I've completed the Stormcloak quest line (as well as Blood on the Ice) and this morning I spoke to Ulfric, who offered me the position of Thane under two conditions. The first I had already met (helping 5 citizens of Windhelm) and the second I met promptly by purchasing Hjerim. I was named Thane and I went ahead and upgraded my furniture before visiting the home, only to discover that a particular situation within the home had not been taken care of. A bug prevented me from having it dealt with after upgrading my furniture, so I had to reload to follow the proper steps.

This time I didn't speak to Ulfric, but instead I bought the house, visited the house, then returned to the steward to buy the upgrades. My problem was solved and the situation inside my home was taken care of.

However.. Now when I speak to Ulfric, I'm not given the dialogue option that begins/completes the "Thane of Eastmarch" quest. I was excited that the previous situation was resolved and I've already written over my earlier save, so reloading isn't an option. I've googled the crap out of my issue and I can't find any reports of this particular bug. I've tried resetting and re-completing both "Blood on the Ice" and "Liberation of Skyrim" in hopes that I'd be given the option to become thane, but to no avail.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can correct this? Is there a console command that will set me as the thane of Windhelm and place the housecarl in my home?

If it makes any difference, one thing I did differently before I bought the house the second time was I exploited the console and I used "coc WindhelmPalaceoftheKings" to quickly move 2,000 lbs. of equipment from my previous house to Windhelm.

Yeah, hang on, let me look it up. THere's a similar bug for the Riften quest.

Try typing this in the console:

setstage Favor254 200