“Have You Forgotten Princess Rhaenys And Prince Aegon?”

“Have you forgotten Princess Rhaenys and Prince Aegon?”

“Never. That was Lannister work, Your Grace.”

“Lannister or Stark, what difference? Viserys used to call them the Usurper’s dogs. If a child is set upon by a pack of hounds, does it matter which one tears out his throat? All the dogs are just as guilty.” (Daenerys II, ADWD) 

It kind of amazes me that people expect Dany to just automatically worship Ned Stark. Yes, Ned Stark was a great man, an honorable man, but he still actively participated in the Rebellion and was the righthand man to the person who led the slaughter of Dany’s House. He was best friends with the man who called Rhaenys and Aegon “dragonspawn”, and even after his own anger at Robert, he still agreed to be Robert’s hand, 14 years later. He joined Robert to quell Balon’s rebellion. Ned’s guilt at aiding and abetting Robert in fact plagues him throughout AGOT. 

For me, it’s a little upsetting that the fandom doesn’t acknowledge that one of Ned’s actual flaws was his constant willingness to aid and abet Robert and overlook his excessiveness for so long. When Ned refused to cosign the plan to assassinate Dany, that was the first time in 14 years and probably the only time that Ned defied Robert and went against him. When Ned was angry at Robert sanctioning and being pleased at the deaths of Rhaenys and Aegon, he still went back to him after Lyanna’s death. He still saw Robert happily crowned. He still joined him to quell Balon’s rebellion. He still agreed to be Robert’s hand. When Joffrey got Mycah the Butcher’s Boy killed and Cersei ordered Lady to be executed, he didn’t stand up to Robert. It took Ned years to go against the dictates of his best friend.

So, while Ned isn’t “cold-eyed” or of “frozen heart” like Viserys taught her, and while he isn’t exactly a “dog” like Robert or Tywin, he was still culpable, and the AGOT narrative holds him accountable through his constant and repetitive feelings of guilt at Elia and her children’s deaths, as well as his fears of what will happen to his own daughters at the hands of the Lannisters. In fact, Varys’ very speech to Ned about Princess Rhaenys showcases that Ned stews in the hypocrisy of warring against one tyrant who kills children but then supporting a King who cheered and smiled at the deaths of other children. 

In that sense, yes, “all the dogs are just as guilty”. Ned is guilty of being complicit in Robert’s anti-Targaryen blood purity by aiding and abetting his conquest and his reign. GRRM has strived to show us that Robert’s Rebellion was ultimately not a moral or revolutionary conquest, as it replicated the same oppressive infrastructures Aerys II simply took to a 1000th degree. Robert still wanted innocent children and women murdered, he still massacred an entire house, in Balon’s Rebellion he enabled the Ironborn smallfolk to be murdered and their women raped, he himself was a rapist and abuser, he left bastards all over Westeros and was a horrible and absent father, he left the realm in disrepair, and the hole created by his absence led to the outbreak of a civil war that no one can blame the Targaryens for this time around. 

Ned even saw Robert slapping Cersei. He came to realize that Robert is abusive, which is why he warned Cersei that he knows the truth about her children, because he did not want Robert hunting them. That he was even going to tell him the truth and endanger their lives is something else that has always bothered me. Is a warning really good enough to keep them out of danger, especially knowing how Robert reacted to Rhaenys and Aegon’s murders? Regardless, if the narrative holds Ned accountable for his complicity in Robert’s actions, and if the narrative shows us, time and time again, that Robert’s Rebellion was ultimately a bastion of hypocrisy and did nothing meaningful to change the structures that led tyrants like Aerys to brutalize people, then it does not make sense to think that Dany here is being “unreasonable”. If your entire family was murdered and someone told you that the guy who was best friends and comrades-in-arms with the man responsible for the event was a good person, would you be so quick to believe them, so quick to forgive?

I’m sure Dany will learn that Ned was truly a good person and that despite his complicity in Robert’s crimes, he felt guilt and actively strove to be a better person and to right the wrongs of his past (namely, the complicity, the overlooking/the willful blinding), and that he was one of the few people who cared about what happened to Elia and her children, many years later. But Dany has the right to mourn her family and the right to be angry at everyone involved in what happened to them, as well as to currently hate the people who were best friends with and aided the man who smiled at their corpses. 

You guys often like to say that the Starks will be justified in mistrusting Dany because she’s Aerys’ daughter (and Aerys killed Rickard and Brandon Stark). I’m saying here that Dany will be justified in mistrusting the Starks for being Ned’s children because Ned Stark was Robert’s best friend and Robert ruined Dany’s life, led to the slaughter of her house, murdered her eldest brother, hunted her even when she was in the womb, sent an assassin after her, and smiled at the corpses of her niece and nephew. She is justified in that anger and she will be justified in that mistrustfulness. It absolutely does and will go both ways.