#there is moral greyness in ned by virtue of the system he is in and upholds lol its not that complicated actually

[branwinged]

this was interpreted as "ned's death is supposed to be karmic justice for gared's execution" by at least one person, so, to clarify:

i'm drawing a comparison between both scenes as part of a broader theme. ned starts the story by killing an innocent man. he is then wrongfully killed in the same manner. even the circumstances of the crimes they have committed are similar. gared did desert the watch and ned did commit treason but for sympathetic reasons which they are not allowed to disclose. gared has been driven mad by his encounter with the others and cannot speak. ned must lie out of fear for sansa's life. ned's not being punished by the narrative for gared's execution, but the parallel exists for a reason. ned dies by the very same rules of the system under which he executes gared. the big revelation here is that if ned's death is a gross injustice, then gared's death in the very FIRST chapter of the series and by extension the entire honour code of westeros is unjust. (he's also sentencing gared to death in his king's name: "in the name of robert of house baratheon [...] i do sentence you to die" and his downfall in king's landing occurs because of his fidelity to his king <- the broader point being made is that even a man with good and true intentions such as ned is blind to and complicit in the harm caused by westeros's moral and legal codes)

ned is an example to live by if your character's goodness is restrained to the rules dictated by their society, but the series is about committing heroic acts outside those social norms. because those social norms say sansa's greatest ambition in life must be to bear her prospective suitor's heirs. that arya cannot build castles or be a councillor to kings, only her sons are allowed that. that the only way for bran to be a hero is to be an able bodied knight. that a group of people don't deserve the right to live because they were born on the wrong side of a wall. we're introduced to the world of westeros through the point of view of a man trying to live the most moral life within these restrictive codes and then his story is taken over by his children (and dany, brienne, sam etc) whose desire to do good extends beyond those codes. because what's the point if the series's thesis on what makes a hero was already answered at the beginning of the story. if the new generation of children don't surpass the values of the previous ones. ned isn't killed for not having enough of a revolutionary spirit, ned dies because he is an older, more conventional breed of hero who no longer has a space to occupy in this new narrative.

ned being held up as the metric for moral goodness in asoiaf is absurd like did you not read bran i, agot in which he beheads a man on the run from the others because he must fulfill his fedual oaths and he carries out the execution through his family's ancestral sword which was definitely forged for the exact opposite purpose, i.e. in defense of the north against the others. and then he uses ice again to behead the direwolf which was meant to protect his daughter. is it any wonder that he also meets his end the same way, through it, after spending the rest of the book in king's landing in service to a failed king, desperately trying to reassure himself that they are not repeating history. bran i is saying ice was already metaphorically broken long before tywin melted it down because the starks have forgotten their magical history yes, but also because ned represents an older, failed generation in service to hollow chivalric ideals. and it is now up to his children, the ones coming of age in a world destroyed by the previous generations—it is up to bran, sansa, arya, and jon to reforge their family legacy, away from contradictory oaths and in service to hollow paradigms. (and in a way ice is already currently being remade through brienne, who is not a knight of the songs but still the closest thing to the idea of a true knight)