You mention in one of your essays that Ned should’ve put one of his men in charge of the City Watch. While this would’ve prevented Janos Slynt from betraying him, would this have guaranteed the loyalty of the gold cloaks? It seems to me they wouldn’t be so willing to help overthrow Joffrey on the orders of someone who commanded them for less than a year.

In the moment, the issue was less whether they would help overthrow Joffrey and more whether they would literally stab Ned’s men in the back.

However, I would say that if you look at the history of revolutions and coups, the officer corps is hugely important in deciding the decisions of the rank-and-file, in no small part because the rank-and-file spend a lot of time being trained to obey orders from their officer corps. 

So would all of the Gold Cloaks have eagerly joined in Ned’s coup? Probably not. But enough of them would have to give Ned the edge he needed vs. Cersei’s hundred men at arms, and the rest would likely have remained inactive without Slynt’s leadership to give them direction.