Moreover, empire/storm cloak negotiations affect their spawning as they reappear for the quest "Compelling Tribute," and if the relevant hold has been traded in negotiation, then the quest will not occur, and the npc may not respawn.
I know it is old and everything but i chose to follow Ralof at helgen but joined the imperial legion and fought alongside hardvar so.............
You know how in unbound like not even halfway in to it before the potion room you see people crushed by debris?...that's the other person you didn't follow, if you take hadvar...Ralof is crushed and vice versa,but if you then join the opposite team in the war eg: hadvar but join stormcloaks it's a bug in the game that randomly triggers in some runs where it forgets who you escaped with and loads in both
I did a closer look at the people you mention, looking at them as close as i can without causing the ceiling to collapse, and i noticed that, no matter if i followed Hadvar or Ralof, the silhouettes under that section of roof are always in stormcloak armor.
Idk about vanilla but with Alternate Starts it doesn’t seem to work very well... I purposely saved Hadvar, this Ralof “dies” but then chose Stormbois and low and behold, “I killed more than you; I was counting,” LotR knockoff Ralof is there.
I guess if anyone is on PC and curious you can just type:
player.moveto 0002BFA2
player.moveto 0002BF9E
The first command will teleport you to Hadvar's location, and the second one to Ralof.
For those that want to know, I used the moveto command to find Hadvar position, and it takes you to just inside Helgen keep where Hadvar would have cut your binds had you followed him. Hadvar is nowhere to be seen, however. His form ID still exists in the game, but his character is gone from existance. Alduin probably ate him.
In my case, and I caught it on recording, I had sided with Hadvar, then made a hard save in the event I wanted to see both sides of the war. I was able to do the Imperial's side with no problem, but the minute I tried doing the Stormcloaks, Ralof just kinda came back?? I was super confused. Couldn't complete the attack on Whiterun though. It literally had the objective "Force Jarl [...] to surrender" and Ralof was just following me around like a lost puppy.