I can't come up with any reason this marriage would happen (maybe I don't understand Westerosi politics well enough but I just don't see how, at the very least, Mace Tyrell would not be against it) but I've read a few posts saying that had Robb married Margaery it could have changed a lot of things for the better. Do you think that's true?
Hi anon! Great question; a Stark-Tyrell alliance is one of my favorite ASOIAF hypotheticals to play around with, and it’s explicitly teased more than once in the text:
“Had it been me up there, I should have sent Ser Loras. He so wanted to go… and a man who has the Lannisters for his enemies would do well to make the Tyrells his friends.”
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.”
If you had to fall into a woman’s arms, my son, why couldn’t they have been Margaery Tyrell’s?
Now, why would this marriage happen?
Robb Stark’s campaign against the Lannister regime reaches its peak with the Battle of Oxcross. With Stafford Lannister’s army shattered, there’s basically nothing stopping Robb from sacking Lannisport and besieging Casterly Rock itself. Edmure holds Riverrun, Roose holds the Ruby Ford, and Maege Mormont and the Greatjon are raiding the rest of the Westerlands, makin’ off with all their gold and cattle. (Those rapscallions!) Robb is an extremely attractive ally at this point to anyone not already committed to Joffrey’s rule. Indeed, we later learn that many Vale lords were champing at the bit to get in on the Young Wolf’s hot streak, prevented only by Littlefinger via Lysa.
We learn about Robb’s victory from Sansa’s POV in King’s Landing; the very next chapter, her mother witnesses Renly’s assassination. The Tyrells suddenly find themselves kingless, as Lord Mace has what you might call history with Stannis. (Namely, if not for Davos and his onions, Mace would’ve starved Stannis to death at Storm’s End during Robert’s Rebellion. Stannis does not forget. Stannis does not forgive.) What’s a wealthy, powerful, and conniving family to do?
If Mace chose to marry Margaery to Robb, it’s almost impossible to imagine how either Stannis or Tywin could have defeated the new North-South alliance. Tywin’s vassals, now drastically outnumbered and with Robb loose on their lands, could well have demanded he sue for peace or even desert him if he refused. Even if they don’t, Harrenhal will soon come under siege by a massive, unwearied, and well-fed Reach army. The big question then becomes what happens at King’s Landing. Without Tywin and Mace riding in to save the day, Stannis will likely take the city and the throne…unless Robb and his new vassals stop him.
After all, with three of the seven kingdoms behind him, and a fourth (the Westerlands) about to fall to him as well, why shouldn’t Robb just go ahead and claim the Iron Throne for himself? (Putting aside for the moment the li’l matter that he has no claim to it but by force.) After all, up to this point, his kingdom hinged in large part on who his parents were; now it’s about who his kids will be. With the backing of Highgarden as well as Winterfell and Riverrun (and in all likelihood, Casterly Rock by conquest), Robb and Margaery’s kids won’t be ruling an “independent kingdom, as of old.” They will be ruling over the lion’s share (heh) of the Westerosi population. When your realm stretches from Oldtown to the Wall, you’re not really a secessionist any more. And of course Mace wants to see his grandson’s arse on the Iron Throne, and while his vassals (especially Randyll Tarly) would love to serve a king as classically charismatic and accomplished in war as Robb, they wouldn’t be happy being ruled from far-off and decidedly foreign Winterfell, where Northern lords would always have a leg up in influence.
But those Northern lords, naturally, want exactly that monopoly on the Young Wolf’s power; indeed, no sooner has Robb been declared king than Wyman Manderly moves to reap the benefits of independent fleets and finances. How would he feel about Tyrell gold suddenly displacing White Harbor silver as the literal and figurative currency of Robb’s realm? Moreover, there’s an ideological component to Robb’s declaration of independence that would lead Northerners to resist re-bending the knee to the Iron Throne, even if Robb himself were sitting on it. Rickard Karstark openly dismisses “their red castle and their iron chair as well.” Theirs, not ours. He swore an oath to the King in the North, not a half-Tyrell regime in King’s Landing.
As such, if Robb marries Margaery, he will immediately face one hell of a headache in managing the various interests of his new coalition; his best hope is claiming the Iron Throne to sate the Reach nobles while offering his father’s lords significant rewards (lands, marriages, positions at court) to earn their buy-in for this dramatic alteration of their military and political aims.
So why doesn’t this happen? Catelyn’s presence in Renly’s tent when he dies ruins any possibility of her serving as matchmaker (remember, she’s initially considered a suspect in his murder). Then Theon takes Winterfell. Just as Robb’s raids on the West made Tywin look dangerously weak in front of his lords (forcing him to march back toward home, despite the massive threat Stannis’ new army poses to the nascent Lannister dynasty in King’s Landing), Robb’s loss of his home castle destroys the aura of victory and legitimacy that would make him an attractive partner for the Tyrells. Mace instead teams up with Tywin to take down Stannis, but as Tyrion’s quote up at the top indicates, the lords of the Reach could still jump ship yet again, now in a position to open the capital’s gates to King Robb…except by then, King Robb has a queen. His marriage to Jeyne Westerling obviously poisons his relationship with the Freys, but if he’d married Margaery instead, Walder Frey wouldn’t have dared risk the Red Wedding, no matter how slighted he felt. (What Roose Bolton would’ve done in this scenario is a whole ‘nother post.)
I love this hypothetical because it emphasizes the exquisite timing with which the War of Five Kings unfolds and the remarkable cultural upheavals it puts into play: when Robert Baratheon sat the Iron Throne, no one could have imagined the Tyrells fighting to sit a Stark there instead, but the dominos that fall after Robert dies bring us closer than you might think to exactly that scenario. It’s how you know GRRM’s a great writer; I love the story he tells, but the ones he doesn’t, choosing instead to faintly trace their outlines and structure the narrative around their absence, are almost as fascinating.
