Livre d'Or

Ah, hang on, things are bubbling up from the depths of my memory. Sorry to keep replying piecemeal like this; my head's working quite slowly today.

I think the reason I had that thought about saving everyone in the castle was: "when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards". And I interpreted "Death working backwards" as a global change in the nature of the universe – it didn't just enable Aslan himself to come back from the dead, it also enabled all the turned-to-stone (i.e. dead) people in the castle to be unstoned, because that was a piece of magic relying on the same change in the natural laws.