Hello, you mention in your ask about Renly's manipulative cruelty that Mace Tyrell is actually shrewder than he appears. What makes you say that? Does that imply that Olenna's description of him as an oaf is an act put up for Sansa? Do you think he had a conscious part in the Purple Wedding?
Hiya! I’m so sorry this is so long in coming; a bunch of people asked on this topic, so I wanted to put something full-length together.
When people talk about The Quotes from ASOIAF,the ones that are basically GRRM dropping the veil and telling us how he thinksand feels about his subject matter, there’s this one from Varys that comes up alot:
“Power resides where men believe itresides.”
And there’s a lot of political and Plato’s-cavetruth to that. But there’s an equally relevant and powerful flipside to thistrope: the power that can be achieved by deflecting attention, by appearingunimportant, shallow, secondary, a figurehead. In short, the tremendous upsideto be exploited in being constantly underestimated.
For me, no character exemplifies this tropebetter than Mace Tyrell, that pompous, overwrought boob…who is currentlyserving as the Hand of the King, which is exactly what he has beentrying to accomplish the entire time. Mace commands by far the largest armiesin Westeros, and has acted at every turn to preserve them, committing to battleonly at the Blackwater, where he was bolstered by Tywin’s forces and needed toprove his loyalty to the new regime, as Tywin had bound himself toRobert in that very city. Where Tywin begins the war by rampaging around the Riverlands to work through his shame about Tyrion’s kidnapping (until Robb turns up and promptly makes him look like an idiot, so then that much more shame to slaughter civilians over), and Stannis begins the war by painstakingly preparing alist of reasons why his life sucks and everyone’s mean and he hates them (Ilove him so much because he’s a sullen, lonely kid forlornly kicking atempty plastic bags in the corner of the schoolyard), Mace begins the war like an adult. Specifically, he cuts off food supplies to King’s Landing.
Now, Renly is usually creditedwith or blamed for the strategy of moving his army deliberately slowly towardKing’s Landing, but note that when Stannis threatens Storm’s End, Renly movesextremely quickly–in fact, too quickly:
Ned would surely have prevailed upon Robert to bring up his whole force, to encircle Stannis and besiege the besiegers. That choice Renly had denied himself in his headlong rush to come to grips with his brother. He had outdistanced his supply lines, left food and forage days behind with all his wagons and mules and oxen. He must come to battle soon, or starve.
So it seems more likely that Mace was responsible for thisslow pace, with the primary goal (as we see through Tyrion’s POV) of starvingthe people of King’s Landing to the point of rebelling against Joffrey, acruel but clever stratagem that came very close to working. When the Tyrellsthen ally with the Lannisters, they flood King’s Landing with food, winning thesupport of the people even though the Tyrells were the ones who cut offsupplies to begin with:
“The Tyrells have been carting food up from Highgarden and giving it away in her name. Hundreds of wayns each day. There’s thousands of Tyrell men swaggering about with little golden roses sewn on their doublets, and not a one is buying his own wine. Wife, widow, or whore, the women are all giving up their virtue to every peach-fuzz boy with a gold rose on his teat.”
They spit on me, and buy drinks for the Tyrells.
Those bolded words of Tyrion’s sum up perfectly how well the Tyrells have played the commons relative to the Lannisters. Littlefinger’s upcoming embargo (as revealed in the recent “Alayne” chapter) will only rampup the political leverage Mace has wielded throughout the series via Reachresources and exports.
Mace also managed to avoid ever alienating the Starksand Tullys, and so is not hated by the Young Wolf’s former supporters, asignificant accomplishment given that they seem poised to wipe HousesBolton and Frey off the face of Planetos. Indeed, successful politicalmaneuvering is as much about avoiding disastrous mistakes as securingambitious triumphs; Lord Mace excels at this, which is why he’s been able to jumpfrom Renly to Joffrey to Tommen, sacrificing remarkably little and picking up Brightwater Keep in the bargain. Hell, asTyrion points out, he even left the door open to joining Team Robb should theLannisters prove troublesome:
Bloody fool, thought Tyrion. “Sweet sister,” he explained patiently, “offend Tyrell and you offend Redwyne, Tarly, Rowan, and Hightower as well, and perhaps start them wondering whether Robb Stark might not be more accommodating of their desires.”
Note Tyrion’s construction here; Tyrell’s vassalstake their cues from the Fat Flower, not the other way around. When RandyllTarly and Mathis Rowan talk in council, this is what I hear:
Ser Kevan was his brother’s vanguard in council, Tyrion knew from long experience; he never had a thought that Lord Tywin had not had first. It has all been settled beforehand, he concluded, and this discussion’s no more than show.
(I know Kevan thinks Tarly’s the real danger,but Kevan also thinks Cersei is permanently cowed, so he’s not necessarily the most insightful guy.)
Mace Tyrell has spent the entire story steadilyaccumulating both hard and soft power, and nobody seems to notice,because unlike his mother or his daughter, he doesn’t fit the archetype of aclassic political manipulator. If there is an unambiguous winner in the Game of Thrones so far, still standing amidst all the bodies, it is the Warden of the South…and yet it’s hard not to laugh at himwhen he does stuff like this:
The new King’s Hand was seated on an oaken throne carved in the shape of a hand, an absurd vanity his lordship had produced the day Ser Kevan agreed to grant him the office he coveted.
But the terrifying thing to consider is that heis not desperately compensating by making himself a Hand-Throne; he is,instead, deadly serious. (How long ago did he have that chair made, to have it ready on the spot?) Mace Tyrell intends to rule King’s Landing forthe foreseeable future, and Varys and his little birds have made that immeasurably easier for him.
So, why do I credit all this to Macespecifically? It’s become a near-consensus that Lady Olenna is the true decision-maker in Highgarden, to the point I’ve actually seen people refer to House Tyrell as“matriarchal,” which is one hell of a misread. Highgarden is notSunspear. The Tyrells are not the Mormonts (more’s the pity; all our lives are brighter with Lyanna Mormont in charge of the Bear Island letterhead). The Reach is the epicenter offeudal patriarchy in Westeros; Mace commands the armies, controls theresources, and makes the marriage contracts, not Olenna. We’ve seen this with Catelyn, Cersei, Lysa: noble women of patriarchal houses can exercise enormous power, but they do so through their sons, and Mace is no Sweetrobin. Don’t get me wrong, Olenna is unquestionablya strong influence on Mace’s decision-making, but it’s in an advisory capacity.Sure, she changes his mind on some questions (most notably on whether to wedLoras to Cersei), but Davos changes Stannis’ mind on the biggest question ofall (who he’s really fighting for, and why); this doesn’t make Stannis any less responsible for the decision to sail North.
I would argue thatOlenna’s storyline actually subtly demonstrates the enormous passive power MaceTyrell wields in the realm, and has since at least Robert’s Rebellion (more onthat in a moment). I think A Storm of Swords sets that up perfectly:Olenna isn’t Mace’s puppet master, she’s his assassin. Iabsolutely believe he knew about the Purple Wedding, because Olenna would betaking a frankly unbelievable risk by acting on her own. If she is discovered,she’s going to need Mace’s protection, which he can only effectively accomplishif he knows about it beforehand. As one of the judges, he can direct theinvestigation away from his family, which he does by repeatedly reminding hisfellow judges that Margaery could’ve easily been poisoned as well.
Olenna’s dialogue is largely concerned with the limitsof her power within the Tyrell household, and how the ultimate strategicand decision-making authority rests with her son.
“Should you ever have a son, Sansa, beat him frequently so he learns to mind you. I only had the one boy and I hardly beat him at all, so now he pays more heed to Butterbumps than he does to me. A lion is not a lap cat, I told him, and he gives me a ‘tut-tut Mother.’ There is entirely too much tut-tutting in this realm, if you ask me. All these kings would do a deal better if they would put down their swords and listen to their mothers.”
It was Mace who controlled the information withinthe Tyrell Conspiracy, as Olenna didn’t know about the Lannister twincest untilhe told her:
“It’s treason, I warned them, Robert has two sons, and Renly has an older brother, how can he possibly have any claim to that ugly iron chair? Tut-tut, says my son, don’t you want your sweetling to be queen?”
It was Mace who pushed the family ambitionsforward, not Olenna:
“We should have stayed well out of all this bloody foolishness if you ask me, but once the cow’s been milked there’s no squirting the cream back up her udder. After Lord Puff Fish put that crown on Renly’s head, we were into the pudding up to our knees, so here we are to see things through.”
Nor is book!Margaery actually obsessed with the crown, per Littlefinger:
“We shall have another wedding soon, wait and see. Margaery will marry Tommen. She’ll keep her queenly crown and her maidenhead, neither of which she especially wants, but what does that matter?”
Couple of quick things: one could argue that Olenna is being falsely humble to Sansa in the same way that I’m arguing Mace is doing writ large. But Olenna really has no reason to lie to Sansa about any of this; Sansa’s expectations and perceptions are not politically influential (although Alayne is a different matter), and Olenna is mining Sansa for information in this scene, not trying to sow misinformation of her own. Also, note the limitations of Olenna’s hands-off mantra:
“If truth be told, even our claim to Highgarden is a bit dodgy, just as those dreadful Florents are always whining. ‘What does it matter?’ you ask, and of course it doesn’t, except to oafs like my son.”
Well, Mace has to care about that sort of thing, because it’s the source of his legitimacy in the Reach. If he can put a grandson on the Iron Throne, he’ll have secured his authority back home from the likes of the Florents…and indeed, as soon as the Blackwater was done, Mace used his new access to the Iron Throne’s power to bring Brightwater Keep under direct Tyrell jurisdiction.
Mace’s go-to move, one which he has incommon with Roose Bolton, is to hoard his resources while allowing/encouraginghis ostensible allies to self-destruct, counting on being the one withthe most soldiers (and food, in Mace’s case) in the end. Never was that made more plain thanduring Robert’s Rebellion. I’d guess Mace stayed loyal to Aerys precisely becauseso many other lords were jumping ship; if he bet on the rebels losing and won,he could potentially take much (if not all) of the Stormlands as a reward. Indeed, thatwas his primary war aim: not to defend the crown, but to occupy the Stormlands.And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for young Stannis’ ironresolve and inspiring leadership (bullshit “Stannis isn’tcharismatic,” uncharismatic men don’t hold a starving garrison together forthat long; the king’s men and queen’s men alike have followed him to Storm’s End, the Blackwater, theWall, Winterfell, through fire and ice, the odds against them almost every time,roaring his name. No Baratheon is uncharismatic, there are laws on this.) Mace’s siege wasn’t just a landgrabconducted under the pretense of loyalty to the crown, however; if Stannis hadyielded, Mace could’ve broken Robert’s cause in the same way Theon brokeRobb’s. What kind of king loses his castle, especially to Lord Puff Fish (or Theon,for fuck’s sake)?
But Mace never gave Robert Baratheon cause tokill him if (when, as it turns out) the rebel lord won, although thestill-Warden of the South certainly committed himself to a lifelong campaign tokeep Stannis off the Throne, which helps explain his willingness to join TeamJoffrey after Renly’s death. Mace kept his titles, his land, his soft power.And when Renly came to him with the news that Cersei’s children were notRobert’s, Mace plotted with Renly to replace Cersei with Margaery and put ahalf-Tyrell on the Iron Throne, cementing Highgarden as the politicalpowerhouse of the realm. As mentioned above, Mace commits himself to this planbefore informing Olenna, telling her only to keep the family united in pursuit ofa common end (which, again, is why I cannot believe Olenna would take thehugely risky step of murdering the king without getting her lord’s consent…ormore likely, she was following his orders in doing so. Like she said, shewanted nothing to do with any of these assholes, but Mace tut-tutted,and that was that.)
So what’s next on Mace’s agenda? Control the small council, get Margaerythrough her trial, and protect Highgarden from theCrow’s Eye. I’ve no doubt he’ll accomplish the first two, but the third is going tobecome very perilous very quickly (especially if I’m right in thinking Eurongets a dragon). Cersei’s already demonstrated how many fucks she gives aboutdefending the Reach (between zero and let me check oh also zero how weird); moreover, she may very well break the alliance for good by sending Robert Strong after Margaery. So Mace Tyrell is going to yet again be in the market for a new client-king…and lo andbehold, like an answered prayer, there’s one down at Storm’s End, and his first choice for Hand has, ah, a hand problem…
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