I'm just curious if I've screwed myself out of that home (on this character, being my "main" if you will).

See, in the beginning I wasn't too concerned about buying other homes. As soon as I picked up Breezehome in Whiterun I was more than content. I felt comfortable in the area, not only because I like the city-scape but also because it's conveniently close to the smiths and shops. No armory but at the time I wasn't concerned about it.

Since then I've played 200 some odd hours, been a rauaging werewolf, played the crap out of the brotherhood assassin quests. I've created a lot of havoc and killed a lot of npcs. I have also unwittingly triggered a lot of quests along the way, possibly more than I'll ever remember, not realizing that I needed to jump on them then and there.

So, my question to everyone is: If I have already triggered the beginning of the murder quest that will eventually allow me to purchase the home in Windhelm, when everyone gathers in the cemetary, and did nothing about it....am I screwed?

I can't remember specifically what has or hasn't happened, since it all happened so quickly and so long ago. But it seems to me that this may be my issue. Now that my game play has evolved and I'm more informed, I've tried and tried to fulfill the prereq's for triggering that questline so I can buy the house; but to no avail.

What do you all think?

Have you tried breaking into the house? I heard it starts the next part of the quest.

If they are no longer in the cemetry, and you haven't started any part of the quest you are probably screwed. But like mentioned above you can try jumpstarting the quest by breaking into the house.

I'm always afriad of breaking this quest so I always do this quest as soon as I enter the city.

As stated above, you can break into the home to trigger the second half of the quest and go from there. The entire questline is bugged and broken, so much so that if you [censored] it up you need to break the quest even more to get it to go to the next step.