Help! I've recently started playing Skyrim again, and have been making lots of progress, until I got tripped up by an apparent quest conflict.

The good thing is that I have a saved game BEFORE the roundtable with Arngeir, Ulfric, and Tullius. So I can still go and alter my choices.

The bad thing is that no matter what choices I make, I can't seem to progress in the Reunification of Skyrim (or "civil war") quest.

I'm at the stage of Season Unending where I have gotten both Tullius and Ulfric to agree to attend the council. Tullius is no longer present in Solitude, because he is at High Hrothgar waiting for me to go and trigger the council to begin. Likewise, Legate Rikke (who seems to be the crux of this entire problem) is no longer present at the Rift Imperial Camp, because she too is waiting at High Hrothgar for me to go and trigger the council to begin. Two other legates are in the places where these two important NPCs would normally be.

I'm at the stage of Reunification of Skyrim where my next directive is to "Regain the Rift." This is normally done by speaking to Legate Rikke at the Rift Imperial Camp and triggering another quest, Compelling Tribute, to begin.

If I choose to give the Rift to the Stormcloaks, then the Rift Imperial Camp literally disappears off the map and I'm not sure where Legate Rikke goes at this point.

If I choose to give Markarth to the Stormcloaks, then Legate Rikke remains in the Rift Imperial Camp but she does not have any dialogue options to trigger any of the quests to progress. I've read about various supposed workarounds for this, such as attacking Rikke, using the cooking spits in the camp, etc., but I have had no success with any of that so far.

So I seem to be stuck, and I'm rather disappointed with that. Has anyone had any success with finishing Reunification of Skyrim AFTER completing the Season Unending council? Is there a workaround? If I had any idea it would cause this kind of conflict I would have put off that quest until later, or at least kept earlier save games.

I know there are some Skyrim experts out there. Please advise! Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Season_Unending

So, finish the Main Quest and you should be able to restart the Civil War once the events at the end of the MQ are complete.

The civil war quest requires you to have talked with the Yarl of Whiterun. Once you do that and become thane, then you can progress.