Baelish's true goal is to become king.
There are 3 large steps he must overcome:
- Becoming King and gaining the kingdoms' loyalties.
- Defeating Daenerys
- Defeating the Night King
- And he can absolutely do all 3.
Becoming King of the Seven Kingdoms
Let's assume in this hypothetical timeline that Baelish is a bit more charismatic, manipulative, influential, and knowledgeable within reasonable means.
The first step is to take over the Vale like in the show. Let's assume this timeline's Baelish accomplishes the things that happened in the show before Cersei blows up the Tyrells and takes over as queen and before Daenerys lands on Dragonstone:
- Gained control of the Vale by marrying and killing Lysa Arryn. Let's assume he gains the lords of the Vale's trust through Sansa's cooperation as well like in the show.
- Got in contact with Dorne and the Tyrells about allying together.
The Vale has about 40-50k soldiers based on internet searches. He can send half to King's Landing and half to the North along with Sansa. He can rally the northern houses using Jon and Sansa plus 20k Vale troops to take back Winterfell and defeat the Boltons. This will ensure a positive relationship with the North and Jon/Sansa's loyalty (for now).
The other 20k troops will march with Dorne's and Tyrell's armies to King's Landing. Ellaria and the Sand Snakes want revenge on the Lannisters and Olenna Tyrell wants Margaery freed from the Sparrow's grasps.
Using the 3 armies, they will storm King's Landing and kill all the sparrows while also killing Tommen and Cersei while staging it as the Sparrows' fault. They can secure Margaery's safety by hiding her somewhere or smuggling her out of King's Landing. This is very reasonable considering how intelligent and capable Margaery and Olenna are.
Once all is said and done, Baelish will now marry Margaery and have secured Dorne as allies.
Why would the Tyrells marry Baelish you ask?
All the Tyrells want is the furtherance of their house. They do it by playing the figurative game of thrones (armies, gold, marriages, allyships, etc). Baelish being king doesn't interfere with the Tyrell's goals at all as long as Baelish proves himself a competent and cooperative king. In this timeline, Baelish can reasonably convince the Tyrells to marry him into royalty. He isn't of noble birth but that can easily be overridden with the combined pressure and resources of the Reach, Dorne, and Vale. As Olenna says, "the lords of Westeros are sheep".
Kevan and Jamie Lannister are devastated at the deaths of Cersei and Tommen and are likely suspicious of Baelish but have no concrete evidence nor enough power to do anything about it. Neither Kevin nor Jamie is as competent as Tywin Lannister so they don't have the enormous pressure they once had when Tywin was alive. They also have to figure how to deal with their empty gold mines.
Ultimately, the Lannisters have no choice but to acquiesce the throne and maintain a friendly relationship with the other kingdoms while dealing with their internal affairs.
Baelish is now:
- Lord Protector of the Vale
- Married to the Tyrells
- Allies with Dorne by helping them get their revenge
- Friends to the North and Sansa/Jon, the last living Starks.
- On alright terms with the Lannisters
He is now effectively King of Westeros. Now there's just the question of the elephant in the room.
How the fuck is he going to deal with Daenerys and her 100,000 Dothraki, 8,000 Unsullied, and 3 grown dragons?
Defeating Daenerys Targaryen
The solution is guerilla tactics. Daenerys has 2 options. Burn everything down or play the game of thrones like Tyrion advises in the show. Around this time, Daenerys is not yet mad with rage. She will eventually become the Mad Queen like at the end of the show, but not yet, so she won't burn cities.
I believe her most reasonable and likely option is to go from kingdom to kingdom and force them to bend the knee or burn.
(Let's assume that she allied with the Greyjoys like in the show whether its Yara or Euron. She will be able to transport her army to Westeros using the Iron Fleet but lets not pretend like Euron can pull off whatever plot armor bullshit he did in Season 8. At best, the Iron Islands are providing transportation).
Here's what Baelish will do:
He and Margaery will vacate somewhere else. A small town perhaps. Just anywhere that Daenerys can't easily find. He will order his most loyal and tight-lipped men to spread across the entirety of the 7 Kingdoms with crossbows and orders to assassinate Daenerys.
To quote Jorah: "It only takes one angry man and a well placed bolt to become the hero".
There is no stopping Daenerys if she chooses to go to one of the Kingdoms or King's Landing itself. The kingdoms and cities will have no choice to surrender to her but there are still numerous assassins ready to kill her no matter where she goes.
It will seem as if Baelish and Margaery fled the scene in fear of being executed by Daenerys. The armies of each kingdoms will stay their hand but discreetly remain mobilized and ready for battle. If they pledge to Daenerys, she won't execute them.
Eventually Daenerys will start settling down in King's Landing to start ruling. She'll attend council meetings and travel the kingdoms. She'll meet with the common folk and hold festivals and feasts. There will eventually be an opportunity for one of Baelish's assassins to do the deed.
Before I discuss what happens after with the Dragons, Dothraki, and Unsullied, I will say that this part requires luck and skill on Baelish's part that borders on unreasonable. Varys is the greatest spymaster in all of Westeros since Bloodraven and based on what Varys is capable of in the show, he ABSOLUTELY would be able to find out about the assassination plans, or at the least be heavily suspicious of it.
Maybe Baelish could hunt down and kill all of Varys's birds or convert them to his own side like Qyburn did. It's technically possible but highly unreasonable. Still, I think this is the best way to defeat Daenerys.
Aftermath of Daenerys' Death
First are the dragons. Let's look at Drogon's behavior in the show. Drogon only burned the Iron Throne but the more likely event is that all 3 dragons will go on a rageful rampage and burn everything around them. But eventually, they'll just go on living like normal. Before returning to Daenerys, Drogon roamed and lived like any wild dragon would. Its highly likely that all 3 dragons will find somewhere to roost and live out their lives, likely in Old Valyria.
They'll cause a lot of damage at first and over time, but its better than having a live dragonrider direct their destructive capabilities towards kingdoms and cities.
As for the Dothraki and Unsullied, the combined force of 6 Kingdoms will no doubt defeat them just fine. All kingdoms working together have collectively more men, weapons, bows and arrows, organization, discipline, and resources. Not to mention plenty of food from The Reach. Blood will flow but it will end in victory for the Seven Kingdoms. Then all Margaery and Baelish has to do is return back to King's Landing once the fighting is over.
It won't be a pyrrhic victory either. The Unsullied are only 8,000 strong. 100,000 Dothraki are numerous but are completely useless against castle walls. They will scatter and fight amongst themselves for the position of Khal now that Daenerys is dead so they will be incapable of smart tactics and moving as a single unit devastating anywhere that's not a castle. Eventually they will fragment into different Khalasars and be defeated over time.
The people will might call Baelish and Margaery cowards for going into hiding but it won't matter. The real leaders like heads of each house and their army commanders know Baelish's true plans. He's been the mastermind all along and they have no good reason to defy his orders and ally with Daenerys who has proven to be volatile, angry, and far too dangerous. Daenerys also demands absolute loyalty and 0 compromise and has the firepower to threaten. Many of the lords don't want that.
Defeating the Night King
Guys. We don't need plot armor Arya Stark or dragons to defeat the Night King. In this timeline, the Night King never got his hands on Rhaegal. There's a massive ice wall in between the army of the dead and miles of Night's Watch's infrastructure. All Baelish has to do is man the walls with thousands of men and consult the books for how to defeat the white walkers.
There is absolutely no way the Night King is making it past the wall even with 120,000~ wights. Just look at what happened when Mance Rayder's army tried. The real fighting during that episode occurred between the wildlings who climbed over the wall before the invasion started.
- Flood and fill in the gates
- Man the walls
- Allocate resources
- Consult the books
- and even hundreds of thousands of tireless wights is NOT making it up that wall. Even if a few do, the combined manpower of 6 Kingdoms (lol the Greyjoys) is plenty enough to fight back. Not to mention they have Bran's help for easy intelligence on what the Night King is doing.
The Night King is left two options then.
- Use the entirety of his army and fail to get over the wall.
- Save his wights and bide his time.
Either way, its a loss or a stalemate for the Night King. There's barely any dead bodies left to increase the size of his army North of the wall and the more time he bides, the more time Baelish gets to increase the Night's Watch's defenses. There will likely be enough of a difference given a few hundred or thousand years, but Baelish will be dead by then so who cares?
Leftover Opposition?
- Bran knows the truth about what Baelish did to instigate the War of the Five Kings. He will probably tell Jon and Sansa.
- Euron is still gallivanting the seas.
- The three dragons are still roaming about causing chaos wherever they go.
- Even if Bran, Sansa, and Jon knew what happened...so what? To the North, Baelish is the one who responded accordingly to the Night King threat. He is deserving of respect as a fairly well respected King. Even in the best case scenario where they manage to rally the entire North again, what the hell can they even do?
- The death of Ned Stark united the North into a 20,000 strong army. That's about as strong as the North can get. That will do nothing to the rest of the five kingdoms.
The Vale won't betray Baelish either. At this point, Baelish will have raised and groomed Robin Arryn into his loyal son and the lords of the Vale are loyal to Robin. Also, Baelish never sold Sansa to the Boltons in this timeline so Lord Royce never had reason to oppose Baelish.
The rebelling Greyjoys are an annoyance. Nothing more.
Its true that the dragons could destroy everything if they wanted, but based on their behavior in House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones, they much prefer large open wild areas compared to empty and human-packed areas. It is highly, highly unlikely they will come close to major cities.
Baelish will have plenty of time to design giant ballista and other preventative measures. They aren't 100% effective but they'll provide a reasonable amount of safety. The ballista can be mass produced across the kingdoms to protect against the dragons.
Small towns might be devastated and certain areas might be uninhabitable due to a nearby dragon, but ultimately, they're not reign ending.
Once the kingdoms recover their strength from the last few years of war, they could also reasonably use resources to slay the dragons out of fear.
And there we go. Baelish wins. Anything I missed or didn't make sense?