When talking about Eddard Stark, you meantion his understanding of power as relational not institutional. Would you care to elaborate on the differences between these two views of power?
Well, I kind of wrote a book about that topic…
Eddard Stark thought that being Hand of the KIng meant being an adviser to his friend Robert Baratheon, and trying to persuade Robert to be his better self; i.e, he thought about being the Hand as about the relationship between himself and Robert.
What he didn’t understand is that the Handship is a political institution that comes with certain distinct powers that can be exercised independently of the King – making appointments, drafting laws, making war, etc.
I’m not sure “independently” is the best formulation here. The Handship isn’t independent of the king; indeed, the very name of the office implies that it is in many ways simply an extension of the kings authority, which resides in his person. “Hand of the King” implies you’re acting as part of the royal body. It is in no way independent, at least in the way we construe “independence” in the modern sense. (I.E, there are offices in the United States government that the people occupying them cannot be unilaterally fired from, or overruled in, by the President despite him nominally being their boss.) The Hand doesn’t have any of that independence; if they do something the king doesn’t like the king can completely disavow and reverse it and get rid of the Hand for any reason they feel like, up to and including “I don’t like your hair.”
What Eddard didn’t understand was that Robert had delegated power to him. He saw himself as being empowered to implement policy (he acts swiftly and decisively to punish Gregor Clegane’s marauding in the Riverlands, for example, because he assumes that it is already royal policy for that sort of bullshit to not be tolerated) but he largely refused to make policy on his own account. This is… rather puzzling, because Robert straight-up tells Eddard, multiple times, that he expects Eddard to govern while he goofs around. Robert doesn’t want to make decisions! (Except, of course, when he does.) He had Jon for that, and then later Ned.
I meant independently of the king in the sense that the Hand doesn’t need to get the King’s permission or sign-off beforehand – the King is not a chokepoint in the normal political science sense. But yes, the King can reverse a Hand’s decisions and get rid of the Hand.
And yes, you’re right that Eddard didn’t quite get that Robert wasn’t interested in governing.
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