I'm sure you've all seen this at some point, but I thought it summed Ned it up well and wanted to share it for anyone who hadn't, for all the "Ned was an idiot and deserved his fate" comments we get since, like all of A Song of Ice and Fire, the truth lies somewhere in the grey shades of tragedy.
"...In my eyes, this puts Eddard Stark in better context. In the end, he lost the game of thrones and ended up with his head on a spike. But he’s hardly the only one, and many great lords who were far better politicians and courtiers than he was ended up dead.
Which I think is something that people fail to comprehend about George R.R. Martin’s work – he’s not an advocate of Machiavellian statecraft. Ned Stark does the honorable thing and loses, but master schemers like Tywin or Tyrion wind up betrayed and either murdered or attempted-murdered and exiled, and Cersei’s more second-string efforts result in the realm being misgoverned by loyal incompetents and herself arrested for adultery, treason, and conspiracy.
If anything, what George R.R. Martin is saying is that there are no winners in the game of thrones. The good die unluckily, the bad die deservedly, and honest efforts and clever schemes all end in disarray." -Race for the Iron Throne: Political and Historical Analysis of A Game of Thrones, by Steven Attewell.
Submitted February 02, 2018 at 03:01PM by greyassassin24 http://ift.tt/2DZ35cE
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