Sorry pru, I missed this earlier but thanks to bleachy I've finally figured out how to find the notifications I accidentally wipe!
I really think both of those events sent the HMs into a tailspin and the first one (Tim putting himself up and Caleb being 'shock' evicted) started it. They had assumed that 1. Caleb was a potential winner when no one on the outside thought that and 2. Tim would be punished by the public by being arrogant enough to put himself up. When instead it gained him the largest save % he had throughout the entire season. He more than doubled Jade who got the second highest % of votes and that was up against 5 other HMs which means that one move gained him a slew of fans. I'm sure more than one of the HMs kicked themselves when they got out of the house and saw the numbers. So then they tried their ridiculous war and their crew started to get picked off one by one, with Tim being on the bench when Ben went home. I do think Tim manipulated things but because he was open about it, someone like me could only just sit back and laugh/admire the guts of this guy. I haven't seen anything like that before on BB. At least not someone who managed to do it in a way that still made you find humour and sometimes compassion in his behaviour.
I'm obviously happy he won - if for nothing else than I don't remember any other winner sharing a portion of their prize with fellow HMs/gifting them with trips and I think he earned it. But I also don't blame the others for their actions. Not even Ed. He didn't have a lot of support to begin with - and we could see he was shocked by that when he was evicted over Jade - but he was there to play the game and try to win. Although I didn't agree with his hypocrisy, his best bet to stay alive was to keep Tim off that bench while he was on it and he did that by sacrificing Jade. *Of course in my dream scenario Jade walked out of the house and told Ed to piss off but c'est la vie.