Game Of Thrones: 10 Stupidly Easy Decisions That Would've Solved Everything

10. Rhaegar Does Not Take Lyanna

There are a lot of events in the Game of Thrones universe that can be blamed for the advent of the War of the Five Kings. With all of the plotting and backstabbing at work behind the scenes of just about every front, it's impossible to cast blame at any one incident. Nevertheless, there is a particular fiasco without which Westeros would not have found itself in its current state of disarray, and it happened many years before the show even began: Rhaegar Targaryen's kidnapping of Lyanna Stark. On a show slightly less layered than Game of Thrones, it would be ludicrous for an incident that occurred many years prior and featuring a cast of characters who all happen to be dead to play a pivotal role in ongoing events. Rhaegar and Lyanna have been mentioned only in passing, and the sole account of what transpired between them came via Bran in Season 1 as he gives a tour of the Winterfell crypts. "That's Lyanna, my father's sister," Bran tells Osha of a particular statue. "King Robert was supposed to marry her, but Rhaegar Targaryen kidnapped her. Robert started a war to win her back, but she died anyway." Over the years, fans of the books and show alike have formulated plenty of theories about what happened between Rhaegar and Lyanna and whether the kidnapping was even a kidnapping. The one indisputable truth that remains is that Prince Rhaegar disappeared with young Lyanna, setting off a series of events that would result in the deaths of each, a civil war, the near-annihilation of the Targaryen dynasty, the exile of Viserys and Daenerys, the slaughter of Elia Martell and her children, Jaime Lannister earning himself a nickname, and Ned Stark returning home from conquest with a bastard baby boy. Way to go, Rhaegar.