#tywin lannister trust and believe you will be dealt with in hell

[moonlitgleek]

Do you think Ned Stark was successful in anything? Your metas heavily emphasize his failures, faults, and shortcomings. Do you think there was anything he was good at other than being viewed as a good man and moral? I don't see many people acknowledging positive aspects of him-other than he loved his family and was relatively a 'good' person, but that seems to be done more to lighten the criticism of him. Why is he so beloved in the book if he was such a fuck up to his family and the North?

Um, should I not criticize him where criticism is due? Or when an issue he did not handle properly is being discussed? I criticize Ned but I do not denounce him. It’s not that I’m heavily emphasizing his faults but there are places where Ned erred, even if it was sympathetic or understandable in some occasions. I’m generally against considering only one aspect of Ned’s personality as an indication of who he is as a whole, be them his virtues or his faults. My analysis of his motivations or his actions in a certain event isn’t a blanket condemnation of the character or any attempt to argue that he is a fuck up or a bad person. Flawed, certainly, but not bad. Far from it actually. The text itself criticizes Ned  because he, like every other character GRRM writes, is not a saint. He is one of the good ones, but he is not an impeccable untouchable paragon of all that’s good and right. He stands out, certainly, since he is sometimes the only person to speak up against some truly vile things (like the fight with Robert over his condoning of Elia and her children’s murder, or the one over Robert’s command to assassinate a pregnant Daenerys, in which he was joined by Barristan Selmy) but, well, Mycah.

I can’t really speak for the entire fandom, neither do I know what tone the conversation around Ned usually takes, but for me, Ned’s merits and morals and successes are explicitly laid all over the text so I don’t usually feel the need to argue for them. This is the guy who is reputed for his honor across all of Westeros, who garnered the epithet of the honorable Ned Stark. Everyone, friend or foe, make a mention of his morals and honor. And it’s not that he is good at “being viewed” as moral, he genuinely is. Ned Stark is the last person who would perform morality or honor. We’re inside the man’s head, we see his thought process, this is his character and his moral code.

The narrative gives us two contrasting ideologies in Tywin Lannister’s and Ned Stark’s to serve as foils to each other, and then goes to bat for Ned’s. It’s a part of a larger body of stories that is meant to make a statement about the importance of upholding values and believing in ideals even when corrupt institutions and individuals ridicule and distort them, or even use them against you. A corrupt system can’t take your ideals away from you, no matter what. Ned’s story falls right in line with this message. His ideals win. His political theory wins. He wins. How can he, then, be considered a failure?

In-universe, it’s Ned’s legacy that has so many factions fighting for his children’s rights right now. Even Stannis, who does not like Ned and resents the hell out of him, expresses a lot of respect for him and admits to his value and morals. Throughout their stories, the Starklings encounter people who help, support and trust them right off the bat because they are Ned’s. Alys Karstark goes to Jon for protection because he is Ned Stark’s son. The mountain clans choose to die for “the Ned’s little girl”. Meera and Jojen Reed pledge heart and hearth and harvest and swords to Winterfell. The support Jon and Robb gain at the very start is in no small part due to them being Ned’s. This isn’t solely about the Stark name, this is specifically about the character of Eddard Stark and the way he ruled the North. You simply don’t inspire that level of loyalty and love if you’re a failure.

It’s true the Starks are revered in the North for protecting their people and being just plain generous (e.g: their long-lived tradition of taking in people in the winter town in wintertime to share with them the advantages of Winterfell’s higher technology of the glass gardens and hot springs, the benefit of which makes the difference between life and death in winter) but not only does Ned uphold that model, he capitalizes on it. You can easily see why he’d be so loved when you learn of the way he treated his lessers from minor nobles to the servants, and the apparent respect and engagement he showed to both his vassals and his household. Ned took care to foster loyalty in his people, employed a ruling theory based on having his vassals’ respect and admiration, and impressed the importance of doing that on his kids.

The Starklings’ behavior and ideals reflect Ned’s successes with them as much as it bears his mistakes. These kids’ value system is largely shaped by his teachings and it’s his moral code they try to follow. They aspire to (and do) follow his example. They are all, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, falling back on Ned’s teachings and model of behavior. They have a constant thread of “What Would Eddard Stark Do?” running through various storylines; a part of it is expected childish idolization of their father, for sure, but these kids also recognize that his morals and ideals are sound, and his example is a pretty good one to follow.Ned, by and large, shaped their personalities (some more than the others, obviously) and his influence is always there. The way Robb invites a different bannerman to ride with him everyday, which is echoed by Bran back in Winterfell, comes from Ned. Sansa’s absolute belief in the strategy of inspiring loyalty through love comes from Ned. Jon and Arya’s sense of justice comes from Ned. Their collective sense of responsibility and recognition of the value of every individual life comes from Ned.

Unfortunately, we get so little interaction between Ned and his children but what we do get, combined by how his kids think of him, tell of a loving, approachable and available father. He listened to his children and demonstrated a willingness to let their arguments and wishes change his mind in a way that isn’t exactly common in Westeros (e.g: listening to Jon’s argument and allowing the kids to keep the direwolves after he initially refused Bran, hiring Syrio to train Arya and planning to offer for him to accompany them back to Winterfell). Ned clearly did not see his children as investments or marriage pawns to be used to bolster his own power which is pretty rare in Westeros. He was attentive and protective of them and of their right to be children. He was very hands-on when it comes to his boys’ education, and his teaching method was pretty good; he taught by example, for starters, and he explained why he does something and what meaning lies behind his actions.

And we can’t talk about the kind of man Ned is without talking about what he did for Jon. To be clear, I’m highly critical of how Ned handled things with Jon but I’m not unaware that Ned’s choice to give Jon a relatively good life with excellent education and a family that (mostly) loved him came at no small expense to Ned and his marriage. He did not have to raise Jon in Winterfell to honor his promise to Lyanna (as far as we know anyway since we don’t know the exact promise Ned made.) He could have let Jon disappear into the Neck with Howland, but he chose to assume responsibility for the kid himself. He chose to give Jon an education on par with Robb’s and raise his biological children to love their ostensible bastard brother. Not many men would choose to do so. I’ll give credit where credit is due.

So no, anon, I definitely do not think Ned is a failure, far from it. But he was still a Westerosi man raised in a patriarchal society and wasn’t immune to its rigid rules and prejudices. He was still someone who made mistakes with his kids - he simply did not have any sensible choice in some places in the narrative, which has to be taken into account when we discuss him, but we also have to acknowledge that he was someone who dealt with trauma and situations out of his control by avoiding thinking about them entirely. His protectiveness and desire to keep his children close, and keep them children, did impair a realistic planning for their future while his tendency to compartmentalize to deal with his trauma or guilt directly affected at least Jon and Sansa. But Ned, like everybody in either the fictional or the real world, succeeded and failed; he made good decisions and very very bad ones; he loved and championed and protected his children but also failed them. Being a good father or a good lord or a good person does not exempt him from making grievous mistakes, and those mistakes do not make him a failure or a bad person. It’s the totality of his actions and the context of said actions that determine the kind of person Ned was.