Book 1 vs. Season 1: Poor Doomed Ned
Like I finished my essay on the argument to assassinate Daenerys, in many ways the show and the books present us two different Ned Starks who fail their missions in two different ways.
There’s book!Ned, a widely respected and highly regarded Northern lord, for all his taking up the post was an historical accident. His lack of understanding of southron political culture tripped him up badly as Hand, and when asked to make a difficult decision involving violence to children, his past experiences with violence to children drove him to choose the most merciful course available. Which backfired. Then he was finished off by an unexpected betrayal and a psycho with a grudge.
Then there’s show!Ned. For all he’s the Lord of Winterfell, at heart he’s a common soldier. He’s completely over his head as Hand of the King. He trusts someone he clearly should not have trusted and is killed on the order of someone he should never have tried to save.
In addition to this, the story structure of book one and season one differ in their presentations of Ned’s arc. The book tells us a detective story, almost noir-ish in execution, as Ned finds a dark truth at the heart of Robert’s government and loses all else in the process. The show gives us an experience more akin to rereading the books – Ned is doomed, Westeros is doomed, and there is nothing that can be done to avert the crisis.
Over His Head
Ned is not the world’s best politician.
In spite of this, in the books, Ned was not the worst choice Robert could have made for a Hand. He’s a general of proven skill. He’s run his area of responsibility well. He’s neither a Lannister nor a Lannister lackey. And he’s loyal to Robert personally. (On Ned’s side, this means that he could count on Robert’s support in most ways.) There’s no Watsonian reason to think that Ned’s appointment as Hand must end badly.
Consider what Jorah Mormont’s exile tells us about Ned’s tenure as Lord Paramount of the North - Ned could and did head up to Bear Island to execute Lord Mormont for enslaving poachers. (Eddard II, Daenerys IV) Then he presumably accepted oaths of fealty from Maege Mormont, who is not just a woman but an unmarried woman, who gave her noble surname to her daughters, whose heir is the eldest of those daughters, and all of those daughters are also unmarried. These are not the sort of things a liege lord without a firm support base could do. And from Bran VI, in which Robb deals with the Northern lords, it seems you don’t get a firm support base in the North without doing some very neat wrangling of some very determined people with vastly conflicting demands. In the books, in a northern context, we can therefore infer that Ned is far from hopelessly outclassed in political skill.
Ned absolutely has insecurities about his ability to rule. We find this out very early, when he tells Catelyn. “Brandon. Yes. Brandon would know what to do. He always did. It was all meant for Brandon. You, Winterfell, everything. He was born to be a King’s Hand and a father to queens. I never asked for this cup to pass to me.” (Catelyn II)
The show seems to take Ned’s attack of self-doubt as an absolutely reliable indicator of Ned’s political skill.
The additions begin in 1.01 (“Winter is Coming”), in a quick exchange between Ned and his brother Benjen. “You’re at a feast,” Benjen says. “It’s like a bear in a trap.” This is quite the contrast to Arya’s memories of dinnertime at Winterfell (Arya II):
“Her father used to say that a lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep them. […] At Winterfell, he always had an extra seat set at his own table, and every day a different man would be asked to join him.”
and Catelyn’s observations of Robb’s developing skills and where they came from (Catelyn IX):
“Each day he would ask one of his lords to join him, so they might confer as they marched; he honoured every man in turn, showing no favourites, listening as his lord father had listened.”
Neglecting even more basic skills, episode 1.03 (“Lord Snow”) features Ned declining to bathe and change into clothing suitable for a Small Council meeting. Book!Ned, likewise summoned to meet with the Small Council the instant his party gets through the gates of the Red Keep, tells the steward sent to fetch him “pray give me a few moments to change into something more presentable.” (Eddard IV) It’s played as a comic moment, but even comic moments have their implications. What we learn about show!Ned here is that he doesn’t believe in businesswear.
Over the course of season one, the show removes most every time Ned succeeds, leaving his mistakes untouched. It also leaves out or denigrates some of his good ideas and solid arguments. I’ve written before about the changes to the scene in which Ned argues against assassinating Daenerys, and mentioned in passing how Ned never got to order the mobilisation of the North. Let’s just get to the new material.
Episode 1.04 (“Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things”) features a notable discussion on why Ned’s incompetent and also doomed. Cersei Lannister comes in to have a quick chat with Ned on this topic. “What is it you hope to accomplish?” Cersei asks Ned. When Ned replies that he intends to serve Robert, Cersei replies, “You can’t change him, you can’t help him.” At roughly this point in the book, by the by, Ned effortlessly and indeed accidentally foiled one of Cersei’s assassination attempts on Robert - as Robert listened to Ned when Ned said he was in no physical shape to participate in the tourney melee. This is the danger Ned poses to Cersei, which in the book she sees clearly: “Robert will listen to Stark.” (Bran II)
Cersei’s speech continues, “You’re just a soldier, aren’t you? You take your orders and you carry on. I suppose it makes sense. Your older brother was trained to lead and you were trained to follow.” There is a big difference between Ned having an attack of self-doubt and someone else expositing this doubt as fact. And, as I’ve already argued, this is a misreading of the text: second son or not, Ned was fostered in the home of a Lord Paramount and clearly learned something while he was there. He also has a pretty solid track record of leadership under his belt whether or not he was trained for or even personally inclined towards the job.
Then there’s the matter of Ned sending out a medium-sized party under Robert’s banner to arrest Gregor Clegane for his Riverlands raids, which takes place in 1.06 (“A Golden Crown”). The events that necessitate this response are spelled out by Littlefinger to Ned, and it’s unclear in what proportions this is supposed to be obnoxious and helpful. “Tully, my lord, that’s your wife’s house!”, “I’ve heard [Gregor Clegane] called Tywin Lannister’s mad dog,” and “Can you think of any reason the Lannisters might have to be angry with your wife?” The immediate post-decision reaction is from Littlefinger: “A bold move, my lord, and admirable, but is it wise to yank the lion’s tail?” In the book (Eddard XI), Varys questions not Ned sending out a party, but his choice of commander, since “a man who has the Lannisters for his enemies would do well to make the Tyrells his friends.”
We see in episode 1.07 (“You Win or You Die”) Tywin’s reaction to this decree as Jaime reads it out. First Jaime offers his own commentary on it: “Poor Ned Stark. Brave man, terrible judgment.” Jaime is not the foremost political analyst in Westeros, but we only ever hear the negatives of Ned’s plan, and not the potential upsides.
Steven Attewell of Race for the Iron Throne does a far better job of outlining those upsides than I ever could in his coverage of Eddard XI, AGOT, and he specifically notes that Ned is even more shrewd in the show than the books with his actions, given the additional summons of Tywin to court. To quote Attewell:
“With this action, Eddard places the Handship and thus the Crown firmly on the side of the Starks and the Tullys - if Tywin does not submit to royal justice, then he’ll be publicly condemned as a rebel; if Tywin does submit, he’ll have to leave his army behind lest he appear to be making war on the King.”
Attewell also notes that this action “commits Robert to this course personally” and that “if Robert had lived even a few days longer than in [the original timeline], this masterstroke would have changed the opening of the War of Five Kings dramatically.”
Recalling also the changes to Ned’s arguments against assassinating Daenerys and the changes to his war preparations (what war preparations?), we can see a season-long pattern of making Ned less competent than his book counterpart. No wonder Ned was doomed - he couldn’t do anything right by the writers’ fiat!
Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal
One of the more serious structural problems in depicting Ned’s downfall was Littlefinger. Littlefinger is obviously, cartoonishly untrustworthy (he even has the evil goatee). He goes so far as to hang a lampshade on it a few times. “Distrusting me was the wisest thing you’ve done since you climbed down off your horse.” (Eddard V) In hindsight, especially after A Storm of Swords, the reader can see how Littlefinger fed Ned misleading information the whole way.
But that’s in hindsight. On first reading, the book puts readers in Ned’s shoes – they must decide which, if any, of the Small Councillors are trustworthy. Who would make Ned a good ally? Who is Ned’s most dangerous opponent? Which are the flatterers, and which are the fools? From Ned’s POV, there’s no sure way to tell. Catelyn’s and Tyrion’s POVs show the reader that Littlefinger is even less trustworthy than Ned assumes, but in AGoT neither Catelyn nor Tyrion come close to comprehending the scope of Littlefinger’s plans, nor are they privy to the motivations that make sense of his actions. Furthermore, nobody has a vantage point on Renly or Varys, rendering their plans and motivations equally opaque and potentially bad for Ned.
The show approaches things differently. Not being bound to Ned’s POV, they take advantage of this and show scenes that could not possibly have been in the books. Unfortunately, there are a few that outright exposit the depths of Littlefinger’s evil.
Episode 1.05 (“The Wolf and the Lion”) is the one that reveals that Littlefinger is worse than just a skeezy brothel owner. It’s the first of Littlefinger’s little discussions with Varys. Littlefinger tells Varys that “first boy is on the house,” which is not just a jab at what he presumes are Varys’ sexual practices but an admission that Littlefinger would cater to them. “We accommodate all inclinations.” Varys then goes into more detail, which Littlefinger doesn’t deny. “All desires are valid to a man with a full purse,” he says, even when he’s helping provide for tastes that “strictly speaking…would not be in accordance with the king’s laws.”
His infamous monologue in 1.07(”You Win or You Die”) is in many ways a straightforward villain monologue. Littlefinger here outlines his methods of winning Ned’s trust in extremely crude and unsubtle metaphor (“he’s winning you over in spite of yourself…he wants to believe it…he knows he’s better than other men”). He outlines his motivations: “I do believe my lord’s in love!” Ros says, and Littlefinger replies, “For many years. Most of my life, really.” It goes full-on motive rant, in fact:
“I was her little confidant. Her plaything. She could tell me anything, anything at all. She told me about all the horses that she liked, the castle that she wanted to live in, the man that she wanted to marry. A Northerner, with a jaw like an anvil. So I challenged him to a duel. I mean, why not. I’d read all the stories. The little hero always beats the big villain in the stories. In the end, she wouldn’t even let him kill me. ‘He’s just a boy,’ she said, ‘Please don’t hurt him.’ So he gave me a nice little scar to remember him by and off they went.”
“Is she still married to him?”
“Oh no, he got himself killed before the wedding, and she ended up with his brother, an even more impressive specimen. She loves him, I’m afraid, and why wouldn’t she, I mean, who could compare to him? He’s just so…good. Do you know what I learned, during that duel? I’ll never win. Not that way. That’s their game. Their rules. I’m not going to fight them. I’m going to fuck them. That’s what I know. That’s what I am. And only by admitting what we are can we get what we want.”
“And what do you want?”
“Oh, everything, my dear. Everything there is.”
It would make a Bond villain proud. (And I’ve transcribed the whole thing so you can get the full effect but without the disgusting background of exploitative female nudity and girl-on-girl sexual activity for the gratification of the straight male audience.) But this takes place before Littlefinger puts the finishing touches on Ned’s betrayal. The viewer knows more about Littlefinger’s plans than Ned does, right as Ned approaches a critical decision about whom to trust. There’s no surprise in Littlefinger’s betrayal.
The viewer likewise has a more privileged perspective on Ned’s options for allies than the reader does. The reader has no scene with Loras talking up Renly (quite possibly because there’s not much to talk up about book!Renly), nor a scene where Renly makes an argument for his merit as king to Ned. Instead, Renly goes to Ned proposing that they forcibly wrest Joffrey from his mother, a proposal that publicly, staunchly anti-violence-to-children Ned of course rejects. The reader as yet has no scene indicating or implying that Varys is in serious long-term political opposition to the obviously evil Littlefinger; merely one where Varys admits to Ned that he knew about at least one of Cersei’s attempts to assassinate Robert, but did nothing about it, not even pass it on to Ned. (Eddard VII) This is on top of the scene in Arya III/1.05 where we find Varys engaged in a debate about whether or not to murder Ned.
And so the calculus of trust changes. With Renly depicted as a good guy, Varys more ambiguous but opposed to Littlefinger and not playing chicken with Robert’s life, and Littlefinger even more explicitly evil at this point than in the books, the viewer starts to think that Ned must be really stupid to misjudge the situation so badly.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt in my mind that Ned made a long string of mistakes that led to his failure to first protect Robert and second to successfully install Stannis on the Iron Throne. Quite a few of them had not a thing to do with Ned’s sense of honour or his mercy, just his inability to adapt to southron political conditions. (I cannot recommend Race for the Iron Throne enough on this account.) Book!Ned had chance after chance. Where his political skills didn’t fail him, his luck did - even after all those mistakes, Ned had to be stupendously unlucky to actually fail.
Show!Ned is in no such position. We are told again and again that Ned is fundamentally unsuited for the position he now occupies. We are told more than once that he is doomed to fail, and that a war will inevitably be the result. We are walked through Ned’s mistakes while his successes are written out, ignored, or misinterpreted.
It is not inherently wrong to change the essential tragedy like that. Both can make compelling stories. I simply wish to point out that Ned was doubly doomed in adaptation.
