Mr. Martin, please forgive me for disturbance. An interesting argument cropped up, one that only you can resolve.
Ahhh, but I don't like to resolve arguments, I prefer to stir them up. <G>
Namely: One of the posters claims that if Tyrion had been a honorable man (such as Ned), he would have used his position as the acting Hand to open the gates of KL to Stannis and would have subsequently testified against Cersei and Joff (if they got a trial, that is). He would have done so, because: "a lawful succession, and justice for the murders of Robert and Ned and many others should have been the major priority for a man of honor and responsibility". Would such a course of action be considered honorable and "right" in Westerosi society?
By whom? Westeros doesn't have the Gallup poll. This is a sort of question people would need to decide for themselves, just as in real life. Two thousand years after the assassination of Julius Caeser, people are still debating whether or not that was an honorable act. Dante put Brutus and Cassius in the lowest level of hell for what they did, right next to Judas Iscariot, but Shakespeare wrote that Brutus was "the noblest Roman of them all."
So argue on.
Now, Ned is dead and we will never know for sure unless you tell us, but what would his options as a honorable man be if he found himself brother to Cersei and son to Tywin?
Ned had his own siblings, and his own moral quandries. I don't know that he'd care to get involved in hypothetical ones.
I find it hard to believe that he would have accepted the position of acting Hand while knowing all the facts, but assuming that he learned about incest and Robert's murder only when he was already acting Hand in KL, would he have opened the gates to Stannis (with all implications)?
Probably would have tried to treat with Stannis first, work out some terms.
Well, the above mentioned poster also claimed that once Stannis had KL, Westeros would have shortly been at peace, because everyone except for Tywin would have flocked to Stannis as their rightful king, but I guess that we'll learn the truth of it in ASOS...
I don't know if the series will ever reveal the "truth" of things that never happened, only of those that did.
But keep reading, and some of these things may be resolved eventually.