The Book of Benjen Stark

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 [email protected] 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. 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 [email protected] 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.