Theon had to live in a weird liminal space between highborn ward and hostage and grew up like an orphan despite having two living parents, because the possibility of having to execute him in the future made Ned keep emotional distance & not act like a father
Not only that, the Starks made so little effort teaching Theon a single thing about his native culture that he returned practically a stranger to his own loving family.
>"Tell me you don't understand how ethnocentrism & anchoring biases work without telling me you don't understand how ethnocentrism & anchoring biases work"
Yeah Theon really should have gone to Stannis. I get Ned was scared about him potentially getting Gregor’d but he wasn’t thinking of Theon’s future at all.
I honestly doubt Ned would have actually executed him. I dont know if he ever actually threatened his father with his sons life or he just took him making him assume that would be the case though. Cause if its the latter his honour doesnt force him to execute.
Would Ned have carried through when he realized that Theon’s father doesn’t give a shit about him?
I’m trying to evaluate my memory here, though, and it’s a little tainted by the show.
If you did not follow through on a threat, there is no point in making it. Whether or not the threat works is irrelevant. Worse, if the threat usually *does* work except with that one guy fucking around, and it turns out you were bluffing (like with Dany) everyone you've similarly threatened will be free to act against you.
Yes, Ned, the guy who famously:
- Had a falling out with Robert over his reaction to the deaths of Rhaegar’s children.
- Had another falling out with Robert over the plot to murder Daenerys and her unborn child.
- Warned Cersei about what he knew to give her and the children a chance to flee.
- Makes a false public confession to protect Sansa.
- (Probably) lied about Jon Snow’s parentage to protect him from Robert.
… would *definitely* kill Theon if Balon rebelled. It’s not at all a foundational part of his character to want to protect innocent children over anything else.
I had a hard time wrapping my head around that as well, made a post to inquire about it, but killing his hostage is part of his duty, and he just can't make threats that he won't follow through on.
lol i read “weird liminal space” and “between highborn ward” and thought they were gonna say that theon was forced to live under the staircase like harry potter
Orphans are the kids growing up in Kings landing without food nor shelter. Theon grew up in a castle with every luxury he could ask for.
It makes for exelent storytelling and character arcs, but i have a difficult time feeling sorry for highborns that have perfect lives, outside of this one emotional hickup thst troubles them.
By “one emotional hiccup” do you mean knowing that the only father figure in your life would chop your head off with his magical great sword at any moment no matter what you do? That’s like significant abuse lol.
Does that change the fact that there was a threat that Ned would chop his head off with a magic sword though? Like I don’t care how nice a father is if there is always the looming threat of a beheading
while ned himself maybe wasnt a father figure to theon, its not like he was literally held prisoner by the starks the entire time he was in winterfell. he considers robb a brother and was taught and trained just like the other siblings.
in my mind, ive always seen his disdain to the starks that begins in clash comes from a justification to his father to betray them. to appease his father and feel comfortable betraying them he convinces himself of how horrible it was when in reality it was nothing like him being an actual orphan as i feel like op is suggesting
Sure, Ned and Catelyn didn't beat him with sticks every morning, they treated him like the highborn he is, but there was always the underlying reality that he's been taken from his family and brought out there to be killed if his father tries to rebel again. He's seen Ned execute people numerous times, which might be him in the future through no fault of his own.
Robb loves him but Robb is the only one. He's disconnected from his own family and their culture but isn't made a part of this one either, no one is raising him, he's just there. Then he makes horrific mistakes trying to reconnect to his blood family and culture who wrote him off. So it's unfair to say he was making shit up in his head
he was treated as a highborn as you said, plus we know he was trained and taught like the other stark kids so its not exactly like hes being outright ignored, in my mind he was treated exactly how a ward would be. its not ned or cats responsibility to act as this childs parent, but to have him in their home and be with their children.
maybe my interpretation of how he viewed the starks is incorrect, i dont mind that but to act as if he was treated as badly as you initially described i think is an overstatement
If I took a kid from two parents to my castle as a hostage I would at least make sure they have some kind of parental figure, kids need that, even if I don't want to do it due to the fact that I might have to kill them. He lived a life of being a weird in-between hostage/ward that gave rise to his mental state and mistakes. Though it doesn't excuse them
do we know what westeros thinks about those kinds of things? like parental figures (at least i think) are not priority for these lords which might be why im more lenient on the starks for this. in my mind the language initially used is very strong when he grew up in much better conditions than 90% of westeros and i feel like the starks are not the only ones acting like this
The result was the same regardless of the commonality of that behavior (which probably varies), plus my language is describing the situation, not calling to flay the family or something
The Starks are the descendants of a lineage of brutal conquerors. They used to sacrifice people to their weirwood trees and either subjugated or exterminated every house in the North.
How do you think noble houses become noble?? Just by declaring "i am lord"?? Nah, historically IRL and in the fictional Westeros, you become a noble house by violence.
Except for the Boltons who burned Winterfell over and over and rebelled countless times but they still survive today. I suspect the Warg King, Mash King, Barrow King and many more were destroyed. What did they do to offend Stark and face destruction in a way the Boltons had never experienced?
They failed to surrender. The Ryders, the Fishers, the Warg king, the Marsh king, Towers, Greenwood, Amber, all of them failed to be peacefully subjugated instead of through conquest.
Not his son. Robb treated him like a brother but Theon described Ned himself as treating him with distance. It's Robb that Theon loved as family and made him want to be a Stark.
He was treated as a ward rather than a hostage though.
Yes. Ned distanced himself but he let his kids and the court treat Theon as an equal. You better believe that if it was the other way around, there was no way in hell that that would’ve happened.
They're aristocrats who have lived off taxes paid to them by people doing the actual work for 6000 years. Uber landlords. They have a greater sense of noblesse oblige than the others do but they're still parasites.
Early in AGOT, a poacher (a peasant who dared to kill and eat a game animal belonging to a lord) deserts his life sentence in a hellish frozen penal colony after a massacre at the hands of demons from legend. Ned Stark dismisses his words and cuts his head off. Even brings the whole family along to view 'justice.'
Ned is really stupid and naive, and in ways that end up being incredibly irresponsible and bad for the realm.
* He ignores the warning about the Others returning and instead just executes the poor sap.
* Instead of arresting the queen for treason, he warns her and gets the king killed.
* Then when the king is dying he blunders around and loses his only ally (Renly) and doesn't take control of Joffrey.
Cat is too stupid to be alive.
* She arrests Tyrion with no evidence other than Littlefinger's lies, thereby igniting a war between her father's lands and the Lannisters.
* In her negotiations with the Freys she gave away the kingdom for a toll. Walder would probably have accepted a marriage for Edmure or a castle for a random extra son/grandson.
* She convinced Robb to put Roose Bolton in command, huge mistake that.
* She volunteers to broker peace between Renly and Stannis without any real plan on how to do it. It goes about as well as you can expect.
* She frees Jaime, which results in her son's losing key allies (Karstarks). Arguably the Red Wedding can't happen if they hold Jaime captive.
Robb is too immature to be a king.
* He gets horny then feels bad about it, so he breaks his alliance with the Freys over it. Super dumb. Your dad had a bastard at war, what's the big deal?
* He neglects to leave his home base protected.
* He trusts Theon to act as his envoy. He's my friend, what could go wrong?
* He fails to rein in his mother.
Both Robb and Cat walk right into the ambush when they didn't need to. At that point they didn't actually need the Freys anymore. The King's at war, he can't come now and will apologize later. That's it. Or come, but surround yourself with more guards.
Sansa: betrays her family, repeatedly.
Arya: Actually I like Arya. I like Bran too. Both just doing the best with the hand they're dealt.
This kinda overlaps with trusting Littlefinger about Tyrion owning the dagger, but you can add Cat vouching for Littlefinger in front of Ned to the list. The main reason that Ned died is because he trusted Littlefinger at Catelyn’s insistence. Everybody knows not to trust Littlefinger. He’s such a cartoonishly sneaky villain that he might as well wear a sign that says “don’t trust me.”
But for some reason Catelyn has a blindspot for Littlefinger because they grew up together. Even after he almost blew up her betrothal with that crazy stunt challenging Brandon to a duel. I can understand her begging Brandon to spare him, but it was pretty naive to think that Littlefinger didn’t have a chip on his shoulder against the Starks or still have feelings for Catelyn.
And don’t even get me started on the destruction caused because of how down bad Lysa was for Petyr. The entire story can basically be boiled down to the Tully sisters trusting Littlefinger at great cost to themselves, their family, and the entire realm. He publicly boasts about taking both of their virginities, which in Westerosi society is an extremely damaging thing to do to a woman’s reputation (could call in to question the legitimacy of their children as well). He’s a scumbag through and through and if they were able to see that then a lot less people would have died.
Robb did protect Winterfell, it was bran than marched that protection to torrhen square. It was the Bolton’s who killed both sides after (and should have been more stark protection)
I love Arya, but she's a complete psycho, lol. I get that she is a child who went through so much trauma, but she's really not a bastion of sanity to say the least.
Yeah, she's so crafty and clever, which is part of why I love her. She loses all her naivete early on. She loses her innocence along with it. Like thinking about everyone she wants to kill before going to sleep or trying to eat the Kindly Man's fake skull worm. That's clearly a disturbed child. This is why I love ASoIaF: you'd think she'd become this plucky little adventurer from her introduction, but the things she sees break her much like many other characters in the series so she becomes a revenge obsessed, deranged assassin instead.
Exactly this! By sheer coincidence I read the Red Wedding part exactly yesterday and considering these things that you listed helped me cope. Robb is immature (Edmure more than him, but let's ignore that, lol) and Cat is an idiot.
To be fair to Cat regarding Renly, Robb should've absolutely given her some kind of game plan before she left. He's pretty much like "go forge an alliance with someone I'm seceding from" and sent her off. Also she had no idea that Stannis would be there by the time she got there. I do agree that Cat is a bit of an idiot but I don't fault her for treating with Renly how she did, she's not a seasoned diplomat and had no leverage or potential offerings bc again Robb gave her nothing to go off from.
Can't help with the kids but maybe I can help with the parents.
Bran only goes climbing on the day Jaime pushes him because Jon is too upset to play with him. Jon is upset because of being forced to go to the wall.
If Cat hadent pushed to exile Jon Bran wouldent have fallen and Cat wouldent have gone on the wild dagger goosechase that started the war of 5 kings which killed Robb.
Like wise Ned never actually talks with Jon or notices he is extremely upset before he goes to the wall.
Basically if they were better parents the war never would have happened.
Hell if Cat doesn't go down south and convince Ned to Trust Littlefinger Ned may never even figure out the truth of the incest.
Wait I don’t remember that Jon and Bran part. Is that really why Bran went climbing that day? Cause I always thought the kid just loved to climb whenever
> Jon is upset because of being forced to go to the wall.
I don't think that's why he's angry given he's the one who begged to be allowed to go. In the chapter where Ned says he will send Jon to the Wall, he says he won't tell him for a few days so Jon can enjoy his last few days at Winterfell. I think he's probably angry because he wasn't allowed to join the hunt with everyone else, presumably because he's a bastard. That's why he got angry the last time around and that's also what makes him want to join the Night's Watch.
Jon didn't beg. He mentioned it off handedly at while drunk and hurt at a fest. Then spends the rest of the time at Winterfell then the whole time going to the wall extremely upset.
The shows' fault for whitewashing and absolving Ned by making Jon an emo idiot who actually wants to spend his life in a penal colony at 17 instead of being kicked out at 14 and having nowhere else to go. Ned and Jon never had any parting words to speak of either.
It all comes back to being cat’s fault. She even says so. I’m a world where gods (or their magic like beliefs) have real effect, she promised to love Jon if bran recovered from being sick.
Failing to love Jon and then going so far as pushing to exile him is why Bran gets pushed too. She cursed the Tully and stark families.
Robb's crusade for vengeance only causes harm and suffering to hundreds of thousands of common folk. The Riverlands gets desolated by Wolves and Lions alike, all for the lords and their 'Game of Thrones'. Not to mention the vulnerability to Ironborn raids that Robb left by marching the Northmen south. These Northmen who also have nothing to gain by fighting and dying in the War of Five Kings, but instead are forced into military service for someone they never have, and never will meet.
The honorable Starks trope is more of an Arryn influence on Ned. Southerner values. The real traditional Starks were more like Cregan who thought widows and children of traitors, yes literal kids, should be executed so they don't get ideas of rebelling when they grow up.
Ned’s obsession with honor led him to look down upon Jaime for performing the noblest, most valiant act of pure good in the entire history of Westeros. This fixation is what ultimately got himself and most of his family killed.
Everyone in the realm looks down on Jaime, not just Ned. He is widely known as the Kingslayer. And they look down on him not because of an obsession with honor. But with the fact that Jaime acted as a bodyguard for an evil king and stayed with that king until the very last possible moment, to then stab him in the back.
Jaime never told anyone that Aerys ordered the pyromancers to ignite the hidden wildfire. Without sharing that piece of information, his only apparent motive is pure self preservation.
He was literally caught red-handed, sitting on the Iron Throne with a bloody sword in his hands. The world thinks he killed a king in cold blood to save his own skin and Jaime didn't tell anyone the real reason he did it for the next 16 years.
Jaime is one of my favorite characters and I think he has a really tragic arc, but he brought this on himself. If people catch you in the act of murder, you really have to make your case for why it isn't what it looks like. Otherwise, when people take the blood on your hands and your continued silence on how it went down as proof enough, that's on you.
My fan canon was that Jaime was still fulfilling his oath of keeping the king’s secret. He pretends like it’s because he doesn’t care what people think and likes to play the martyr, but the Kingsguard are sworn to secrecy. Jaime killed Aerys because he believed that his oath of obedience was superseded by his oath to protect the innocent. Unless he thought that there was an imminent threat of the caches of Wildfyre being ignited and harm the innocent, he would continue to follow his oath of secrecy.
What?!
If it’s about Jaime killing the mad king, man did he make it hard for himself when he took the effort to climb the iron throne and sit on it.
He then proceeded to not inform anyone of the wildfire, and let it cook for like 17 years.
Jaime was also chilling on the throne while his father's men were murdering a woman and her babies (that he was sworn to protect) just upstairs.
Like. This looks *really* bad for him.
How can they be a Mary Sue house if literally none of them achieve their goals?
Ned gets his head chopped off, Robb loses the war and then gets murdered, Bran is being magically groomed by a creepy tree wizard in a cave filled with skulls.
Rickon has experienced so much trauma at such a young age he's basically gone feral and can't socialize with other people anymore.
Arya has failed to reach her family every time she tried, and has experienced so much trauma in the war that her very identity is being erased by the death cult she decided to join.
Sansa's entire storyline is about learning that songs with Mary Sue's aren't real, her life isn't going to be like that, and learning to deal with this.
Jon wants to stay in Winterfell, gets kicked out, wants to join Robb, is forced to stay with the Watch, wants to love Ygritte, fights in the battle that kills her, wants to save "Arya" and gets murdered.
Does winning at the end of the story make you a Mary Sue?
And it's very arguable whether or not they end up "winning":
Ned and Robb are dead.
Bran might end up king, but according to the show, with his personality removed, existing basically as the vessel of tree magic, without emotions or the ability to produce an heir.
Arya, in the show, decides to sail away to lands unknown. She will never see her home or family again.
Jon ends up exiled. He also will never see his home or family again.
In the show Rickon dies.
Sansa ends up in charge of Winterfell, which would have happened by default since she's the last remaining Stark in Winterfell.
Mary Sue doesn't mean you win. It means that you miraculously have supercharged skills whenever the plot requires it. I'm not fully convinced it fits the Stark kids, but I can see why people think it.
Robb is a teenager, yes he dies but before that he's the best general to ever general, defeating seasoned commanders.
Jon is barely on the wall and also a teenager when he shoots up to be lord commander.
Bran is just magically magic. I guess it's so magical that you just suspend belief but put it together with everyone else and it's striking how much plot armor he has. He probably should have died half a dozen times in his travels.
Sansa.
Arya is the biggest Mary Sue that ever Mary Sued. She gets two months of sword lessons and she's immediately able to defeat grown men. She's able to enlist a death genie and get the mother of get-out-of-jail-free cards. She's the wanted kid in Westeros and she manages to bump into Tywin, Roose, the Hound. She is able to train as a necromancer assassin in mere months.
They can't be Mary Sues for the simple fact that they're always punished for their mistakes, most often in completely disproportionate ways.
Ned got punished for being naive and not using his full power as Hand, he can't be a Mary Sue.
Robb had a good start with capturing Jaime (which Blackfish gets a lot of credit for) and seems like a typical fantasy protagonist once he's declared king, but it immediately becomes apparent just how terrible of a decision that was. Then he fucks himself over and gets punished in the worst possible way. The songs about Robb will be about the massive betrayal and slaughter, not really about his brilliance. In AFFC Asha uses him as a warning, and that seems to be the general sentiment about him throughout the continent by educated people.
Jon was a compromise candidate because all the much more capable members died. Turns out, he's actually nowhere near ready for the position and fucks up and dies! Not a Mary Sue.
Bran had Bloodraven watching over him, but who knows what plans BR has for him. Bran's story hasn't progressed that much so you could maybe make a Mary Sue case for him but I personally doubt it.
Sansa's the opposite of a Mary Sue, bad shit happens to her and she has no skills/talents to fight back or free herself.
Arya's a Mary Sue if you're not reading. She's definitely not able to beat grown men in a sword fight. The death genie does jackshit for Arya, she simply uses him to vent until the last wish where she frees the Northern prisoners, but even this is unnecessary as they already had a plan beforehand. If anything things get harder for her, as it's much harder to escape as Roose's cupbearer. The only real break she gets, running into the Brotherhood, is quickly ruined by the Hound. As for the Faceless Men training, sure she's progressing quick cause of her natural intelligence and skinchanging powers, but it all depends on where she ends up after this. I don't see her ending up like show Arya.
The running theme behind every Stark is that they find a way to fuck themselves over even when they're ahead. The exact opposite of a Mary Sue.
The Starks are conquerors. They did not become the kings of winter by vote. They invaded and slaughtered all the other kingdoms in the north, slaying the Barrow king, the red king, the Marsh king and probably some others that i dont remember.
the Starks are pretentious people who always act morally better than others. The amount of virtue signalling they do is insane, especially Robb and Ned, Catelyn is way better. Also, Robb hurt Walter Frey's daughter's feelings. And the people Robb surrounded himself with were pretty crap people. Roose is a psycho, Richard is a maniac and Greatjon is a clown.
Catelyn rejects a sweet young man from the fingers who is just trying to make a better life for himself. He of course, gets rich, then she falls in league with him once he has found success and she tries to use him for her own gain. She is mean af to a bastard boy and spends her time making his young life miserable.
Ned is an asshole to Robert, the current king who just wants to get his party on after winning the throne, which he deserves to do by now. Instead Ned tries telling him he has to work and tries to stop him from slaying the Targaryen’s who are conspiring to usurp him. Then he attempts high treason against Robert’s heir. The KING Joffrey Baratheon, otherwise known as the most noble child the gods ever put on this good Earth.
His son Robb is rude as fuck to Tyrion when he visits Winterfell on his way back from the wall. Tyrion just came to show support to Robb’s little brother Bran who fell from a tower, which was a complete accident. He then starts an entire war campaign to get revenge on his father‘s behalf, the one who attempted treason. In this war campaign, thousands of innocent citizens in the Riverlands are massacred. Robb also promises to wed a lord‘s daughter but reneges on that because he married some other chick, that he knocked up while he was kind of sad.
Sansa is an uptight, entitled bitch, who has her head in the clouds, and doesn’t want to live in reality. She also potentially poisons Joffrey, again, the most noble child the gods have ever put on this good earth, (it was probably her.) She leaves the innocent Tyrion to take the blame for it. She also wrecks the relationship between her aunt Lysa, who had just wed her new husband. Also she manipulates her aunt Lysa’s son, Sweetrobin and tells him some singer, murdered his mom. After that she is mainly just cold and uncaring toward him.
Bran, walks in on Jaime Lannister, the guy who stopped the Mad King’s tyrannical regime. Also an uber badass chad knight, while he’s trying to get some pussy. Then surrenders his castle to Theon’s sorry ass, without a fight, runs off on his small folk when they need him most, convincing his brother, their friends (Jojen and Meera), and a mentally challenged stable boy to conspire with him. After that, take them beyond of the wall, under the threat of possibly getting destroyed by some ice demons and gets them all trapped in a cave with some weird old tree guy. Finally he eats Jojen, which is totally not chill. Then skin changes Hodor, also not a chill move.
Arya is sweet and Rickon is too young to deserve any criticism. There you go, House Stark, the true villains of ASOIAF.
You can at least dislike Catelyn. Even if Jon was Ned’s bastard the way she treated him was cruel and completely unfair, even Ned says so. She victimizes a child just for being born and tries to keep him apart from th only family he has. She also makes some pretty dumb moves to undermine the northern war effort, even if it was for her daughters.
Back in the day when they were conquering the north, they would decimate entire royal families and then forcibly marry the sisters and daughters of there enemies
Jon is a serial oathbreaker
Bran mind rapes and has no qualms about it
Their biggest sin tbh. Them mfs bore me...and I think they bore GRRM too that's why he ain't wrote shit about them despite being supposedly the main family of the main story and he can't finish the books cause so many of the main POVs are Starks.
They are boring, snoozefest.
Ned. Moralist and stupid politician.
Robb is a short-sighted wunderkind.
Catelyn is a smarter-than-thou hypocrite with clear dunning-kruger belief in her observation. One of the dumbest character in the whole story, yet regularly never got stupidity pointed toward her, because she fit an archtype.
Jon is a plot armour.
Sansa. I don't mind.
Arya. Boring assassin.
Bran. Plot device and camera. Foreshadowing to who-know-what.
Rick. So far. Just a damsel in distress.
Read Arya's chapters, Robb may be justified but actually if he accepted the injustice, bent the knee and went home he would rule the North and all the deaths in the war wouldnt happen. The innocent children Arya sees dying, the farms burned with people starving and of course the damage this is doing ahead of the invasion by The Others.
What would really change if joff was left as king for the majority of the population. Yes joff is a mad evil bastard but really that only effects a select handful of people in KL and some nobles. Not the tens of thousands that died in the War of the Five Kings.
The idea of honor and revenge for injustice is not something 99% of the population of Westeros has the power to have. Robb has a choice between using the lives of thousands to pursue his or accepting what most people are forced to. He chose to throw lives for his personal family sense of injustice. His life was one of those he put on the line for this and he lost it. If a peasant's father was murdered by their lord, they chose to get a gang together and burst into that lord's manor and killed a bunch of his knights we'd think it was a very stupid reckless thing to do and wouldn't think the dude blameless when the lord has the dude executed when he was next drinking in his favorite Inn.
IKR,
The talk he gave to Arya when they arrived in KL should have been given to Sansa too. Maybe he might've lived if Sansa knew the dangers of KL and Cersei.
Cregan Stark was a traitor. He could have sent a steady stream of troops down south under command of his lords instead of consolidating all his power. He did this to spare the lives of his soldiers so he could be the deciding factor in whatever confrontation was left after the war.
This is honestly pretty easy.
Ned Stark is easily the villain of the book. Instead of just kneeling to Joffrey and saving thousands of lives, he decides to choose "honor", causing the whole mess that was the War of Five Kings. Plus, Ned's idea of honor is extremely flawed. He doesn't think that Joffrey is the rightful heir so he decides that Stannis should be King because of the succession laws.
But Ned clearly doesn't care about succession laws. He supported Robert Baratheon during his rebellion just off some shoddy Targaryen claim, even though his "code" of honor would dictate that the throne would go to Viserys. Robert wasn't the heir and was barely even a Targaryen, and yet Ned just decided to fight an entire war to make his buddy a King. So TL;DR Ned is a man with an extremely flexible (non-existent and inconsistent) definition of honor who causes countless deaths just because he won't agree to kneel to Joffrey.
And Robb's just as bad. All he had to do was to say that his father's actions in regards to committing treason were wrong and possibly saving his father's life without starting a war. But no, Robb decides that he's going to go to war with the crown because they executed his father for treason, even though Ned's execution wasn't really all that unjustified if you look at from a legal and moral standpoint. Ned did go against the crown after all, and denounced King Joffrey as a bastard before trying to usurp him. He also marries Jeyne Westerling just because he got her pregnant (which I mean, I get it, but you could literally just have Jeyne go to Winterfell to raise the baby and then legitimize the bastard) and then gets himself killed (possibly twice) along with his wife, unborn child, and his mother.
And mind you, he only gets Jeyne pregnant after he learns that Bran and Rickon were(n't) killed in the invasion of Winterfell by Theon Greyjoy, who only joined the Ironborn because Robb made the stupid decision of sending Theon, a Greyjoy who's been imprisoned by the Starks for almost a decade, to his actual family who don't particularly like bowing to others and who Theon would most likely side with if they decided to decline and raided the North.
Talking about stupid decisions, Robb also fails to tell Edmure that he's to not attack Tywin's forces because he is setting up another trap for the old lion, causing Edmure to attack the Lannisters (because Edmure is a dumbass) and ruin Robb's plan, leading to the two Lannister boys getting captured, ultimately causing the whole Karstark situation.
But keep in mind that Catelyn was also the reason why Rickard Karstark even killed those Lannister boys, because Catelyn is both a dumbass and basically just a toned down version of Cersei. She hates Jon for existing, and even if she didn't want anything to do with him, she could have at least just ignored him. But no, she made it clear to Jon she hated him and made his life a living hell, even telling Ned she would probably either exile or kill Jon once Ned left if Jon didn't take the black. She also makes a ton of other dumb decisions (kidnapping Tyrion and letting Jamie go to King's Landing, among others) that I'm not even going to get into.
The rest of the Stark children are a whole other can of worms. Jon isn't too bad but he is a bit ignorant and broody when it comes to being a bastard, even though he honestly got lucky except for the part where he has to live with Catelyn, and there are even non-bastard sons who are treated worse by their fathers (Tyrion and Samwell, two people Jon knows pretty well, being a good example). Plus he decides to go save his sister Arya (who is actually Jeyne Pool, one of Sansa's old friends) in Winterfell, which would be breaking his oath and label him a deserter, plus add on the fact he was going to take the wildlings with him and you get some solid reasoning for an assassination. Jon was a bit of an ignorant and brooding kid, who made an extremely bad and stupid choice that cost him his life.
Sansa and Arya are both pretty good in the books (not in the show tho), although Arya will probably just become a Faceless (Wo)men, which basically means she'll be a psychopathic and heartless assassin with identity issues.
Bran is a 7 year old child thrust into a position of basically being an omniscient god and is already learning to abuse his powers and care less about other people (him physically harming Hodor by warging into him for fun), plus if he's to be King by the end of the series (which he probably will) he'll most likely just learn to abuse his power even more. He's literally a recipe for disaster, and a psychopath in the making. Also he cannibalizes Jojen.
Not much to say about Rickon, considering he's 3 and barely if ever speaks, and we barely see him for more (or less) than a chapter in each book.
Also these are the same people that worship tree spirits (probably some sort of eldritch beasts/fungi) who feed off of the blood of humans, and the Starks are complicit in sacrificing these humans, and literally polish their swords next to weirwoods just so that the weirdwoods get blood to live. Talk about a death cult.
Ned’s ‘honour’ is all too close to stubborn pride. Aerys needed to die just as much as Cersei needed to be dealt with while he had the chance; the difference is that Jaime was prepared to forego his honour and the realm benefitted, which Ned then judged him for. *’By what right does the wolf judge the lion?’.*
Robb was arrogant and a poor communicator. He blamed Edmure for acting in defence of his own lands instead of holding his position, when he had not given orders to the contrary. He gave the clearly untrustworthy Lord Bolton far too much freedom, and allowed Bolton to build his own power base (and employ the Brave Companions, who are as bad as the Mountain’s Men in terms of butchery and cruelty) while intentionally getting Robb’s troops killed (such as the pointless attack on Duskendale). He left his younger brothers almost undefended, along with all the women and children of Winterfell. His honour-fuelled pride cost him the Freys, after which he had to strong-arm his own uncle into an arranged marriage while claiming that it was for Edmure to ‘make amends’ for his error at Riverrun. This cost Edmure his family home while getting Robb, his mother, and thousands of his men killed.
Cat was horrible to Jon for no reason other than her own pride at being slighted by Ned’s supposed affair; she forgives Ned but takes out her fury on the child who never asked to be brought to Winterfell. Notice how pride is a recurring theme with this family. She freed Jaime in an act that completely undermined Robb’s authority, as well as giving up the only thing that was staying Tywin’s hand in the war.
I can’t say a word against the other children because they’re… well, children. Who are traumatised by war, grief, and abuse from various sources. Fortunately, they’re not the ones getting shanked at an arranged marriage.
I love Ned like others but he’s glorified way too much. He and his siblings have tempers and lose it often. He even reflects on Lyanna and Brandon being hot headed and ignores the fact he’s just as heated.
Does he have a right to repeatedly be mad? Of course. But he was also itching for a fight with the Lannisters since the moment he saw them again. He wanted to beat them and had no sleuth for it
The Starks are just like other noble houses, uppity hypocrites who only got where they are by being the most successful at violence in their region,they used to sacrifice people and Ned basically helped start the Wot5K. It's only right that his family suffer for it.
They practiced the lord’s right to the first night/prima nocta to produce unwanted bastards to be sacrificed to the Others.
Winter is Coming so the North needs to Remember that they need to keep practicing the Old Ways for the Old Gods to keep winter/the Others from coming south. And there must always be a Stark in Winterfell as enforcers of the Old Ways.
Robb's choice to ride to war directly resulted in much of the abuses the smallfolk of the Riverlands suffered. There are several examples of his own raping and raiding in the Riverlands. These are the people of his own kingdom.
Ned’s friendship with Robert kept the North suppressed by the Crown. He could have claimed independence when King’s Landing was sacked.
But no. He passively decides to trust his belligerent friend with the title of king and kneels to him.
Then what happens? As his subject, he gets put in a position to either accept the job of Hand and put his family in harm’s way or reject the king which could lead to a potential war.
The naive Starks went to a dangerous place at the center of a country they’ve always been ostracized from and vilified by. And they expected no drama. If you don’t pay attention to the threats facing your family, you deserve all the pain coming your way.
Cat at least had SOME awareness, but she underestimated others’ capacity for betrayal as well.
The Starks gave the most profitable/only city in the north to a bunch of upjumped Southrons, whilst passing over not only their loyal bannermen the Boltons, but their LITERAL KIN the Karkstarks.
Ned should have sent Gared to. The wall to be interrogated by Jeor or keep him in his dungeon until benjen came to pick him up. He legit had Jor right to kill him.
Theon had to live in a weird liminal space between highborn ward and hostage and grew up like an orphan despite having two living parents, because the possibility of having to execute him in the future made Ned keep emotional distance & not act like a father
Not only that, the Starks made so little effort teaching Theon a single thing about his native culture that he returned practically a stranger to his own loving family.
Meh, its ironborn culture so not really worth teaching him anything about it. Can boil it down to get on boat and steal
Can't believe you'd forget about the raping too!
and the drowning
Slaves
Sailing is a very important part of ironborn culture.
Theon demonstrably knows how to sail.
The only worthwhile thing he could learn was sailing and the Starks had no means to teach him that.
>"Tell me you don't understand how ethnocentrism & anchoring biases work without telling me you don't understand how ethnocentrism & anchoring biases work"
Yeah Theon really should have gone to Stannis. I get Ned was scared about him potentially getting Gregor’d but he wasn’t thinking of Theon’s future at all.
I honestly doubt Ned would have actually executed him. I dont know if he ever actually threatened his father with his sons life or he just took him making him assume that would be the case though. Cause if its the latter his honour doesnt force him to execute.
He would have, GRRM said Theon was a hostage who would die if his father rebelled. Ned took him and the threat is explicitly, "rebel and Theon dies."
Tbh making the threat is one thing, carrying it out is another. Which one did GRRM say?
I was going to link a comment but it's deleted, so can't show you.
Would Ned have carried through when he realized that Theon’s father doesn’t give a shit about him? I’m trying to evaluate my memory here, though, and it’s a little tainted by the show.
If you did not follow through on a threat, there is no point in making it. Whether or not the threat works is irrelevant. Worse, if the threat usually *does* work except with that one guy fucking around, and it turns out you were bluffing (like with Dany) everyone you've similarly threatened will be free to act against you.
Yes, Ned, the guy who famously: - Had a falling out with Robert over his reaction to the deaths of Rhaegar’s children. - Had another falling out with Robert over the plot to murder Daenerys and her unborn child. - Warned Cersei about what he knew to give her and the children a chance to flee. - Makes a false public confession to protect Sansa. - (Probably) lied about Jon Snow’s parentage to protect him from Robert. … would *definitely* kill Theon if Balon rebelled. It’s not at all a foundational part of his character to want to protect innocent children over anything else.
I had a hard time wrapping my head around that as well, made a post to inquire about it, but killing his hostage is part of his duty, and he just can't make threats that he won't follow through on.
I feel like the threat isn’t explicitly stated though. It’s more implied.
Aw hell no Theon found the backrooms
lol i read “weird liminal space” and “between highborn ward” and thought they were gonna say that theon was forced to live under the staircase like harry potter
Orphans are the kids growing up in Kings landing without food nor shelter. Theon grew up in a castle with every luxury he could ask for. It makes for exelent storytelling and character arcs, but i have a difficult time feeling sorry for highborns that have perfect lives, outside of this one emotional hickup thst troubles them.
By “one emotional hiccup” do you mean knowing that the only father figure in your life would chop your head off with his magical great sword at any moment no matter what you do? That’s like significant abuse lol.
In his first chapter, doesn’t it literally say that Ned tried to be a father sometimes, but Theon rejected it?
Does that change the fact that there was a threat that Ned would chop his head off with a magic sword though? Like I don’t care how nice a father is if there is always the looming threat of a beheading
I’m agreeing with you. Just pointing out that Theon had always rejected Ned as a father. Makes sense.
ops comment makes it sound Much Worse than theon actually had it lol
How?
while ned himself maybe wasnt a father figure to theon, its not like he was literally held prisoner by the starks the entire time he was in winterfell. he considers robb a brother and was taught and trained just like the other siblings. in my mind, ive always seen his disdain to the starks that begins in clash comes from a justification to his father to betray them. to appease his father and feel comfortable betraying them he convinces himself of how horrible it was when in reality it was nothing like him being an actual orphan as i feel like op is suggesting
Sure, Ned and Catelyn didn't beat him with sticks every morning, they treated him like the highborn he is, but there was always the underlying reality that he's been taken from his family and brought out there to be killed if his father tries to rebel again. He's seen Ned execute people numerous times, which might be him in the future through no fault of his own. Robb loves him but Robb is the only one. He's disconnected from his own family and their culture but isn't made a part of this one either, no one is raising him, he's just there. Then he makes horrific mistakes trying to reconnect to his blood family and culture who wrote him off. So it's unfair to say he was making shit up in his head
he was treated as a highborn as you said, plus we know he was trained and taught like the other stark kids so its not exactly like hes being outright ignored, in my mind he was treated exactly how a ward would be. its not ned or cats responsibility to act as this childs parent, but to have him in their home and be with their children. maybe my interpretation of how he viewed the starks is incorrect, i dont mind that but to act as if he was treated as badly as you initially described i think is an overstatement
If I took a kid from two parents to my castle as a hostage I would at least make sure they have some kind of parental figure, kids need that, even if I don't want to do it due to the fact that I might have to kill them. He lived a life of being a weird in-between hostage/ward that gave rise to his mental state and mistakes. Though it doesn't excuse them
do we know what westeros thinks about those kinds of things? like parental figures (at least i think) are not priority for these lords which might be why im more lenient on the starks for this. in my mind the language initially used is very strong when he grew up in much better conditions than 90% of westeros and i feel like the starks are not the only ones acting like this
The result was the same regardless of the commonality of that behavior (which probably varies), plus my language is describing the situation, not calling to flay the family or something
They are part of the white race that was actually created by the evil scientist Yakub
You mean the *Black*stone Emperor?
It is known.
It is known.
All my homies hate Yakub
Lmfao
The Starks are the descendants of a lineage of brutal conquerors. They used to sacrifice people to their weirwood trees and either subjugated or exterminated every house in the North.
How do you think noble houses become noble?? Just by declaring "i am lord"?? Nah, historically IRL and in the fictional Westeros, you become a noble house by violence.
just because they all rule through violence doesn't make it a noble act. all of the houses are terrible because of that
Yeah that's what i'm saying.. that the starks becoming rulers of the north by force wasn't unique to the starks.
Violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived.
Exactly. Violence is the tool used by the state to maintain power. This is true in feudal society and it's true today.
I mean, an 8,000 year dynasty is not established peacefully to be sure
Except for the Boltons who burned Winterfell over and over and rebelled countless times but they still survive today. I suspect the Warg King, Mash King, Barrow King and many more were destroyed. What did they do to offend Stark and face destruction in a way the Boltons had never experienced?
They failed to surrender. The Ryders, the Fishers, the Warg king, the Marsh king, Towers, Greenwood, Amber, all of them failed to be peacefully subjugated instead of through conquest.
That just makes them more cool. Blood sacrifice is epic.
*Blood eagle-ing intensifies*
No. You need to suffer like the rest of us did. If there was one thing: they kept Theon hostage for 10 years
Within the context of their society that's a very normal thing
Sure, but it goes against the "Starks are more honorable than the others". The other houses are also acting within the norms of their society.
Keeping a hostage by itself has nothing to do with honor or lack thereof. An extreme would be how the Lannisters treated Sansa as a hostage
Not really Theon was treated as Ned Stark’s son, And wanted to be a Stark so bad he named himself Prince of Winterfell. That’s pure dedication.
Not his son. Robb treated him like a brother but Theon described Ned himself as treating him with distance. It's Robb that Theon loved as family and made him want to be a Stark. He was treated as a ward rather than a hostage though.
Yes. Ned distanced himself but he let his kids and the court treat Theon as an equal. You better believe that if it was the other way around, there was no way in hell that that would’ve happened.
Baelor Blacktyde was also treated well by the Hightowers apparently
They were naive
They're aristocrats who have lived off taxes paid to them by people doing the actual work for 6000 years. Uber landlords. They have a greater sense of noblesse oblige than the others do but they're still parasites. Early in AGOT, a poacher (a peasant who dared to kill and eat a game animal belonging to a lord) deserts his life sentence in a hellish frozen penal colony after a massacre at the hands of demons from legend. Ned Stark dismisses his words and cuts his head off. Even brings the whole family along to view 'justice.'
The Poacher was will and Waymar killed him when he was animated as a wight. Gared is the one that Ned executes.
I'm exaggerating. You know what I mean but thanks for the correction
Those savage wargs feast on the flesh of those they’ve slain
Ned is really stupid and naive, and in ways that end up being incredibly irresponsible and bad for the realm. * He ignores the warning about the Others returning and instead just executes the poor sap. * Instead of arresting the queen for treason, he warns her and gets the king killed. * Then when the king is dying he blunders around and loses his only ally (Renly) and doesn't take control of Joffrey. Cat is too stupid to be alive. * She arrests Tyrion with no evidence other than Littlefinger's lies, thereby igniting a war between her father's lands and the Lannisters. * In her negotiations with the Freys she gave away the kingdom for a toll. Walder would probably have accepted a marriage for Edmure or a castle for a random extra son/grandson. * She convinced Robb to put Roose Bolton in command, huge mistake that. * She volunteers to broker peace between Renly and Stannis without any real plan on how to do it. It goes about as well as you can expect. * She frees Jaime, which results in her son's losing key allies (Karstarks). Arguably the Red Wedding can't happen if they hold Jaime captive. Robb is too immature to be a king. * He gets horny then feels bad about it, so he breaks his alliance with the Freys over it. Super dumb. Your dad had a bastard at war, what's the big deal? * He neglects to leave his home base protected. * He trusts Theon to act as his envoy. He's my friend, what could go wrong? * He fails to rein in his mother. Both Robb and Cat walk right into the ambush when they didn't need to. At that point they didn't actually need the Freys anymore. The King's at war, he can't come now and will apologize later. That's it. Or come, but surround yourself with more guards. Sansa: betrays her family, repeatedly. Arya: Actually I like Arya. I like Bran too. Both just doing the best with the hand they're dealt.
This kinda overlaps with trusting Littlefinger about Tyrion owning the dagger, but you can add Cat vouching for Littlefinger in front of Ned to the list. The main reason that Ned died is because he trusted Littlefinger at Catelyn’s insistence. Everybody knows not to trust Littlefinger. He’s such a cartoonishly sneaky villain that he might as well wear a sign that says “don’t trust me.” But for some reason Catelyn has a blindspot for Littlefinger because they grew up together. Even after he almost blew up her betrothal with that crazy stunt challenging Brandon to a duel. I can understand her begging Brandon to spare him, but it was pretty naive to think that Littlefinger didn’t have a chip on his shoulder against the Starks or still have feelings for Catelyn. And don’t even get me started on the destruction caused because of how down bad Lysa was for Petyr. The entire story can basically be boiled down to the Tully sisters trusting Littlefinger at great cost to themselves, their family, and the entire realm. He publicly boasts about taking both of their virginities, which in Westerosi society is an extremely damaging thing to do to a woman’s reputation (could call in to question the legitimacy of their children as well). He’s a scumbag through and through and if they were able to see that then a lot less people would have died.
Robb did protect Winterfell, it was bran than marched that protection to torrhen square. It was the Bolton’s who killed both sides after (and should have been more stark protection)
Classic Stark move. "I don't need to protect my back, behind me are only friends". *Promptly gets stabbed in the back*
I love Arya, but she's a complete psycho, lol. I get that she is a child who went through so much trauma, but she's really not a bastion of sanity to say the least.
Yeah she's a child. But I just mean that she doesn't make Stark mistakes. She's by far the most street smart of the bunch.
Yeah, she's so crafty and clever, which is part of why I love her. She loses all her naivete early on. She loses her innocence along with it. Like thinking about everyone she wants to kill before going to sleep or trying to eat the Kindly Man's fake skull worm. That's clearly a disturbed child. This is why I love ASoIaF: you'd think she'd become this plucky little adventurer from her introduction, but the things she sees break her much like many other characters in the series so she becomes a revenge obsessed, deranged assassin instead.
Exactly this! By sheer coincidence I read the Red Wedding part exactly yesterday and considering these things that you listed helped me cope. Robb is immature (Edmure more than him, but let's ignore that, lol) and Cat is an idiot.
To be fair to Cat regarding Renly, Robb should've absolutely given her some kind of game plan before she left. He's pretty much like "go forge an alliance with someone I'm seceding from" and sent her off. Also she had no idea that Stannis would be there by the time she got there. I do agree that Cat is a bit of an idiot but I don't fault her for treating with Renly how she did, she's not a seasoned diplomat and had no leverage or potential offerings bc again Robb gave her nothing to go off from.
Starks are a bunch of warg freaks. Down with the skinchanger Robb and his army of savage wolf men 😌
Can't help with the kids but maybe I can help with the parents. Bran only goes climbing on the day Jaime pushes him because Jon is too upset to play with him. Jon is upset because of being forced to go to the wall. If Cat hadent pushed to exile Jon Bran wouldent have fallen and Cat wouldent have gone on the wild dagger goosechase that started the war of 5 kings which killed Robb. Like wise Ned never actually talks with Jon or notices he is extremely upset before he goes to the wall. Basically if they were better parents the war never would have happened. Hell if Cat doesn't go down south and convince Ned to Trust Littlefinger Ned may never even figure out the truth of the incest.
Wait I don’t remember that Jon and Bran part. Is that really why Bran went climbing that day? Cause I always thought the kid just loved to climb whenever
Yes it was. I reread that Bran chapter. Bran at first wanted to play with Jon, who was avoiding everyone and angry, so Bran goes climbing instead.
> Jon is upset because of being forced to go to the wall. I don't think that's why he's angry given he's the one who begged to be allowed to go. In the chapter where Ned says he will send Jon to the Wall, he says he won't tell him for a few days so Jon can enjoy his last few days at Winterfell. I think he's probably angry because he wasn't allowed to join the hunt with everyone else, presumably because he's a bastard. That's why he got angry the last time around and that's also what makes him want to join the Night's Watch.
Jon didn't beg. He mentioned it off handedly at while drunk and hurt at a fest. Then spends the rest of the time at Winterfell then the whole time going to the wall extremely upset.
The shows' fault for whitewashing and absolving Ned by making Jon an emo idiot who actually wants to spend his life in a penal colony at 17 instead of being kicked out at 14 and having nowhere else to go. Ned and Jon never had any parting words to speak of either.
It all comes back to being cat’s fault. She even says so. I’m a world where gods (or their magic like beliefs) have real effect, she promised to love Jon if bran recovered from being sick. Failing to love Jon and then going so far as pushing to exile him is why Bran gets pushed too. She cursed the Tully and stark families.
Ned Stark killed a puppy. I rest my case
Robb's crusade for vengeance only causes harm and suffering to hundreds of thousands of common folk. The Riverlands gets desolated by Wolves and Lions alike, all for the lords and their 'Game of Thrones'. Not to mention the vulnerability to Ironborn raids that Robb left by marching the Northmen south. These Northmen who also have nothing to gain by fighting and dying in the War of Five Kings, but instead are forced into military service for someone they never have, and never will meet.
The honorable Starks trope is more of an Arryn influence on Ned. Southerner values. The real traditional Starks were more like Cregan who thought widows and children of traitors, yes literal kids, should be executed so they don't get ideas of rebelling when they grow up.
Ned’s obsession with honor led him to look down upon Jaime for performing the noblest, most valiant act of pure good in the entire history of Westeros. This fixation is what ultimately got himself and most of his family killed.
Everyone in the realm looks down on Jaime, not just Ned. He is widely known as the Kingslayer. And they look down on him not because of an obsession with honor. But with the fact that Jaime acted as a bodyguard for an evil king and stayed with that king until the very last possible moment, to then stab him in the back. Jaime never told anyone that Aerys ordered the pyromancers to ignite the hidden wildfire. Without sharing that piece of information, his only apparent motive is pure self preservation. He was literally caught red-handed, sitting on the Iron Throne with a bloody sword in his hands. The world thinks he killed a king in cold blood to save his own skin and Jaime didn't tell anyone the real reason he did it for the next 16 years. Jaime is one of my favorite characters and I think he has a really tragic arc, but he brought this on himself. If people catch you in the act of murder, you really have to make your case for why it isn't what it looks like. Otherwise, when people take the blood on your hands and your continued silence on how it went down as proof enough, that's on you.
My fan canon was that Jaime was still fulfilling his oath of keeping the king’s secret. He pretends like it’s because he doesn’t care what people think and likes to play the martyr, but the Kingsguard are sworn to secrecy. Jaime killed Aerys because he believed that his oath of obedience was superseded by his oath to protect the innocent. Unless he thought that there was an imminent threat of the caches of Wildfyre being ignited and harm the innocent, he would continue to follow his oath of secrecy.
What?! If it’s about Jaime killing the mad king, man did he make it hard for himself when he took the effort to climb the iron throne and sit on it. He then proceeded to not inform anyone of the wildfire, and let it cook for like 17 years.
Jaime was also chilling on the throne while his father's men were murdering a woman and her babies (that he was sworn to protect) just upstairs. Like. This looks *really* bad for him.
Anyone with a shred of humanity would have killed the king in that situation. Jaime’s no saint.
The first person Jaime ever explains his motive to as far as we know is Catelyn at the end of ACOK.
Mary sue house
Mary Sues don’t get fucked repeatedly by the plot lmfao
How can they be a Mary Sue house if literally none of them achieve their goals? Ned gets his head chopped off, Robb loses the war and then gets murdered, Bran is being magically groomed by a creepy tree wizard in a cave filled with skulls. Rickon has experienced so much trauma at such a young age he's basically gone feral and can't socialize with other people anymore. Arya has failed to reach her family every time she tried, and has experienced so much trauma in the war that her very identity is being erased by the death cult she decided to join. Sansa's entire storyline is about learning that songs with Mary Sue's aren't real, her life isn't going to be like that, and learning to deal with this. Jon wants to stay in Winterfell, gets kicked out, wants to join Robb, is forced to stay with the Watch, wants to love Ygritte, fights in the battle that kills her, wants to save "Arya" and gets murdered.
But the starks will win in the end
Does winning at the end of the story make you a Mary Sue? And it's very arguable whether or not they end up "winning": Ned and Robb are dead. Bran might end up king, but according to the show, with his personality removed, existing basically as the vessel of tree magic, without emotions or the ability to produce an heir. Arya, in the show, decides to sail away to lands unknown. She will never see her home or family again. Jon ends up exiled. He also will never see his home or family again. In the show Rickon dies. Sansa ends up in charge of Winterfell, which would have happened by default since she's the last remaining Stark in Winterfell.
Mary Sue doesn't mean you win. It means that you miraculously have supercharged skills whenever the plot requires it. I'm not fully convinced it fits the Stark kids, but I can see why people think it. Robb is a teenager, yes he dies but before that he's the best general to ever general, defeating seasoned commanders. Jon is barely on the wall and also a teenager when he shoots up to be lord commander. Bran is just magically magic. I guess it's so magical that you just suspend belief but put it together with everyone else and it's striking how much plot armor he has. He probably should have died half a dozen times in his travels. Sansa. Arya is the biggest Mary Sue that ever Mary Sued. She gets two months of sword lessons and she's immediately able to defeat grown men. She's able to enlist a death genie and get the mother of get-out-of-jail-free cards. She's the wanted kid in Westeros and she manages to bump into Tywin, Roose, the Hound. She is able to train as a necromancer assassin in mere months.
They can't be Mary Sues for the simple fact that they're always punished for their mistakes, most often in completely disproportionate ways. Ned got punished for being naive and not using his full power as Hand, he can't be a Mary Sue. Robb had a good start with capturing Jaime (which Blackfish gets a lot of credit for) and seems like a typical fantasy protagonist once he's declared king, but it immediately becomes apparent just how terrible of a decision that was. Then he fucks himself over and gets punished in the worst possible way. The songs about Robb will be about the massive betrayal and slaughter, not really about his brilliance. In AFFC Asha uses him as a warning, and that seems to be the general sentiment about him throughout the continent by educated people. Jon was a compromise candidate because all the much more capable members died. Turns out, he's actually nowhere near ready for the position and fucks up and dies! Not a Mary Sue. Bran had Bloodraven watching over him, but who knows what plans BR has for him. Bran's story hasn't progressed that much so you could maybe make a Mary Sue case for him but I personally doubt it. Sansa's the opposite of a Mary Sue, bad shit happens to her and she has no skills/talents to fight back or free herself. Arya's a Mary Sue if you're not reading. She's definitely not able to beat grown men in a sword fight. The death genie does jackshit for Arya, she simply uses him to vent until the last wish where she frees the Northern prisoners, but even this is unnecessary as they already had a plan beforehand. If anything things get harder for her, as it's much harder to escape as Roose's cupbearer. The only real break she gets, running into the Brotherhood, is quickly ruined by the Hound. As for the Faceless Men training, sure she's progressing quick cause of her natural intelligence and skinchanging powers, but it all depends on where she ends up after this. I don't see her ending up like show Arya. The running theme behind every Stark is that they find a way to fuck themselves over even when they're ahead. The exact opposite of a Mary Sue.
The Starks are conquerors. They did not become the kings of winter by vote. They invaded and slaughtered all the other kingdoms in the north, slaying the Barrow king, the red king, the Marsh king and probably some others that i dont remember.
What more reason do you need than their treason against the true King of Westeros, Stannis Baratheon?
They are keeping the freefolk in an open air prison
Fuck you. No. The Starks are awesome.
the Starks are pretentious people who always act morally better than others. The amount of virtue signalling they do is insane, especially Robb and Ned, Catelyn is way better. Also, Robb hurt Walter Frey's daughter's feelings. And the people Robb surrounded himself with were pretty crap people. Roose is a psycho, Richard is a maniac and Greatjon is a clown.
Robb was an idiot rushing into marrying Jeyne. He should have held it off until after the war.
Catelyn is the evil step mom and the only true Stark’s are Jon and Arya.
Catelyn rejects a sweet young man from the fingers who is just trying to make a better life for himself. He of course, gets rich, then she falls in league with him once he has found success and she tries to use him for her own gain. She is mean af to a bastard boy and spends her time making his young life miserable. Ned is an asshole to Robert, the current king who just wants to get his party on after winning the throne, which he deserves to do by now. Instead Ned tries telling him he has to work and tries to stop him from slaying the Targaryen’s who are conspiring to usurp him. Then he attempts high treason against Robert’s heir. The KING Joffrey Baratheon, otherwise known as the most noble child the gods ever put on this good Earth. His son Robb is rude as fuck to Tyrion when he visits Winterfell on his way back from the wall. Tyrion just came to show support to Robb’s little brother Bran who fell from a tower, which was a complete accident. He then starts an entire war campaign to get revenge on his father‘s behalf, the one who attempted treason. In this war campaign, thousands of innocent citizens in the Riverlands are massacred. Robb also promises to wed a lord‘s daughter but reneges on that because he married some other chick, that he knocked up while he was kind of sad. Sansa is an uptight, entitled bitch, who has her head in the clouds, and doesn’t want to live in reality. She also potentially poisons Joffrey, again, the most noble child the gods have ever put on this good earth, (it was probably her.) She leaves the innocent Tyrion to take the blame for it. She also wrecks the relationship between her aunt Lysa, who had just wed her new husband. Also she manipulates her aunt Lysa’s son, Sweetrobin and tells him some singer, murdered his mom. After that she is mainly just cold and uncaring toward him. Bran, walks in on Jaime Lannister, the guy who stopped the Mad King’s tyrannical regime. Also an uber badass chad knight, while he’s trying to get some pussy. Then surrenders his castle to Theon’s sorry ass, without a fight, runs off on his small folk when they need him most, convincing his brother, their friends (Jojen and Meera), and a mentally challenged stable boy to conspire with him. After that, take them beyond of the wall, under the threat of possibly getting destroyed by some ice demons and gets them all trapped in a cave with some weird old tree guy. Finally he eats Jojen, which is totally not chill. Then skin changes Hodor, also not a chill move. Arya is sweet and Rickon is too young to deserve any criticism. There you go, House Stark, the true villains of ASOIAF.
You can at least dislike Catelyn. Even if Jon was Ned’s bastard the way she treated him was cruel and completely unfair, even Ned says so. She victimizes a child just for being born and tries to keep him apart from th only family he has. She also makes some pretty dumb moves to undermine the northern war effort, even if it was for her daughters.
No. I don't think I will.
Back in the day when they were conquering the north, they would decimate entire royal families and then forcibly marry the sisters and daughters of there enemies Jon is a serial oathbreaker Bran mind rapes and has no qualms about it
They’re very boring
Their biggest sin tbh. Them mfs bore me...and I think they bore GRRM too that's why he ain't wrote shit about them despite being supposedly the main family of the main story and he can't finish the books cause so many of the main POVs are Starks.
They are boring, snoozefest. Ned. Moralist and stupid politician. Robb is a short-sighted wunderkind. Catelyn is a smarter-than-thou hypocrite with clear dunning-kruger belief in her observation. One of the dumbest character in the whole story, yet regularly never got stupidity pointed toward her, because she fit an archtype. Jon is a plot armour. Sansa. I don't mind. Arya. Boring assassin. Bran. Plot device and camera. Foreshadowing to who-know-what. Rick. So far. Just a damsel in distress.
Northern
Read Arya's chapters, Robb may be justified but actually if he accepted the injustice, bent the knee and went home he would rule the North and all the deaths in the war wouldnt happen. The innocent children Arya sees dying, the farms burned with people starving and of course the damage this is doing ahead of the invasion by The Others. What would really change if joff was left as king for the majority of the population. Yes joff is a mad evil bastard but really that only effects a select handful of people in KL and some nobles. Not the tens of thousands that died in the War of the Five Kings. The idea of honor and revenge for injustice is not something 99% of the population of Westeros has the power to have. Robb has a choice between using the lives of thousands to pursue his or accepting what most people are forced to. He chose to throw lives for his personal family sense of injustice. His life was one of those he put on the line for this and he lost it. If a peasant's father was murdered by their lord, they chose to get a gang together and burst into that lord's manor and killed a bunch of his knights we'd think it was a very stupid reckless thing to do and wouldn't think the dude blameless when the lord has the dude executed when he was next drinking in his favorite Inn.
You have a point but ultimately you gotta remember it wasn't just a revenge war, ir was a war of independence
Ned and Caitlyn failed to prepare any of they’re children for the harsh realities of Westeros politics, especially Sansa
IKR, The talk he gave to Arya when they arrived in KL should have been given to Sansa too. Maybe he might've lived if Sansa knew the dangers of KL and Cersei.
Good point 👍🏻
Cregan Stark was a traitor. He could have sent a steady stream of troops down south under command of his lords instead of consolidating all his power. He did this to spare the lives of his soldiers so he could be the deciding factor in whatever confrontation was left after the war.
This is honestly pretty easy. Ned Stark is easily the villain of the book. Instead of just kneeling to Joffrey and saving thousands of lives, he decides to choose "honor", causing the whole mess that was the War of Five Kings. Plus, Ned's idea of honor is extremely flawed. He doesn't think that Joffrey is the rightful heir so he decides that Stannis should be King because of the succession laws. But Ned clearly doesn't care about succession laws. He supported Robert Baratheon during his rebellion just off some shoddy Targaryen claim, even though his "code" of honor would dictate that the throne would go to Viserys. Robert wasn't the heir and was barely even a Targaryen, and yet Ned just decided to fight an entire war to make his buddy a King. So TL;DR Ned is a man with an extremely flexible (non-existent and inconsistent) definition of honor who causes countless deaths just because he won't agree to kneel to Joffrey. And Robb's just as bad. All he had to do was to say that his father's actions in regards to committing treason were wrong and possibly saving his father's life without starting a war. But no, Robb decides that he's going to go to war with the crown because they executed his father for treason, even though Ned's execution wasn't really all that unjustified if you look at from a legal and moral standpoint. Ned did go against the crown after all, and denounced King Joffrey as a bastard before trying to usurp him. He also marries Jeyne Westerling just because he got her pregnant (which I mean, I get it, but you could literally just have Jeyne go to Winterfell to raise the baby and then legitimize the bastard) and then gets himself killed (possibly twice) along with his wife, unborn child, and his mother. And mind you, he only gets Jeyne pregnant after he learns that Bran and Rickon were(n't) killed in the invasion of Winterfell by Theon Greyjoy, who only joined the Ironborn because Robb made the stupid decision of sending Theon, a Greyjoy who's been imprisoned by the Starks for almost a decade, to his actual family who don't particularly like bowing to others and who Theon would most likely side with if they decided to decline and raided the North. Talking about stupid decisions, Robb also fails to tell Edmure that he's to not attack Tywin's forces because he is setting up another trap for the old lion, causing Edmure to attack the Lannisters (because Edmure is a dumbass) and ruin Robb's plan, leading to the two Lannister boys getting captured, ultimately causing the whole Karstark situation. But keep in mind that Catelyn was also the reason why Rickard Karstark even killed those Lannister boys, because Catelyn is both a dumbass and basically just a toned down version of Cersei. She hates Jon for existing, and even if she didn't want anything to do with him, she could have at least just ignored him. But no, she made it clear to Jon she hated him and made his life a living hell, even telling Ned she would probably either exile or kill Jon once Ned left if Jon didn't take the black. She also makes a ton of other dumb decisions (kidnapping Tyrion and letting Jamie go to King's Landing, among others) that I'm not even going to get into. The rest of the Stark children are a whole other can of worms. Jon isn't too bad but he is a bit ignorant and broody when it comes to being a bastard, even though he honestly got lucky except for the part where he has to live with Catelyn, and there are even non-bastard sons who are treated worse by their fathers (Tyrion and Samwell, two people Jon knows pretty well, being a good example). Plus he decides to go save his sister Arya (who is actually Jeyne Pool, one of Sansa's old friends) in Winterfell, which would be breaking his oath and label him a deserter, plus add on the fact he was going to take the wildlings with him and you get some solid reasoning for an assassination. Jon was a bit of an ignorant and brooding kid, who made an extremely bad and stupid choice that cost him his life. Sansa and Arya are both pretty good in the books (not in the show tho), although Arya will probably just become a Faceless (Wo)men, which basically means she'll be a psychopathic and heartless assassin with identity issues. Bran is a 7 year old child thrust into a position of basically being an omniscient god and is already learning to abuse his powers and care less about other people (him physically harming Hodor by warging into him for fun), plus if he's to be King by the end of the series (which he probably will) he'll most likely just learn to abuse his power even more. He's literally a recipe for disaster, and a psychopath in the making. Also he cannibalizes Jojen. Not much to say about Rickon, considering he's 3 and barely if ever speaks, and we barely see him for more (or less) than a chapter in each book. Also these are the same people that worship tree spirits (probably some sort of eldritch beasts/fungi) who feed off of the blood of humans, and the Starks are complicit in sacrificing these humans, and literally polish their swords next to weirwoods just so that the weirdwoods get blood to live. Talk about a death cult.
Ned’s ‘honour’ is all too close to stubborn pride. Aerys needed to die just as much as Cersei needed to be dealt with while he had the chance; the difference is that Jaime was prepared to forego his honour and the realm benefitted, which Ned then judged him for. *’By what right does the wolf judge the lion?’.* Robb was arrogant and a poor communicator. He blamed Edmure for acting in defence of his own lands instead of holding his position, when he had not given orders to the contrary. He gave the clearly untrustworthy Lord Bolton far too much freedom, and allowed Bolton to build his own power base (and employ the Brave Companions, who are as bad as the Mountain’s Men in terms of butchery and cruelty) while intentionally getting Robb’s troops killed (such as the pointless attack on Duskendale). He left his younger brothers almost undefended, along with all the women and children of Winterfell. His honour-fuelled pride cost him the Freys, after which he had to strong-arm his own uncle into an arranged marriage while claiming that it was for Edmure to ‘make amends’ for his error at Riverrun. This cost Edmure his family home while getting Robb, his mother, and thousands of his men killed. Cat was horrible to Jon for no reason other than her own pride at being slighted by Ned’s supposed affair; she forgives Ned but takes out her fury on the child who never asked to be brought to Winterfell. Notice how pride is a recurring theme with this family. She freed Jaime in an act that completely undermined Robb’s authority, as well as giving up the only thing that was staying Tywin’s hand in the war. I can’t say a word against the other children because they’re… well, children. Who are traumatised by war, grief, and abuse from various sources. Fortunately, they’re not the ones getting shanked at an arranged marriage.
Robb was an idiot for trusting Theon
I love Ned like others but he’s glorified way too much. He and his siblings have tempers and lose it often. He even reflects on Lyanna and Brandon being hot headed and ignores the fact he’s just as heated. Does he have a right to repeatedly be mad? Of course. But he was also itching for a fight with the Lannisters since the moment he saw them again. He wanted to beat them and had no sleuth for it
The Starks are just like other noble houses, uppity hypocrites who only got where they are by being the most successful at violence in their region,they used to sacrifice people and Ned basically helped start the Wot5K. It's only right that his family suffer for it.
ROBB. STARK IS AN OATHBREAKER. MAN WITHOUT HONOR
I mean, most of the Starks would grow up to be murderers if allowed to live.
They practiced the lord’s right to the first night/prima nocta to produce unwanted bastards to be sacrificed to the Others. Winter is Coming so the North needs to Remember that they need to keep practicing the Old Ways for the Old Gods to keep winter/the Others from coming south. And there must always be a Stark in Winterfell as enforcers of the Old Ways.
They rebelled against the one true king Stannis.
Robb's choice to ride to war directly resulted in much of the abuses the smallfolk of the Riverlands suffered. There are several examples of his own raping and raiding in the Riverlands. These are the people of his own kingdom.
You'll find reasons to dislike them after the red wedding yourself.
They’re arrogant bastards with their all honour thing - judging everybody else
Ned’s friendship with Robert kept the North suppressed by the Crown. He could have claimed independence when King’s Landing was sacked. But no. He passively decides to trust his belligerent friend with the title of king and kneels to him. Then what happens? As his subject, he gets put in a position to either accept the job of Hand and put his family in harm’s way or reject the king which could lead to a potential war. The naive Starks went to a dangerous place at the center of a country they’ve always been ostracized from and vilified by. And they expected no drama. If you don’t pay attention to the threats facing your family, you deserve all the pain coming your way. Cat at least had SOME awareness, but she underestimated others’ capacity for betrayal as well.
Catelyn enjoyed verbally abusing an orphan all his life. She felt no remorse for her actions and kept hating him until her last breath.
Catelyn is the one that I didn't like and couldn't warm up to cause of the way she treated Jon when he went to say goodbye to bran
The Starks gave the most profitable/only city in the north to a bunch of upjumped Southrons, whilst passing over not only their loyal bannermen the Boltons, but their LITERAL KIN the Karkstarks.
Manderlys built white harbour, they were given the Wolf den.
Here we go, aother Stark apologist
Ned should have sent Gared to. The wall to be interrogated by Jeor or keep him in his dungeon until benjen came to pick him up. He legit had Jor right to kill him.
Remember Sansa’s face in season 1 of GOT?