1. Ned Stark is happily married to Lady Catelyn Tully and is father to five trueborn children Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Rickon and a bastard son Jon Snow, as well as guardian to a ward boy Theon Greyjoy.
19 Facts About Ned Stark
1. 2.
Ned Stark is a lifelong friend of King Robert Baratheon, the ruling monarch of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, who personally visits Winterfell to invite and persuade Ned to become the new Hand of the King at the beginning of the novel.
3.
Ned Stark's family name, Stark, is a word play that both emphasizes the resilience of his noble family and serves as an indication of his personal resistance to moral compromise.
4.
Ned Stark is ultimately forced to choose between his family's safety and doing what is right.
5.
Readers are led to believe that Ned Stark will be the main character of the series, but ultimately he is, from a literary perspective, a classic decoy protagonist.
6.
James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly stated that tricking the audience into thinking Ned Stark is the hero and then killing him makes the series' story better.
7.
Years before the events of the novel, the quiet and shy young Ned Stark is fostered in the Vale by Lord Jon Arryn.
8.
Content to be far from court intrigue, Ned Stark is reluctant to accept the offer until he receives a letter from Arryn's widow, who believes that her husband had been poisoned by the Lannisters.
9.
Ned Stark subsequently agrees to the appointment to protect Robert, and travels south to King's Landing with his daughters Sansa and Arya.
10.
Ned Stark eventually concludes that all of Robert's heirs with his wife Cersei Lannister are illegitimate products of incest with her twin brother Jaime.
11.
In private, Ned Stark confronts Cersei, who confesses to infidelity, and offers her the chance to safely exile with her children.
12.
Ned Stark called it a "risky" move that would probably lose the show viewers who had tuned in for Bean, but would hopefully attract others impressed by the boldness of it.
13.
Executive producer and writer D B Weiss told Entertainment Weekly in 2011 that when he and Benioff pitched the series to HBO, the fact that "main character" Ned was slated to die "was a selling point for them".
14.
Bean noted that Ned Stark's death "was as much a surprise to me as anyone" and called it "a very courageous move for a television company".
15.
The image of Bean as Ned Stark sitting in the Iron Throne is featured on the covers of the 2011 Season 1 DVD and Blu-ray Disc sets, released in March 2012.
16.
Not interested in politics or the intrigues of the court, Ned Stark accepts out of duty, as well as to discover how Arryn died.
17.
Robert is killed just as Ned Stark discovers that his three children by Cersei were actually fathered by the queen's twin, Jaime.
18.
Ned Stark makes a public confession to save his daughters from Cersei's wrath, but Joffrey has Ned Stark beheaded anyway.
19.
Ned Stark makes him swear to protect her son - Jon Snow.