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Why does everyone keep saying Ned was an average swords


ilikethesebooks

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1) GRRM said so


2) The circumstances under which he bested Dayne are uncertain


3) Ned and Jaime fought in the show. In the books, Jaime told the Lannister guardsmen to kill Ned's guardsmen, and then rode away.


4) Nobody in-universe ever mentions Ned as a swordsman, good or bad, so its best to assume he is average


5) We never see Ned fight


6) Ned thinks to himself that Brandon was the swordsman of the family.


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Martin said he was only average, for a Lord. To be honest, Ned was the definition of an average man in most aspects imo.



Ned was lucky he didn't go sword to sword with Jaime in the streets of KL. He would have been dead a lot sooner.


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Maybe. But if Jaime killed Ned, what do you think Robert would have done? Then again, Jaime was never that big on thinking.

This was kind of what I was thinking. Once they come to blows, it suddenly becomes a lot harder to not harm your enemy. He did only want to capture Ned, but he's also a hothead and decided to attack him in the first place.

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Maybe. But if Jaime killed Ned, what do you think Robert would have done? Then again, Jaime was never that big on thinking.

Robert would have done what he always does when there's a problem............Nothing

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I'm more curious as to why so many assume he's an elite fighter beyond the fact he's the primary protagonist of the first novel.

I notice most Stark fans want the Starks, and by extension the Northerners, to be the toughest of all peoples. Might have something to do with that.

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Didn't he best Dayne (who was highly regarded) in single combat? When he fought Jamie briefly he wasn't exactly getting worked by him.

1. It wasn't single combat. More like 7 on 3 combat.

2. He never fought Jamie. That was just the show.

3. GRRM even called him average.

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Didn't he best Dayne (who was highly regarded) in single combat? When he fought Jamie briefly he wasn't exactly getting worked by him.

No, he didn't best Dayne in single combat. Ned's young soldiers rumour that amongst themselves, but they weren't there and don't actually have a clue. They only know that he returned the sword Dawn to Starfall.

Ned himself tells Bran that he would have died to Arthur if it were not for Howland Reed. That doesn't actually tell us anything about if or how they fought though.

What GRRM said was that while Ned was a competent swordsman, Brandon was the good swordsman in the family.

As others have noted, the Ned/Jaime fight (and the verbal jousting previously) is made up by the show.

What we do have in the text is a memory of Sansa's of Bronze Yohn Royce easily beating Ned and Ser Rodrik Cassel (Ned's Master at Arms, so presumably no mean slouch with a sword) both together in practice at WInterfell. Clearly Ned is not in Royce's class if that is the case, and while Royce is a noted Tourney participant, he's not a super-top class swordsman like Jaime, Barristan or Arthur Dayne.

So, all in all, Ned's probably about average for a nobleman born to fight who has trained all his life. As GRRM says, competent, but probably not much more.

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Sansa says he's terrible.



Lord Yohn still looked as though he could break most younger men like twigs in those huge gnarled hands. His seamed and solemn face brought back all of Sansa’s memories of his time at Winterfell. She remembered him at table, speaking quietly with her mother. She heard his voice booming off the walls when he rode back from a hunt with a buck behind his saddle. She could see him in the yard, a practice sword in hand, hammering her father to the ground and turning to defeat Ser Rodrik as well. He will know me. How could he not?


Eddard got Yohn'd


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1. Because he's never said to be better than average.

2. Because he's said/shown to be far inferior to the only skilled fighters that he's compared to (Robert, Arthur, Brandon, Yohn).

3. Because GRRM only ever called him "competent".

Though, "average" for a Westeorsi nobleman is still "amazing" by any other standard.

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I guess this "single combat" thing comes from TWoIaF? Remember that was written by a maester, I suppose the book says something like "it is said that Ned beat Dayne in single combat".

But the books show that's not exactly what happened. It was, probably, 7 vs 3, and Ned says Howland Reed did something to help.

The Jaime thing is from that lame tv show.

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