"Why did House Stark fall?" Pelop's question also represents the hearts of the vast majority of Game of Thrones viewers.

In their opinion, the Stark family is the protagonist, and it is really possible to turn the tables against the wind, how can such a character be destroyed?

There is only one reason:

You can't win Game of Thrones with just a bunch of kids.

At the beginning of the story, the Stark children are aged: Robb, 15; Sansa, 13; Arya, 9 years old; Bran, 8 years old; Rickon, 3 years old.

Take another look at their opponents:

Tywin Lannister, in his 50s, has been prime minister for 20 years;

Baron Greyjoy, age unknown, but his youngest son, Theon, is nineteen years old, so he may be older than Tywin;

Stannis Baratheon, 33, Minister of the Sea;

Ranley Baratheon, 20, Minister of Justice;

Ruth Burton, whose age is unknown, but should be close to Eddard Stark, is around 30 years old, as well as Walder Frey, who is nearly 100 years old, and the more cunning "Queen of Thorns".

These young children don't even know enough about themselves, and they simply don't have the ability to face these grandparents' opponents

What is worse than their youth is that they have no education in politics at all, and they have almost no one to ask for advice.

Although Tywin was only 20 years old when he became Prime Minister, Lan Li was only 20 years old when he was able to gather the Stormlands and Riverbend Princes, and Robert was only 20 years old when he rebelled, but only a few years away, and the Stark children were all smart, and they should not be too far from them

This brings us to the Stark family's eldest child, Eddard Stark

Don't look at Ed is 35 years old, he himself doesn't have much political ability at all.

His political sense is not even as good as that of Lan Li, who is only 20 years old, and look at the plan they came up with when they faced the threat in King's Landing:

After Ed finished talking to his two daughters, he slowly prepared an evacuation plan.

You must know that the Red Keep is full of eyeliner, and later, after Robert's death, Eddard and Cersei meet, and the arrogant Cersei even has to tell her own plan. And what does Ed see?

Ned saw Sandor Cregan gallop through the hard dirt and pierce the scarecrow's head.

The Lannister guards laughed and cursed.

Was this deliberately performed for me?

If that was the case, Cersei was more ignorant than he thought, he thought to himself.

Damn, why didn't this woman run away? I give her a chance again and again......

Cersei's power is the largest in King's Landing, and when Eddard enters the city, he sees that the city is full of bright red Lannister soldiers.

Before Robert died, it was obvious that Cersei gave him a chance to escape, and he had to wait until 3 days later for his two daughters to leave.

Looking at Lan Li again, he first gave Ed a complete plan

"I have thirty personal bodyguards, as well as other noble and knightly friends. Give me an hour, and I'll give you a hundred. ”

"What do I want these 100 people for?"

"Preemptively, of course! Act now while everyone is still asleep. We'll have to take Joffrey out of his mother's hands as a bargaining chip, it doesn't matter if he's a guardian or not, whoever holds the king hostage can command the whole country. Messirah and Tomman are also to be arrested. Once we had Cersei's baby, he didn't dare to act rashly. ”

"Every second you delay is giving Cersei an extra second to prepare."

Eddard certainly wouldn't do such a thing out of a sense of justice, and Lan Li fled that night, taking Loras Tyrell and fifty of his followers with him.

When they left, they even left the Redwin brothers, the Redwin family is the Earl of Qingting Island, and the Tyrell family's grandmother "Queen of Thorns" is a Redwin, Lan Li said that if he left it, he would leave it, because he understood that escaping was the point.

Looking at it this way, Ed's various behaviors are like a child who has never been exposed to politics.

Ned: The lack of scheming is due to the fact that in the political world of the Northlands, scheming is very unimportant, even harmful.

For the ancestors and descendants of the Northlands, it was only natural that there was a Stark in Winterfell who was giving orders.

After subduing the Burton family a thousand years ago, no one threatened their dominance.

The Starks only need to abide by tradition, be fair and strict, help defend the desperate Great Wall against pirates, and closely unite the masses to be good leaders.

Ed himself knew this, so he didn't go to King's Landing for 9 years after Greyjoy's rebellion.

He knew that he wasn't strong enough to survive in the center of politics, and that in the North, as long as he had Stark's last name, he didn't need to know anything about schemes.

After talking so much about Ed, in fact, he just wants to say that his own ignorance of politics directly led to his mistakes in the education of his children.

First up Robb.

A few years after the Usurper War, the kingdom rebelled against the Iron Islands.

For nine years, after Ed led the army south to assist in the suppression, he never left the north again, far from King's Landing, the center of the power struggle.

In fact, from the perspective of the battlefield, Ed should be an excellent warrior, at the most he can lead the troops to rehabilitate, and if he is small, he can dare to challenge the Royal Guard.

As a result, he should be able to train his sons (including Jon) in this regard.

And Robb and Jon's performance on the battlefield is also a testament to the success of Eddard's education.

Unfortunately, apart from these, Robb did not receive much other education.

Immediately after his father's arrest, he gathered his vassals and led his troops south from Winterfell.

First assemble at Kalim Bay, the king of the north has always done this, and if you hold the neck, you can keep the north.

Tywin understood this, too, and sent Jaime to bully his uncle Edmure Tully in the Riverlands.

Robb naturally didn't sit idly by, and he dragged Tywin with his infantry, and the cavalry sneaked up on Jaime with a very clever tactic.

The successive victories since then have shown that he has done a flawless job both strategically and tactically.

At the same time, he is also good at adopting the opinions of his vassals, knowing people well, he knows who to let to play the striker, and who to let be responsible for persuading surrender.

Unfortunately, that's all he can do, and it's enough for him to be a good guardian of the North, because no one in the North will challenge Stark's authority.

But he has never been exposed to politics and has never understood real power.

He had never grasped the intentions of his vassals, and he did not know what Luce Burton, Edmure Tully, Wald Frey, Karstark, and even Theon had in their hearts and needed.

In fact, Ed still has Robb's political education:

"Not only do you have to know your men," she once heard her father say to Robb, "but you have to let them know you." Don't try to make your search work for someone they don't know. ”

In Winterfell, he always has a special seat at his table and invites a different person every night.

But it's clear that Ed is bringing in people who don't have any scheming. Later, when Robb was acting as the lord of the city, when the night watchman visited:

"I've sent for a room and enough hot water for you to wash off the dust on the road. I sincerely hope that you will have the pleasure of having dinner with you tonight. ”

He said this in such a way that even Bran could tell that he had memorized it on purpose, not from the bottom of his heart.

If his subordinates are all people like him, he can use his integrity to be enough to command.

But the reality is that his vassals have their own interests, and integrity can only make others praise him, but it is not enough for people to surrender to him willingly.

These are the reasons why Robb was killed at the Red Wedding.

Not only does he not understand what others think, but he doesn't even know his own purpose. Although he was the King of the North, he didn't think about the usefulness of the title other than winning battles, nor did he think about how he would end up living with the Iron Throne.

He rallied his vassals in solidarity with his father, led his troops south to rescue his uncle, and laid siege to the west to threaten Tywin, but this was only a short-term goal.

Whether the ultimate goal is to severely punish the murderer of his father and rescue his two younger sisters, or to capture King's Landing and sit on the Iron Throne, this is the point.

He sent his mother, Catelyn, south to negotiate with Lan Li to get Lan Li to recognize him as King of the North. And what Lan Li said

Madame, I swear to you that the Lannisters will pay the price for your husband's murder, and that as soon as I take King's Landing, I will give you Cersei's head.

After the end of the war, we had time to discuss the question of "His Majesty".

If your son supports me as his father supported Robert do, he will find me to be a generous man, and he can even retain the title of King of the North.

All it takes is for him to bow down to me and confess that I am his master.

The title of king is just one word, and obedience, loyalty, and service...... That's what I'm here for.

Even if Robb and Caitlyn didn't know what they wanted, Lan Li pointed them out: justice and the status of the North's independence.

It's a pity that all Catelyn saw was that Lan Li left Ed and ran away alone in King's Landing (it was your Ed who drove people away), and Lan Li only wanted the army in the north to sacrifice himself to reap the benefits (except for Stannis, of course, everyone thought so, otherwise why form an alliance with each other).

Lan Li's army is all summer knights, and they are all children who can only compete in martial arts (Robb and Tywin are in the thick of the battle, and the army of the High Court will naturally wait until the battle to the north is over).

So even though Robb managed to save Winterfell without the Red Wedding, he still hadn't solved the problem of the King of the North and the Iron Throne.

And he can't coexist with Lan Li, let alone Stannis.

(The saddest thing here is actually the loyal northern army that followed Robb, they left their homeland, and the only sustenance was the belief that the young wolf lord would win, but the young wolf lord led them to destruction)

The second is Sansa.

As the eldest daughter of the Stark family, Sansa's main role as a grown-up is to marry, solidify or create allies for the Stark family.

In this respect, she is very well educated, so that at the beginning of the book we see a perfect aristocratic lady, beautiful and polite at the same time, able to remember the various families, and able to show herself at the right time.

Importantly, Sansa also psychologically accepts that she will eventually get married.

At this time, Robert gave her best chance to marry the future king Joffrey, and the Stark family married Baratheon.

The time has come for Sansa to realize her own value, and she will naturally not let go of such an opportunity, and Ed will certainly not object.

So this father and daughter, who have zero political literacy, one is helpless, and the other is full of yearning to step into the center of the power storm.

Before she arrives in King's Landing, halfway through, Sansa reveals the flawedness of her education.

After the conflict between Arya and Joffrey, Sansa is not only indifferent to the death of the butcher's younger brother, but later almost destroys her own sister for Joffrey (Arya beats the prince out of blood, and her wolf bites Joffrey, if it weren't for Ed and Robert being iron buddies, it would have been a death for any other family child).

The problem with Sansa's education is shown here, where Ed educates her to be queen, but never tells her that it is for the good of the family.

So later, Sansa even regarded Cersei as her own, and forgot all about the Stark family's "winter is coming" and the Tully family's "family, responsibility, and honor".

In contrast to Sansa, Margaery of the Tyrells is married to Ranley, Joffrey, and Tommen, and Margaery's every action is for the benefit of the family.

In the same face of Joffrey, Margaery can bring the brutal little king to good order, something that only Tywin can do.

This is the real aristocratic lady, and Sansa is just a beautiful vase.

If Sansa could be half of Margaery's, she would at least not have her father killed in King's Landing (if she could change Joffrey's personality), and she wouldn't have made Robb's army too passive (if she and Arya had escaped King's Landing, Robb might not have marched west).

And Arya, who is almost the Stark's most failed education, but that's her greatest strength.

First of all, discarding the quirky image in the TV series, Arya in the book is actually very ugly.

Robb, Sansa, and Bran all inherited the beauty of their mother, Tully.

And only Arya and Jon inherited their father's horse face, not to mention that Jon is still an illegitimate child, although Arya is very close to him, but Arya can't have no doubts in her heart.

And she's the second daughter, so it's only natural that the girls in Winterfell will revolve around her sister.

And learning how to become a qualified young lady is also very difficult for her, no matter how well she does, she will not surpass Sansa, not to mention that she does not have Sansa's beauty.

That's why people see Arya as a pure woman.

Ed may have poured all his knowledge into Robb and Jon, so Sansa and Arya taught the nuns to educate them, so that it was enough to have a good heart and integrity.

As for Arya's flaws, as long as there is nothing wrong with it, it is good to fool the past.

It's a pity that it was this attitude of turning a blind eye that almost caused a catastrophe.

As mentioned earlier, on the way to Winterfell, Arya's conflict with Joffrey nearly killed her.

With a little common sense, Arya wouldn't have been impulsive enough to hurt Joffrey, so Arya's education was a complete failure.

Thankfully, Eddard was aware of this, and continued to correct Arya's behavior after arriving in King's Landing.

He also told Arya that he wanted the young girl to share some of the pressure, so many of Arya's later behaviors were quite mature.

In addition, due to her low self-esteem, Arya has learned to read words and emotions too early, so she is more aware of the cruelty of reality than Sansa.

Comparing Sansa and Arya, Ed never seems to have taught Sansa anything like that.