I would imagine make very sure that Margaery had a posthumous pregnancy, so that they could prosper during a long regency of a Baratheon/Tyrell infant monarch.

So one of the more interesting readings I did in one of the most boring classes I took as an undergraduate (which was more the fault of the lecturer than the subject matter) was on medieval demographics, which show non-random patterns of both the spacing of offspring and the patterns of gender. In other words, families would delay having a child if they couldn’t afford to have them (especially given the already high rates of infant mortality at the best of times) and they would vary the number of boys and girls to meet the household’s needs for labor and potential liabilities when it came to inheritance and succession. Which is kind of mind-blowing if you had the mindset that medieval Europeans were all devout and dutiful Catholics adhering to strict doctrine. 

Whether people were using herbal abortificiants or contraceptives or the pull-out method or infanticide, or to be more accurate what mix of these they were using, is a matter of scholarly debate. 

I don’t think Renly was waiting. Rather he seems to have been moving carefully but consistently throughout 298 AC, and just didn’t forsee that Robert was going to drop dead at an early age. 

I don’t have the sense that Renly started earlier than the others, in part because Renly’s really young (only 21 when AGOT begins in 298 AC) to start with, which means that he wasn’t in the game yet when Edric was born in 287 AC (being only 10 years old), or when Tommen was born in 291 (14 years old). 

I think we saw his contingency with A. the attempted coup, and B. his marriage to Margaery. 

turtle-paced:

Margaery’s age, at first – she’s sixteen for the bulk of ASoS, at least, meaning that she was quite possibly fourteen in the earliest parts of AGoT. The idea to marry her to Robert was probably floated when she was fourteen-fifteen. Don’t forget, either, that Renly’s twenty-one in AGoT and Loras sixteen. Neither of them are hugely experienced schemers.

And yes, the political situation did stall things. Jon Arryn’s death is not only a political event, but a personal matter for Robert; shoving Margaery at him when he’s trying to actually grieve for someone might come across a bit tacky and put Robert off. Likewise, interrupting Robert’s “I got my BFF back!” high might also go poorly. The royal progress to Winterfell and the Tourney of the Hand are both disruptive to court business as normal. Ned himself had to be factored in in terms of replacing Cersei. Then the Stark-Lannister feud kicked into a higher gear.

Until Renly had the marriage to Margaery ready to go, right then, Robert’s cooperation guaranteed, he didn’t have the pieces he needed. There wasn’t a great window for him to bring a sufficiently grown-up Margaery to court in AGoT, and so the plan ended up not happening.

I got the same ask, so I figured I’d add my contribution to the conversation here rather than having two threads as it were. 

I don’t think Renly was “waiting,” per se. He was, in fact, carefully moving his plan into place:

• Already in Bran II of AGOT, we see Cersei naming Renly as one of her “ambitious” enemies, and saying “my husband grows more restless every day. Having Stark beside him will only make him worse. He’s still in love with the sister, the insipid little dead sixteen-year-old. How long till he decides to put me aside for some new Lyanna?”
• Then not long after Renly shows up in person, we see in Eddard VI him approaching Ned about Margaery: “Ned was not sure what to make of Renly, with all his friendly ways and easy smiles. A few days past, he had taken Ned aside to show him an exquisite rose gold locklet. Inside was a miniature painted in the vivid Myrish style, of a lovely young girl with doe’s eyes and a cascade of soft brown hair. Renly had seemed anxious to know if the girl reminded him of anyone, and when Ned had no answer but a shrug, he had seemed disappointed. The maid was Loras Tyrell’s sister Margaery, he’d confessed, but there were those who said she looked like Lyanna.” Clearly he’s trying to sound out Eddard about whether he can pitch Margaery as Lyanna come again as a hook for Robert’s interest.
• In the very next Eddard chapter, we see that Renly had been talking to Robert about Margaery as well, and that Robert is receptive: “Have you seen Mace Tyrell’s boy? The Knight of Flowers, they call him. Now there’s a son any man would be proud to own to. Last tourney, he dumped the Kingslayer on his golden rump, you ought to have seen the look on Cersei’s face. I laughed till my sides hurt. Renly says he has this sister, a maid of fourteen, lovely as a dawn …"
• Right after that, we see in Arya III that Renly has taken action to get Margaery to court, to put his plan into action: “The Knight of Flowers writes Highgarden, urging his lord father to send his sister to court. The girl is a maid of fourteen, sweet and beautiful and tractable, and Lord Renly and Ser Loras intend that Robert should bed her, wed her, and make a new queen.”

But then a series of events take place that radically alter Renly’s plan: Robert and Ned quarrel over the assassination of Daenerys so Eddard resigns and is then attacked by Jaime; a week later, Eddard is reappointed and Robert goes off on his fatal hunting trip. 

These unexpected events meant that Renly ran out of time to bring Margaery to court and seduce Robert, so he shifts to trying to get Ned to mount an anti-Lannister coup, and then when that doesn’t work hightails it out of King’s Landing and goes for plan B instead.

But you could easily see things going another way – if Robert is a bit luckier in his duel with the boar and survives yet another sloppy assassination attempt, Margaery arrives at court just as Robert’s relations with the Lannisters reach the breaking point thanks to Jaime’s actions in King’s Landing and Tywin’s actions in the Riverlands, Renly springs Margaery on him at the opportune moment, and we’re off to the races. 

RFTIT Tumblr Weeklyish Roundup, Part II

Hey folks! With logistics for my book event out of the way, I can now spend a bit more time writing. And in an attempt to motivate myself out of my block on Druon Part II, I’ve decided to try my hand at an honest-to-gods fanfic, a short one-shot describing the Hour of the Wolf from the POV of Grand Maester Munkun. So look for that in a bit.

In the mean-time, let’s burn off the last of the Tumblr…

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I don’t think the plan is that far-fetched necessarily; after all, it worked in the real world with Anne Boleyn (and Jane Seymour) even without the added sting of adultery in the former. 

Certainly, there was a danger that Robert would set her aside as he did Delena Florent, but I think there were some factors working to mitigate that:

1. Margaery was not merely highborn but a lady of a Great House, and royals dishonoring Great Houses can lead to outright rebellions so setting her aside has more downside risk than with Delena. Robert might be fickle but he’s also conflict-averse. 
2. When Robert set Delena aside, he already had a male heir with Cersei. There was no need to legitimize a bastard through marriage to the mother in order to procure legitimate offspring. If Joffrey et al. are disinherited, all of the sudden Robert really needs a male heir in a hurry. 
3. The correct timing of the reveal would make Robert more likely to cleave to Margaery than set her aside: having his queen commit adultery with her brother is not only an act of treason but a huge loss of face for Robert as a virile macho king figure; here’s Margaery to consolingly tell him that he’s definitely all man in the sack (she can’t get enough, really), that the evil queen only did what she did because Lannisters are all evil and crazy, and Margaery’s love is true and pure and the proof of it is that she’s pregnant (which proves how virile he is) and of course as noble a king as Robert would never dishonor her instead of marrying her, and of course when he does daddy will step up and pay the bills just like the mean old Tywin used to do, and brave ser Loras who’s been like a son to him will help you crush the treasonous Lannisters like the manly man warrior he still is. 

So to answer the original question:

• Batman would identify with Arya because he is Arya.
• Wonder Woman I think would identify with Catelyn, Brienne, and Sansa and would be very disappointed in a lot of the fandom.
• Aquaman…maybe Stannis, because of the responsibilities of kingship and the naval connection. 
• Hal Jordan is definitely a Jaime fan – arrogance mixed with ability. 
• I think Martian Manhunter would probably feel some kinship with Bran Stark or Brynden Rivers.
• Barry Allen…probably Ned Stark? He’s a hard one. 

I haven’t read a ton of Justice League, but in order to answer this I need to know what the JL lineup would be.