So I disagree quite a bit with this because while I see a lot of parallels between Ned and Stannis including the call for accountability and the refusal of dehumanization of lower social classes, empathy is not one of them. I just don’t think that Stannis is a particularly empathetic individual. Not to say that he is unfeeling or that he is
incapable of being empathetic in places (Davos and Jon Snow are big emotional exceptions for him, Melisandre to an extent as well), but I do not think it’s one of
his defining qualities. The divide here comes from how different their core character motivation is: Stannis is wired by duty but while Ned is also dutiful, he is wired by mercy first, and it’s that that powers his empathy throughout the series to the point where he readily offers an out to the woman complicit in his own son’s attempted murder because he can not bear the thought of innocent children being harmed as collateral damage. Compare and contrast with Stannis’ proclaimed intent to execute Cersei’s “abominations”. Even Tommen. Even Myrcella. His tendency to refer to to them simply as “Cersei’s abominations” is in and of itself dehumanizing, which is an element that also rears its head when Stannis learns about Gilly being Craster’s daughter as well as wife, and his automatic response is to call her a whore and want the abominations gone. (And honestly, “she is wanted for her teats, not for her tongue” She is not a cow, Stannis Baratheon.)

Stannis posses a merciless streak that comes through in several parts of the narrative, and I often find myself disquieted by the thoughtless cruelty he displays. Stannis is hailed as a truly just man within and without the text but I find that a main requirement for calling someone just is for their doled out punishments to fit the crime they are punishing someone for. Stannis often falls short of that. While the Westerosi justice system is inherently flawed, he takes it to the extreme in some places. The fiery executions are the most obvious example since fire is one of the most excruciating ways to kill someone so there’s a needless prolonged torture component weaved into that capital punishment, but there is also his plan to catapult Ser Gawen Wylde and three others over the walls of Storm’s End after they tried to sneak out to surrender to the waiting Tyrell host. And I just can not stomach the way he treats Theon in the sample TWoW chapter. It’s one thing to condemn a man to die because Theon did earn that by Westerosi legality, but it’s another thing entirely to deliberately inflict pain on him for no purpose. Robb Stark himself spoke against Theon’s torture when Roose presented him with his skin. Whoresbane Umber wanted him killed and not tortured – Whoresbane, Hother fucking Umber, the man who disemboweled a thief. The mountain clans with Stannis just want Theon executed as well. These are the people who have a very personal reason to want revenge on Theon, and none of them advocates for torture. Dead and done with, sure, but no additional pain inflicted. But Stannis…. For some unfathomable reason, Stannis chooses to tie Theon up in a very painful position and ignores his pleas to be put down. And for what purpose? Theon is cooperating with Stannis and telling him what he wants to know so that is not it. Stannis already has every intention to put Theon to death for his crimes. So what does that senseless pain inflicted on someone who is obviously a torture victim accomplish? I don’t expect Stannis to feel sorry for Theon, but this treatment is not justifiable in any way or form because Stannis’ model of justice that is based on personal accountability does not translate to torture being a suitable punishment to a crime that Stannis already plans on executing Theon for. That’s a pattern that really does not fit with what I mentioned in my original post about Ned advocating for compassion and being tuned in to the value of human life.

So if empathy is the standard used to compare Ned and Stannis, I’m afraid that comparison just falls apart. Any attempt to parallel Ned and Stannis in that respect just comes to a screeching halt when you compare the way they handle some similar situations. “What is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?” is very symbolic of that because Ned demonstrated,
whether with Jon Snow or Cersei’s children, that his answer, like Davos’, is everything (and YMMV on whether Ned was right or wrong in his actions with Cersei, but I personally don’t think he was mistaken in trying to save the children) while Stannis allowed himself to be persuaded to burn Edric, despite not really wanting to, because he thought it was for the greater good. A main difference here is that Ned looks towards the individual while Stannis looks to the collective which is reflective of their political positions and personal ruling theory. Neither position is innately better than the other, and looking to the collective does bespoke a level of care (it’s not for nothing that Stannis is the “king who still cared”, the only one to answer the call of the Night’s Watch) but the personal empathy I was talking about, the refusal to lose sight of even the individual and the respect shown to every singular life that exists in Ned, is not strong in Stannis. I think Ned’s empathetic capacity and the scale of his rejection of dehumanization surpasses that of Stannis by leaps and bounds. Stannis might refuse to dehumanize lower social classes, but he does dehumanize others, and often.

And on a side note, I don’t think the parallel of detesting nobility holds either. Ned may have recognized the rot in some nobles but he did not actively reject the noble model the way Stannis does. He rejects the way nobility dehumanizes people of lower social status but he does not share Stannis’ low opinion of the nobility and the hierarchy they uphold, or his instinctive drive to raise up the downtrodden. Stannis is quite revolutionary in his “then we will make new lords”.