Ya Helmer totally wins this, and to add on that he's gonna have more books to himself to kill more baddies!

This does get me thinking about the other side, villian defeats of heros.

I’d say the identification of Jupiter as the third son makes it clear that there was a second son. But as you say, we know literally nothing else about him. Except for that one reference, he is entirely absent from all the Green Ember wirks we have so far. That is, unless he has been a particularly forceful personality of the story and simply hasn’t been revealed to be Jupiter’s brother to us as yet.

As you say, it is quite possible that he died young, possibly before the whole succession dispute between his brothers came up. There’s certainly no indication that he was ever a contender for being named Walter’s heir. Helmer in the Dragon Tomb makes no mention of him either, with King Walter’s decline and Jupiter’s absence leaving those who address the subject fearful that Bleston would return from self-imposed exile and claim the throne without anyone to oppose him. It seems probable therefore that if Jupiter’s brother was alive, he wasn’t a forceful enough personality to oppose either those who opposed his father or a returning Bleston.

There are a few other possibilities that strikes me:

• The second son may have sided with Bleston against their father and Jupiter and gone with Bleston when he left First Warren.

• Jupiter’s brother may have had some fault or faults that, while not as great as Bleston’s, still made him unfit for rule. Perhaps he was a privileged brat who couldn’t be bothered with affairs of state so long or concern for his people so long as his own needs were being met.

• The second son may have been somewhat like his distant uncle Lemual or future niece Emma, neither of whom wanted the responsibility of being the heir. But he never reached the crisis point that they did, and so wasn’t forced into the position of leadership.

• A favorite theory of mine is that he may have been taken captive, and thus ended up as an anonymous slave under the Lords of Prey and been assumed dead. He may, however, have used this anonymity to assist the resistance to the Preylords in whatever location he happened to find himself in. Of course, this may be based on my interest in another fairly mysterious character in the Green Ember series: our friend the Commandant of Akolan.

Another interesting coincidence is that both died by falling into an abyss. Gollum by falling into the lava of Mount Doom and Garten by falling into the whirlpool in the battle.

My personal theory is that Pacer was probably killed when the Terralains under Bleston infiltrated Cloud Mountain. Tameth probably knew Kylen had been chummy with Pacer and claimed that Pacer had spoken against Picket.