What would have happened. His marrying her was strongly discouraged by the Prophets. Would Sisko have lived rather than joined the Prophets indefinitely? Interesting though that in "What You Leave Behind" "Sarah" tells him that he HAS walked the path the Prophets laid out for him. This is sort of confusing to me. What do you think? SPIN
No. The warning from the prophets was an artifact from the earlier intention that Sisko's separation from the real, physical world would have been more definitive. He would be dead, never to return. The sorrow would be that his wife and yet-to-be-born child would be without him. However, Brooks asked for revisions to the farewell scene in WYLB after it had already been shot. The new dialog made Sisko's separation indeterminate, if not temporary.
^How does that work? "If you do, (spend his life with Kasidy) you will know nothing but sorrow." How can Ben experience nothing but sorrow if he was dead? The way I saw it was that if Ben spent his life with Kasidy (ie: Chosen her over the Prophets at all turns), it means he would not have confronted Dukat in the fire caves, and all events after that would cause sorrow for Ben. (The fall of Bajor?)
Because "spend my life with her" is being used as a metaphor for marriage, here and throughout Sisko's conversation with Sarah. The subject of the conversation is marriage. It's not like he was going to say,"what if we maintained separate residences?," and Sarah would have been ok with that. In the end,he did spend the remained of his life (as far as we know) with Cassidy, and he still confronted Dukat.
I thought the Prophets had always planned or knew that Sisko was destined to meet his end in the Fire Caves and were trying to dissuade him from marrying Kasidy so he wouldn't have loved ones to be separated from or something. I always thought it was some kinda "If you go to Z'ha'dum you will die" kind of prophecy with multiple meanings. Sisko thought they were being jerks but they were really trying to spare him from sorrow.
As far as this reasoning goes, how does not marrying Kasidy create a situation where he doesn't have loved ones who will miss him? Of course Jake and Kasidy will still be such people to him, regardless of whether he and Kasidy were formally married. SPIN
At this point, you would be arguing more about the effectiveness of what the writers did. Arguably, Sisko marrying Yates brings them closer together, emotionally and physically, which increases the chances of conception. The sorrow that Echeverria ultimately envisioned was one that had to do primarily with Sisko and the unborn child.
Actually after my last post I thought about the idea that him marrying Kasidy makes it more likely that they'd have a child, which of course is (and was) a significant loss, in addition to Jake and Kasidy.
Sisko would likely have forgotten to get his injection regardless of whether he was married or not, so Kasidy would still have got pregnant.