Why is the Golden Tooth so important with Robb having to bypass it through a hidden pass, Edmure holding the pass and Daemon Blackfyre having to break through the castle? Tywin didn’t leave through the pass, according to this quote ” All the time they were battling in the pass, Lord Tywin was bringing a second Lannister army around from the south. It’s said to be even larger than Jaime’s host”. Yet he can’t have been too far south as he crossed the Red Fork and didn’t go into the Reach.

The Golden Tooth guards the main pass between the Riverlands and the Westerlands, through which passes the River Road that stretches from Lannisport and Casterly Rock to Riverrun and Lord Harroway’s Town. So it’s a big deal because it’s guarding the direct route. 

My theory about what Tywin did is that he took the southern pass through Deep Den along the Gold Road, then hooked up sharply to attack the Mummer’s Ford. 

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After all, Robb says that “Lord Derik had no sooner crossed the Red Fork than the Lannisters fell upon him, the king’s banner be damned, and Gregor Clegane took them in the rear as they tried to pull back across the Mummer’s Ford.” In other words, Gregor Clegane was on the east side of the ford before the battle started, and Gregor is definitely with Tywin’s army at all points after this battle, so it stands to reason he was with it before. 

If you were Aegon the Conqueror, would you have included House Lefford of the Golden Tooth into the Riverlands under House Tully’s Lord Paramouncy or kept them as part of the Westerlands? (P.S. I’m asking Attewell, SLAL and the Good Queen, having huge respect for all y’all’s differing POVs, TY)

Well, it sort of depends on how, as King, you view the loyalty of the Westerlands and the Riverlands. After all, the whole point of Aegon’s Conquest was to assert the unity of Westeros and establish a scenario where wars between kingdoms don’t happen, and given that the only purpose of the Golden Tooth is to ensure that the Westerlands can’t be invaded by the Riverlands but can invade with impunity, the King’s rule should make the Golden Tooth irrelevant. 

So the only scenario where I would see Aegon giving the Golden Tooth to the Riverlands is a scenario in which the new king sees the Riverlands as more loyal than the Westerlands, and needs to forestall any future rebellion which might involve an invasion of the Riverlands. 

Indeed, if it wasn’t for Aegon’s dracocracy leading him to make minimal changes to pre-existing conditions, it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to annex the fortress to the crown to prevent either kingdom from invading the other without openly rebelling.