mrmagnanimous asked: Why does Eddard Stark hate Jaime Lannister so much? Given how Jaime killed the Mad King after being so affected by the Stark killings in the Iron Throne room, you'd think Eddard would appreciate the favor and feel a bit of a bond. Or does he resent Jaime because he wanted to kill Aerys himself?
I definitely don’t think he’s angry because Jaime got in the way of his personal vengeance. Just for starters, Eddard’s not a personal-vengeance guy. Now, obviously Eddard’s not heartbroken that Aerys is dead. But Jaime’s action represents much more to Ned than the act of killing a killer — that act, but more importantly Jaime’s total lack of contrition after the fact, are a potentially mortal wound to pretty much everything Eddard believes about the world works. It’s true that Eddard is at least flexible enough to have raised his banners against his king rather than meekly submit to torture and execution at his hands, but in that case he’s still adhering to some really strong bonds of honor and loyalty — to his father and brother, who also happen to have been his lords; to his foster father and mentor Jon Arryn; to the oaths of betrothal sworn between his best friend and his sister. He’s not tossing the whole system in the garbage. In his view, though, that’s precisely what happens when a sworn brother of the Kingsguard who murks the king he’s sworn to protect on behalf of the family his connection to which he’s supposed to have severed not only displays zero compunction about this act, but sits his ass down on the throne of the guy he just killed. A mad king was a threat to Eddard that Eddard could fit within his conceptual framework; a rogue kingsguard is an existential threat to his worldview.
