Stannis and Ned are a lot a like in some ways.
Stannis, having learned that Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen are bastards realizes that he is the legal heir to the Throne.
He wants to be king because he is the king.
Ned is similar. He doesn't want to be king because he isn't the king.
Robert had the greater claim. Full stop. That's all there is to it.
Except that, actually, it's not.
Ned didn't want to be king because he didn't have the legal right. This much is true.
He didn't want Jaime Lannister to be king and was upset when he found Jaime on the Iron Throne with the Mad King at his feet.
He considered that a horrible affront to legality, honor and tradition.
For Ned, most likely, the rightful heir was Aegon, Rhaegar's son whose brains Gregor Clegane splattered on the walls.
In lieu of him, there was Viserys, second son of the King.
Viserys was only a boy though. And was actually showing some signs of the same madness that had afflicted his father, the late Aerys II, the Mad King.
And Robert's star had risen too high: the handsome and legendary Victor of the Trident, the Stormlord, the warrior's warrior whose prowess and largesse all men in the martial culture of Westeros aspired to, 'muscled like a maiden's dream'-- had proved to be an unstoppable force. Even his enemies loved him.
Because Aerys was dangerous and mad. And the realm had suffered for it enough.
.Political expedience demanded that Ned accept Robert as king.
Which is not to say that was Eddard Starks end goal.
He just went along with it.
Robert was next in line after Viserys.
Jon Snow's existence may indeed have been the reason why the stickler-for-legal-rules Eddard Stark accepted Robert as king instead of insisting on what he would have seen as the right thing to do: Viserys being the next king.
Because Robert had shown himself to be merciless towards even young children who bore the Targaryen family name. The bodies of Rhaenys, stabbed 'half a hundred times' and the toddler Aegon, his skull 'a red ruin' laid before the Iron Throne had convinced him of that.
And Ned had made a promise.
And he was shattered.
He'd had two years of war. Two years of war that had seen his father, his brother, his sister, his king murdered. He'd seen children slaughtered senselessly. The woman who by all reports he'd loved had thrown herself into the sea.
He'd married a virtual stranger for honor and had a newborn baby.
The best thing he could do, for himself, for his bride, for his son, for the secret nephew-prince that he had promised to keep safe--was retire North and rebuild his world as the Lord of the Kingdom of the North, as a family man and vassal of his new King.
He needed peace. To wipe his sword clean.
(thanks for the A2A)
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