Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5.64.61.239-20130817160806/@comment-24590102-20140418050854

In reply to the OP, ...because that's the way it happens.

Battles are messy things and, though it may be written differently, the mighty are often felled by the most insignificant of things - and children are not insignificant. In fact, children are particularly dangerous in battle because they do not fight in synchronisation with the kind of rythms which make the Snow Prince's great performance possible. That triumphal pause was expected by the Snow Prince and honoured by the adult Nords - but the child broke the rythm of the battle only because she was a child and not yet privy to the feelings of adversarial comraderiarie which may develop in some cultures of seasoned veterans.

That kind of attack, especially from a child, was very much a roll of the dice - but any face of the dice can come up, no matter how unexpected or improbable.