Thandros

It depends on how much the information really encouraged Cersei to move up her plans by which I think the answer is a couple of hours at most if that. The Stark departure can't have been too well hidden from Lannister watchers and it's likely Cersei was going to move quickly after Robert's death to purge the Starks from King's Landing anyway so it probably wouldn't have made a difference at all if Sansa hadn't spilled the beans to Cersei. She simply ensured that the Lannisters would have one hostage locked away before the fighting rather than after it. I think the entire episode says a lot more about Sansa's character and it might come back to bite her if control over the north between the Starks comes under some form of contention than having had any serious impact on the events. Ned Stark had already doomed the Starks in King's Landing by giving Cersei an offer of mercy which she decided to turn against him while Robb's campaign seems barely affect by the Lannisters holding his sister hostage. Only way Arya and Sansa get out of King's Landing together is if Ned moves their departure up 12 hours and they leave on their boat in the middle of the night. The honestly most impactful result may even be Cersei's attempt to lure out Arya using the fake Stark guards on the Braavosi ship they were planing to sail on which comes close to tricking Arya but she sees through it quickly enough to make no difference.

I think half the problem with making this argument is that a lot of people here seem to think dragons are these uber magical nuke equivalents. There very much not. They're basically armored planes with nose torrent mounted flamethrowers with exposed pilots which do weird stuff the moment they no longer have a pilot. The Targaryens don't conquer Westeros by burning it to the ground with waves of dragon fire. They do it by breaking the morale the armies they are facing. The Field of Fire where Aegon has absolutely perfect conditions to wrack up a massive kill count and permanently inspire fear of dragons in all of Westeros for generations. He kills just over four thousand or so with dragon fire with another thousand or so killed by his army. A lot of the rest of the army gets away with mostly relatively minor burns from the middle of what is presented as a massive fire storm. Only some of them have permanent scarring from their burns. If the allied army hadn't lost it's leadership and held together for a charge they'd probably still been able to smash Aegon's army charging beyond the flames. And Visenya get struck by an arrow and wounded when she is described as not evening laying into the main body of the army with dragon fire. When Garin the Great faced three dragons on his march south he killed two of them with arrows while they only managed to kill thousands of his huge army which presumably relied on a mix of luck and water wizards trying to disrupt the flight of the dragons to inflict anything like telling blows with simple bows and it worked. Two of them were killed and the third was sent fleeing with it's tail between it's legs wounded while the army they brought with them was seen off. How did the Ghiscari Empire hold out for five wars. Easy Dragons are less powerful than you seem to think particularly given the Ghiscari armies are described as having excellent morale so aren't going to break from dragon fire half as easily as the Westerosi do and they likely were more aware of the Dragons and their strengths and weaknesses particularly after the first war so were better able to counter them than the Westerosi were who never seemed able to seriously learn all the lessons between battles. Also it's possible the Valyrians in the first wars had only just learned to ride dragons so only had a few weaker ones which were much more vulnerable than older dragons and it was only in the latter wars that the Valyrians had enough old powerful dragons to actually fight and win truly decisive victories. Also the dry ground of Ghiscari would not have been as ideal terrain for the kind of firestorms that proved so devastating in the Reach. I think an apt comparison is to war elephants who despite being a useful enough weapon that fairly routinely worked very well are thought of as little more than a joke because we only really remember the times they were panicked and turned on their own men and not the times they charged forward and smashed the enemy lines to pieces. Dragons are probably a flying fantasy version of War Elephants used well they are devastating but I half wonder how many times they ended up burning their own armies or descended to eat their own troops after their rider was killed in battle. Clearly the Valyrians didn't keep any records of those embarrassments.

I like to think it's because that have some limited ability to see the future like the green dreams of Jojen and they've seen just how badly wrecked Westeros is going to be by the current civil wars that are ravaging everywhere and it gives them the best shot of ensuring victory over the living. Interestingly a couple of other conflicts are associated with nasty winters which suggest preemptive awakenings associated with conflict which didn't pan out and they went back to sleep which definitely gives the idea that they're looking for opportunity.

Tywin horribly misplayed his hand here and it only worked out at all because of a massive stroke of good fortune. When Catelyn took Tyrion Twyin had a nice safe option of appealing to the king. Appealing about the illegal seizure on spurious grounds of one of the members of their family and demand he be returned. Eventually reports of their arrival at the Eyrie arrive and they are summoned back to King's Landing and both sides have their cases heard and everything ends up working out. Tyrion is released once the falsehood of the evidence is revealed and Catelyn perhaps escapes any serious consequences by playing on female stereotypes in the world of Westeros and Tywin gets to ensure vengeance on the person responsible by having Baelish executed for his role in masterminding the entire thing and maybe gets even more influence by arranging the replacement master of coin. Assuming Joffrey's role in the entire thing doesn't come out the Lannisters have firmly come out on top and can possibly extract a bit of grovelling from the Starks to enhance their prestige. Except they'd have to work through the king and Tywin doesn't really like having to rely on people above him to achieve his goals. It would particularly in this case the limitations of his power and I doubt he could stand that. Instead he decides to find a plan b which results in one of the many poorly thought out hare brained schemes that dominate most of ASOIAF's plot. He decides to effectively break the King's peace with raiders with only the most basic of steps taken to prevent revealing who was behind it because Tywin clearly thought that people knowing he was behind it was a good idea when it probably wasn't to lure Ned into an ambush. Right and then what? Assuming Robert isn't killed by the boar (Given Cersei was relying on a drunken hunting accident to remove him it easily have gone poorly for her) he's now had his best friend been kidnapped and held hostage. Good excuse for a war if Robert wanted one and now he can significantly improve the realms finances in one fell swoop. Most of the realm would eagerly side with him in such a war. Tywin has no serious allies to call upon who would actually stick with him and even the lords of the Westerlands might decide not to join him in a suicide conflict. This of course assumes that he is unaware of Cersei's actions which seems reasonable. If he is aware the plan makes a little more sense as a ruse to cover a military build up which can be legally unleashed once Robert is dead and Cersei is regent. The entire thing does suit Tywin's personality and his desire to send out the right messages from his point of view. A preference for dramatic statements of the risks of opposing Tywin Lannister and his wrath rather than more intelligent displays of cunning and diplomacy would definitely fit him to a tee. Dramatic overreactions to deal with problems in the least efficient way is definitely how he normally deals with most problems. He got lucky as Robert's death allow him to turn a seemingly inevitable disaster into a fairly advantageous start to the fighting in the Riverlands. If Robert hadn't died he was looking into serious possibilities of major issues in the future as had to figure his way out of the corner he was boxing himself into regardless of how well it was working out for him.

Maybe but weirdly it could make a lot of sense him ending up king of Westeros. Most of the other surviving members of the great houses are either going into any post war resolution council to figure out who should be in charge with lots of baggage that would arguably prevent them becoming king without vast opposition. The Baratheons are likely to be all dead in legitimate lines that aren't distant cousins. Robin Arryn may not survive and Harry the Heir doesn't exactly look like kingly material from what we've seen if he survives. The Lannisters of any relations have no hope. The Greyjoys fall into the same boat. Edmure is likely to be the only Tully to survive and he's not exactly looked upon well by everyone so he might get pushed aside. The Tyrells have historically struggled to control their own region and they come from a lesser house before the conquest and that assumes Cersei leaves any alive if she has the opportunity to get her way. The Martells might be in an alright position after everything has ended but it's possible Arianne meets an unfortunate end if she gets too closely involved with Aegon and Tyrstane and Doran might not be in an ideal position if backing Aegon ends up getting them badly burnt. King Bran basically requires no Targaryen claimants of any merit to be in positions of power so assume Aegon and Dany kill each other or remove themselves from the game in some dramatic fashion and Jon decides maybe he just wants nothing to do with it and wanders off or his legitimacy (if he has any) is called too much into question to be taken seriously. That leaves the Starks and Bran who have had much more shit done to them than they've been dishing out and Bran himself has spent a good chunk of the civil strife lost or beyond the wall conveniently not making political enemies. The fact he can't walk may only encourage ambitious lords hoping to take advantage of a weak king to support him in hopes of crippling royal authority. I think King Bran in the vacuum of legitimate leadership (possible given the Baratheons look likely to die off completely and the Targaryens I don't think have much better odds and the Martells may end up just as badly and have been diplomatically isolated for almost a generation) has a number of advantages. He has few hardened political enemies who might bare grudges against him and may end up with powerfully allies in a number of regions depending on how the cards fall at the end. His opponents to take the position are largely discredited and he may well have other actions he's done to encourage support. Of course this would all seem to be at odds with Bran's principal character journey of ignoring temporal power in favour of higher spiritual or magical power instead e.g. Bran won't be a knight but he'll learn to fly instead. Of course his victory in the game of thrones could end up being construed as the limitations of physical means of exerting authority as against more esoteric justifications of authority and power. The Lannister faction had all the manpower and gold it could in theory ever need but it hasn't helped them one lick in actually consolidate authority over the Seven kingdoms. The Starks and Bran in particular have very limited or no forms of conventional power yet they may end up triumphing in spite of these supposed limitations.

Actually it does conform to the ideas of justice. Considering whether a criminal would reoffend is something judges should and I believe do consider in sentencing. Janos has committed a crime. If spared death (death being a reasonable punishment which in this case you could argue it is) he will commit further crimes and lead others possibly into committing crimes then enacting a punishment which will protect the innocent (relative term here) from his villainy would be in the spirit of justice. The idea of justice being blind I think means that it shouldn't be who you are that determines what happens to you. Instead it should be how you live your life, how you act and think and what you've done and why that determines how you are punished. Janos slynt is clearly a slime who'll do any horrible deed for his own advancement and has already tried to extrajudicially execute Jon for a crime other more reasonable people have basically taken the view he was innocent of. He had every reason to suspect Slynt would commit further crimes of a worse nature than his initial one and acted accordingly.

I suspect that the Lords of the Crownlands are engaging in part a deliberate policy to diminish their military strength for political gain. Like the in the RIverlands where refusal to grant charters to prospective growing towns to restrict their size the Crownlands seem to have had a similar policy in stifling the formulization of city governance as provided by a formal charter. Given that the Crownlands arguably have the most urbanized population of any region this could have serious consequences. We know Denys Darklyn sought a charter for Duskendale which probably if he'd gotten the one he wanted would have granted him economic advantages to strengthen his trade but would equally have required other less palatable concessions on topics such as self governance (a double edged sword which could have given the Darklyns more or less control over Duskendale) and rights over the organization of a town militia. Such could represent a considerable force of men particularly in a massive city like King's Landing. Yet at the same time an armed force of commoners inside your own city walls right outside your own gates would have given the urban burghers who ran the city considerable leverage over the crown. Such urban militias in the real world represented a considerable force of semi professional infantry of reasonable quality and a valuable force. Clearly the political risks in allowing such an armed force to be organized so close to his castle. In fact their seems to be no evidence of any such urban militia in any of the cities of Westeros suggesting either deliberate policy to restrict the political capacity of urban elements or incomplete world building.

Technically speaking if Tytos' line fails is to reduced to unacceptable candidates it would go to Damion Lannister or his father Damon Lannister (who we don't know if he's alive or not) much more background characters we know nothing at all about. Daven Lannister I suspect would do a good job if the circumstances called for it but he isn't the first in line after the descendants of Tytos he's just much more prominent.

…. you seem to be completely missing the point. Sure in the original timeline they were all alive if not necessarily available (Willem and Martyn were prisoners of Robb) in a scenario where Renly takes King's Landing then Tyrion and Lancel are either dead or prisoners of Renly. This would leave the Westerlands in the hands of women, distant cousins or Freys if Tywin and Kevan die. Your second section seems to be making a completely unrelated point to both the first and the context of the conversation so I'm going to ignore it.

Unless Tyrion and Cersei's plans with Tommen work out and Tommen ends up in the Westerlands. All of that happening is rather unlikely and that leaves Tywin as a directionless rebel with no cause diminishing manpower and resources and extremely limited ability to bring in reinforcements from anywhere given that Renly would control the sea of the Reach by that point. Tywin also has no future to count upon given his only available heir of his name is a two year old girl if him and Kevan kick the bucket. Unless he goes into Genna's brood but two of them are also prisoners including the eldest, one we know nothing about and only the youngest is known to be safe. With Tommen Tywin can present a threat to Renly ideologically and could attempt to swing alliances his way. Without him Tywin is out of friends and doesn't really have a cause to motivate his men. Renly could leave him for a while to see if his forces simply break apart and he can capitalize by accepting Westlander defections. Particularly if he's able to get his hands on some Westermen captives from Robb Stark. The other thing to consider is where Renly's army is. King's Landing. To directly attack Tywin he has to march all the way back through the Reach and then up the ocean road. Both other routes to the Westerlands lead through the Riverlands and Robb Stark would probably feel either compelled or advantageous to harass his flank if Renly tried to march along the Gold Road. But Robb Stark's separatism does represent a threat to Renly's power base. The longer Robb Stark resists Renly the more his ideas of breaking up the Seven Kingdoms would take root. If Renly leaves Robb alone for a year to defeat Tywin (and given the defences Tywin may be able to rely on it could easily take longer) then Robb will have a year to consolidate his state and bed down the ideas of an independent North and Riverlands as well as encouraging the Vale to join them. But after Renly would have taken King's Landing the Northern Kingdom was in shambles. Large swaths of the North were effectively out of his control and he'd lost his lines of communication to the North. A quick strike and some victories could unravel Robb's entire kingdom particularly if the Freys or Boltons decide to defect and a relatively gentle hand could help keep the North in line freeing him up engage the more dug in Lannisters on more favourable terms. On the other hand Tywin can gain advantages by attacking the Northerners in the Riverlands. He can free captives Robb holds helping improve his internal politics and if Renly takes a hard line and Robb suffers defeats encourage defections if it appears the choice is allying with the Lannisters or dying fighting Renly. It's quite reasonable to assume that Tywin has a larger army than Robb does in this situation.

That is exactly right and it would have worked in hindsight with Stannis. But the plan would have been made with Renly in mind who is absolutely hostile to Robb. If it goes perfectly Tywin has a large army in the Westerlands and Renly still has his massive Reach and Stormlander Army in King's Landing. Robb Stark is stuck in the middle of two larger armies both hostile to him. Effectively Robb is the same position at the start of ACOK but the armies on his flanks are larger and all he has gained is Harrenhall and some loot and plunder. His only hope is to assume Renly goes after Tywin and Tywin is able to grind him down enough having lost one of the better opportunities to diminish Renly's forces.

Robb Stark's military plan during ACOK. Most of these plans have some tiny slim prospect of improving the situation of the ones initiating the plans. Robb's plan if everything goes exactly as he was planning puts him in a worse military position than he started. It only had the chance of working in his favour at all because of stuff he likely didn't even consider occurring when he was originally making the plan. It works much better in hindsight than it ever could have in foresight.