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Let me put this straight


Rhodan

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In this veresion of events series de facto begins by Eddard decapitating guy who might commit a crime but it was becouse of something legitimite he couldn´t prove and people around should listen to him? Geez, I hope people won´t remember Will, becouse they might say Eddard got dose of his own medicine. Of course, these situations are very different but still...

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In the trailer, after Bran asks him if it's true that Will has seen the White Walkers, Ned says, "A mad man sees what he sees." The Others haven't been seen for thousands of years, so deserter claiming to flee due to them would probably not be very impressive. Just about everyone but some of the people on the NW dismiss the threat of the Others (not counting Mel and Stannis who don't come to the rescue until much later when they get the news).

I'm sure some will delight in the irony of the season ending with Ned being the one to get his head chopped off. I don't see why that is a bad thing which you somewhat imply it is in your post.

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I think there is definitely a sort of structure going on with the beheadings. You get the Gared&Ned beheading, as Rhodan says, since both of them are privy to information that no one else can believe. In the later books, you'll remember that a certain Stark has to behead someone and is then in turn beheaded - in both cases it is an issue of personal/House honor and indiscretion. And it looks like the beheadings will continue in the future, but whether they will come in pairs is yet to be determined - I sure hope not.

But as in the book, I think the beheadings in GoT at the beginning and the end will have a powerful structural resonance, since the visual impact of the film medium will make the similarity between the two events more noticible.

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I really don't think the two situations are comparable. Will (or really Gared) deserted the Night's Watch. Deserting for any reason is a crime punishable by death. Ned, on the other hand, was attempting to expose the treasonous acts of Cersei and instead Cersei and Littlefinger manipulated the situation to make it look as if Ned was the traitor. And the only reason Ned was beheaded was because Joffrey is a prat.

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I really don't think the two situations are comparable.

There are a lot of differences but aGoT is still the story of how a man went from beheading a man to been beheaded. It is a journey that i'm sure GRRM recognised when he wrote the thing.

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There are a lot of differences but aGoT is still the story of how a man went from beheading a man to been beheaded. It is a journey that i'm sure GRRM recognised when he wrote the thing.

Oh yes, I'm sure the irony of starting the book with Ned beheading someone didn't escape Martin. But I just don't agree with the OP's claim that readers should not feel sympatheic to Ned because he upheld the law.

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In this veresion of events series de facto begins by Eddard decapitating guy who might commit a crime but it was becouse of something legitimite he couldn´t prove and people around should listen to him? Geez, I hope people won´t remember Will, becouse they might say Eddard got dose of his own medicine. Of course, these situations are very different but still...

The irony is deliberate, as it was in the book.

Though my reaction was far from "oh, yay!" when I read about Ned's beheading, I see the point of the orignial poster here. And I agree with Thelonious that there is a great deal of irony here, and it is deliberate.

I think Ned beheading Gared (or in this case, Will) at the begining of AGoT is both incredibly sad and the first sign that ASOIAF is not going to be like any fantasy series before it. In those other series, the good guys usually do good, even when they are conflicted about it. And when they do occaisionally do wrong, they repent of it and struggle to right things again.

But in the begining of AGoT we see the series main "good guy," an incredibly honorable man by all accounts, doing something that is clearly wrong-- in the name of justice. What makes this so much more powerful is the fact that Ned truly believes that what he is doing is justice. (Gared-- or Will, in the TV series-- is a deserter, and deserters deserve to die.)

However, we, the readers, know that Gared did not desert under normal circumstances- he saw two men be killed by members of an ancient demon race that has supposed to have been extinct for thousands of years. Furthermore, we know that Gared is a brave and dedicated member of the Night's Watch and almost surely would not have deserted under normal circumstances. (And I'm willing to bet, from what we've seen in the previews, that the same is true of will.)

Basically, by placing the execution scene near the beginning of the T.V. series, I think that it will show readers early on that what they're watching is morally complex and not like anything else. (In addition, it will form a nice parallel with Ned's later beheading.)

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