Eddard

Ned represents the moral and emotional center of the story. His honor, justice, mercy, and understanding of the moral landscape are the major themes and premises that ring out through the entire story. Ned’s ethos is portrayed in the short term as foolish, naive, and poorly adapted for a world as harsh as this. But Winter is Coming.

Much like the Stark words, Ned’s lessons and way-of-being are designed to win the long game. The morality he has imparted onto his children is serving them well, and better than the philosophies of other Houses.

When it comes to Jon’s parentage I always return to my feelings about Ned. Ned feels to me like an incomplete character.

Every character in the story, from Arya to Littlefinger, seems to be struggling against their own flaws. The character’s journey is interesting and valuable as a story because I want to see how to get from A to B so that I can imitate it if B is desirable or avoid it if B is undesirable. If I began the story as a naive princess like Sansa, and my naivety causes me suffering, then how do I overcome it so that I can end the story as something better than a naive princess? Say, a wise queen?

Most of Ned’s story took place before the story began, so his A is a few decades in the past and I don’t get to see it firsthand the way I see Sansa’s story. But that fact doesn’t absolve a storyteller of the responsibility to present each character as a traveler from A to B, or rather, as a conqueror of his own flaws. Because everyone in life has flaws.

So if the only useful lesson I can learn from The Story of Ned’s Life is to be flawless like Ned, then it’s a useless story. And probably not a very interesting one either.

It is often said that Ned’s flaw is that he is too honorable, and so his death is the lesson. “Don’t be too honorable.” It’s valuable and interesting because it demonstrates how to achieve an undesirable end.

“You wear your honor like a suit of armor, Stark. You think it keeps you safe, but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move. Look at you now. You know why you summoned me here. You know what you want to ask me to do. You know it has to be done … but it’s not honorable, so the words stick in your throat.” (AGOT Eddard XIII)

I think that’s wrong. I think in Ned’s code of justice there is rooted an argument for self-sacrifice that re-contextualizes Ned’s death as a victory rather than a defeat. There are some principles worth dying for. Protecting children is one of them.

So, if Ned’s death is the successful and proper way to behave in the world, in the final assessment, then Ned has not made a journey from A to B. He hasn’t conquered his own flaws or been defeated by them because he is flawless, which is a useless ideal because none of us can be flawless like Ned.

So there must be some mistake in Ned’s past that will re-contextualize him as someone who was, in fact, flawed. But he did his best to overcome it.

I think that flaw might be infidelity and fathering a bastard. Ned’s interest in Ashara seems to be a seed of that. But I’m open to other ideas.

 

I’m coming to wonder if the extent of Ned’s flaws were judging both Jaime Lannister and Will too soon and too harshly. Maybe he should have investigated Will’s claims about the Others before killing him. And maybe he could have been less judgemental towards Jaime.