Two Times Catelyn Was Wrong on Game of Thrones – With Disastrous Results

First, pretty much everyone still remembers that time when Catelyn said "he's like a little brother to me, Ned. He would never betray my trust" about Littlefinger. Yikes.

Second, she repeated basically the same mistake, trusting Lord Walder to the certain extent and even saying, "I have known Lord Walder since I was a girl. He would never harm me."

And it must be said that the second time was more or less excusable (even though Catelyn's sentiment there pretty much inverts Catelyn's thoughts about general reliability of Lord Frey from the book).

While everyone would have understood Freys had they simply switched sides after Robb broke their deal, the Red Wedding's level of treachery was virtually inconceivable and shocking to everyone in Westeros who was not involved with the plot (a point that the show also had failed to sufficiently emphasize).

After the alternate deal was seemingly accepted, and Robb's retinue was invited into the Twins as guests, a slaughter at the wedding feast was genuinely the last thing to expect.

But as for her chronologically first case of being wrong… well, Catelyn really had no excuses here.

Littlefinger's parting with Catelyn was anything but friendly (never mind brotherly). He was not just Catelyn's childhood friend, he was the guy who cast dark implications upon Catelyn's honor by challenging her arranged fiancé to a duel for her hand, in which he ended up thoroughly trounced and heavily injured.

After that Littlefinger got kicked out of their house as soon as he could survive a voyage to his own small domain in the middle of nowhere. Throughout these events, Catelyn firmly refused to do anything remotely indicating that she's reciprocating his feelings, and after these events they haven't contacted each other for decades.

So, after they've met again, with Littlefinger now managing to worm his way into a position of power by means which could not conceivably be anything but shady, trusting him in any way looks just… stupid. Whether he acted friendly or not – in fact, particularly if he acted friendly and tried to be useful – healthy suspicion should have been her first reaction.

Certainly, Littlefinger got over his teenage issues and his eventual decision to betray Eddard Stark had more to do with him generally being a selfish bastard (as far as we can tell, he genuinely wanted to bet on Starks, rather than Lannisters, at least initially, and only changed his mind upon realizing that Eddard's course of action is unacceptable to him and his ambitions), but Catelyn could not know that!