I'm still having trouble with Ned's thought process.

[Angel Eyes]

I'm still not sure why Ned would trust Littlefinger. Did it never occur to him that Littlefinger might want to take revenge on him for something as simple as having Catelyn as his wife?

[John Suburbs]

He doesn't trust him at first. But as he leads him to the king's bastards, he starts to soften up.

At the end, though, Ned should have been highly suspicious of Littlefinger. Ned knows that the truth of the royal children's parentage comes as no surprise to LF, which means he has been stringing Ned along since the beginning, and Ned then pursues a strategy to put Stannis on the throne, which LF is adamantly opposed to. But Ned's problem is that he sees this is the lawful, honorable thing to do, so he assumes LF has been swayed by his arguments when in fact he hasn't.

It was hubris, not honor, that cost Ned his head.

[shadeofthemorning]

People keep saying that both Ned and Catelyn weren’t stupid and that nobody could have predicted where they’d end up.

Given how many people would never trust Littlefinger as Ned did, that’s shown to be not true. 

Aside from that, Ned marches right into the Red Keep and confronts Cersei after getting the written proclamation from Robert and just hands the note to her. He continually makes idiotic decision after idiotic decision, decisions that nobody, not even Catelyn would have made.

 

At the end of the day, the thing that got Ned killed was his belief that everybody shared his thought process. He mistakenly believed that everybody in the world trusts honor and has good intentions. He was hopelessly naive and it cost him his head. Even if he hadn’t died at the hands of Joffrey, he was bound to die as a result of his inability to put himself in the shoes of others. He lacks the ability to understand that other people think differently than he does. I blame it on the fact that the North is so isolated and is practically its own kingdom, which means the Starks pretty much only ever encounter people who share their thought process. They lack the cunning and serpentine that the rest of the realm is made of.

[Angel Eyes]

6 hours ago, shadeofthemorning said:

People keep saying that both Ned and Catelyn weren’t stupid and that nobody could have predicted where they’d end up.

Given how many people would never trust Littlefinger as Ned did, that’s shown to be not true. 

Aside from that, Ned marches right into the Red Keep and confronts Cersei after getting the written proclamation from Robert and just hands the note to her. He continually makes idiotic decision after idiotic decision, decisions that nobody, not even Catelyn would have made.

 

At the end of the day, the thing that got Ned killed was his belief that everybody shared his thought process. He mistakenly believed that everybody in the world trusts honor and has good intentions. He was hopelessly naive and it cost him his head. Even if he hadn’t died at the hands of Joffrey, he was bound to die as a result of his inability to put himself in the shoes of others. He lacks the ability to understand that other people think differently than he does. I blame it on the fact that the North is so isolated and is practically its own kingdom, which means the Starks pretty much only ever encounter people who share their thought process. They lack the cunning and serpentine that the rest of the realm is made of.

That's what I'm saying, that Ned was quite stupid to trust Littlefinger given the history between their families. There's no way Littlefinger wants to get back at me for something my brother did and for marrying the girl he wanted ;)

[shadeofthemorning]

4 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

That's what I'm saying, that Ned was quite stupid to trust Littlefinger given the history between their families. There's no way Littlefinger wants to get back at me for something my brother did and for marrying the girl he wanted

Precisely. Ned was a northerner, through and through, and it prevented him from realizing that only in the north do people value honor so much (and even that’s arguable, given the example set by folks like the Boltons and the Karstarks). Giving people the benefit of the doubt is what gets people killed in Westeros, which is exactly why Varys and Littlefinger are the two most powerful people in the country. They trust nobody, and they also look at problems through the eyes of others. The people that have the ability to look at things through all possible lenses survive and thrive, because they can think ahead. Ned’s “everybody in the world holds honor and trust to the same standards as I do” shtick is what inevitably lead to his head being chopped off. Starks have a history of being foolishly shortsighted though. Look at Ned’s brother. 

[Angel Eyes]

On 11/15/2019 at 12:08 AM, shadeofthemorning said:

Precisely. Ned was a northerner, through and through, and it prevented him from realizing that only in the north do people value honor so much (and even that’s arguable, given the example set by folks like the Boltons and the Karstarks). Giving people the benefit of the doubt is what gets people killed in Westeros, which is exactly why Varys and Littlefinger are the two most powerful people in the country. They trust nobody, and they also look at problems through the eyes of others. The people that have the ability to look at things through all possible lenses survive and thrive, because they can think ahead. Ned’s “everybody in the world holds honor and trust to the same standards as I do” shtick is what inevitably lead to his head being chopped off. Starks have a history of being foolishly shortsighted though. Look at Ned’s brother. 

Makes me wonder how Ned got along with Robert Baratheon.

[shadeofthemorning]

On 11/16/2019 at 2:28 PM, Angel Eyes said:

Makes me wonder how Ned got along with Robert Baratheon.

Truthfully, I don’t think he did. They grew up together, sure, and that solidified a bond between them, but as young adults it seems like the only time they really got along was when they were in battle together. They constantly fought, it seems, and their arguments over the Targaryens was enough to end their “friendship” for a loooooong time. 

[BlackLightning]

On 11/14/2019 at 1:03 PM, shadeofthemorning said:

People keep saying that both Ned and Catelyn weren’t stupid and that nobody could have predicted where they’d end up.

Given how many people would never trust Littlefinger as Ned did, that’s shown to be not true. 

Aside from that, Ned marches right into the Red Keep and confronts Cersei after getting the written proclamation from Robert and just hands the note to her. He continually makes idiotic decision after idiotic decision, decisions that nobody, not even Catelyn would have made.

 

At the end of the day, the thing that got Ned killed was his belief that everybody shared his thought process. He mistakenly believed that everybody in the world trusts honor and has good intentions. He was hopelessly naive and it cost him his head. Even if he hadn’t died at the hands of Joffrey, he was bound to die as a result of his inability to put himself in the shoes of others. He lacks the ability to understand that other people think differently than he does. I blame it on the fact that the North is so isolated and is practically its own kingdom, which means the Starks pretty much only ever encounter people who share their thought process. They lack the cunning and serpentine that the rest of the realm is made of.

I don't think Catelyn is stupid. I never thought she was either.