I now realize that the Night King was good
He was trying to save us all from that awful ending.
shareThe Night King was good. A victim who was kidnapped, cursed and killed. He was made to walk the Earth and turn the dead into the living dead who in turn would destroy all life in their path.
His was a tragic story.
I suppose you could say that the night king was "innocent", as he wasnt depopulating the North of his own free will.
But not "good",because, you know, mass killings and making corpse art.
Maybe zombies lead a happier existence than the living. They feel no pain after all.
shareYou misunderstood me. I meant BEFORE he became the Night King. He was an innocent human who was kidnapped from his village. He probably was married with children too. The Children of the Forest were the ones who turned him into something bad.
shareWe don’t know if he was really innocent, do we?
For all we know he could have been one of the men slaughtering the Children of the Forest – or did I miss something?
Innocent until proven guilty. Children of the Forest never gave him a trail.
Anyway, they would more likely kidnap a defenseless sap rather than a soldier-type who would actually put up a fight. Notice how much screaming he did. Very unsoldierlike behavior on his part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guhc75cGY2Q
This is getting a bit silly. We don't know anything about the guy or how the CotF treated him, all we know is that turning Westeros into a continent-sized ice cube isn't his own idea.
And BTW that era is the setting for the prequel series that's supposedly in production, the one set in the era of the building of the Wall. I wonder if that's still on after S8 flopped?
The guy was kidnapped, tied up and murdered and you're wondering if he's a victim? You're a cold one, aren't you?
shareI just don't know anything about him, other than again, he is fundamentally innocent during the events of "GoT". None of that was his idea.
But we know nothing about the original man, not even that he was kidnapped. For all we know, he came to the CotF and begged them to endow him with supernatural powers or immortality, and they said "Sure. You'll do. Supernatural powers and immortality coming right up!". We just don't know.
And we'll probably never know, if the prequel series falls through because everyone is fed up with D&D.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guhc75cGY2Q
Yes, we do. The two minute video shows that he was kidnapped, tied up and looks scared. His demeanor shows he's not a soldier type. Can you imagine Stannis or Jamie screaming like him?
Speak for yourself. The last two seasons were a bit rushed, but overall it was enjoyable. It was probably too sophisticated for you to follow.
Well the guy who tried to buy one of Dany's dragons with an army of Unsullied screamed piteously too, but that didn't make him an innocent victim. I am just saying that I don't know enough about that situation to make any sort of judgment or to have strong feelings.
And FYI your last sentence had me sniggering out loud. S8 was a mess!
"the guy who tried to buy one of Dany's dragons..."
Kraznys mo Nakloz wasn't a soldier/warrior either which makes my point.
I'm confident GMMR's two last books will be fine.
> Innocent until proven guilty. Children of the Forest never gave him a trail.
Sorry, but you’re contradicting yourself here. On one hand, you say "innocent until proven guilty", on the other hand, you *assume* that the CotF didn’t gave him a trial.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they gave him a trial either. But in my opinion you can’t play the "not proven guilty" card in one sentence, and in the next, comdemn another one as guilty (of not giving a trial) without a proof.
> Notice how much screaming he did. Very unsoldierlike behavior on his part.
Well. My grandfather and some of my great-uncles were soldiers in WWII. According to the stories they told me, screaming like a baby at the moments before death is not uncommon among soldiers.
Not at all.
"I don’t think they gave him a trial either."
Then we both agree that he's innocent.
It would be stupid for the Children of the Forest to kidnap a strong soldier who will put up a fight as opposed to a simple farmer who won't. At some point you have to use your common sense. It's also more tragic if he is innocent since that person was changed into something malevolent. A malevolent soldier becoming malevolent is poor drama and plain stupid writing.
It sounds like those soldiers were poorly trained.
> Then we both agree that he's innocent.
No.
I said "I don’t think" so this is my assumption. Doesn’t make it real. But more importantly: In real life, the "innocent until proven guilty" concept is good and just because we usually have no way of actually *knowing* what happened until a trial tries to find it out.
In books we’ve got the "omniscient narrator" (not used in The Song of Fire and Ice of course) who tells us what really happened. In TV shows we see often what really happened (and this has been used in GoT). Thus, while a person might not be proven guilty to the other people in the story, we, the viewers, may know fully well if he’s innocent or not.
> At some point you have to use your common sense
Well, my common sense tells me if you want to create a monster you might prefer select a human who already has shown signs of cruelity, not someone who wouldn’t harm a hair on sb.’s head. Maybe that’s even the reason that the spell went wrong and the NK turned against his creators.
Of course you’re right that this would be less dramatic – a true tragedy would be if the NK was the Jon Snow of his time before he was turned. Therefore I kinda HOPE that you’re right here.
But my point was that at the current stage, we don’t KNOW what happened.
And since I sincerely hope that the prequel will tell us the full story of the CotF and NK, I’ll stop speculating here.
> It sounds like those soldiers were poorly trained.
I’m very lucky that I never needed to go to war. So I’m not going to judge my family members who meanwhile are dead, nor any other soldiers who died fulfilling their duty. I just hope that you don’t believe that all well-trained soldiers die with "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" on their lips.
But what makes you think that all the soldiers in the GoT world get a proper training?
"I said "I don’t think" so this is my assumption [that he's innocent.]"
OK! We both assume he's innocent.
The answer is probably in the DVD with the commentary on. I don't see how his background is that important anyway. Obviously, he was kidnapped and it was forced upon him.
My father fought in two wars and trained soldiers. Part of the training is to make fighting automatic or instinctual so that they don't freeze during battle.
> OK! We both assume he's innocent.
Nope.
Of course, you can label Sauron as innocent, or Emperor Palpatine or the great majority of all fictional villians we’ve ever seen or read about who never got a trial, too. I don’t apply our real-world juristic rules to a piece of fiction, because there, we habe other ways to know the truth (which even are more reliable).
> The answer is probably in the DVD with the commentary on.
Maybe, but I guess they save this for the prequel. We’ll see.
> Part of the training is to make fighting automatic or instinctual
> so that they don't freeze during battle.
Yeah, but *this* part of the training (I don’t doubt there are others) isn’t very helpful when you’re tied to a tree with someone approaching you with a weapon in his hand…
But as you said, maybe we’ll get the background in another way.
Feel free to have the last word on this, but I’m not going to continue this discussion.
Apples & oranges re Sauron and Palp since a captured regular human has nothing to do with the evil he became after a spell.
I've seen documentary videos of people before execution/slaughter and they are strangely quiet and passive. Probably resigned to their fate.