So I checked, and you don’t seem to have covered this in your What-ifs in your Game of Thrones chapter analyses, but there is one scene in Catelyn’s earliest chapters (if not the very first one), in which Catelyn is reflecting after having sex with her husband, that she was still young enough to have another child. I’m curious of the possible ramifications if she had in fact gotten pregnant, provided there’s enough time between GoT and CoK for her to give birth, and how they might differ based

(Catelyn with child what-if, cont.) (2) on what gender the child was. I could easily see the Freys choosing not to kill him/her, and instead raise it to be a pro-Frey Stark. On the other hand, Tywin might have demanded the baby handed over to be raised as a ward of the Lannisters.

If Catelyn got pregnant in Catelyn II of AGOT, she would have given birth roughly around Catelyn I of ACOK. This has some pretty wild ramifications:

first and most obviously, she’s not going to Bitterbridge and Storm’s End having just given birth – Robb’s going to send someone else. This has substantial knock-on effects for Brienne of Tarth, which in turn reduces the odds that Jaime will be released.
Second, if her child is a boy, the Red Wedding loses a good deal of its political purpose, because the Stark/Tully forces will have a boy king to rally around.
Third, no way in hell Blackfish lets his niece and his king become Lannister prisoners.

If Edmure manages a sucssesful defense against the Westermen in the first place, would he or the Riverlords accept Robb as their King? They were not at the brink of collapse in this scenario and are not as dependend to the North as in OTL.

Interesting question!

I mean, if Edmure had managed a successful defense against the Westermen, lots of things would change significantly.

For example, let’s say Edmure arranges a reverse-Red Fork and executes competently, as he did in the OTL battle, and even manages to refuse his flank vs. Tywin’s southern flank.

A couple things change immediately:

There’s a lot more Riverlander troops around. There’s 4,000 from Vance and Piper’s doomed army, plus however many were lost at the disaster under the walls of Riverrun. How many that is something of a puzzle: I’ve made a few estimates, but I think another 5,000 may have been lost. Which means that the Riverlander army is going to be as big as Robb’s army at 19-20,000.
Lannister strategy is going to have to respond to their failure to break through. My guess is that part of their army is going to have to keep Edmure pinned down defending the Red Fork/Riverrun, while the rest is going to keep pushing east along the Gold Road, either trying to find an open way in to Edmure’s underbelly, or once Robert dies, shifting to defend King’s Landing from Renly or Stannis.

This in turn changes Robb’s strategy immediately, to begin with, he doesn’t need to figure out a way to defeat two armies with one army, which required the splitting of his forces and the deal with the Freys. Yes, Edmure’s going to be demanding support rather loudly, as I would imagine Tywin would keep at least 15,000 battering away at the Red Fork, but it’s not as urgent a crisis as to require more than half of his army.

Instead, I would imagine that Robb would concentrate on moving south quickly – first, it gets his army closer to King’s Landing where his father and sisters are, second, it puts him closer to dealing with that southern Lannister army which threatens to outflank the Riverlander lines and put his allies on the run, and third that Lannister army might give him the Lannister hostages he needs to achieve his political aims.

So what you could see happening is a major battle between Robb’s full(er) army and the southern Lannister army, probably being fought not that far from where the Fishfeed was fought. And if Robb can catch the Lannisters with their back to the Godseye or its river, he could achieve a tremendous victory that might, due to to its proximity to King’s Landing, actually deter his father’s execution.

If Robb had declared for Stannis before being crowned, how would Stannis have rewarded him, longterm, assuming they crush the Lannisters? And if Stannis pushed his religion on the north, how would Robb have reacted? (I would assume he wouldn’t accept it).

Well, the timing doesn’t work there – Robb was acclaimed before Stannis put himself forward as a candidate – but…

I think Stannis would have rewarded Robb by A. punishing the Lannisters (because they’re lawbreakers), B. returning Robb’s sisters, family sword, and father’s body (because it’s the right thing to do) and C. recognized him in his ancestral titles (because that’s the law).

I don’t know if he’d be inclined to do more than that, because as Stannis sees it, Robb owes Stannis his allegiance as a matter of law, and you don’t get brownie points for obeying the law. Now, as a matter of practical politics, a Stannis who needs Northern swords to carry him to the Iron Throne knows that you also need to reward service in proportion, so if Robb does a good job as he’s likely to do, I think Stannis would be willing to grant a request he saw as within reason.

No, Robb is not going to accept R’hllorism as a state religion in the North. But in this scenario, I don’t see Stannis feeling that indebted to Melisandre, so…

Hey I loved your “Politics of the Westerlands” series. Had Aerys died at Duskendale do you think Tywin would have succeeded in wedding Rhaegar to Cersei? If so how would it have affected the politics of Westeros? The Southern Ambitions?

Good question!

I think the politics would have been quite complicated – on the one hand, Tywin has been Hand for 15 years, he represents stability and competency in government, he’s the Crown’s major creditor, he’s got the army in hand de facto. It would be rather difficult for Rhaegar to refuse him in the moment.

On the other hand, Tywin’s power is in Rhaegar’s powers to dispose of, simply by naming someone else as Hand. (Indeed, if Rhaegar is really Machiavellian, he could publicly blame Tywin for causing Aerys’ death and really go to town on him.)

On a third hand, it’s not clear how many alternatives to Cersei there were at the time…there’s no Arryns,

In terms of the political effects…there are going to be quite a few Aerys loyalists who will run a rumor campaign that blame Tywin and Rhaegar for killing Aerys. I don’t think it’ll be given much credence by most (Rhaegar was quite popular among the smallfolk)…until something goes wrong and then people will start to whisper.

There’s definitely going to be tension between Tywin’s faction and Rhaegar’s faction (Connington, Lonmouth, Mooton, the Daynes and the Whents) over access to offices. Rhaegar’s going to want his own men around him, and Tywin’s going to want jobs for Tygett and Gerion and Kevan and Illyn Payne and the like. And I would argue this tension would expand as other Houses get tired of Tywin’s monopoly on royal power – the Tyrells, the Martells, the Southron Ambitions bloc, these folks want their fair share of honors and offices and if they feel like A. Tywin’s never going to leave and B. he won’t share, you’re going to get some “evil councilors” politics brewing fast.