal because of he might have also seen Waymar as a
something of a son. He never had.
Not as close as John would because he's not as Stark, but
still something along those lines.
Right at Winterfell is our next section.
This is where before Benjin leaves and there's a few things
that happen that are maybe fly under the radar.
There's a hunt, of course, Roberts there.
Of course, they go hunting, right?
And Benjin goes with and this is the last day of Winterfell.
This is like the hunt. And then they're going to come
back and then leave. Presumably when he left Castle
Black to go visit, the idea with from Mormont would be hey, as
usual, because usually this doesn't happen, right?
They're not. You're not supposed to go back
and visit your family. But this is the Starks, The
Starks, right? It's a wink and nod situation
here. The watch isn't supposed to have
this commerce with you're not supposed to.
You're not supposed to remember your families, right?
You're supposed to forget them entirely.
But no one does because he's at the Starks.
You can't have the wall without Winterfell.
That just isn't going to happen. It's it's this is the exception.
It's the unspoken unwritten rule that, all right, the Starks are
different because we're too, they're too important.
We have to rely on them. And this is probably when, you
know, when Robert said, I'm sure I'll get to talk to your brother
later. This is probably when it
happened on the hunt. This is Ben's best access to
Robert, very likely is during this time when they're out in
the wilderness and Robert's kind of in a good mood.
He's out there on the hunt. He's doing something he loves.
Best time to ask for help, right?
Send some help to the watch. That's his main purpose of being
there. But another reason should be
there there. There's another subplot that I
wonder if this is going to be a end of the story type thing that
gets resolved. The Gift Eddard and Benjen
discuss repopulating the Gift. Which are those lands just South
of the Wall. They were gifted to the Wall by
Winterfell. It was supposed to be for them
to farm and feed themselves, but they don't have enough men to do
that. They can't afford to have men
farming those lands and it's gone with the lack of protection
those lands have. Also getting more susceptible to
raiding by free folks. So there's just not much going
on there at all. It's kind of it's semi empty and
that's a waste. And since the Watch has changed
so much, the idea is, well, let's let's do this differently.
We have different levels of manpower, let's come up with a
different system. So the idea is make new Lords,
give them lands in the Gift, but their taxes don't go to
Winterfell like the other Northern Lords.
The Lords of the Gift would give their taxes to the what?
So that gives them tax money instead of, you know, food that
they would have gotten from that land.
So they still get something from it.
But since they don't have the manpower to do it themselves,
well, put some Lords there, be happy to make new nobles and
have them support the watch that way.
It's pretty clever. And it like I said, this is
nothing that's been followed up on.
But at the end of the story, when all is said and done, if
the watch is still a thing, or even if it isn't, you might see
Lords in the in the gift. So it's kind of interesting.
And this is kind of what Ned was saying when he told Bran what
his role was going to be. He said, you're going to be a
bannerman to Rob holding a keep in his brother in your brother's
name. He might have been thinking of
that. He's like, this is maybe Bran
could be one of these. Maybe Stark could be some of
these new Lords of the gift. Because when he says you'll
you'll, you know, command to hold fast for your brother, He's
like, will he? That's not typically what
happens to 2nd, 3rd and 4th sons.
They don't have castles. That's not that common.
So that this is maybe that was fresh on his mind.
He was thinking that's what they would do.
And of course Ned could convince Robert of this.
It would need to be something that both Jor or GR Mormon
agrees to, because when Benjin brings it up, it's implied.
Not even implied. It's said that he believes he
could convince Mormon to do this.
Which means it's not Mormon's idea, which means Mormon hasn't
even heard the idea. Which means it's something that
Ned and Benjin have discussed on their own.
Maybe it was Benjin's idea in the 1st place, which just goes
to show his visionary status, like the things he does.
He's thinking about the Watch as a as a whole, not just from the
perspective of being the 1st Ranger.
We find out much later in A Storm of Swords 2, Not A Storm
of Swords 2. There's only one of them as well
in A Storm of Swords that Benjen had a combo with Bran as well.
It's something that we didn't see in A Game of Thrones, but it
was off page. And Bran just thinks about it
two books later and what happens is Bran recites all the castles
on the wall for his uncle. You know, he's like showing off
for his uncle and Ben Benjen's like, good job, kid could be a
little minor foreshadowing because as much as John is
connected to Benjen, and much as John is like Benjen in a lot of
ways, in the long run, I think Benjen's going to have more to
do with Brand's story than John's.
Probably some of both. But I think Brands is the one
that matters more and he's more connected to in the long run.
So it's important for George to make a little bit of connective
tissue between these characters when things are good so that
they have more of a connection if they meet beyond the wall or
something like that. So then he leaps, he leaves for
the wall. He brings Tyrion and John and
does his thing. They they take their long
journey there. There's also, they pick up some,
some other people along the way. Now, Benjen doesn't like
Lannisters kind of for obvious reasons.
For the same reason the rest of his family isn't big on
Lannisters. So he's not very nice to Tyrion.
Benjen rides really hard and Tyrion thinks a lot of this is
personal. He's like, oh, he's riding
really hard to to wear me out, to prove me out.
You know, it's a show to, to make me look weak.
I'm not sure that's what he's doing.
He might be, but Benjen is this is this probably how Benjen is
like he's why would he ride slowly?
He's an aggressive, you know, go getter.
He offers Tyrion a fur right, and Tyrion thinks Benjen
expected him to regret to reject it.
He's like, Oh no, that's you're too generous.
I don't know that Tyrion red Benjen right there either.
I'm not sure that was his intent.
He's like, I'm going to get you to refuse.
I don't think that's it. And then he thinks Benjen
regretted giving it to him. He's like, he's probably cold
right now. I'm like, I'm not sure that's
true either, Tyrion. It might be, though.
So a little while into their journey, they meet Yarn.
Of course, that's that's interesting.
Like this is the first appearance of yarn and quote.
Five men, three boys, a direwolf, 20 horses and a cage
of Ravens given over to Benjen Stark by Maester Lewin.
No doubt they made a curious fellowship for the Kings Rd. or
any road. Yeah.
Or any road. Yeah, that's true.
That would be strange. Now Tyrion, who is very
observant, sees John observing his new brothers and observes
that he's shocked and disappointed.
He thinks, no doubt the lad thought all the men would be
like his Uncle Ben. Santa imagines the exact thing
later. Nice little irony.
It's like a little little parallel, little crossover
there. When she meets yarn, it's the
same trigger. She meets yarn and she's like, I
thought the Nights Watch were more like my uncle Benjen.
And Joran will later make much of his connection to Benjen.
He will. It's going to be a big plot
point when it comes to Ned and Catlin and some and some things
like that. We'll we'll see you in a minute.
But Benjen's prowess and leadership is outstanding.
That's a really big deal. And that likely left an
impression on Joran and many other brothers.
So that's something that they're all they're all proud of Benjen.
They're all like, this is a great man and he's one of ours.
When they get to the wall, things change a lot, especially
for John. He thinks how Benjen is a
completely different person here.
Like he's changing, he's acting differently, he's treating him
differently. He's not quite as friendly.
He's more, you know, like a authoritative commander, which
is what he is. 1st Ranger is a big responsibility and there's a
lot going on. So Benjen is probably also a
little terse with John because he's high strung given what's
happening. He's got to go beyond the wall
to investigate these disappearances.
He's got to the minute he gets back from this trip, he's headed
out on this ranging that's dangerous and he doesn't know
what he's going to find. It's it's peculiar the the
things he's looking for and the the details they've gotten it.
It doesn't really align with the Free Folk exactly as the
culprits, but that's still what they assume in in the 1st place.
So the idea being there's Garrard's executed by Ned.
They still haven't found any sign of Will or Waymar so he's
got to go look himself. It's the 1st ranger's job.
So that that's so that's a lot of the stress that's immediately
placed on him that he may not have been aware of.
He didn't necessarily know Waymar was missing when he when
he left. He probably did, but that's not
clear. Anyway, the plan is start
heading West towards the shadow tower, look for clues and then
head more N northwesterly towards the mountains towards
the Frost Fangs. And here's what happens because
John gets peevish and thinks he should be allowed to go along.
Which no, of course not John, you have 0 experience.
This is how it goes. Benjen Stark frowned.
A boy you are, and a boy will remain until Sir Alisar says you
were fit to be a man of the Night's Watch.
If you thought your stark blood would win you easy favors, you
were wrong. We put aside our old families
when we swear our vows. Your father will always have a
place in my heart, but these are my brothers now.
He gestured with his dagger at the men around him, all the
hard, cold men in black. These are his picked men.
Benjen Stark is a badass Ranger. Remember, Mance Rayder calls him
the bane of the Free Folk. So the men with him, the men he
chooses to go along, they're badasses too.
Think about Corin Halfan and his crew.
Those guys work together a lot. They knew each other really
well. They all were able to
communicate wordlessly. They all understood what they
would do. They had they had such, they
were of one mind about a lot of things because they'd work
together so much. I got a feeling this is similar
here. These are probably men that have
gone a lot of ranging with Benjen.
They had ultimate utter trust in him and him and them.
Probably just a lot of experience together.
You know, they had a lot of experience getting hard
together. I would say that's accurate, no?
That's true. You are technically correct, the
best kind of correct. So when Benjin Stark, when we
hear that he has this fierce reputation among the free folk,
no doubt some of this credit goes to these men that he that
ride with him regularly as well, or did sad to say, they probably
aren't around anymore. And that's a big part of why
John is not going to be a part of this group.
He doesn't earned his he hasn't earned anything.
He hasn't learned anything and he wouldn't fit into this group
of men that just know each other super well.
And when he when he fits in with Corin's group later, you can see
that there's a little bit of friction.
It actually works out OK, It maybe works out better than
anyone might have thought, but you can see why Benjen would not
want to take a newbie, right? And here's another thing.
Here's another interesting point when Bran is taken hostage right
by those other deserters that the gang that included OSHA,
right? She speaks up and says don't
kill him. Think what Mance would give to
have Benjin Stark's own blood to hostage.
That's the reputation Benjin Stark has.
They're like they don't say Ned Stark's blood.
They don't say the Lord of Winterfell's blood.
They say Benjin Stark's own blood, right.
That's the the person that they have front and center in their
mind. He's the big boogeyman, the big
villain, the big ultimate enemy. Ironically as well, there's a
lot of ironies here. Mance will have Benjen's own
blood to hostage later in the form of Jon Snow.
And let's get back to Jon with that, Who witnesses the very
last sight of Benjen Stark, the last time we see him, and he has
a bad feeling. As he watched his uncle lead his
horse into the tunnel, John had remembered the things that
Tyrion Lannister told him on the King's Road, and in his mind's
eye he saw Ben Stark lying dead, his blood red on the snow.
The thought made him sick. What was he becoming?
This is part of John's character growth.
He gets reality checked by Tyrion about what the Nights
Watch is, then by his uncle about what his role will be,
then by Donald Noy about who the bully is and his own privilege
that he doesn't recognize, then by Maester Amon, then by Lord
Commander Mormont, then by his friends after he deserts.
John is reality checked and corrected by a lot of people
early on. Benjamin just wanted them.
He's just like the second one to do it.
And John Kerry's a lot of guilt about this, but he wasn't
actually fantasizing about his uncle's death.
He was just, it just popped in his mind.
That's, that's just fear, John. That's not, that's not cold.
You're not hoping he dies. That's just worry, you know, And
for good reason, as it turns out, time passes.
No word. Even Tyrion notes that Benjen
seems to be gone a long time. And that's kind of interesting
in and of itself. The Tyrion stayed at the Wall so
long. And then the news gets to
Winterfell. It's a big part of book one.
Everyone hears about Ben's disappearance.
A lot of people weigh in on it. Rob gets angry when Joran
suggests that Benjen's lost, and Alistar Thorne is a jerk about
it, suggesting Benjen is conspiring with Mance Rayder.
I don't know if he's sincere about that or if he just wants
to make John mad, which it definitely does make John mad.
Yet another thing that a piece of John's immaturity that he has
to get over. Don't let him get you mad like
that. And Bran's response to hearing
that Benjen is missing might be the most interesting of all.
Quote. All Bran could think of was Old
Nan's story of the Others in The Last Hero, hounded through the
White Woods by dead men and spiders as big as hounds.
He was afraid for a moment, until he remembered how that
story ended. The children will help him, he
blurted. The Children of the Forest.
The Children did help you, Bran. I'm not sure about Benjen.
You know, if they helped Benjen too, maybe they would have
revealed him to you, but maybe not.
It's definitely possible, though we certainly can't rule it out.
We can pretty much rule out Benjen being the last hero,
though. You know that's more likely to
be Bran or someone else. John, who knows, but not Benjen,
but they could be the children could be the reason he's not a
white. If he is, you know, some sort of
other white, something like cold hands, but not cold hands
specifically. There could be a similar sort of
magic in play and that could be because of the children.
They could, they could have prevented the full
transformation or gotten to him first, that kind of thing.
Not sure, of course, but a lot of good interesting
possibilities here in the supernatural vein.
It's kind of like some macabre game that the old bear keeps
losing but keeps on playing, like chasing his losses kind of
thing. Like, well, Sir, Sir Waymar
disappeared, send out Benjen. Benjen disappears, send out
more, you know, like for him, like wait, at some point you
would hold on. But actually this one doesn't go
badly. Quote.
The Old Bear had sent out Rangers in search of him.
Sir Jeremy Reicher had LED 2 sweeps and core in half hand had
gone forth from the Shadow Tower, but they found nothing
aside from a few blazes in the trees that his uncle had left to
mark his way in the Stony Highlands to the northwest.
The marks stopped abruptly and all trace of Ben Stark vanished.
So this time it wasn't a disaster.
People didn't disappear. The group returned, but they
didn't succeed either. They got enough evidence to
learn roughly where Ben probably disappeared, but that's it.
So the thing they learned is they don't know not exactly
clear where this what this means the in the Stony Highlands to
the northwest. But if you look at the
northwest, that's near the first of the first men, which is
where, you know, the Rangers get turned back because of the
attack there. And we have a lot of reason to
think that that may have been a pivotal location for Ben as well
as we'll get to now. It's at this moment that John
realizes Benjen was right, that he feels the same way now that
the watch are his two brothers. Now he notices that they don't
give up on each other easily, that they, you know, some of
them disappear. You got to go find them.
You can't just like write that off.
You know, the brothers look after the brothers almost like a
family would, which is what Benjen said.
He said, you know, Ned, all he's all have is a place in my heart.
But these are my brothers now. But also, what could have done
this? There's that unspoken fear
amongst all this. What could have done that to
Benjin Stark? He has had such a reputation of
the bane of the Free Folk. So much is said about how he's
just an unstoppable force against the Free Folk.
They just can't take him on. There's they're all afraid of
him. So it just, it's spelling out
that it was something else. We're not supposed to be.
We're not supposed to think, oh, this is the finally he slipped
up, the Free Folk finally got him.
I don't really don't think so, Especially because we meet the
whole Free Folk army. We meet Manson.
There's no word of that. They don't mention yet we got
him. They would be proud of it.
If someone killed Benjen amongst the Free Folk, the gossip would
be everywhere. They'd be like, that dude would
be proud or that dudette, whoever it was, would be like,
yeah, I killed the boogeyman, I killed Benjen Stark.
That's a big deal. But no one's claiming that.
No one's claiming that victory. We could be sure that someone
would if they did. So that very strongly speaks to
it being the Others. And this is also how Joran sees
it, by the way. And I don't mean the Others.
I mean Joran sees Benjin as a brother.
And this is where Joran cheats a little bit.
This is where Joran thinks, OK, he's stretching the rules
because he sees Benjin as a brother and that makes him loyal
to him. He what he says to Eddard is
Benjen's as much my brother as he is yours and because of that
he rides hard from the end at the crossroads to tell Ned that
Catlin impnapped Tyrion right. That's a clear violation of the
nights watch code. You're in Rd.
South to tell Ned this. This is what is it that has
nothing to do with the nights watch right.
This is a clear violation, but he he has his out.
He's like, well, you're my brother too, because we're both
Benjen's brothers. So I had to tell you, you know,
and of course Ned's not going to even Ned, who's a stickler for
rules, isn't going to be like, you shouldn't have told me that.
That's against the your rules there.
He doesn't nothing like that. He's like, thank you.
You know, I that's good information for me.
I needed to know that. And again, Joran is probably
it's not just his brother. He's the the brother.
This is the leader, you know, besides the Lord Commander and
even a lot of people probably respect Benjin more than Mormont
because of his fighting prowess, you know, like the, the guy who
takes on these missions himself. He's he goes out and faces the
dangers first hand. So I, I would think that that's
the general attitude amongst the nights Watch is Benjin's the
guy. So Joran would, you know,
Joran's kind of a sour man, But this is this is someone
different. This is Benjin Stark, the guy
that he has a lot of respect for.
If Benjin doesn't, if Joran doesn't have respect for Benjin,
he doesn't have respect for anybody.
And and again, Benjin is never forgotten.
He disappears early in A Game of Thrones, but we're never meant
to forget it. It comes up often even.
He's mentioned a lot in A Storm of Swords by A Dance with
Dragons. He's officially been replaced by
Blackjack Bulwer, who was in turn killed by the Weeper.
Before that, there's a revolving door of First Rangers as well,
acting First Rangers, because it's a while before they
officially say, all right, well, let's not just go acting 1st
Ranger. It's been three years.
We got to go with just a new 1st Ranger.
The first one was Sir Jeremy Reicher.
He's killed by one of the two whites that they bring back from
the Grove. Then Thorin Smallwood, who
nobody likes, but Mormont decides to give him the job
anyway because he's at least strong and but he's killed with
the first of the first man. Then Ronald Harkly is named.
Ronald Harkly just disappears. He's presumably killed in the
mutiny 'cause we never hear from him again.
And we can assume he's dead because Blackjack Bulwer was was
then made First Ranger and then killed by the weaker.
So there's actually no 1st Ranger right now.
That's kind of an interesting point too.
But even John has that little bit of stubbornness when
thinking about Benjen. In A Dance with Dragons.
He thinks my uncle is lost in the frozen wild.
He doesn't think of him as dead. In every appendix after A Game
of Thrones he's listed as lost Beyond the Wall still marked as
alive, but A Feast for Crows and Dance With Dragons mark him as
presumed dead. We will return to the subject of
his disappearance, but let's first delve into his past that
will help us understand all this from a narrative perspective as
well as the character perspective.
Jay Tanner sends a super chat and says what's up My fellow
historians, second week catching a live stream.
Thank you for all your hard work hearts.
Thank you as well to you, Jay Tanner and everybody else
hanging out. We really appreciate you all.
We wouldn't be able to do it without you.
I feel very privileged of it to do this for a living, and we'll
keep them coming. I always get a kick out of
people who've been listening for a long time, but only now
catching their first live streams.
I like to see it. It's nice to see new names in
the live stream chat. Also nice to see names we
recognize from emails from years past.
I don't know, it's just nice. Yeah.
We got a little community going here.
Don't we last long running community?
Yeah. It's it's it's fun to see
familiar faces. It's not so big that we don't
get to recognize people here and there.
It's not just like a stream of names, you know, We, we, it's
small enough that we remember y'all most of the time, birth
and early life. He was of course the 4th of four
children rather born to Liana and Liara and Rickard.
And of course Liara was Rickard's first cousin.
So these are, it's almost an incest pairing.
It's the equivalent of Joanna and Tywin's marriage.
So Brandon, then Eddard, then Liana and then Benjin.
And of course, they're all they have a Stark mother and a Stark
father. The oldest Benjen could have
been when he left on that last ranging when we saw him
disappear in John's POV would be 31 ish.
That would make him a year ish younger than Lyanna, which is
that's as old as he could be. He couldn't be much like the
oldest he could be is 9 months younger than Lyanna.
That's that's really pushing it. Obviously like she gets pregnant
immediately after. That's so not quite that soon,
but pretty close. And I think that's about right.
Like the he could be a lot younger, but I don't that
doesn't really work with a lot of the other scenes.
Liana and Benjen, there's a lot of things with them together and
that kind of implies that they're close in age, probably
closer than any other siblings are.
I doubt that they're more than three years apart.
I tend to think that they're only about a year and a half
apart. So that means he's born around
267, but not earlier. Remember, it's 298 when the
books start, about 300, three, 101.
Now, the major event of 267 for assuming that's Benjen's birth
year was the death of Titos on the subsequent ascension of
Tywin. If he's born in 267, that's
about the same age as Littlefinger, about three years
younger than Stannis, a year 2 younger than Jamie and Cersei,
about six years older than Tyrion, and about four to five
years younger than Ned. Benjin is a traditional Stark
name, and I want to say Stark name, not Northern name.
It could be a Northern name, but frankly, the only Benjins we
have are Starks. All the Starks are Benjins.
I mean, all the vengeance are Starks.
Rather, not all the Starks are Benjins.
There was a King Benjin the Sweet, a King Benjin the Bitter,
who is his son. There was a Lord Benjin during
the reign of Viserys the First. There was a Benjin who was the
eldest son of Bernard Stark and Margaret Karstark.
That was the Bernard who tried to usurp Kragen, meaning the old
man in the North when he was the young man in the North.
So before they answer the Dragons and Artos, the
Implacable's youngest son was a Benjin as well.
So yeah, no other Benjins on any other house.
There probably are, we just haven't seen them.
But it's kind of funny that it worked out that way.
There's also the name Benjicot, which is also seem to be pretty
Northern. Don't know of any other
Benjicots that aren't Northern or Blackwood, which is Northern
culture. So that's, that's interesting,
but probably not much to say about that.
It did make it a little tricky looking up Benjen references
throughout the books 'cause he's called Ben half the time and
there's a lot of Ben's, you know, and Ben can be part of
another word. So it was a little tricky
finding all the talk about Benjen, but it was worth it.
So earlier I mentioned that in A Dance with Dragons, there's a
very crucial mention actually appearance of Benjen, and it's
in a vision by Bran, that cascading vision that goes
backwards in time. Here's the slice of that
containing Benjen it's awesome quote.
The rest of his father's words were drowned out by a sudden
clatter of wood. On wood, Eddard Stark dissolved
like mist in a morning sun. Now two children danced across
the godswood, cooting at one another as they dueled with
broken branches. The girl was the older and
taller of the two. Arya, Bran thought eagerly as he
watched her leap up onto a rock and cut at the boy.
But that couldn't be right. If the girl was Arya, the boy
was Bran himself, and he had never worn his hair so long.
And Arya never beat me playing swords the way that girl is
beating him. She slashed the boy across his
thigh so hard that his leg went out from under him and he fell
into the pool and began to splash and shout.
You be quiet, stupid. The girl said, tossing her own
branch aside. It's just water.
Do you want Old Nan to hear and run?
Tell Father. She knelt and pulled her brother
from the pool, but before she got him out again, the two of
them were gone. So it isn't just the knowledge
that it's not Arya and Bran, but the mention of Old Nan, Old Nan,
not Nan, not Young Nan. So this isn't that far in the
past of the one generation back. So yeah, that's Liana and that's
Benjin, the girl obviously beating the boy.
And that's very telling, right? They were playing with sticks.
Cause as we've heard Ned say, Liana would have carried a sword
around if my father, if our father permitted it.
Clearly he didn't. And this is evidence of that.
Like they don't want Ricard to find out what they're doing.
He doesn't want her sword fighting.
But let's also consider what Bran says about how badly Lyanna
is beating Benjen, which is just another hint that Lyanna was
martially talented. Like she's good at fighting
Night of the Laughing Tree vibes y'all.
But also several other important notes here.
First of all, Benjen becomes perhaps the best fighter of the
group in the long term, maybe in part because he was training
with Liana, who was also very talented.
That helped him, you know, get fighting against someone who was
also very skilled or talented would make you better in the
long run. You got to work hard to keep up
with her, especially because she's older and taller.
She would have the advantage that she wouldn't have had in
the long run. Once Benjamin, you know, caught
up in height and and strength and all that, which they never
that never got to happen because their childhoods were cut short.
But also the idea that they were close, that they're working
together, that they're hanging out together and that that she
dominates him. She calls him stupid.
She tells him to be quiet. Like this is a a very strong
willed, strong personality, which we've heard from everybody
was the truth about Liana and how she's behaving with her
younger brother, her perhaps constant companion.
So Benjamin's hair long. I don't think that's an
important detail, but it's interesting.
And it's a parallel that Bran at first thinks this vision of
Benjin is him, given that they're both left behind as the
young Stark and Winterfell. Remember, Bran becomes the Stark
and Winterfell when Rob rides off to war.
And that's a parallel because it's Rob riding off to become
king. When Benjin is the Stark and
Winterfell, it's Robert trying to become king, the man Rob was
named after. So yeah, kind of neat.
So. And of course they're both gonna
head be on the wall too. After their time is Stark and
Winterfell, they go head be on the wall.
Except, yeah, so. And no one has seen them since,
except readers in Bran's case, not even us in Benjen's case.
And again, it's when and if Benjen appears, it's probably
going to be in Bran's POV. But here's another thing in
terms of mysteries in general, we there's three types of
mysteries, I think three major categories of mystery.
One is the kind of mysteries that for us, we don't know the
answer and the characters in the story do.
Like Ned knew, Ned knows who Jon Snow's parents are.
He knows that answer. He didn't tell us, but he knows.
We pretty much know, but we haven't had confirmation.
Maybe that's not the best example, but still it serves the
other kind. The second kind is the ones that
we know the answer to and Noah and the and the characters
don't. Like for example, we know who
killed Kevin Lannister. It was virus.
And the only person who knows that is virus.
Every other character in the story is ignorant of that.
So that's a mystery that we know that the characters don't.
So that's the reverse. And of course, the third type
you might have figured out is the one where, well, I guess
there's third and 4th. The 3rd is the third would be we
all know both the characters in the story and the readers do.
Of course, that maybe isn't a mystery, so maybe that one
doesn't count. And then the last one would be
neither of the characters in the story know, nor the readers the
biggest mystery of all. And that's the kind of mystery
Benjen is. No one knows where he is,
neither readers nor characters, except maybe Benjen himself.
I mean, well, Benjen knows himself unless he's dead, so he
knows where he is. Well, actually, maybe he doesn't
know where he is. Where the heck am I anyway?
We can probably assume based on that scene the the vision scene
that another clues that Leon and Benjin played it swords often
and would have to hide it for that same reason.
And this is the only comparison he makes by the way, he doesn't
compare Santa or Rob or Bran or Rickon or even John to other
family members. This is the one Bran and Benjin
are compared and Leon and Benjin as well.
So there's this is kind of neat how these characters have echoes
of each other and these other comparisons are never made.
Also, this reinforces that notion I keep getting at which
they just were close. You know, Ned had his was was a
little bit older. Brandon was the heir and was
going around was fostered elsewhere.
He was fostered at Barrelton. Ned was fostered at the Vale
from a very early age at 8, right.
This is all vital to keep in mind when we consider his role
and or guilt in Lyanna's tragedy that he knew her better than Ned
did. He was closer to her.
We also don't know when their mother died.
Liara was their mother. We have no idea what kind of
impact she had on Benjamin's life or the rest of them, but
it's a certainty. He got the fewest years with
her. He's the youngest, so that's
just mass straightforward. Brandon, Ned, and Liana all got
more time with their mother than Benjamin did.
Now, there's no hint that she died in childbirth, so it was
probably something else much later or maybe just a few years
later, but we really have no idea it it's not because he was
too young. It's odd then, right?
Think about that. Why was Ned fostered and Brandon
fostered but Benjen wasn't? You could say, oh, maybe he
wasn't old enough yet. No, that's definitely not it.
Ned was fostered at 8. Benjen was well past 8 when the
war started. You know, even if we're not sure
of his age, he's definitely well past that.
So there could have been a place for him to go.
There could have been a something Southron ambition
related, for Ricard has a house he wants to get in good with.
He sends one to the Veil. He sends another to Barrelton.
Why not send his other son somewhere else to shore up his
alliances? It's part of the safety of it
all. Like you have your air and your
spare and your extra spare, and you keep one at home.
You keep one boy at home of all the three.
I don't know. It just makes sense to me that
you should not send every boy out.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, it could be. You're right.
That could be simple as that. But it's because Rickard was
seemingly so ambitious, you think he might have pushed it,
you know, especially because Brandon was only over at
Barrett. He's not that far away.
You know, that's that's that's a hop skip and a jump.
Probably not too, too much in danger being still in the North.
But it's it's a mystery. I'm not sure.
There's definitely some options. And you know, you like, like
Jaya says, not it's not like every child gets fostered.
It's just with Ricard's attitude, you might have thought
he would do all of them. I mean, he already had arranged
for Leona to marry Robert by then too.
So, you know, and that's interesting in itself because we
know that Ned and Leona had that conversation where, you know,
Ned's a friends with Robert. So of course he's saying nice
things, but Leona's like brother Robert's not a good man, not
going to be a good husband. You know, you wonder if Leona
and Ben had some conversations like that because it would be a
different context because Benjamin wasn't close friends
with Robert, so he wouldn't be defensive or protective of
Robert's honor or disposition on things.
Now, being farther out of the noble branch, we talked earlier
about how Benjen is a little bit closer to John in terms of how
little privilege, how little benefit he gets from his name.
I mean, he gets more than John does because he actually has the
name of Stark. But they both end up joining the
watch. It doesn't really, you know,
that doesn't change a whole lot you.
But the other hand, the other side of that is reduced
expectations. There's a lot more burden placed
on Brandon and then Ned to be the Lord, be the Stark and
Winterfell, to have children. These are these are expectations
that Benjen didn't have placed on him.
Sometimes that's a good thing, right?
You don't. Maybe it's like your life is a
little easier when you don't have all these, all these
decisions made for you. You get to maybe make your own
way in the world a little bit. And sometimes it's good to not
have fatherly influence because your father sucks.
I just don't want to. He's bad.
He's a bad influence. It can be better to have no
father than a bad father. I'm personally an example of
that. But again, even though he's
farther down on the branch, he's still a Stark.
That still counts for a lot. And we saw that earlier.
We talked about that earlier. His his visits to the Watch are
his visits to Winterfell after the fact, which is highly
unusual and out of out of pocket for brothers in the Nights
Watch. This is a rare exception.
Next section is called A Song for Lyanna.
Yes, that is a play on George R Martin's short story, A Song for
Leah of this. The characters in that are Rob
with two BS and Leah. So it's, yeah, it's very similar
to the character names to to Rob and Leona or Robert and Leona.
So we've touched in general and Benjamin in there and Leona's
relationship in general and flesh it out somewhat.
Let's apply what we've learned to the known events.
Let's get to the big one, the tourney at Harrenhal.
Now, Benjamin was at the tourney, I assume you know that,
if not big news, and like all his siblings was involved in
these important plot back story events that happened during this
tournament. But his role is the easiest to
miss. It's the most subtle, but it's
very significant. Let's start with the quote.
The She Wolf laid into the Squires with a tourney sword,
scattering them all. The Chronic man was bruised and
bloodied, so she took him back to her lair to clean his cuts
and bind them up with linen. There he met her pack brothers,
the wild wolf who led them, the quiet wolf beside him, and the
pup who was youngest of the four.
That evening there was to be a feast in Harrenhal to mark the
opening of the tourney, and the she wolf insisted that the lad
attend. He was of high birth, with as
much a right to a place on the bench as any other man.
She was not easy to refuse this wolf made, so he let the young
pup find him garb suitable to a King's feast and went up to the
great castle. Y'all that line she was not easy
to refuse. This wolf made is big right?
Like, that is huge in terms of talking her own people into
letting her run off or helping her run off or just Rhaegar or,
you know, her being older than Benjen and having, you know,
dominance over him, especially with her strong personality.
This isn't the other reason this is such an important note is
that this story is being told second hand, right?
This is what Howlin Reed told his kids, and they're many years
later telling it to Bran. So when Howlin Reed told the
story to them, he made sure to emphasize that she was not easy
to refuse. They picked up on that detail.
He was sure to pass that on and they remembered it and passed it
on to Bran. So that last line, the young pup
found him garb suitable to a King's feast.
Benjen is the one that helped Howlin Reed dress for the feast.
Quite possibly his own clothing. Benjen being a younger man, the
wolf pup at this stage he may have lent him his own clothing.
But here the story continues. Keeps going quote.
Under Heron's roof he ate and drank with the wolves and many
of their sworn swords besides Barrow down men and moose and
bears and mermen. The dragon Prince sang a song so
sad it made the wolf maid sniffle, but when her pup
brother teased her for crying, she poured wine over his head.
A black brother spoke, asking the Knights to join the Nights
Watch. Goes on to talk about people
dancing with each other and all that and you know you know Ned
dances with a char and all that stuff, but that's not quite in
our focus for right now. So Lyanna was moved by Rhaegar's
song and Benjen teased her about it.
This is another clue that they were very close.
They hung out a lot. They're sitting together almost
every time we see them. They're together.
Right? And that is interesting, too,
given her authoritative personality, her dominance of
him that we're supposing as a case, this is a rare moment
where she's crying. And that must have seemed kind
of like, whoa, Benjen's like, my sister's crying.
That's crazy. She, she's so tough and strong.
And so he teases her about it. And then she proves that she is
tough and strong, dumps wine on his head.
That's funny. This gives me an idea, though,
right? When John is drunk in that very
first chapter of his at the feast, Benjen kind of takes note
of that. And he's like, yeah, maybe.
And Benjen says, hey, I was younger than 14 when I first got
drunk. This might have been that
moment. He might have been drinking like
Leona pours wine on his head. If he's maybe a year or two
younger than her, he might have had a wine too.
He might have been getting drunk.
That might be why he teased her because he was drunk, you know,
You know, So if, if father, if, if Ned, if Rickard had some sort
of SEPTA Mordane equivalent, maybe it was actually SEPTA
Mordane. You know, they keep she can't
keep her eye on everybody, right?
These the wolf pup and the wolf maid doing their own thing.
And I mean, frankly, SEPTA Mordane got drunk herself and
passed out at the Tournament of the Hand.
So, you know, even even the, the chaperones can, can slip up
sometimes. Now, here's an interesting bit.
According to the World of Ice and Fire app, not the book, the
app, and only the app. Benjen was struck by that plea
from the Night's Watch recruiter.
Ironic that Benjen is encouraged to join the Night's Watch when
he's in the South. But hey, they were near the Isle
of Faces. At least there's that going on.
Could this have been Yoran? That would tie together a lot of
these little tidbits. It could have been Yoran's been
a recruiter for 30 plus years or had been, he's dead now.
So before Benjan was even born, possibly he's been a recruiter.
So yeah, that definitely is possible.
And there's not a lot of nights watch recruiters out there.
So it definitely could have been him.
It's only a, it's only a handful of possibilities.
And that would that would really tie some things together with
making Yoran even more partial to Benjan, Benjan even more
partial to Yoran. Like this is the guy that
encouraged me to join in the 1st place.
So later they spot those Squires, the Squires that
attacked Howl and Reed. One of them was afraid quote.
The wolf maids saw them too and pointed them out to her
brothers. I could find you a horse and
some armor that might fit. The pup offered.
The little Cranic man thanked him but gave no answer.
This is really big too. After Benjen gives him some
clothes, Benjen next offers to give him armor and a horse.
This is the beginning of the night of the Laughing Tree.
Benjin's idea, he's like, hey, you could go get them and I'll
help you with that. And that's probably the genesis
of the whole idea to go teach them a lesson that Leon
eventually did. Now Benjin made the offer.
It shows his character, perhaps a bidding bit of following his
sister's lead there. Leon was, was helping this guy.
Benjin was like, yeah, we should help this guy.
You're you're starting it off. I'm following your lead.
He is our father's bannerman. He's one of us, etcetera.
He shouldn't get picked on, blah blah blah.
So something that Ned and Brandon might not so easily do.
They're because they're her elder, they would be protective
of Lyanna while Benjan is in her shadow.
He's younger and he might not have the same approach.
She's like telling him what to do rather than he.
She's protective of him rather than him protective her 'cause
he's the younger 1. So that's so the dynamic kind of
goes downward there, even though she's a woman in this setting
where women are often the ones that you are supposed to
protect. It wasn't like that with Lyanna,
only their father was really like that.
Ned and Brandon were protective of her, but they also recognized
how strong she was. And you know, until they until,
until the the fatal event with Rhaegar, she could take care of
herself most of the time. So I, of course, favor the idea
that the Night of the Laughing Tree was Lyanna herself.
There is an alternate theory that it was Benjamin, right?
That, but why would Benjin have mismatched I'll fitting armor?
It would it would probably he has his owner, it would probably
fit him right? Liana and Howlin, that makes
sense because they don't have their own armor.
Although maybe Benjin didn't bring his armor with him to the
tournament. Why?
He wasn't expecting to joust so. But still, narratively it all
really seems to point to Liana. But given that Benjin is the one
who offered Howlin clothing and then offered Howlin armor, who
do you think helped Liana put her armor on?
Who was her helper there? Liana.
Liana was the knight of the Laughing Tree.
I hereby dub Benjen Stark the Squire of the Laughing Tree.
He might have even made the shield.
Someone painted that Laughing Tree shield, and it didn't just
come from nowhere. Someone had to make that.
Someone had to paint. That might have been him.
The not so great escape. Of course, it didn't end with
Liana sniffing at Rhaegar's song.
She had stronger feelings than that.
Now we cover this in great detail in our episode about it.
Note that we're not calling it an abduction here.
We called it abduction of Liana because that's the perception of
it. But here we know better.
And Benjan did too. And again, he may have helped.
Let's recall that sneaky phrase we heard in the quotes just now,
how she was quote, not easy to refuse.
Now, maybe she just made a run for it.
She's a great rider. She could have bolted on her
horse and gotten away from whoever was with her and that's
that. Like she's a she's fast.
That's only one theory, though. Another would be she sneaks off
in the night, right? She steals off in the night when
no one's around. Benjid could have covered for
her, helped her escape, helped her get a horse, lied to give
her time to get away. Like Oh yeah, she just went over
there to use the bathroom and like, no, she didn't.
She ran away, I guess, sorry. And meanwhile she's she's had a
four hour head start or something like that.
Just as he was eager to help Howland do what he wanted and do
what he thought was right, he could be ready to help his
sister. He's young.
He's not going to have a strong, thorough, wise idea of the
consequences that of this. He just wants to help his sister
be with the man he she loves and not with the man she doesn't
want to marry. So it's like he thinks he's
doing good by her by helping her avoid marriage to Robert and go
to Rhaegar, who she really likes.
And if Benjamin had already helped armor her and all that,
and it already helped her flout her rule, all these rules that
her father had about carrying a sword, he's been sword fighting
with her for years, which is against the rules.
He's clearly willing to go against their father repeatedly.
So that's not an obstacle here at all.
It would have been for Ned. Ned's like a rules guy, right?
And he wouldn't condone his sister running off.
He's protective of her. Brandon probably as well.
But so Leona knows better. He doesn't.
She doesn't go to them. She goes to Benjen, the one that
she can dominate, the one who's the closest to her.
And well, didn't work out so well, did it?
As I said in the intro, this is Topics Moot episode 11 of 16.
Our patrons choose topics during Topics Moot at the beginning of
the year, usually around February, early March, we go
through a series of polls, lots of polls, lots of choices.
It's a lot of fun. You guys get to pick which
episodes and we have like run offs and you know, the top
topics get to face off against the others and so Siri.
So kind of like a bracket system, pretty fun.
And we, we, we expanded it from the first year.
We may do that again because hey, it's July and we're on #11
if 16, we're well past the halfway point.
And like I said, it didn't even start till March.
So why not make it bigger? Why not join us and be a part of
that? You also get bonus episodes,
maybe access to scripts if you choose that level, shout outs,
things like that. We got a lot of benefits if you
join us on Patreon thatspatreon.com/history of
Westeros. Yeah, You know, it's crazy to
think about if let's say 16 episodes are voted on, right?
Yeah, we, we've released like over 50 episodes a year on
average. So that really is not even half
of our episodes. That's true.
Yeah, we do release a lot of episodes, especially in the TV
season year, which this is not. But that was my at least 50
episodes a year without the TV season.
Yeah, Super Chat from Thunderclap says what if
Benjamin has a second life in an animal?
It's possible we have no indication that he is a warg,
but that doesn't mean he's not. I mean, it could be something
that latent ability that, you know, he just has a little bit
of. I tend to doubt it because
there's not much clue of it, but it can't rule it out.
It's Kirstie Angel's birthday. All right, that's cool.
Happy birthday, Kirstie. Cannibal the Dragon says yes.
The Spider Man connection to Game of Thrones.
Jon has uncle named Ben, learns A valuable lesson from him,
gains power. Jon Snow is Spider Man.
Jon Snow and Spider Man both had redheads for girlfriends.
That's good. That's good.
Yep. Richard Tabor says I bet we see
him through Bran's eyes. Yeah, well, we have once
already. Why not again?
And I have some ideas on that specifically, not just
generally, which is, you know, maybe I've missed some of the
possibilities, but I do have some ideas.
As a side note here, John wonders if Lord Eddard would
have executed Benjen if it had been him running instead of
Garrard. I don't think so.
It's still kin slaying. And that seems to be more
important than he who passes the sentence between the sword.
That's a stark, you know, cultural tradition, not
religious thing. I think what he would do is to
get around that. He would deliver Benjen to the
Night's Watch for justice. Like what do you guys decide
what to do with him? If you got to kill him that's
fine, but it won't be on my I can't do it, you know, Kinsling
blah blah blah. Robert's Rebellion, though it's
hard to keep track of any of the Starks.
After the Tourney of Harrenhal building up to Lyanna's
disappearance and then Brandon's I'll fated rush to the Red Keep
followed by Lord Rickard going there to do the trial by combat.
One thing we can be sure of is Lord Rickard would not have
brought anyone else and his family along with some guards,
sure, some some sworn Shields, whatever, but not any more of
his family members because he was obviously going into a very
tense situation and the Mad King being who he is, no risk
necessary there. Benjen may have been about to
attend Brandon's wedding, right? Brandon's about to get married
to Catlin at River and this is what diverted that this Liana
running away. So Benjamin was probably around
there, right? He might have stayed at River
Run while all this played out. But you know, an argument
against that is Catelyn doesn't mention that.
And she stayed there and was like, well, I'm waiting for
Brandon to come back and he never does.
She doesn't think about other people hanging around there at
the same time, but that doesn't mean she would have mentioned
it. So if he helped his sister flee,
if he helped Lyanna get away, then he would definitely or
easily blame himself for these domino effects of her running
off with Rhaegar and then dying and then the war happening,
right? That's he could he could blame
himself for all that, sure. He could give himself a little
sympathy for himself saying, hey, I was a young man.
That is not going to help a whole lot though.
You're still going to be like, that was my sister, that was my
brother, that was my father. Like he, he would wish he just
had never done that. And again, to repeat, when the
war kicked off, he was the Stark in Winterfell.
So sometime he had to go back to Winterfell after all these
horrible things happened. And Ned didn't wield the sword
ice in the war, so Benjan would have had possession of it.
Ned escaped back to the to the North during when the war broke
out and when to Winterfell was able to call the banners.
And Benjan would have been there and been like, hey, brother,
yeah, you go off to war. I'll hold the Fort here.
There's got to be a Stark in Winterfell.
And there was no other Stark right at that moment.
It was just Ned and Benjen. Brandon's dead.
Leon is dead. Rick R is dead.
Well, actually Leon is not dead yet.
She's will be dead during the war.
But the others definitely. And and there's no Rob yet.
So that's interesting. Maybe Benjen kept Ice around
with him, you know, for ceremonies.
He's he's sitting on the high seat like Bran would have during
those Clash of Kings scenes when he's the sitting, you know, the,
the Stark and Winterfell. He would have had complete
authority if he turned 16 during this.
He would have been around 16. That's interesting.
He actually turned 16. He could, you know, be the guy
to oversee things like executions.
Interesting to consider for a 16 year old.
But he's the Stark and Winterfell.
You know, let's not let's again remind ourselves that Rob was
named for robbers. There's a lot of parallels here.
Bran being the Stark and Winterfell.
Well, while Benjen was the Stark and Winterfell also during a war
and different for Bran is that, you know, he knows that his
brother's off in war and it's dangerous.
But there's other Starks when Benjen's sitting as the Stark
and Winterfell with his brother off at war.
What if Ned dies? Isn't it?
Obviously that's very possible in a war, a rebellion against
the throne. This is no ordinary war.
This is taking on the Targaryen. This is overthrowing a dynasty
that's held, that's held the throne for 300 years.
Very dangerous endeavor that Ned is involved with.
Benjen had to have dark thoughts of what if my brother never
comes home? I might be the Lord of
Winterfell. I might have to get married and
have children to keep the line going.
What a what a thought. And like, this is a kid that
would have grown up thinking he's going to have no part of
any of that. He's got two older brothers.
They're going to have children. They're going to be the ones
that rule Winterfell. It's certainly not any,
certainly not on his radar, but all of a sudden it was.
Now, of course, we probably had some of the familiar faces
around Winterfell to help him. Maester Lewin was probably
there, Sir. Roderick Cassell probably, he's
an old guy at the at the start of the book.
So not unlikely he was the man around then 1617 years prior.
A lot of the people that were killed by Theon and Ramsey would
have been there, you know, old man would have been there.
Maybe more stories. Benjamin gets past the time
hearing more stories from old man.
Now. The war wasn't super long,
despite how big it was, how important it was.
It wasn't a a long dragged out affair, but it was obviously
very costly for the Starks. We can only imagine what news
and rumors would come back. They'd hear all sorts of things,
letters, you know, Ravens, riders, messengers, rumors from
here and there about what's going on in the South during the
war. One piece of news that would
have come from Riveron would have brought joy.
The birth of Rob, right? That is.
I doubt they kept that a secret. They would want people to know
it's a big deal. They'd especially want
Winterfell to know. So I think a Raven went to
Winterfell pretty much as soon as Rob was born.
That would take some given that we don't think Benjen wanted to
be Lord of Winterfell, it would have been a relief for him.
Like, hey, good, my brother had a kid, all right, That means the
the family's safer 1/2. I don't want to have to be the
Lord of Winterfell. I don't want to do that.
Now, I don't know that for sure that he didn't want to be Lord
of Winterfell, but there's really nothing in him that's
ever suggested and that kind of ambition.
He seems like really be at home as the first Ranger.
He was like a natural at it. And it seems like maybe he knew
his own skill set before becoming first stranger and
being the Lord of Winterfell wouldn't allow him to to do all
that. You know, we got to sit home and
sit in judgement on people. He's he's an, he's a man of
action. So it wouldn't have just been
the danger to Ned or how Stark. This is a new, this is a fragile
situation. If Robert's side had lost, what
kind of penalties would have been levied on how Stark, even
if Ned survived and and quite possibly if how Stark does it,
if they lose, Ned doesn't survive in that scenario.
So this is a Benjen would have had a lot of very stressful
things put on him at a very young age.
But hey, Benjen's worries didn't come to pass.
That didn't happen. Ned did survive.
Robert's Rebellion was successful.
And that in itself is interesting.
Like Benjen finds out the war has been won, that Rhaegar has
been killed, which she'd be like, Rhaegar was killed.
Well, where's our sister? Where's our sister?
He's dead. Where's our sister?
Where did she go? He was.
He knows she ran off with him. Probably knows that it was
running off and not abducted. He'd be one of the people that
was very clear on that detail. But yeah, where'd she go?
Where? If Rhaegar appears, then where's
where's she? So those worries didn't come to
pass, but this one did a different word.
What happened to Lyanna? And as more time goes on and she
still hasn't appeared, even more like the the Targaryens lose and
there's still no sign of Lyanna. Rhaegar's done.
No word, no idea. It's bad.
So he would be worried just as net as his brother would.
And he and he and. And as a man of action, he's
can't take action. He's just waiting for news while
his brother goes to different castles and finishes off the
war. And yeah, news would have come
of stone. He stepped all that, all these
different things. Then the Trident, after that,
the death of Rhaegar, all these things.
Then the sack of King's Landing and the death of the Targaryen
children and all this other stuff that Benjamin would still
be like, yeah, but what about Liana?
All his news, but not about her. So eventually though, Ned
somehow finds out he goes to bring he goes to lift the siege
of storms end. Then you know that's after he
and Robert quarrel about the dead Targaryens.
They they they're mad at each other over that.
Then he so he goes to storms end.
Then he goes South and somehow finds out what the towers were.
This is where our information becomes very murky.
Maybe Benjen was informed. Maybe Ned's like, hey, I did
this now I'm going to go look for our sister.
You know, I got to go. I'm trying to find her, mention
me like, yes, find her, please. I've been wondering about that
for so long. Like why is she not turned up
yet? I'm very worried.
So Ned goes, He finds the Tower of Joy.
However that happens, however he does that, then he there's the
fight. Then he buries people in their
Cairns and he takes Leona's body with the survivor Howland Reed,
and returns Dawn to Starfall. And things happen in Starfall.
John, the whole John Willa thing happens where that subterfuge is
launched, I suppose. And then Ned goes home.
I guess Benjen would be informed that Ned was on his way back.
It would be a while, you know, if he, especially if the Raven
came from like Starfall or somewhere far in the South.
Like, yeah, I got AI got a ways to come before I'm home.
But he might have put in the new, in that letter I'm and I'm
bringing our sister's body. He wouldn't have put it so
bluntly, but I don't know that he would have waited to tell him
when he got home, but maybe he would.
Maybe he wanted to be like, you know, like we should grieve over
this in person. Remember, that's what reunited
Robert and that that that shared grief.
And having already gone through that with Robert, he might want
to, you know, have that empathy for his brother as well and and
share that with him, You know, as a family.
Now, you can't guess with certainty how anyone grieves
without direct evidence. But Northerners very commonly go
to the gods would pray at the Hartree.
So I bet that's what Benjen did when he learned about his
sister. It's probably the first place he
went. And he may have gone there
before that just to to pray for a good result, just to ask the
old gods for help or to say, hey, you know, keep her safe.
Whatever, whatever kind of prayers Benjen would make, who
knows? Maybe just sit there in silence.
I don't know. And exactly what Ned would tell
Benjen is a huge question. Yes, he she's dead, but wouldn't
he want to know why? Can you just really just leave
it at that? Like, well, what killed her?
I'm not going to tell you. I don't think Ned could say that
to Benjin. Would he lie to his brother
about it? That gets really tricky.
If he's not going to tell him the truth, then Benjin is just
going to figure it out. Like the lie isn't going to work
on him. It might work on a lot of other
people. It might work.
It worked on Catelyn. It worked on pretty much
everybody else in Winterfell. But I don't think it works on
Benjin. Even if Ned arrives at
Winterfell with Liana's body and baby Jon Snow and says nothing,
Benjen could figure it out. He already knows Liana ran off
with Rhaegar. He already knows who his brother
is. He knows Ned Stark is not going
to father a bastard. A lot of other Lords might miss
that. They don't know Ned personally.
But this is his brother, right? This is his brother.
He knows that as well as anybody.
If anyone has that insight, it's his family, right?
So he sees the kid, he sees the body.
He knows all these details, Benjen.
They don't have to. Again, they don't have to talk
about it. Benjen can just like lift an
eyebrow and look at Ned, look at the body, look at the baby.
And Ned could just stare at him and be like, we're not going to
talk about this. But you get what this look
means? This look means we're not going
to talk about it. But I know you get it.
You know, I know you get it, but we're not going to talk about it
because he made a promise to Lyanna, right?
That doesn't mean not telling all these other details.
He could have said, yeah, the Kingsguard, but the anything he
gives away is going to give the game away.
And he's Ned's going to know that Benjin already knows a lot
of these details. So, like, how can he avoid
Benjin finding out? It's just like, really this?
You can't keep it from him. There's too many, too many
inconsistencies with any sort of lie that Ned would have to make
to conceal the truth. Again, it would work on nearly
everybody, but I don't think it would work on Benjin.
Like another thing is like, really, my brother beat Arthur
Dayne. I don't what, you know, he's
like, my brother's good, but I don't want to like, you know,
malign is a skill set, but really, Arthur Dayne?
Are you kidding me? And if you find that out, then
he's going to ask the same question a lot of other people.
Why was Arthur Dayne guarding Liana?
That's just too big of a clue, right?
Why were you fighting Arthur Dayne?
Like, it was one thing to beat him, but why were you even
fighting him? Rhaegar was already dead,
Viserys ran off to the Free Cities.
What is going on here? There's not a lot of other
possibilities other than that's Rhaegar's kid with Liana.
No one else has all the pieces to put that together except
Benjen Stark. Now we're told during a con
appearance. This is a long time ago,
Conquest May 2005. George said this that Benjen
joined the Night's Watch within months of Ned's return.
So it wasn't a rush decision. He didn't just like insta join
the Watch. It may have been related to
guilt over Liana or influenced by it, but it wasn't a snap
decision. And again, this is a new regime.
This is a Baratheon. It now sits the throne.
It's not the Lord of it's not the the Targaryens anymore.
That changes the whole dynamics. Now you have the Starks are in
pretty good shape is despite the the horrors of the war and all
the losses they suffered suffered going forward.
It looks all right because Ned's best friend is now the king.
That's pretty good. That's not a bad place to be.
So Benjen would recognize that, you know, he's not friends with
Robert, but he certainly knows his brother is and well, that
can only help them. So that might give him more
feeling of hey, everything's fine.
You know, a lot of babies die in the cradle, but a few months
have gone by. Rob's still alive, you know,
things could. So maybe it's time to go.
You know, all those factors added up.
He's like, yeah, I can go join the Watch.
You know, he was, he was already kind of a guy who thought it was
a good thing to do. He was already inspired by the
recruiter at the tournament tourney of Harrenhal, right?
He might have felt good about the Watch's future, given the
king was a friend to Winterfell. But yeah, we know Ned and Robert
made-up over Leona's grief or Leona's death.
Their grief brought them back together.
What about Benjin and Ned? Like I brought you that.
I suggested that scenario where they just kind of look at each
other and share knowing looks. But that doesn't have to be the
end of it. They could still grieve over
their sister without talking about what happened.
And they may have shared that. They may have grieved, grieved
alone. They may have knelt in front of
the heart tree together, prayed in silence together.
I don't know how they dealt with it, but I doubt they did
nothing. And they're the they're the two
people alive at the time who knew Lyanna best.
No one else in the world. Everyone else is dead.
So like, we're the only two left.
We loved her the most. You'd think they'd share that.
But again, stoic men, Maybe not, maybe not.
They're Starks after all. There's even a chance that
Benjen was blamed by Ned for his role.
He might have, but I don't think so.
I doubt it. I doubt that, you know, Benjen
helped Liana escape. I don't think Ned would blame
him for that, but maybe it's possible.
So as much as Ned loved Lyanna, it's it's very clear.
Like he gets so sad thinking about her.
He almost cries. It just he becomes overcome
thinking about the promise, about how much he loved her,
about just everything. Benjin doesn't quite have the
trauma of Ned because she didn't die in his arms.
Like that's that's as bad and that's really terrible.
But that doesn't mean he didn't love her more going into that.
Like, again, there's a lot of evidence that Benjin and Lyanna
were the closest pairing of those four siblings, that as
much as Ned loved Liana, I think Liana and Benjen were even
closer. And now we can't just keep score
here. Like who loves who more?
Like that's kind of ridiculous. But still, I don't, I don't put
much stock in I love them more than you did.
Like, that's like, what does that even mean?
Only you can say who you love the most.
It's your opinion. You get to say that no one else
could tell you who you love the most.
But so regardless, these two both love their sister a lot.
She was just someone they revered, someone beyond just the
fact that she's their sibling. Like she was a strong
personality, a special, unique person who died under very
tragic circumstances. So there's a lot.
This is why it's difficult to say that it was just guilt that
led to Benjen joining the Night's Watch because there's so
many other things pushing him there.
Yes, guilt, but also sense of duty, just being a fourth son.
Lots of Starks joined the Night's Watch.
Maybe not a lot, but it's not uncommon.
His, his skill set, you know, like he seems to just be a
natural at it, you know, and he probably recognized that.
And then just, you know, the old concept of hearing the call,
like it's, it's his beckon call. Like some, you hear that about a
lot of professions, some doctors, some nurses, they just,
they're teachers, you know, they're just, you're just kind
of born that way. You just, that's where your life
gravitates. It's like you, you are focused
on that. It's, you kind of feel like
you're born to it. Benja Sark seems like he was
born to be a Ranger, like his skill set, everything, his
talent, all that. So let's get into that.
This next section is called 1st Ranger.
It's not unusual for a Stark to take the black like I just said,
but that doesn't make it ordinary either, right?
It's not like a every generation doesn't have Starks joining the
nice watch. But the fact that he's so good
kind of obscures this even further.
It does make him seem like he was born to it.
Like I'd said, he's a he's a natural at it, which he shows a
lot in common with Jon Snow. Or rather, Jon Snow shows a lot
has a lot in common with him. Jon Snow was restricted from
ranging because you know, this could be your first mission.
That's a bit much, but then when he is allowed to go off with
Corin, he is a natural too. He's good at it.
And of course, Ghost helped as well.
Benjen didn't have that leg up, that wolf up, but still, John
was still good at it from the get go.
He had the right attitude. He's brave.
Anyway, let's look at the circumstances.
Why take the black? It seems obvious that Benjen
would be devastated by the loss of the sibling that he spent the
most time with, but because of that role in her disappearance,
you could see how this all comes together.
We also to expand on this idea, the idea that Benjin helped is
supported by the idea that no one else would.
Even though we have Leon, a strong personality, Benjin
wouldn't have to fear the same consequences that say,
Winterfell guards would if Rickard Stark finds out that
they allowed or fail. Even just failing to stop her
would be caught grounds for punishment.
Like they're they had a job to do, they didn't do it.
Leona ran off. They were supposed to prevent
that from happening. Benjin's not going to get
punished the same to the same degree that these guards would.
They're adults who had a job. They might be fired, sent to the
wall. So they wouldn't go along with
it. Most likely they wouldn't be
talked into it. They couldn't be cousin into it,
no matter how hard Leon is to resist.
On the other side of that is execution, firing, taking the
black. Yes.
Sorry, Leon, I, you might be strong willed and authoritative,
but I don't want to take the black or be executed by your
father. Your father's even stronger than
that. So.
But Benjamin, not in that in that case, right?
Not that situation. So, and again, backing up a
little farther, when we talked about John and his joining of
the Nights Watch, it's like you, you shouldn't join this young.
That's when Benjen joined roughly.
I mean, they're they couldn't have been more than a year or
two apart when when Benjen joined.
So he really knows what he's talking about when he tells
John, maybe you should wait a little while.
He's speaking from experience. He doesn't say that, but we know
it. We know it's true.
Maybe he should have told John that he's speaking from
experience, but he didn't. Yeah.
And that's of course, remember our longest, our oldest estimate
for Benjin puts him at that age. If he's younger, then he's even
closer to John's age, or maybe even younger.
Probably not, but, but it's possible.
All right, now the mystery. Let's get into the missing part.
Let's get into that. Where in Westeros is Benjin
Stark? Well beyond the Wall, of course.
But beyond that, beyond, beyond the Wall, it's perhaps the first
mystery that we're really given other than who the heck are the
others, you know? And it's not just how it might
be resolved to this mystery of missing Benjen, but why?
What's the purpose of Benjen being missing, narratively
speaking? Why is George stringing us along
for so long? What sort of information or
reveal or both will Benjin provide to us by returning?
What is he going to mean to the story by coming back first, just
to get it out of the way? I find very little of use in the
show's portrayal of Benjin in their case, Like, oh, he's not
gone forever. The only thing it really reveals
is that he's coming back, which is that we knew that already.
All he did was save John and Bran in, you know, in order.
Like he saves Bran and company, then he saved John just from
from drowning or from whites. It's like that's all that just
to save them. I don't think so.
He doesn't he doesn't explain anything about Liana, nothing
about John. There's nothing about the nature
of the others really that we can be that we can really be sure is
book accurate. So there's there's only a yeah,
there's only a little bit of explanation as to how Benjen is
even walking around at all. That's the only thing they
really get into and it isn't necessarily transferable or
anything else. So we can just kind of throw
that away like. I think it's going to be
explained differently in the books.
Kind of like Cold Hands, but not exactly like Cold Hands.
And let's not forget, we know for an absolute certainty that
he is not Cold Hands. Which brings us to another
reason why Benjen won't just show up to save them.
Cold Hands already did that in the book.
Cold Hands showed up at the last minute to save Bran and company
from the whites right outside of Blood Ravens cave.
Is Benjen going to show up to do the same exact thing as they're
leaving? I don't think so.
That's just bland right. That's just like using like
what's the point of that? I there's got to be more yes, he
could save them, but they can't be the only thing he does.
He's got to also provide information knowledge, something
the five year gap is comes up here as well, because before the
five year gap, would Benjen have been missing even longer?
Would this mystery stretch out for five whole mole years or
would we have? Would George have written it
differently with Benjen coming back is damn, that's a long
time, right? It's it's crazy.
So in this case, George reduced that it's still really long.
It's still the longest missing persons case in the in the
entire book series and long enough that it becomes very
dubious that he's survived by non supernatural means or
without help from supernatural beings like the children of the
forest. So just to recap briefly why he
left on this ranging that led to his disappearance.
You got a lot of problems facing the watch that are building up
and sort of having a reaching A climactic point here.
Rangers disappearing, then more Rangers disappearing with people
like Garrett fleeing. And that's alarming because
Garrett's a 40 year veteran and he's so frightened that he can't
even like speak, you know, competent, like he's just mad
basically. So Benjen had to figure all that
out. It's his job.
This next section is called Back in Black.
So this is some ideas of what could happen.
He could, yes, he could reappear to help George or Bran, I mean,
to Bran or John, but what else could it be?
There has to be a reason George hasn't had anyone find him,
alive or dead or otherwise. Otherwise.
That fits really well, doesn't it?
Otherwise. So it can't just be where's
Benjen? That can't be the whole mystery.
There has to be Where's Benjen? Because he knows things, the
reason he disappeared and the reasons he will return have to
matter. The first of those reasons might
be self referential. What exactly is allowing you to
still walk around Benjamin? What magic is that and how does
that relate to the rest of the others?
The magic of the children? Jon Snow's resurrection.
Is that going to teach us about overlap between relore and the
children? And everybody has a version of
Raising the dead, something we talked about in our our episode
on necromancy and the Song of Ice and Fire.
There's a lot of different versions of that in in this in
this story. Another very clear possibility,
a strong possibility is that Benjen returns with crucial
knowledge on how to fight the others.
We already know some basics like dragonglass fire, probably
Valyrian steel. But why did they even come back?
What's the trigger? What was the catalyst for that?
Why now and where did they even come from in the 1st place?
These are things can be maybe answered by Bran because he can
look into the where would never can see them and he actually
knows to look. He's already facing the others.
He has some idea that. So maybe we don't need Benjen
for that. Maybe Bran will get there on his
own. Maybe.
But Benjen could have learned about the free folk finding
something in those graves. And Marie Grit talks about we
loosed all those shades into the world looking for that horn of
winter and we never found it. She admits it it Grit indicates
they were bluffing about that. But for a while it seemed like
she was telling the truth like that was a real thing.
Maybe Benjen heard that rumor without learning the truth that
it was just a bluff. So maybe he was trying to figure
out what that was all about. And we still wonder what that
was all about. What do you mean opening graves,
losing all those shades? What do you mean to grit and
what shades is that the others? Is that how they came back or
was it then? Well, that doesn't really make
sense if you were trying to find the Hornet winner to escape the
others. That doesn't really make sense
as the thing that unleash the others like you have to the
others have to be unleashed before you're worried about
unleashing them. Unless it unleashed more of
them, it made them more powerful.
I don't know. It's, it's, it's tricky to sort
through that, but that might be what we need Benjen for, or at
least someone to tell Bran where to look.
It it's like the Dewey Decimal system or a web address.
Bran can't just like see the entire past.
He has to have some idea what he's looking for.
So that's why in the case of the Others, well, he already has
some idea. He knows who they are, but when
it comes to the Stark mysteries like Lyanna and the Tower, Joy
and Jon Snow, Bran doesn't have any idea.
There's even a mystery there. He has no idea There's even a
question of Jon's parentage. He thinks Jon's his bastard
brother and that's the end of it.
Just no more thought given to it is in his mind.
So that is what Benjen can tell, can tell Bran about.
And to give Bran the reason to look at that information in the
past to to go back and see the Tower of Joy again, briefly
touching on the TV show Bran, just like when Bran sees the
Tower of Joy scene in the TV show, it just happens.
He's just like, you know, he's just thinking about it and boom,
there you go. Like, why?
But why did his brain go there? It's it's presented as his mind
just went there. For some reason.
He started thinking about that. There isn't really a catalyst
for it in the books. Benjen could be that catalyst.
Someone has to tell him about that, and it would.
Benjen's really the only one who could, so that's a very strong
possibility. So yeah, he can look through the
Werewood network to get the details, but someone has to
point him in that direction in the 1st place.
And why would the children care? Why would the children care
about John's parentage? Well, they might, but again,
Bran doesn't know that mystery is even a thing.
And Jojen or Mirror, Could they bring it up?
Probably not. Bloodraven, I don't does does
Bloodraven going to point out, hey, by the way, Bran John is
half Targaryen and that matters because, I mean, maybe, but I
don't know about that. Doesn't seem like a great
theory. It seems definitely possible.
But yeah, we can sometimes narrow down things to be
extremely confident. But this is not one of those
times. So maybe there's another thing
that maybe there's a secret to the origin of the Others.
Maybe there's a tie in with the Starks.
More on that in a minute. After five, 5 1/2 months, we get
this section that I'm calling Two of seven.
They, John and Sam, travel to the Grove to say their vows.
They've been, they're getting inducted into the Night's Watch.
Benjen, of course, said his vows there, too, about 17 years
prior. And as they're there, Darwin
smells. Something is off.
Ghost emerges with a white hand. Though they find the bodies.
It's O, Thor and J for flowers. It's determined that they had to
have come pretty far away because not only were the
Rangers regularly searching this area, there's no blood on the
ground. These bodies were moved or
Walking Dead. No one suggests that, but we
readers obviously are are meant to make that conclusion.
So they were killed far away too, and resurrected far away,
raised far away because there would be blood.
Now all the other evidence for them being killed far away is
Mormont says, hey, look, this guy had a hunting horn.
Oathor had a hunting horn. If he were in peril near the
wall, he would have blown that horn.
So. And no one heard a horn, though
there was no evidence of that. No, no suggestion that happened,
so probably didn't happen. There's also the suggestion that
O Thor is the one who killed Jafer.
Jafer appears to have been killed by an axe blow, and O
Thor was an axe man. So it's easy to imagine that O
Thor is killed beyond the wall. They don't yet know to burn the
bodies. They're not thinking about the
others. Maybe the fresh on their minds,
they haven't remembered that old, that old strategy, that
important tactic, burn the body, don't let them get raised and
that body raised up. Othor dies, is raised up
immediately attacks his fellow companions.
I don't know what the other guys do.
They get away and then for some reason Othor and Jaffer are sent
by the other S to you know, play dead and then rise on the other
side of the wall and try to and go after the command.
They go after the new 1st Ranger and kill him and almost kill
Lord Commander Mormont. That leaves four more, right?
Benjin's one of the other seven and four other men.
So we got these two. There's seven that went on the
group, Benjin being one, these two dead men that became whites,
and the other 4, Where are they? Maybe they'll show up as whites
as well. In the long run, the lot of
characters that could show up as whites, a lot of people who died
beyond the Wall that could show up as whites later, including
giants and animals and things like that.
A little little scary, but also kind of cool.
So this is no longer a search for Waymar Royce and Will.
When that happens, let's say Benjen and his group, this
happens. O Thor dies, come, becomes a
becomes a white, kills Jafer. They deal with that in some way.
All of a sudden, they're not so worried about Waymar Royce and
Will. They're like, OK, now we kind of
have an idea what happened to them.
This totally changes our mission.
We're no longer looking for free folk.
The dead are rising. That that's a game changer.
They didn't leave for their mission.
Having any idea that was happening or possible didn't
even hint at it. So whoa, we're out here.
And this has just suddenly become a much bigger problem.
It isn't just free folk, cause Benjen is very confident in
dealing with free folk. He's the bane of the free folk.
But that's not who he's facing now.
And in fact, the free folk are running from the Others, and
that makes the Others more dangerous because the Others are
killing free folk and making them into whites.
So all these things, the disappearance of Ben, the
returning of these whites, the attack on Mormont himself, this
triggers the great ranging Marmont's like, we're going out
there. We got to find Benjen.
We got to find what's going on with these bodies.
We got to find out all that stuff.
This next section is called Craster's Lie.
But before they get to Craster's they stop at White Tree, a
village. This village has a connection to
Craster cause Craster's mother was born there or lived there.
But like every other village, White Tree is empty.
And that is scary and confusing quote.
If my uncle found all these villages empty as well.
He would have made it his purpose to learn why.
Lord Mormont finished for him. I may well be someone or
something did not want that known.
So no longer is Mormont just dancing around.
What else could it be? Something or someone?
He's openly stating that this could be the supernatural enemy,
something, not the wildlings, right?
That is not the language he would use if he thought it was
the Free Folk. He wouldn't say something, did
not want that known. The wildlings aren't things, not
even to him. Now we do know that the Free
Folk are massing in the mountains to make an army
capable of punching through the wall to escape the Others.
So there's some expectation from the watch that, well, if Benjen
was killed, it might have been relatively close.
He may have been fleeing and was caught before he could escape,
like O Thor and Jafer. One suggestion is that the other
five were killed. O Thor and Jafer got away but
were also overtaken eventually. So they go follow this path.
They go to White Tree. They keep following, go
northwest. They hit Crasters.
Now Craster says he hasn't seen Benjin in three years, which is
very sketchy because there's a certainty, given the path Benjin
was going on, that he would pass by Craster's Thorin Smallwood
says this out loud. He's like, he should have passed
by here. They're they're, they're like,
they're a little. They're not so sure.
Craster's telling the truth. And we know almost for certainty
that he was lying. Mormont says Benjin was looking
for Waymar Royce. He says looking looking for
Waymar Royce. Craster refers to that.
He says, oh, yeah, them I saw Garrett.
He wasn't so bad for a crow. I liked him.
All right, so how do we know he lied?
Well, he knows Garrett was executed.
How did he learn that so fast? How did he learn Garrett was
executed so fast? He even knows that his head was
cut off. The it's it's very hard to
imagine how he learned that so quickly without it being
Benjen's group telling him. Right, you could say, well, what
about the other Rangers that went out after in search of an
engine? They didn't necessarily go that
far. And there's no mention of them
visiting Craster either. They don't seem to have come
this way. They seem to have been searching
in other places. Now, that would be weird if they
knew he went that way, but maybe they just bypassed Crasters and
just said, yeah, screw it, we're going past and keep looking.
There is another explanation. It's a little thin, but it's
possible. Mance was at the Welcome Feast,
right? He was there.
He snuck into Winterfell when Robert and Cersei and everybody
was there. This is something we learned
much later, of course, but he says enough detail to that we
can believe him. Like, OK, that's this is not a
lot. He knows too much about what
happened there for him to be making this up now.
There's so he would have learned about Garrett being executed
just from the gossip there, from being on that side of the wall.
There's a plenty of ways he could have heard that now.
He wouldn't have told Crafter though.
Craster hates Mance and Mance hates Craster.
Remember what happened when Mance sent an envoy to Craster
to tell him to jump? Craster cut his tongue out and
nailed it to his door. But it Mance doesn't have to
tell Craster directly. Mance could tell other people,
and other people could tell Craster.
The telephone game can happen. That's why I said this is a bit
thin because, well, the timing isn't great.
This happened, you know, this isn't that much time has passed.
And we know that the Nights Watch talks to the wildlings
sometimes, but that's a little thin too.
So Craster probably lied. He probably did see Benjin.
But why? Why did he lie?
What's the point of lying? What is he concealing?
Could he, could he have sold out Benjin to the others somehow?
That's possible. Like if there's a if there's a
if Craster is somehow able to communicate with the others and
that's how he's given them children, but boys, then maybe
he can give them this kind of info too.
I don't know. Maybe, definitely possible.
But why would he need to lie about that?
Why? I need to say, yeah, I saw him.
He passed through here and then he just.
I don't know what happened after that.
The others killed him. That wouldn't lead back to
Craster. They would like others killed
him. That's your fault.
Like, why would that? Why would they blame Craster for
that? So it's a little odd that I
can't quite figure that out, why Craster would lie because there
doesn't. He wouldn't be blamed for it if
he told the truth. But yeah, I don't.
Yeah, it's very peculiar. I don't have an answer there.
I'm a little lost on that one. Let's have our quote of the
week. It's Between 2 Fires by
Christopher Buellman, a really excellent gothic horror fantasy
novel that takes place during the Black Plague.
Here we go. Delphine awoke alone in the
cart, her heart racing from a dream that a devil was in oxair
turning people into puppets. In the dream she was able to
stop it, but the devil, who had too many eyes, was very angry
and it chased her. That was when she awoke.
She knew the dream was true, but she was very frightened and
pulled the blanket over her head.
Then she thought of her father and mother, and of how she would
have felt to see either of them turned into a devil's plaything.
She gathered her blanket around her, meaning to set off down the
road, knowing she didn't have much daylight in which to walk
the last few miles. An Angel was sitting on the back
of the mule, facing her and wringing its hands.
It was the same one she'd seen in Normandy.
It was the saddest she'd ever seen an Angel look.
It told her to stay in the cart, speaking as if every word heard
it. Why, she said she would only
make things worse. It said however noble her desire
was, getting to Avignon was all that mattered.
Is a devil going to Oxair? Yes, a very strong one is
already there, and another is coming.
Who will help the people in the town?
Will you? It hung its head.
It was a minor Angel, made better at messages than war.
The strong ones were fighting in heaven.
Delphine thought from the way the Angel spoke that this fight
must not be going very well. I like to read a book the first
time and then listen to it the second time.
I feel like that covers the bases for the way my brain
works. I might catch things differently
audibly than with my eyes. You know, two different methods,
kind of slightly different results.
It works pretty well for me. So I recommend that for y'all.
Maybe you try that out. If you're, if any book you like
is good enough to reread, then well, get the physical copy and
then maybe get the the audio version on Audible.
And you can get either of those through the links on our
website, historyofwesteros.com. You could shop anything on
Amazon. Audible is owned by Amazon
through us and anything you buy there, we get a little kickback.
It doesn't cost you any extra. So it's a great way to support
the show. If you're going to shop on
Amazon, might as well help us out in the process.
And this is a great book. I, I love mentioning these books
that I mentioned. These aren't just like attempts
to sell books. Sure, we want to sell a few
books, but mostly these are just cool books.
I want y'all to read. We don't, we don't sell very
many of these. Very little of these actually
get sold through us. So it is mostly just about I
want to share books that I really like.
So yeah, Check out Between 2 Fires if that quote moved you or
if one of the other quotes I've read did.
And look out for more quotes of the week in future episodes.
The cash at the 1st and I don't mean the money.
I mean the little, you know, the stored stash there.
Stash cash. Yeah.
Anyway, So after Crasters, they continue northwest and get to
the first of the first men. And of course, that's as far as
they go. In fact, not long after, they
flee back S much quicker than they arrived.
At one point, Mormont points out that they've made enough noise
and setting the fires to alert Benjamin of their presence.
John realizes what he means, that it's a lot easier for
Benjin to find them than for them to find Benjin.
They're a big group. He's one or five or seven
people. Well, 5:00 at most.
They already know that Othor and Jafer are gone, but they also
acknowledge the dark possibility that Benjin could find them as a
dead man. He could return to them undead.
This is a reasonable place to assume that Benjin had problems
as well. We know his marks.
He was burning marks in the trees to mark his patches so
Rangers could find him. They ended at some point.
Well, if the Nights Watch ran into a problem getting to the
first, the others attacked him when they got far this far, it
stands to reason that this would have been an area, a region that
would have been a problem for Benjamin as well.
They may have also stopped him from going any further, even
though he's a small, much smaller group able to hide and
travel much more stealthily. Well, you know, that doesn't
mean it worked. Doesn't mean they're stealthy
enough. They could still have been
detected. Right now, this is a reasonable
place. Also to guess maybe that maybe
Benjen sent O Thor and Jaffer flowers back.
He hasn't sent word of what happened.
This would be a way to do so. He's like, OK, we can't go back
yet. We discovered this huge new
problem that the others are active again, that the dead are
walking. I don't want to go all the way
back to Castle Black. I need to stay here and keep
figuring this all out. But we do need to tell people.
So he sends O Thor and Jay for back, but they don't make it.
They're cut off. They're killed first, O Thor is
killed, and then O Thor kills Jay for something like that.
They never get to deliver that message.
So maybe, maybe Ben had expected that that that message would be
passed along and then help would come.
And then, well, it did come, but it was too late.
Maybe, or we don't know if this even happened, but at the first
of the First Men, remember what happens.
John finds that cache of Dragon. Well, really, Ghost finds the
cache and leads John to it. Quote.
Had Ghost uncovered some ancient cache of the Children of the
Forest, buried here for thousands of years?
The first of the First Men was an old place.
Only beneath the dragonglass was an old warhorn, made from an
Oreck's horn and banded in bronze.
John shook the dirt from inside it, and a stream of arrowheads
fell out. He let them fall and pulled up a
corner of the cloth the weapons had been wrapped in, rubbing it
between his fingers. Good wool, thick, a double
weave, damp but not rotted. It could not have been long in
the ground, and it was dark. He seized A handful and pulled
it close to the torch. Not dark black.
Even before John stood and shook it out, he knew what he had.
The black cloak of a sworn brother of the Night's Watch.
Of course, the cash has arrowheads, a few spearheads, a
couple dagger, dagger blades, things like that.
Good stuff, useful stuff. It's probably not Benjen's cloak
because he would need it, so it could have come from one of his
men, One of the ones who died, maybe.
Now, I tried to find evidence that Jafer Flowers or Othor were
missing their cloaks, but this is not mentioned.
There's a theory, an alternate theory, that Cold Hands was
responsible for this cash, IE he was guided by Blood Raven to put
it there. And if Cold Hands was in this
area, then you know that he could have run into Benjen.
That would be quite a meeting. Cold Hands could even have been
1 of Benjen's men. Probably not, but it's there's a
chance I guess. Another possibility is the
children themselves. The children left this cash for
the Night's Watch to fight the others who they knew that would
happen like, well, these guys are about to be in big trouble.
Let's try to arm them. But that doesn't really work
very well. Where would they get a Night's
Watch cloak, right? Maybe from a body.
But why would it bother? Well, just bury it like you
don't need the cloak. That's not a crucial part of
this. The cash is what matters.
And also the horn. The horn is very curious.
What is that horn doing there? Why would the children put a
horn, a broken war horn there? And if it's the Horn of Winter,
a lot could be explained by this Benjen, picture this.
He's a he's out there, he's being chased.
He thinks he's got the Horn of Winter.
Maybe the same thing that the Free Folk were looking for, that
the Grit says they were trying to find.
Maybe he got it before them somehow, but he can't risk them
getting it from him. He's in peril of being captured.
So he places it at the first of the first men with dragonglass
weapons. Well, I don't know where those
came from. So maybe he did run into the
children and they all conspired to do this with some plan of
both of their makings to both get this weapon away from the
others to make sure it goes to the right hands.
The the Horn of Winter, that is, but also arm the Night's Watch
against what's coming. Because if we don't, then they
might not make it back to Castle Black.
They might all die beyond the wall and then that then the horn
dies with them too, or stays here.
What good does that do if they're all killed also?
So yeah, it's tricky, right? The horn is.
The horn to me, is the real peculiar part of this.
There's lots of theories about what that horn is, whether it's
the Horn of Winter, whether it's something else.
But if it's not, if it's, it can't just be a regular.
Why the hell would Benjen put a regular broken horn in his
cache? What the hell purpose is that?
That's extremely useless, right? There's got to be a reason, and
regular horn does. No version of regular broken
horn makes any sense whatsoever. It has to be a special horn.
The fact that it's broken is why.
That's why we know it's special. Because broken regular horn, who
cares? Broken magical horn, right?
Like there, I just can't see it any other way.
Not that it tells us what the horn does, not that it tells us
what magical properties it actually has.
But again, mundane horn in the stash of dragonglass weapons?
Why No. It's special, Your monster,
Benjin Stark. Of course, that line comes from
Cold Hands when he's telling Bran on the brand like you're a
monster to your monster, Bran Stark.
It's creepy. It's cool.
We know that Benjin isn't Cold Hands.
But there's still considerations here.
Possible overlap, possible connections.
In other words, something George has done a few times, more than
a few times. Maybe is he gives us the
introductory version, or a proto version, a pseudo version of
something that he's going to take to another level later.
He's going to give us a more potent example of later.
A good example of that would be Vermeer's POV chapter.
Vermeer's POV chapter is clearly a set up for, among other
things, Stark's Second Life and Second Life concept.
Starks as skin changers, like what that's like, what their
powers are. There's a lot of explanation in
that, a lot of Vermeer kind of telling us what he's about, what
he can do, and what skin changers are all about.
Kind of similar here in that we see this version of Cold Hands
that sets us up for John's On Death and maybe Benjamin's as
well. Now on on the other and I'm not
so sure because I still think my best guess is cold hands is one
of the Ravens teeth, one of blood Ravens men that joined the
watch with him. But that would explain why
they're tied together. That would explain why he died
long ago. Blood Raven could be controlling
him through this, a similar type of magic that the others use to
animate the whites, the children version of that magic that the
that they may have even given to the others.
If if if the children created the others, which seems like a
distinct possibility. What A twist that would be
though, if that was the case, that Benjen is controlled by
Bloodraven. He's undead and controlled by
Bloodraven. I kind of doubt it, but that
would be possible. That would keep that would be in
the vein of Cold Hands. And I think this is one of at
least three major things Benjin's return could explain.
Remember, we started the second-half of this episode with
the big question of what is the point of Benjin's return?
Why might it matter? It's not just, again, it's not
just going to be to save Bran. It's not just going to be to
save John. It's not just going to be here's
Benjin, we now we know where he is.
Nah, there's got to be deeper reasons.
For example. Yeah.
Like how to defeat the others that would align with him
leaving the cache there. It doesn't tell us where he got
it from, but it does tell us. It does give us a pretty strong
clue. Is it the purpose of it?
Like, why else would those dragon glass weapons be there?
Of course, it's to fight the other.
There's no other possible reason.
So could Benjin be a prisoner of the Others?
I mean, that's kind of out there as an idea.
Like, do they keep prisoners? I mean, I don't know about that,
but it's a wide open topic. We know so little of the nature
of the Others, of where they come from, of the lands of
Always Winter, of their yeah, just all that.
So we can't rule much out at all.
It could also speak to a connection between the Others
and how Stark, right Then the original Night King supposed to
be a Stark, right? That's what how old Dan tells it
it is. It's long been a theory in the
fandom that because the Targaryens have a blood
connection to Dragons, that maybe the Starks have a blood
connection to the others. Like the fire and ice parallels
here, the two bookend concepts that the Song of Ice and fire.
That isn't maybe enough to go on, but it's enough to start
with as an idea and just say, hmm, maybe, you know, and like I
said, it's this has been a theory that's been around I
think since book one, that idea, like people have been connecting
the Starks to the others for a long time.
And there's a good reason to, even if not a full reason to,
even if we don't have that all fleshed out, maybe one day we
will. All right, let's end with
Benjen's point of view. And I don't mean like we'll see
a chapter from his point of view, but just given some things
that might, what they might have looked like from his point of
view and what he might look like if he returns.
The idea that Craster had an indirect role in his
disappearance is definitely a maybe the Free Folk in general
again, there's, I really don't think so.
Again, the idea that that they would have killed him and not
bragged about it, you know, and John's travelling with the Free
Folk for a while. Yeah, this is no way.
Whoever did that would be a legend amongst the Free Folk.
So. So if he does return, when he
does return, we'll say, let's say that who's he going to
reveal himself to? Bran, of course, is the most
obvious. But if not him, then who?
The Night's Watch is completely cut off.
Like how does he even get there? Most of the Free Folk are South
of the Wall, so he probably can't do that.
If he's undead, he like cold hands.
He probably can't cross the wall.
So that's another thing they might have in common.
So even revealing himself to John seems a little bit unlikely
because John may not have a reason to go north of the wall
for a while, if at all. Like he froze the gate shut, you
know, and he wanted to lead that thing to heart home.
And, you know, he was assassinated before he could do
that. That would be a twist though.
Very interesting thing for Benjen to come back as undead
after John is undead. And then it'd be like, hey, hey,
we're both undead. How about that?
Yeah. Melisandre hasn't seen Benjen in
any visions. He she's seen what she thought
was Arya. She's seen, you know, towers
crumbling into the sea. She's seen Bloodraven, she saw
Bran the wolf headed child and all that.
She's seen a lot of things. She saw patch face, she's seen
Jon Snow. No Benjen, though, so that's not
a vehicle, George, this is not a Melisandre.
Could have been and still could be, I guess in a future chapter
could have been a vehicle for clues about Benjen.
But no, we didn't get that. So that I thought that was
interesting to mention. I kind of doubt he'll just show
up at the gate one day, but maybe, you know, maybe that he
shows up when the others do. He's been, you know, following
them, shadowing them, and when they make their move, he's ready
to help. Benjen attacking the others
could look a bit like Aragorn. I'll call him Strider in this
case, because since that's his Ranger name and Benjen's a
Ranger. When?
When at the. What is that?
The mountaintop, the Weathertop spot where he he had his torch
and his sword. He was driving the Nazgul off.
It could look a little like that.
Benjen showing up, you know, with the Obsidian and fire, not
afraid for himself because he's already undead as well.
And who knows? Yeah.
Just if he does show up and starts kicking ass, that might
be what it looks like. Yeah.
Because if he if he left that cash, well, he probably kept at
least one for himself, right? Maybe a couple arrows, maybe a
dagger, maybe something like that, a spear.
So, yeah. But even that said, I still
think it's most likely Bran's chapter.
He could tell his story, give Bran more things that are
important for him to know in his fight against the others.
From his Bran's grand magical perspective, information that
Benjen has could be very useful. Tells him where to look in the
in the mirror network for certain mysteries, how to learn
more. It's fitting that the 1st Ranger
went missing in the fight against the ultimate enemy that
he was the 1st to go investigate it even though he didn't
actually know what he was going to investigate at first along
the way he did he probably had that same real think.
Corin tells John tell Lord Commander Morma you have to get
away you have to get back to the watch.
It's vital I, I, I, I'm willing to die to help you get away
because otherwise we're both going to die.
And this information really has to get back to, to the, to the
wall. That's again, that could be a
model for what Benjin was thinking when he when O Thor and
Jafer flowers got so close to getting back to the wall.
He they may have had that vital information that he wanted to
pass on. So if Benjin's, if Benjin died
for this, if Bran realizes that, discovers that it'll be all the
more motivating for him to honor his uncle's sacrifice, that he
died for this and that the Starks are, you know, it's it's
up to the Starks to make sure that this that the North wins,
that the others are not victorious.
Yeah. I don't even really entertain
the notion that Benjen won't reappear.
I think that's just. Yeah.
No way. I think most of you, if not all
you agree with that. George is not going to let us
hasn't let us forget about it. He keeps mentioning it.
That's not something you do if you want us to forget about him.
If he's never going to reappear. That just would be such a weird
thing to do narratively. Like, yeah, where's Benjen?
Where's Benjen? Where's Benjen?
Bookends series ends. Where's wait, where's you never
told us where Benjen was? You know, he that meant that
most recent mention of Benjen is the vision of young Benjen in
Bran's collection of visions. That's very telling.
We see a young Benjen with Lyanna that that's just, that's
just meaty stuff right there. So, yeah, we are not done with
this character. He's out there.
Don't forget to hit us with your Benjen theories.
We're on Discord, we're on Facebook.
We can send us a message right directly Westeros
history@gmail.com and you can interact with us on Blue Sky a
Shaya. Put up a poll here and you'll
get the results. That's cool. 171 votes.
Is Benjen alive? Alive 40%, Undead 37%, Dead 21%.
That doesn't add up to 100, but it's close.
I guess we got half percentages there anyway.
That's great. I love, I like that, but I, I'm
in the undead camp myself. I would I would.
My vote would go towards that one with a live being next and
dead being the least likely. If he is dead, he's going to be
raised. It's telling temporary.
He's not just going to be found dead.
Unanimated and that's the end of it.
I seriously doubt that, but hey, you never know.
Our trivia question was what term does Mira Reid used to
refer to Benjamin? And this is when she's telling
Bran the Tournament of Harrenhal story.
She refers to Brandon as the wild wolf, Ned is the quiet
wolf, Leon as the wolf maid, and Benjen as the wolf pup.
Congrats to anyone who got that one right.
A lot of episodes relate to this one that we have in our catalog
already. Of course, the Abduction of
Atlantis arc episode. That's perhaps the most
relevant. Also, our necromancy in A Song
of Ice and Fire, when that is a big one.
Same with our execution of Brandon and Lord Rickard by Mad
King Aries. That gets into the whole other
angle to Leona's disappearance and the fallout from that, which
obviously Benjen is tied to in a few different ways.
We have an episode on the Neducation Young Ned, which of
course ties into Brand Benjen as well, as well as the rest of his
family. We have that episode Craster and
the Cold Gods, which gets into the issue of Craster and his
whole deal and what's going on with that and him and all.
Yeah, that business. And we have one called The
Curious Case of Cold Hands that obviously relates to this one
too, for a lot of reasons. We have an episode on Hardhome,
which maybe's a little far afield of this one, but it might
have a connection, who knows, Maybe we'll learn more about
that. And we have that episode called
The Missing where we deal with a lot of other missing characters
besides Benjen, who gets a brief mention alongside so many other
characters that we flesh out completely in that episode.
Thanks again, everybody. We really appreciate your
support, that your patronage, your telling of your friends
about us. I will, I've said it a million
times, I'll say it again. There is nothing better than
that word of mouth. You telling your friends about
us is the best and most best way for us to get new listeners
because you are trustworthy to your friends, I would assume,
And your advice, your suggestions are something that
they will take above just about anyone else's.
So we do rely on you for that. And we thank you for that and
for listening or watching and any other interactions you have
with us. We're very grateful.
Thanks as well to Nina for her great notes today.
She often has such great notes. This day was no exception.
Thanks to Joey Townsend for our theme music and Michael Klarfeld
for our intro and the maps you see behind me.
Get his maps at KLARADO x.de. It's Clair docs.de.
You can get the files downloaded, you can print them
out yourself, and it's pretty cheap that way.
And that's it. I'm Aziz on behalf of a Shaya.
We'll see you next time and you know what to do.
Until then, Valar reread us.