“They took my sword hand. Was that all I was, a sword hand?”
Synopsis: Jaime tries to die, but decides to live instead.
SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.
See here and here. Tywin’s original plan always had tension between the interests of the Lannisters and the Boltons:
“Why, do you plan to mistreat her?” His father sounded more curious than concerned. “The girl’s happiness is not my purpose, nor should it be yours. Our alliances in the south may be as solid as Casterly Rock, but there remains the north to win, and the key to the north is Sansa Stark…Come spring, the northmen will have had a bellyful of krakens. When you bring Eddard Stark’s grandson home to claim his birthright, lords and little folk alike will rise as one to place him on the high seat of his ancestors.” (Tyrion III)
Lord Bolton will wed the girl to his bastard son. We shall allow the Dreadfort to fight the ironborn for a few years, and see if he can bring Stark’s other bannermen to heel. Come spring, all of them should be at the end of their strength and ready to bend the knee. The north will go to your son by Sansa Stark … if you ever find enough manhood in you to breed one. Lest you forget, it is not only Joffrey who must needs take a maidenhead.” (Tyrion VI)
“The price was cheap by any measure. The crown shall grant Riverrun to Ser Emmon Frey once the Blackfish yields. Lancel and Daven must marry Frey girls, Joy is to wed one of Lord Walder’s natural sons when she’s old enough, and Roose Bolton becomes Warden of the North and takes home Arya Stark.” (Tyrion VI)
So the Boltons would have the Wardenship and Arya, Tyrion would have Sansa and Winterfell, but that’s not a tenable situation over the long-term because only one of these houses can rule the North. So Tywin wants to wear down Roose Bolton’s power by having him fight the Ironborn and the Stark loyalists, and then turn on him to consolidate power in the person of Tyrion’s Lannister-Stark son.
Roose Bolton realizes this, but he also realizes that once he’s up in the North with his carefully-hoarded Bolton-Frey army, there’s really nothing the Lannisters can do to him all the way down in King’s Landing:
“Lord Bolton aspires to more than mere lordship. Why not King of the North? Tywin Lannister is dead, the Kingslayer is maimed, the Imp is fled. The Lannisters are a spent force, and you were kind enough to rid him of the Starks. Old Walder Frey will not object to his fat little Walda becoming a queen. White Harbor might prove troublesome should Lord Wyman survive this coming battle … but I am quite sure that he will not. No more than Stannis. Roose will remove both of them, as he removed the Young Wolf. Who else is there?” (ADWD, Prince of Winterfell)
I think there were several factors. The first is that communication between armies isn’t good at the best of times – look at what happened when Jaime and Tywin (or Jaime’s cavalry and Jaime’s infantry) got separated, for example. Unless both parties have a rookery that both know to write to (and even then, ravens can go awry), you’re down to riders trying to get across hundreds of miles of very dangerous territory. This only gets more complicated when Robb takes the goat path into the Westerlands and is essentially behind enemy lines, or when Roose is on the march from the Twins to Harrenhal and isn’t near a rookery.
The second is that communications can be controlled. Roose is in a very good opportunity to dictate the narrative of how the Green Fork went down, and when he’s both at the Twins and Harrenhal, he can control what goes out by raven. You would need a subordinate to have recognized that Roose intentionally threw the battle rather than making a forgiveable mistake, be willing to be wholly insubordinate by informing on his commanding officer to the king in violation of chain of command, and then get a rider all the way to Robb Stark without being noticed, and be believed when that rider gets there.
The third has to do with expectations and perceptions. Roose Bolton stayed within the general framework of his orders at the Green Fork – he made a bunch of bad tactical choices, from failing to carry through with his night march to leaving the high ground to firing on his own men, but he didn’t violate Robb’s orders, and most importantly, Roose’s actions achieved the intended strategic effect by engaging with Tywin and allowing Robb to relieve Riverrun before Tywin could move to block him. So Robb doesn’t have any reason to perceive what happened at the Green Fork than the necessary sacrifice he thought it was.
Likewise, when Roose takes Harrenhal, he could plausibly say that A. it was the major enemy asset in the theater of war so it was good sense to take it, B. an allied commander had asked him to do it, and C. he wasn’t given orders to the contrary. Robb doesn’t have any reason to see this action as treasonous, and indeed the victory helps to obscure the pattern of Roose’s actions. It also helps that Robb is a bit distracted by Edmure’s actions at the time.
It’s not until Duskendale that Robb has something that really rings false, and Robb immediately picks up on it, recognizing that Duskendale is a target of no strategic value:
When they brought him word of the battle at Duskendale, where Lord Randyll Tarly had shattered Robett Glover and Ser Helman Tallhart, he might have been expected to rage. Instead he’d stared in dumb disbelief and said, “Duskendale, on the narrow sea? Why would they go to Duskendale?” He’d shook his head, bewildered. “A third of my foot, lost for Duskendale?”
But here’s where Roose’s control of communications kicks in. Sitting at Harrenhal, Roose is the one sending Robb information about what happened. So Roose constructs an alternative narrative in which he had nothing to do with Duskendale:
“Your Grace is too kind. I suffered grievous losses on the Green Fork, and Glover and Tallhart worse at Duskendale.”
“Duskendale.” Robb made the word a curse. “Robett Glover will answer for that when I see him, I promise you.”
“A folly,” Lord Bolton agreed, “but Glover was heedless after he learned that Deepwood Motte had fallen. Grief and fear will do that to a man.”
Robb has no way of knowing this isn’t true, because Roose made sure that the men who could have contradicted him were either killed or captured. The only people present when Roose gave the orders to take Duskendale – through a raven, so it’s not like any of the men at Harrenhal could have talked to Glover’s army and heard about new orders, and even then those men were almost all Freys and Bolton men by that point – wereArya and Qyburn.
The only, only way Robb could have heard differently is if Robett Glover had turned the ship around at Duskendale and headed for the Twins instead of White Harbor and gotten there ahead of the Red Wedding. Even then, odds are that Robett would have been seen as a rash incompetent looking to excuse his folly by making a scandalous accusation at his forgiving commanding officer.
But even if Robb had believed Robett, the 5,000 Stark loyalists in Roose’s army were dead or captured, and Roose and Walder had Robb outnumbered two to one. The damage was already done.
Well, I think this is a case of “"any Coburg prince.” I.E, I don’t think you necessarily need a Robb Stark – Robett or Galbart Glover, the Greatjon, really any competent commander could have done a much better job.
As I write about in my recaps of Tyrion VII and Tyrion VIII of AGOT, I think Roose Bolton deliberately botched an eminently winnable battle. To begin with, deciding to go on the offensive was odd, given the Northmen were outnumbered and lacking in cavalry. His night march is especially weird, because A. he knows that Robb wants Tywin’s army as far away from the Trident as possible, and B. despite achieving tactical surprise, Roose gives the game away by drawing up in battle formation rather than attacking Tywin’s army immediately.
But even more egregiously, given that Roose has an army of almost entirely foot and a strong defensive position on the high ground that stood perpendicular to the Green Fork itself, his decision to send slow-moving spear-and-shield infantry to attack Tywin’s cavalry vanguard is absolutely insane. As in the Battle of the Hastings, if you put a shield wall on the heights of a long line of hills, knightly cavalry cannot break through – the uphill climb makes it all but impossible to generate the speed you need for a proper charge, horses founder and fall – wrecking formations. Likewise, the heights make an infantry assault even more difficult – it’s incredibly difficult to stay in formation and your shield up while you’re climbing, massed pike formations draw devastating plunging arrow volleys that gain momentum and range when you’re firing down-slope, and the Lannister bowmen’s shot is going to fall short.
What’s bizarre about the Battle of the Green Fork is that Roose Bolton deliberately does what Harold Godwinson absolutely sought to avoid throughout the whole battle, without the feigned retreat, the faked death of William, and the actual death of Harold that was necessary to get the Saxon housecarls to break discipline.
So with a competent and/or loyal commander in charge, the Northmen take the heights, form a strong shield wall to screen their archers, and hold their position, forcing the Lannisters to make repeated up-hill attacks that are bloodily and repeatedly repulsed. Once the word gets around that the Young Wolf isn’t present on the battlefield, and the Lannisters are forced to withdraw, the Northmen pursue relentlessly down the Kingsroad rather than retreating back to the Twins, increasing the Lannisters’ OTL losses from the forced-march retreat.
If at all possible, try to maintain contact with Tywin’s army and slow them down as much as possible, creating the possibility that Robb’s combined Northmen and Riverlander cavalry force can beat Tywin’s mixed force to the Trident, trapping Tywin’s army between the Green Fork and the Ruby Ford and the mountains, potentially knocking the Lannisters out of the war in one fell swoop. But short of that, make sure to seize the strong defensive position at the crossroads and take control of the Ruby Ford, which Roose doesn’t do until Arya VII of ACOK. This creates a strong defensive line anchored by the Red Fork of the Trident, ensuring that the reaving never spreads “north across the Trident almost to the Twins.” It also gives Robb a protected seaport at Saltpans which allows communication, reinforcements, and resupply from White Harbor.
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