confirmed whether they ever arrived at Winterfell. He is mentioned in a flashback along with his friend Robert Baratheon in the follow-up novel A Clash of Kings. Family tree of House Stark TV adaptation In January 2007 HBO secured the rights to adapt Martin's series for television. When the pilot went into production in 2009, one of the first casting announcements was Sean Bean as the "lead" Eddard Stark. As the show premiered in 2011, the Los Angeles Times called Bean's Ned "the strong and brooding headliner of the series". As in the source novel, Ned is beheaded in the ninth episode of season 1, "Baelor". Though praising the character's demise for its role in propelling the story, James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly later noted that: Hibberd echoed the show's producers' statement that "the move lays down a dramatic precedent for the show: Nobody is safe". He 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. 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". Noting that the network has killed off characters in other successful series, he said that this sense of jeopardy "completely ups the ante for any moment when a character is in a dire situation if you know another character didn't survive a similar situation". HBO programming president Sue Naegle concurred, saying that Ned's death made the show creatively more attractive, adding that "The book series was filled with unexpected twists and turns. I loved this idea we'd bring together the group of characters, then once you started to believe all the tropes of heroes, you pull the rug out from under them. It's the opposite of feeling manipulated". Noting that the story and world of the series is bigger than any one character, Naegle said, "Sean brings a giant following, but Thrones is not just about the promise you're going to see one of your favorite actors week in and week out. The star is the story". Bean noted that Ned's death "was as much a surprise to me as anyone" and called it "a very courageous move for a television company". The image of Bean