Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-25941257-20170825174215/@comment-31763506-20170918174504

IIRC, the distinction was between people who are "defeated", that is sufficiently injured that they are unable to continue fighting, and genuinely dead. Dead is dead in TLS, whereas the defeated can be healed with sufficiently advanced magic.

Wendis was killed instantly, so nothing could be done.

Put another way, defeat  in TLS is only mostly dead.