This marvelous essay on the Handships of Jon Arryn and Eddard Stark by Steven Attewell makes quite a few points I’d never thought of before. It celebrates Jon Arryn as one of the most successful politicians in Westerosi history — he is, after all, the engineer of the first wholesale regime change on the continent since Aegon Targaryen. And its criticisms of Ned center not on the notion that he should have been more brutal to the Lannisters, but that he failed to use his office to its full capacity — by adding loyal supporters to the Small Council, by replacing prominent city officials with his own men, by utilizing his military and judicial powers to counterbalance the Lannister forces within the capital or to expedite the investigation of Jon Arryn’s death respectively.
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