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Tywin's plan in AGoT - nonsense or brilliance?


Mr Fixit

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To answer my own question, seeing as how the War of the Five Kings effectively ended with RW, one could say it was a brilliant plan resulting in the absolute zenith of Lannister power.

However, looking at his moves in AGoT, I must wonder what he was trying to accomplish. Simply said, his battle plan seems like lunacy to me. Let's examine facts of the case:

  1. At the time Tywin launched his combat operations in the Riverlands, Robert was still king. Tywin had no reason to think Robert was going to die so soon. Even if he was in on the poisoning, he couldn't have been certain of its success.

  2. He couldn't have known for certain that Edmure would be so incompetent, wasting Tully armies without making a dent to the Lannisters. As far as Tywin was concerned, Riverlands had a pretty strong army which, when led competently, could inflict serious losses to the Westerners even in defeat.

  3. North was bound to help their southern allies if things got too out of hand

  4. There was a strong chance Vale would join the fight as well. A Tully was the de facto ruler of the Vale, after all. We as readers know this threat didn't materialize, but there was no reason for Tywin to think that Vale wouldn't commit its forces.

So, my question is, what did Tywin intend by essentially declaring war, without any allies, on the most powerful alliance of contemporary Westerosi politics, namely the Baratheon-Tully-Stark-Arryn alliance that was dating all the way back to the Robert's Rebellion?

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He couldn't have known for certain that Edmure would be so incompetent, wasting Tully armies without making a dent to the Lannisters. As far as Tywin was concerned, Riverlands had a pretty strong army which, when led competently, could inflict serious losses to the Westerners even in defeat.

I would contest the idea of Edmure's competence. Edmure kicked Tywin's ass when Tywin tried to return to the Westerlands, and Edmure biggest mistake was arguably just protecting his smallfolk.

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I thought the full scale war only started once Robert was dead. Before this was only Gregor's raid.

Still a pretty idiotic plan by Tywin which only worked through a series of really lucky breaks. He could only rely on the Westerlands to back him up, and as far as he knew, the Vale and the Martells and Renly's Stormlords were very likely join the war against him too. And the Tyrells were close to Renly so more likely to be against Tywn than for him too.

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The Lannister forces were not openly attacking the Riverlands. They wore plain armour so the Tully's could not openly attack them without risking the crowns anger.

It Edmure had attacked without first going to the King, Tywin would simiply have said that the Tully's attacked them for no reason and would have brought the King onto his side. The Starks and Arryn's would not be able to attack the Lannisters without starting a full scale civil war.

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I thought the full scale war only started once Robert was dead. Before this was only Gregor's raid.

Still a pretty idiotic plan by Tywin which only worked through a series of really lucky breaks. He could only rely on the Westerlands to back him up, and as far as he knew, the Vale and the Martells and Renly's Stormlords were very likely join the war against him too. And the Tyrells were close to Renly so more likely to be against Tywn than for him too.

Even moreso when you consider that Tywin would probably have had to assume, as Tyrion and Cersei did, that Stannis and Renly would be on the same side.

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His intention appears to be to force the Tullys/Arryns to release Tyrion, get Ned Stark dismissed (or killed) and then browbeat Robert into letting him off scot free.

In his calculations, he probably figured he could get the better of the Riverlands, since they appear to have relatively few experienced commanders and he attacked them quickly and without warning.

He expected Ned to lead the relief force himself, which would give him the opportunity to kill or capture him. He wrote off Robb Stark as a serious threat, figuring, I imagine, that it would take him longer to respond and his command ability was minimal.

Realistically, though, you're right, it was a stupid plan and if he hadn't got very lucky in the ways you describe, he'd have been stuffed. Perhaps, if he'd captured Ned, that would give him a good negotiating platform with Robert to get let off. He probably figured that if Ned were killed, he could then withdraw his forces and say it was a rebellion against Ned rather than Bob. But there's a serious chance there that Bob would have decided to Tarbeck him instead, and, really, he should have done.

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"They have insulted me, insulted! That cannot go unpunished!"

Tywin Lannister is mental. Insults to his pride are his berserk button, he takes extreme measures and gambles his houses survival on slimmest chances if he feels insulted.

Examples are the Tarbecks holding his relatives hostage, his stepmom, Reynes of Castamere, insulting Elia and Oberyn with Tyrion instead of Jaime, insulting Hoster Tully samewise, killing Elia, Rhaenys and Aegon the way he did and Tysha. Starting the war in the Riverlands are just the tip of the iceberg.

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Lannisters against the Tullys and Starks.

Outsiders would look and see a Tully in charge of the Vale and a possibility that the Baratheons join aswel.

Martell has waited 15years for revenge and it looks as though his targ hope isnt going ti happen. Why the hell didn't Dotne join up with four other great houses to get revenge. With so many on one side the other great houses were sure to take part or stay out.

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I've always assumed that he had planned to ambush Ned in the Riverlands, capturing him to force Tyrion's release. With Hoster sick, Edmure would me to inexperienced to stand against him. Robert was his son-in-law and heavy into debt to CR. Sending Jaime to beat Edmure and RR would allow him to march around the Trident and block and relief from North or Vale. Counting on Robert's inaction, Ned's naiveness, Edmure's inexperience, Stannis lawfulness, Mace's obliviousness, Doran's carefulness, Balon's pettyness and Lysa's fearfulness, considering what we see of them isn't that much of a strech. Was he overconfident? Yes. Absurd? No.

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This sounds like Tywin wagered on a certain outcome, and placed all his cards on this sort of attack. Was it foolish? Yes. Was it not a standard plan of action, because of a potential powerful alliance against the Lannisters? Yes. But did it eventually work in his favor? It did. That is the only thing that matters, because eventually he won (well, sort of :) ).

And there is an obvious parralel with a certain historic event here. In World War II, Adolf Hitler also broke all army rules and procedures to force an attack on France through the Ardennes. Previous plans were more conventional, and called for massing of armies on the northern fork of the attack, which would have probably ended with a stationary front similar to the one in the First World War. But Hitler decided to strengthen the attack through the almost impenetrable forests and hills in the Ardennes, and potentially break the entire Anglo-French northern front. This was a gamble, but it paid off big time, because the German Panzer divisions soon passed through the forest, broke the French 9. Army, and started their march to the sea, thus trapping all of the northern British and French armies, and esentially beating France.

Had this plan failed, Hitler would have been beaten probably as soon as 1941, or maybe even before, but he went on with it and later atributed the successful plan to his "brilliant mind". It's a similar situation to Tywin's, at least in the words of OP.

Oh, and please, I'm NOT comparing Tywin to Hitler, I'm just stating it is a rather similar situation. :)

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Tywin took a risk. It was a big one, had Robert lived, Tywin would have been facing the combined armies of the Starks, Baratheons, Tullys and Arryns, with the Martells and Tyrells maybe getting in on the act, and Tywin would have been screwed and his entire line would probably have been destroyed, especially once Robert or his Council realised that by destroying the Lannisters they also destroyed half the Kingdom's debts and gained a large revenue source in the bargain. But for the sake of the narrative Robert had to die and the gamble paid off.

Tywin probably thought that if he lost he could use the debt and Robert's dislike of civil war to save his own skin and so he didn't think the risk was as great as it appears on paper. The reasonableness of this belief is debatable.

I think Lysa only got away with sitting out the war because Robert was dead, had he lived the Valelords, who were ready to rise in rebellion to go to the aid of Robb, would never have allowed Lysa to refuse a royal command.

In other words Tywin gambled and in a fair and just world would have lost and died horribly, but Westeros is neither fair nor just, and it didn't suit George's purposes for the Lannisters to lose in the first book, so he created a plausible reason for it not to happen .

Personally I wouldn't have minded a story about what the Starks would have had to sacrifice to stay at the top of Westerosi politics but that's for another thread.

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Tywin is very aggressive, so sending Ser Gregor into the Riverlands was disproportionate but probably wouldn't be perceived as treason because it was in response to Catelyn's arrest of Tyrion. However, the plan to draw Ned out was considerably more risky.

He sent Gregor because he would be recognizable and he thought, with good reason, that Ned would have ridden out to take Gregor's head personally. So, if Ned had come as Tywin planned and Gregor ambushed and killed him as he did the party Ned sent... Tywin, or at they least if he denied knowledge Tywin's bannermen, would have murdered Robert's Hand of the King. That would have surely been treason, Robert would never have stood for his best friend being murdered trying to bring the King's Justice, and none of the other regions would have stood with Tywin. I'm not sure what he was really thinking to be honest, as a plan it seems astonishingly risky for not a huge reward. He wanted Ned out the picture, I get that, but at that time Robert was alive; he could have called on the North, Riverlands, Stannis and the Stormlands at the very least.

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All in all, it was a pretty solid plan. He could have fallen back at any time prior to Robert's death and Ned's arrest, and simply used the excuse that Catelyn had unlawfully taken Tyrion. Yeah, there would have been some reparations paid out to the Riverlands, but a Lannister was the queen, and the king owed him an extraordinary amount of money. Robert's words to Ned weren't "I've got your back on this one bro." they were "Make a peace dammit! I want no part in this! And we're not having a civil war!"

Even when Ned didn't come, and the war started in earnest with the Riverlords massing and Robert dying, the plan was still very solid. Ned was a hostage, and Robb a boy, so who would reasonably expect he could rally the banners successfully and strike south? Lysa's instability and paranoia at that point was the stuff of renown, and what's more, with Ned as a hostage he was capable of forcing a peace with the Starks. Even Ned, a guy who's met Edmure all of... never? Knows he's got a soft heart and a reputation for a soft head to match, and indeed, the Lannisters rolled right over the Riverlands.

The whole point of the exercise was to get Tyrion back, and tell the rest of Westeros what happens when you screw with the Lannisters by hitting the homeland of his kidnapper (along with the houses that facilitated his capture, when you note Catelyn's plea at the inn). Bad things happened to the Lannisters well before the good started, like Robb managing to cow bannermen like the Greatjon, forge a unified front, then successfully push south, convince Walder 'always on the winning side' Frey to take up with him, and catch Jaime completely undetected. And who would have ever suspected that Joffrey would be insane enough to execute a High Lord, and one the Lannisters' most important hostages at that?

Tywinn's plan was grounded in the real. He didn't expect Robb to have a magic direwolf which would act according to his mental wishes, uncover secret goat trails to get passed thousands-of-years old border fortifications, and give him super-Stark-cred with the bannermen, and he didn't expect Joffrey to act the part of a complete and total vindictively insane moron, and he didn't expect that Cersei wouldn't do -anything- to stop him at that!

In the best case of Tywin's plan, Ned goes to Gregor's keep and falls for an ambush, Robert demands that they make a peace. Ned is exchanged for Tyrion along with a couple token apologies, and Tywin walks away with a ton of plunder from the Riverlands, maybe a few ransoms if he can wrangle it for Edmure and other high-ranking captives, and Westeros gets a harsh lesson in what happens when you abduct a Lannister on the road. And really, all those things looked to be happening prior to Ned's injury and Robert's death.

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He called his banners because that's what you do as a mighty lord in order to show that you are serious. The plan was to capture Eddard and exchange him for Tyrion(and also show the realm that the Lannisters are the biggest baddies). But when Robert died and Ned was imprisoned for treason, he invaded the Riverlands in order to stop the inevitable Northern reaction. And then everything of course developed in unexpected ways which they ALWAYS do in war.

I'm 100% sure that his plan wasn't something like this: "hurr durr INVASION Robert's going to die soon I bet".

As for the actual war effort itself I think his plan was sound(and was proof of a very strategic mind). He makes Edmure spread his forces, and then Jaime crushes the Riverlords whilst Tywin marches around in order to block the Northern host.

He couldn't be sure about the Vale, but I assume that his plan was to capture all the major fords of the Trident, and then what could the Vale host do? Neither could he know that Walder Frey would join the Starks. Walder had no reason to like the Starks and reasons to dislike the Tullys. Walders second son was also married to Tywin's own sister!

The predicament he's in in ACOK is because of a series of events you really can't expect someone to see beforehand. Frey joining the Starks, Joffrey killing Ned, Jaime getting captured.

Of course he did mistakes, as nigh everyone does sometimes. The biggest imo was trusting Jaime with the siege of Riverrun.

Edit: Victor227 put it much better than me.

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I would contest the idea of Edmure's competence. Edmure kicked Tywin's ass when Tywin tried to return to the Westerlands, and Edmure biggest mistake was arguably just protecting his smallfolk.

Edmure cares too much. He cares about the smallfolk, he cares about his bannermen and that leads him into vulnerable spots.

He seems to have a good grasp of warfare but robb should have let him in on his grand strategy.

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I don't know. He starts a full scale war for a son he wants to disinherit anyway, for a son he hates. If it would have been Jaimy ....

Seems to be more plot hole than all those numbers about soldiers.

So he started the war of the five kings for a dwarf.

It wasn't about Tyrion, in fact he blames Tyrion for letting himself being taken by a woman. It was the Lannister name that mattered.

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