Lessons from Game of Thrones

Based on the show, the most obvious way to state Robb's fatal fault is that he tried to be honorable while allowing an aberration. Had he not lied to the Freys, they presumably wouldn't have massacred his house. Alternatively, had he leaned into his lie, he might have escaped it. Robb leans full tilt into the honorable lifestyle of his father, yet excuses his own clear aberration, promising himself to the Freys and marrying another. One can surmise he was too emotionally weak -- or young -- to materialize the honor his father lived by, yet he tried to sustain the principle. He breaks his own code and apologizes, which is the right way to restore the code, but it's dangerous to break in the first place. He faces the punishment of his own oath breaking. He needed to either keep his father's code the whole time, or lean into wartime survivalism.

Perhaps he allowed himself an aberration because he could see just such an exception on his father's record. Jon is a living symbol of honor's exceptions. The irony is he's not -- Ned never broke his honor (save perhaps at the end) -- but Robb doesn't know that. How often do we see our parents break their own codes, and thereby allow ourselves the occasional slip?

So there's the question of Ned's honor in the end. He dies the very moment he breaks his honor; yet Varys says he's a dead man anyway, and his lie appears to be his best shot at saving his children. Joffrey lusted for Stark blood regardless, so it's hard to say whether Ned broke his code for nothing, or whether it was his best shot. Or whether it actually hurt his children's chances! Had Ned refused to even appear before the mob, who knows how things would have transpired. Joffrey may not have pounced on such an auspicious opportunity to flex his power. Cersei, Sansa, and the like may have connived another fate for Ned, behind closed doors. Perhaps the lesson is that Ned's breaking of his own code is what precipitates his death, even if his death seemed materially imminent. Symbolically, it was the breaking. Perhaps the lesson, for he and Robb, is to hold one's code, as a single exception is the death of the code and the death of the holder.