“Are you well Bran?”…    “Yes, Father,”

“Are you well Bran?”…

    “Yes, Father,” Bran told him…“Rob said the man died bravely, but Jon says he was afraid.”

    “What do you think?”

    Bran thought about it. “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”

    “That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father told him. “Do you understand why I did it?”

    “He was a wildling,” Bran said. “They carry of women and sell them to the Others.”

    His lord father smiled. “Old Nan has been telling you stories again. In truth, the man was an oathbreaker, a deserter from the Night’s Watch. No man is more dangerous. The deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will not flinch from any crime, no matter how vile. But you mistake me. The question was not why the man had to die, but why I must do it.”

    Bran had no answer for that. “King Robert has a headman,” he said, uncertainly.

    “He does,” his father admitted. “As did the Targaryen kings before him. Yet our way is the older way. The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we hold the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.

    "One day, Bran, you will be Robb’s bannerman, holding a keep of your own for your brother and your king, and justice will fall to you. When that day comes, you must take no pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.”

                                      - George R.R. Martin, Bran I, A Game of Thrones

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