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.
16 Facts About Ned Stark
2.
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.
3.
Years before the events of the novel, the quiet and shy young Ned Stark is fostered in the Vale by Jon Arryn.
4.
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.
5.
Ned Stark eventually concludes that all of Robert's heirs with his wife Cersei are illegitimate, the product of her incest with her twin brother Jaime.
6.
Ned Stark confronts Cersei with his discovery and gives her the chance to escape with her children into exile.
7.
The sadistic Joffrey has Ned Stark executed anyway for his own amusement.
8.
Ned Stark is mentioned in a flashback along with his friend Robert Baratheon in the follow-up novel A Clash of Kings.
9.
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.
10.
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".
11.
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".
12.
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.
13.
Not interested in politics or the intrigues of the court, Ned Stark accepts out of duty, as well as to discover how Arryn died.
14.
Robert is killed just as Ned Stark discovers that his three children by Cersei were actually fathered by the queen's twin, Jaime.
15.
Ned Stark makes a public confession to save his daughters from Cersei's wrath, but Joffrey has Ned Stark beheaded anyway.
16.
Ned Stark makes him swear to protect her son - Jon Snow.