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Post by PhoBWanKenobi on Jun 16, 2011 17:47:17 GMT -5
Discussion of season 1, episode 9 ("Baelor") goes here. Please be sure to mark all spoilers (it's the little gasping face).
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artw
Junior Member
Posts: 79
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Post by artw on Jun 16, 2011 18:40:17 GMT -5
Stupid Ned Stark.
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Post by PhoBWanKenobi on Jun 16, 2011 18:44:35 GMT -5
Continuing a bit of discussion from over on metafilter, did the rest of you who haven't read the books anticipate stupid Ned Stark's stupid beheading? I was very much not surprised by it. I felt that his character arc seemed very complete at that point--what else could have happened? Where he could have gone after selling himself out like that? I find that a testament to Martin's writing. It's not what you'd expect of most fantasy, but it makes sense within the context of itself. |
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Post by furiousxgeorge on Jun 16, 2011 18:55:35 GMT -5
When I first read it I assumed he was going to end up on the wall fighting zombies with Jon Snow, seemed to make the most sense for his character. I don't think we need to be marking stuff that happened in this episode. |
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Post by furiousxgeorge on Jun 16, 2011 18:56:52 GMT -5
Hi Artw.
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Post by PhoBWanKenobi on Jun 16, 2011 18:58:58 GMT -5
When I first read it I assumed he was going to end up on the wall fighting zombies with Jon Snow, seemed to make the most sense for his character. I don't think we need to be marking stuff that happened in this episode. I am just being extra careful.  It's interesting to imagine what person he would have been, then. Almost doesn't seem like he would have been able to live with himself. |
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Post by furiousxgeorge on Jun 16, 2011 19:06:31 GMT -5
I think he would have been okay. The choice he made was deciding to favor family over honor. The interplay of those values (along with duty) is a major theme of the story. Here is a cool analysis on that: www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/05/game-of-thrones-family-matters/238922/I kind of felt like what he said about being a soldier is what would have carried him through on the wall. He would have gone back to being a solider and make duty the focus of his life. |
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Post by Ms Harriet Vane on Jun 17, 2011 3:39:00 GMT -5
That's a good point. He wouldn't have been happy about what led him to being on the Wall, but he would have done his duty to the best of his (no doubt excellent) ability.
It's interesting to me that people who are only watching the show have spotted a similarity that all the book-readers and I had never quite noticed: Sansa takes after Ned in her belief that doing the Right Thing will give good results. She's doing her best to be the Perfect Princess, he was doing his best to be an Honourable Lord. Jon has also been misled by the idea that doing his duty and going to the Wall would be a great adventure, not a lowly job in a freezing cold wasteland. And yet both kids are acting in the way Ned taught them was right.
I guess they're all pretty disillusioned now.
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Post by PhoBWanKenobi on Jun 17, 2011 9:46:01 GMT -5
Nice point.
I find it interesting that in both cases, this honor sometimes seems to come at the expense of, you know, like a common-sense survival mechanism. I like how Arya seems to not care for the family values one bit--it seems to give her a little more, I don't know, moxie
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Post by cortex on Jun 17, 2011 19:23:57 GMT -5
It's been a couple years since I re-read the first book, so I can't recall if there was any notable earlier bits there that got omitted from the show along the lines of what follow, but it feels like Ned is basically the Isaac on the slab before Martin's Abraham: as much as the story is already pushing a lot of "this is not stereotypical fantasy adventure" buttons up until this point, it's really how things play out for him the that really fundamentally seals the deal on the whole MartinTM subversion. Also, the biblical metaphor doesn't really work, scratch that.
But, yeah, because he did do the right thing, he stood by his honor in the face of difficulty and risked danger and found himself in dire straits all because his unwillingness to wilt in the face of moral adversity and then at the eleventh hour everything magically worked out turned out pretty shitty, whoops.
Ned's a patsy; he gets sold short to make a point. His honor and goodness and remarkable if foolish belief that others were fundamentally honorable as well even if they had misstepped are supposed to get him into and out of trouble, not into trouble and then bring the whammy. If Game of Thrones was a one-book story, if Ned's arc ended in the third act, it'd just be a twist; but in a series like this it's something else. It's a thesis statement.
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Post by Ms Harriet Vane on Jun 18, 2011 7:54:33 GMT -5
Very true.
Plus the surprise partly comes from GRRM hiding who the main characters are. We assume it's Ned, because he fits the fantasy mold (well, for an everyman hero, anyway, what with the family love and all). This episode and the matching book event are what make us re-evaluate the type of story we're following.
What's Philip Pullman's line? All children in search of adventure must first lose their parents somehow - or something like that. Ned's set up to be the hero, but really I guess he's there to show how the kids have been brought up, get them to their starting points, and get out of the way. Now we get to see how Robb, Jon, Sansa, Bran, Arya (and Rickon, maybe) deal with the harsh truth of life in Westeros.
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Post by PhoBWanKenobi on Jun 18, 2011 10:05:39 GMT -5
What's Philip Pullman's line? All children in search of adventure must first lose their parents somehow - or something like that. Ned's set up to be the hero, but really I guess he's there to show how the kids have been brought up, get them to their starting points, and get out of the way. Now we get to see how Robb, Jon, Sansa, Bran, Arya (and Rickon, maybe) deal with the harsh truth of life in Westeros. I have to say that Arya's presence in the beheading scene made Ned's death seem that much more inevitable for me. That just screamed "classical YA character-building moment!" It's the type of scene you see all the time in, say, prologues to YA fantasy books. "When I was ten, I saw my father die . . ." That kind of thing. |
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Post by griphus on Jun 18, 2011 13:31:20 GMT -5
You know I was so incredulous when it happened that I refused to believe it. "The sword went right over his head!" I kept telling my girlfriend. "You don't see the body! He's not dead if you don't see the body." And then just to prove how right I was I stepped through frame-by-frame and ... uh ... shit.
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Post by fantasyarchipelago on Jun 18, 2011 17:56:43 GMT -5
As soon as Ned confessed I figured they'd find a way to more cleanly rub him out at a later date, as he was a liability to Joffre's rule. Then, suddenly, surprise beheading!
Joffre is lucky he's not visiting Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, because it would only be a matter of time for him in that situation.
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Post by misslapin on Jun 18, 2011 20:30:42 GMT -5
For me, the writing was on the wall when Ned told Cersei what he knew. That whole episode I was just like "WHAT!IS!HE!THINKING?!"
To me, Ned basically illustrates Machiavellian principle (which is represented, in King's Landing, by Varys) that in order to rule for the benefit of the people, you must be willing to do dishonorable things "for the good of the realm." In this case an honorable man, Ned, was more concerned with the late Robert's honor than the future of the Westeros.
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