"Even unpopular lords stay lords, until they suffer some sort of 'accident,' or another lord successfully rides against them. I bent the knee because I chose to, and my sister was my successor." For a couple of reasons, only one of them being that no one knew if their last remaining brother was even alive, much less where he was.

"Normally a Snow wouldn't be. It's the name given to bastards in the North. I have no legal claim to Winterfell or any of the rest of it." Not that he ever really wanted one; acceptance and a place to belong was all he'd longed for from the start. "The men of the North named me their king, at which point the legality or otherwise of my claim didn't matter."