No Plan for What Comes After, by Bryan Caplan

My elder sons got the first four seasons of Game of Thrones for their thirteenth birthday, so I get to watch the whole series again.  Season 2, Episode 4 is even more pacifistic than I remember.  Crucial scene: Talisa, the battle surgeon, handily exposes the shallowness of the honor of Robb Stark, King in the North.

Talisa: That boy lost his foot
on your orders.



Robb: They killed my father.



Talisa: That boy did?

Robb: The family he fights for.



Talisa: Do you think he's friends
with King Joffrey?

He's a fisherman's son
that grew up near Lannisport. He probably never held a spear

before they shoved one in his
hands a few months ago.

Robb: I have no hatred
for the lad.



Talisa: [sighs]

That should help
his foot grow back.



Robb: You'd have us surrender,
end all this bloodshed. I understand. The country would be at peace

and life would be just
under the righteous hand

of good King Joffrey.



Talisa: - You're going to kill Joffrey?


Robb:  If the Gods give me strength.



Talisa: And then what?


Robb: I don't know. We'll go back
to Winterfell. I have no desire to sit
on the Iron Throne.

Talisa: So who will?


Robb: 
I don't know.
 
Talisa: You're fighting
to overthrow a king,

and yet you have no plan
for what comes after?



Robb: First we have
to win the war.

Only fiction?  Think again.  Robb's a typical politician: too obsessed with winning to dwell on whether the game is morally permissible, much less worth playing.


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