Well I decided to go with Stormcloaks on my play through and found myself in an odd position. Of course, I am the Thane of Whiterun and I own a house there. Now I have to storm my own city. Well before I did that, I wanted to finish the quest with the Greybeards. The Horn was stolen from the tomb, so I had to go to Riverwood, meet Delphine, then go kill the dragon at Kynesgrove. All well and good. So I go to start the Battle for Whiterun quest only to find that I have to report back to Ulfric for some reason. Turns out I waited too long, I guess, to do this quest. He said that he is disappointed that I "ran away from the battle". That's funny, I hadn't even shown up to start the battle!

The coolest thing to me about quests in TES series is that they could be done when you wanted to do them, without a time limit. Turns out this one is pretty important and I completely miss the chance to see how the battle plays out. This really svcks.

Did this happen to anyone else?

Wow I didn't know you could fail this quest. That's kind of awesome.

Oh, and what's more, he says that the Stormcloaks managed to take Whiterun. Well, I tried fast-travel there and I get greeted by a bunch of Imperials inside. Hi Stormcloaks! er... wait.

Sounds like something is broken. That's what you get for lollygagging! My nephew is taking his time in the siege of Solitutude. They appear to be waiting for him to join the attack.

When you traveled to Riverwood did you pass near Whiterun by any chance? If you got close enough to the city it's possible that you might have triggered the beginning of the seige by accident.

I image that is what happens if you show up for the battle but run away instead. You might have traveled too close to Whiterun and the AI picked you up and assumed you were there for the battle.

Could be possible, I had to run out of Riverwood. Just svcks!

Start a new game?

Yeah , positionally you would have ran down that road right by the meadery , which probably triggered the event.Fast travel isn't just poofing you from town to town, it's adding time so it's basically using the route your follower or NPC would take to get from point A to point B , no shortcuts. Have you went to Dragonreach itself to see if the original Jarl is still just standing there? If he is and he's still wearing armor you've never seen him in , he could possibly re-trigger the event or bug worse , I'd make sure you have a save point or 15 just to be safe or just go back anyway. Those imperials should be tagged as soldiers instead of guards , if they're tagged as guards , I'd definitely think about restarting to an earlier save , that sounds realllyyyy bad.

P.S. - I figured out how Delphine stole your horn , she used the wooden bowl exploit at the back door! I will be applying for a detective job shortly.

And I thought I waited a long time to start the attack.

I re-entered after a while to find that the Imperials have been replaced with Stormcloaks. I haven't entered Dragonreach yet. I hope I don't break the game. Anyway, the quest like was advanced to Falkreath Hold. In that aspect, everything has seemed to catch up to itself. The last test is going inside Dragonreach.

Ok well it looks like everything fixed itself. Vignr is Jarl now in Whiterun, so the integrity of my game is saved. Just be careful, let this serve as a warning to all!