The most glorious death in my playthrough of The Banner Saga

Spoilers ahead.

The Banner Saga has been out for a while and news about The Banner Saga 2 is starting to circulate, so I feel like now is a good time to discuss one of the many poigniant parts of my playthrough and why I love this one thing in particular so very much. It's a spoiler that is not early in the game, so I don't recommend you read any further unless you have finished playing The Banner Saga.

The following image is a spoiler buffer. Because seriously, spoiler.

K, can I spoil now? Here I go.

Heading into the final battle, your party is faced with a tough situation. Leading the enemies' charge is a special elite enemy who is immortal. There's no way to kill him. The best you can do is injure him a great deal and then punch him in the chest with a special arrow in the hopes of making this enemy believe that he has actually been killed. The idea is that this will stunt his regenerative powers and take him out of everyone's hair for a long, long, long time.

The leader of your forces, arguably the main character of the game, is an archer named Rook. As he's preparing to take on the responsibility of shooting the one special arrow that absolutely must hit its mark, his daughter Alette demands to be given the job. She is the better archer, she argues, and it's true. To Rook, though, this is his only child. His only family, even, since his wife died when Alette was tiny. The choice is ultimately left to the player.

People can definitely die in The Banner Saga, so I took this choice seriously. With the fate of everyone hanging on this one arrow, it made sense to give it to the more skilled archer, and I did. We entered battle and we got that bastard's health down and Alette fired the arrow. It went right where it needed to go.

But as the enemy fell, he took Alette down with him.

It was heart-rending.

And it was awesome.

At the beginning of the game, Alette had been a happy girl learning archery and hunting in a fairly safe environment. She didn't take well to the flight from home and and the hard choices and killing that came with it. She didn't like all the decisions that I made, and as the game went on I could see her losing a her innocence bit by bit. But by the end of the story, Alette had grown into someone who was not just willing to do what needed to be done for the good of all, but able to acknowledge that she was the best suited to the job and argue that it should be given to her. That's the kind of strength of character that is not often seen in women in media, and I love it.

The fact that her relationship to Rook is painted as a father-child relationship rather than a leader-follower relationship over the course of the game and that she grows from innocent to less so in so short a time colors Rook's protectiveness as more of a parental instinct than a societal "but you're a woman" thing. It's possible that if his child were male, he'd have been less hesitant (women not really being seen as warrior material in this society is addressed a bit in game), but we'll never know the answer to that. Stoic did a great job of addressing the status of women in their fictional society and adding female attackers who gave no frells what society thought women should be doing, and I don't see this conflict as demeaning to Alette at all.

Regardless, I chose to give the daughter-turned-woman a great responsibility. She stepped up to the plate at the hour of need, performed admirably, and died the kind of death about which legends are written. She smote the giant, but as he fell he struck out in his rage and the hero, too, did fall.