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

7. Catelyn Stays At Winterfell

While Season 1 sees Ned absent from Winterfell, things aren't going so well for his wife and sons in the North where Robb acts as lord over a diminished household. When Catelyn is attacked by a man armed with a Valyrian steel blade aiming to murder the comatose Bran, however, she takes things into her own hands. Believing that word of the assault should not be entrusted to any raven or common courier, Catelyn decides that she will travel to King's Landing to tell Ned what has happened. Her reasoning as to why Robb - a healthy young man trained in the arts of war - must remain in Winterfell falls in line with the oft-touted sentiment that there "must always be a Stark in Winterfell," overlooking young Rickon as an alternative. And Bran wasn't actually dead. And why did it have to be Catelyn? Even if she would not permit Robb to travel south and would not entrust such a task to Theon Greyjoy, why could she not have just sent someone else? Ned did not take all of the trustworthy men to King's Landing, and Catelyn happily accepts Ser Rodrik as an escort. Had she just sent him on his own, Catelyn never would have had occasion to instruct Ned to trust Littlefinger, and she never would have kidnapped Tyrion Lannister, thus in turn preventing the death of Jory as well as the injury that would cripple Ned and leave him in either agony or a drug-addled haze for the rest of his life. Granted, the "rest of his life" amounted to about four days, but the point remains: Westeros as a whole would have been far better off if Catelyn had just remained in Winterfell with her sons.