Post by whitewolfstark on Jan 3, 2016 9:07:01 GMT
In a post I posted elsewhere about Northrop Frye's Theory of Mythos (pub. 1957) I have the summary of the 24 stages he roughly outlined in that essay of the 4 Mythoi with 6 Stages each. I thought we could have a little fun placing each POV character's placement within the framework.
Example:
Eddard - Satire & Irony Phase Four: There is no attempt to make fun of Eddard or his world views from the narration, so we know we are not in the Satire end of the Satire & Irony phases (the first three are satiric, the last three are ironic). We are meant to take him seriously as our potential protagonist. His flaw is not heroic but instead focuses on the "feet of clay" and "all too human" side, which overemphasizes Eddard's humanity, and gets rid of any sense of "ritual inevitability" that you would find in a Tragedy. In a Tragedy there's a greater sense of connection to a greater spiritual world that the Tragic Hero is the last connection to--and for sake of the community, undergoes a ritual of sorts to put them back in connection with that greater spiritual world through his death. Essentially one gigantic communion ceremony played out ritualistically. A Tragic hero is also still heroic and suffers from heroic problems and flaws that really only heroes suffer from--i.e. in a Tragedy the protagonist is still a "great man" who is separate from or in a different class than the rest of the society that surrounds him (this goes back to his being the only tie to the greater spiritual world & the Grecco-Roman assertion that heroes were demi-gods--half-human and half-divine). Ned, while he's built up by others to be a greater man, when we look at his POV chapters is clearly just a man. Additionally social and psychological explanations for the tragedy are given to his situation (his being sick and injured from his leg wound, doped up on drugs), and all of the horror and human misery that follows his actions is portrayed most surely as being completely superfluous and avoidable as Littlefinger, Varys, and Cersei all stress to him and offer him "ways out" which he either outright objects or eventually caves into (with the last offer from Varys).
The only reason Ned meets his end is because of the social (honor) and psychological (drugged & sick) pressures he is under and unable to break from due to his own personal issues. It is here where the turn from Tragedy and ritualistic death is turned away from, in his chapter where Varys visits him in the Black Cells. Eddard makes mention that he knows how to die and that he'll not take back his words or say what Cersei wants him to say. Had Ned continued on in this vein and died holding tightly to his honor... he would indeed be a Tragic Hero, his story a Tragedy, and his death a ritualistic death (that he acknowledges and is aware of to some degree with his acknowledgement to Varys that he "knows how to die"). However this is where Varys gives him the offer that takes his story to its final level, out of Tragedy and into tragic Irony. Varys makes mention of how Sansa might not be well treated if he doesn't confess to being a traitor before all of King's Landing. Ultimately we see that for his daughter's life and well-being, Ned capitulates and sacrifices his chance at greatness. He dies not as a martyr for honor, like a Tragic Hero would in a Tragedy, but instead as an all-too-human man, trying to protect his daughter. The Irony is made plain to the reader as he does this to protect Sansa--the daughter who sold him out to the Lannisters, and who because of his proclamation of being a traitor, is treated worse--not better--by the Lannisters in ACOK.
Ned's fall from power come from his honor, to be true--but that's only part of his story--and to stop it there is to ignore the further depths to which he falls. Had he stayed true to his honor, he would have died a martyr for the heroic virtue of honor. Instead his truest fall comes from his inability to hold to even his honor--and all for the (paternal) love of a girl.
Comedy: Phase One
Existent society remains: The absurd society triumphs or remains undefeated or sometimes, in more ironic cases, dissolves without anything to take its place. Example: Uncle Vanya (Chekhov is the master of this stage)
Comedy: Phase Two
Criticism of society without change: The hero escapes a humorous society without transforming it, often poking fun at an absurd ruler of the society who has seized control of society wrongfully, before he escapes. Example: Most Robin Hood stories, that don't end in King Richard returning
Comedy: Phase Three
Existent society is replaced by happy society: The hero’s society replaces that of the humorous society. Typically this takes place in a self-contained but widely influential (in terms of setting national policy) urban world, like a King's court, or a capital city or cultural capital city such as New York, Washington, Chicago, or Los Angeles. Often there is an attempt to bring back a grandfather-like benevolent figure to the position of ruler who was ousted by an absurd extremist who has been governing the society and needs to be overthrown due to their absurdities bringing problems to the entire country. Example: Once Upon a Mattress
Comedy: Phase Four
Happy society resists change: The society at the beginning of the story remains at the end, but a metamorphosis occurs by a central character or the members of the society moving into a green world where a comic resolution and a rebirth are achieved before the return to the normal world. This is mostly an example of another popular theme in Comedy: Rural vs. Urban, with the Rural society being the "morally right" society and the Urban one learning the ways of the Rural one. In this stage the absurd can be forgiven past offenses provided they amend their ways. Example: As You Like It
Comedy: Phase Five
Reflective and idyllic view: Movement occurs from a lower world of confusion to an upper world of order, where a distance between human experience exists. Some of the themes of which we have already anticipated, we move into a world that is still more romantic, less Utopian and more Arcadian, less festive and more pensive, where the ending is less a matter of the way the plot turns out than of the perspective of the audience. ... [W]e notice how much more serious an action is appropriate: they do not avoid tragedies but contain them. Example: On Moonlight Bay (a lot of nostalgia stories are put here)
Comedy: Phase Six
Society ceases to exist beyond contemplation: the collapse and disintegration of comic society occurs, and the story exists in an isolated place or on a different plane. In this kind of comedy we have finally left the world of wit and the awakened critical intelligence for the opposite pole, an oracular solemnity which, if we surrender uncritically to it, will provide a delightful frisson. This is the world of ghost stories, thrillers, and Gothic romances. ... Secret and sheltered places, forests in moonlight, secluded valleys, and the happy islands become more prominent, as does the penseroso mood of romance, the love of the occult and the marvelous, the sense of individual detachment from routine existence. Example: The Tempest
~*~*~
Romance: Phase One
Complete innocence: These stories often relate to the birth of the hero, an event which is commonly associated with a flood or water imagery; it is common to have a hero locked in a chest, symbolizing that fertility and youth is the real wealth. If self-contained then it typically revolves around the pregnant mother of our hero, who is being hunted by a cruel father or masculine figure. The mother's purpose is to be the living embodiment of the "locked chest" and protect the life that is growing inside of her. Example: Early scene of The Ten Commandments
Romance: Phase Two
Youthful innocence of inexperience: This phase usually presents a pastoral world, a generally pleasant wooded landscape with glades, shaded valleys, and murmuring brooks; the story tends to center on a youthful hero, still overshadowed by parents and surrounded by youthful companions. Example: The Secret Garden (most children's literature lives here)
Romance: Phase Three
Completion of an ideal: This is the typical quest where the hero sets out on an adventure to destroy the monster and evil and return goodness and fertility to the land. Example: Dragonslayer
Romance: Phase Four
Happy society resists change: The hero’s society, which is innocent, is assaulted by an enemy, which is experience, but it withstands and survives the assault; this is often seen in a moral allegory or morality play; it may be a society or the individual that needs to be defended. Example: Return to Oz
Romance: Phase Five
Reflective or idyllic view: Here experience and adventure is contemplated, a similar world as that in the second phase is present, but with a knowledge of experience that did not previously exist. Example: Hook
Romance: Phase Six
Society ceases to exist beyond contemplation: These are tales often told in quotation marks by one individual to a small group; there is a coziness to this type of tale as it is free from confrontation and has a relaxed and entertaining tone. Example: The Princess Bride
~*~*~
Tragedy: Phase One
Complete innocence: The hero who is dignified because of her innocence and courage is toppled; the hero is often a female in this phase. The first phase of tragedy is the one in which the central character is given the greatest possible dignity in contrast to the other characters, so that we get the perspective of a stag pulled down by wolves. The sources of dignity are courage and innocence, and in this phase the hero or heroine usually is innocent. Example: The Diary of Anne Frank
Tragedy: Phase Two
Youthful innocence of inexperience: The heroes and heroines are often young people first encountering the realities of adulthood; frequently a central character will survive so that the action closes with an adjustment to mature experience. It may be simply the tragedy of a youthful life cut off, or, in a more complex situation, in the bewildered mixture of idealism and priggishness that brings the hero to disaster. Example: East of Eden (1955)
Tragedy: Phase Three
Completion of an ideal: The success or completion of hero’s achievement is essential despite his tragic end, and a sense of serenity or peace often exists after his death because of his final accomplishment; these tragedies are commonly a sequel to a previous tragic event. A strong emphasis is thrown on the success or completeness of the hero's achievement. The Passion belongs here, as do all tragedies in which the hero is in any way related to or a prototype of Christ. Example: The Passion of the Christ
Tragedy: Phase Four
Individual’s faults: The hero moves from innocence to experience with his fall occurring as a result of hybris and hamartia. In this phase we cross the boundary line from innocence to experience, which is also the direction in which the hero falls. Example: MacBeth
Tragedy: Phase Five
Natural law: Natural law becomes prominent in these stories, overshadowing the hero and allowing the audience to look down on the action; this phase includes any of the existential and fatalistic tragedies that deal more with metaphysical and theological questions rather than social or moral ones. For a Christian audience an Old Testament or pagan setting is ironic in this sense, as it shows its characters moving according to the conditions of a law, whether Jewish or natural, from which the audience has been, at least theoretically redeemed. Example: Coriolanus
Tragedy: Phase Six
World of shock and horror: These stories possess a strong element of demonic ritual in public punishments and depict a hero in such deep agony or humiliation that they cannot achieve a heroic pose; cannibalism, mutilation, and torture are frequently present in this phase. world of shock and horror in which the central images are images of sparagmos, that is, cannibalism, mutilation, and torture. Example: Titus Andronicus
~*~*~
Satire & Irony: Phase One
Existent society remains: There is no displacement of the humorous society in this phase, and the absurdity often does not occur to the audience until after the story has ended, when a realization of the futility of the society is realized; it takes for granted a world that is full of anomalies, injustices, follies, and crimes that is permanent and yet displaceable (though never overthrown); it suggests the only way to survive is for one to live with his or her eyes open and his or her mouth shut and follow what common sense tells them--and all those who cannot do so need to be beaten into submission or have everything fanciful purged through the gluttony of overindulgence. Example: Don Quixote
Satire & Irony: Phase Two
Criticism of society without change: Sources of values and conventions are ridiculed usually by a successful rogue who challenges the society’s generalizations, theories, and dogmas by showing their ineffectiveness in the face of reality; the rogue does not, however, offer a positive solution or create a new society. Corresponding to the second phase of comedy, the comedy of escape, in which a hero runs away to a more congenial society without transforming his own. The satiric counterpart of this is the picaresque novel, the story of the successful rogue who, from Reynard the Fox on, makes conventional society look foolish without setting up any positive standard. Example: The Tale of the Fox
Satire & Irony: Phase Three
Existent society is replaced by happy society: In irony and satire this is accomplished by attacking and criticizing even basic common sense; there is usually a shift in perspective to show societies in a different light. Common sense too has certain implied dogmas, notably that the data of sense experience are reliable and consistent, and that our customary associations with things from a solid basis for interpreting the present and predicting the future. This type of fantasy breaks down customary associations reduces sense experience to one of many possible categories, and brings out the tentative, als ob basis of all our thinking. Emerson says that such shifts of perspective afford "a low degree of the sublime," but actually they afford something of far greater artistic importance, a high degree of the ridiculous. And, consistently with the general basis of satire as parody-romance, they are usually adaptations of romance themes: the fairyland of little people, the land of giants, or the world of enchanted animals. Common sense is no longer a useful measure to trust. Example: Gulliver's Travels
Satire & Irony: Phase Four
Individual’s faults: This phase applies a moral and realistic perspective to tragedy. Tragic irony differs from satire in that there is no attempt to make fun of the character, but only to bring out clearly the "all too human," as distinct from the heroic. It stresses the humanity of its protagonists, minimizes the sense of ritual inevitability in tragedy, supplies social and psychological explanations for catastrophe, and makes as much as possible of human misery seem, "superfluous and avoidable." It is in general Tolstoy's phase. Example: War & Peace
Satire & Irony: Phase Five
Natural law: The main emphasis is on the natural cycle, examining the steady unbroken wheel of fate or fortune. The refrain in the Old English Complaint of Deor: "Thaes ofereode; thisses swa maeg" (freely translated as "Other people got through things; maybe I can") expresses a stoicism not of the "invictus type, which maintains a romantic dignity, but later a sense found also in the parallel second phase, that the practical and immediate situation is likely to be worthy of more respect than the theoretical explanation of it. Often the stage of Absurdism. Example: Waiting for Godot.
Satire & Irony: Phase Six
World of shock and horror: Presents human life in terms of largely unrelieved bondage and social tyranny. Its settings feature prisons, madhouses, lynching mobs, and places of execution, and it differs from a pure inferno mainly in the fact that in human experience suffering has an end in death. Typically this is the home of the Dystopia. Example: A Clockwork Orange
Existent society remains: The absurd society triumphs or remains undefeated or sometimes, in more ironic cases, dissolves without anything to take its place. Example: Uncle Vanya (Chekhov is the master of this stage)
Comedy: Phase Two
Criticism of society without change: The hero escapes a humorous society without transforming it, often poking fun at an absurd ruler of the society who has seized control of society wrongfully, before he escapes. Example: Most Robin Hood stories, that don't end in King Richard returning
Comedy: Phase Three
Existent society is replaced by happy society: The hero’s society replaces that of the humorous society. Typically this takes place in a self-contained but widely influential (in terms of setting national policy) urban world, like a King's court, or a capital city or cultural capital city such as New York, Washington, Chicago, or Los Angeles. Often there is an attempt to bring back a grandfather-like benevolent figure to the position of ruler who was ousted by an absurd extremist who has been governing the society and needs to be overthrown due to their absurdities bringing problems to the entire country. Example: Once Upon a Mattress
Comedy: Phase Four
Happy society resists change: The society at the beginning of the story remains at the end, but a metamorphosis occurs by a central character or the members of the society moving into a green world where a comic resolution and a rebirth are achieved before the return to the normal world. This is mostly an example of another popular theme in Comedy: Rural vs. Urban, with the Rural society being the "morally right" society and the Urban one learning the ways of the Rural one. In this stage the absurd can be forgiven past offenses provided they amend their ways. Example: As You Like It
Comedy: Phase Five
Reflective and idyllic view: Movement occurs from a lower world of confusion to an upper world of order, where a distance between human experience exists. Some of the themes of which we have already anticipated, we move into a world that is still more romantic, less Utopian and more Arcadian, less festive and more pensive, where the ending is less a matter of the way the plot turns out than of the perspective of the audience. ... [W]e notice how much more serious an action is appropriate: they do not avoid tragedies but contain them. Example: On Moonlight Bay (a lot of nostalgia stories are put here)
Comedy: Phase Six
Society ceases to exist beyond contemplation: the collapse and disintegration of comic society occurs, and the story exists in an isolated place or on a different plane. In this kind of comedy we have finally left the world of wit and the awakened critical intelligence for the opposite pole, an oracular solemnity which, if we surrender uncritically to it, will provide a delightful frisson. This is the world of ghost stories, thrillers, and Gothic romances. ... Secret and sheltered places, forests in moonlight, secluded valleys, and the happy islands become more prominent, as does the penseroso mood of romance, the love of the occult and the marvelous, the sense of individual detachment from routine existence. Example: The Tempest
~*~*~
Romance: Phase One
Complete innocence: These stories often relate to the birth of the hero, an event which is commonly associated with a flood or water imagery; it is common to have a hero locked in a chest, symbolizing that fertility and youth is the real wealth. If self-contained then it typically revolves around the pregnant mother of our hero, who is being hunted by a cruel father or masculine figure. The mother's purpose is to be the living embodiment of the "locked chest" and protect the life that is growing inside of her. Example: Early scene of The Ten Commandments
Romance: Phase Two
Youthful innocence of inexperience: This phase usually presents a pastoral world, a generally pleasant wooded landscape with glades, shaded valleys, and murmuring brooks; the story tends to center on a youthful hero, still overshadowed by parents and surrounded by youthful companions. Example: The Secret Garden (most children's literature lives here)
Romance: Phase Three
Completion of an ideal: This is the typical quest where the hero sets out on an adventure to destroy the monster and evil and return goodness and fertility to the land. Example: Dragonslayer
Romance: Phase Four
Happy society resists change: The hero’s society, which is innocent, is assaulted by an enemy, which is experience, but it withstands and survives the assault; this is often seen in a moral allegory or morality play; it may be a society or the individual that needs to be defended. Example: Return to Oz
Romance: Phase Five
Reflective or idyllic view: Here experience and adventure is contemplated, a similar world as that in the second phase is present, but with a knowledge of experience that did not previously exist. Example: Hook
Romance: Phase Six
Society ceases to exist beyond contemplation: These are tales often told in quotation marks by one individual to a small group; there is a coziness to this type of tale as it is free from confrontation and has a relaxed and entertaining tone. Example: The Princess Bride
~*~*~
Tragedy: Phase One
Complete innocence: The hero who is dignified because of her innocence and courage is toppled; the hero is often a female in this phase. The first phase of tragedy is the one in which the central character is given the greatest possible dignity in contrast to the other characters, so that we get the perspective of a stag pulled down by wolves. The sources of dignity are courage and innocence, and in this phase the hero or heroine usually is innocent. Example: The Diary of Anne Frank
Tragedy: Phase Two
Youthful innocence of inexperience: The heroes and heroines are often young people first encountering the realities of adulthood; frequently a central character will survive so that the action closes with an adjustment to mature experience. It may be simply the tragedy of a youthful life cut off, or, in a more complex situation, in the bewildered mixture of idealism and priggishness that brings the hero to disaster. Example: East of Eden (1955)
Tragedy: Phase Three
Completion of an ideal: The success or completion of hero’s achievement is essential despite his tragic end, and a sense of serenity or peace often exists after his death because of his final accomplishment; these tragedies are commonly a sequel to a previous tragic event. A strong emphasis is thrown on the success or completeness of the hero's achievement. The Passion belongs here, as do all tragedies in which the hero is in any way related to or a prototype of Christ. Example: The Passion of the Christ
Tragedy: Phase Four
Individual’s faults: The hero moves from innocence to experience with his fall occurring as a result of hybris and hamartia. In this phase we cross the boundary line from innocence to experience, which is also the direction in which the hero falls. Example: MacBeth
Tragedy: Phase Five
Natural law: Natural law becomes prominent in these stories, overshadowing the hero and allowing the audience to look down on the action; this phase includes any of the existential and fatalistic tragedies that deal more with metaphysical and theological questions rather than social or moral ones. For a Christian audience an Old Testament or pagan setting is ironic in this sense, as it shows its characters moving according to the conditions of a law, whether Jewish or natural, from which the audience has been, at least theoretically redeemed. Example: Coriolanus
Tragedy: Phase Six
World of shock and horror: These stories possess a strong element of demonic ritual in public punishments and depict a hero in such deep agony or humiliation that they cannot achieve a heroic pose; cannibalism, mutilation, and torture are frequently present in this phase. world of shock and horror in which the central images are images of sparagmos, that is, cannibalism, mutilation, and torture. Example: Titus Andronicus
~*~*~
Satire & Irony: Phase One
Existent society remains: There is no displacement of the humorous society in this phase, and the absurdity often does not occur to the audience until after the story has ended, when a realization of the futility of the society is realized; it takes for granted a world that is full of anomalies, injustices, follies, and crimes that is permanent and yet displaceable (though never overthrown); it suggests the only way to survive is for one to live with his or her eyes open and his or her mouth shut and follow what common sense tells them--and all those who cannot do so need to be beaten into submission or have everything fanciful purged through the gluttony of overindulgence. Example: Don Quixote
Satire & Irony: Phase Two
Criticism of society without change: Sources of values and conventions are ridiculed usually by a successful rogue who challenges the society’s generalizations, theories, and dogmas by showing their ineffectiveness in the face of reality; the rogue does not, however, offer a positive solution or create a new society. Corresponding to the second phase of comedy, the comedy of escape, in which a hero runs away to a more congenial society without transforming his own. The satiric counterpart of this is the picaresque novel, the story of the successful rogue who, from Reynard the Fox on, makes conventional society look foolish without setting up any positive standard. Example: The Tale of the Fox
Satire & Irony: Phase Three
Existent society is replaced by happy society: In irony and satire this is accomplished by attacking and criticizing even basic common sense; there is usually a shift in perspective to show societies in a different light. Common sense too has certain implied dogmas, notably that the data of sense experience are reliable and consistent, and that our customary associations with things from a solid basis for interpreting the present and predicting the future. This type of fantasy breaks down customary associations reduces sense experience to one of many possible categories, and brings out the tentative, als ob basis of all our thinking. Emerson says that such shifts of perspective afford "a low degree of the sublime," but actually they afford something of far greater artistic importance, a high degree of the ridiculous. And, consistently with the general basis of satire as parody-romance, they are usually adaptations of romance themes: the fairyland of little people, the land of giants, or the world of enchanted animals. Common sense is no longer a useful measure to trust. Example: Gulliver's Travels
Satire & Irony: Phase Four
Individual’s faults: This phase applies a moral and realistic perspective to tragedy. Tragic irony differs from satire in that there is no attempt to make fun of the character, but only to bring out clearly the "all too human," as distinct from the heroic. It stresses the humanity of its protagonists, minimizes the sense of ritual inevitability in tragedy, supplies social and psychological explanations for catastrophe, and makes as much as possible of human misery seem, "superfluous and avoidable." It is in general Tolstoy's phase. Example: War & Peace
Satire & Irony: Phase Five
Natural law: The main emphasis is on the natural cycle, examining the steady unbroken wheel of fate or fortune. The refrain in the Old English Complaint of Deor: "Thaes ofereode; thisses swa maeg" (freely translated as "Other people got through things; maybe I can") expresses a stoicism not of the "invictus type, which maintains a romantic dignity, but later a sense found also in the parallel second phase, that the practical and immediate situation is likely to be worthy of more respect than the theoretical explanation of it. Often the stage of Absurdism. Example: Waiting for Godot.
Satire & Irony: Phase Six
World of shock and horror: Presents human life in terms of largely unrelieved bondage and social tyranny. Its settings feature prisons, madhouses, lynching mobs, and places of execution, and it differs from a pure inferno mainly in the fact that in human experience suffering has an end in death. Typically this is the home of the Dystopia. Example: A Clockwork Orange
Example:
Eddard - Satire & Irony Phase Four: There is no attempt to make fun of Eddard or his world views from the narration, so we know we are not in the Satire end of the Satire & Irony phases (the first three are satiric, the last three are ironic). We are meant to take him seriously as our potential protagonist. His flaw is not heroic but instead focuses on the "feet of clay" and "all too human" side, which overemphasizes Eddard's humanity, and gets rid of any sense of "ritual inevitability" that you would find in a Tragedy. In a Tragedy there's a greater sense of connection to a greater spiritual world that the Tragic Hero is the last connection to--and for sake of the community, undergoes a ritual of sorts to put them back in connection with that greater spiritual world through his death. Essentially one gigantic communion ceremony played out ritualistically. A Tragic hero is also still heroic and suffers from heroic problems and flaws that really only heroes suffer from--i.e. in a Tragedy the protagonist is still a "great man" who is separate from or in a different class than the rest of the society that surrounds him (this goes back to his being the only tie to the greater spiritual world & the Grecco-Roman assertion that heroes were demi-gods--half-human and half-divine). Ned, while he's built up by others to be a greater man, when we look at his POV chapters is clearly just a man. Additionally social and psychological explanations for the tragedy are given to his situation (his being sick and injured from his leg wound, doped up on drugs), and all of the horror and human misery that follows his actions is portrayed most surely as being completely superfluous and avoidable as Littlefinger, Varys, and Cersei all stress to him and offer him "ways out" which he either outright objects or eventually caves into (with the last offer from Varys).
The only reason Ned meets his end is because of the social (honor) and psychological (drugged & sick) pressures he is under and unable to break from due to his own personal issues. It is here where the turn from Tragedy and ritualistic death is turned away from, in his chapter where Varys visits him in the Black Cells. Eddard makes mention that he knows how to die and that he'll not take back his words or say what Cersei wants him to say. Had Ned continued on in this vein and died holding tightly to his honor... he would indeed be a Tragic Hero, his story a Tragedy, and his death a ritualistic death (that he acknowledges and is aware of to some degree with his acknowledgement to Varys that he "knows how to die"). However this is where Varys gives him the offer that takes his story to its final level, out of Tragedy and into tragic Irony. Varys makes mention of how Sansa might not be well treated if he doesn't confess to being a traitor before all of King's Landing. Ultimately we see that for his daughter's life and well-being, Ned capitulates and sacrifices his chance at greatness. He dies not as a martyr for honor, like a Tragic Hero would in a Tragedy, but instead as an all-too-human man, trying to protect his daughter. The Irony is made plain to the reader as he does this to protect Sansa--the daughter who sold him out to the Lannisters, and who because of his proclamation of being a traitor, is treated worse--not better--by the Lannisters in ACOK.
Ned's fall from power come from his honor, to be true--but that's only part of his story--and to stop it there is to ignore the further depths to which he falls. Had he stayed true to his honor, he would have died a martyr for the heroic virtue of honor. Instead his truest fall comes from his inability to hold to even his honor--and all for the (paternal) love of a girl.