Writing a fanfiction on this scenario if you’re interested but I wanted to ask again what your objection was to Ned installing Jon as King in the aftermath of Robert’s death? Your argument aboht Viserys made sense but as a half Stark with Ned as regent wouldn’t that solve the potential for recrimination?

It solves some of the problems – a King Jon would probably not want to revenge himself on the Starks in the name of his father – but not all of them. For one thing, this doesn’t exactly do much for the Tullys, Baratheons, Arryns, and Lannisters, who don’t have the same protection of blood.

But there’s a larger political problem: the rebellion was launched as an argument that the actions of King Aerys and Prince Rhaegar were so contradictory to the feudal social contract that they had forfeited their right to rule. Naming Jon as King goes back on that in a really egregious fashion: by acknowledging Jon as Rhaegar’s heir, you’re accepting his abduction of Lyanna as legitimate, which the Baratheons are going to have a problem with. Moreover, as Rhaegar was Aerys’ heir, you’re accepting that Aerys was a rightful monarch.

Moreover, the Rebel Alliance had already acclaimed Robert as their King. So now Ned has forsworn his oath to Robert to put his nephew on the throne, which is going to be seen as both an unspeakable personal betrayal and dishonor for Ned and as rank self-interested treason in the eyes of the political class. Ned’s now going to have to deal with the Baratheons and the Arryns and Tullys who’ve sworn their oaths to Robert and his heirs, and he’s going to have to deal with the Lannisters who have every reason to fear a Targaryen restoration.

So the only scenario I see coming out of this is a bloody and entrenched civil war, likely leading to the fracturing of the realm as the Vale, Riverlands, and Stormlands declare for King Stannis, Dorne and possibly the Reach splits the Targaryen loyalist faction (because the Dornish are not going to recognize anyone of Lyanna’s line ahead of Elia’s), and the Westerlands and Iron Islands are all out for themselves.

And since Ned’s not an idiot, he’s going to see this coming the moment he finds out about Jon’s birth and that’s why he would never name Jon King.

Where do you suppose Ned got his gender equality notions from given how he indulges Arya’s tomboyish inclinations? Catelyn is very conventional while the Vale is depicted as ultra conservative, while Robert wouldn’t have been the best influence on how to view women I would think.

I don’t know if I’d go with gender equality notions per se, after all Ned is still the one who says this:

Arya cocked her head to one side. “Can I be a king’s councillor and build castles and become the High Septon?”

“You,” Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, “will marry a king and rule his castle, and your sons will be knights and princes and lords and, yes, perhaps even a High Septon.”

Arya screwed up her face. “No,” she said, “that’s Sansa.” She folded up her right leg and resumed her balancing. Ned sighed and left her there.

I think the thing with Ned is that he cannot help but see Lyanna in Arya’s face, and so he can’t bring himself to outright forbid Arya to pursue those things she has in common with Lyanna. It’s a personal thing, founded in his specific relationship with Lyanna, as opposed to a general commitment to gender equality as a concept.

Squaring the circle between Ned’s allowing Arya to have a “dancing master” and telling her that she can’t follow a male-gendered “career” path is that Ned is also someone profoundly marked by his past:

“It has a name, does it?” Her father sighed. “Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. ‘The wolf blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early grave.”

“Lyanna was beautiful,” Arya said, startled. Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of Arya.

“She was,” Eddard Stark agreed, “beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time.”

So while Ned can’t bring himself to stop Arya from mimicing Lyanna, he also feels strongly that Lyanna’s “wolf’s blood,” her “willful” nature lead to her early death and doesn’t want Arya to go down that path. Thus, he’ll allow her indulgences like swordfighting training, but he wants her to be safely married and live a long and conventional life.

Hi again, i’m the anon from the northern and southern style of politics, i was wondering how different is ned’s ruling style from other lords of winterfell, and if that difference is more from been raised by jon arryn or some other reason (his uniquely strong sense of honour, the fact that he was a second son, raised to served his older brother) ? thanks for the fast answer btw!

That’s a good question – we don’t really have a good sense of how Ned’s very personal approach to power and his benevolent paternalism compares to the Starks who came before him. We know Rickard Stark was interested in continental power politics, dynastic marriage alliances, and fostering agreements but we don’t know much about how he related to the lords of the North.

What we can say is that Ned Stark was widely respected and beloved by his lords even past his death, so his style couldn’t have been been that far from the norms of Northern politics.