#Eragon sticking around being Nasuada's (if she managed to get out of there alive) help which kinda sounds like a Morzan-situation

[tonhalszendvics]

@dellanir hey, sorry for the tag, but it's maybe easier to talk like this than in the answers :|

To my understanding, our heroes won the final battle when Galbatorix lost his cool. He got mad, he set everything aside and tried to break Eragon's mind, straight and head-on. And the thing that made him mad was Murtagh getting free and attacking him. That was that broke the king's spell that was holding down Arya, Saphira and Elva, so they were physically able to move.

Most of Eragon's success is him acting on a whim, on instincts - but at the same time it also almost killed him many times, so when we are throwing things of what could he have done, keep in mind that all of those can kill him as well. Also: Eragon spent like. Two months at most in Ellesméra, studying from Oromis and he forgot a lot (ie. the Banishing of the Names, human runes, probably even more, as Oromis had no time to revise their lessons. I don't hold it against him, it was a very difficult and challenging part of his life). He got the distilled version of the rider-training. Galbatorix was a student in the height of the Order, so I think we can safely assume that everything Eragon knew, Galbatorix knew as well. Even if he had been an apprentice a long time ago and he forgot a lot.

Murtagh said that the king could be killed in many ways. Eragon found one. However, we've seen how did Galbatorix deal with Nausada, and in the new book it was revealed how did he break Murtagh. For me, this means that if Murtagh there in the throne room didn't change, Galbatorix would have done the same to Eragon. He was entertained by Eragon and the others, but he'd have returned to the known ways. He could have started with separating Eragon from the others, stripping him from his magic. He could have started torturing Saphira, which is a well-known method to break riders. Eragon reached him with his talking, that's why he let that duel happen in the first place, but if he had talked further, I think he'd have silenced him.

If we have the throne room scene with everything the same, except for Murtagh and Thorn switching sides, then Eragon and his company has the slimmest chance to win. It is possible, as everything is possible, but I'd give it a one to million ratio. We were granted with the best outcome there, I think, everything else would have been too taxing to our heroes either physically or mentally. I am thinking about Murtagh's threat from the third book where he'd said that he'd cut down Eragon's hand, since he wouldn't need that in Uru-baen. And while hands can be glued back with magic, as we've seen it in courtesy of Balder, Glaedr's case shows that it is not always the case.

For mental stuff: Eragon was in a very vulnerable state mentally after the end of the war. Let's not forget that he was a teenager who was forced to grow up too fast and who'd lost basically everything during that war, including his own sense of privacy. If he'd beaten Galbatorix alone without the help of Saphira, Arya, Murtagh, Thorn and Elva, he'd have become a second Galbatorix. If not immediately after the battle, then later on. He still has that fear, that's why he left Alagaesia.

Galbatorix was alone. Even if he had Shruikan and the Eldunarya, they all hated him, so in reality, he was alone. He had to be overthrown via group effort, and in that way it had happened in the book, otherwise Eragon's future, and the future of Alagaesia, would be in danger.

TLDR: Eragon has a one to a million chance to win without Murtagh's help, and I don't want him to win like that, because that would break him and the consequences would be ugly.

Could Eragon actually defeat Galbatorix without Murtagh's help?

If Murtagh's true name had remained the same or if he hadn't remembered the Name of Names, does that mean Galbatorix would have easily defeated Eragon and the Varden?