Who would have Ned Stark chosen to be Lord of Queenscrown and of the lands of the New Gift? And to whom would that lord swear fealty?

[Universal Sword Donor]

On 10/28/2020 at 6:06 AM, The hairy bear said:

It depends on how you look at it. There was a period between 170 and 220 when the North was really unstable and there were many lords in quick succession. But in the immediate past before Ned's ascension, between 226 and 282, there had been only two lords (Edwyle and Rickard) averaging 28 years of rule each.

Ned could easily expect to rule even more time than that, given that he lived in a peaceful time and he was only 18 when his father was killed.

Beyond that, even in the 14 years that Ned was LP, he was fighting in two separate wars and we don't know how long the summers were after RR and before the GR. That said, 9ish years of summer is a long time. There were plenty of noblemen who would likely have jumped at the opportunity to have large chunks of land (younger Tallharts, cadet Karstark men, possibly even the younger Manderly) in addition to the options on hand in Jon / Bran / Rickon.

[Azarial]

On 10/27/2020 at 7:15 PM, Bernie Mac said:

Only 14 years?

How long do you think his father Rickard was Lord for? Or the average length of rule for the last 10 Lords of Winterfell.

14 years is a pretty long time to rule. Between the year of 200-300 there will have been 7-9 Lords of Winterfell. 14 years is not a short time.

But the issue that was stated in the text was that summer had lasted so long that they knew winter would be coming, and no one would want the lands with winter approaching. It's a 9 year summer,  and if this plan was thought of prior to summer waiting for spring wouldn't be stated as the reason they waited. That means this plan was thought of in summer, and likely not in the first year of summer either. That places us at 5-6 into his rule at a minimum. Then it has to be long enough for Jon to be old enough to understand that he could have been one of those lords. He didn't even realize he couldn't rule Winterfell until he was sparing with Rob, as we're shown in Dance. We see that Bran is just learning how to spar when he is seven, and not at the level Jon and Rob were shown to be at in that memory, so likely they were at least a few years older so 9 years old if not older. That is only 5 years before the start of the story, and would be 4 years into the summer. Them believing a 4 year (or more) long summer must be near it's end and choosing to wait for spring to establish new holdfasts that would need time to build/repair structures and create food stores isn't unreasonable. How long Lords rule for on average doesn't change the logistics of setting up new lesser houses, and the concerns over winter approaching. It's not like they can just build a house in a year and run to the store to buy food. Only a poor leader wouldn't think about logistics and the fact that most summers are much shorter than this one freakishly long one. Something he had no way of knowing in advance, and it's stated that he was waiting for spring. 

Rickard was executed, I don't think he was concerned about that happening to him prior to the current story, he was wrong not to worry as we all know but he never feared for his life or safety until Cat placed those fears in him. We're shown this pretty clearly. So he wouldn't rush this and place the new lords and their bannermen's lives at risk from being unprepared for winter, especially knowing that longer summers mean longer winters, over some fear of him dying young. I just don't see any indication in the text that this was a concern of his.